The Lets Read Podcast - 204: TRUE DETECTIVE CHRONICLES | 21 True Scary Stories | EP 192

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about 4CHAN, Vacations, & Detectives...   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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for a limited time at Booster Juice. One of three new dragon fruit sensations taking wing with the Dragon Booster Ball and Pink Dragon Booster Mixer. Slay your cravings for dragon fruit. Order now on the Booster Rewards app. Somewhere about April or May every year, I leave the shop in the hands of my cousin and take a two-week vacation in the Ozarks. Our family has a 250-acre piece of land that's used for hunting mostly. In my case, I just use it as a getaway from the stresses of modern life. The area has very little in the way of conveniences

like electricity. One dirt and gravel road leads in and out. At the end of this road sits a hundred-year-old log cabin, and this is where I spend my time. Just me, my thoughts, and the beauty of nature to keep me company. It's a routine I recommend to everyone. I could carry on about how beneficial nature is all day, but that's not why I'm here. I want to share a strange and terrifying incident I had back in 2020 while I was out there. While the rest of the world were hiding away in their homes, Mark, my cousin, and I were working our tails off. Things still needed repairing and we were the only people in the area willing to fill the demand. Without our employees, we were overwhelmed in no time. When Mark injured his hand, we finally threw up our hands and shut down.

The world was going to have to wait until we figured out a way around the lockdowns, and during this period of transition, I decided to take my vacation. A week or two in the woods was just what I needed. I was up late one night reading and heard a faint crack in the distance. It was familiar, but I was unable to place it. I sat quietly and waited for it to happen again, but I didn't hear it. I went back to my book and the rest of the night was quiet. The next day I found myself hiking away from the cabin and came across a dead deer.

It clearly hadn't died from natural causes. The body had been hastily skinned and butchered A lot of good meat had been wasted And it made my blood boil And not just because of the horrible harvesting Any hunter reading this knows July is way out of hunting season It appeared we had a poaching problem on our land I snapped a few photos on my phone to send to the game warden when I got back to town.

Nature would take care of what was left. The really strange stuff started later that afternoon. I was on the porch relaxing with a beer when a very odd feeling came over me. The woods around me had become very quiet. No birds were singing or anything. Slowly I started to feel like I was being watched. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. The uneasiness began to weigh on me until I felt compelled to call out. No one moved or answered. This lasted for almost an hour.

Gradually the tension slowly lifted and the forest around me came back to life. It's an experience unlike any I've ever had. At dinner that night, I flipped through a book about Ozark wildlife we had on a shelf. My visitor had probably been a common deer, but black bear and mountain lions were also a possibility. The last two were said to be very rare in my neck of the woods. That being said, wildlife has its own set of rules and will go anywhere it pleases. I wasn't worried about the deer, but the others were very capable of killing me in a heartbeat. However, they also tend to be very shy of people. I had three days left of my stay. I figured if I kept my eyes peeled and stuck close to the cabin, I'd be relatively safe.

And so that was my plan. Humans hadn't even crossed my mind, despite just finding a kill the day before. As a rule, men are loud and easy to spot, and only a very seasoned woodsman can stay invisible in the forest. No matter the circumstances, I was determined to enjoy my remaining time, and I was up early the next day as usual. I'd had breakfast and was filling a bucket from the well when another crack came a second later, quickly followed by a ricocheting noise. That's when it clicked. I was being shot at. The noise was the sound of a suppressed rifle. I dove behind my truck which was parked nearby. I was kicking myself for not recognizing it that first night. Even though silencers, as most of the world calls them, aren't super common, I do have friends that own them. They are used for hunting but the practice

is more common in Europe than here. Contrary to what the movies make you think, suppressors don't make your gun silent. Although they do drastically reduce the report of the gun, the actual action of the gun opening and closing makes a pretty loud clacking noise. None of that's important right now though. Once I made it to cover, the shots stopped. I was unsure where they were coming from. I had no other choice but to try and escape some way.

I was next to the truck, so that was the option I chose. As quietly as possible, I opened the driver's side door and crawled into the cab. I put the keys into the ignition and started the engine. I expected the shots to start again, but they didn't. I still wasn't willing to stick my head up and get it shut off. Luckily for me, I had a straight path through the road. I yanked the transmission into gear and pressed the gas pedal with my hand. The most I could do was hold the wheel straight and hope I didn't crash into a tree. It's not an easy way to drive, that's for sure. After I had gotten about a hundred yards down the road, I quickly peeked over the dash. I didn't dare expose myself any longer than necessary. Any decent shot with a rifle could hit me at about 300 yards out without much trouble.

I continued doing this until I was well out of range. At that point, I sat up into the seat and drove as fast as possible to the sheriff's station. When I arrived, I let them know that they had a crazed poacher sniper running loose. They were a lot calmer than I expected and far more prepared than I thought. The sheriff called in a nearby county to assist. They got together and planned out the operation quickly and in a very professional manner. I stood by a few miles away while they cleared the area. I was allowed in only after they were sure that he had fled.

In my absence, he had shot the windows out of the cabin and there were several holes in the doors. I grabbed what I needed and returned home. It was all in the hands of law enforcement now. I was expecting a call within a few days updating me, but I heard nothing. After two weeks, I couldn't wait any longer. I contacted the sheriff and left a message.

They called me back to say that they had yet to capture the subject and those exact words. They had found signs of some old camps, but he hadn't been seen in almost a week. Missouri law enforcement has also been notified they were monitoring their side of the border in case he crossed over into their state, and that was the last time I had any real information. I suspect they may know more about him than they're telling me. There are thousands of acres out there for him to hide in. If he's as experienced as I think, they may never find him. I check in every month or two and I'm always told that I'll be notified should anything change. And now that life has returned to normal, my cousins are planning to hunt the upcoming fall and spring seasons at the cabin.

They went out to make repairs earlier this year and said they saw no sign of the guy in the area. For their sake, I hope the guy really is gone for good. And that's about all I can tell you. Until he's found, much of why he did what he did will remain a mystery. There was a period of about three years where my family took yearly vacations to a nearby state park. My dad bought this old RV from a buddy and we'd camp out in that. It was fun when I was younger, but that last year was miserable. I was almost 14 by then. Hanging out with my family was the last thing I wanted to do. It was spring break and all my friends were already going to places like Florida. I did anything I could think of to pass the time. I remember sleeping a lot and going on a lot of walks. I was bored to death sitting around camp waiting for bugs to bite me. I did meet a few

girls my age, but they weren't able to hang out much. We'd been cramped up for four days when I ran into this cute older guy. He told me his name was Steve and he was 19. A group of his friends had invited him along for the holiday but they all had to leave early. He'd been spending his days drinking beer and fishing. Being the deceitful and immature child that I was, I lied and told him that I was 17. When he asked if I wanted a beer, I accepted. I never even tasted beer at that age, but I wanted to look cool. We walked through a small clump of trees separating the two camping areas to his tent. He pulled out a can of beer from a cooler and handed it to me. It was so bad that I almost spit it back into his face, but I managed to choke it down.

He and I sat at the picnic table and continued our discussion. Although I hated it, I kept drinking the beer. Halfway through the can, I kind of had a buzz going. Of course, at that time, I just knew that I felt really good. The taste began to improve with every sip, and I was drunk by the time I finished the first can. Steve had a fresh beer open and ready for me, and I started taking bigger and bigger drinks as the minutes passed. I was acting like a total idiot. I also began feeling very tired, and I laid my head down and listened while Steve talked, and I guess I must have fallen asleep.

I remember raising my head up at one point and saw Steve standing a few feet away talking on his cell phone. I laid my head back down but soon woke up again feeling sick. It wasn't long before I started throwing up. I was so embarrassed. I kept blaming it on food poisoning and he was holding my hair back and laughing now. This probably took place over a period of hours but seemed like only minutes. And this is when things started to go south. I was finished puking and in the process of wiping it off my face when a car pulled into the camping spot.

I assumed one of his friends had returned. It was starting to get dark and I knew my parents would start missing me. I'd left for a hike just after lunch and now I was terribly embarrassed and just wanted to get away. In my mind, I was sober enough to get past my parents. Steve was at the car talking to another guy about his age, it seemed. I took my chance to slip away. I said goodbye and thanked him for the beers, and he called out to me to wait. He suggested I stay a little longer and have some water so I could sober up some more. He was walking toward me this entire time. I thanked him but said I needed to get back. I could hear my parents calling out for me through the trees at this point. I turned again and got about three steps before I felt someone grab me. It was Steve. I asked him what he was doing. He didn't say anything,

and I quickly realized that he was dragging me to the car. The other guy had the trunk open and was looking around. I began fighting to get away, but Steve was so strong. The closer to the car I got, the more panicked I became. I could hear the other guy saying hurry up in a rushed tone. The fear really kicked in now and I started screaming at the top of my lungs. Anything I could think of. Mommy, daddy, help, anything. My parents were yelling back at me now. It all must have become too risky for Steve and I heard him shout some expletive and then he let me go.

I just dropped onto the paved surface of the road but expected I would soon be grabbed again. I balled up my fist preparing to fight but when I turned, no one was there. And I sat up in time to see Steve jump into the passenger side of the car. The car sped off with the trunk still open, and a massive feeling of relief washed over me. Then, I emptied my stomach onto the pavement everywhere once more. My dad scooped me up like I was a feather and rushed me back to the camper. It took almost an hour for the sheriffs to arrive.

They put out a bulletin or whatever it's called for the car but it was little help. I knew nothing about cars and I was too busy fighting for my life to get the plate number despite my protests I was taken to the hospital for tests. After I was cleared we returned home and waited for news and that would be the last family vacation we'd ever go on. Sleep was hard to come by for a long time. My parents put me in counseling, which did help a lot. It truly did. The doctor gave me a prescription in case of anxiety attacks,

but I didn't need to use it very often. The hardest part was dating. I had trouble being alone around men. The majority of times I went out in groups. Drinking was impossible. The risk of being I went out in groups. Drinking was impossible. The risk of being drugged or taken advantage of was too high. I wouldn't drink alone with a man until my husband and I were married. I'd like to leave you all with an important message. Young women have so much pressure on them these days. It's not just about being pretty. They feel

pressure to grow up faster than they need to. And this sometimes leads to poor decisions like the one I made. I'm not going to preach here. I realize you're going to do what you want. But if you do find yourself in a similar position, pay attention to your instincts. They rarely lead you wrong. When the time comes to leave, don't worry about hurting someone's feelings. Get out of there and get to safety. Anybody that doesn't understand doesn't deserve to be your friend. To be continued... story. It would, at the very least, allow our children to know why their grandfather passed.

I hope you understand why this process has been so difficult for me once you read it. That's my personal reason for doing this. I'm not the counselling type of guy. This will have to be my therapy. Now with all that said, what follows is my memory of what happened that day. My dad was a quiet, serious, and no-nonsense man. If he didn't want to do something, nobody could make him do it, even if it kept you safe. Seatbelts were his number one pet peeve. He hated them and refused to wear them, even though they were required. He'd been ticketed several times, but he continued to refuse. Mom even showed him statistics proving they kept you safe, but it fell on deaf ears. He was uncompromising and set in his ways and

this trait would end up being what killed him. The accident would occur on July 23, 1995. At the time I was 12 years old. The family had taken a short camping trip to a lake on the Texas-Oklahoma border. It was the first and only vacation that we were going to have that year. The entire weekend had been one endless mess. It was miserably hot and my sister got a severe sunburn. I think we all got devoured by bugs also. I know I couldn't stop scratching for weeks after.

