The Lets Read Podcast - 199: I WENT DOWN AN INTERNET RABBIT HOLE | 25 True Scary Stories | EP 187

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Internet Rabbit Holes, Summer Camp, & Wrong Turns... 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

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🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 On March 14th of 2014, two Dutch students named Lisanne Froon and Chris Kramers traveled to Panama for an adventure vacation. They planned to do their fair share of relaxing on the golden sands of Panama's beaches, but they also had their hearts set on some selfless humanitarian work. Before their departure from their native Holland, the girls had contacted a school in a small town on the Caldera River named Boquete, asking if they needed any volunteers during the upcoming semester.

Their assistance was eagerly accepted by the understaffed and under-resourced escuela, but upon arriving in the village a few weeks early, they discovered that it wasn't all that they'd hoped for. Chris Kramers wrote in her diary that the villagers were rude and not at all friendly, and that their trip had proven to be a real disappointment. In order to offset what a letdown the initial phase of their trip had been, the two girls planned to hike around the active Baru volcano on April 1st of 2014. The three-mile hiking trail that surrounds the Baru volcano is relatively easy to explore,

but as the two girls set off from Boketi at around 11am, it proved to be one of the last times anyone would see them alive. Accompanied by a local dog named Blue, Lisana and Chris walked along the Pianista Trail, stopped only at an inn to ask directions. It's not clear why the innkeeper would do so, but it was later discovered that he advised the girls to immediately take a taxi back into Boquete. None of the local villagers would admit to there being any kind of threat of danger on the Pianista Trail, but if that was the case, why would the innkeeper advise the girls to immediately call off their hike?

The Boquete villagers began to suspect something terrible had happened when the dog, Blue, returned from the hike unaccompanied, but for some reason they waited until the following day to report Lisana and Chris missing. Again, it's not clear why they would wait to do this, and it suggests that they knew of something dangerous on the trail, something that was to be avoided for at least 24 hours. Two days later, the girl's family became concerned by the lack of communication and reported the missing to local authorities. Their report sparked a search of the surrounding area that was conducted both on foot and using aerial assets, but not a trace of either girl could be found. Just less than a week after they first

went missing, the Froon and Kramer's families became so wracked with worry that they flew out to Panama to assist in the search and were accompanied by members of the Dutch police's missing persons department. The Dutch police officers interviewed the Boquete villagers and were told that it was more than likely that the two girls had taken a wrong turn on the mountain somewhere and were simply lost in the forest. Yet it didn't take long for the detectives to notice some serious inconsistencies in the villagers' stories and they became suspicious that the girls had been the victim of some kind of criminal activity. Over the next ten weeks, search teams led tracker dogs through the stretches of forest that the two girls were believed to have traversed, but again, not a

trace of the two girls could be located. Authorities would have to wait until June of 2014 for any kind of break in the case, and this came in the form of a woman from the local Nogabe tribe who showed up at a police station with something very disconcerting in her possession. The woman had found a blue backpack that she claimed she found along the bank of a nearby river. The backpack contained sunglasses, a camera, two cell phones, money, two bras, a water bottle, and Lisana Froon's passport. Investigators immediately set about analyzing Lisana's phone, and it was through this process that they discovered something as confusing as it was disturbing. The phone had remained active for almost ten days after the pair had initially gone missing,

and during this time, they had made repeated attempts to summon help for themselves. They had made a number of 112 calls, which is the Dutch emergency number, as well as using 911 in an attempt to contact Panamanian emergency services. A number of these calls actually connected for a time, but due to a poor cell reception in the area, the longest of them lasted only two seconds before the signal dropped. Not long after the analysis of Lisanne Froon's phone, Chris Kramer's was located a short distance away, and after a similar analysis was performed on it, authorities discovered something very frightening indeed. Someone had locked Chris's phone by entering the wrong pin code on several different occasions,

powering it on one final time on April 11th, before both phones would be switched off until they were found. The phone's activity had initially suggested that at least one of the girls remained alive around five days after they went missing, but the locking of Chris' phone through incorrect pin code entries told them something very different and reasserted the possibility of there being criminal activity. Obviously, both the authorities and the girls' families found this all deeply concerning, but it wasn't until they examined the girls' camera that a truly terrifying scenario began to unfold. The camera's memory card contained more than 100 pictures,

with the first 50 or 60 consisting of regular tourist-style photographs of the two girls smiling or posing. Yet as investigators continued to scroll through the pictures, the tone of the images began to shift dramatically. One photograph showed Chris Kramers with a look of pure terror on her face and was dated around the time the girls began to contact emergency services. The remainder of the photos were taken from April 8th between the hours of 1am and 4am, and depicted seemingly random objects, like a stick with plastic sticking to it, clumps of foliage, a canyon, or a bridge. Investigators suggested that due to the steady framing of the shots, they were intentionally taken, perhaps to serve as trail markers to help the young women navigate their route, or even as a way for rescue workers to locate them should they have discovered the camera before the girls themselves. The girls may have also been using the

camera's flash as a light source or perhaps to scare off predatory animals, but there were others who suggested that neither Froon nor Kramers took the photos and that a potential abductor had taken them while playing with the camera. Lisana Froon's parents were extremely upset when they saw the rough and frightened state their daughters were in and begged the authorities not to release any of them to the public. Yet despite their wishes, a Panamanian news channel accidentally leaked some of the photos, and the same thing happened back in Holland. The latter featured a picture which appeared to show the back of one of the girls' heads,

and whoever it was was sporting a rather severe head wound, with blood matted in her hair. The leak sparked off wild speculation that not only had the girls been kidnapped, but that an attacker had actually taken pictures of his victims to serve as a kind of grim series of trophies. After the discovery of the backpack, the search teams shifted to the area it was found, scouring the banks of the Rio Culebra along the small village of Alto Romero. Alto Romero was a long way from the trail that Kramers and Froon originally set out for, further cementing the idea that they had somehow gotten lost after taking a wrong turn. Shortly after the teams commenced with their new search area, they found

a bunch of Chris Kramer's clothing by the river's edge. Each item had been neatly folded and placed on the river's edge and appeared to be on the opposite side of the bank from where the photographs had been taken. Some suspected that local tribesmen had found the discarded clothes and had folded them neatly in the hopes that someone might return for them. This led to a great number of them being questioned in relation to the girls' disappearance, but none admitted to seeing them, either alive or dead. Two months after the search teams focused their efforts around Alto Romero, the first human remains were finally discovered. One of the search teams discovered a hiking shoe behind a tree along the same stretch of river where Lisana's backpack had been found.

Initially, they believed that it was just another spare item of clothing, but upon further inspection, the shoe contained a severed human foot. By the end of August, DNA analysis had successfully determined that the foot had belonged to Lisana Froon, and further searches had turned up pieces of rotten flesh that were a DNA match for Chris Kramer's. It was a heartbreaking revelation for the girls' families, as it meant that the chances of their daughter's survival were extremely slim. Yet the question remained, how on earth did their bodies end up in such a gruesome state of dismemberment? It took until March of 2015, almost a year after Kramers and Froon traveled to Panama, for investigators finally to reach

their ultimate conclusion. In their eyes, the two girls most likely suffered some sort of tragic accident along the trail after becoming lost in the forest. The catastrophic ankle break that Lisana suffered suggested that she had fallen a great distance before passing away either in or near the river. Chris Kramer had probably then attempted to climb down the cliff face in the dark, but due to the low light conditions, could not find Lisana or her way back to the trail. Chris had then died somehow while trying to exit the forest, leaving Lissana dead or dying somewhere in the darkness.

Her remains then decomposed, and thanks to the river and the intense tropical rainfall, had ended up scattered for miles down the river. For some, there was finally a solid resolution to the mystery. But for others, morbid mysteries still abounded. One of the staff writers of the Panamanian newspaper La Estrella de la Corriata claimed the authorities had completely botched their handling of the case. She reported there was no chain of custody established for the recovered evidence or any human remains. She also reported

that the 30-plus fingerprints found on the backpack not only remain unidentified, but that not a single one of the indigenous people involved with the case had their prints recorded in order to eliminate them from suspicion. The reporter also raised additional concerns over the analysis of the girl's camera and phones, claiming that the condition of the equipment was inconsistent with the places it was discovered. She claimed to have seen photographs of the equipment and argued that the lack of damage to the items was extremely suspicious, almost as if though the police had recovered them from a home or dwelling and not from the rainforest as they'd previously claimed. The reporter also said that only a skin-deep analysis from the camera had been performed,

and that although it was possible to scour the memory cards for pictures that had been deleted, the Panamanian police had completely neglected to do so, even though this could have provided vital clues as to exactly what happened on the day of the girl's death. Panamanian lawyer Enrique Orocha, who was employed by the heartbroken Kramer's family, also voiced his concerns regarding the handling of evidence. He claimed despite reports to the contrary, no forensic investigation was conducted at the site the girls' bodies were found. On top of this, many of the investigation sources remain completely unverified,

meaning for all intent and purposes, police officers could have simply fabricated them. But perhaps most disturbing of all, Enrique claimed that neither Chris nor Lisana's skulls were ever recovered, and that despite intensive searches of the area around Alto Romero, the most important pieces of their skeletons were never found. If the two girls died of accidental injuries, it seems extremely unlikely that neither's skull would ever be recovered, and Enrique believes that this is the most compelling evidence of foul play in the entire case. In light of law enforcement's mismanagement of the girls' deaths,

a number of conspiracy theories and suggestions of cover-ups have gathered momentum. Some critics have asserted that the indigenous tribespeople of the area may have murdered the two girls and are now masking their involvement in the crime by turning over evidence and pretending to cooperate. Some have even argued that the missing thigh bones and skulls are evidence that the two girls were cannibalized following their deaths. Others have suggested that the girls fell victim to narcos or organ traffickers, which would explain why their bodies were in pieces. While there is no shortage of theories regarding the grim truth of what happened that day, one common thread runs through all of them,

and that's how the Panamanian authorities have remained suspiciously quiet and inactive regarding the investigation during the years that followed. It's entirely possible that this was done to protect Panama's tourism industry, which is essential to its fledgling economy. Yet others have suggested that narco-traffickers have paid off key members of the government in order to prevent international authorities from discovering their involvement in the girls deaths and hindering their multi-million dollar businesses when all is said and done the key question in this case is did someone actually murder chris kramers in lisana prune or was it all just a horrible accident as much as the Panamanian government might be uncomfortable admitting it, between the

years 2009 and 2017, 24 other tourists have either gone missing while hiking in Panama, or have turned up dead under extremely mysterious circumstances. In 2017, independent journalists from both Panama and the United States conducted an investigation into the deaths and disappearances, with each coming to the same conclusion, that they might all be the work of an unidentified serial killer. Leaked forensic documents suggested someone dismembered the young women and scattered the remains deliberately,

which is exactly what seems to have occurred with many of the other victims. The most insidious and dangerous thing about this particular case is that, in covering up such a frightening series of murders, the Panamanian authorities aren't just denying justice to the Froon and Kramer's families, they're essentially digging the graves of many more victims. If there really is a serial killer at work, targeting tourists on the jungle trails of Panama, there's certainly no shortage of potential victims to choose from. So if you're planning a trip down to Panama, maybe avoid hiking around the Pianista Trail, as you might have to worry about something far more terrifying than jaguars. The The single worst day of my life started in the unlikeliest of ways,

when I took a trip to visit my grandpa over near Omaha, Nebraska. First problem I ran into was the lack of cell signal out there in the sticks. No internet meant my GPS started going haywire and I've never been great at reading maps. That and there are basically no road signs anywhere and the ones that are there are in such bad shape you can barely read them even if you slow down when passing them. So in the end I had to actually stop at some guy's house to ask directions and the fact that he didn't seem to know where I was talking about didn't fill me with confidence. He mentioned knowing of an old house off a dirt road, maybe a mile or two away from his own.

