The Lets Read Podcast - 206: TRAPPED WITH MY INTRUDER | 25 True Scary Stories | EP 194

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Highways, Intruders & Abandoned Places...   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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Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. 🎵 This didn't happen to me personally, but I thought it was such a good story I should share it here. When this happened, my friend was dating a girl in the next town over. She was part of a group we hung out with over there. Our towns were separated by about 10 miles of woods and farmland. We spent

a lot of time traveling back and forth on the major highway that connected them. We'd all been traveling on it since we were little and knew it well. To my knowledge, it had never had a bad reputation or was considered dangerous. I certainly had never met anyone else that had ever had a similar thing happen to them before or since. It was old and a little rough in places, but that is the status quo in small town Texas. Most days, one or more of us would have been riding along with him, but for some reason, he was alone on this day. He had just left his girlfriend's house and was about 5 minutes into his commute. A flashing light caught his attention in the

rearview mirror. He looked up and saw an old Jeep Cherokee flashing its headlights at him. He was going about 75 and the Jeep was closing in fast. He assumed the driver had an emergency and was trying to clear the road ahead of him. He changed lanes to allow the jeep to speed ahead. However, when he did this, the jeep also changed lanes. He was puzzled. Maybe the guy just misread my intentions, he thought. He sped up a bit and moved back over to his original lane. Once again, the jeep did the same.

He was unsure of what to do do and while he considered his options, the jeep accelerated and rammed the back of his car. He came very close to losing control but held firm. As you can imagine, he was freaking out. He did the only sensible thing he could think of and floored the gas pedal. The Honda Accord he was driving was well capable of outrunning the jeep. Unfortunately, he moved just a tad too slow and the jeep rammed him again. To his credit, I'm not sure I would have been capable of maintaining control, but he did. By now, he was beginning to pull away, and this is where he made a major mistake. To his right was an exit off the highway. He had to know it wouldn't lead anywhere but to more empty land and woods.

Perhaps he thought he'd trick the jeep's driver by making a quick exit. I could never get a clear answer for him. Either way, just before he was to pass the exit ramp, he made a quick cut across two lanes and left the highway. He thought he'd shaken his stalker, but the familiar shape of the jeep was now hot on his tail. He was running out of options and he knew it. Now he was in an even worse situation. The access road was virtually invisible from the highway and was getting dark. If no one saw what was happening before, he was really screwed now. At the bottom of the hill, he blew through the stop sign and sped up the next hill. There was an entrance ramp coming up soon,

and he planned to take it. The outskirts of town were close. There was no way the jeep driver would continue the pursuit once they got into town. He was sure he'd be able to make some space if he could just get to the top. He did, but the jeep proved a hair faster and rammed the back of the car one final time. This was the hardest hit so far and caused him to finally lose complete control. The force of the collision caused the car to leap forward and to the right. The right side of this road made a dramatic drop about 35 feet down into a creek. I could be overestimating the drop a little, but it was definitely pretty high.

He remembers the car rolling over once, but he lost consciousness right after. The picture I saw on the paper showed the roof of the car actually caved in and the rear end smashed. It was resting on a precipice just inches from falling another ten feet into the creek bed. A passing motorist happened to catch sight of his lights from the highway and call for help. Once they arrived, he was rushed to the hospital and remained there for a few days. His most serious injuries were a punctured lung, along with a few other broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a very bad concussion. The sprains and bruising weren't exactly minor themselves, but he did go on to make a full recovery.

I'm sure most of you reading this right now are wondering one thing. Why would someone try to kill a complete stranger? And here's where we get into a hazy area. According to my friend, he did not do anything to cause such an extreme behavior, nor did he recognize the jeep or its driver. Since I never heard of a person ever being accused, let alone charged for the crime, I have to use some deductive reasoning here. Is it possible a crazy man saw an opportunity to drive a complete stranger off the road? Yes, crazier stuff happens

every day all around the world. I even know a pair of guys from the same town who often took advantage of weaker people when they saw a chance. Not only did one of them sucker punch a friend of mine, I actually had a run-in with both young men. Fortunately, I got away unscathed. If it was one of those guys, I can assure you they messed with the wrong guy one night and got there just desserts. That said, I don't think it was them. I am of the belief that my friend did or said the wrong thing to someone and they went all Frank Castle on him, if you get my drift. I was in a car with a guy who flipped off another driver and very nearly ended up being

shot. Like I said, there's a lot of crazy folks out there. Maybe my friend did something similar and was punished for it. He wasn't the kindest of guys and could be arrogant. We've been estranged for a long time and for all I know he could be dead now. A victim of his own cockiness I suppose. Automobiles are very dangerous machines. They kill more people every year than really anything, and we just have to accept this because they're

so important to our daily lives. Knowing that there are people out there willing to destroy their own property and possibly even harm themselves to get revenge, it truly does give me chills. I shouldn't have to tell anyone how stressful and uncertain the last two or three years have been. Countless people around the world have lost homes, businesses, and loved ones through no fault of their own. As the pandemic waned and the shutdowns lifted, I counted myself lucky not to be one of them. Perhaps it was my hubris, but the universe found a way to change that. Because of an older model car and a drunk driver, I was robbed of the most important person in my life. I wasn't sure if I'd make it, but with a lot of help from friends and others familiar with my loss, I've been able to see a future for myself without him. I'm sharing my experience in

order to show others there is hope after such a great and immense loss. Alan and I married late. He had been reluctant to settle down after hearing horror stories of his friend's contentious divorces. I'd been married myself once before. This didn't instill much faith in his mind. I was over 30 and eager to start a family. Alan was well aware of this, but I put no pressure on him. He came to the decision that he didn't want to lose me and proposed. I was more than happy to accept. To be honest, I was afraid he'd call me on my plan and let me go. Fortunately, we both got what we wanted and we were eager to move ahead together. We tried for a few years to get pregnant,

but it never happened. My doctor suggested fertility treatments. Due to the cost, we chose to forego buying a new car, much needed by the way, to pay for the procedures. We'd only managed to get one round before the pandemic struck. Our dreams seemed to grow less and less likely by the month, but we didn't quite lose hope just yet. As the summer of 2021 arrived, things in our area began to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Our favorite restaurant had just opened to sit down customers again. Alan and I packed into my 20-year-old VW Golf and headed downtown. Dinner was just as fantastic as I remembered it. I was on cloud nine afterwards, and this was the moment at which life chose to present me with my greatest test.

On our way back home, my VW began to have engine trouble. This wasn't anything new. My priorities were never on auto maintenance. In truth, the poor car had made it a lot longer than it should have. The lurching and jerking continued to get worse until the engine died completely. We coasted a few feet onto the outer shoulder and stopped. Alan called AAA and we waited inside the car for a tow truck to arrive. We'd been sitting there around 10 minutes when a highway patrolman showed up. Alan got out

to talk to him. From what I could hear, he was doing a routine check to see if we needed any assistance. Our state is one of those who offer such services. Alan informed him of the situation and they were making small talk when everything went sideways. Out of nowhere, I heard a massive crash. Instantly after, I saw the patrol car hurling toward the back of my Golf. My last memory was of the officer attempting to push Alan away from the direction of his oncoming vehicle. It was too late, unfortunately. Both men were killed on impact. I awoke some seconds later. Initially, I was unaware of my surroundings, but the smell of smoke pulled me back to reality. I could see through the windshield I had been pushed another

twenty yards or so down the shoulder. There was no overpowering pain. I cautiously stepped from the mangled remains of my car. The floodlights from the patrol car were still functioning and I could see my way around. The patrol car had come to a rest a few yards away in a field that ran alongside the shoulder. The car that had caused the crash sat a few feet behind it. Both Alan and the officer's bodies were scattered nearby. It was clear I could do nothing to help either of them. That's as far as I'm prepared to go on that front. I was taking in the horror of the scene when I heard a slurred shout from the rear car. I looked over and saw a middle-aged man stumbling out from the driver's side and blood

was pouring down his face. My instinct to help kicked in and I ran over to him to help but as I got closer, the smell of booze overpowered me. I flipped out. I attacked the guy. He had no idea what was going on. A couple of good Samaritans had arrived and had to pull me off of the drunk idiot. I broke down right there and then. A female paramedic quietly walked me over to the ambulance and helped me onto the gurney. While the paramedics did their work, I cried unlike I'd ever cried before. The doctors were amazed at my condition. Other than a lot of the bruising to my chest and knees, I was unharmed. I spent the rest of the night in the ER and was let go later that next afternoon. The true power of losing

Alan had not yet hit me completely. That would come after the funeral. And speaking of the funeral, I was happy to see how many people turned out to say goodbye. Many of them I had never met. Despite some reservations I also attended the officer's service. His family greeted me warmly and we all had a good cry together. And after all the chaos surrounding the wreck subsided, I was left alone to think. And this was when the weight of everything truly fell upon me. The man in which I tried so hard to create a family with was gone forever. I wouldn't leave the house for almost four months. Without the help of some awesome people, I would have probably starved to death.

Only when a close friend convinced me to attend a grief counseling group was I able to regain some sense of sanity. Although it hasn't been that long, the group has helped me a lot. I'll be the first to admit I have a lot of progress to make. However, if you would have suggested nine months ago that I could carry on without Alan, I would have probably spit in your face. It may be a trite cliche, but it really does appear that time can heal all wounds. The little part they neglect to add is that every severe wound leaves a scar behind. That scar may be an ill reminder of that past trauma to some. I prefer to see it as a memorial, a monument to a man who I will always love. This makes me smile.

And a smile is never a bad thing. To be continued... six months since this happened, but I'm still having a hard time getting past it. I don't have the means to get counseling. I thought maybe posting an account here could help somehow. Maybe there's someone reading this that could push me in a helpful direction, or it could just make everything else worse. I'm willing to try anything at this point. I'm not sleeping well and it's beginning to affect my life in other ways, so please listen to what I have to say and feel free to comment with your thoughts. Or even better, a low-cost way I can get the help I need from real professionals. I was on my way to the post office to ship a package when my car died. This wasn't a new thing, it is an older car.