That morning we were driving back through Oklahoma. Everyone seemed to be driving ridiculously slow and dangerously. This was driving my dad crazy. He desperately wanted to get back home before dark. To add to the stress of the situation I was picking on my sister and slapping her sunburnt shoulders. This made her scream like a banshee. Mom was doing her best to keep us in check. It made dad even crazier than he already was. At some point, about halfway across the state, we got behind a truck. It was going fast enough, but the bed was stacked high with all types of junk. Dad paid it no concern, he was just happy to finally be going the speed

limit. Although knowing him, we were probably going way over it. The environment in the car Dad paid it no concern, he was just happy to finally be going the speed limit, although knowing him we were probably going way over it. The environment in the car had relaxed, I was listening to Metallica on my headphones and everyone else was just sitting quietly. Dad had the radio turned down. Suddenly something flew out of the bed of the truck. I looked up and dad was swerving out of control. He regained it just in time for the second collision. We slammed into the back of the truck doing 50 at least.

Rather than pull over the truck stopped right in the middle of the highway. The next thing I remember was waking up in a lot of pain. The seatbelt had stopped me but it did nothing to slow all the objects flying from the back of the car. My sister had also been struck and was very confused. Our mom was fussing over us and making sure we were okay. Everyone was relatively unhurt. Everyone but dad. Mom looked over. She had an expression of horror on her face. She was sobbing and rubbing my dad's arms. And that was when I knew that he was gone. I had to look even if I didn't want to.

I slowly unlocked my belt and leaned forward. His upper body was leaning onto the collapsed steering wheel. His head was turned facing my mom and blood covered the windshield where his head had made contact. He could tell that he never saw it coming. It's the only comfort I carry with me until this day. Of course, the stubborn jerk just wasn't wearing a seatbelt. From then on, it's all a blur, really.

Emergency services arrived and took us all to the hospital. The driver of the truck was fine but for a sore neck. Family from Kansas City arrived later that evening and we returned home with them the following day. As it always must, life for us carried on. Mom kept the family afloat until my sister and I went off to college and she would eventually remarry a really good guy named Larry. Since I've become a father, it has been my primary goal to set a good example for my children. I love my dad, but he was a selfish man. If you have kids, be mindful of your own safety as well as your children's. It's your duty to be there to guide them into adulthood.

If you're dead, you can't do that. But that's just my two cents. Thank you to all who took the time to read this, and I hope it helped you all as much as it helped me. A few of you may be aware that I was engaged once before I met my current husband. In early 2000 I was working in IT for a company in Denver and this was when I first met Mark. We flirted for several months before he got the nerve to ask me out. Our relationship quickly became serious. Later that year I moved in with him. Only a few months after that he proposed and I tearily accepted. The stress of planning the wedding left us both overwhelmed. When the time came for us to take

our vacations, we chose a camp out in the Rockies. Flying anywhere made us both nervous. I picked out a spot about an hour away and we set up camp. We arrived late on our first day and stuck close to camp. After a quick breakfast the next morning, we went out on a hike. The trail was a bit grown over, but still usable. Neither of us brought any water or snacks for the journey, and I had very little knowledge of bushcraft. I don't recall Mark ever talking about it. As a pair, we would be hopeless if we ever got lost. So, as it often is, that's exactly what happened. I had picked the place because I'd heard about this awesome pair of waterfalls. I didn't know exactly where they were, but I knew that they were close. We could hear them faintly in the distance. The trail split off at this point. This new trail

was even rougher, but to our ears it was in the direction of the falls. We followed it for a long time, but the sound never got any louder. I suggested that we go off to the left. We'd surely run into the falls or a trail that led to it. Mark was reluctant, but agreed without argument. After 15 minutes of fighting our way through the trees, we finally ran into another, more developed trail. We were sure that we were back on track now. However, a mile or more later, we were no closer. We were both tired and just wanted to get back to camp.

We turned around and followed the trail back a few miles. The assumption was we'd eventually run into the original trail that led back to the camp. There was no sign of it, but we weren't yet concerned. Another hour passed and we still hadn't intersected with the trail. This was the moment that we knew that we were lost. The sound of water had faded long ago. I thought that we had just missed our turn. If we went back the way we came, we had to hit it. It was 2.15pm when we turned around. The next time I looked at my watch, it was 3.25 and we were still no closer.

And this is when the fear began to hit me. By that point in the day, everything was a jumble. I was tired, hungry and most of all, very thirsty. Mark had become uncharacteristically quiet and this made things even worse. I became a panicked, ranting mess. Mark had enough and screamed shut up in my face and it worked. I sat down, shut up and listened. Mark calmly laid out a plan.

We could hear the falls again and and we had to be close. And we would follow the sound through the trees until we reached the falls. We would not take any trails or shortcuts. Logic dictated that we would have to run into them eventually. Once we made it there, we would stay and wait until another tourist arrived and follow them out. If it was dark when we arrived, we would spend a night there and wait until someone arrived the next morning. And that's just what we did. We would finally reach the falls just before dark, and I was so happy to have water. I forgot that we were lost for a while,

and little did I know, the hardest part was ahead of us. A fire was out of the question. Everything was back at camp. Neither Mark nor I knew any other way to start one. We curled up together and tried to sleep, and the hours seemed to pass like years. The night got colder and colder. No matter how close we got together, it was never enough to keep you warm, and I began to violently shiver. At some point, I could feel myself drifting off, and relief soon gave way to fear. A little voice inside of me said that if I fell asleep, I may not wake up. I turned over and started shaking Mark to wake him up. It was very hard.

He was angry and asked what I was doing, and I told him my fears, but he didn't want to listen. He started drifting off again, but I wouldn't let him, and this made him my fears but he didn't want to listen. He started drifting off again but I wouldn't let him, and this made him furious. He flew into an angry rant about shivering or something keeping you alive. It made no sense, but it gave me an idea. I decided to make things worse by bringing up something we had long dropped, and this made Mark live it, and the fight went on for hours from there. I kept the fight going as long as I could. Mark eventually caught on and laid back down. We laughed about it and talked about our plans for the future. My idea turned out to backfire on us. We were so exhausted from the argument we couldn't stay awake.

I fought the urge to sleep for as long as I could, but at some point, I slipped away. The next thing I remember is someone shaking me and yelling. I didn't want to wake up but they kept at it until I had to. My eyes opened to the sun shining and a middle-aged man talking to me. My head ached more than it ever has and my vision was blurry. I sat up and looked behind me. Mark was awake and looked as if though he felt like I did. We couldn't explain much other than we got lost. And just like Mark had planned, the gentleman and

his wife walked us out and back to our camp. The trip was over. We packed as fast as we could and drove back to Denver. And we spent the rest of the trip under a big comforter in a bed. We probably should have chosen that from the start. And now I carry a lighter with me now whenever I go and even if it's just a trip to the store, I never want to be that cold again. Never. An ill feeling between Mark and I spawned from that trip.

Although it was never said, Mark seemed to hold a grudge against me afterwards. I had been the one who chose the location and suggested the shortcut in the woods. I'd also brought up something he believed was buried between us. It may have eaten away at him after he had time to think more about it. He made backhanded comments about me and that trip more than once. A few times he did it in front of our friends. And over time it drove a wedge between us and what led to our split.

In late 2002 we went our separate ways and haven't spoken since. I harbor no ill will towards him and I don't think he does toward me. That was a long time ago. It's not important. I mainly wanted to share my story to illustrate the importance of getting basic survival instruction and preparing for every possible emergency. I hope the seriousness of this situation drives the point home to you. Whether it's about wilderness survival or changing attire, I've discovered preparedness is always your best option. Get trained and you'll never regret it. Many summers of my childhood were spent exploring my grandparents' sprawling farm down in Texas.

It was the location of many life-changing events. I broke my first bone there and I even had my first kiss there. And this post is about one of those life-changing events. My first five years were spent at home with my mom. When I began school, mom took a part-time job as a bookkeeper. Summer vacation came around and the economy dictated that mom keep working. And without mom around to watch me, I was shipped off to my dad's parents' place. A few years on, my cousins joined

me on the farm. Dad's parents were more than happy to take us in. Any farm can use an extra hand or two. The boys were put to work with Grandpa Ray and my female cousin worked just as hard beside Grandma Ida preparing the day's meals and cleaning. This may sound like a lot to put upon a group of kids, but I assure you, we had plenty of time to mess around. My first vacation, Grandpa Ray taught me how to swim in the stock pond by throwing me in. I picked it up really quick. You'll probably be arrested if you did that now. It's not something I would have done with my kids, but Grandpa Ray was an old marine. He had no time to coddle anyone, but it was never done out of malice. The event I want to talk about happened when I was 10. It was the infamous

summer of 1980. That year still holds the record in several areas for highest temperature. I know the day I have in mind was well over 100 degrees. Had the creek and pond not been almost dried up, we would have been swimming. Incidentally, the next year Grandpa Ray bought a big above ground pool for us all. My cousin Wade and I spent most of the morning shading ourselves under the trampoline. The area hadn't seen rain in quite some time. A web of deep and dry cracks riddled the black dirt and he and I were curious how deep the cracks went. So we began to dig.

We'd gotten maybe six inches down when Wade's little sister, Beth, came outside. She wanted to swing on the tire swing but the limb which held the rope had broken. Since I was the oldest, I was nominated to climb the tree and retie the rope. I took the rope in my teeth and Wade boosted me up to the first limb. It appeared strong enough, but it bent considerably when I put any weight on it. Another slightly larger limb was just above it. I pulled myself up onto it and shimmied about three or four feet. I felt confident enough to sit upright and tied some weird knot around the limb. I told Beth

to pull down on the tire to test it and it held. Satisfied, I turned around and began to crawl back to the trunk. I made it back about a foot when I heard a loud crack. I yelled out, oh god, and the limb gave way. I didn't see my life pass before me, but things did seem to go in slow motion. The crack and the separation of the limb from the trunk, Beth's blood-curdling scream, it all seemed to last so long. Just before I hit the ground, I thought this may mean that I wouldn't get hurt, and this was a stupid idea. I landed back down with my left arm between myself and the ground. The wind was knocked out of me and I blacked out. I wasn't out but maybe

for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes, Grandpa Ray was already carrying me to their station wagon. He carefully laid me down in the back seats and raced to the hospital in town. I remember very little from the ride. I may have blacked out again, and the next thing I recall was being in the ER. The doctors and nurses coming and going, Grandpa Ray assured me that I was going to be okay. Grandma Ida arrived with my cousins an hour or so later, and I found out that I'd broken my arm and had a concussion. In my teens I began to have problems with my back. They probably stem from that fall too. The doctor said had I fallen from

a higher place I probably would have fared much worse. Despite being doped out of my mind the process of making the cast enchanted me and I was held overnight for observation and released the next morning. I would spend the rest of the vacation digging more holes, among other things. I still had my cast the first week of school. All my friends signed it for me, and I wanted to keep it afterwards, but my mom got the nurse to throw it away because it stunk. I would spend another four summers on the farm before I was old enough to stay on my own. Grandma and grandpa became a smaller and smaller part of my lives. They had both passed away before I realized how important they were to me. I'm happy to say that the farm is still in the family although it's much

smaller than it once was. Currently, Wade and his family are living there. I visit them anytime I happen to be in their neck of the woods The craggy old oak tree remains An entire swing still hangs from one of its massive limbs And it's good to see no matter how things change Some things still manage to survive We'll be right back. like cash eruption, UFC gold blitz, make instant deposits or same-day withdrawals. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly.

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See penswell.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. Our family vacation of 2018 would be the worst vacation of our entire lives. My first mistake was driving. In my mind, the whole ordeal would be easier if I did. I wasn't counting on my back acting up. This made a four-hour drive seem like an eternity. By the time we made it to Corpus Christi I could barely walk. Most of my holiday was spent in bed watching TV. My wife did a great job handling the kids alone, but that doesn't mean everything was smooth sailing. Our second day there, she was wading in the ocean and stepped on a piece of glass. She would need ten stitches in her big toe.