He said it wouldn't be the easiest to find, but he was basically 75% sure that I was close. So, off I went, headed in the direction he was pointing, hoping that I'd make it to my grandpa's before lunchtime. A few minutes later, I spot a dirt road turn off that I thought might be the one that he was talking about. But after driving down it for a few minutes, I didn't see any houses or anything, so I figured that I made a wrong turn. Not surprising considering how crappy the infrastructure was, but it was still pretty frustrating. But then luckily, I saw a driveway out of nowhere, and I got my hopes up thinking that it was my grandpa's place. It wasn't, as there was a bunch of dudes with a van and a car all stood around talking, and my grandpa wasn't one for company,

but I at least figured that I could ask them for some more directions. So that's what I do, but the second I turn into the driveway I notice the guy standing around started to act a little anxious. One guy immediately tears away from the little circle they had going, another starts looking around as if though he was expecting other people to show up or something. I realize that I just interrupted something private. I just didn't realize the danger I'd driven into. Right as I stop the car, I hear one of the guys say something to another like, he with you? Then I took my eyes off of them for a second as I reached for the road map I had. Right as I stopped the car, I hear one of the guys say something to another like,

''He with you?'' Then I took my eyes off them for a second as I reached for the road map I had. Then when I looked up again, all I see is a gun pointing at me through my driver's side window. I realize now that in the few seconds that followed that I was just waiting for the guy to pull the trigger. I can't remember thinking anything other than gun but I didn't move. I just froze. I didn't try to back out or duck or anything.

I just sort of waited for everything to turn black. Like on a nature documentary when a deer gets caught by a tiger or something, and they just sort of go limp as they're thinking, well, this is it. Seconds later, I hear the guy with the gun saying, turn off the engine. Then when I do, he follows up with, get out of the car. I do as he says, feeling my knees wobble a little as I step out onto the dirt outside. I didn't think I could get any more scared, but I was wrong. Because when another guy spoke next, I felt like I honestly could have made an actual mess in my shorts. This guy just pipes up, He's a cop, man. Just shoot him. Let's get out of here.

That suddenly roused me from being all frozen and silent with fear and I just started saying, I'm not a cop. I swear to God I'm not a cop. I'm just looking for Grandpa's place. Please don't shoot me. Please. I'm not a cop. Please believe me.

It all came out in one long, frenzied sentence, and I can't really write it all into this, but I was stammering, shaking. My voice was breaking. I was just a mess. I think this was the same guy who said, He's lying. Just kill him. We can't lose the shipment. That was the only clue I had as to what was going down at that meeting, and I have agreed with a few other people's suggestions that it was drug-related. I didn't know this at the time, but Douglas County, the county that Omaha is in, has a huge meth problem, probably the biggest in the entire country. And as myself and many others suspect, I accidentally stumbled across a meth deal, probably a pretty big one considering some of the hardware on display.

Not only did I have some kind of pistol on my face the whole time, but one of the other guys emerged with the kind of gun I've only ever seen on Call of Duty. I'm talking the kind with all kinds of attachments and stuff on it. Like I said, there was a hot minute there where I really did think that I was about to die. But when I heard the guy with the pistol trained on me say, get the tape, I started to think that they might have something even worse in mind for me. What's weird though is that, even though that didn't mean that they were going to kill me, my survival instincts told me at least that buys us a little more time. Thinking about

it, letting them tie me up like they did could have secured my death, not helped me avoid it. But still, I just let them do what they did in the hopes that compliance might lead to mercy. They put tape over my eyes as well as around my wrists and ankles. They made me kneel in the dirt as they frisked me. I'm pretty sure they searched my car too and I mean it when I said that they had some serious hardware because I'm assuming you need something pretty advanced to tell if there's no secret recording equipment on a car. One of the guys said, cars clean for bugs. At one point,

and that made me realize those guys weren't your average crankheads. I piped up again that I wasn't a cop, that they could search me all they liked, but they wouldn't find a badge or a gun or anything like that. That didn't seem to satisfy them though, and they kept arguing among themselves about what

to do with me. I know they took out my license at one point because I could hear them passing something around, asking each other, you know this guy? Or you recognize him? Stuff like that. I can't even describe how relieved I was when I heard them all agree that they'd never seen me before and that I probably wasn't any kind of undercover cop or anything. I was praying that meant they wouldn't

kill me but at the same time I knew it meant that I was still in quite a bit of trouble. Not long after that they started discussing what they were going to do with me. The guy who had been suggesting they kill me kept on making that suggestion but then the guy who ordered me tied up, the same one who first pulled suggesting they kill me kept on making that suggestion, but then the guy who ordered me tied up, the same one who first pulled a gun on me, he kept telling him to shut up, saying that killing me was a bad idea that it'd only bring down more heat on them. During those few minutes of pure terror, he was like my best friend in the world.

As if it had been the bloodthirsty one in charge, I definitely wouldn't be around to write this. But then, right as it seemed like I was going to get away unharmed, the boss of the group seemed to have a sudden change of heart. He said something like, You know what? I think you might be right. We can't risk it. There's probably a do-gooder who's going to go straight to the cops. I started wailing about how I wasn't, how I'd never snitch, how I'd just drive off and forget what I saw, causing them no trouble whatsoever. But that just didn't seem to do the trick. And when I heard the boss doing something with his gun, I begged him over and over not to kill me. I tried everything, reminding him that it would be too much trouble,

that I was sorry for interrupting them, that I didn't see anything, but not a word that came out of my mouth seemed to change his mind. I haven't even finished talking when I felt him press the gun to the back of my head, and as I felt myself starting to cry under the tape they'd wrapped around my eyes, I wished I'd never gotten out of bed that morning. The last thing I heard him say before he pulled the trigger was, ''Start digging a hole.'' And then, after every muscle in my body seemed to tense up in preparation for oblivion, I heard the trigger pull with a dull click that seemed to echo around my skull. But then, there was nothing.

No bang, no pain, no blood or brains. I wasn't falling forward or backward or whatever. I was still just kneeling there, tensed up, feeling the pee trickle down my thigh, sadly. And all I could hear was laughter. They were all laughing at me, laughing at how I'd begged and pleaded with them not to kill me, when it was all just some cruel prank to instill the fear of God into me. And let me tell you, it worked. I felt the hot breath of the boss on my neck as he must have leaned down to tell me something like, Keeping your license. Anything happens, I'm sending someone to pay you a visit. Think of it as an insurance policy.

And next time, there'll be one in the chamber. I was later told this was called dry firing, or something like that anyway, where you fire a gun with nothing in the chamber so all it does is click real loud. Or at least it felt loud to me. After that they tossed me in the back seat of a car and from the very short distance that I was moved I figured that I was back on my own. Not long after I heard engines gunning, then moving vehicles, then silence. They left me there, in the back of my car, tied up and blindfolded for what felt like days. In reality it was only around 24 hours and if a passing farmer using the back roads hadn't spotted me, there's a chance I might have died of dehydration. My phone had upwards of 50 missed calls.

I had been reported missing by my parents. It was a whole ordeal, and obviously a big part of what followed was being questioned by the police. I didn't ask to talk to them, but considering how I was found, my parents wanted me to talk. I just stonewalled the deputy who showed up, then told my parents why I'd refused a word about what happened. That was honestly the worst part. Having my own life threatened, and being subjected to what amounted to a mock execution, that was one thing. But having my own mom and dad realize that they were no longer safe in their own home, that was another thing entirely. We moved a short while after that, living with family in Des Moines for

a few weeks after we could find an apartment, which mom and dad then used as a base to sell their house. Every so often, the cruel, maddening chaos of it all hits me all at once. All that, our entire lives uprooted, all because of one wrong turn I made on a dirt road, out in Douglas County, Nebraska. On February 7th of 2018, 49-year-old Canadian firefighter Danny Filipidis was on a skiing trip at the Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, New York. The event was a regular annual event attended by both active and retired firefighters, and on the day in question, Danny and his eight companions decided to ski one of the highest peaks in the Adirondacks. All could have been considered accomplished skiers but even the hardiest of athletes would have found this particular run to be thoroughly exhausting. So in the mid-afternoon the majority of Danny's group decided to call it quits. Danny however wanted one more run before he retired for the day

with his friends waiting for him at a ski lodge about halfway down the mountain. Yet just as they were awaiting his arrival, one of the worst snowstorms of the decade struck Whiteface Mountain, rendering visibility almost non-existent. Naturally, Danny's friends were extremely concerned for his well-being, and when he failed to return at the time they expected him to, they ventured up to the resort that they were staying at to report him missing. Search and rescue teams began to scour the mountain for any sign of the missing firefighter, but despite an all-night search of the area, Danny was nowhere to be found. The following day, scores more joined the search teams, including state police,

the U.S. Border Patrol, and dozens of civilian volunteers. Some theorized that Danny had simply packed up his belongings and gone back to Canada, but a search of his hotel room revealed that he'd left his passport and other essentials behind, meaning he had to be somewhere in the vicinity. When word of Danny's disappearance reached the Toronto Fire Department, more than a hundred active and former firefighters traveled down to Wilmington to aid in the search, and over the course of the following week, a total of over 6,000 people worked in shifts in an attempt to bring him home safely. Thankfully, six days after going missing, Danny was found alive and

well, but in a place that no one ever expected him to show up. Danny wasn't in New York at all, nor was he in Canada. He was almost 3,000 miles away, in the state of California. The story of his re-emergence began at around 9.30 a.m. on Tuesday, February 13th. Danny's wife was in a meeting with one of the search parties near Lake Placid when she received a very bizarre phone call from a phone number she didn't recognize. Her phone had been ringing almost non-stop all week, so it wasn't unusual to receive such a mysterious call. But when she picked up

the phone and heard the voice on the other end, her knees just about buckled with relief. It was Danny, using an old pet name for her that he'd used for years. When she asked where he was, he told her he was on the other side of the country, at Sacramento Airport. Danny's wife could tell just from his voice that he was very unwell, so she told him to hang up, seek help, and inform those who came to his aid that he was a missing person. Sacramento police rushed to Danny's aid,

finding him in a state of extreme disorientation at the airport's car rental terminal, still wearing the ski clothes he had on when he went missing six days prior. He had no idea what day it was, and when asked to describe a nearby road sign in order to determine his state of mind, he must have took the obvious blue for a bright green. He was also in possession of a brand new iPhone, having no idea where he'd bought it, and when he returned home, those that knew noticed that he'd gotten a haircut in the time that he'd been missing. When asked how he'd gotten to California, Danny claimed that he couldn't remember and was the first person to suggest that his patchy memory was down to some kind of head injury he'd

suffered while skiing. However, he did have vivid memories of sitting in the passenger seat of an 18-wheeler and that he'd slept a lot during his journey. Following a brief, on-the-spot assessment, Danny was quickly taken to a nearby hospital to be checked over for a possible head trauma. Yet surprisingly, he was soon discharged with no signs of any injuries being found. According to a Sergeant Sean Hampton of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, police officers conversed with Danny for quite some time at the airport, and all of them were sufficiently confident that he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

They came to the conclusion that Danny had been dropped off at the airport on the night before he was found, and that based on what little he could remember, must have slept roughly near Richards Boulevard before making his way to the airport just before dawn. Given how mysteriously fascinating Danny's case was, it wasn't long before the national media was engaged in a comprehensive search for the truth. Pictures of Danny, as well as the clothes that he was wearing at the time of his disappearance, were broadcast all over the United States and Canada, in the hopes that someone who encountered him on his journey might come forward to share what they knew.