Its gauges began doing weird stuff just after the warranty expired. I'm a student living with my parents. Neither me nor them have the money to fix such a seemingly unimportant problem. As long as the speedometer keeps working, I'm happy. Unfortunately, the gas gauge is one of the problem sections. It seems to only work when it wants to. Under one fourth of a tank, you can't trust it. And I found out this the hard way by running out of gas on a very busy part of the road. Ever since, I try to keep the tank above one fourth, but I keep a small gas container in my trunk just in case. The day of my post office trip, my tank must have run empty. This time I was on a quiet part of a road.

I checked my phone and found a gas station less than a mile away. It was a nice cool day and the wind was light. I figured I couldn't pick a better day to run out of gas I suppose. I was a few minutes into my walk when I heard a car approaching me from behind. I moved over into the grass to make sure I wouldn't be hit. As the car passed, it began to slow down. I looked over and saw a young man leaning out of the passenger window. He was smiling and looked like a kind person. I wasn't sure what he wanted. I hadn't tried to hitchhike and I did nothing that I would think gave him that impression.

I nodded and said hello in a nice voice. I didn't know what else to do. I returned my gaze forward and continued my walk. I'd walk about five steps when the passenger called out to me. Need a ride? A chill ran down my back. You see, he'd asked this, but ended his question with a derogatory slur. All I'll say is that it starts with a P.

This guy appeared to be looking for a fight. I'm not a tough guy and have gone out of my way to treat people with respect. I pretended like I hadn't heard him and kept walking. He yelled it out again. Now he sounded angry. I started walking faster. The driver sped up to catch me. The passenger called out to me again. Hey, didn't you hear me?

He ended his question with the same slur. I had begun to shake now. I was terrified they were going to attack me. Somehow I summoned up the courage to tell him that I didn't want any trouble, and he just laughed and said, I ought to kick you in the teeth for talking back to me. And this was just what I'd feared. I panicked and started running. I was trapped alongside the road with nowhere else to go. A fence blocked me from running into the open field that merged onto the shoulder. I was too scared to look back. I could hear the car driving just behind me. My only hope was the intersection about 50 yards ahead. I could see a car coming from the opposite direction and

hope this would deter them from assaulting me. I pushed harder. I was about 30 yards from the stop sign when I heard the car speed up. Just as they passed me, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head. And that's when everything went black. When I woke up, I saw a middle-aged woman and a man kneeling over me. My head hurt and my ears were ringing. I tried to sit up but the woman stopped me. She said an ambulance was on its way. Then she said something that seemed so odd at the time. Don't worry. We saw those boys throw that beer bottle.

Donnie got their plate. They're not going to get away with this. Donnie turned out to be the male leaning over me. I would later discover that the passenger of the car had thrown a quart-sized bottle of beer at me. The bottle nailed me in the back of the head and knocked me out cold. The ambulance took me away and I stayed overnight at the hospital for observation. My parents brought me home and I've been here ever since. Since then, I've been terrified to leave the house.

I've only left once when I had to identify the passenger. I was jumpy and anxious the entire day. When I saw a car that was the same model as the one my attackers were driving, I had an outright panic attack. They were arrested but got out on bail the same day. I'm afraid they're going to seek revenge. Our house is the only place I feel safe now. I still have nightmares and the loss of sleep has affected me psychologically. Just reliving all of this has me in tears right now. I'm at my wits end and will take any help I can get. Please, can you suggest anything to make this waking nightmare end? The other day, I came across some old photos from 2012. Among them were several shots of my wrecked Camry.

Since we're coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the event, I thought that I'd share the scary incident that led to its demise. Although I may be able to joke about it now, it changed the way I think about my safety. More or less, it went like this. In 2012, I was 19 and still living with my parents. I had dreams of getting my own place as far away from my hometown as I could get. I would need a lot of money to do this. The majority of my time was spent working, often double shifts, at a large chain restaurant you likely know the name of. I was a line cook but would also wash dishes to get extra time on the clock.

In spite of my rocky relationship with my parents, they did allow me to use an old Toyota that they had purchased for my sister. She was now married and left the car with them when she moved out. It was agreed that I could drive the car as much as I wanted as long as I paid for the gas and the regular maintenance, both of which I did. Even with well over 100,000 miles, that little Camry remained reliable all the way up until I totaled it. In addition to all the hours I was working, I was also serving as a de facto taxi service for a friend. He wanted to move away himself and worked almost as many hours as I did. In fact, he would go on to be one of my roommates a few years later.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't have a car. Most days he was able to get dropped off by his stepmother, but no one was willing to go out after 10 o'clock at night to pick him up. I guess I felt sorry for him. He was a hard worker and we'd been friends a long time. He and I made an agreement where he'd pay me $20 a month on top of a full tank of gas a week for the privilege. Considering getting him home and myself back added another 10 or more miles to my trip every day, and it was more than a fair deal. You also have to remember that this was at a time where gas was almost as expensive as it is now. Something that I wasn't really mindful of then was how all the hours of work were affecting me at the end of the day.

I was running myself into the ground without even realizing it. Driving 15 extra miles a night after working 12 plus hours a day was a recipe for disaster. Whether it was someone looking out for me or I just got lucky, I was fortunate to only receive a few cuts and bruises from my negligence. The date on the photos is September 17th, 2012. I know for sure the wreck had been on a Saturday night. Therefore, my best guess is that the accident took place on the 15th. The date may be a little hazy, but the rest of that evening is still crystal clear.

I'd worked a total of 14 hours that day and fully intended to meet some friends for coffee after stopping home for a quick shower. When I left the restaurant, I didn't feel any more tired than usual. From the restaurant, I drove to the next town over and picked up my friend. I managed to drop him off and was about halfway home when the need to sleep really hit me. Back then I was a smoker. I rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette. I hoped the fresh air and nicotine would wake me up a little but nothing really changed. I was about a quarter of a mile from my exit. I could see the lights of my neighborhood in the distance and this is the last thing I remember. My next memory was oddly surreal. I found myself hanging upside down with people shouting at me.

To say I was confused would be a gross understatement. I was blinded by the beam of a flashlight and the man asked me if I was okay. I didn't hurt anywhere so I said yes. Before thinking it through, I undid my belt and dropped on my head. This whole time, voices from outside the car are yelling out to me to be careful and asking if I'd been drinking. I was able to crawl out of the window and get to my feet. I began to feel a bit dizzy and a man suggested I come over to his truck and sit on his tailgate. Once I did, I felt a lot better. While we sat and waited for the

emergency responders, I looked over at my poor Camry in disbelief. I remained unsure of how I rolled over. The passenger side was squashed, yet the roof was relatively intact. Soon, the cops and EMS arrived. While the paramedics looked me over, the cops gave me a rudimentary sobriety test. At the hospital, a sample of blood was also taken to confirm. I was there about 45 minutes when my parents arrived. I guess someone had notified them. My mom was freaking out like you'd expect, but my dad assumed that I'd been drinking and began grilling me about it. The hospital released me in the early hours of that morning and even after all these years my dad still hasn't apologized. After a month I was

cleared of any guilt. Luckily nobody else had been involved. The insurance company wrote the car off as a complete loss and our rates went up considerably for a while. This gave my dad another reason to be angry of course and I got a few days off to find another car and use some of my savings to buy a 10 year old Focus from some run down note lot. I jumped right back into things in spite of some residual soreness. My arrangement with my friend came to an end and I became much more focused on getting enough sleep

rather than messing around with my friends after work. I'm happy to say that I don't have any long term trauma from the wreck. I was nervous about driving for a few weeks but that faded pretty quickly. Now I make sure to take plenty of breaks on long trips or pass the driving duties on to my wife when needed. Once or twice I've gone as far as renting a motel room when I began to nod off. It may sound funny, but lack of sleep takes as many or more lives on our highways as drunk driving. Please people, take it seriously. I'm a 24 year old woman currently living and working in the west of the United States. A few weeks ago, I had a strange and scary encounter. Two of my friends happened to have their birthdays on the same week,

and I was busy trying to find them the perfect gifts. I was returning home from a 30-mile round trip. About 20 miles from home, my front left tire went flat. I pulled off onto a wide section of the shoulder and got out to look. The tire had a huge hole in it. But fortunately I do have AAA just for times like this. I searched through my phone for the number. I dialed it and just then an old work truck pulled up in front of me and parked.

I assumed it was a good Samaritan looking to help. I got out to let him know that I was okay and he claimed to be with AAA and pointed to the AAA sticker on my window. He was driving by and figured that he could save me a call. I questioned him about his truck. He claimed to actually be a subcontractor for the company. The lady from AAA was on the phone while this was happening. I was suspicious, so I lied and said that I was talking to my husband. I'd be off the phone in a minute, and then we'd be free to talk.

He walked back over to his truck, and now that he was out of earshot, I asked the operator if they use contractors. They do, but all of them drive tow trucks in case a tow is needed. This was not what I wanted to hear, and a sick feeling filled my stomach. I quickly explained the situation and she promised to send an officer along with roadside assistance. I hung up before I realized what I was doing. I was scared, but knowing a cop was on his way gave me some sense of confidence. I put the phone in my pocket and waved the man over. He seemed like he was beginning to get nervous.

By my estimation, it would take at least 15 minutes for the cops to arrive. I figured that I'd need to keep him busy. I began asking a bunch of stupid questions. Very few made any sense or pertained to the subject. He looked annoyed but answered every one. Suddenly, my phone rang, and it was AAA. I answered and the operator asked if I was okay. I told her that I was and apologized for hanging up on her. The man must have smelled a rat and he began looking around. I looked at him, apologized and mouthed the words that it was my husband. I told him that it would just be a minute. I only had one or two questions and then he could get to

changing the tire. The operator assured me that the officer was on his way and he shouldn't be much longer and she was right. Less than a minute later, a police car pulled up behind his truck. The man said that he had to go and quickly walked away. But thankfully the officer caught up with him before he could escape. I thanked the operator and hung up, the proper way this time. I got in my car and watched as the cop spoke to the man. Soon, another cop car arrived

and joined him. Just a minute or two passed and the real AAA assistant showed up. He got to work quickly and had the tire changed in a few minutes. As he was wrapping up his work, the cop put cuffs on the guy and took him away. I was relieved. I thanked the mechanic and went on my way. I arrived home soon after and have been wondering what became of that fake service man ever since. And to date, I haven't received any calls from police or AAA, and that's probably a good sign. I'd rather not know if the guy was some serial killer or anything like that, and I've since removed the AAA sticker from my car. It was one of the big things that drew the man to me. Having a beacon for nutcases on my car didn't seem like a wise idea.