No one in my family goes barefoot anywhere now. My twelve-year-old son was the only one that got away unscathed. The wife and I have called him lucky ever since. Even after all this misfortune, none of us would be as unlucky as our daughter. Her terrible experience is the focus of this post. To make things simpler I'll refer to her as Amelia. I don't think she'd appreciate me using her real name. The entire drive up she'd been sullen and withdrawn. Had I been less focused on myself I may have asked why. When she realized I wasn't going to be joining them on the beach she wanted to stay in the

room with me. My wife reluctantly agreed and left with our son. While I stared drowsily at the TV, I have a prescription for when my back decides to crap out, she frantically tapped away on her phone. For three days, all was well with the world. I dozed off at some point when I woke up, and Amelia was gone. I figured that she had gotten bored and joined her mother and brother on the beach. She was a responsible girl, or at least as responsible as a 16-year-old kid can be. I saw no reason to worry. I fell back asleep, and this time I was awakened by a pounding on the door, and it took me a few minutes to reach it. When I opened up, two police officers asked me my name

and the name of my daughter. I went into full panic mode. I frantically started asking all kinds of questions. My mind was going in every direction possible. I was convinced something awful had happened to her. The officers were able to calm me down enough to explain that she was safe. About half an hour prior, she had been walking on the beach and discovered a body that apparently washed up. She reported it to a hotel employee and they called the police.

They were there to notify us. I explained my situation and told them my wife was already down on the beach with our son. They left to find her and I spent the better part of 30 minutes getting dressed. My wife and son were already on the scene when I arrived. Amelia was visibly shaken. I'm sure the experience was dramatic for her. Not long after, we were cleared to leave. We returned to the room and discussed what we should do, and it was quickly decided to end the vacation early.

Because of my back, I would fly back with Amelia and my wife would return in the car with our son. We packed up and headed to the airport, and by dark we were back home. And this is when the process of healing finally began. Amelia had said very little on the flight back home. This was a different type of quiet. She didn't act pouty or entitled. A blank and boundless stare had taken its place. She was very clearly in a state of shock. But I knew this was not the time or place to discuss it. This behavior continued for several weeks.

She had yet to say anything about what had occurred. My wife and I got her a counselor with whom she would gradually open up to. I'm happy to say that she's doing much better. Although these lockdowns and starting college made things more difficult, she was able to attend her news we'd hoped we'd never get. According to Brazilian and US officials, a set of remains were discovered in a shallow grave near some small unnamed village. Several tests were done, including dental comparisons, and it has been determined that they belong to my oldest brother, Rafael. We had lost contact with him in late 2017. The story of what happened during that period still has a lot of holes that need to be filled but this is what little we think we know. Growing up, Rafael had been very close to my father.

When our father passed away from cancer when Rafael was 15, he lost his way. Much of his next 10 years were spent searching. At 25, he was more aimless than ever. A friend suggested he join the army, and this turned out to be a blessing. Surrounded by all sorts of strong male leaders, he learned to become his own man. After two combat deployments, he left the military in a far better state. He wasn't quite ready to give up helping others yet, though. He found a non-profit providing aid to indigenous groups throughout Central and South America.

Rafael joined them and remained with them for three years. During this time he made a lot of friends, many he stayed in contact with when he returned to America. After he left the non-profit, he traveled the country and explored. He slept on friends' couches and worked odd jobs. And this is the point in which we lost contact with him. It wasn't out of the ordinary to go long periods not speaking to him. We were confident in his ability to take care of himself. And here is where I'm forced to go by second hand information and assumptions.

After not hearing from him for almost six months, mom and I became concerned. We contacted every friend we knew of and got no real answers, at least not at first. A week went by and we received a call back from one of Rafael's co-workers with the aid group. Through another person, he was contacted and told Rafael that he had taken a vacation trip back to Brazil to see some friends. A man he met online joined him. The friends in Brazil verified that Rafael had visited them once and promised to return one more time before leaving the country. He had been accompanied by the unknown man, who himself was Brazilian. The friends said that he

was very quiet and almost unfriendly toward them, and this is the last time anyone can verify him being alive. Nobody we've spoken to knows the identity of the man he'd taken with him on the trip. It was suggested that he was along to serve as a guide and interpreter, but most of his co-workers asserted that Rafael spoke Portuguese and a couple native languages relatively well. Not to mention, he knew his way around much of the country. Those places he wasn't aware of, he wouldn't have any problem finding willing locals to assist him. He was well known and liked, especially among many in the native community. And that's about the extent of what we can share

with you. We are grateful to the authorities here and in Brazil for all the effort they put forward to bring our Rafael home to us. That said, I can't pretend to be happy with the result. To date, very little is known as to how he lost his life. The cause of death was ruled as undetermined. My hope is that the unknown Brazilian man will soon be identified, and he can fill in all the empty spots that currently exist. I'm afraid to say, until then we are left with far more questions than answers. I want to thank all of those who helped us in our search and provided the information needed that led to the discovery of Raphael's body. Should any important updates arise, we will be sure to share them with you all here. I also want to thank everyone for their support

in this terribly trying time. You have been a light when all around us seemed so dark. I have a story to tell you. A very frightening one at that, but it comes with a little disclaimer. It's not exactly my story. It's my grandfather's, who was the single most fascinating man I'd ever known. He was definitely a little kooky towards the end of his life because he became obsessed with the JFK assassination and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. But then, by the end of the story, I'm pretty sure you'll understand why.

So I was brought up in Austin, but my grandfather was raised in Houston and for most of his adult life he worked as a detective for the homicide division of the Houston Police Department. He always used to say that being murder police, as he used to put it, was somehow both the most rewarding occupation he could possibly envision for himself, but also something he wouldn't wish on his worst enemies. Getting bloodthirsty killers off the street so they could ride the lightning was something he found very fulfilling, and although that might sound equally as bloodthirsty, he only had to hear one or two accounts of some of the more gruesome things that he'd witnessed to lose all sympathy for those that

ended up strapped into old Sparky. But one story topped all the others in terms of how jaw-droppingly horrifying it was, and not only that, but the far-reaching implications of it made it one that gives me shivers to even think about, even all these years later. Full disclosure, I've done a bit of research on the exact dates and details, just to give you a clearer idea of what actually happened. And so you can cross-reference the events themselves so you know that this all actually happened. In June of 1965, two Houston PD officers received orders to perform a welfare check at the home of Fred and Edwina Rogers, a middle-aged couple who lived in an area of Houston called Montrose. Neither of the Rogers' neighbors had heard from them in a few days, and a relative of the couple had become so concerned that he'd asked the cops to check on them, just in case anything had happened.

After that, the cops drove over, knocking on the door and peeking through the windows, but nothing seemed amiss. Thankfully, the cops had the good sense to actually break into the house, just to make sure everything was okay. But then once they were inside, nothing looked remotely out of place and the whole house looked basically untouched and peaceful. The only thing that alerted them to there being anything wrong was the fact that the kitchen table had been set and laid for some kind of dinner. The way I imagine it, it was almost like that old ghost ship, the Mary Celeste, or the old Roanoke ghost town.

It looked like whoever lived there had just packed up and disappeared all of a sudden, real fast too, without having collected anything or brought anything along. The whole mealtime thing must have put an idea into one of the officer's heads because he then started checking the home's refrigerator. He opens the door, looks inside, then sees all these cuts of meat stacked in neat little piles on the shelves, and he later said they looked almost exactly like cuts of pork. He's probably thinking this was some of the meat the Rogers were going to eat for whatever meal they seemed to have bailed on. But right then, just as the cop is closing the fridge door over, he sees something that has his jaw practically hitting the floor in absolute horror.

Inside the two glass vegetable bins at the bottom of the fridge are two decapitated human heads. The heads of Fred and Edwina Rogers. And the meat on the shelves. It wasn't pork. It was the remains of their arms, legs, and torsos after someone had butchered them. A couple's organs were later found in a nearby sewer, meaning whoever had cut them up must have flushed their insides down the toilet.

Other parts of their bodies, like their eyes and their private parts, were never found, suggesting their killer had either taken them as trophies or had eaten them during the process of butchering their bodies. I guess psychopathic killers get hungry too, right? The cop's best guess was that the Rogers had been killed around June 20th, so Father's Day. Fred's autopsy showed that he'd been beaten to death with a claw hammer before his eyes and junk had been gouged out,

probably with the same hammer he was killed with. Edwina, on the other hand, she got much luckier, and died right away from a single gunshot to the head. What comes next is really gruesome, I know, but it's where this part of the story gets very, very interesting. Even though the bathtub upstairs had been thoroughly cleaned, the cops figured out that it had been used by the killer to cut up the bodies. But then whoever had actually done the butchering must have known quite a bit about how human bodies were put together, because they managed to do it without absolutely any waste of flesh or meat aside from organs. By that I mean they'd

either butchered a person before, they'd had tons of experience butchering pigs so they at least had some idea of how to do it, or they were some sort of medical professional who specialized in human anatomy, either a coroner or whoever does autopsies after a person has died. The only trace of blood the cops could find led to the bedroom of the Rogers' son, Charles, meaning he'd either been the third murder victim or he'd been the one responsible for murdering his parents. Either way, he had to be found and that's partly where grandpa stepped in. The case ended up getting taken away from him not long after and my grandpa said his superiors told him it was because they had evidence that Rogers had

fled into Central America, which meant it was basically up to the federal government to bring him home. But then get this, and note, this is all from memory and I have no real way of verifying any of this apart from a few details here and there, so you just have to take mine and grandpa's word for it. A few weeks before the case gets moved up to the fed, grandpa and his partner found out that Rogers used to live down in Mexico City, working as a seismologist for some big oil company. They managed to track down one of the guys he used to work with down there who said that Charles was basically a genius for finding oil and gas deposits. When they were down in Mexico City, they were responsible for securing contracts for Shell to harvest oil and gas down there.

But Charles used to go AWOL all the time, and keeping him on task was apparently like herding cats, as my grandpa used to put it. This one time, Charles told his ex-coworker that he was going to meet a friend at some bar in this particular neighborhood of Mexico City. He said that he'd only be an hour or two, and then they could get back to work. But then way more time goes by, and they're burning daylight on company money, so the guy goes looking for Charles at the place that he said that he was meeting his friend. When that guy gets there, Charles is nowhere to be seen, and this makes the guy really mad, so he goes looking around this neighborhood, asking the

locals if they've seen some gringo matching Charles' description. Eventually he finds Charles and he's all like, yo man, we gotta get back to work. Only Charles seems really spooked that he's been found and immediately excuses himself from the meeting with his friend. But then as they're walking away, the friend calls after Charles only he doesn't call him Charles at all. He calls him Lee. Why would Charles be going around Mexico City telling people that his name is Lee of all things? Well, according to his ex-coworker, Charles said that the friend that he was drinking with was an old college roomie and that Lee was a nickname as in Char Lee. The ex-coworker thinks that this is kind of weird but buys the explanation and only

brings it up because he figured that he might have run off with the help of these old college friends who might be sheltering him in Mexico City, in which case they'd be calling him Lee and not Charles. They made sense. But just in case he might be hiding out anywhere else, my grandpa and his partner check around just to make sure Charles didn't have any connections anywhere else. I mean, he obviously did. He used to be a Navy pilot during World War II, so he had old Navy buddies all over the country. But then my grandpa discovered that for almost a whole year, Charles was living in Dallas, apparently while remaining completely unemployed. So from Christmas of 1962 to the end of November in 1963, Charles was living in Dallas, not collecting a penny in welfare, and with no record of him being employed by any major oil or gas company. After getting a hold of a copy of a rental agreement he'd signed

with the landlord, my grandpa was able to determine that Charles had left Dallas on November 24th of 1963. Suddenly, at least in my grandpa's eyes, it all started to fall into place. Charles had left Dallas just two days after President Kennedy was assassinated, and he'd been calling himself Lee in certain circles while living down in Mexico City. Then, less than two years later, his parents wind up getting killed in a horrific way, and Charles basically drops off the face of the earth. Grandpa said that, at the time, even though it was staring him right in the face, he just didn't want to acknowledge it. It seemed like such a far-out idea that the murder of Charles' parents might be in any way connected to the JFK assassination.