A particular amount of effort was poured into an attempt to find the truck drivers that Danny had ridden with on his six-day journey. But despite the massive amount of publicity, not a single one of them came forward to identify themselves. It was only six months after being back in his native Toronto that Danny believed he had pieced together a solid picture of what had happened during the six days he was missing. In an interview with a major Canadian news outlet, Danny stated that the whole ordeal had started when he made a wrong turn while skiing down Whiteface Mountain. After taking this wrong turn, Danny believed he had taken a nasty fall, banged his head and lost consciousness. Then, after waking up, he walked to the main ski lodge only to find it was closed. In reality, this is highly unlikely

as rescue teams were searching this area intensively and it's more probable that he mistaked the children's programming area for the main lodge, a place that was most definitely closed at the time of his disappearance. Being extremely dazed and confused at this point, Dana claimed he walked all the way to a nearby highway before thumbing down a ride from a passing trucker. It's here that his memory becomes very patchy, and that he only remembers vomiting at a truck stop before learning that he was halfway across the country in the state of Utah. He remembered experiencing a crushing headache and intense fatigue during this moment of lucidity and that all he wanted to do was sleep as he continued his journey west. Towards the end of the journey, the mysterious trucker who gave Danny a ride claimed that

they had reached what he called the end of the line before dropping him off in Sacramento. Danny claimed that he couldn't remember the driver's name or what they spoke about and to this day the identity of the trucker remains completely unknown. Upon reaching downtown Sacramento, Danny claimed that he suddenly realized the gravity of his situation and he knew he needed to contact his loved ones. It's then that he took out $1,000 in cash from a credit card in order to buy a phone, but that he had no idea how he'd gotten hold of the card itself. It's also somewhat of a mystery that he didn't just use a pay phone or buy a cheaper variety of phone if it was just to make one phone call. But of all the mysteries this case consists of, this is by far one of the minor ones. A bigger mystery is why after Danny

realized that he was on the opposite side of the United States, as well as a missing person, he chose not to contact family or call 911, but instead opted to sleep on the streets overnight. It's possible that he still felt exhausted and wasn't thinking properly, but the man himself had no concrete explanation for his behavior at that point. The next morning, still in his ski clothing, Danny hitched a ride to Sacramento Airport, and it's around this time that he claimed he suddenly remembered his wife's phone number. He then made contact with her and the rest we already know.

Medical professionals have suggested that Danny's bizarre behavior could have been caused by one of two things. Dr. Charles Tater, a Toronto-based brain surgeon, believes that Danny was suffering from retrograde amnesia, the loss of memory resulting from a blow to the head. If Danny had indeed suffered a head injury after his wrong turn, it's possible that the resulting concussion caused gaps in his memory. Yet retrograde amnesia tends to last anywhere from a few seconds to 48 hours, meaning it wouldn't account for the entirety of Danny's memory loss. On the other hand, Dr. Jennifer Ryan, a senior scientist at Toronto's Rotman Research Institute, argues that Danny experienced another form of amnesia,

in the form of a dissociative fugue state. Derived from the Latin word for flight, a fugue state is a rare mental condition which can be triggered by a head injury, but can also be caused by a traumatic event or emotional disturbance. People with dissociative fugue have been known to temporarily lose their sense of identity before impulsively wandering far from their usual surroundings. They may not show any signs of illness or injury, but instead exhibit radically different behavior and have extreme difficulty remembering who or where they are. Dr. Ryan states that subjects typically don't remember the traveling itself, rather their memory kicks in when they find themselves in a new unfamiliar location.

The real problem with amnesic episodes like this is that some subjects never fully recover these lost moments, leaving them with what are known as islands of memory that remain forever lost to them. This may well prove to be the case with Danny Philippidis, meaning the missing pieces to the puzzle might never be unearthed. Incidents like Danny's disappearance show how fragile our minds really are. For all intent and purpose, Danny Philippidis was dead for a few days. It might have been a kind of identity death, and not a physical death. But what's the difference when the very memory banks that make up our personas are suddenly wiped?

Maybe if he had hit his head a little harder after that fateful wrong turn, the Danny Filipidas he'd once been might have never, ever returned. A few years back, I was out elk hunting with my brother up in Alberta, Canada. That morning, my hunting buddy Paul and I were headed out to hunt near the Simonette River, but I only had my rifle with me since Rob didn't have a big game license at the time. As some of you might know, the banks of the Simonette are very much considered bear country and since one half of our hunting party was very vulnerable without a firearm, we hit up the nearest ranger station and asked about bear sightings. The ranger was very helpful and warned us that there was definitely

a grizzly in the area. They had been tracking sightings for weeks though and the ranger told us that if we stuck to certain trails and avoided others, we might be able to stay out of the bear's territory, which would lower our chances of encouraging it. That might seem silly to people who understand how vast a grizzly's territory can be, but up here we believe that mitigation can be just as effective as outright protection. Anyway, we had been walking for about an hour or so. Because there was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground, it was much harder to recognize where each trail turned

off, etc. Suddenly, we both realized that we might have taken a wrong turn a mile or so back, because we didn't seem to recognize where we were. We decided to make our way back to the truck so we could better orient ourselves, when we suddenly noticed fresh wolf tracks in the snow. Wolves generally aren't as dangerous as bears, as they're way too smart to attack humans, but it still meant we got a little tense as we carried on padding through the snow in dead silence. Moments later, we caught a glimpse of an animal carcass just laying there in the snow, and it was only barely touched with no other scavengers near it.

This was a huge red flag to us, as the crows tend to descend on anything that doesn't have an apex predator near it, so we both started to worry that we were about to encounter something we really didn't want to. I loaded my rifle as we slowly approached, thinking we might be in for a close encounter with a wolf or a wolf pack, who would be wanting to defend the carcass obviously. As we both scanned the area, extremely on edge by that point, I heard this low-calling sound, but this huge spruce seemed to be blocking my view of where it was coming from, so I couldn't exactly see what was making it.

That's when Paul suddenly let out this terrified, high-pitched cry of grizzly. And then the next second, all I see is this huge bear charging right at him. If you haven't seen how fast a grizzly can charge, it's hard to imagine how such a lumbering beast can achieve such frightening speeds. But I can assure you, when they want to, those things can fly at you like a freaking fury cannonball. It is truly terrifying to behold. The bear moved so fast that I barely had time to react, and definitely not enough time to raise my rifle to actually aim. But still, I had to get a shot off even if it was just to scare it, so I tried my best to aim from the hip and hit the bear in the head. I turned, fired, and nothing. The bear didn't even so much as flinch.

Luckily, Paul was able to take cover behind these two trees that were pretty close together, so they acted kind of like a palisade between him and the bear. The grizzly took a swipe at him, missed, and then just kept moving around the tree before turning in my direction. I don't think I can even really describe the kind of terror I felt in that moment. It's like nothing I've ever felt before or since. We, humanity I mean, spend so much time dreaming up imaginary monsters for books or movies or comic books, when there are real life monsters just walking the earth alongside us. And up near the simonet that day, I had one charging right at me.

It must have been no more than 8 meters away from me when I reloaded my rifle and fired again. That time I actually hit it, and I saw a spray of blood in the air from where the bullet tore through its shoulder. But to my horror, it just didn't seem to flinch that time either. I had to fall back onto my butt to dodge the swipe it took at me, and as I kept on crawling back through the snow, I just couldn't get the leverage to properly reload my rifle. It took another swipe at me, but I knew then that it must have pulled a bullet through its arm or shoulder because the force wasn't as powerful as I thought it would be and I saw a few drops of blood hit the snow in front of me.

It probably realized that it wouldn't be able to kill me just with its claws, so that's when the bear opened up its mouth to bite me, lunging forward as I lay there in the snow. I didn't really plan on it, what I did next was all out of pure instinct, but I just shoved my gun barrel towards it to try and keep it from biting me, and I watched the barrel disappear down its throat. It actually bit down on that thing, and I swear I heard one or two of its teeth shatter as it chewed on the cold steel for a few seconds.

It pushed the rifle butt down onto me, and that gave me the leverage I needed to actually work the bolt again to put another round in the chamber. Seconds later, I pulled the trigger, and sent a bullet either right through its brain, or through its spine, because it just went completely limp and rolled onto its side in the snow. The whole event lasted no more than maybe 20 or 30 seconds, but it was the most terrified I've been in my entire life. But the aftermath was probably worse. You'd think that after surviving something like that, you'd be all like, man, screw that bear. But I just felt this sickening regret. Grizzlies are beautiful animals, and if there were another way I would have let it live, but it just didn't give me that option. In that moment it was either

it or me. There was no reasoning with it, no negotiating with it, no communicating with it outside of pure violence, and I think that's what scares me about nature most of all. How one of humanity's most powerful tools is our power to communicate. But out there in nature, it's almost useless. If Mother Nature wants you dead, there's no stopping it. Either you die, or it dies. There is no in between. A few years ago, I had this really erratic schedule where I had to get up super early for school before going to my part-time job until 10 or 11 at night. I think there was about three months there where I didn't get any more than about five hours of sleep at night and after a while, it started to have a really terrible effect on me. I found my memories started to become shot, my mood was seriously affected and life in general just got really, really tough.

I started making basic mistakes on a daily basis and while some were just irritating, one almost cost me my life. It was when I was driving home one night, and although I made the same journey maybe a hundred times before, my overtired brain was at a breaking point, and I made a wrong turn. I know what you're thinking. That's just a minor inconvenience. I could have just turned around and corrected my course. But this wrong turn was down a one-way street and, as fate would have it, some motocross-mounted joyrider was coming the other way doing maybe 40 to 50. There wasn't a thing I could do about it, and the kid had no helmet on either so the second I hit him, his head smashed right through my windshield, his body stopping

only as his shoulders hit the crunched up glass. It was the most horrific sight I've ever seen in my entire life. The kid's head was almost completely split open. There was no way he was alive, at least that's what I thought at first. But then, as my screams finally died down, I could hear him groaning, with all these gurgles coming from where there was blood or something in his throat. I heard those sounds in my nightmares for months afterwards. The kid died on his way to the hospital and I thought I was going to go to prison over it. I mean, I honestly believe that I deserved to go to jail for a long time.