I'd suggest any other single women out there remove anything like that from their cars, no matter how little it may seem. From what I've read, they use things like stickers to create a superficial connection with their intended victims and draw them into their web. Even if you're not single, it couldn't hurt. Our men can't be with us 24 hours a day. I just turned 20 the year the towers went down. Society was in the process of a massive shift, but none of this made any difference to me. I was just some unskilled college dropout training to be a carpenter's apprentice, and life wasn't any different than I imagined it for most guys of that age.

My parents disowned me when I dropped out, and I was fortunate to find a cheap garage apartment near my job. The place smelled like dog, but it beat homelessness. At that time, I was getting around in a 1991 Honda my parents had given me on my 18th birthday, and it was well past its best years and spent a lot of time broken down, as you can imagine. I have a very strange and scary experience on one of those days that I broke down. It was the height of summer and I was driving home from work. A train stopped traffic for about 10 minutes.

Sitting and waiting caused my engine to overheat and I was forced to turn on the heater even though it was well over 100 degrees. A few minutes later, the train ended and the gate lifted. Traffic began again, but the overheat light stayed on, and I knew that I was screwed. This had never happened before, the heat gauge kept increasing, and the smell of burning made me pull over. I had passed a small service station a few miles back. I hoped someone there could help me out or at least keep the car going until I got home. As if it mattered, I rolled up the windows. You didn't think I had AC, did you? Locked the doors and began the long walk to the shop. The walk was long and far from a great experience, but I was young and used to

the heat. Once or twice I took a short break under a tree. Even so, I managed to arrive at the station within about 45 minutes. I was struck at how quiet things were. There were no people at the pumps or sounds coming from the garage. I considered the possibility it was closed but the open sign was lit up. As I reached the door I noticed it was slightly ajar. I couldn't see inside because of all the signs and product stickers covering the glass. When I entered the door chime went off. No one was behind the register but I could hear shuffling sounds coming from around the corner. I innocently walked forward and was about to say something when I caught sight of two men struggling for a pistol on the floor. I had an immediate urge to help, but I had no idea who the good guy was in this scenario.

The man on the bottom was showing signs of flagging. The desperation and fear in his face still haunts me to this day. I could see he was only a few seconds from losing control. When he let a pitiful whine slip out, I threw all caution to the wind and jumped on top of his assailant. I put the guy in a chokehold. This drew his focus away from the struggle for the gun and allowed the other guy to pry it from his hand. This is when I locked the choke in and waited. The guy grabbed at me but was already slipping into unconsciousness. I held on another few seconds until I felt his body go limp. Only when I was sure he wasn't faking did I let go. I wasn't trying to kill the guy, I just wanted to be

sure that he was out. I gingerly lowered his body to the floor and looked over to the other man, and I was relieved to see the logo of the store on the breast of his shirt. On the opposite side was his name, and I leaned up and offered my hand. Nice to meet you, Paul. Name's Mike. You okay? He was still catching his breath, but managed to push out a rough, yes. I knew the guy would be awake any second and suggested that we find some way to tie him up until the cops arrived. He handed me the gun and asked me to watch the guy while he got some zip ties from the garage. He disappeared through a door and reappeared a few seconds later. The hold up guy was waking up but he was still very confused. I lifted him so Paul could attach the ties. The hold up guy began to fight with me.

Paul began punching him. It seemed a bit unfair but I wasn't about to tell some guy who had been mere seconds from death to be nice to his attacker. One of the punches rung the guy's bell and he stopped fighting. We got the ties on and I watched the guy until Paul could get the cops there. The cops were super cool about the situation, surprisingly. It turned out, the robber had knocked over several other stores in town and even shot one poor guy. When Paul heard this, he went pale and the paramedics had to treat him for shock. If I had to guess, I'd wager the stick-up guy is dead or in prison by now There's no future in that line of work, for certain

And when it was all over, I got a tow truck to bring my car to another shop The driver happened to be on the way to another call and dropped me off at home A few days later, I stopped off to check on Paul And he gave me the details on how everything started The craziest part was that he wasn't even the regular cashier. He was just a guy who worked on cars. The regular employee had a family emergency and he had to fill in until another cashier arrived. He was doing an oil change when he heard the door chime. The gunman approached him just steps from the adjoining door.

He noticed the guy had a ski mask on and, in his mind, this meant that he was going to die. His survival instinct kicked in and he grabbed for the weapon. Just as I thought, he admitted that he was on the verge of losing control when I arrived. And he thanked me profusely, then gave me a big hug. I'll not deny that we both cried a little in that moment. Over the years since, he and I have kept in touch through Christmas cards and birth announcements, and I'm happy to say that he's still alive and kicking at 67 years, and I wish growing up, me and my family lived on a council estate that was within spitting distance of some abandoned docklands.

My hometown used to be famous for its shipbuilding, but we suffered a massive economic decline in the 70s and 80s, and this meant that miles upon miles of industrial sprawl was left almost completely deserted. We went from a place people would move to in order to start a life for themselves to a place people would move away from just to survive. The only reason my family stayed is because my dad was a teacher and my mom was a nurse, two of the few professions that weren't affected when the shipyards went belly up. But if your living relied on the shipyards, you were pretty much buggered. And bit by bit, the town started to die. And although it's never

actually straight up kicked the bucket, the decline had a horrible effect on the locals. Like I said, the docklands and warehouses near our house ended up completely abandoned, and as I grew into my teenage years, me and my friends started sneaking into the area to nose around the compounds. It wasn't like there was much else to do to keep us entertained, and although we probably should have spent our spare time playing football or hanging around the youth center, our inclination for mischief meant trespassing among the empty warehouses was much more exciting. We'd find a way in, be it through ripping up a section of plastic-coated chain-link fence,

or by digging under a section of the solid iron gating, then just kind of mess around until it was time to go home. During our early teens that consisted of playing manhunt or having WWF style wrestling matches on the patches of overgrown grass. But then as we got older, the Woody, as we called it, don't ask me why the name just stuck, became a place we could experiment with tobacco and alcohol away from the prying eyes of our parents. And for years, we thought the Woody was a place we had all to ourselves, and that really meant something to us. But it turns out, we were very, very wrong. There's just one more piece of backstory I've got to get out of the way before I really get

into the story, and that concerns the security guard who patrolled the warehouses. I suppose someone still owned the land, and either they didn't want it to get into too bad a shape of disrepair, or they had some legal obligation to make sure no silly kids like us ended up getting hurt while trespassing. Either way, we had to keep on the lookout for security guards at all times. That only enhanced the excitement for us though, being somewhere we weren't supposed to be and whenever he happened to show up, which was a rare event, we always just shouted bail then legged it back towards one of our entry and exit points. We all knew that

the worst that would happen is that he tells us to just clear off or something. We'd been caught red-handed before, so there came a point when the only reason we'd run was just for the thrill of it. Nine times out of ten, the security guy either didn't patrol the area we were in, I suppose he wasn't the most diligent security bloke around, or we'd just hide after spotting him when he didn't feel like running. And that's why we were all so confused one day when a mate of ours called Chris started running off after going for a slash with a look on his face like he'd seen a ghost. We all do our usual thing, joining him and running off towards one of our usual escape points. But instead of taking a breather and contemplating going back when we were at a safe distance, Chris basically threw himself under the fence in a way that actually really frightened us. One by one, we scramble under the

fence and I remember hearing another lad asking Chris exactly what he'd seen, because no one ever acted like that if they'd spotted the security guard. He just kept saying, I saw someone, I saw someone, but then didn't know exactly who it was other than that it definitely wasn't the security guard. Everyone kept asking him to at least describe the person he'd seen, you know, height, weight, hair color, anything that might give us an idea of who it was. But the most Chris could give us is that the person looked like they'd been wearing a wooden mask. And that's when I realized that he was playing an elaborate prank on us. I mean, the person he'd seen in the woody had been wearing a wooden mask? No chance. That just stank of on thethe-spot thinking to me.

The kind of think a person would make up on the fly via word association or something, you know. Okay, maybe I'm describing that wrong, but I'm sure you get what I mean. I just started to smell nonsense all of a sudden, and I basically decided there and then that as much as his acting had been BAFTA worthy, it was just that, an act. After that he just wouldn't come back to the woody with us and insisted we find somewhere else to hang out. This almost caused a bit of a rift in our friend group and for a while we just didn't see Chris outside of school. But then eventually I think we just missed all hanging out together so we compromised and found another place to hang out there that wasn't among the abandoned warehouses.

This also might have had something to do with the fact that Chris's dad was a raging alcoholic and that Chris would basically steal cans of beer with his dad assuming he drank them all by himself. But at the same time we did genuinely miss hanging out with him. So cut to a few months later when spring had turned into the summer holidays. The wood face man had turned into a bit of old wives tales among us by that point and a few of the other kids in our year group had heard Chris talk about him as well, but the whole time I just took mild amusement in the idea that it was all just some big mess about. Me and Chris are down by the stream that ran through some farmer's fields about a half an hour away from our estate. I mention something about missing hanging out about the woody and he flat out says I effing don't.

I laugh and then tell him to wind his neck in. That he doesn't need to pretend that the wood-faced man is real around me, that I know he was only taking the mick to scare people and that it was nothing but a prank. I actually expected him to crack a smile and say, alright, he got me, before admitting that he just couldn't be bothered risking his neck in such a dangerously crumbling place. But instead, he actually starts getting really annoyed with me and says things like, you're calling me a liar, are you? I try to explain that I wasn't strictly calling him a liar, more like it was just a very effective prank he'd used to get us all to hang out somewhere different. And this only makes him more angry with me, and eventually he just gets up and storms off.

Obviously, I followed him, telling him I didn't mean anything by it but he didn't talk to me for like the whole way back into town. I learned pretty quickly to just not bring it up anymore, not so much because I actually believed him but because I knew it only caused a fight and then that's about the last time we talked about it for almost two years. So two years after the whole wood face man thing, there's this horrible incident involving a really nasty assault that occurred on what we called the Woody, or what all the adults always called the abandoned industrial estate. Somehow, the police got wind of the fact that we used to hang around there a fair bit and one day I come home from a bike ride to find these two policemen sitting in the kitchen with my mom over a cup of

tea. After assuring me that I wouldn't be in any trouble, that they weren't interested in doing me for trespassing or anything, their questions all involved things that I might have seen while exploring the woody. They didn't ask about a suspect right away, but I knew it'd get there eventually. I just had no idea what was coming. I had to tell them no, time after time, when they asked if I'd ever seen anyone personally. But then, thoughts of Chris's wood-faced man started popping into my head. Yet the moment I even mentioned a friend of mine having seen someone frightening there once, they'd asked me if he'd ever described what the person had looked like. I told them that he had, only a little bit, but he had and then one of the officers asked me something that actually

stunned me into silence. He looks at his partner, then turns to me and says, did your friend ever mention anything about a wooden mask? I was so stunned that I just couldn't even respond for a few seconds. All I did was just stare at the policeman until he asked me if I was okay and repeated the question. All I did was nod, and when I finally found the words, I told them that they were probably better off speaking to Chris about the wood face man, as for years by that point I just thought that he was making it up. As far as I know the real life person behind the wooden mask was never caught, but his victims were so traumatized by the attack, which apparently lasted hours,

that she and her family ended up as yet another family moving out of our dying town. The police searched the woody intensively and apparently found evidence that someone had been living in one of the abandoned warehouses that we hadn't explored. How the security guard never found the guy I'm not sure, but this is all beside the point to be honest because the thing that really affected me was having to apologize to Chris about not believing his story. It wasn't a prank. He wasn't making it up. He really had seen someone wearing a wooden mask. And if he hadn't warned us about it, if he hadn't insisted that we hang around somewhere else instead, that might have been one of us getting beat half to

death instead. Way back before Ford bought the place up and began renovations, I used to urbex at the Michigan Central Station in Detroit. For those that don't know, the old Central Station is a huge 18-story building, the gigantic pitch-black basement. Back then, there were a few ways to get in, but by far the best entrance, which was least likely to get you caught by security, was a tunnel dug underneath the steel wall of the train garage next to the station. It wasn't a particularly long tunnel, it just went deep enough into the ground to clear the wall,

but then it came right back up again into the compound on the other side and gave you a straight shot in and out. Like I already mentioned, the garage itself was pitch black with numerous pits so mechanics could work under the trains. Picture the underground areas at a mechanic's shop. These pits tended to be full of trash, nasty stuff too, broken glass, scrap metal, and other items that could easily impale and kill you by falling in. That meant that anyone who went inside the garage was well advised to bring a flashlight, or they'd risk falling into what were basically death traps. But at the same time, it was equally essential you used your flashlight sparingly, as any light shining out from within the building could easily be seen by

people walking past the building outside, which at the times we visited the place would most likely be the cops or security. This particular trip to the station would be my last for a number of different reasons, and the guys I had with me had much less experience doing urban exploration, particularly at this building. My buddy C had been once before, but hadn't been through the entire building, and this other guy we found online had never visited at all. Before we went inside, I explained the thing about being careful with flashlights, went over the hazards we'd be facing, and I especially made it clear that the security guards patrolling around the building would be pretty thick from around midnight to five or six in the morning.

Then, after the little mission brief, we headed there in the evening and by the time we got there, it was almost night. Getting inside was basically the easiest part and I think how easy it was gave us all the sense of overconfidence. We milled around C's car until we saw one security guy drive by the tunnel entrance. The second he turned the corner, we went one by one into the tunnel and back up again into the garage. After that, we began to properly explore at our leisure. A big motivation for wanting to get inside was that the station was known for being the go-to place for some absolutely incredible graffiti artists. I'm talking cream of the crop of the Detroit street art scene. I think one of the main attractions for me personally would probably be the 13th floor,

as the graffiti was all based around all these dark subjects like the devil, the underworld, all super creepy stuff like that. We took our time drinking all that stuff in, taking pictures and stuff, and then headed up even higher to what I considered the motherlode of Detroit Urbex, the station's roof. We made it all the way up there without so much as a hitch, then gazed out in awe at the 360 degree view of Detroit. Up there, he felt like a king, like he owned everything the light didn't touch, to kind of steal a line from the Lion King. Again, pictures were taken, but instead of the near constant chattering that went on while we were exploring the 13th floor,

all three of us stayed completely silent, a testament of just how incredible the view was. Then, when we were done, we started making our way back down. But this is where things started to go horribly wrong. Robbie, completely contradicting all my warnings, kept turning his flashlight on to look at different patches of graffiti. I had to continuously tell him to turn it off, but it was like he turned into a child. He just wouldn't listen to a word I was saying. Then C kept going off on his own to look at stuff even though staying in a tight group is what kept you relatively safe. Then, as we kept moving down level after level,

CC is one of the open elevator shafts around the 8th or 9th floor and decides that he wants to throw a glass bottle down it just for fun. I pled to him that it's not worth getting that close to it, that it's too dangerous, but once again, he didn't listen. It was like all the overconfidence had completely ruined any kind of professionalism or discipline we had, and it almost't listen. It was like all the overconfidence had completely ruined any kind of professionalism or discipline we had, and it almost killed us. He said he'd be careful, dismissing me like I was an overprotective parent or something, and then he starts walking over towards the open elevator shaft. He throws the bottle in, then leans into the shaft to watch the bottle fall with his flashlight. But then, to my absolute horror, he slips on a broken piece of flooring and falls into the elevator shaft, ten stories up. I ran over to the shaft in a panic, thinking I was about to see one of my

best friend's lifeless bodies all the way down at the bottom. But by some kind of miracle, he'd managed to grab some of the elevator cables as he fell and was only maybe two or three floors below us, hanging on for dear life. When he caught his breath, he let out the loudest scream for help I'd ever heard. I told him to hang on, to not let go no matter how much it hurts his hands. It was that, or die. Me and Robbie then sprinted as fast as we could to the staircase, and I nearly killed myself in the process as I leapt down the staircase trying to get to the floor I believed he was closest to. When he got to the elevator shaft and looked in, I saw that he was right above me

between floors, still begging for help. I told him he was too far up and that if he wanted to live, he would have to come down a bit closer for me to be able to grab him and hang on. He was in tears, crying, telling me I can't do it man, I can't do it, and I could see the blood running down his arms from where he'd sliced both his palms from grabbing those cables. I told him he had to, that he had no choice. That again, it was do as I said or it would be all over for him. I gave him words of encouragement and told him to fight the pain

but that he had to slide down just a little more, just a little more, and that if he did what I knew he could do, that everything would be okay. I swear to God I've never seen anything so brave. He just kind of sucked it up and slowly worked his way down, but that didn't mean that he wasn't howling in pain the whole time. He screamed, but he did it. He worked his way down until we got close enough that me and Robbie were able to reach out and pull him in. His hands were a bloody mess. Two thick gashes across both of them.

So I took off my undershirt and wrapped up both of his hands. Not because he was going to bleed to death or anything. I just wanted to feel like I was doing something, and also to calm him down as best I could because getting caught would still mean getting busted for trespassing, and the noises that he was making would definitely get us caught. As relieved as I was that he was alive, I still wanted to beat him for his stupidity. So after chewing him out for being so stupid and choking up with tears as I did it, I told them that it was probably time that we get out of there. I thought it was all over, that the worst was done, but that wasn't entirely true.

As we made our way down the remaining floors and into the main lobby, I see Robbie stop in his tracks, quickly back up and turn around. Even in the dark, I watched him turn pale. I asked him what was wrong, and all he said, cops. Four Detroit police officers just entered the lobby from the main entrance. Someone must have heard all the screaming and called 911. I looked at both Robbie and C and with a voice that was shaking with fear, told them to follow and fast. I took them through a maze of hallways, each of us running on nothing but adrenaline. The only thing was, I hadn't actually explored the places we were running down. So after a minute or two, we hit a dead end with nowhere to go except a pitch black room next

to us, which meant we had no other option but to slip into the room and stand as still as we could against the walls. I didn't have to tell them to stay quiet, as much as they'd been acting dumb before, they knew better than to make any sound by that point. And I'll never forget the sound of the cops' radios going off and footsteps getting closer, but then I remember hearing another sound too. The drip, drip, drip of blood running off the pieces of my undershirt that was wrapped around C's hands. A few minutes went by, that dripping sound carrying on the whole time, before one of the cops started walking down our dead end hallway, his flashlight beam bouncing in and out of the

room we all stood in, but somehow never actually touching any of us. I kept thinking the sound of dripping blood would give us away, but looking back on it now, I think he just figured it was a dripping pipe or something. We all held our breath as he was a few feet away from the room and then heard him say on his radio, always clear, I wanted to let out the biggest sigh of relief of my life, but I couldn't. None of us could. We all just stayed silent as he turned around and proceeded back down the hall. We stood there, still and silent for what seemed at least a half an hour, but it couldn't have been any longer than about a minute or two. I could hear my heartbeat inside my ear canals like a drum,

just this booming until it finally started to slow down and lessen in intensity. We waited until it was dead silent, then crept our way back to the train garage as slowly and quietly as we could and made our way out. The car ride home was dead quiet and I never went back to the train station again. We were just focused on getting to the hospital. That was eight years ago now, and I think about that whole thing at least once a week, how our lives and our freedoms were on the line, but some kind of miracle kept anything serious from happening to us. I guess I should be thankful that all I have are the memories because,

per se, he has the scars to remind him too. So, we're back all the way back to 2012 for this one. To when I first moved out of my parents' house and into a place of my own. I had just turned 20. I was financially independent and completely free of my overbearing mom and dad for the first time. Needless to say, it was one of the most exciting times of my life. And no, don't get me wrong, they always did their best for me and I know that everything they did was out of love and a desire to keep me away from negative influences. I'm very grateful in a lot of ways, but it also meant that I didn't have quite the same

childhood experiences as other kids did. I was never allowed to just hang out with friends whenever I wanted. I wasn't allowed to play football in high school even though I know I would have made the cut and most relevant to this story, I was never allowed any household pets. That last thing was more because they just didn't want any animals quote unquote messing up the house as they put it and not so much about keeping me safe. But then when I checked in with my landlord and found out that I was free to keep a pet, so long as I didn't mind losing my deposit if they messed the place up, I realized that one of the first things I wanted to do as a newly free man was to become

a dog owner. So I went down to the SPCA here in New Orleans, as I was told that it was the most ethical and probably the cheapest way to get your hands on a furry friend. And I know this might sound like a cliche, but when I saw a lady for the first time, it was love at first sight. It was my girlfriend that had the idea to name my new best friend Tramp, as in Lady and the Tramp. But when I saw Lady, who was an adolescent Doberman at the time, I knew it had to be her. Obviously I couldn't exactly go naming a girl dog Tramp, so I went with Lady instead. It was just too perfect a backup name not to use. I took great care of Lady. She was never just some manifestation of my need for freedom and new experiences that ended up getting neglected in any way, but I will admit to being kind of irresponsible with her.

Like I mentioned earlier, I just wasn't allowed to have any real freedoms before I moved out, and honestly, that was a huge motivation to move out too. So when I finally did, I turned almost every one of Lady's walks into a miniature adventure and tried to make up for all the years that I wasn't able to go where I wanted and when I wanted. So one summer's night back in 2012, I took Lady with me to explore quite an upmarket neighborhood that hadn't quite recovered from Katrina at the time. It's a totally different place now, almost completely unrecognizable from the years following the hurricane, and I remember coming across this beautiful four-story house that I realized was completely abandoned. It had these big balconies, an enclosed private courtyard, and the place was spectacular, and I suddenly got this overwhelming urge to explore it.

Granted, I know that's trespassing and that it was definitely an irresponsible thing to do given that I had Lady with me, but it wasn't all broken glass and rusty nails, so I figured it wasn't hurting anyone if I just took a look around. The main gate wasn't locked, but it had all these signs up saying warning, do not enter, which I half paid attention to at first, until I took a look around and realized that they were probably only there just to keep people out. As I said, aside from some obvious water damage and a little structural damage at the rear of the house, the place looked almost untouched by Katrina, so in we went to take a look around.

After taking a look around the first floor and deciding that the place was definitely empty and safe enough to explore, I made my way up to the second and third floors. The lady wasn't on a leash, I hardly ever kept her on one, and I suppose that spoke to the fact that I didn't want to treat her like I was treated as a kid. I know that might seem kind of dumb. Heck, this whole story probably seems kind of dumb, but I was 20, so give me a break. The lady kept coming and going for me as she pleased, exploring the place herself before checking in on me every so often.

That's how we always did it, and I only really put her on the leash whenever strange dogs or cats were around, as I didn't want her running off after them or starting fights. Anyway, I get up to the second floor on my own, and I wandered into one of the back rooms. It was honestly one of the most beautiful rooms I'd ever seen. Opulent doesn't even really cover it, and I was amazed that the place was even abandoned at all. The only sign that anything was wrong was that the window was missing, totally missing, and there were signs that there had once been a balcony, but it was gone for whatever reason. I hate heights, so I didn't get too close to the edge, but I ended up looking down into the courtyard below,

and again, it was just magnificent. It was kind of overgrown, but that somehow just made it look even cooler. There were all these statues, a fountain, some marble looking benches that had these arches over them, and I decided that the angle I was at meant that it'd make for a great picture. So, I reach into my pocket, take my phone out, then right as I'm about to snap a photo, I hear something moving really fast, coming up behind me, as I'm about to snap a photo, I hear something moving really fast, coming up behind me, and I'm not even beginning to turn when I see Lady bolt past me towards the opening where the windows had once been.

I can barely even describe what I was feeling as I watched my beloved Doberman running towards this wide open hole with absolutely no signs of stopping. Then all of a sudden, right when she got to the edge, she just jumped, threw herself down onto the stone courtyard, and I had no idea why. I had already started running towards the stairs when I heard Lady yelp as she hit the ground outside, and when I finally got to her and went to pick her up, I saw that she was covered in blood. She wasn't yelping too loud, just whining, like she was completely in shock. I figured I'd have to pick her up and carry her out of there, maybe because she'd broken a bone and ripped through her skin and that's what was causing all the blood. But as soon as I went to pick her up, she just got up off the ground all

shaky and started to walk. I honestly figured it was just the adrenaline still pumping in her and walking was going to hurt her even more so even though she seemed like she wanted to walk it off, I still picked her up and basically ran all the way back to my apartment. I still remember the smell of the blood in the humid air, how it heated up from the friction in my body heat. I always heard that blood had a coppery smell to it, and that's the night that I found out that was true. When we got there, I put her in the backseat of my car, then drove over to the mattery small animal hospital to get her some treatment. And it was there that things started to get weird. So, like I said, there was definitely blood on her,

and I got it all over myself from carrying her. And because of that, she got triaged real fast at the vet's and we got seen to almost straight away. But then, as the vet is looking her over, trying to find the wounds, he couldn't find any. He's cleaning her fur off bit by bit, trying to find some deep cut or break or anything that might cause the bleeding but he couldn't find anything. Most he could find was some swelling from where she hit the concrete outside. The vet seemed pretty happy to report that there was nothing really wrong with Lady and that I should just keep her inside and resting for a few days while the swelling went down. He also suggested that what had happened was that she'd killed a rat or a possum or something,

then had gotten overexcited about it, bringing the whole kill to show it off to me, and had underestimated her stopping distance or something. Dogs can do some dumb things from time to time, I get that, but not Lady, she just really wasn't like that. Besides, I didn't see the rat or possum she'd killed anywhere and I feel like I really would have noticed if she had something next to her or in her mouth when she first appeared. So what happened for her to get all the blood on her? It's not something I thought about too much in the immediate aftermath as honestly, I was just so happy that she was okay that my thoughts didn't wander on to any of the real

questions. But then as time went on, I really started to wonder just what in God's name had happened that night. For example, I feel like I'd have heard her growling or barking or something if she came across a small animal that she wanted to kill, and that whatever she killed would have made some kind of noise after she attacked it. I once heard a rabbit getting attacked by a hunting dog on TV, or at least the dog grabbed it after the hunter had winged it or something, and my god, the noise it made was enough to wake the dead. So the idea that something

traumatic had happened to her, all completely silently, or at least so quiet that I didn't hear it, it just doesn't make any sense at all. I once told a friend this same story a few years back, and he told me something that haunts me every time I reminisce about this whole incident. The lady wasn't hurt by anything, at least not in a way that the vet could detect. She heard someone or something that actually wanted to hurt me. I don't know if I quite believe that. I don't know if I want to believe that. But deep down, a part of me thinks that's true. And it wasn't Lady that was lucky to be alive after that night. It was me who was fortunate enough to walk out of that abandoned place without being hurt or killed. Back when I was in my early 20s, I ended up homeless for a while.

I don't really want to get into exactly how that happened because it's a long story and a really painful bunch of memories. But the point is that I ended up looking for somewhere to squat, and that place ended up being an abandoned house in quite a dodgy suburb here in Rockhampton. Just to clear things up, it wasn't strictly abandoned, it was a full-on squat with several other people living there, but it definitely wasn't legal. We had running water from time to time, which we were basically stealing off the water companies, and every so often they'd send someone out to turn it off, but we'd just turn it back on again. We also had electricity thanks to this really

pollutive generator we kept on the back of our house, and when we had money left over after buying our meth or heroin, we'd buy some petrol to keep it running. When we didn't have money left over, we'd siphon off what we could from cars around the neighborhood. To be honest, it was probably the best I lived while I was homeless, and as much as it was rough living, at least I could wash and have a roof over my head. It was also pretty safe as squats go, as it had these really high fences we had to climb to get in. Yeah this got a bit annoying from time to time especially if you were high and weren't in the best frame of mind for climbing but they mostly kept people from seeing onto the property

and that worked for us. But then the reason it had all these high fences is the same reason that when I first arrived there and went wandering into the front yard, I was greeted by something that made my skin crawl. There was this old doghouse with a broken chain leading out of it. Right in front of the opening was what looked like a load of dried blood. When I asked someone who'd been living there for a while what what's the deal with a literally bloody dog house? They told me this place used to belong to a drug dealer. Nabbed him in a dawn raid and the dog went for the jacks when they burst through the gate. They shot it, took the thing's body away, never cleaned up the blood though, as you can see. That was about the one and only time I ever saw it, as for the most part, we all lived in the rear of the house so that it still looked abandoned if you were looking at it from the street, and we entered and exited the place by climbing over the back fence.

Our one big worry was the jacks finding out that we were there, and even then, the laws here regarding squatting is a bit complex, so they couldn't kick us out. If the AFP made it a drug thing, then that would be a different story, but we generally considered ourselves pretty safe outside of that. There was just one thing we didn't consider, and that was the opinion of the house's former owner when word got to him that we were squatting in his place. So, this one night, I woke to the sound of someone banging really hard on the front of the house. The girl I was sharing a room with at the time was already awake, but when I asked her if it was the Jacks, she stayed quiet and just shook her head. The police usually announce themselves, don't they?

Hammer on the door and shout police open up or something. But whoever was outside was staying as quiet as we were. They were really hammering on the door too. but whoever was outside was staying as quiet as we were. They were really hammering on the door too, so hard the whole house seemed to be shaking and although we maybe should have actually done something, be it hide or run or at least get ready to defend ourselves, all we did was stay quiet and hope they'd go away, which they did.

After maybe an hour or so of silence, the older guy who explained what happened to the dog to me goes downstairs and takes a look around to make sure the bangers had really gone. About a minute later, he comes back upstairs and tells me to come look at the front door. It was already open when I went down and even in the near darkness, I could see that whoever had been banging had rammed something through the wood of the front door. It was this huge bowie knife looking thing, so big that it was more like a machete than an actual knife. We just left it where it was, mainly because there was no way of actually dislodging the thing but also because

we were kidding ourselves into thinking that if we did leave it, whoever had left it there might think that there was actually no one squatting. Like I said before, we had it really good there, relatively speaking anyway, so not everyone wanted to just pack up and leave right away. The girl I was sharing a room with did though. She was gone when I woke up after going back to sleep, and I think she ended up in one of the legit homeless shelters in the city, but I can't be sure. And the rest of us decided to take our chances. A few days later, me and this other fella nipped out to get some food during the afternoon. We usually hit up a couple of different places in the city, picking up whatever yellow sticker food we could find, pinching more expensive things, and going to food banks for our staples. The point being, we were gone a good couple of hours before we started walking back towards the squat. Because we had to climb in over the back fence,

the usual routine was that one of us would climb up and straddle the wall, then the other would pass the food bags up to them for them to drop down the other side as gently as possible. The other person I was with jumps up onto the wall, takes one look at the squat, then freezes, looking at the squat with this scared look on his face. I asked him what the problem is and he just looks down at me and says, leave the food. I go to climb up myself to see what he's looking at and he just says, no. And then hangs on the wall for a second, looking around as if though he's watching for any signs of anyone. Then, only when he saw the coast was clear did he say it was safe for me to climb up. Obviously, I'm curious.

So I climb up over the wall myself and the first thing I see is that all the back windows of the squat had been broken and the back door had been smashed off its hinges. We go inside and basically everything had either been broken or smashed. All the furniture, all the gear we had there, all either flipped over or completely destroyed. Upstairs there's clothes everywhere, empty bags and stuff and it looked like all the other squatters had either left in a hurry or been chased out by someone. In one room there was this spray of fresh blood on the wall, not a lot of it

but enough for us to know that some sort of violence had occurred while the place was getting trashed. We salvaged what we could, then just got out of there ourselves. I'm still not entirely sure what happened there, but mine and the other guy's best guess is that the dealer who owned the place had gotten wind that people were using his house as a squat and wanted us out of there. It was his friends, or at least people he'd organized to pay us a visit, that had left the knife in the door as a warning. Then they'd returned on the day of our food shop to make sure everyone was gone. Obviously, not everyone was gone, so they chased them out after hitting someone with something

that caused the blood spray. The really messed up thing is that I didn't actually want to go on the food run. I really couldn't be bothered, but it was my turn. And although I tried to convince another one of the squatters to go in my place, that hadn't worked. So I was basically forced to head out if I wanted to eat. If he'd been a good friend and covered for me, it might have been me who took that shot to the head. At least, I'm assuming it was a shot to the head. I don't know of any part of your body that'll squirt blood like that after taking a hit. It's just weird thinking that I was so close to being a victim in that situation, and it makes you wonder if there

had been any other times in your life when you narrowly dodged something bad via some spur-of-the- moment decision or whatever. For anyone wondering, I'm doing much better these days. I have a job and I'm living back with my mom until I can afford a deposit on a place of my own. I'm not exactly flying high or anything like that. I only work in a burger joint and the pay is pretty terrible, but anything is better than living in squats as an addict. That's something I never want to go back to. Back when I was a dumb teenager, me and my buddies got into our heads that it'd be a good idea to explore the storm drainage system underneath our neighborhood. Picture the ones in that It movie, but just all made of concrete since they were the round kind of sewer tunnels made from pre-made pieces. Getting down there was no small feat, and you had to crawl through a real tight fit for maybe 10 to

15 feet before there was any standing room. But then after that, as you explored deeper, you'd find areas that were big enough to drive a golf cart through. Not that it would have been impossible to get one down there, just to give you an idea of how big the tunnels were. Every so often, you'd come across these really weird looking structures. Things that look like grates or prison bars that only covered half the pipe. Sometimes you'd see a little light coming in from a grate and the road above, but most of the time we needed flashlights to see anything at all. Every single sound was nerve-wracking,

because technically there shouldn't have been any sounds other than running water down there. So whenever you heard anything creaking or groaning, it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up while you wondered if you were finally about to run into that sewer gator or whatever urban legend that had gotten into our heads during that day or week or month. It also wasn't like we had a map or anything, nor did we even think to draw one up, so most of the local kids who had gotten to know the system well enough to navigate through it just had all the knowledge in their hands. At one point, we all figured out that if you got lost, all you had to do was choose a turn that led to a bigger pipe. That was because the biggest one ran for about a half mile all the way outside the neighborhood,

eventually emptying by a 15-foot waterfall- type thing into a local pond and creek. With this in mind, one day my brother, who walked the fine line between brave and dumb, decided to go a different direction from the main junction, with his friends, to explore a tunnel none of us had ever ventured to. I had joined them that day and I'm not afraid to admit that I was way too scared to follow him. I'm not sure why I was so creeped out that day. I always felt safe with my brother but for some reason I just had this really bad feeling that day so I didn't want to go with him deeper into the tunnels.

As he went off, me and two friends stayed in the junction while my brother and his two friends went exploring. But then, after they were gone for 10 or 15 minutes, we suddenly start hearing this terrified screaming accompanied by the sound of quick footsteps echoing down the tunnels as they came running back towards us. My friends just bolted, and as much as I wanted to run too, it was only my brother that seemed to be in danger so I just couldn't bring myself to leave him, even if he was with a few friends of his own. Seconds later, I saw them turn around a bend in the most dark tunnel and I heard one of my brother's friends shouting, run, run, run. They didn't need to tell me twice, and I joined them as we all sprinted down the big tunnel.

I think the worst part was that we all instinctively knew that whatever was down there chasing us might actually catch us if we had to shimmy back through the small pipes to get out of the way we came in. With that in mind, we ran as fast as we possibly could down the bigger tunnels, flashlight beams just waving all over the place until we finally started seeing light from where the tunnel emptied into the pond. Then, one by one, we all just leapt into the pond below, as getting soaked and ruining our flashlights was much more preferable to getting caught by whatever or whoever they were running from.

I was terrified of heights at the time, and I definitely wasn't the strongest swimmer, but the fear and adrenaline took over and when the time came, I just jumped. When we'd all made it to dry land it occurred to me that they might have been playing a prank on us but then the fear in my brother's voice as he insisted that we all go home right away convinced me that they really had seen something down there that had seriously freaked them out. I kept asking him what he'd seen on our way home, but he wouldn't talk to me about it. He just kept saying that he needed to get his head straight, that he wasn't sure who it was that he'd seen, he just knew that they didn't have good intentions. I realized just how serious things were when we

got home and my brother told my mom where we'd been and what we'd been doing. He knew that meant that we'd both be in quite a bit of trouble, even more so when our mom learned that he'd let me, his younger brother, go somewhere that dangerous. Mom was obviously angry, but when she calmed down, my brother told her that when he and his friends reached a junction in the tunnel that they were exploring, they came across a spot where light was trickling in from above. There was a pile of trash and debris built up around one of those half-pipe prison bar gates, and laying within that pile of trash, they saw a man.

A completely naked man. And when this guy heard them, he raised himself up, covered in dirt and grime and started crawling out of the trash on all fours in their direction while making this low growling sound. And that's what had them so scared that they just ran without a thought. Upon hearing that, our mom just called the cops. Two cops in uniform then drove over to our house to ask my brother to guide them to the location and the pipes where this happened. At first he refused, but after some reassurance from the officers and pressure from our mom, my brother was convinced to go back. I heard they found exactly what he described, but the so-called man was gone. Then, within an hour, there were at least a dozen police cars around our neighborhood,

with people and dogs searching that drainage system. They wouldn't tell us much in the way of details, but I do know that they never found the guy who chased us. I heard the dogs following his scent trail to the end of the pipe at the pond pond but they never picked up the scent anywhere on the ground around the pond or creek. None of us ever went into the storm drains again and the guy in the sewers became a kind of urban legend that I'm pretty sure is still talked about in my hometown today. Only my brother and friends know for certain that it's true, and although I didn't see the sewer man personally, I believe that he was real-old male, was home alone with my family, besides my sister, who's 21, was at work. They were staying in their cabin a few kilometers away. I'm used to staying home alone, and this exact scenario is very common in the summertime,

especially while I'm working and can't travel from the cabin and back. I'm not usually jumpy or afraid while home alone anymore, as I'm used to the odd creaks and settling noises of our old house. I was especially comforted by the fact that my sister's dog was also in the house with me that night, and most noises could be attributed to him, and if anything were to happen he would act as a good guard dog of sorts and alert me to anything odd. At the same time, however, he's the type of dog to bark at any noise or person walking past the door or windows, so I'm used to hearing him bark or growl at night. Even so, this past Friday the sound of his barks at nearly 12am were disconcerting,

to say the least. Despite my comfort with staying home alone, I'm still terrified of the premise of a break-in or some other uninvited human interaction at midnight. I let him bark for a few seconds, telling myself it was just someone walking past our glass door in the adjacent alleyway and he would quiet down once they passed. Needless to say, that's not what happened. He kept barking and growling for a few moments too long and I finally got out of bed, I sleep in the basement, and walked upstairs to check it out. As I'd suspected, he was standing alert at the glass door. I was comforted for a moment until I walked over, ready to close the curtains and go back to sleep and saw the door open about two or three inches. I froze. I had led Bosco, the dog, out earlier that night but I know I closed the door. I've

never left the door open. I'm a paranoid person with bad anxiety especially concerning break-ins and the like so I would never, home alone, forget to close the door, and I'm 100% certain. But at the time, I didn't let myself think about these facts or even acknowledge that I could not have left that door open because I knew it would send me into a spiral, possibly even an anxiety or panic attack if I didn't explain this away. I closed and locked the door, double-checking that it was certainly locked. Using the flashlight on my phone, the lights were all off, I looked around the entire second floor of my three floor house including closets and other reasonable hiding spots just

to put my mind at ease and upon finding nothing, went back downstairs to my room. As I was down there, trying to push away the fear, I could hear Bosco walking around on the floor that doubles as my bedroom's roof. I thought that I was overthinking it when it started to sound like human footsteps accompanied by Bosco's footsteps. He walks around for about ten minutes before I put in my earphones and talk myself down until I can fall asleep. At 2am that same night, my sister comes home from work. I woke up a few minutes before this to Bosco in the basement, which he never does. There's even a gate to stop him from getting to the basement,

whining at my bedroom door. When I got up to let him out, my sister walked in, then we let him out the front door rather than the glass patio door, letting him in the same way. We talked for a while before I went back downstairs, and my sister went to the bathroom. I forgot about the door, busy with work for the next few days, and forgot to mention it to anyone until tonight. My sister and mom were home with me for a movie night while my dad and brother stayed at the cabin. I remember the door situation when we were picking out horror movies to watch. I was sharing it as a creepy, almost sort of funny story before my sister spoke up,

saying that the same night, an hour or so after they got home, the door was open again. The same door that was locked from the inside and not open since earlier that night. My stomach dropped and I started shaking the second this was revealed. We first started trying to explain it away. Maybe she had let Bosco out and forgot to close it until we both recalled that we'd used the front door. Then we were trying to justify a reason someone would break in to not steal anything and proceed to stay for two hours before leaving. Ultimately, I realized that I quite possibly locked someone in the house with me, then forced them to hide upstairs while I searched the second level of our house.

Then this hypothetical person would be trapped up there now knowing that this house, that appears empty with the rest of the family gone and all the lights off, was not empty, and there was a dog who would bark if they showed themselves again, alerting me to their presence. Then, when I was in the basement and my sister was in the bathroom, they ran out the glass door, which is timed perfectly when they found the door open once more, much wider than when I found it as though they were only in a hurry on the way out. Perhaps they left the door open the first time for a quick escape, or to stop the loud

sound of it meeting the door frame. Either way, it ties together too perfectly for me to reasonably brush it off. I know it's unlikely, especially with nothing missing, but in this small town, there have been many reports of break-ins with nothing missing, vandalizing, or just breaking and entering many, many times, so it's not as unlikely as it may be in a bigger city. I can't really make sense of this, and I'm shaken up thinking of the possibility of someone being in my house while I was asleep, alone in the basement. There's a part of me that doesn't believe it, but I can't shake the too many coincidences that all tie together to make this as concerning as it truly is. To be continued... the abandoned ghost town of Moonville Rail Tunnel. I've never been to this area so I didn't know what

to expect, but I did know that it was pretty deep in the woods. We took a trip from our rented cabin using Google for GPS to the location. We start driving and it's, for lack of a better word, real impoverished where we are driving, Hills Have Eyes-esque. We literally only see a few cars on the way there and are on back roads. We get to a point where we need to enter into a forest and are close to the tunnel. There was a sign that said that we were entering Bubblewood. For a little additional information, I drive a Mercedes that I am just lucky to have and have my husband in the car, a black man with dreadlocks, my 10 year old non-verbal autistic son, and my 6 year old daughter.

We drive down this real creepy stone road into the forest and there's nothing back there. No houses, no cars, nobody. We see signs that we're close and we pull into the parking lot. There is a footbridge with a ton of stuff on it that people put there, and we walk over to the footbridge and make our way toward the tunnel, which is a lot larger than I expected. We hear the sound coming from the other side of the tunnel that goes into the woods away from the parking lot. A truck comes driving through the tunnel towards us while we are on foot. He gets out of his truck with a chainsaw and it's some dude in his 60s.

He walks with my entire family everywhere we go and through the tunnel. I try to make small talk with him and pull some info about if he worked for the department of natural resources etc and he really wasn't budging. We turned around to walk out of the tunnel and he starts using a chainsaw behind us and the sound is just echoing through this tunnel. At this point we have no cell phone service and literally no one knows my family is out there except us. I was already worried my car was sending the wrong idea to people like we have money or something and we don't and we rush to the car to get the kids and their booster seats. And this guy comes driving over the footbridge in his truck towards us in the parking lot.

I honestly don't know how this truck fit on it. He stops again and gets out of his truck and starts walking the other direction, much to our relief. About this time I noticed that there are dusty handprints on my car. I asked my husband if they were his and we compared his hand and my son's and there wasn't a match. I don't know who could have touched the car because we were with the chainsaw man the entire time we were there and we got out of there as fast as possible. Just a few minutes later I look in the rearview mirror and there is a bunch of dust kicked up behind us and there he is. He had to have driven pretty fast on the stone road to catch up to us like that. There is nowhere to go in this woods. The road is basically one lane and we have no cell service or GPS. Every time I think we lose him, he's there again I'm waiting for my tires to get popped or something

Or for this guy to ram me off the road into a ravine in the woods And finally we get out of these woods and I turn out and he's still following We were following printed directions to get back and I ended up making a wrong turn in the excitement The guy in the truck was finally gone and I turned around to go back past the stone road that goes into the forest. There is one lone house near this road and there's his truck. Park there. He had to have seen us drive onto this road into the woods and taken some back way to the tunnel. I don't know if he was just trying to protect the site from some graffiti or what, but he really creeped us out.

It was like every scary movie trope rolled into one single event. I'm a service technician and my job consists of me being a glorified handyman for a bunch of different residential units located all over the city, all of which are owned by this one big letting agency. On this particular occasion I was working in a large condo building and I really do mean large. This place had exactly 37 floors and 4 different elevators serving the hundreds of different tenants.

The elevators are in two groups of two, with two large elevator shafts. Just picture one giant square that is the lobby and two smaller rectangles in that room that are the elevator shafts. The two shafts are identical looking. Sorry for all the seemingly pointless detail, but I only explain so you can see how easy it is to get disoriented as to which direction you're facing when you exit an elevator. Anyways, after completing some work on one of the top floor units, I realize I have to go all the way back down to the parking level to stop by a utility room. So I hop on the elevator and press P1, and take a lonely ride down almost 40 floors, but I arrive on the elevator and press P1 and take a lonely ride down almost 40 floors but I arrive on the parking level. I reach P1 level and when the elevator doors open I start to hear the sound of a kid crying. Obviously because I'm not completely heartless I find myself feeling bad for whoever it was and found myself wanting to find them so I could fix whatever the issue was.

They could have been lost and scared or maybe they fell over and skinned their knee and either it was me who showed up to show them some kindness or someone else might show up who had less than pure intentions. I start to try and pinpoint where the noise is coming from but since all the walls in this area are bare and concrete, the sound is echoing and seems to be coming from everywhere. This was obviously kind of freaky at first but I didn't start really getting creeped out until I had searched four corners of the square room and still hadn't found anyone. I'm getting increasingly more freaked out as I head back to the door to the utility room but as I round the corner I see the source of the noise right in front of me. It's a pale skinned little girl with straight black hair crouched down sobbing into her knees

facing away from me. Maybe I've just seen too many Japanese horror movies but my heart started pounding in my chest when I saw her, and the way her cries were echoing all over the parking level gave them this otherworldly, ethereal effect. I don't know why I didn't see her before, because I already checked that corner, but then again, there was a good chance that she heard me get off the elevator and was actively moving away from me out of embarrassment, maybe so no one would see her crying. For a moment there I actually considered just running and getting out of there, because it honestly looked like something straight out of Ringu or The Grudge or something. When I asked her what was wrong and if she needed help, I was legit filled with this

feeling of momentary regret, thinking I was about to get my soul eaten or something, that she'd turn around and have no face or a giant face-splitting mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. Obviously, when she did turn around, she was just a totally normal, upset little girl who'd managed to get herself turned around in the admittedly confusing parking floor layout. I ended up escorting her back to the concierge desk so security could help her get back to her room where her parents were probably equally upset that their little girl had just gone missing. The whole thing was definitely the spookiest moment of my career and I appreciate

it might sound a little anticlimactic, but I defy anyone to have been there and not been seriously freaked out by that sound of her cries echoing off of all four walls. I mean, you could have recorded it to put it in a horror movie or something and it would have made for the scariest part of the movie. Around three to four years ago when I was 12, I was at my aunt's house visiting for camp. I was upstairs and saw the camera go off saying someone was at the back door. It was my older cousin, so I went downstairs to open the door. I was able to see him for a little bit before I actually got to the door. He looked so determined and focused on opening the door and he spent less than a minute at the door then he got in his car and just sped off. I didn't think much about this honestly. All I thought was

oh he must have been in a rush if he didn't bother to call us to open the door. I was even thinking about going to open the door and calling out to him before he drove off, but I was feeling kind of lazy that day. About two minutes later, the house phone started ringing along with my personal phone and my grandma's phone. I picked up,

and it was another one of my aunts telling me not to open the door and to stay away from the windows. They told me they already called the cops but that I should call again. I was very confused and asked what happened. They explained my aunt and cousin got in a very heated argument about the business she owned and left him $300,000 in debt the day before that led to him hitting her. The next day he came looking for her very upset but couldn't find her at the office. He proceeded to drive to my aunt's house while on the phone with some other

family members, telling them how he was going to kill my aunt, his mother. I remember going to the kitchen and picking up a knife to keep it with me just in case. I was shaking while thinking about where to hide. He ended up coming back and he started walking around the house looking through windows before he sat at the front step. Luckily I was on the second floor. I don't even know what exact time I called the police due to my panicking. The cops ended up coming and made my cousin leave but my grandma wanted to talk with him first. Throughout their whole talk I still hid upstairs listening through an open window. I prayed she didn't mention my name

in case he came back later in the night and luckily he never did. To this day I'm so glad I didn't open the door. I feel like I was truly protected. We normally don't lock both the screen door and the actual door, but we did that day. He struggled so much with the lock screen door that he broke the handle. Luckily, he didn't open the door where he knew the code. This situation still gives me so much anxiety, and I don't understand how we went back to acting like nothing happened. I've never been back since, just in case he ever snaps again. To be continued... casino. We mostly just played simple games like slots and video roulette since it was our first time going to an actual casino. After losing some money, we decided to search for something to eat.

Pretty much everything was way too overpriced so we wandered around for quite a bit. Eventually, we reached a hallway along the border of the main floor. We made our way down the hall looking for food but everything was closed. We started to notice that the hall was completely vacant of people. As we wandered further down the hall, we reached an oddly intriguing small room through a double doorway. This was the only entrance into the room. It was completely empty except for us three and about 10-20 slot machines. We were bored so I decided to throw $5 into the slot machine and spin a few times. After my second or third spin, an odd looking man,

early to mid 30s, appeared from behind the slot machine, seemingly out of thin air. He began watching me play and started getting uncomfortably close to us. We weren't very worried since we outnumbered him three dudes to one. However, we weren't very confused. We grew more and more uneasy the longer he stood there, not saying a word. Eventually, my friend decided to ask him what was up. The man looked at us for a second before asking if we were all brothers. None of us look even remotely similar, so we told him we were all just friends. He said, oh that's great and proceeded to ask if he could join our group. We told him that we all

came together and lied in saying that we were actually planning on leaving soon. He told us that we should stay and play with him and says, my good friend Rachel over there knows all the good machines and points towards the other side of the room. We slowly peered around the machine and all immediately became horrified. Nothing else was in the room with us. He pointed into an empty corner. We all stand up from our seats and slowly back out of the room, not letting our eyes leave the man.