And besides, he and his partner would get to the bottom of things eventually, right? Wrong. Days before they were officially relieved of the case files, my grandpa and his partner started receiving anonymous tips from people which seriously complicated their investigation. Not only that, but they made absolutely no sense whatsoever. One of the more ridiculous tips was that Charles' parents were criminal fraudsters who were regularly stealing money from him via some kind of wire fraud, and that's why he'd killed them, in a fit of rage after discovering yet another series of thefts. My grandpa said he didn't buy any of it, and that he and his partner agreed that someone, for some reason, was trying to muddy the investigative waters, so to speak, shoveling dirt on Charles and his parents to overcomplicate and slow down the investigation.

Then a few days later, word came down that the case was moving into the hands of the FBI, and that my grandpa and his partner would be moving on to another case. Officially speaking, that was where their involvement ended. But unofficially, my grandpa's interest in Charles Rogers' connection to the JFK assassination had only just begun. He once told me that if I asked most true crime enthusiasts, they'd tell me that Charles Rogers was already losing his mind by June of 1965, to the point where he only ever communicated with his parents by writing them notes which he slid under his bedroom door. Then, despite still being unemployed at the time of the murders, Charles would apparently get up and leave the house before dawn and would only ever return after dark,

sometimes after his parents had gone to bed. Meaning he was sleeping no more than six hours a night and basically no one knows what he was doing during this time. Then one day, Charles just went completely nuts. Killed his parents and cut them up with the intention of actually eating them. Suddenly he comes out of his manic disassociative state, realizes what he's done and flees to Mexico to escape justice. Makes sense I suppose, but according to my grandpa, it's all dressed up in a way that it's supposed to make sense to the outside observer, because that's not what actually happened. This is what my grandpa told me he thinks happened. Charles was involved in the JFK assassination in some capacity, whether as an organizer or

maybe as an actual shooter. He didn't actually work for the CIA, but he was definitely involved with the CIA. And after JFK was shot, his handlers basically set about erasing all traces of their plan. With Charles having been such a loyal, hardworking member of the team, they told him to leave the country. After all, they'd already set him up in Mexico City. He probably spoke Spanish. He had options. But then, for whatever reason, Charles refused to leave. Maybe he figured that because he'd served his country, he'd figured that he'd earned his right to stay in the US. But apparently, someone up the chain didn't agree. Maybe they knew his weak spot was his parents and may or may not have given him advanced warning about what might happen to them if he didn't leave the country, or find some other way to

make himself disappear. Then eventually, whoever it was made good on their threat, killed Charles' parents, then did it in a way that would distract from the wider context of their murders. After all, if the press would obsess over the gruesome details of the murder itself, so would the public, and then all the crucial background details would get lost in the sauce, so to speak. My grandpa seemed like he had it all figured out. He even had a good idea of who actually committed the murders, and that person happened to be Woody Harrelson's dad, of all people. Yeah, Woody Harrelson's dad was a hitman,

which is an entire other rabbit hole, so I won't touch on that, and you can do your own reading on that. 100% true story. Yet as much a lot of this stuff is totally verifiable, the bulk of my grandpa's theory is basically pure speculation. He could never really prove it, no one can I guess, and that's something that haunted him until the day he died. I don't know if I actually believe it either. I mean, as much as it makes for an interesting story, I'm not much on conspiracies, and I'm

definitely more inclined to go for Occam's razor when it comes to stuff like this, meaning the simplest and most logical explanation is the one to believe in. But then again, I guess it's just up to you what you believe. I just know that my grandpa was one of the most incredible people I've ever met, and if you really believe that there was something more to the Rogers murders, then there had to be. I just don't know if it goes as deep as being connected to the most infamous conspiracy theory in American history. These days, I can do anything from my phone. Book a vacation, order a meal from a five-star

restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have Rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app or at Rinse.com. A Rinse valet comes to get my clothes, and before I know it, they're back crisply folded and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning, which is returned hanging in a nice Rinse garment bag. And with Rinse, my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll re-clean my clothes for free. Best of all, Rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of

laundry, remember, there's an app for that. Rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at rinse.com. That's R-I-N-S-E dot com. One day, back in June of 1963, a young boy burst into the police department in the small Mexican town of Villagran. He was dehydrated, exhausted and barely able to stand, having run 15 miles from a nearby village. But just before he passed out, he told a gathering of officers a truly terrifying story. The boy only managed to speak a handful of words, yet their implications were more horrifying than any of the officers could imagine. A group of murderers, seized by ecstasy, gathered to drink human blood. The boy's story was so unsettling that most of the local police dismissed it as a chilling but implausible piece of fantasy.

Yet a detective by the name of Luis Martinez had observed that up to 15 different people had gone missing from the area in just a matter of months. As a precaution, Detective Martinez decided to escort the exhausted child back home, and when they arrived, he asked the boy to tell him where he'd last seen those he described as vampires. Detective Martinez was never seen again. Alarmed by the sudden disappearance of their fellow officer, the police in Villagran enlisted the help of the Mexican army in order to scour the area surrounding a town known as Sherba Buena. Upon questioning a number of local townsfolk, the officers heard that some of them had heard terrifying noises coming from a cave system on the eastern outskirts of the town. Some heard screaming, some heard chanting, and many added that a number of townsfolk had gone missing after having wandered too close to the caves. So on May 31st of 1963, officers accompanied by soldiers began to encircle the entrance to the caves, cutting off any route of escape before they commenced their search of the caves

themselves. What they found was a vision of hell. The caves outside Sherba Buena had been occupied by a murderous cult, and many of its members chose to die instead of being taken alive. The cave was lined with eldritch shrines, body parts, and rotting corpses, and there was evidence that members of the cult had been partaking in cannibalism. In one chamber, the police found one cult member engaged in the task of carving out the heart of a man he'd recently murdered. When one of the soldiers barked at him to drop the knife, the cult member rushed him, screaming as he waved the knife around and forcing the soldier to shoot him dead. The survivors were rounded up, arrested, and taken to various holding cells in the surrounding towns.

Then over the weeks that followed, as more and more of the survivors were questioned, the police began to build up a picture of the cult's origins, as well as the horrifying acts its members had committed. In late 1962, two brothers named Santos and Cayetano Hernandez arrived in Xerbe Buena, intent on scamming the locals out of their hard-earned money. Xerbe Buena was an impoverished, illiterate place and many of the villagers were highly superstitious, as well as being firm believers in all things spiritual. So, using a combination of hallucinogenic drugs, violent intimidation, and simple sleight-of-hand magic tricks,

the brothers managed to convince the locals that they were the prophets and high priests of the powerful and exalted Inca gods. Once they had gained the unyielding loyalty of up to 50 villagers, they declared that the Inca gods, in exchange for worship and tributes, would grant them hidden treasures in the caves of the mountains surrounding the town, and that they would soon come to claim authority over their ancient kingdom where they would punish the non-believers. Once Santos and Cayetano had moved their loyal followers up to the cave system, they began to exercise a terrifying level of control over them, promising that sordid acts of devotion would bring about the reincarnation of an ancient Inca goddess. For months, the cultists obeyed the brothers' orders

without question, but as time went by and obscene blood rites failed to bring about the arrival of the goddess, they began to grow impatient. The brothers knew that any kind of rebellion would result in them being slaughtered, and so desperate times called for desperate measures. The brothers traveled over 400 miles north to the city of Monterrey and began looking for an escort that they could convince to take part in their scam. And this is how they came across a young woman by the name of Magdalena Solas. Magdalena had just the right kind of charisma the brothers needed to convince the poor and ignorant cultists of her divine nature. And so, after promising to pay her a sizable fee for her few days' work, they took Magdalena back to Sherba Buena and introduced her to the villagers.

The cultists were instantly besotted by the beautiful young woman, who was revealed by the Hernandez brother via a fake summoning ritual involving a well-timed screen of colored smoke. Convinced of her authenticity, the cultists set about worshipping Magdalena, waiting on her hand and foot, and by the time the brothers were due to drive her back to Monterrey, Magdalena had gone completely rogue. She was playing the part of goddess far too well, exercising complete control over the cultists' every action, and she refused to leave the cave system when the Hernandez brothers offered to drive her home. At first, the brothers tried offering Magdalena more money, just to leave the camp, but she still refused. They then attempted to forcefully remove her,

but Magdalena's screams had her loyal cultists rallying to her cause. It was then that the brothers realized something terrifying. Magdalena wasn't just acting like she was the living embodiment of the goddess Coatlicue. She seemed to genuinely believe to take the job. But night after night of drug-fueled ritual and intoxicating power had pushed her completely over the edge, into a deep and disturbing madness. After that, the reality was clear. Just as the cultists were once slaves to the Hernandez brothers, the Hernandez brothers were now slaves to Magdalena, the high priestess of blood. Magdalena's reign over the cult was even more brutal and sadistic than that of the brothers, and after weeks of absolute horror and depravity,

loyalties were beginning to wane. But then, one couple expressed a desire to leave the cult. Those still fiercefully loyal to Magdalena informed the Hernandez brothers, who were then acting as their goddess's lieutenants-in-chief. Fearing the butchery of their order be exposed, the brothers sought Magdalena's permission to execute the apostates. Drunk with power, Magdalena ordered that the couple would be publicly executed, and after being seized by their fellow cultists, they had their throats cut and their hearts carved out to the jubilance of the congregation. After that, the victims' bodies were completely drained of blood, and the cultists took gulping mouthfuls of it from a ceremonial cup. The gory executions made the cultists thirst for more ritual blood,

and over the weeks that followed, dozens of non-believing villagers were kidnapped, tortured, and sacrificed in Magdalena's name. In one instance, a villager was lured up towards the caves by a family member who had been missing for weeks after pledging her loyalty to her living goddess. The cult then stalked the man through the forest, beat him unconscious, then dragged him back to the cave system to be ceremonially sacrificed. The cultists cut off the man's hands and feet, cauterizing the gushing wounds to keep him alive for as long as possible. Then, piece by piece, they sliced up, mutilated, then drained him of his blood.

From there, the victim's blood was mixed with peyote, a kind of cactus which produces psychedelic effects when dried and consumed. This meant that when the throng of cultists drank the blood, they fell into a violent state of hallucinogenic frenzy, which further cemented their loyalty to their goddess. It went on and on for six weeks, torturing victims for days at a time before taking their lives in one of the worst ways imaginable. It's believed that around 15 different people were sacrificed in this way, all before a teenage boy stumbled across the ritual site. 14-year-old Sebastian Guerrero was so completely terrified by what he'd witnessed at the caves that he ran almost non-stop for 15 miles in order to alert the nearest law enforcement.