It took a lot for people to talk me down and tell me that the kid was ripping it down a street on a stolen bike, wearing no helmet, and if he hadn't made that choice, he'd still be alive. I just made one dumb mistake, but the kid had made a fatal, criminal one. I still can't really justify it to myself and even though the state didn't choose to prosecute, his mom tried to make a civil suit to get some money out of me. I tried to offer her enough to cover the kid's funeral, but she wanted more. She wanted to see me in court. But then the whole civil suit was thrown out because of the whole grand theft auto thing. I understand where she was coming from though. She didn't want it to be nice and respectful or like charity. She wanted to take something from me, just like I'd taken something from her. I still go to therapy over the whole thing, and I sometimes still see that kid's face

in my dreams, the way his eye was bulging out with his head split open. But somehow he was still alive, groaning and gurgling his final breaths away, all because I went the wrong way down a one-way street. When I was 13 years old, my mom and dad told me that they were sending me to summer camp for two weeks. I was a real homebody when I was that age and I guess sending me to camp was their way of forcing me to develop social skills before I ended up with some kind of anxiety disorder or something. Looking back I see why they did what they did. No parent wants to see their kid grow up some weird loner who ends up socially stunted and resentful of the world. I guess attending camp that summer really did make me a little bit more confident and able to handle

people, but it definitely wasn't in the way they were expecting. To say I wasn't keen on attending the summer camp might be the understatement of the century. When my parents told me, I almost burst into tears right then and there. I promised that I'd do whatever it took to keep them from sending me to some wilderness torture for two weeks, that I'd improve my hygiene and try to be more sociable. But they weren't looking to bargain with me, they were giving me an order. I was going to summer camp whether or not I liked it and if they had to drag me kicking and screaming onto the waiting bus, so be it. I'll be honest, I cried myself to sleep on the night before the departure day

and I was fighting back tears on the drive out to the bus that would eventually take us to camp. It was only when I was on the bus with the other kids that I was certain I wouldn't cry again and even then, I think it was only because I was frozen in terror at being in the presence of a bunch of screaming teens. A trio of kids actually asked what my problem was, and all I could do was just sit there, gripped with fear as they began to discuss if I was special. It was completely humiliating, and I actually wondered if there was any way I could escape during a break at a roadside rest stop or something. But then, where would I go? What would I do? It was the very definition of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, and obviously, I chose the hard place

over the rock. The first few days of camp were tough to say the least. I barely spoke to anyone, hated the food and the activities were my idea of hell. I guess I have to say that I was spoiled in that respect, having eaten my choice of foods while sleeping in my very own bedroom, all as an only child. So the realities of eating fairly crappy food while sleeping in a cabin that slept six were a devastating shock to the system. My anxiety was bad enough during that first week, but it was particularly intense during mealtimes and that was all down to the fact that the boys and girls camps shared a catering facility. It wasn't all the girls that made me so anxious either. It was one in particular, a girl named Alexandra. She was the prettiest girl I'd ever laid eyes on. Popular, smart, graceful, and confident. I spent almost all of lunch and

dinner time staring in her direction, except of course when her gaze turned my way. Then I'd just stare into my dinner tray, hoping she hadn't spotted me looking at her. I somehow said twin prayers that she'd come waltzing up to me to say hello, while also hoping that she'd stay far away and that I didn't become some bumbling, red-faced idiot in front of her. Only one prayer was answered, and it made for one of the most nerve-wracking moments of my life. I'll never forget how sweet her voice sounded from up above me, how she asked if it was okay if she could sit with me for a few moments. I completely failed to give her an answer,

but she was confident enough to just smile, giggle, and sit down opposite me, recognizing that I wanted to bask in her presence more than anything else in the world. I only managed to compose myself enough to speak once she started asking me my name and where I was from and that kind of thing. Hearing how curious she was about me and seeing the jealous looks of some of the other boys in the cafeteria, that was the first big confidence boost I'd ever gotten in my life. It didn't exactly tip me over the scales or anything, I was still socially backward and incredibly nervous, but for the rest of the day, it was like I was floating on cloud nine. The same thing happened at dinner the following evening, with Alexandra coming over to talk to me about this and that. Only that time, I actually managed something of a complete conversation. And then, towards the end of my first week, when I'd actually managed to buddy up with two other

fairly geeky, socially awkward guys, she finally asked me the faithful question. Alex walked up to the table I was sitting with my two friends at and asked me if I wanted to meet her down at the swimming lake that evening before lights out. Now, as you can guess, something like that was completely and utterly forbidden by camp rules. The girls and the boys were not allowed to fraternize outside of permitted activities, or in the cafeteria, but then that's what made it so doubly special for me. She obviously liked me enough to risk getting sent home early and completely in disgrace too. There was definitely a time when an opportunity to get

sent home early would have been something that I'd have jumped on, but after meeting and talking to Alexandra, I didn't think that I ever wanted to go back home at all. The risk made it exciting, thrilling even, and as nervous as I was about meeting her in private, I told her of course, then plotted how I'd make my way down to the lake without being spotted by any counselors. When the time came, my buddies wished me luck, gave me some advice on how to keep it cool and play it smooth. Then I set off down towards the lake to meet Alexandra. When I arrived, my heart sank when I saw that she was nowhere to be seen. I was convinced that she wouldn't show, that I had gotten all my hopes up for nothing, but I was also terrified to just leave in case she showed up a

little late and got the impression that I wasn't interested in her. I stayed for five minutes, then ten, then when I eventually heard someone approaching along the trail. Then, who should emerge from the trees but the object of my affections, Alexandra, and she was carrying two towels. As we talked, I was this mix of nervous and excited and terrified and joyous, but above all, it felt like some kind of victory. I could be sociable, I could date pretty girls, I could probably even be one of the popular kids if I put my mind to it, I thought.

That might sound like my ego was inflating to dangerous levels, and you'd definitely be right about that. In fact, by the time Alexandra had actually showed up, it had inflated to the point where I couldn't see how our little meetup could possibly go wrong and when she suggested we strip down to our underwear and go for a little swim, I was completely blinded by puppy love that I didn't stop to think how that might not be the best of ideas. We did strip down to our shorts, then edged off the dock and into the water. The water was cold, but that was a godsend in a way because then I could pretend that I was shaking just because of how cold it was and not because I was absolutely overwhelmed with nerves

at being in my underwear with such a pretty girl. We swam around for a while, trying to keep as quiet as possible and at some point Alexandra brought up that she loved swimming and that she swam competitively for the private school she attended back in Burlington. She told me that she could hold her breath for just short of a minute, that it was a record at her school or something like that and asked if I wanted to see her prove it. I was happy to watch her do just about anything at that point so of course I said yes. And when she sank under the water, I counted up to 52 seconds until she emerged gasping for breath. I was beyond impressed. 52 seconds is an incredible feat, especially for a girl of her smaller stature. Then, she asked how long I could hold my breath for.

I told her I didn't know, but I was only too happy to duck under the water so she could count how long I could hold it for. I remember ducking under the water and hearing her muffled sounds of counting loud in that sweet lyrical voice of hers. I counted along with it in my head, feeling my lungs beginning to burn for air as the seconds ticked over. But then, she suddenly stopped counting, right as I heard something enter the water next to me. I kicked my legs to push myself back to the surface so I could check out whatever or whoever it was. And that's when I felt a hand on top of my head, pushing me down and keeping me under the water as I tried to

resurface for air. I remember opening my eyes to see that Alexandra was no longer in front of me, so whoever was keeping my head under the water was either behind me or above me on the dock. I began to panic, reaching up to pull the hand off my head, but I couldn't do it. I don't think I've been able to drag it off my head at the best of times, and I was always a fairly weak kid and the grip was strong. But then, since I was dangerously low on oxygen, it was completely impossible for me to even budge it. Within a couple more seconds, I could actually feel myself starting to black out. My lungs were on fire.

It got harder and harder to struggle against the force pushing me down, and there came a moment where I actually thought to myself, I'm going to die. The thought caused another spirit panic to run through me but then after that, and this is the very final thing I remember before I must have passed out, was this weird feeling of peace and acceptance. I wasn't panicking anymore. I just sort of gave up trying to fight the feeling. Then although I don't exactly remember it, I guess I just let myself drift off into oblivion.

The next thing I remember I was lying on the dock, coughing up water while an adult voice was asking me if I could hear them. I was still in a daze and in that moment I couldn't remember what had happened to me, I was just all confused and kind of sleepy. Then as I looked around, I saw Alexandra, crying while one of the counselors tried to comfort her. It was only then that I actually remembered the hand holding me under the water. I had gone from the happiest I'd ever been to thinking I was going to die. I had no idea who'd actually held me under, but Alexandra did, and her guilt had her fessing up to the counselor pretty quickly regarding who it was.

Apparently the whole thing had been an elaborate prank to screw with the nervous, overweight kid, but she had no idea that they were going to try to literally drown me out on the lake. From what I gathered, she'd panicked as soon as she saw them keep me under the water so long and had rushed off to get a counselor so they could stop it from happening. The EMTs and the cops showed up not long after I was taken into the head counselor's office and, as you can imagine, it became a huge deal. What was intended to be just some dumb, cruel prank had turned into what the cops were calling attempted murder. The kids did end up getting arrested and taken away from the camp

that same night, and the kid who actually held my head down ended up going to juvie for a couple of years, believe it or not. Mom and dad came to pick me up the next day too, and mom gave the head counselor an earful about seeing them in court before basically shoving me into the car. I didn't cry when I went off to camp, but I cried having to leave it. It was a whole mix of emotions too, happy to be leaving a place where I almost died, but sad to be leaving my first real friends behind, and sad to be leaving Alexandra behind too. I know she was the crux of the prank against me, and don't get me wrong, I definitely felt bitter about that, but she also cared enough to run to get help when she realized that they were trying to actually hurt me. I can't tell you how much that meant to me,

and looking back, I do realize how crazy that sounds. But in my dumb 13 year old brain, that was all the evidence I needed that she did actually like me in some way. Even if it wasn't the way I wanted. In a bizarre way, nearly dying at that camp turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to me. I realized that the worst thing in the world, death, wasn't actually all that bad a concept. When it comes to actually facing it, there comes a point of acceptance and peace. And after that, nothing really scared me anymore. I knew I could make friends. I knew I could be brave and so the things that I thought I never could, like talk to girls or learn to skate and I actually ended up losing a few pounds from actually going outside and socializing with

the new friends I made at school through skating. The only big negative that came from it was my fear of deep water. I haven't gone swimming since that day and the idea of going on a cruise or being out on a boat honestly makes me sweat with fear. Like I said, going to that camp helped me get over my social anxieties in a big way. It came at a cost I suppose but I still weirdly am glad I endured the whole experience because now I'm not scared of that one thing that grips everyone else and sometimes dictates their whole lives. I'm not afraid of death, and I guess that helps me live a little more than others. Anatoly Slivko was born on December 28th of 1938 in the Dagestani portion of the old Soviet Union. After a grim childhood marred by the deprivations of the Second World War, he eventually made a life for himself in the city

of Novinomysk near Stavropol and went on to have two children with his wife Lyudmila. To outside observers, Anatoly was an outstanding communist and a pillar of the local community, as he volunteered a great deal of his time to a local children's club. On the other hand, Anatoly was an outstanding communist and a pillar of the local community, as he volunteered a great deal of his time to a local children's club. Every summer, this children's club organized summer camps, and much like their American counterparts, these summer camps offered hard-working parents a brief reprieve from the responsibilities of child-rearing. Parents trusted their children with Anatoly, but this trust proved horribly

misplaced, for he harbored a terrible secret that would only come to light when it was far, far too late. In 1961, Anatoly was traveling home from downtown Novinomysk when he happened to witness a horrific traffic accident. The drunk driver of a heavy Soviet motorcycle had been traveling back too fast around an almost blind turn, causing catastrophic damage when it barreled into a group of pedestrians. One of the fatalities was a young boy wearing a Young Pioneers uniform, a youth organization similar to the Boy Scouts of America, and his body was in a dreadful, dire condition. It was quite obvious that the boy had been killed on impact, as his

head and neck had been almost crushed by the weight of the motorcycle. Yet the uniform of the Pioneers remained remarkably unblemished, and made for an image that Anatoly would recall vividly for the rest of his life. But the image wasn't so memorable because of the gore or the uniform, or the horror and pain etched on the faces of those affected. It was memorable because it was the very first time that Anatoly realized he received erotic gratification from witnessing the fresh remains of deceased children. The boy had experienced convulsions in his death throes, he later said, and as the smell of gasoline and fire permeated the air,