Once he was out of sight, we turned around and sprinted down the hallway back to the main game room. We all vowed to never go back down that hallway ever again and I never did, but curiosity eventually got the better of us. About a year and too many casino trips later, we're playing blackjack back at the same casino with a fourth friend. He gets bored and hungry and says that we should go look for food. After walking around looking for food, we made it back to the entrance of that very hallway that we vowed never to return to. The fourth friend said that we should go search there for food.

The rest of us tell him no and explain to him that we can't go back down there. He asks why, so we tell him about our experience down that hallway about a year prior. He said that we're just BSing him and that there's no room of slot machines in the location we described. He explains that his mom was a worker at the casino and he wouldn't know if there was a rogue room of slots in the middle of nowhere. So we did the one thing we could do to convince him of our experience. We decided to lead him to the room. We made our way down the hallway and searched for the room, but after walking for a few minutes, we reached the end of the hall. Confused, we turned around and searched again, thinking that we had somehow missed it.

No room. We came to the conclusion that they must have moved the machines out of the room since the casino changes things around quite frequently so people don't gain a sense of direction on the game floor. So we once again walked down the hallway in search of an empty room or at least a set of closed doors that would enter the room. Nothing. No doors even remotely close to where we remember the room. We were completely dumbfounded and started to question our sanity. All three of us remember the room in the same location, yet there was nothing. There was no room with slot machines, and there was no room at all. To this day, neither me nor my friends understand or can explain how this happened. This is Fresh. I'm 17 years old and I was at Tim Horton's drawing random people

and some guy came up to me and started asking me about my drawings. We started a conversation and my work came up and I was waiting to go to work. He asked me where I worked and what time and I answered innocently. Then he asked me if I lived alone which immediately set off some alarms but that's not the root of the story. He tells me he's a truck driver and I said I thought that was a cool job. He left for a couple of minutes to get himself a drink and offered me one and I said no because I don't take drinks from strangers. He walked away saying that he'd come back and talk to me more. After he left I started to get

a really bad feeling so I text my mom a description of the man's appearance, which I often do if someone is making me uncomfortable in a scary way. I told her not to worry and just told her it's probably my anxiety. When he came back, he asked me if I wanted a tour of his truck. I said no thank you and when he left me again, I called my mom and told her what just happened, almost having a panic attack in the bathroom. Then when I sat back down, he came up to me one last time and told me that he was leaving. He asked me for my Snapchat, and I told him I don't have one. I sat in my anxiety and watched him cross the highway to the parking lot of my work,

which happens to also be a truck stop. He was still there at 10.38, and he was there for about an hour and 30 minutes, and I had to be at work at 11, so I thought it was best to just ask the Tim Horton staff to walk me over, but they actually ended up calling the cops. I didn't want them to call the cops, in fact I was adamantly against it, but they did it anyway. When the cops arrived, I explained everything but they were gone by the time everything was finished. I managed to get a police officer to drive me across the road and I feel like I wasted the cops time because I wasn't in immediate danger and I kind of felt like I was being dramatic. But looking back on it, it truly was creepy how interactive that guy was and the fact that he stood outside my work for over an hour and a half. I had no idea what he wanted. I moved out of state to a very small town.

First day of moving in, a neighbor walking his dog greets me and introduces himself to me. Gives me a quick rundown that the neighborhood is filled with tweakers and other shady types. I took that as a general warning that that may be all I'll deal with. A few months later he invited me over to his place to teach me how to do some woodwork. As we're making a shelf for my cat to sit on, he's asking me questions. To me they were normal questions, but looking back, I realize now that he was trying to get information out of me. Why did you move out here from out of state?

Who lives with you? Do you have any other family members in the state or area? Once we were done, we went to install the shelf and he met my mom who stays with me. He talks to her for a bit and then we left to walk back to his place. He starts telling me that he can see our yard from his place and notices that I barely go outside with my dogs. Told me not to worry that if someone breaks into our place that he can see them and shoot them from his room. That's when I'm thinking how is that possible because you live over half a block away?

Before I can question him, he asks me if I want to see more of the town. I'm like, sure, let's go. He walks to his car and pulls something out from the middle compartment and then tells me to get in his pickup truck. So I do while he's filling the gas tank up with gasoline. Once he's done, he walks to the driver's side and opens the door and drops a holster between us. He tells me not to worry about it as I look trying to see if he has a gun or not. As we're driving, I realize that he hasn't said a word in five minutes, and this guy loves to hear his own voice. Another thing I notice is that we're on a dirt road and haven't seen a single house, trailer or vehicle for a while. I guess I gave off some nervous vibes because he suddenly goes, so yeah, unless you know where you're going out here you'll get lost

and it's best to have a pickup or ATV to drive out of here. After about another 10 minutes of silent driving we get to a little creek Luckily there was another truck there All he says is Ah, look at that Somebody else is here with us And he grabs the holster and gets out We both see a lady with a big dog playing in the water

She turns to us as she sees him walking closer to her She gestures to his holster and he tells her not to worry that it's just for snakes. She lifts her shirt above her waist to show her gun and she tells him she's not worried one bit. They talk for a few minutes and she tells him that her husband is home waiting for her to make dinner and she's just out letting the dog have some playtime. The neighbor changes his tone and posture from confident to defensive now. She called her dog and they went to their truck. He's watching her and she hasn't started her truck yet. A few minutes pass and he tells me I guess it's time we go too.

When we get to his truck, she drives off. The drive back I start getting uneasy and creeped out. Why would he drive me all the way out there and just leave? Why tell me not to worry about the holstered gun but tell the lady what it's for? I finally get out of my head and just break the silence and give him my life story as to why I moved. Finally he responds that he can relate to my story and gives me the rundown on how the town is and what it's about, and that some people are more racist than others and I should watch my back for that. Once we get back to his place, I tell him I have stuff to take care of at home and just

nope out of there. I said to myself if I'm ever going to hang out with them again. It won't be alone. I'm a female and I was 14 at the time. Back about a year or so, my sister, mom and I went on a road trip to New Mexico and Colorado. One night in Colorado, my mom and I were swimming in the pool. She got tired after a little and went back to the room. An hour or so later I got out and walked to the elevator to go back to our room. I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit with my towel wrapped around my waist. I had my small backpack slash purse and I wasn't wearing any shoes. It was about 10 p.m. and I didn't see anyone in the lobby so I decided not to bother putting

my shoes back on. The elevator opened and I got in, but I saw an old guy trying to catch it so I held the doors open for him so he could get in too. Big mistake. He walked in, thanked me for holding the door for him, but he didn't press a button for the floor he wanted. And immediately as the door closed, I looked over at him, and this man was staring at my feet.

I mean, it was almost comedic how obvious it was. His head was tilted all the way down, and his eyes were just wide, staring, gaping at them. Then he started complimenting me on my looks while never looking up from my feet. You're so pretty, you remind me of my wife and stuff like that throughout the whole ride. Well the elevator stopped on my floor and the old guy gets out with me. Luckily he was staying on the other end of the hallway. Still I didn't go to my room.

I stopped in front of a janitor's closet and pretended to check my phone and root through my purse for my room key. After a little, I heard his door open and shut, so I looked down the hallway and saw that he was gone. As fast as I could, I went over to my actual room door and went inside fast, locking the door behind me. The following morning, I told my mom about it and she treated it like it was just some friendly old man with no social cues.

That may have been the case, but Ted Bundy was also a nice guy and I'd rather be safe than sorry. To be continued... This happened over 20 years ago but I often think back on it and how lucky I am to be here. In 1998 pagers were all the rage and personal phones were huge bulky contraptions you'd have to have in your car if you could even afford one, but they were far too cumbersome to carry with you. I had some serious health problems starting in my early teens so I missed out on most of high school. At 18 I was eager to shake off the sickly overprotected child role at home.

I got a job and moved into my own apartment. I was eager to party with friends and make up for lost time. Spending so much of my adolescence in a hospital had consequences. I had missed out on the life experiences teens learn from. I was much more naive than my friends and generally lacked their sense of judgment and street smarts. My knowledge and experience with drugs and alcohol was even more deficient. At the time I also had this stupid attraction to the bad boy thug types. So attracted to thugs and naive, that has victim

written all over it. And human trafficking wasn't something you heard about at the time. Probably the worst thing we thought could happen was someone putting something into our drink. And because of my illness, I had to take medications, so I usually kept drinking to a minimum and avoided drugs. However, I didn't have much experience on dealing with peer pressure. Usually, if I knew my friends were going out drinking, I'd skip my meds that night. This night, I had planned to stay in. Later, two girlfriends showed up and insisted that we go out. There was a lot of pressure to have one more beer, roll one more joint.

And when we got to the club I felt reasonably coherent. It was super crowded, I started dancing with a guy with a 13 on his hand, and then suddenly I felt numb and couldn't speak. The next thing I remember I'm standing out in the parking lot. It's cold and my best friend just slapped me. We're standing in front of a car I don't know. The guy I was dancing with is arguing with a male friend of ours and four men who appear to be with the 13 guy are waiting in this running car. My BFF grabs my wrist and pulls me towards the front doors of the club, all the while yelling at me, what were you thinking? Are you stupid? Do you want to die? So it turns out, my friend had lost sight of me after I was dancing with this guy.

Then my BFF caught a glimpse of him holding my hand walking me out the door. She grabbed three guys who knew us and ran up to the parking lot after me. The car with the men had pulled around and they were trying to put me in the trunk. After that, my wild child days were over. I focused on studying, got my degree and made smarter decisions. I'm so grateful to my observant friends Quick Action and for the three guys who ran out to help. We lost touch over the years, but I have no doubt that those four saved my life. To be continued... Eastern Standard Time. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt.

And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. And I'll see you again soon.