After a trial that sent shockwaves through neighboring communities, Magdalena Salas was sentenced to 50 years in prison, while the cultists not loyal enough to die for her were handed around 30 years each. One of the more shocking details that emerged in the trial was that the man being sacrificed at the time of the police raid was actually one of the Hernandez brothers. When it became apparent that the cult's days were numbered, one of the cultists set about murdering one of the brothers with the intention of harvesting their organs. The idea was, if the cultists escaped, they could consume a high priest's organs

and thus restart the cult after manifesting their powers. As news of the murders spilled into newspapers across the country, the Mexican public found themselves in disbelief that such a nightmarish thing could have occurred. Since then, the village of Sherba Buena has tried to move on from the hellish murders that were committed in the nearby caves, but to some, the jagged rock walls of the Shebra Buena caves will forever be stained with the blood of the innocent. To be continued... Back when I was a beat cop in Ogden, I worked under a lieutenant who, back when he was a homicide detective, had come up with a genius technique that caught the hi-fi murderers. Given that the incident had occurred back in the 70s, I was only vaguely aware of the hi-fi murders. Then one time when we were sharing a few beers after a shift, one of my buddies decided to share the story with me. This was way back before Google or anything like that, and if you wanted to read news archives, you had to head down to a library to dig through their collection of slides. So mostly it was a case of you either knew about

something or you didn't. But as well as telling me exactly how those guys were caught, my buddy told me about all the murders themselves. And that story is probably one of the most nightmare-inducing things I've ever heard. Back in 1974, three serving members of the U.S. Air Force drove over to this hi-fi store in Ogden, Utah. Hi-fi systems were still pretty cutting edge at the time, and the Air Force guys intended to rob the place before making tens of thousands of dollars offloading their loot. They hit the place just before closing time, tied up the two young employees on duty, then led them down into the basement. And when I say young, I mean really young, as in I'm pretty sure that they were both still teenagers at the time, and they must have been terrified. The gang then set about unloading all the hi-fi equipment into their vans they'd pulled up in when, for some reason, this 16-year-old kid walks right into

the door and interrupts them. This ends in the kid also being taken prisoner, and I imagine by that point, the robbers are getting pretty anxious because their plan is starting to unravel and that they had three prisoners to keep an eye on, not just one or two. Not long after, the employee's parents started getting worried that their kids hadn't arrived home yet, so two more people show up at the store. They're both taken prisoner and now the gang are literally outnumbered by the number of prisoners they have to keep in check. What happens next is the part that really confuses me, as there was no reason why one of the robbers couldn't have just kept a gun pointed at the prisoners

while the other two loaded up their van with sound equipment. Sure, the robbery hadn't gone exactly as planned, but I'll never understand what possessed them to do what they did next. One of the robbers goes out to their van, brings back some kind of bottle, and starts pouring the contents into plastic cups. He then tells the hostages that it's some kind of liquor laced with sleeping pills, and all drinking it will do is knock them out for a while so they can complete their robbery. The thing is, it wasn't liquor. It was drain cleaner.

Really strong drain cleaner too that burned their throats and tongues and caused the skin on their lips to peel and blister. To stop them from puking the drain cleaner back up, the robbers then tried to duct tape the prisoners' mouth shut, presumably in the hopes that drinking the drain cleaner would just kill them so there wouldn't be any witnesses. But because the skin around their mouths were melting off, the duct tape wouldn't hold in their puke or their screams. So all five prisoners started convulsing, screaming, puking up drain cleaner, and it must have been an absolute horror show. Realizing their mistake, the robbers then just started

shooting their prisoners, leaving only an 18-year-old girl alive so that one of them could do terrible things to her before shooting her in the head. One of the survivors said that he'd heard her last words before she was shot, and they were a whimpered, I'm too young to die. After that, the robbers noticed that one of their prisoners, who was one of the employee's fathers, had survived being shot. So, to finish him off, one of the robbers rams a ballpoint pen into the guy's ear, then stomps on it until it somehow ripped out of his throat. And of all the messed up details I heard that night while staring into my bottle of Falstaff, that's the one that sticks with me the most. When they were done doing that, the robbers

finished uploading the hi-fi equipment into their van then drove off somewhere to stash it. The bodies were found by one of the employee's other parents just a few hours later and I can't imagine she ever got over what she saw that day. Son dead, husband with a pen sticking out of his throat. The way I see it, those thugs ruined just as many lives as they took that day, and the scars on the survivor's face from the drain cleaner meant that they were reminded of it every single time they looked in the mirror. The cops were clued into the fact that the killers were airmen just a few hours after the crime, as the timing of it meant that it was all over local TV channels' evening news broadcasts. One of the killers had actually told an Air Force buddy of

theirs that they were planning on robbing that particular hi-fi store. So boom, the first tip came in almost right away. That's where my old lieutenant comes in too, because he was one of the homicide detectives who was assigned to the case. He and his partner figured that, since the guys were in the Air Force, they might have been staying at the base just outside of town. So, they drive over, tell the base's commanding officer what they're there for, then get his permission to assemble all the airmen in the mess hall or whatever. My old lieutenant's plan was to basically show them all a bunch of pictures of the victims, then watch all the airmen's faces to see if anyone

exhibited any suspicious behavior. So, that's what he and his partner did. They showed all the airmen pictures of the victims, then talked in detail about what had happened to them, all the gritty details included. From what I was told, almost all of the airmen just stared, open mouth, as my old lieutenant told them about the drain cleaner, about the assault, and about the whole pen being stomped into the guy's ear. But among the crowd were two or three airmen who just kept looking around all nervous, glancing over at one another in a way the detectives found extremely suspicious. After the little presentation was over, the guys who acted

suspicious were singled out and had their barracks searched. There, the cops found flyers for the Hi-Fi shop which listed its opening times as well as some kind of rental receipt for a storage unit back in town. The unit was searched and, what do you know, the Hi-Fi equipment was there. And this was all the evidence they needed to arrest all three of the guys on suspicion of robbery and attempted murder. I know two of the killers, after confessing that they were involved in some of the guys on suspicion of robbery and attempted murder. I know two of the killers, after confessing that they were involved in some of the violence, were executed by lethal injection. Apparently they got the idea to use drain killer to kill people after watching some Clint Eastwood movie and the pair of them found Jesus before they were actually put to death. Turns out the third guy didn't actually hurt anyone. He was

just there for the whole thing, and this was corroborated by the other two, who I guess wanted to save him from the death penalty. Well, it worked. And the third guy, this 19-year-old kid who had no idea what he had gotten into, he gets something like a decade in prison before he's finally released. He moves to Oklahoma, back in with his folks, then just tries going about living a whole new life. But then, get this, when the kid, who I suppose wasn't a kid anymore, hears about his two buddies getting executed back in Utah, then decides that he has to go too. And by that I mean he puts a bullet through his head maybe a week or so after they're killed. I guess it was a combination of not being able to live with the guilt of what he'd been a part of,

then maybe a little survivor's guilt that he dodged the death penalty while his buddies didn't. That whole detail is the final disturbing twist on what had to be one of the most messed up cases I'd ever heard of, and as much as it would have been cool to have the same kind of freedom and creativity that detectives get to operate with, thinking about having to deal with stuff like that makes me glad that I never got into homicide. I was a homicide detective working just outside of Portland, Oregon for just over seven years. I think a cop only has so much time in them as murder police as they call it, like a little hourglass or something. Once you run out of stomach for it, you gotta get out.

And this is the case that made me throw in the towel. In late spring of 1983, we had a woman bring her three kids to the hospital, and all three had gunshot wounds. One of them was already dead and the other two definitely would have been if it wasn't for the efforts of the doctors and nurses over at McKenzie Willamette. When we heard about it, we were all amazed at how brave and resilient the mom had been. She'd been shot in the arm during what she told us was an attempted carjacking, but had managed to fight the guy off before driving her kids to the hospital. As she sped off, the guy had apparently fired shots at the back of her car, and that's how her kids ended up getting hit. Myself and my partner drove down to the hospital

right away, hoping to ask her some questions so we could get after her kid's killer before it was too late. She seemed pretty calm for someone that had just lost one of their kids to a carjacker's bullets, but we figured whatever painkillers she'd been given had that kind of effect on her. But after that, the inconsistencies really started to add up. The first was when one of the woman's nurses pulled us aside after we'd questioned her. The nurse told us that the woman, whose name was Diane, had reacted very, very strangely upon being told that two of her three kids were going to survive their wounds. Any other mother would have been elated, even if they were drugged up to the eyeballs. But Diane barely seemed to react. She just said okay and

then seemed to withdraw inside of herself, like she was in deep thought. The second thing was when we got the results of the forensic examination on her car. Diane said the carjacker had shot her at point-blank range, right in the arm, while she was sitting in the driver's seat. But then there was no blood spray on the driver's side at all. She also mentioned how the carjacker had fired on the back of her car as she sped away, but our ballistics experts said that the bullet holes didn't line up with how the kids actually got hit. To them, it was almost like she'd staged the whole thing. Obviously, we had some rather serious questions to pose to Diane during our second interview, but before the day came, we were contacted by a man who said he needed to talk to us. When we met with the guy, he said that he and

Diane had been having an affair over the past year or so, and that after he tried to talk to us. When we met with the guy, he said that he and Diane had been having an affair over the past year or so, and that after he tried to break it off with her, she threatened to kill his wife so that they could be together. He said that he was actually scared for his life too at one point and that the whole thing had forced him to come clean to his wife so that he could get her to a place of safety until Diane moved back to Oregon. When he mentioned how serious Diane seemed to have been with her threats, he brought up how she'd talked about buying a gun and that she'd even showed it to him. That is what prompted us to search Diane's house, and while we didn't actually find any kind of

firearm, we did find a few.22 caliber shell casings she attempted to dispose of in her garage. And guess what size bullet the kids had been shot with? You guessed it,.22s. It took us almost a whole year to get all the evidence we needed to guarantee a conviction, but we got there in the end. Our chief of police wanted us to be 100% certain that we could convince a jury of Diane's guilt, but by the time the trial came, we didn't need to. One of Diane's own kids did all the heavy lifting for us. Her eldest daughter, who survived being shot, actually took the stand to describe how her mother had shot her little brother and sister before shooting herself in the arm to make her story look legit. The other thing I remember about Diane's trial is how the defense had a list of

mental disorders that she'd suffered from that was about as long as your arm, and they tried to use them to get a reduced sentence on the grounds that she wasn't in control of herself. That didn't wash with us, and it didn't wash with the judge or jury either, and she ended up getting life in prison plus 50 years. Weirdly enough, Diane ended up having another kid around the same time she was sentenced, although I couldn't tell you exactly who the father was. The kid ended up getting adopted and then long after I quit being a homicide detective, my ex-wife calls me to say that she'd appeared on Oprah and had talked about what it was like having someone like

that for a mother. I didn't watch the interview but just the mention of it had all these bad memories rushing back to me. As a parent, the idea of my kids getting hurt makes me feel physically sick. Even now that they're all grown up and the idea of actually hurting them myself isn't something I can even imagine being capable of doing. The darkness in that woman's heart, seeing those kids all torn up, watching her lie over and over again about neglecting her primary duty as a mother. They all constituted the last few grains of sand in the hourglass of my time working homicide. I handed in my transfer request on the day Diane was convicted, and although I

had to work one more case before it actually went through, my captain and my fellow detectives knew better than to give any more tough cases to someone who had reached their limit and was mentally checked out, and eventually, I ended up on the fraud team. I have nothing but respect for cops that choose to work homicide, and I admire any detectives who manage to last longer than I did, but for me personally, there was only so much that I could take. One of the first cases I was given as a homicide detective was probably the easiest open and shut case in my career in terms of determining if there was an actual guilty party. But it also happened to be one of the most haunting things I'd ever come across in my entire life. It started out as a woman calling 911 to say her husband had set himself on fire. EMTs show up, he gets taken to the hospital, but is announced dead on arrival.

Given that she was the last person to see him alive, I'm given the task of exploring if there was any possibility that the wife had actually killed him. This was ruled out as almost right away as the wife had dash cam footage of the whole thing going down. As part of the investigation, I had to watch this footage and my god, it was one of the worst things I'd ever seen. I'll break down the whole scenario for you so you have some context. According to the guy's wife, her husband used to start work much earlier than she did, and they only had time for a brief good morning and goodbye before he headed off to his job. By the time she got up for some coffee, he was usually just finishing off his breakfast, but on the morning of his death, he'd already left their home by the time she got downstairs. Although such an occurrence wasn't exactly cause for alarm, she found it kind of unusual. But then she sees his company ID just lying there on a countertop, and without it,

he wouldn't even be permitted to enter the building to commence work. So, instead of waiting for him to drive all the way back, apparently his commute was just shy of an hour, she figured that she'd drive all the way to his place of work to get his ID to him so he wouldn't be too late starting work. She then puts her shoes and a coat on, gets in her car then starts driving off in the direction of her husband's workplace. She says she was calling him a bunch during the drive, but at no point did he answer his phone. Then, about a third of the way into the drive, she spots a car that looks suspiciously like her

husband's, parked off a path at the side of the highway. The path is flanked by trees, so she can't see her husband, only what she believed to be his car. She then turns around at the next available opportunity, doubles back, then turns down the pathway which I believe led to some kind of dairy or poultry farm. It's here that the relevant section of her dashcam recording begins. I remember watching as the dashcam shows her approaching her husband's car. She then honks her horn and a man we later identified as being her husband basically steps out from behind a tree. She then opens the driver's side door, calling out his name and asking what he was doing. Her husband says nothing in return and appears to be fiddling with

something that was in his hands. She then asks again, what are you doing? Only that time, there was considerably more stress in her voice, suggesting that she could see what he had in his hand. The man continues to stay silent, and the next thing you see on the dash cam recording is the guy being engulfed in flames. Her screams are still probably the most horrific sound I'd ever heard during my career as a police officer, just full of terror and confusion. She rushes towards him for a second, then stops, runs back to the car, then reappears on the dash cam footage with a blanket. She tried to use the blanket to douse the flames burning up her husband, and in the end, she was successful. But the damage was done, and his injuries were so severe that he didn't survive

the ride to the hospital. As you can imagine, that was all extremely disturbing to witness, for me and obviously her. After that, the whole thing was out of my hands, as obviously no homicide had taken place, but there were a few small details I managed to pick up before the case was closed that I still find very, very unsettling. The first was that the husband seemed to have no reason whatsoever to want to take his own life. The family's finances were in good health, their kids were doing great in school, their son was headed for a football scholarship at one of our state's top colleges. And from what I heard, their marital relationship was about as healthy as could possibly be. The husband had no history of depression or anything like that. His personal and professional lives seemed to be in great

condition. In short, the reasons as to why he might self-immolate like that were a complete mystery. Naturally, we didn't look into it too much, not us homicide guys anyway, but there was one other little thing that the wife told us as we were closing the investigation that I think might just be the key to finding out what was going on in the guy's head. A few days before the guy set himself on fire, his wife went up into their office to find that he'd taken the family computer away. Not just the tower, either. The whole thing. Monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, everything. When she asked him about it, he just told her it needed replacing, that they could use a newer, more up-to-date model. This newer model arrived within a few days of the old one disappearing

so the wife didn't think anything of it. She did think it was kind of odd that he didn't just leave the old one in place until the replacement arrived. But she just assumed that the old one was unworkable and then by the time the new one arrived, the whole thing was forgotten about. It seems to me that the key to finding out why this guy took his own life is buried somewhere on that old computer's hard drive. And unless the wife manages to find out what the guy did with it,

possibly recovering the hard drive in the process, the whole thing is going to remain a very unsettling mystery for all involved. These days, I can do anything from my phone. Book a vacation, order a meal from a five-star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have Rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app or at Rinse.com. A Rinse valet comes to get my clothes, and before I know it, they're back, crisply folded, and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning, which is returned hanging in a nice Rinse garment bag. And with Rinse, my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll re-clean my clothes for free. Best of all, Rinse saves me tons of time

each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember, there's an app for that. Rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at rinse.com. That's R-I-N-S-E dot com. I was one of the detectives at the Mad Chopper murder incident back in 1978. Single worst thing I'd ever investigated. It involved a 15-year-old girl named Mary Vincent who was hitchhiking back to Vegas after visiting family over in California. A guy pulled over when she was hitchhiking in Modesto, gained her trust, then drove her into the middle of nowhere before subjecting her to some of the worst torture imaginable. The guy beat her with a sledgehammer and violated her all night.

Then before he tossed her body off of a 30-foot cliff, he cut her arms off with a machete in the hopes that she'd just bleed out. The guy then drives off, thinking the girl is dead. Only she isn't dead. She wakes up, then does some of the craziest stuff I've ever heard in my whole life. She sticks the bleeding stumps that used to be her arms in a pool of mud, as it was all she could think of to stop the bleeding. It actually works, and as the mud dries it actually stemmed the blood flow enough to keep her from bleeding to death. She then walked three times, completely without clothes and with no arms, before she eventually reaches a highway

where a passing driver got her some help. We worked with that young lady for months and I swear to God she was the bravest girl I'd ever known. The guy had intended to kill her, torture her for hours, then made an invalid of her. Anyone else might have been too afraid or traumatized to be of any use to the investigation, but she was invaluable. She was so determined to get justice for herself that she later said it gave her a kind of calm. I guess the idea of revenge just kept her going, kept all the dark thoughts at bay. In the end, we arrested a guy named Larry Singleton, and after her testimony helped secure a conviction, we all figured the guy would get upwards of 20 years in prison. Then, the judge only gave him 14. We were disappointed, and that's putting it mildly, because the way Singleton acted

all throughout his trial, we knew he was a natural born killer. He was cold, totally remorseless, and if he got another chance, we had no doubt he'd kill again. Singleton went to prison in 1979 and over the next 20 years or so, the case faded into the background. We couldn't forget it, and that goes for my partner too. We were haunted by it, and all the times we met up for drinks after we retired from the force, the subject of the mad chopper always came up at some point. He used to imagine it too, said he'd see little Mary Vincent when he closed his eyes at night, running through the dark, mud all over her stumps, even though he'd never even

seen it to begin with. Then come 1997, what do you know? I get a call from my ex-partner telling me to expect an envelope in the mail. It arrived a few days later and when I opened it, all it contained was a newspaper clipping from a Florida newspaper. It said none other than Larry Singleton had been arrested for the murder of a mother of three. Thank God for Florida, because a judge down there gave Larry the death sentence. He ended up missing his execution though and I read how he died of cancer in prison just a few months after 9-11. You ask me, he should have been put out of his misery much earlier, preferably before he took poor Mary Vincent's arms off. When I was in high school, I competitively partook in cross-country and track, so I was rather fit for my age.

I didn't win any fancy awards nor was I the fastest, but I was still very capable of outrunning others. But during my free time, I was also part of the local boy scout unit and we'd go on nature hikes here and there. Back then, I'd thought that it was to study leaves and rocks, but in reality, I think it was because my scout leader was just that bored. Summer comes up and we all get a surprise vacation, going hiking at the Grand Canyon. Of course, you could choose not to go, but why on earth would I pass this up? A thought I very much wish I could take back now. And for those that don't know, the Grand Canyon is located in Arizona and without stating any information, this meant that it'd be

a few hours for us to get there. Which meant that we'd be making a reservation at the Havasu Falls for a few days. The drive isn't anything to note so I'll skip that and get to the main event. Our scout group normally ends up splitting into two groups, the fast paced hikers and the slower let's check out nature hikers. Due to my athleticism I'd usually be with the fast hikers but my friend had packed on some pounds to be a linebacker for tryouts in autumn so I stuck with him in the slow group. Since this was the let's check out nature group I ended up being able to flex my knowledge about the local rocks. For the most part I just chatted with the

other kids. Another thing about being rather quick on my feet is that if I decided to linger back to look at something I could easily catch up with the group. So this one stone wall catches my eye as it has an interesting stripe that curves from horizontal to vertical. So I tell my friend that I'll catch up as I want to look more into this particular stripe. My friend accepted the weirdness, shrugged, and just walked away. As I inspected the pattern, I soon noticed that the rock was an andesite, which was really strange since igneous rocks wouldn't belong in the Grand Canyon. I spent about 30 minutes or so pathfinding my way to a flat surface so I can get a better

look at the stripe. As I'm working my way up a little cliff face like 15 feet 20 tops, I see a little flower growing in a crevice. It was a really strange little flower, as I hadn't seen a flower with green petals before or since. But with me being the explorer that I was, I decided to poke the flower head. But it was like the flower petals were under tension, as when I touched it, the flower reacted like a mousetrap. It clamped down and practically exploded a cloud of pollen on me. Within one single breath, my entire brain gets overwhelmed with what I can only describe to this day as a mind-numbing fear. My body soils itself. I begin sobbing hysterically without even getting a chance to gather my thoughts. I couldn't tell why I was so terrified, but my body was physically

reacting like it couldn't determine whether to enter fight or flight mode. Best way I can describe it was like a sort of fear paralysis had overcome my senses. Do I go into full on lockdown and recoil or do I sprint for my life in hopes of escaping? Suddenly I'm practically leaping down the rock wall I had climbed, being only semi-careful of where I'm placing my feet. I hit the ground and begin sprinting to catch up with the others, telling myself that as long as I see humans I'll be fine. Another strange thing I noticed is that this fear would slightly decrease if I sprinted at full power. Slowing down at all

would only heighten the fear again. Whether it was my body acknowledging this feedback or my muscles were just that tense, but I felt like I couldn't stop running. I knew it was tearing my body up and it hurt so bad to keep going as I felt this foamy spit gather all around my mouth but the idea of slowing down was so terrifying that I just kept going. The slow group is in my vision and I didn't even realize I was trying to scream as I was so focused on sprinting. They kept asking me what was up but again if I slow down then everything is tremendously horrible so I had no choice but to just blitz right past them, still letting out these dry-throated screeches and coughs. Soon, the fast group was within reach, and I guess the slow group's leader had radioed the fast group's leader about my insane behavior.

Just like before, the fast group asked what was happening and I refused to slow down, so their group leader, who I'm happy to announce is built like a brick wall, grabbed me before I was out of reach. I remember being grabbed, but according to him, I fought like an animal, using all of my limbs and even my teeth to attempt to free myself. When asked what was wrong, I apparently screamed that I had to get away before it arrived in between screeching gibberish. Finally, with no other choice, the group leader puts me into a headlock until I pass out. It turns out, Mr. Brickwall was a former coach for the wrestling team. He sends a kid back to the other group to give them an update as his hands were full of, well, me, and they ended up tying my legs together and my arms behind my back.

But what was there to do next? I was too much of a hassle to transport by foot, and since we were deep in the canyon, there was no phone service. Their only option was to send two of the runners back to the Havasupai Reservation and have them evacuate me via helicopter. The kids reach the reserve, telling them the issue, and the tribe ends up sending a horse to carry me close enough to range for a medevac, and all of this takes approximately an hour and by then, the fear had faded off. The scouts and leaders weren't angry with me,

only scared of what caused me to freak out so bad. Of course, I don't know much of the details, but I could only seem to repeat about a weird rock and a green flower. I've grown up with some of these kids. They know I'm not the kind to have a psychotic episode or anything like that. If anything, I'm probably assumed as the most robotic or clinical of the group, which must have scared everyone even more. The scoutmaster comes back and sees that I've finally come to and that I'm sane again, and it was decided that I didn't need a medevac, but I still used the horse to travel back since my legs felt like they were obliterated.

Rightfully so too, because that was probably about 6 miles that I ran in 30 minutes. I couldn't even stand. I ended up spending the rest of the trip at the reserve just taking it easy, trying to get recovered enough to walk normally. I'll be honest, if I hadn't stuck to the trail and if the scoutmaster hadn't been there, I think I literally would have run myself to death. It took a super long time for the fear to wear off when I was basically held down and even then, with the amount of running that I'd done, I was basically handicapped for the next two days. I asked the reserve tribe about the flower and they said they'd never heard of anything like that. And whenever I hear stories about someone being found 30 miles off course from their hike at the top of a mountain or something,

I think about that weird little flower and wonder about how many people survived that little ball of doom. I was, in most aspects, a very strange kid. I feel that most people can chalk up their silly memories and experiences by simply stating that they didn't know better. But not me. I'll shamefully admit that I was always the weird kid. Teachers didn't like me because I never participated. I couldn't make friends because I was socially awkward and my home life wasn't average. Not because of abusive parents or anything like that, but because I suffered from horrible insomnia. I can pinpoint the majority of my problems on my childhood insomnia,

but what was even worse were the dreams that I'd get when I'd take my prescription pills. They always felt real. You know how you can usually tell when you're in a dream after you wake up? Well, for me, when I'd wake up, I'd have to take several minutes or so to grasp reality. The worst was when I lost track of a dream and combined it with reality. I cannot remember the meds that I took, but I do remember that after this incident I stopped taking them. I was either faced with horrific reality bending nightmares or the inability to sleep. So one night, I take the prescription and lay down for bed. My mother comes in to turn off the lights,

standing by the doorway, and before I know it, I'm suddenly in a brightly lit, foggy room. Where my mother once stood is now a complete stranger, wearing what seemed like a black spandex suit. His face seemed to glow with a dark red hue, but his eyes remained hollow. Similar to a skull in a way, I remember not feeling threatened by him, although his appearance definitely disturbed me. He told me his name, and I only remember it sounding like a bunch of noise in my ears. He asked me my name and before I even tell him, he repeats it back to me like he was confirming it. I nod my head and suddenly we're now in my kitchen. The TV in the kitchen turns on and he goes through the channels, each one displaying planets and galaxies,

and he comments on how he knows I'm interested in science and history. While that was true, I didn't recognize anything that he was showing me, yet the pictures were very clear. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't exactly scared of him. He wasn't a stranger to me, even though I've never had a dream involving him before. As soon as I realized that he seemed familiar, he turned to me and told me that I had nothing to be afraid of, and that this wasn't our first meeting. I never had a memory of him before, yet I believed him, like he was from another dimension or alternate reality. He then discusses my real life doctors, how they're all suspecting that I just have depression and ADHD. He seemed to get angry as he said that and began to tell me how important I really am and that I simply must

wait for my time. The weird part about this, aside from all of it, is that I wasn't aware of what the doctors were discussing. Him mentioning depression would be the first time I'd ever hear about it, but a year or so later I'd get diagnosed with major depression disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I ask him once again how he knows of this and he approaches me, telling me that this needs to stop. Before I ask what he means, suddenly all I hear is that muffled sound in my ears again and a sharp stab in my shoulder. Next thing I know, I'm sitting up in my bed. I didn't feel like I woke up and if I'm being truthful, it never felt like I fell asleep either. And that's when I remember that random pain in my shoulder.

And I look over and found that I have a circular imprint with three little dots of blood in that exact area. Keep in mind, we didn't have any pets and I was laying in bed with no toys or electronics around. Nothing could have made a perfectly circular imprint, nor three evenly spaced dots to stab my shoulder like that. I began to panic and I screamed for my mom. She races in, looks at my shoulder and freezes still. What happened? Are you alright? She said, trying not to heighten my panic more, but I could tell she was struggling to understand the situation. I rambled on about the man in the dream, how he said I'm different and all these other things, but she just continued to glare at me. Without saying another word, she picks me up and carries me into my parents' bedroom to sleep. The rest of the night was uneventful, except for my mom scolding me for picking at the mark on my shoulder.

The next morning I woke up and found myself back in my bed, thinking that she or my father had carried me back into my room. So I get up to use the bathroom and I find that the scar is gone, completely missing. No imprint, no dried blood, no dots or scabs. I ran to my mom and asked her to help me find the scar. What scar, Anon? Did you hurt yourself? I just stared at her blankly, thinking she was maybe just tired, but she was awake before me. I began to go through with what I had told her last night but this time she chalked it all up to being a bad dream. That it was perhaps a dream within a dream to which I asked her why was I in their bedroom last night. She stopped sipping her coffee and firmly told me that

when she turned off my bedroom light I was already clocked out for the night. But in my memory I was still awake and looking directly at her before disappearing into that bright room. After that, I stopped taking my meds and just dealt with my insomnia. To this day, I still don't know what was the healthier choice for my brain. Neither option made me feel sane, but at least by refusing the meds, I didn't deal with alternate reality aliens stabbing me in the shoulder. My grandfather served in the Vietnam War. He didn't really tell people about it, and it turns out it's not for the reasons you think.

My grandfather is a short man, about 5'4 if I were to guess, and because of his height, he was the involuntary tunnel rat. Tunnel rats would be sent into Viet Cong's underground dirt tunnels for search and destroy missions. Clear out enemies, find intel, or just plant bombs and destroy the entire tunnel itself. It could be an anxiety-inducing experience, crawling the dark and foreign lands to destroy their own traveling systems. Yet, that's not what my grandfather told me about, when I was older of course. He had much, much worse encounters as a tunnel rat. At the time, he and another man, Daniel, were designated tunnelers. Daniel wasn't as short as my grandfather, but still

short enough to be another rat. So the two of them get sent out to clear out and destroy a tunnel system equipped with a little flashlight, a bayonet, an old revolver, and some explosives. To them, this was a basic mission, nothing new nor drastic. In fact, it was a rather simple mission as there weren't any Viet Cong or even any traps set up. It felt like the tunnel was abandoned, which wouldn't really be all that surprising. They seemed on guard for traps as they entered further in, eventually coming across a larger sectioned out area. This bigger space allowed them to sit up into a half-standing position, and they could even hear water running through the tunnel. Daniel mentions how they're possibly above a river,

and my grandfather comments that the tunnel could lead into a watery cavern and points off to the opposite side of the area. Daniel shines his flashlight over towards where my grandfather pointed and sees four completely massive spiders. They both freeze and they've never seen any spiders this big before. My grandfather says that they were longer than a foot each and each one of them had a leg span of about two to two and a half feet. Three of the spiders were bunched up right next to each other, with one resting a couple of feet from the cluster. My grandfather doesn't just hate spiders, he's absolutely petrified of them. In fact, I remember when I was a kid, he threw a kitchen chair at a daddy longleg spider.

But seeing these giant creatures left him paralyzed. Both him and Daniel couldn't move out of sheer shock and horror of how large they were, and that's when Daniel takes his eyes off the cluster and looks at the other one that was apart from the group. But it's gone. My grandfather looked to his left after hearing Daniel curse to himself, and found that the lone spider was beginning to advance towards them. Not at a quick pace, but at a slow, steady speed. He compared it to how a predator stalks its prey before pouncing on them. Daniel curses again, but my grandfather abandons all rationality and begins to open fire on the spider. This, of course, agitates it and the sound

stirs up the three other spiders. He and Daniel turn around to book it out of the tunnel as Daniel tosses a charged explosive behind them. My grandfather mentioned how he could actually hear the spiders' legs tapping and clicking against the dirt as they crawled after them. They make it out of the tunnel and Daniel presses his detonator ensuring that if these things were behind them, they weren't anymore. My grandfather in the meantime is screaming and borderline sobbing about spiders as the rest of the unit asks what happened. He even told me that he suspects it wasn't a Viet Cong tunnel that they stumbled into,

but rather a newly formed nest that was being built by these exotic spiders. He actually told me of another time that they went to destroy a tunnel and discovered a not-so-hidden trap. The trap, if activated, would release a bucket of scorpions or snakes overhead of the victim, so Daniel and him stopped to consider their options. A trap means someone's in the tunnel, so they could either disarm the trap and sneak up and ambush their target, or they could just throw explosives in and call it a day. Apparently Daniel, at the time, was getting reprimanded for his, let's just say liberal use of explosives, and so they decided to disarm the trap. Normally, the traps they come across were rather simple to deactivate, but

this one was very complex. Daniel mentions that if this doesn't deactivate properly, then they're trapped in the tunnel with deadly poisonous animals. Suddenly the idea of explosives sounds like the best alternate route, and they even joked about Daniel being scolded for using more explosives. What are they going to do, send me home? And so with that, they backed up, and a grenade was lobbed over in the general direction. The tunnel didn't actually collapse ahead of them, plus the trap was gone, so they began to move forward. Apparently, the grenade

had created a hole where the trap was, exposing another tunnel. And out of this new tunnel was what my grandfather described as a five foot long centipede which barreled right past them and down deeper into the tunnels. They both agreed to let my grandfather take the blame for the explosives, plant more charges, and they haul it out of the tunnel. To my grandfather, verbal reprimanding is a million times better than being stuck in tunnels with five foot long centipedes and spiders the size of dogs. 3 years ago, my Aunt Barb died. To me, this meant a couple of things. The first being that my last close connection with my family had passed away before her 70th birthday. The second was that I wasn't

going to be invited to the celebration of life because I was a familial outcast at that point for going no contact with my parents. I contacted a cousin of mine and they agreed to let me crash at their place for a couple of days because they agreed to let me crash at their place for a couple of days because they spoke to Barb before she died and our mutual aunt told them that I was the only person who was still calling her weekly. It was sort of the thing that we did where we would update each other on our lives. That way I got to keep tabs on the family that wouldn't talk to me and Barb got to talk to a loved one because barely anyone ever really visited her. She wanted me to sing at her funeral and unfortunately that wasn't going to

happen, but I was definitely going to be there for the celebration of life, even if only for a moment. I was going to have to drive through Utah and Idaho to get to Montana though and unless I wanted to effectively bankrupt myself, I wasn't going to be sleeping in a hotel room on the way. That meant almost 20 hours of driving with only gas station bathrooms to break up the monotony. Oh well, I got things scheduled with Hannah, my cousin, and I departed at 10. The land of Mormons didn't give me any issues, thankfully. My recommendation for road trips is to carry lots of water from the beginning and to very lightly snack on food throughout. Less stops the better.

Anyway, the forest gets denser the further north you go. Though it's never really blinding, you still have to stay vigilant. So after lots of water and maybe some soda, it's best to switch to energy drinks at sunset to get through the night. The main thing is, water rules over all else. Anyways, I made it through Idaho fine. Being a little wired from an energy drink, I hit Montana and that's where things kind of turned sour. Naturally, I'm already anxious about running into my family. Even though there's no way that I could run into them at the border.

They mostly all live in the central or eastern part of the state itself, but I'm driving along this big lake or reservoir and I feel this chill. It was like intuition, the way you feel when something moves out of the corner of your eye, but it felt like that throughout my whole body. I knew something was happening and because I thought that it might be a stroke or a heart attack due to hypochondriac genes, I started to pull over to gauge how to react. Just as I started pulling to the shoulder though, this loud scream just kind of shot out from right beside me. Like I had a passenger and I scared the life out of them

or something. It sounded like a loud woman's scream and it was so loud that my ears were nearly ringing. It was the kind of loud that makes the silence afterwards twice as powerful. I slammed the brakes and made it to the shoulder fine after a second but I was breathing hard and my heart was in my throat. It was awful. This horrible nausea came over me as well as I got a full body shivery feeling, similar to when you're hot and cold at the same time with a fever. So I sat in the dark for a moment with my hands shaking and holding the wheel hard. After a second I built up the energy within me and I looked back and around

the car. Nobody was there. It felt like I was on a roller coaster that never put my weight back down in the seat. When I made sure that there was nobody behind me in the road I opened my door and undid my seatbelt and I just leaned out of the open doorway of my Civic and vomited. When I was done I closed and locked my door and took the opportunity to put a new CD in. My Civic doesn't have Bluetooth and I'm too cheap for a new radio. It was something by Regina Spector, which was actually my co-worker's music, but they left it in my car. Anyways, I let the CD start up and then I shut my car off because I felt like I needed that disconnection from traveling. Soon enough, I turned it on and continued onward.

A couple of miles down the road, the situation really dawned on me. That what I experienced wasn't only terrifying, it was completely unexplainable. That's it, ex. I got yelled at by my haunted car, I guess. Maybe it was the result of slightly losing sanity from the drive. Maybe it was the spirit of Aunt Barb. But I went to the celebration of life and it surprisingly wasn't bad. People weren't disrespectful like I was, afraid that they would be.

And I stayed for a few days and then I made the drive home without any other incident. Rest in peace Aunt Barb, I miss you and I really, really hope that wasn do anything from my phone. Book a vacation, order a meal from a five-star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have Rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app or at Rinse.com. A Rinse valet comes to get my clothes, and before I know it, they're back crisply folded and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning, which is returned hanging in a nice Rinse garment bag. And with rinse, my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll re-clean my clothes for free. Best of all,

rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember, there's an app for that. Rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at rinse.com. That's R-I-N-S-E dot com. When I was 12 years old, my best friend and I would ride our bikes all across our little city town. We never meant harm or to cause issues with neighbors and for the most part, everyone was accepting of each other. Everyone except this one particular subdivision in the city.

It was early springtime at the time, the snow was all gone, the weather was warming up and it was beginning to be t-shirt and shorts weather. For those of you who love spring like I do, this equates to pure bliss. So, like always, my friend and I met up and began riding our bikes through the neighborhood. We decided to explore further out than usual by a few miles and ended up in the previously stated subdivision. My friend, who was ahead of me, turns down the street and instantly I can hear someone making a fuss about him riding his bike in the street. I followed behind and realized that this wasn't a kind of lecture about road safety, but more like a, if you don't get off the road this instant, oh why I oughta, shaking fist type of

yelling. My friend wasn't one to care for authority figures, probably because his home life wasn't the healthiest, so this resulted in him giving the finger to whoever was yelling at him. I couldn't tell if the person was yelling inside a car or a house, but I looked all over for this stranger. As soon as my friend gave his single finger salute, the stranger instantly stopped yelling, but my friend refused to stop there. He began yelling out obscenities, mocking this random stranger and making suggestive comments about their manhood. And that's when I heard what I thought was a door slam.

In fact, I was so busy looking around to find this individual that I genuinely thought they rushed out their front door and had slammed that hard. But finally, I looked ahead and my friend was laying on the ground, sprawled out on his back, his bicycle on top of him. I assumed that he had jumped from the sound, lost his balance and accidentally fell down. That is until I saw blood pooling underneath him. I was probably a few yards away when I caught up to him, seeing his blood spilling underneath him. I don't do well with blood, so I began sobbing and panicking, trying to keep my cool, but I couldn't. The reason my friend was on the ground was because he hadn't lost his balance. He'd been shot. Whoever he had agitated felt that their ego

was in such danger that they had no choice but to shoot a 12-year-old boy. A woman, probably in her 20s, came racing out to see what had happened. Her and I made eye contact for a brief second. I had no idea what was going to happen. Was it her who shot him? Am I next? Were we trespassing and this is what happens to kids? She looked down and saw the blood underneath him and screamed so loud I swear it was louder than the gunshot earlier. Eventually a crowd began surrounding us and I even remember someone mumbling about how this street never changes. That stuck with me for some reason. Eventually the ambulance arrived but everything is fuzzy after that. I remember the police taking me in for questioning and how terrified I was, thinking I did something horrible and it's my fault that my friend was in the

hospital. I later on discovered that this was survivor's guilt. I tell my story, a few of the neighbors tell their perspectives and soon the suspect is identified and arrested. Long story short, my friend survived as the bullet had miraculously missed any large organs and the ambulance responded in good time. I would later find out that their good response time is a rarity which to this day still scares me. The reason the scumbag shot my friend wasn't just because of the insults, but because he apparently was wearing gang colors and the guy thought that he was scoping out or something. My best friend could have lost his life and it's all because some low-life scumbag

had to check his own ego because of the colors of some clothes. I was either in 4th or 5th grade when my story took place. Just for some backstory, I was very shy and a quiet girl at the time and didn't have many friends. I was basically a bit of a loner. I had music class with this teacher, I don't remember his actual name so for the sake of the story I'll just call him Mr. Martin. Now Mr. Martin is well known as an overall nice teacher but with a bit of a temper. It seemed that the smallest things would set him off. If a student of his was late or interrupted him, he would literally shout at them at the top of his lungs. He would get so angry that when he would shout, spit would be flying out of his mouth

and his face would get bright red. All the kids would get terrified but within a matter of minutes, he would go from this scary red-faced maniac to a regular smiling teacher acting as if nothing had happened. Before I tell you what happened, I wanted to give you a small layout of the school as I think it's important to the story. The music classroom was not a direct part of the school. There was a little hallway that connected to the main body of the school to the music room. The closest classroom to the music room was at least 40 to 50 feet away. This classroom belonged to another teacher that I didn't like, Mrs. Webb. Now Mrs. Webb was not a nice teacher at all. Everyone seemed not to like

her. If I would ask her for help on an assignment, she would sneer at me and tell me to figure it out and refuse to help me any further. Mrs. Webb also plays a part in the story. Anyway, one day I was in music class with Mr. Martin and we were learning the keyboard. I remember that we were playing the song Old MacDonald and I was actually pretty proud of myself as I wasn't messing up. At one point the entire class was playing the song without anyone making any mistakes and Mr. Martin was ecstatic. Then, once we were done with the song, he was so happy he shouted, great job everyone, let's do it one more time. We all started from the top and about halfway through the song, I made a mistake. I tried to correct myself but the rest of the class had continued and when I tried to join them, I played the wrong keys and just

continued to make it worse. Other kids started playing the wrong keys and the song was ruined. And Mr. Martin shouted, enough, stop it. And everyone stopped playing right away. He stomped toward me and forced me out of the classroom into the hallway away from the music room. He was whisper shouting, why did you have to mess up? What were you thinking? You ruined everything. He then proceeds to pin me against the wall and I had started to cry and apologize which only seemed to make him more angry. He grabbed my throat and began to squeeze so I felt like I could barely breathe. I began kicking and trying to scream so someone could hear me. I don't remember making any sound but I guess it was loud enough for Mrs. Webb to come bursting out of her room only to find Mr. Martin's hand around my throat.

He let go of me instantly and Mrs. Webb ran to me asking if I was okay. I don't remember much after that. I just remember Mrs. Webb grabbing a chair for me to sit on while her and Mr. Martin talked about what happened. They talked for what seemed like a long time until the bell rang. Mr. Martin came up to me and gave me my backpack and I went to my next class. I think I had suppressed this memory and only told my parents about it months later. They didn't believe me. They were probably thinking that I was just making an excuse to avoid school, but I knew the truth. And since they didn't believe me, the school was never told and nothing happened to Mr. Martin. It wasn't until years later that I realized that Mrs. Webb and Mr. Martin had probably promised each other that they would keep this a secret between them,

which is why he was never caught. Mrs. Webb had covered for him instead of ensuring the safety of the students at that school. When I was a kid, probably seven or eight years old, I was quite obsessed with exploring nature. Hills, woods, trees, forests, I wanted to see it all. And since we were young kids, we didn't know about property limits. If you didn't have a big sign up saying stay off, we deemed it as free to explore. Really naive of us, I know, but I kind of miss that ignorance. One morning, a group of friends and I headed out into the forest to go exploring since we all lived near a wooded area. The one thing that I miss about being that young was that everything was a toy. One of my friends discovered some low-hanging sturdy branches but

to us they weren't just branches, they were swing sets and balancing beams. Another thing about being a kid was just how fast time could fly by. 30 minutes outside would pass in what felt like 5 minutes, and all we were doing was simply messing around with trees. Plus finding sharp sticks and small rocks because, you know, in case of monster attacks. It was about 4pm when all of us traveled further into this forest and came across a pond that is completely surrounded by trees. Even better yet, these trees had more of those low hanging branches so within minutes we were setting up a rope, yes we actually did bring a rope with us, and discussing how we

could launch ourselves into the pond. Another friend suddenly mentioned that someone had beaten us to this idea. He points over to another tree and we see a piece of wood already set up tied to a branch. We all book it around the pond towards this newly discovered swing. All giddy because we now have extra rope in case we find another pond to dive into or something silly like that. But as we were getting closer, I noticed that this wasn't the only swing. Or I guess you could call it a swing with our imagination. In reality, from afar, it looked to just be small pieces of logs tied to rope.

What didn't make sense to me was that there wasn't only one, but would seem to be about twenty different logs tied to different ropes. Yes, childish ignorance quickly washed over and I thought to myself, wow, someone made twenty swings? The pond was rather wide and I don't remember who discovered it first, but soon everyone quickly realized simultaneously, these were not swings, and these were not pieces of logs attached. It was a bunch of nooses with varying decaying items hanging from them. Small animals, like raccoons, beavers, possums, all dead and rotting. Some of the nooses had baby dolls or just doll limbs. In about a 30 meter radius there were animals decomposing from nooses and baby dolls or just doll limbs. In about a 30 meter radius there were animals decomposing from nooses and baby dolls rotting from nature. And I guess I'm lucky to say that I was old enough

to realize that they were dolls because one of my friend's little brothers thought that they were real babies and apparently needed serious mental help to cope with that. That being said, we all hightailed it out of there and never looked back once. I feel that this story needs to be told, but this didn't happen to me, but to my grandfather and uncle. One day my grandfather was visiting his son's land, aka my uncle, for a family trip. He wanted to do some typical hunting and fishing as it was their way to spend time together. After being in the woods all day and finding no deer to hunt, he decides to call it quits. My grandfather leaves the stand with my uncle while his other son, my dad, and his brother are on the other side of the property.

He and my uncle began walking through woods back to the cabin as it quickly became dark. Out of nowhere, there's a glow ahead of them. My grandfather pointed it out to my uncle, who can see it as well, and they decide to approach the area. In typical farmland tradition, they arm themselves with hunting rifles as my uncle wants to make sure nobody is on his land that shouldn't be. They reach the source of the glow to find that it wasn't a flashlight, a fire, nor a glow stick. It was a soccer ball-sized mass of goo that emanated this massive glow. So, in my grandfather's exact words, they decided to blast it. But the bullets they fired seemed to get absorbed into the mass. No holes or damage, no evidence that they even fired off their guns. And soon the incompatibility

to comprehend what was before them had put them into panic mode. They rushed out of there and headed back to the cabin. Now, I've heard this story a few times from my grandfather and uncle, each at different times and yet always the exact same details. This consistency is particularly impressive in my mind for my grandfather who was getting well on in his years. My uncle's land is massive and mostly surrounded by wilderness with the exception of a couple of abandoned houses. The entire place is covered in small lakes and ponds and a good number of caves, but most of the caves are roped off or being used by geology students for whatever rock people do with rocks. I didn't do much exploring myself, but I'm sure

a Google search would probably answer it as being some luminescent piece of nature. However, this still doesn't explain what happened to their bullets. It's too easy to label things as aliens or paranormal, but I don't know. it really stumped 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 let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just one dollar 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 do anything from my phone. Book a vacation, order a meal from a five-star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have Rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app or at Rinse.com. A Rinse valet comes to get my clothes, and before I know it, they're back, crisply folded, and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning, which is returned hanging in a nice Rinse garment bag. And with Rinse, my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for

any reason I'm not happy, they'll re-clean my clothes for free. Best of all, Rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember, there's an app for that. Rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at rinse.com. That's R-I-N-S-E dot com.