I began to lose myself in a haze of raw desire. In the months that followed the incident, Anatoly began looking for ways to get closer to local children without their parents becoming suspicious. After only a preliminary search, the solution was obvious. He would assume a position of authority over them by becoming a local youth leader, and after gaining the absolute trust of the local community, he would ruthlessly exploit his position to commit some of the most atrocious acts of abuse imaginable. The children that Anatoly exploited were most vulnerable during the yearly summer camps that the youth organization ran,

when they were far away from their parents or guardians. During these camps, Anatoly would work to gain the trust of a certain type of boy. They were always between the ages of 11 and 15. They were always short for their age, and they were always malleable enough so that Anatoly could talk to them into wearing a particular outfit. That outfit being the uniform of the Young Pioneers, the exact same one that the young traffic accident victim had been wearing during that fateful day back in 1961. Once the boy was dressed in Anatoly's outfit of choice, Anatoly would tell them that their

small stature would cause them untold misery in their lives, that they'd be relentlessly bullied by their peers. Then, once the right level of fear was instilled in them, Anatoly would ask them if they wished to be taller. Invariably, they always answered yes, and he would go on to tell the child of an experiment he knew which involved a controlled stretching of the spinal column in order to extend a person's height. Essentially, the boy would be hanged in the same manner of an execution, but Anatoly assured them that he would rush to retrieve them once they lost consciousness. In other instances, Anatoly would tell a group of boys that they were to reenact the hanging of a partisan by Nazi stormtroopers and would emphasize the prestige a child would receive in assuming the role of the Soviet martyr. For the most part, Anatoly was true to his word, and he would revive his victims shortly after they lost consciousness. But in the meantime, Anatoly would strip the boy down, and then subject their unconscious body to

obscene acts of abuse that they would never remember. Yet on several occasions, once the child was completely defenseless, Anatoly would do something far, far worse than simply abuse them. Over the next 22 years, Anatoly is said to have talked to just short of 50 young boys into taking part in his sickening experiments. In 36 of these incidents, he revived the boys, often photographing the abuse he committed before making the children swear a vow of secrecy. But in seven of the incidents, Anatoly's mind wandered back to the day when he saw the young pioneer convulsing in his death throes, soaked in their own blood, with smoke and flame billowing around them. On these occasions, Anatoly would begin to cut up their tiny bodies while they were still alive, starting with their

heads. Then, once they were in pieces, he would pour gasoline over their dismembered corpses before setting them alight, all just to remind himself of the horrific traffic accident he witnessed back in 1961, which had sparked off an intensely disturbed arousal in him. Once they were disposed of, Anatoly would usually keep their shoes as a kind of sick memento, retaining them along with the photographs he had taken in order to remember those he'd butchered and burned. It seems horrifying to acknowledge,

but these twisted trophies may have actually saved countless lives. Anatoly revisited these items whenever he felt the urge to kill, and they seem to have sated his deep desire to see the blood and burning flesh of innocent children. It was only when he grew tired of his trophies that he once again sought to reenact the sights and scents of the traffic accident. Otherwise, there may have been far more than just seven young victims of his depraved desires. It was June 2nd of 1964 when Anatoly claimed his first victim, a 15-year-old runaway named Nikolai Dobrashev. Anatoly would later claim that Nikolai's death was purely accidental, as he had been incapable of reviving Nikolai once he had fallen unconscious.

Once it was clear the young man was dead, Anatoly then dismembered the boy's corpse before burying it in the woods outside the summer camp. He then burned all the film and photographs he had taken of Nikolai, terrified that it might be used to convict him of outright murder. The following year, in May of 1965, Anatoly took the life of his second victim. Alexei Kovalenko had been attending the summer camp of a tourist group known as Cheroget, a camp where Anatoly had been a trusted member of the counseling team. The pictures that Anatoly took of Alexei kept his terrible lust at bay for eight long years,

but finally, on November 14th of 1973, a 15-year-old boy named Alexander Nesmienov disappeared from the streets of Anatoly's hometown. The subsequent investigation undertaken by Soviet police was unable to link Anatoly to the boy's disappearance, and the same could not be said for the next child to be abducted. Two years later, when 11-year-old Andrey Pogosyan disappeared after playing with his friends, his mother told police officers that Andre had mentioned a man inviting him to a nearby forest in order to star in a short film the man was making. This time, Anatoly's reputation for filmmaking prompted the police to pay him a visit, but his status as a trusted and well-liked member of the community meant they only asked him if they knew who this mystery filmmaker might be. Anatoly told them no, and the police left him alone. The run-in with the law meant Anatoly waited another five years before abducting another child,

biding his time until 1980, when he became transfixed with a 13-year-old named Sergei Fatneev, who bore a striking resemblance to the dying young pioneer of many years before. His final victim was claimed in July of 1985, with 13-year-old Sergei Pavlov disappearing after telling a neighbor he was going to meet the leader of Churgid. This is what finally gave Anatoly away, as in his hometown he was very much the public face of the Churgid youth organization. This meant that in November of 1985, a Soviet prosecutor began investigating Anatoly in connection with Sergei Pavlov's disappearance. Upon questioning some of the club members, the prosecutor discovered that many of them had suffered what was referred to as temporary amnesia while attending the club's summer camps. When pressed on the events surrounding this amnesia, the boys invariably brought up Anatoly's sickening experiments, commenting that they suffered blackouts before waking up feeling tender and sore. Following the prosecutor's lengthy inquiry, a disturbingly detailed narrative

of abuse began to form, all of which centered around Anatoly and his summer camps. Finally, in December of 1985, police officers visited Anatoly's Stavropol home and arrested him on seven counts of murder. It's not clear if he was tortured while in police custody, or if they found another method of gaining his cooperation, but within a month of his detainment, Anatoly led police officers to the burial sites of six of his seven victims following a series of full and frank confessions. The Soviet judge presiding over his case was thoroughly disturbed by the details of his crimes

and felt the only suitable justice would be to condemn Anatoly to death. Following the sentencing phase, Anatoly was placed on Nabacharkov's prison's death row. His imprisonment marked the end of a 20-year campaign of abuse and murder, one that had robbed the innocence of almost 50 young boys. But in 1989, Anatoly was given one last chance to save his own life. Police from Rostov Oblast visited Anatoly, telling him if he could help them identify a mysterious serial killer, he would have his death sentence commuted to life in prison. This serial killer had already taken the lives of at least 29 children,

and the police had absolutely no idea how to identify or apprehend him. The killer turned out to be none other than the infamous Andrei Chikatilo, who would go on to be convicted of killing 52 women and children in October of 1992. Anatoly tried his best he could to aid in the investigation, providing deep insights into his own criminal derangement. But it was of no help to the officers from Rostov. Following the officers' questions, Anatoly was dragged kicking and screaming from the interview room and into one of the prisoner's execution chambers. Then, as he begged for his life, a prisoner officer placed the barrel of his pistol to the back of Anatoly's head and sent his brains flying out of his skull with a single, fatal shot. In a way, it was a far more dignified death than Anatoly gave any of his victims.

Vulnerable young boys who knew no better than to trust a man who had nothing but ill intentions for them. Their death served no other purpose than to satisfy the sick fantasies of a man who was nothing short of evil. And when the prison's executioner put a bullet through his skull in September of 1989, there's no doubt that the world became just a little bit brighter. So I used to be a camp counselor for this summer camp here in Florida. I did two years in a row and the first year was all good so I went back for a second time. I saw a lot of the same faces from the first year, namely the same counselors and kids and stuff, but we got plenty of new ones on that second year too. Some really good kids, but some not so good ones too,

and it's the worst one that this whole incident revolves around. So, we'll just call this kid Damien, because he was a total hellspawn, and he was obviously going to be bad news from the moment he arrives in camp. He's mean to the other kids, rude to the counselors, won't do as he's told, and I swear he had the most impressive vocabulary of curse words I've ever known a nine-year-old to have. We can deal with brats, but what we can't deal with is a little psycho who actually scares the crap out of us. And over the next week or so, Damien proved he was exactly that. So, Damien was involved in three separate incidents that had to be written up, with each one getting progressively worse. The first was when he was caught fighting with another kid. Nothing too rough, just a little

scuffle we had to break up then write a report about to cover our butts. Our head counselor called his parents about it and recommended he get picked up as soon as possible, but they were on vacation and couldn't get there so they basically told us to suck it up or they'd sue us for a full refund after that we tried keeping damien separate from most of the other kids grouping him up with the other bad kids he couldn't pick on so easy that seemed to work for a while until it became obvious that he was actually just being a bad influence on them and making them even worse. The second incident was when one of the counselors went to check on Damien and his new friends in their cabin. I say friends, they were just the kids he seemed to have the least problems with. But my god, were they problems. The counselor noticed that they were

being unusually quiet inside the cabin, which was super unusual since they were always screaming and shouting and generally making mischief in there. They head over to check it out, only to find that Damien and his buddies are crouched in one corner of the cabin, all looking at something that Damien has. They said they couldn't see what it was right away, but from the way the kids scattered when they walked in and how Damien threw whatever it was under one of the bunk beds, she knew it was something they shouldn't have been playing with. She walks up to Damien, who has his hands behind

his back, like hiding them, and tells him to show her what he's playing with. He just shakes his head, and although she wanted to see his hands, we can't touch the kids like that at all, not unless their lives are in danger. In the end, she just tells the kids that if they show her what Damien was playing with, they wouldn't get in trouble too, only he would. Someone of them just points under the bunk bed to where he'd thrown the thing, and she kneels down to look. Underneath the bunk was a dead possum. At least, we thought it must have been a possum from the size and shape of the mess that was left.

But then it could have been some other kind of animal and Damien had just pulled all the fur out of it before basically turning it inside out. He had blood all over his hands, and so he'd literally been caught red-handed doing that stuff, while all the other kids' hands were completely clean. Sure, they hadn't actually done anything, but the fact that they all just sat there in silence while Damien mutilated an animal was absolutely horrendous to us. Obviously, we had to write it up, and we ended up calling Damien's parents again and telling them that they could either come pick him up from camp early, or we'd call the cops and report their son for animal cruelty. We weren't all too keen on doing that,

as we figured it might get into the news, in which case that was bad press for the camp, that we just couldn't afford. At least, that's the way I heard it anyway. Damien's parents promised us that they'd end their vacation early, but that they wouldn't be able to come get him for another day since it'd take them at least a day to drive back from wherever they were and they'd have to pack up all their stuff and say goodbye to relatives. It'd be a hard two days with Damien still running rampant, but other than completely exclude him from all activities,

we couldn't exactly just keep him prisoner in his cabin. So, the next day, all the kids were taken on what we called a history walk through the woods to a nearby Seminole tribe museum. The land the camp is on used to belong to the Seminoles, and we pride ourselves on making the kids aware that they should be grateful and respectful of that. So a big part of the camp is taking them over to the museum, where an actual member of the tribe will talk them through the history before letting the kids make their own headdresses and things.

It's a great day out. It teaches the kids a lot of history and the arts and crafts side of things is always fun too. There's a part of the museum tour where the kids get to learn about the Seminole Wars while looking at a bunch of replica weapons and stuff. The nine-year-olds are the lowest age group we take on the day out and again, we couldn't just leave him back at the camp on his own. So he came along with under the strict supervision of one of the counselors. I swear, looking at those weapons was the only time we ever saw Damien quiet or interested in anything, and he seemed particularly transfixed by one of the semle tomahawks the museum had on display.

He ended up asking the museum curator, and the first time that I'd seen him be polite, if the Seminoles actually used the tomahawks in battle. And the museum curator made the mistake of telling him that not only did they use them to fight, but they also used them to rip off the scalps of their enemies before presenting them to the British in exchange for bounties. Damien was absolutely fascinated by this concept. I mean, you could see it written all over his face how the whole concept was computing in his head.

I remember getting this real uh-oh kind of vibe from the whole thing, but I don't think I ever could have guessed what evil scheme he had been formulating in his head. That evening, after dinner, the kitchen team are finishing up when one of them starts complaining to another about something. We were cleaning down the tables and chairs when we overheard the argument between two of the team, with one accusing the other of having borrowed something without returning it. It was just a mildly irritating back and forth like, dude, where did you put it? This isn't coming out of my paycheck, with the other guy like, I didn't take it dude, what are you talking about? I remember one of us counselors asking what the problem was and when one of them said it was all

down to a knife going missing from the kitchen, some of us started looking around the kitchen for it. And it wasn't long before the question of which age group had been the last to eat came up. And then, when someone said the fourth graders, I immediately was like, oh no, Damien. I rushed to Damien's cabin, having this horrible feeling that it was him that had somehow stolen the knife. Then right as I get outside, I hear this god-awful cry coming from inside of it. I burst in, just in time to see Damien holding one of his friends by the hair with a knife in his other hand. He was literally fixing to scalp this kid, and if it wasn't for me scaring the crap out of him by screaming his name,

I actually think he would have tried it. In fact, I know he would have tried it, not so much from the scream or how scared his potential victim was, or the fact that he'd somehow been sneaky enough to steal a knife from the kitchen. It was the look in his eyes, and the smile on his face. Part of me thought since he was caught, he might actually try and accelerate the whole process and start scalping the kid before he could get the knife off of him. I remember having this sick feeling that I was about to witness something that I'd never be able to unsee. Thank god that his go-to behavior was to just yeet the incriminating evidence under a bunk bed then after that he literally tried to sidestep us on the way out of the cabin like he was playing peewee football or something. We grabbed him,

detained him in the counselor's cabin, then did what we honestly should have done the moment we found him with that dead possum or whatever it was. We called the cops and told them what this nine-year-old had done. I say we, the head counselor did it and when the cops actually showed up, they seemed depressingly unsurprised then that a nine-year-old was capable of something like that. I had no idea what they were going to do, but myself and all the other junior counselors were fairly certain that they were about to take him to baby jail or something. I mean, he literally tried to scalp another kid. There was no way he wasn't about to get the cuffs put on him. So, imagine our horror when we find out that

the cops can't actually arrest anyone who's under 10 years old, and that it was basically down to us to summon Damien's parents as soon as possible to get him out of there. The only saving grace was that because he posed a threat to the safety of the other kids at the camp, we basically had the cops' permission to keep Damien locked up in the counselor's office until his parents could arrive the next morning. He ended up totally wrecking the place, and that caused a whole other organizational problems, but compared to the other stuff he'd gotten into during his time with us, that was just small potatoes. I can't tell you how glad we were to see the back of Damien, and when his parents showed up to get him, we suddenly understood why he was so screwed up.

His home was really obviously not a nice place to grow up and our head counselor said his parents would most likely receive a visit from CPS or some other social services and that there was a good chance that it was only a matter of time before Damien wouldn't be living with them anymore. Either because they weren't fit to be parents, or Damien had some serious behavioral problems that meant that he'd need some highly specialized help from professional child psychologists. I never found out what happened to him, but I honestly hope that he got the help he needed. I don't think kids are ever born evil, they're just products of their environment. And if his parents were anything to go by, Damien grew up in a very, very bad environment indeed. During the summer between my A-levels and starting uni, I went over to the US as part

of the Camp American program. For those that don't know, it's basically an exchange program that gets Europeans jobs as camp counselors in the States. You pay them a fee and they organize getting you a job at a camp in your region of choice, be it East Coast, West Coast south west, you get the idea. I ended up getting a place in a camp just outside of Malibu in California, which is honestly one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen, and for the most part my experiences were an incredible one that I don't regret in the least bit. But there was this one

kid that came to camp that ended up being one of the scariest people I ever met in my life. Not just that, but they did one of the most horrible things I'd ever seen with my own two eyes. We knew something was kind of weird about Ashton when we noticed how he would just whisper things to himself sometimes. One of the other counselors told us that she'd actually asked him at one point, Who you talking to, Ashton? And his reply was both completely unexpected and deeply unsettling. She expected him to say something along the lines of no one or my imaginary friend or something,

something fairly innocent like that. But then he completely denied having whispered anything at all, and she found herself a bit lost for words. She said she followed up by telling him that she'd actually watched him whispering to himself, and that it was okay, he didn't have to deny it. Ashton then apparently got quite defensive about it, and acted almost like she was stupid or something as he again completely denied that he'd been whispering anything. She said the really weird thing was that he came across so genuine too, like real indignation and frustration in

his voice as he flat out denied the whispering. She said it actually stopped being amusing at that point and became downright creepy, because what if he really didn't know he was whispering and it was just like an unconscious reflex or something? Either way, we all became acutely aware that Ashton wasn't exactly your regular kid. Anyway, at one point I was asked if I knew any creepy campfire tales to tell the kids one evening. I ended up telling them a shortened, watered-down version of Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf, which happens to be one of my favorite short stories of all time. It's a decent little whodunit with a quality twist towards the end, so the kids were gripped by it. But then, when I I finished and they're all

talking about what a good story it was, little Ashton pipes up. You know, I'm a werewolf. Like he's all proud of it. All the other kids respond by saying, no you're not Ashton, there's no such things as werewolves. But Ashton is insisting that he is, how they're all wrong, and that werewolves must be real because he's one of them. The kids start making fun of him and I found myself recognizing that same kind of sincerity that my fellow counselor had seen in him. He obviously wasn't a werewolf, and I find myself having difficulty describing exactly how he expressed himself. But it wasn't like he was just trying to deceive the other kids into thinking he was. It was more like he believed he was a werewolf, like actually believed it in his heart. I knew what my fellow counselor meant when she said how creepy Ashton could be,

but the really terrifying thing didn't happen until later that night. So the campfire tales thing was part of the trail camping night we did with the kids, where we'd take them off into the surrounding hills with some camping gear so they could get a real taste of the trail lifestyle. That meant that, when it was bedtime, I was way closer to the kids than I would have been if we were back at camp in our separate cabins. So just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard this really high pitched scream that

was really close to me. Because we were in a kinda small valley, the scream echoed all around the hills too, which made it all the more frightening and the next thing I know I'm throwing my boots on, shining my flashlight around to see which tent the scream was coming from. It wasn't hard to work out which one as it was the only tent where the zip and flap were open. I could also see one of the kid's rear ends poking out of the tent, so I ran towards the one to see what was going on. I honestly thought that it might have been some kind of spider or other large insect that had gotten into the kid's tent

and I called out to ask what the issue was. The next thing I saw was one of the most chilling and haunting images I'd ever seen. The kid who half crawled into the other's tent backed up a little and while still on all fours They turned to look right at the light of my flashlight It was Ashton He had this huge, maniacal smile etched onto his face And he had blood stained to his lips, chin and teeth What followed was a kind of weird moment of duality

Where I recognized what had happened. I mean it was obvious, but I just didn't want to believe it. But no matter how much I didn't want to believe it, it didn't change the fact that Ashton had bitten one of the kids that was making fun of him so hard that his teeth had actually cut into some of the meat of the kid's leg. I immediately ran back to my tent to grab the first aid kit and my phone, but as I was making my way back to the wounded kid's tent while on speakerphone with another counselor, this flash of fear went through me, thinking Ashton might

attack me too. Turns out he'd basically run off into the hills on his own, most probably out of fear for the consequences of what he'd done. And when I suggested me and another counselor go look for him, the camp leader basically said no, let the cops deal with that. We all figured that there was something a little bit off with Ashton. We just didn't know that he was the most disturbed and savagely violent kid any of us had ever dealt with. And I can speak for every counselor on that too, even the ones who'd worked at multiple summer camps over many years. Don't quote me on this, but I think he ended up in some kind of children's home. And another camp I worked for ended up getting their butts sued off by the bitten kid's parents for

negligence or something. That was their own private financial horror story from what I can gather, but for me, I was left with my own very real horror story of Ashton, the kid who thought he was a werewolf. Back Back when I was 14, me and some other kids from our church went to this Christian summer camp for a week. It was just about the worst time of my life too. Aside from how lame it was, I ended up getting third degree burns because they didn't pack enough sunscreen for all the kids. So pretty much the whole week was agony for me and I ended up with skin peeling off my shoulders and back of my neck. One of the few chances I had to get an actual relief for the sunburn was this river boating thing we did. It was on an old steamboat kind of thing and one of the highlights was steaming into

this big lake that we could all go swimming in. The boat didn't go out too deep, I think mainly for safety reasons, but that reason just made the sickest, darkest irony when some of the kids started jumping off the lower roof of the boat into the water. It wasn't even all that high either, maybe 7 or 8 feet at the most. I did a few jumps off of it myself and it was really, really fun. But then there came this moment where a bunch of kids wanted to jump off all at the same time. I think maybe to make the biggest splash possible or something. I think maybe 7 kids jumped off at once, all in slightly different locations, but only 6 came up. I didn't notice right away. I wasn't one

of the jumpers, but I wasn't exactly counting either. Then a few minutes later, some of the kids are all like, where's Tommy? Has anyone seen Tommy? The mood stayed chill for a little while because he could have gone to the bathroom or something but then maybe an hour went by and there was still no sign of him. One of the kids mentioned this to one of the group leaders and they began searching the steamboat for him. But then after searching everywhere, they realized either he was hiding somewhere or he actually wasn't on the boat anymore. A little bit of panic must have set in among the group leaders, and I know they must not have been thinking straight, because no one ever

actually thought to check below the waterline. Only the lake patrol thought to do that, and that's when they found Tommy. He'd been down there the whole time. His leg was impaled on a broken tree branch, too weak to free himself as he was drowned while his dive bomb buddies climbed back onto the boat. No one saw the bubbles of air that must have been coming up as he screamed for help either, maybe because we just weren't looking for them at the time. I'm pretty sure the camp got shot down after that season, probably because of the massive lawsuit that came their way following Tommy's death. I only realized later how messed

up it was that no one was really supervising our swim, not in the way they should have been anyway. I just always thought how horrifying that must have been for poor Tommy, to be stuck down there, bleeding and screaming while the other kids just climbed out and carried on having fun. And if someone had been watching properly, if they'd recognized that something was wrong, he might actually still be with us today. First off, I want to assure you that it's one of the creepiest things I've ever come across. But it's not really anything that actually happened to me. It's more of an internet rabbit hole I went down one day after reading a really weird Amazon review. And what was intended as a quick online

purchase on behalf of my girlfriend ended up with me sitting at my computer for like an hour or so, completely horrified at what I was reading. It all started with a separate but equally horrifying incident in our hometown during the summer of 2018, when a woman was ambushed and assaulted while walking back to her car after work one night. Reading it absolutely terrified my girlfriend, mainly because she worked just across the street from where the incident happened. In the aftermath, we started to discuss methods of personal protection. We discussed everything from self-defense classes to buying a gun, but eventually we set it on purchasing a stun gun for her to keep in her purse.

That's how I ended up on Amazon, checking out different tasers and reading the reviews to work out which one was the most effective and user-friendly. As you might know, just above the reviews chart is a little section called Customer Questions and Answers. One of the questions was, and I'm writing this from memory here, how effective is the stun gun? The question was answered by a user named Seth Herter, a name I've never forgotten, mainly because of how messed up the answer was. This Seth guy claimed that he'd once had some kind of nervous breakdown due to being angry at himself, and had used the taser to shock himself up to 30 times,

the number of times being another detail that's just ingrained into my memory. I remember him describing the pain and the marks the taser left behind, as well as how the muscles in his chest or neck felt temporarily paralyzed. But it was the last two lines of the review that really creeped me out. He called it a potent psychological defense weapon on account of the sound it made, which he described as doing something to the dark parts of someone's psychology or psyche or something. I remember thinking, who is this guy? Before recalling that some serial killer that

left eBay or Amazon reviews on some of the stuff he'd used to restrain and kill his victims. So, with that morbid curiosity in mind, I plugged the name Seth Herter into Google, and this is the first article that came up. The article was titled, The Samurai Killer of South St. Louis, and detailed how Seth Herter once believed he was the living embodiment of the Antichrist. He also got it into his head that he could somehow control all the world's electricity, and that people all over the world wanted to watch him dance. I know that last part seems absolutely insane, but I'm pretty sure it's a deep cut reference to something from the Book of Revelations.

In the months before he became a murderer, Seth Herder starved himself to the point where he lost a bunch of weight. He also tied a rope really tight around his waist, painfully tight, believing that the pain would somehow increase his satanic powers. There was a part of the article that mentioned how he believed the CIA had implanted a microchip into his head and how he tried to cut it out before being rushed to urgent care. The doctors kept asking why he'd mutilated himself, but all he seemed interested in was asking if they could perform surgery to remove the non-existent chip. Through reading the article, I learned that the person Seth had

murdered was actually his ex-boyfriend. I can't remember the guy's name, although I'm pretty sure all the details are available through various news articles online. But on the day in question, Seth had told him that he needed help getting people out of the walls of his apartment. This obviously greatly concerned his ex who must have still cared about him enough to actually go over to check on him. And then when he arrived, Herder was waiting with a samurai sword, which ended up being the murder weapon. I remember the description of the herder's apartment reminded me of the bad guy from the movie Seven. All this real creepy religious stuff covering the walls,

reminding him to pay penance, lists of people he needed to pray for, all kinds of stuff like that. He would sometimes go out into public and dance on street corners, blasting music from a portable speaker that he carried with him. The article said that some believed that this was him just spreading good vibes or whatever, having no idea what a total psycho he really was. The rest of the article talked about some interviews he did while awaiting trial and went into the various mental illnesses he was suffering from which led him to becoming homicidal. I remember this one line which talked about how he talked with such clarity about the whole thing,

how he realized he was deluded, that it was like someone who'd been scammed talking about how foolish they were to believe the scammer's lies. Only, it wasn't another person making this guy believe that he was the Antichrist or whatever. It was this guy's own brain. Kind of sad in a way, but even more sad for the relatives of the ex he'd murdered. I'm not saying I feel sorry for the guy, not at all. It's just easy to see how they went so far wrong when you realize how horrifically mentally ill they were at the time. The only people I feel really sorry

for are the victim and his family, because although the Herder guy might just get a second chance at life someday, the man he killed, that's it for him. He really must have cared about the guy to go over to his apartment that day, and Seth Herder repaid him by cutting him up with a freaking samurai sword. For some context, I have been friends with this guy for a little over three years now. When I first met him, I thought he was hilarious, kind, intelligent, and overall a really interesting person. Everyone thought that of him and they still do. He's loved by his peers and is a very well-known member of our community, and this is important later. We didn't become best friends till a few months into our friendship.

One day we were joking around and we had a genuine connection with each other. I've never had such a good time with someone before. It was one of those moments when you're with someone and you suddenly laugh and can't breathe. It was fun. Whenever I first met him, his ex-girlfriend warned me of him. I was pretty close to her, but I still couldn't believe anything she said about him. I assumed that she was just a vengeful ex. She claimed that he went far past her boundaries, was unusually cruel to her at times, and one time attempted to drown her. She said they went swimming and he put all of his weight on top of her and kept holding her under the water. Once she'd come up, he would do it

again and again, and they actually broke up after that. I kind of just ignored this. As I said earlier, I just chalked it up to her having an extreme dislike for him. One day, he brags to me about how he got away with relentlessly bullying this kid in high school. He tried to talk him into taking his own life, but the kid would only go as far as to actually cut himself, so he gave up after getting bored. He thought this was hilarious, and he was laughing while telling me about this. I was very disturbed by hearing this and I've never seen him act so cruel before. Another time we went hiking together and this was his idea.

The trail we were at was very popular so there were a lot of people there. This one woman stood out to him I, and he kept commenting on how gorgeous she was. She was with a man who I guess was her husband or boyfriend and I just thought the whole thing was very strange. Afterwards, we went out to eat inside of this plaza and he guided the conversation towards the topic of intimacy, I'll just say that. We each slowly opened up about what we liked and it was pretty normal until he brought up his true interests. He said that he had fantasized about kidnapping, assaulting, and murdering a girl. He told me in detail how he basically wanted to torture some lady and then do things to her

after she was gone. It was all just really messed up stuff. Once we got done eating he kept joking about going back to that girl and doing all that to her. He brought it up numerous times throughout the day and it was apparent he wasn't joking. It was more of a suggestion at this point. I distanced myself from him after that and we kind of drifted apart anyways as we got separate jobs and didn't see each other much. I went to a party one night and guess who was there? Creepo. At the beginning I mentioned how everyone loves him. He's an active member of the community and goes to church plus his new occupation adds to his facade. He starts talking to me and he seemed normal as per usual. I thought he changed because of how

convincing he was. I'm sure you think you could tell but I'm telling you, this guy could easily fool you. He told me how he joined the local PD. Yeah, he was actually a cop now. And I was shocked by this. He always mentioned wanting to join law enforcement and never say that he had bad intentions. Maybe he was genuine about helping people or maybe it was just a ruse, who knows. But either way, he shouldn't have that kind of authority. We start talking again and we hung out a few more times. He seemed completely normal and kind so I assumed everything was alright until he mentions his cousin's death and talks about him so coldly

and doesn't seem to feel sad about it at all. He also spoke of his current girlfriend in a detached manner. During our friendship, he told me how he abused his dog and killed others when he was younger and recently he bragged about kidnapping an escort and scarring her. Anytime I asked him what he meant by scarring her, he'd become hostile and refused to go into further detail. He always loved going into detail so I'm curious about why he isn't about this all of a sudden. On New Year's, we went to a bar and he literally nearly killed a guy. He literally beat the guy till he was choking on his own blood and didn't stop till

I said the poor guy could die. I tried to stop him physically but he's a lot stronger than I am and he turned around with this blank expression on his face and just casually went back into conversation. I've reported him to the police anonymously but I haven't heard anything back from them and I'm convinced that this guy's a psychopath or something very close to it. It was the early 90s and I was 17 or 18. I had moved out from my parents' house not long before to not the safest of cities. I was a handful at the time and clashing heads a lot with my parents. I had a great paying job for my age, it was $16 an hour and rent was incredibly low at

$350 a month so I moved out. My best friend and I would go for blunt rides around the city when we were bored. Back in the early 90s the streets were pretty scenic with crackheads and corner boys. I stupidly had very little fear and we were used to it. I was driving and we were both pretty smoked out. She was also drinking some kind of liquor straight from the bottle. We had just gone through a yellow light on one of the main roads when I noticed the car behind us had a police light on the roof and was flashing their headlights at me. Oh crap, I thought. My friend starts freaking out, shoving the bottle under her seat, almost in tears already. I didn't think twice about it.

Back then, there were undercover cars everywhere. I pulled to the side of a pretty busy street, hiding the blunt and watching the driver take the light off his roof and start walking towards us. He tells me he had seen us driving up and down the streets looking for drugs and demands our IDs. He's leaning in and close to my face looking back and forth at both of us and sniffing the air. Really big guy, kinda unkempt. We fish out our IDs and hand them to him. He tells us we're in big trouble. And in my rebellious dumb head I'm thinking, for what? We weren't looking for drugs, just joyriding and smoking some weed. And he goes back to his car. By then my friend is a puddle of tears and she was no

angel either, she was just drunk and high and freaking out. He finally comes back and tells us that he talked to his partner. There was another man in his car. And his partner decided to take it easy on us. He said that he would let us go with a warning if we gave him all of our weed and went home. I remember quickly calculating the situation. Plain clothes, undercover car, just wants our weed. Stuff didn't add up. And just as that moment, an actual police car was driving by on the other side of the street.

The guy saw it too and stepped back a little. I just reacted and opened the door and went to the middle of the street, waving my arms at the cop car. I remember the look on the guy's face. Like a confused kid caught with nowhere to go. The cops were coming to a light and not going fast anyway. They stopped right there and I just started asking them before they could say anything, is this guy a real cop? They looked confused. The guy looked like he didn't know what to do. I was yelling to the real cops that this guy said that he was a cop and pulled us over. Guy started fast walking back to his car, to his partner.

The cops left their car in the middle of the streets and went after him, and they did apprehend him. Eventually more cops showed up, and my high is completely gone, and the fake cop car is swarmed. I finally see them both being taken to a cop car in cuffs. The cop that originally stopped came back to my car with our IDs and explained to us that this wasn't the first time these guys had pulled their little fake cop act. Asked me if it was okay to drive home. They took our information and said that they would be in touch. I was shaken but more mad than anything. We went back to my apartment and that was that.

I had a habit of checking out the police logs and court sentencing in a local paper. I found the guy's court appearance which also contained a mugshot and a short article of how many times he had done the same thing to other women. The danger we could have been in didn't really sink into my stupid teenage brain until I read that he had stabbed two of those young women. I still remember his face and his name. The court records said that he got a 20 year sentence. I wasn't a big fan of the police back then, but thank god they just so happened to be driving by. I was a pretty and relatively smart 15-year-old girl. A good kid who did well in school despite a tough childhood.

I was working at an amusement park full-time during the summer. The area I lived in could be sketchy, but having grown up with little to no adult supervision, I was used to trying to look out for myself. My father was out of town, mother was long out of the picture, and my sister, three years older, and myself were staying at our home alone. I finished work at 11pm when the park closed and walked home by myself as I usually did. It wasn't far, maybe ten minutes or so. I arrived home, my sister was still out somewhere and I got ready for bed,

putting my pajamas on and crawled into bed. I was starting to fall asleep but I heard a small noise. I didn't know what it was but it didn't seem like the usual house noise if you know what I mean. My bedroom was on the second floor with stairs leading up. I didn't hear anything after that noise, didn't investigate and just chalked it up to nothing. I started to fall back asleep when I heard what sounded like hesitant footsteps on the stairs. I was instantly awake, but in my mind it was my sister coming home and climbing the stairs where her bedroom was. Still in bed, I called out, Wendy? Wendy, is that you? I heard nothing back, and I yelled again,

Wendy, is that you? Nothing, but then more footsteps. I was petrified as I tell the story to this day. I don't understand some of the reactions that night so I really can't explain them. I got out of bed, opened the already ajar bedroom door fully and went out to the stairs, where I stood at the top. Below me, about halfway up the stairs, was a man I'd never seen before. He looked to be in his early twenties, a little taller than my 5'7 stature. Not a big guy, but solid with blonde curly hair. I asked him what he was doing. His reply was a garbled mess, something along the lines of,

where's Wendy? My mother told me not to get mixed up with women. Where's Wendy? From his mannerisms and wild-eyed look, he seemed like he may have been doing drugs. He had followed me home from the park and was asking where is Wendy in response to me calling out for her. For some reason I got very angry, not just scared, and started screaming at him to get out. Get out of the house. I was going to call my father and Wendy and he needed to just get out. To my surprise, he actually did. He turned around and ran back down the stairs and I didn't see where he went after that. But it turns out that he must have left.

I have no idea how he got in, but he was definitely there for me. And that's why he followed me. Not burglary or anything else. He was looking to do god knows what to me. I think the only reason he left was because he had no idea where my sister actually was. Thought she was in the house and it was an added complication possibly getting him caught. I was so shaken that I stayed up for the rest of the night. I didn't call the cops, didn't call a friend. The only person I told was my sister the next day. I'm not quite sure why I reacted that way. All I did was sit in my rocking chair, clutching my cat and rocking and crying,

staying awake until the next morning. My sister never did come home that night. She had stated of friends and came home later the next day. This happened almost 35 years ago and I've never told anyone until now. I was a 16-year-old girl and an avid runner. I ran anywhere from 4 to 10 miles a day. I had a few parks I rotated through and decided one day after school and before work to run at this pretty secluded park next to the river. It was a very hot day and I knew this park had a lot of shade. I usually carried a knife or pepper spray with me but forgot it at home and didn't have time to go back before work. Coming in I noticed a few

moms with their kids at the playground and what I believe to be one of the children's grandpas watching the kids play. I love kids so I always enjoy seeing them. Cut to me running my laps, it was getting closer to dinner time and the families all started to slowly leave. This park was two laps per mile, so I was on the second half of mile three when I noticed all of the moms and kids were gone. I was a little uncomfortable since I believed that I was all alone in this park.

Something about when the moms were there comforted me, but now I was alone, or so I thought. I'm nearly finished with mile three when out of the corner of my eye I see the grandpa starting to walk the track coming my way. I'm confused since I believed he was with the kids but all the kids were gone. I didn't even see another car in the lot besides mine. And to make things even more creepy, he was sucking on a lollipop. Random but somehow it added to the creep factor.

My body is telling me to flee, but I'm a stubborn teenager who was determined to run four miles that day. I figured I would run past him and be able to move on with my run. I mean, it's not like he could outrun me, right? I'm about three steps from him and doing all I can to pretend I don't see him, acting like I'm super focused and can't be bothered. Just as I thought I had made it past him successfully, he somehow grabbed the wires of my headphones and pulled them out of my ears. I turned around at him, absolutely livid, but as a woman I know I have to play nice to try and lessen my chances of being murdered.

I just look at him, smile and say, are you okay? He takes a long pause, still sucking on that lollipop, then pulls it out and shows me this creepy grin that sent shivers down my spine. He looks me up and down and says, like to play alone, huh? While grabbing a piece of my blonde hair that was in a ponytail. I smacked his hand off my hair and sprinted as fast as I think I ever have back to my car. I had a 1994 Saturn that could only be unlocked manually with a key, so like any horror movie, it takes me a ridiculous amount of attempts to get the key in the hole. All the while I can hear him walking towards me, slow and steady. Finally, after what seemed like hours but was most likely only a few seconds, I unlocked my car and jumped in.

I locked the door and soon after the old man was almost in my car. I start the engine and start to back out of my parking lot. I see the man trying to get behind my car but luckily I was fast enough and he wasn't able to. I booked it out of that parking lot and didn't look back. I don't know what his plans were, I don't know why he was watching those children play and I don't know how he kept a lollipop in his mouth so long without it all melting away. I'm just so glad that I didn't stick around to find out. Fast forward to now. I'm 28 years old and have still never returned to that park even though it's the closest park to my house. Hopefully that man is long gone

but I'm not going to go look and see. I used to work as a bartender at a bar that closed at midnight. My coworker that night was someone that I was friends with and we would often go out for a drink after we had finished closing the bar down. That night we finished around 1am and decided to go to a nearby bar that was open until 2am and was popular amongst service industry people. We enjoyed our drinks then when the bar was closing up and we were paying our tabs, I noticed a male friend of mine who was going through a rough breakup. We ended up sitting outside of the bar on the back of my car and talking. We both had a lot to catch up on and we ended up having a very nice but long conversation. I checked my phone and realized the time was about 3.55 in the morning. This was too late for me so I said goodbye to my friend and we both got into our cars and left.

I lived about a half a mile from this bar, only a few blocks so it didn't strike me as too odd when I saw a car driving closely behind me. It was such a short distance that I didn't strike me as too odd when I saw a car driving closely behind me. It was such a short distance that I didn't really notice or think much of it. I pulled up in front of my apartment and got out of my car as the car following me passed, and then sharply U-turned and stopped in front of me. The window rolled down and a man's voice said, I... I saw you when you arrived at the bar and I was watching you. You seemed really beautiful and interesting so I decided to wait for you to leave so I could follow you to ask for your number.

It slowly dawned on me that he had seen me sometime around 1am when I arrived. Then was somehow watching me outside after the bar had closed for the entire two hours I sat out there with my friend. He must have been sitting in his car just watching and waiting for me to leave. You just watched me that entire time and followed me home? You can't do that. He started to get out of his car to apologize and convince me but I yelled that I had my phone and that I had dialed 911. He jumped back in his car and sped away. I waited until I couldn't see him anymore to go inside so he didn't know which place I lived at. It was so dark I never even saw his face and honestly I was too scared and shocked to think to try and get his license plate. All I remember was that it was a dark blue or black sedan

and I spent the rest of my time living there slightly afraid and looking over my shoulder. I received some strange silent phone calls after that until I eventually moved and changed my number. I also never went back to that bar again. So this was about three years ago and it still creeps me out. I was 18 years old at the time. I'm a female. I'm now 21 years old and I was walking home from work at the local pizza joint and took my usual route home. It was about 9.45

to 10.15pm and it was super dark. As I'm getting about 100 yards away from the street I live on, a white van turns onto that street and something didn't sit right with me, so I yanked out my earbuds and paused my music. I then turned down my street, and as I'm getting closer to my house, I started getting a weird gut feeling. I looked up from my phone, as I was about to text my roommate, who was out of town at the time, that I was almost home, about 15 yards or so. As I looked up, I noticed the white van sitting in front of my house and the man inside is just staring at me, the yellow car light shining on his face. He had brown hair, glasses and facial hair. His van lights were off but his car was running. I stopped and put my back to a tree in my neighbor's yard and just

stood there, maintaining eye contact with this man. After about what seemed like eternity, probably only about 5 minutes at minimum, he starts driving towards the stop sign at the end of the road. I didn't put my back to him, I kept my back to the tree and maintained visual on the van the entire time until it stopped at the stop sign. He just sat there for probably 2-3 minutes, all while I'm not looking away and while my back was still on the tree. Finally he turned right, the direction in which I had come from and after about 20 seconds of making sure he or anybody else wasn't coming, I bolt to my house. I quickly get inside and lock the door.

I go to the window and very quietly look through the blinds. I didn't turn on any lights because I'm not stupid. After a few seconds of looking, he drove back up and down the street and left again. Afterwards, I texted my roommate what had happened and then went to each and every one of the windows in my house to make sure that they were locked along with the back door and garage door. I made sure to keep all lights off for the remainder of the night. I didn't sleep a lick that night. I was so paranoid at every sound or every movement. And let's just say I never walked home grocery store today.

I entered the first set of doors into the cart area and lobby, grabbed a cart and paused for a man to enter the second set of doors from the lobby to the store. He had no cart and I figured would be moving faster than me. He took a step back, insisting, ladies first. I smiled, thanked him, and went on my way. While comparing two items in the store, I noticed someone approaching in my peripheral vision, and when I looked up, it was the same man. He stayed several feet away and said,

I hope this isn't too forward but you're very cute. He smiled at the front door and was just so cute. I blushed and smiled and said, Yeah, that's kind of forward but thank you. He stared at me for a few moments like he expected more so I smiled, nodded to signify good day sir and turned back to my shopping. He walked away and I thought maybe he was just an awkward person, not malicious.

I finished shopping, bought my items and left the store. As I was getting closer to my car I noticed the same man leaning against the cart corral near my parking space. I froze when I saw him and the following dialogue exchange occurred. May I approach? Have you been waiting here just for me? He smiles. Yes, may I approach? To be honest, I'm weirded out that you even know where I parked and that you waited near my cart outside. I'd rather you not approach me. Oh, okay, that's why I asked. Sorry for anything I did to make you feel weird. I watched him get into the driver's side of a car nearby before unlocking my trunk to load my groceries. The only way he would have

known where I parked is if he had followed me in the store from the parking lot. Knowing that made both encounters in the store seem fabricated and freaky. The most polite creeper encounter I've ever had, but still creepy nonetheless. I went to a gas station to check my wheels and undercarriage for any tracking devices. I didn't find anything, but I'm glad I live with two protective 65 plus pound dogs, just in case. Back when I was still working at a rehab facility as a social worker for girls who were victims of SA, and this was out of town, I would take a jeepney and a bus as well to get to my workplace. I was an in-house social worker, meaning that I would stay at the facility for five days and then I would get two days off.

My shift is Saturday through Wednesday, meaning that I can get back home Wednesday evening and return to the rehab facility Friday evening. I like to travel during evenings since there are not a lot of passengers and I can enjoy my window seat alone. The facility is located in a rural area. I can take a tricycle going there from the bus stop, but it's too expensive for me. I would always walk alone and mind you I have to pass through a wide sugar cane field before going there. There's no usual street lights there but I didn't mind except for that one night. Just near the road was a small mom and pop store where I usually buy my snacks. It's about a kilometer away from my workplace. I got close with the

owner and she would often offer for her son-in-law to drive me to my workplace. I got close with the owner and she would often offer for her son-in-law to drive me to my workplace. I always politely declined her offer because I don't want to be a burden. That time, she offered again and I took it because when I looked down the road going to my workplace, it was dark and the air felt heavy and just kind of weird. I finished my Pepsi and cigarette and hopped on the back of the motorcycle. When we reached the middle part, there were five to seven drunk men talking in the middle of the road and saw us coming. One guy said, Miss, come down and talk to us.

I got scared and he came closer. The son-in-law instantly drove his motorcycle fast, and some of the men chased us while calling after me. Thank God they were not able to keep up. If I didn't trust my instincts, I had no idea what would store today at around 10am, an hour after they opened on a Tuesday so not a lot of the other customers in the decently large store. I was in an aisle near the back of the store trying to pick out some yarn colors for a few minutes when I suddenly felt a tap on my left shoulder. The woman who tapped me then popped up on my right side and held out a piece of paper.

The paper was a lengthy note about being born unable to speak, is pregnant and asking for money. I honestly did not continue to read the rest. I can't even describe the strange vibe this woman gave off as she stood there holding her note with an unsettling grin. I politely declined. I never carry cash anymore. Her grin disappeared like a switch and she just folded up her note and walked away. I quickly left the aisle and went towards the more populated front of the store trying to shake the uneasy feeling from the encounter.

I started to browse around in another area and noticed the same woman lingering around the aisle across from me. I moved to another area and she seemed to follow. I then decided to just go find the one thing I actually came to the store to get and leave. While I had stopped to look in that aisle, the woman walked right behind me, paused for a second then kept walking. At this point, I had had enough. I quickly paid and got out of there. I'm just trying to shake the feeling. Something seemed very off about the situation, from the initial approach to her whole demeanor. I was looking

forward to finding crafting supplies I never needed today, but I was more happy to just get home afterwards. As far as I can tell, she did nothing more than creep me out. I was out one morning, late for school and decided, hey, I'm already late, what it would hurt to get something to eat. So I stop by a McDonald's and go in. It's like 7am and there's nobody in there but this guy and his kid. The man offers to buy me breakfast as, I quote, it's pouring rain and you look like you could talk to someone, unquote. I figure, sure, free meal, why not? So he orders me food and I sit down at the table with him and his kid. I'm not sure if they were a girl or a boy, but they were short and had this big hoodie on. Messy hair, the works. The guy on the other hand was a solid 6 foot 5 inches, well dressed and super sociable.

He sat down and started talking about God and his church and all this other stuff. But the whole time his kid was picking their breakfast burrito apart and staring at me. They had marker all over their fingers, like they'd dipped their hands into ink. It looked like the only thing keeping them awake was just straight terror. excused himself to the bathroom at one point, and his kid slid a piece of paper over to me with what looked like them crudely scribbled on with horns labeled, Neon and F-ing Garbage. I just left after that. I have no clue how old this kid was, but I'd say maybe 12 or 13. It wasn't horrifying, but the combo of this hobo demon child glaring at me as they ripped up napkins and scribbled creepy drawings and ate their burrito in a demented manner, contrasted by their dad being overly polite and excessively talking about God and bringing people to the

light and salvation, made me super uncomfortable and just scared the daylights out of me. 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. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash letsreadofficial, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data,

located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon.