The Lets Read Podcast - 215: NEVER PICK UP A HITCHHIKER | 24 True Scary Stories | EP 203

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Hitchhiking, Security Guards, & Freaks at Thrift Stores... 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/LetsRead ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS & Bonus Content!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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Quiet mornings, big hugs, and memories shared. With hundreds of styles and textures, there's a perfect Minky waiting for you. Celebrate the season with comfort that lasts beyond the holiday. Shop now at softminkyblankets.com. As crazy as it sounds, one of the most dangerous and terrifying few moments of my life passed me by without me realizing what was happening. I just started fourth grade, so I was either nine or ten years old,

and my family lived right at the end of a street that was just over half a mile long. I used to hate walking up and down that thing, and you can call me lazy if you want, but it's true. It was five minutes of boring nothingness every time I walked for the school bus or my mom sent me to the corner store. So, this one time, mom sends me to the store to pick up flour or eggs or something. The walk to the store, it looked like it was going to rain. By the time I'd walked out of the store, goods in hand, it was raining like you wouldn't believe. Looking back on it, I probably could have just ran there and back again, but I've always been incredibly lazy, so hard no on that. Instead, I ran to a bus shelter right in front of me, refusing to walk home until the rain had at least meddled out a little.

I shared a nice lady's umbrella for a block or two, but she soon changed course for me and I ended up stuck under the shelter in front of this beauty parlor, real close to where our street started. If I committed to the walk, I was going to get drenched and I also remember not wanting to get whatever it was my mom wanted wet in the rain so instead of walking, I decided to stick my thumb out at passing cars. I was old enough to understand that sticking your thumb out like that was magically what made people give you a ride and it took a while to get someone's attention but in the end, I did. This older looking car which seemed like it was heading

down the street suddenly slowed down, then parked just after the bus shelter I was taking cover under. I was pretty sure the driver had pulled over for me. Like I said, it slowed and stopped right when I started frantically thumbing in their general direction. But then, when I ran up to the passenger side and tried to open the door, I found it was locked. I tried again in quick succession, pulling a little harder, but it still didn't open. I then looked up through the window and saw that the driver was looking at me with this kind of freaked out look on his face. And that's when it popped into my head that he might not have been pulling over for me at all. I kind of take a step back, thinking I might have

made a mistake, then the guy rolls down his window and asks me if I wanted to ride. He then unlocks the door, I climb in, and we take off down the street. The guy driving was a middle-aged white guy, he seemed pretty nice, and when he asked me where I was getting out, I told him just a few blocks down the street. We literally didn't say a word to each other. Then the next thing I knew, I hear the whoop whoop that a cop car sound makes, and that's when blue and red flashing lights began behind us. I'd been in a car that had been pulled over by the cops before and I remember my dad getting really annoyed at it, but the guy I hitched a ride with didn't seem to get annoyed. He seemed

frightened again and in turn, that made me kind of nervous too. Anyway, the guy pulls over and when we come to a stop he tells me, I think you should walk from here. I've been in a traffic stop before, but I didn't know that under no circumstances should you get out of the car. Luckily, I didn't, but not because I knew I shouldn't, just the selfish reason that I didn't want to have to walk home in the rain. So the cop walks up, tells the driver the reason for stopping him, which I honestly can't remember, and then asks for his driver's license. My heart kind of dropped whenever the driver told the cop that he didn't have his license in the car, and not only that,

but he didn't have any kind of paperwork with him whatsoever. I don't know why exactly, but the cop didn't seem to think that that was an issue, and just asked for the guy's name instead. I noticed this weird kind of hesitation in the guy's voice. He said his first name, then his second name, then said another name, then started jabbering about something until the cop interrupted him to ask if I was his kid. But then the guy was like, yeah. And that's the first time I noticed something was actually off. The guy could have been forgetful, nervous, just straight up shy or whatever.

But when he told the cop that I was his kid, I knew that that was straight up a lie, my dude. I wasn't scared or anything, I wasn't about to leap out of the car, and it was still raining really heavy and I wanted the ride I earned. Dumb entitled way of looking at it, I know. It was just a more innocent time like that, I guess. So the cop goes back to his car, presumably to run the guy's details, and I'm hoping I can get a ride home once we're free to leave. I ask the guy this because I really don't want to get out of the car, only the guy doesn't reply at all. He's just sitting there, white knuckling the steering wheel, which makes me even more nervous, but for different

reasons entirely. I swear to god, there was a split second where I thought this guy was about to just take off. He kept looking around, hands going back and forth between the wheel and his thighs. That was the nervous that I got, thinking the whole thing was going to end up in some crazy police chase. But out of pure nervousness, I ask the guy again if I can still get a ride home once we're done with the cop, and he gives me this really anxious look and says, you need to get out of the car. Before I can even answer, the cop comes back, opens up the driver's door, and really rudely tells him to get out of the car. The driver is now visibly shaking and I'm wondering what's going on.

And as he really reluctantly gets out of the car, the cop grabs him by the arm, drags him out, yells at me to stay in the car, and slams the door closed. I'm freaking out wondering what's going on. And by that time, I actually want to get out of the car and run back to my house, but I'm so scared I just stay put in the car and do as I'm told. I wait, and wait, and wait, and nothing happens, but I don't realize at the time that the driver is not going to be returned to the car. The next thing I know, the cop opens up the driver's side door so he can lower the window, and then he closes it again. He then leans down and asks me if I knew the man who was driving,

and truthfully, I shake my head no. The cop nods, then asks for my name and address, then follows up by asking why I got into the guy's car in the first place. Again, I tell him the truth truth and that I was hitchhiking because I didn't want to walk home in the rain and again the cop nods before telling me to stay put a little while longer. I'm not sure how long went by but eventually another cop appears and tells me that he's going to give me a ride home so I should follow him to his car. This is the best news I had in a long time by this point so I'm just happy as I swap cars and drive home safe and dry. But then when we pull up, this other cop explains that he wants to talk to

my mom and dad just to explain why he had to give me a ride home. I'm not exactly about to tell him no, I'm in way too good a mood for that so I let the cop follow me inside so he can talk to my mom. As you can imagine, my mom was pretty surprised to see a cop standing behind me when she opened the door. And after being reassured that everything was fine, mom told me to go up to my room so she could talk to the cop in private. In my mind, the whole ordeal is over. I'm not in trouble for being late and everything is fine. Only, things were not fine, not for my mom downstairs who's having to listen to the full unedited version of what had actually happened, and I didn't find out the truth until many, many years later. The man whose car I'd gotten into

on that rainy afternoon was a registered offender, one who was out on parole after serving however many years for inappropriately touching children. I had offered myself up to this freak on a silver platter, and it was only a freaking broken taillight or something that saved me from god knows what. When I think back to how twitchy the guy was when the cop went back to run his name. I think he was actually weighing up the possibility of just zooming off with me in his passenger seat. I get that he already told me to get out, but that was probably his one last chance to save his butt, and that above anything else he wanted to, I don't know, do stuff to me. I guess that's why he was so apprehensive about letting me in his car in the first place. If he got pulled over, the cops saw the kid in his car after running his plates and stuff,

that he'd probably end up going straight back to jail. I guess that's what creeps me out so much. The guy knew his freedom was at stake, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. He just couldn't resist the compulsion to follow his most evil instincts, like he was just wired to be a predator like that. Like I said, for years I had zero clue how much danger I'd been in, believing I was entirely unconnected to the guy being dragged out of his car like that. I thought I'd done something wrong, and that's why my mom suddenly was all super strict all of a

sudden. She was stuck with this secret for years, correctly figuring that I wouldn't be able to handle it if I knew the truth. I can barely handle it now, and if I ever have kids, I'm going to give them the stranger danger talk as soon as they're able to understand it. The End During the early 1970s, a series of young women began to disappear from the area surrounding San Francisco Bay. Each of the women were high school to college aged and were believed to have been hitchhiking at the time of their disappearance. One by one, as their butchered bodies were recovered, local law enforcement were faced with the grim possibility that they were dealing with a serial killer. The search for the women's murderer culminated in a horrifically grisly crime, only for the

perpetrator to suddenly turn themselves in. Over the days that followed, his name would be printed in every major newspaper in America, as the public learned of the shocking depravity of one Edmund Kemper. Ed was born just north of LA on December 18th of 1948. His father was a war veteran who helped test nuclear weapons during peacetime, while his mother, Clarnell, was a decidedly dissatisfied housewife who would often complain of how meager the family's finances were. Her attitude and demeanor made a strong impression on young Edmund who remembered growing up with a distinct contempt for her.

By the age of four, Ed weighed an impressive 30 pounds and was considerably taller than other children his age. He also seemed acutely aware of his superior size and used it to bully and intimidate other kids and some frightening displays of antisocial behavior. Ed later said that by the age of 10, he was experimenting with the torture of animals and once buried a cat alive before mounting its head on a spike. When accused of such monstrous behavior by his parents, Ed managed to lie his way out of trouble and was said to have derived an intense amount of pleasure from the successful deception.

Knowing he could simply lie his way out of trouble, Ed continued to murder small animals and began taking trophies from his kills until his furious mother uncovered his stash. Ed learned to hide his darker inclinations from his overbearing mother, and would sometimes steal his younger sister's dolls before acting out mock mutilation on them. The same sister would later notice that an alarming amount of her dolls would turn up decapitated, but could never prove that Ed was responsible. She also recalled that Ed used to make her play a game called Gas Chamber, where he would demand to be tied to a chair before asking her to flick on an imaginary switch. Upon doing so, Ed's sister would watch him as he feigned violent seizures, saying he took an intense delight in imagining the suffering of

those executed. Ed was close to his father, and the relationship was probably the one thing which could have kept him on the straight and narrow. However, when Ed was just nine years old, his parents went through a vicious divorce, and instead of being housed with his father as Ed would have preferred, his mother gained full custody. In a bid to forbid his father from seeing him, Ed's mother moved the family to Helena, Montana, where her neurotic behavior and rampant alcoholism resulted in physical and psychological abuse. It must have made for an odd picture to say the least. At 14, he was 6 feet and 4 inches tall, and towered over his mother as she led him to the basement to be locked up for the night. He could have disobeyed and overpowered her with

ease, yet the sheer terrifying force of her personality turned someone very capable of violence into a gentle giant. Clarnell once told Ed that he reminded her of his father, and that no woman would ever love him. She later told his father that she refused to show him any kind of affection out of fear that it would turn him gay. Ed once described his mother as a sick and angry old woman, who made her home such a hellish environment that he fled back to California at age 14 with the goal of living with his father. Yet when he arrived in Van Nuys, Ed discovered that his father had remarried and was caring for a young stepson. Although he couldn't afford to care for the boy, Ed's father promised to keep him away from his mother and arranged for him to stay with his paternal grandparents near North Fork,

a small mountain town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Edmund hated living in such a tedious rural area. Instead of giving him a chance to mellow out, the isolation only exacerbated his growing psychosis. On August 27th of 1964, a 15-year-old Ed was sitting at the kitchen table with his grandmother, Maude, when the pair began to bicker. The petty squabbles soon intensified until the pair were full-on screaming at each other when Ed suddenly stormed out of the kitchen and ran upstairs to his bedroom. Maude simply assumed that Ed was done arguing, so much so that, when he returned with a small caliber hunting rifle, she didn't seem in the least bit afraid. Maude Kemper's final words on the earth were, you better not be shooting birds again, Ed.

But Ed didn't intend to shoot birds that night, and he relished the look of shock on his grandmother's face as he aimed the rifle at her head and fired. Ed went about mutilating his grandmother's corpse with a kitchen knife, then later executed his grandfather following his return from grocery shopping. Realizing that he had murdered both grandparents in a fit of violent rage, Ed then contacted the local police and simply waited to be arrested. He told police officers that he just wanted to see what it felt like to kill grandma, and that he killed his grandfather so he would not have to suffer the heartbreak of finding out that his wife was dead.

Authorities were horrified at Ed's crimes, who couldn't comprehend why such a young boy would kill his own grandparents. In light of that, he was declared criminally insane and was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum security psychiatric hospital that houses mentally ill convicts. However, upon his arrival, hospital staff were confused to find that Ed was far more lucid and coherent than their other patients. One doctor said that Ed showed no flight of ideas, no interference with thought, no expression of delusions or hallucinations, no evidence of bizarre thinking. Ed showed all the signs of an intelligent and thoughtful person,

testing high in IQ tests while getting along with patients. In essence, he was a model prisoner. Yet Ed had a secret. When safe from the eyes and ears of the hospital staff, Ed would question the other inmates on the nature and methods of their crimes. By conversing with a variety of murderers, home invaders, and offenders, Ed had given himself a crash course in violent and deviant crime. By the time he was released on his 21st birthday, he was even more dangerous

than before he was incarcerated. Ed was released into the car of his mother on December 18th, 1969, who by that point was living in Aptos, California. Every so often, Ed met with psychiatrists for a series of probation interviews. His final report read as follows, If I were to see this patient without having any history of him, I would think that we were dealing with a very well-adjusted young man, free of any psychiatric illnesses. He's had an excellent response to the years of treatment and rehabilitation, and I would see no reason to consider him to be of any danger to himself or to any member of society. The report resulted in Ed's juvenile records being completely

expunged, meaning there was nothing to warn potential employers or wider society that the young man in front of them had murdered his own grandparents. Ed's parole required him to attend community college, but he soon grew bored with the experience and applied to be a police officer. Despite being rejected due to his size, Ed maintained friendships with several Santa Cruz police officers and was a regular at a cop bar named The Jury Room, where he was known as Big Ed. After quitting community college, Ed worked at a number of low-paying jobs while staying with his mother. Neighbors would later recall savage arguments between the two, with Ed himself later saying that

My mother and I had horrendous battles. I have never been in such a vicious verbal battle with anyone. It would go to fists with a man, but this was my mother, and I couldn't stand the thought of us fighting. It was mostly over stupid things. I remember one roof razor was over whether I should have my teeth cleaned. Ed moved out as soon as he was able to, but the joy of escaping his mother was hampered by severe financial difficulties. Yet just when it looked like he might have to move back in with his mother, Ed won the equivalent of $90,000 in a civil lawsuit following a traffic accident.

He was now a young, independently wealthy psychopath, and now that his money troubles were over, his mind had time to focus on other things. While driving around in the 1969 Ford Galaxy that he bought with a part of his settlement money, Ed began fixating on the large number of female hitchhikers dotting the highways and byways of Northern California. Times had changed since Ed had been locked up, and he was a stranger to the concepts of world peace and free love. While folks his age were preaching brotherhood and understanding, Ed was a predator who wanted nothing more to inflict pain, suffering, and death. Ed began storing plastic bags, knives, and handcuffs in his car,

then conducted a series of dry runs where he picked up and dropped off hitchhikers without harming them. But by May of 1972, the urge to kill was overwhelming, and on May 7th, Ed picked up two 18-year-old college students named Mary Ann Pesci and Anita Luchessa. After taking about an hour to drive out to a suitably secluded location, Ed forced Marianne and Anita into handcuffs, then stabbed them both to death. He then put both bodies into the trunk of his car, then drove back to his apartment. Records show that during the ride home, Ed was stopped by a police officer for having a broken taillight. He was such a sociopath that he displayed no hint of fear or anxiety in the presence of the officer,

and the pair conducted a polite and jovial exchange before Ed respectfully accepted his ticket. Once he was alone with the girls' bodies, Ed stripped and photographed them before cutting them into pieces. He then dumped the girls' dismembered corpses near the Loma Prieta mountain. A few months later, on the evening of September 14th, Ed spotted a 15-year-old dance student by the name of Aiko Ku, who had decided to hitchhike home from her dance class after missing the bus. Ed picked her up, drove her to a remote location, then after murdering her, stuffed her body into the trunk of his car. He then drove over to a small bar to enjoy a few beers, all while the body of a 15-year-old lay lifeless in his trunk. Ed then disposed of Ico's body in the same way he had with his first hitchhiker murders, and began plotting his next kills. By January 7th of 1973, Ed was back living with his mother.

This was obviously a huge source of stress for him and it's believed he sought a victim in order to blow off some steam. He picked up 18-year-old Cynthia Ann Shaw from the Cabrillo College campus, drove her to a wooded area, and shot her in the head with a.22 pistol. After disposing of her corpse with a power saw, Ed kept Cynthia's severed head for several days, then buried it in his mother's garden facing upward toward her bedroom. After his arrest, he stated that he did this because his mother always wanted people to look up to her. Just a few weeks later, following yet another heated argument with his

mother, Ed went looking for another victim. By this point, terrified students were well aware that they were being preyed upon and were advised to only accept rides from cars with university stickers on them. But since Ed's mother worked for the University of Santa Cruz, he was easily able to obtain one and in doing so, secured the trust of 23-year-old Rosalind Thorpe and 20-year-old Alice Liu. After executing each of them, he dismembered and dumped their bodies around Eden Canyon, both of which were recovered the following month. Edwards later asked why he liked to decapitate his victims so much, and he replied, The head trip fantasies were a bit like a trophy. You know, the head is where everything is at. The brain, eyes, mouth. That's the person. I remember being told as a kid, you cut off the

head and the body dies. The body is nothing after the head is cut off. Well, that's not quite true. There's a lot left in the girl's body without the head. Finally, on the night of April 20th, 1973, Ed's mother woke him up after arriving home drunk from a party. Ed waited until his mother was asleep, then crept into her room with a claw hammer and bashed her head in while she was asleep. To speed up the process of her demise, he cut her throat with a penknife, then set about decapitating her with a much larger bladed implement. Ed then used his own mother's severed head as a dartboard, taking breaks only to scream obscenities at it. When Ed

had exercised all the hatred and rage he felt for her, he cut out her tongue before smashing her face in with a claw hammer. After storing his mother's corpse in a closet, Ed went for a few beers at a nearby bar, but then upon his return home, he telephoned his mother's friend, 59-year-old Sarah Hallett. Under the pretense of his mother being on vacation, Ed invited Sarah over to have dinner and watch a movie, but after inviting her inside, he strangled her to death. Ed killed Sarah over to have dinner and watch a movie, but after inviting her inside, he strangled her to death. Ed killed Sarah for no other reason than to create a cover story that she and his mother were away on vacation together. Then he packed up his car and drove all the way to Colorado, expecting to be the subject of a serious manhunt. However, after failing to hear

news of his mother's murder on national radio stations, Ed found a phone booth and called the police himself. He confessed to the murders of his mother and Hallett, but the police did not take his call seriously and told him to call back at a later time. A short while afterwards, Kemper once again called the Santa Cruz police, only this time he asked to speak to an officer he knew by name. After again confessing to the murder of his mother and Sarah Hallett, Ed then waited for the police to arrive and upon his capture, he also confessed to the murders of the six hitchhiking students. After his trial began on October 23rd of 1973, three court-appointed psychiatrists found Kemper to be legally sane.

One of the psychiatrists, Dr. Joel Fort, relayed to the court that Kemper had engaged in cannibalism, saying that Ed had sliced flesh from the legs of his victims, then cooked and consumed these strips of flesh in a casserole. Despite such claims, Dr. Fort determined that Kemper was legally sane and was fit to stand trial for the murders. On November 1st, Kemper took the stand testifying that he killed the victims because he wanted to own them like possessions. He also claimed that two different beings inhabited his body and that when the killer personality took over, it was kind of like blacking out. On November 8th, 1973, the six-man, six-woman jury declared Ed guilty on all counts. He asked for the death penalty,

requesting death by torture, but instead received seven years to life for each count, to be served at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Today, Ed is free to mix with the general prison population and is considered a model prisoner. During his time in prison, Ed has participated in a number of interviews which have contributed to the understanding of the mind of serial killers. FBI profiler John Douglas described Ed as among the brightest prison inmates he's interviewed, one capable of rare insight for a violent criminal. Douglas also added that he actually enjoyed Ed's company, calling him

open and sensitive with a good sense of humor. In these interviews, Ed is open and honest regarding the nature and motives of his crimes, and he's expressed a desire to prevent people like himself from committing crime in the future. There's somebody out there that is watching this and hasn't killed people but wants to. They need to talk to somebody about it, Ed was quoted as saying. They have to trust somebody enough to sit down and talk about it because it can't be stopped easily once it starts. To this day, Ed is still imprisoned at the California Medical Facility, but he is next eligible for parole in the year 2024. Ed has been repeatedly denied parole in the past and has even waived his right to a hearing on one occasion, but maybe 2024 will be his year.

Maybe Ed's reputation as a model prisoner will allow him to spend his twilight years in the comfort of his own home. But in the words of prosecutor Ariadne Simmons, we don't care how much of a model prisoner he is because of the enormity of his crimes. Ed might act like a polite and affable gentle giant, but make no mistake, the man is a monster. I picked up two hitchhikers in ten years and either they're all cursed or I'm super unlucky. But either way, never again. The first was this really cute girl I figured I could maybe vibe with on the road to Fresno. And for a while, everything was going great and I was thinking we could maybe vibe with on the road to Fresno and for a while everything was going great and I was thinking we could maybe swap numbers or something. But then she asked if she can smoke. There was nowhere to pull over right away because we were right in the middle of the highway so I asked if she could wait a few minutes. She says no then insists on climbing into

the back seat so she can smoke. I tell her to at least open a window because apparently she couldn't wait, then I go back to focusing on driving. I then start smelling this really gross smell, like way different than cigarettes, even with the window open and I look at my rear view to see that she's sucking on a freaking meth pipe. I freak out and tell her to stop, but by that point she's high as a kite, telling me to shut up and laughing at me. I'm still freaking out and I demand that she stop smoking meth in the backseat of my car and she ends up hitting me from the backseat. It got so bad I thought that I was going to cause a crash or something and luckily I was able to get

her out under threat of calling the police. There was no big disaster or anything, but that puts me off stopping for hitchhikers for quite a while. Now the next time was this guy holding a sign saying, need a hospital, can't afford an ambulance. I pull over, check him out to see if he's for real, and he seems to be in a pretty bad way, so I tell him to hop in. We're making some small talk at first and he seems a little woozy, but not dying or anything. But then about 15 minutes into the drive, the guy starts taking a turn for the worse. He's sweating, holding his stomach, telling me he feels like he's gonna puke, but we're maybe like two minutes away from the hospital, so I keep telling him to hold it down for just a few more minutes. We get there and

he opens the door to my car, then just pukes up blood all over the concrete outside. I'm freaking out, kind of asking like, bro, you good? And he takes about two steps towards the hospital before just collapsing and going into seizures, right there before my eyes. People rush out of the hospital, put the guy on some stretcher. It was like something out of a movie. Sadly, I think the guy did die. Maybe if someone is super hurt, I'll give them a ride, but after those two, I think I have a fear of hitchhikers from now on. With hundreds of styles and textures, there's a perfect minky waiting for you. Celebrate the season with comfort that lasts beyond the holiday. Shop now at softminkyblankets.com. Before I well and truly retired, I worked a security job at a set of storage units just outside of Tucson,

Arizona. I'd just finished a 37-year stint as a sheriff's deputy, so I walked onto the job, and I honestly thought that it would be an easy way to pad my bank account until I was too tired to work anymore. Turns out, it was much more eventful than I'd figured. I didn't mind working nights much, that's part of the reason the boss man hired me. I didn't have a reason to be up in the daytime anyways, not since my wife passed away and my son moved his family out to California. I hate to put a downer on it like that, but the truth is the truth. Plus, it made sense to have someone with instincts and experience guarding the units at night, and they were much less likely to get robbed. So that's how I started working nights, four days on, four days off, on what were some of the most tedious shifts I'd ever

worked. For a long time the most exciting thing that happened to me was coming face to face with a trio of coyotes. We just stared at each other for a little while until the coyotes decided to move on. Moments like that made it fine work in a way, moments of nocturnal solitude, all that peace and stillness after so many years of pedal to the metal. But then there was one time when my peace was disturbed by the kind of thing that prompted my retirement from law enforcement in the first place. I thought I'd escaped the terrible evil that man is capable of inflicting on his fellow man. But instead, it came following me. One night, at around two in the morning, a group of men came walking past the site's small office.

The office was right next to the site's front entrance, meaning you could see everyone coming and going from a large window near the door. As the group passed the window, one of the men looked inside and made eye contact with me, and the next thing I know, he's knocking on the door to the office and letting himself in. He was well-dressed, around 30 years old, sounded Hispanic but spoke excellent English, and at first, I was taken aback by how downright friendly he was. He greeted me, asked me if I was the site's security guard, then when I said yes, he acted like it was some kind of high position.

I'd have thought that he was being patronizing if it wasn't for the fact that he was so endearing. He told me his name was Manalo and that he and his friends would be conducting a little late night business in one of the storage units. I joked that I hoped it wasn't anything illegal, which prompted raucous laughter from Manalo before he assured me that no such activity was taking place. He told me that he and his friends owned Lot 36, and that they were in the antiques business and that they specialized in pieces of the Spanish colonial period. Now, I love my history, and I just so happened to

specialize in the Spanish conquest of southern and central America. I ended up asking Manalo about some of the pieces he kept on the lot and he seemed to know an awful lot about this business. He also seemed to share my passion for regional history too and when he professed to know who Bernal Diaz del Castillo was, I was truly impressed. The site had a small waiting room in the office, complete with a water cooler and a coffee machine for current and prospective customers And a few minutes into our conversation, Manalo asked if I wanted a cup of coffee He sympathized with me being up so late and waxed on lyrical about how it must wear me down being up all night

I told him it wasn't too bad and that it was was nice that he offered, and then we got back to talking history. We chatted back and forth for maybe 30-40 minutes, and I gathered that Manalo was a very intelligent and very wealthy man. He didn't explicitly talk about his wealth, but I started to notice how expensive his watch looked, and the numbers he threw around when talking about certain rare furniture pieces were five and six figure numbers. But anyway, as I was saying, we talk for a while and I'm enjoying our conversation, when suddenly Manalo's friends show up and knock on the door. He excuses himself, tells me he has to leave, but shakes my hand very sincerely while thanking me for the stimulating conversation. I walk him out of the office, wish him a good night, then turn around to walk back inside when the cop in me suddenly realizes something. Police work, especially detective work, is all about details.

You learn to notice things, be they differences or numbers or routines and such. It's something the department drills into you and it's something that never goes away once it's there. Walking onto the site, Manala was accompanied by four of his so-called partners. When they were leaving, he was only accompanied by three. I walked back out of the office and watched four total men getting into a sleek-looking Ram 1500, definitely four in total, and I was 99% certain that five had walked onto the lot. I stood there, wondering if my cop instincts were finally starting to fail me with age. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there were only four of them. But if I was right, where was the fifth man? I decided to take a little walk around Lot 36, the unit that Manalo and his friends claim to own.

After all, it couldn't hurt to just take a look around, right? I got up, finished off the rest of the coffee that was purchased for me by the suspiciously friendly man, then walked around to Lot 36, and as soon as I was standing outside of it, I knew something was wrong. I trust that there aren't many people in the world who have witnessed an active murder scene before, and that can only be a good thing. If you have, there are certain things that always stay with you, and for me, it was the smell of blood. Hot blood smells like rust. That always struck me as a dumb sentence because it's not one that makes sense until you smell a lot of it, fresh

from the source. But when you do smell a lot of it, that's just about the only word that covers it. It smells rusty. It's not a putrid smell, it doesn't make you gag or anything, but my god, once you smell it, you never forget it. And it's that hot, rusty smell that I smelled outside of Lot 36 that night. There was a hell of a lot of fresh blood somewhere, still warm due to the humid night air, and I was willing to bet on my mother's grave that was inside of Lot 36. I immediately called 911, got connected with a police dispatcher, and told them exactly why I had my hunch. I explained who I was, told them I had decades of law enforcement experience, and that I needed uniformed officers as soon as physically

possible. We kept bolt cutters on site so I could get the padlock off, but I needed the law on site to witness what was inside. Two officers showed up within the hour. I walked them over to the lot and explained the situation. It didn't take much explaining. One of the officers put his nose right up to the seam of the storage unit, took one whiff, and told me to bust it open. But when he did, that rusty, coppery smell of fresh blood washed over us like a wave. The whole interior of the storage unit was covered in plastic sheets, which were in turn soaked in blood, and there were just two pieces of furniture. One was a long metal table with all kinds of bloody tools and instruments strewn on top of it. The other was what looked like a

dentist chair with a broken mutilated corpse strapped into it. For a minute or two, the three of us were hypnotized by just how horrifying the makeshift torture chamber actually was. In all my years in law enforcement, I'd never seen anything quite like it. Whoever had put it together had even bothered to partially soundproof the interior, probably for added peace of mind, although I believe it was the gag applied to the victim which really muffled their screams. I don't want to go into detail with regards to the kind of mutilations performed on the victim, but what I will do is assure you of one single thing.

Whoever wanted that man dead wanted him to die very slowly and very painfully. Ways that would make death seem like a mercy when it finally came. Within a few hours, there were dozens of cops wandering around the site, with all kinds of forensic vehicles parked outside, and they kept coming and going for almost a week after. I heard the story in the media, and a TV crew even visited on one of my days off to get some footage of the forensics team pouring over the scene. But after that, the media was low on details and it stayed like that for a while. A few months later, I found myself thinking about the murder, so I got in touch with one of the younger co-workers who was still with the department. They told me it was cartel-related,

which I had already long suspected, but as the deputies pieced together the who's and why's of it, a deeply unsettling picture began to emerge. My old buddy told me that the friendly man who'd brought me coffee that night wasn't named Manalo and was more likely to be Luis Esparza, one of the Sinaloa cartel's men north of the border. Luis had sat down, talked antiquities, and drank coffee with me like a gentleman, while his men tortured his own nephew to death in the storage unit at Lot 36. Word had come down from the FBI that they'd lost an informant in the Sinaloa's northern operation, and it came down right about the same time we found the body. So, the department chiefs put two and two together and figured it was a cartel thing,

and that there was little point in taking it further because the killers were probably back south of the border already. A tale as old as time in my area of the country. You'd think that after almost four decades in law enforcement, I'd be more accustomed to the evils men can do to one another. But the way that cartel lieutenant could just sip coffee and talk history, while knowing his own flesh and blood were being ripped apart and cut open while they were still alive. It takes a cold, cold heart to do something like that. It's inhuman, almost.

I don't know if these people are crazy, or if the money makes them do these things, but I suspect a feeling of betrayal really motivated that young man's murder. They say blood runs thicker than water, but I can assure you, they made that being overnight work. Sometimes people ask me where the craziest place I've worked is, or where the easiest place I've worked is, or what the scariest on the job moment has been. Strangely enough, the answer to the second two questions is the same place, and folks are always surprised to hear it. Because I honestly think the best security job I ever worked was the

overnight shift at a funeral home. Some people think I'm crazy for saying that, all alone in the middle of the night with nothing but dead bodies to keep me company. But as long as you don't believe in ghosts or any of that stuff, the job is a walk in the park. Nobody in their right mind wants to break into a funeral home in the middle of the night. Not to say that they didn't have some pretty valuable stuff on site. Some of the caskets went for $8,000 to $9,000. But again, only the crackiest of the crackheads would be so without crack that they'd try to steal a fur-lined coffin. And they'd have to be built like Shaq to do it. So, since I certainly didn't have to worry about anyone

breaking out of the funeral home, I basically had nothing to do. I guess the funeral home just chalked me up as an expense, something to reassure the relatives of the deceased that they were being properly watched over or whatever. But I'm serious. Aside from the odd walk around, all I did was watch TV and lift weights. But ironically enough, it was at this cushy security job that I had the creepiest encounter of my entire life. I was about six months into the job and aside from the whole overnight thing, I was loving every second of it. I started learning Spanish to try and impress this Dominican chick that I was vibing with so I spent most of the first night walking around with my headphones on, repeating Spanish phrases to

absolutely no one. So at one point, I'm sitting in the manager's office, which is where their bank of security monitors were, and I casually look over to check if they're all clear. Now keep in mind that all of the times that I've looked at those monitors over the past six months, the most I've seen was like a fox. The rest of the time, they've been totally clear of any activity, either animal or human. Only this night, as I'm trying to understand the Spanish verb to be, I see someone standing perfectly still in the parking lot of the funeral home.

The sight instantly gets this, what? reaction out of me, not because I was seeing someone for the first time, but because they were just standing there, perfectly still, and just staring at the building. He was so still for so long that if it wasn't for the clock numbers ticking away in the corner of the screen, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the picture had frozen. But then he moved, just shifted a little, and I realized he was really just standing there like a statue, eyes glued to the funeral home. It was real cold out that night, so I put my jacket, hat, and gloves on in preparation for going outside to warn the person off. Then just before I walked out of the office, I checked the screen again.

Nothing. There was no longer anyone standing there. Best case scenario, it was just some drunk that moved on. Worst case scenario, it called for a sweep of the entire exterior. I walked out into the parking lot, but I don't see anyone. But just because I didn't see him didn't mean he wasn't there, so I commenced on checking around the building to make sure statue man isn't fixing to start trouble. I'm shining my flashlight seeing nothing then when I check around back to where the fire door was I hear some scampering sound followed by quick footsteps. This SOB must have seen my flashlight beam before I turned the corner and just up and ran off before I could get to him because when I turned the corner,

all I saw was some hooded figure beating feet about 50 yards away from me. Remember what I said about the crackiest of the crackheads needing crack so bad that they rob a funeral home? Well, that's what I figured it was And since I don't mess with no crackheads, I just went right back inside, made sure the rear door was secure, then called the cops to file a report. I didn't need a unit sent over or anything. I just wanted them to have something on file for next time I called because I had this bad feeling that I'd be calling them back about this guy very soon. And I was right. The second time I caught the guy sneaking around, he was much more ballsy about it. I stopped listening to my Spanish lessons at work and

for good reason because the next time the guy visited, I heard him before I saw him. I tried to open up the front doors, bold as brass, and first time I heard the faint sound of them refusing to open as the manager's office was almost straight across from the entrance. But then the second time, at which point I knew something was wrong, was when the guy violently tried to rip the doors open or something because I heard this almighty crash before I ran to see what was going on. Now the funeral home had two sets of framed glass double doors, meaning you could look right through each way. I didn't see the guy's face very well, but he sure saw mine, and just like the first time I caught him,

he just ran off into the night. The same thing kept happening for weeks on end. At first once a week, then sometimes twice a week, then by the end of it all, I was having to chase this guy off three times a week sometimes. I called the cops every single time, giving the best description I could, but they never got back to me saying that they picked anyone up or noticed anything during their patrols. I'm not sure what they were looking for or if the guy kept off the roads to stay low-key, but it is what it is, I guess. I was there just to do my job and protect the dead people. It didn't scare me or anything, it was just incredibly annoying to be honest.

I had this incredibly cushy job, and this creepy guy keeps showing up and forcing me to actually do my job. I know, I knew, hardly seems like a monster, but you just wait. But I haven't even gotten to the creepy part yet, which happened way at the end of the whole midnight visitor saga. So the last time the guy showed up, I expected it to go down just like all the other times. I saw him on the camera, standing totally still in the parking lot, just like the first time I'd spotted him. He did that a lot, by the way, especially when he finally figured out that he just couldn't break in, but every time I walked out to shoo him off, he'd always run away before I could say a word to him.

Only this time, the final time, as I walk out of the office and he spots me through the glass doors, he doesn't run, he doesn't move, he just stares me down as I walk out into the dark parking lot. Don't get me wrong, the sudden change of tactics definitely made me a little nervous and I started to worry if he had some kind of weapon on him. But just the chance of being able to ask the guy why, after weeks and weeks of crazy curiosity, I just couldn't find it in myself to pass that up. I didn't walk up to him or anything, I just stepped out of the double doors and into the dark parking lot, watching as he stared back at me from under his hood. That's when I first

realized how young the guy actually was. I mean, he looked like a kid, but just from the size of him and the patchy facial hair you could tell that he was late teens or maybe early twenties. He also wasn't mad-dogging me like I thought he would be either. He looked kind of sad and tired as I stared back at him. A few seconds or so passed before I finally asked him why he kept showing up there in the middle of the night. He didn't say anything in reply, and I know this sounds a little out there, but it was like he was trying to talk, but he just couldn't. I figured that he might be a little slow or something. He definitely didn't look like a crackhead, so when it turned to look like I was going to be the one doing all the

talking, I just rolled out the rest of my piece. I told him that he needed to stay away from the funeral home, that I was running out of patience with him, and if he showed up again, I was going to catch him and beat him down. I wasn't too aggressive about it, it came out more like a friendly warning but still the guy didn't say anything and he just looked back at me, still seeming all sad. I figured that I'd try just once more to talk to him and if he didn't want to talk back, I'd just go inside and call the cops like usual. I honestly didn't bet on him piping up that time either so I asked the most fundamental question in my mind. Why? Why keep showing up, week after week, trying to get into a funeral home at night?

But again, nothing. At least until I turned to walk back into the building, because that's when the guy finally found the words to tell me what he wanted, and I'll be cold in my grave before I forget what he said. I just... He started off and then paused, and as you can imagine, I immediately spin around to hear him out. Then after a few seconds, all he says, I just want to touch one. I knew what he was talking about right away. I just didn't want to believe that that's what he was talking about right away. I just didn't want to believe that that's what he was talking about.

So, I asked him, straight up, touch one of what? I knew what he was talking about, and he knew that I knew what he was talking about, but he just didn't want to say it. And as much as I tried to squeeze it out of him, he knew better than to actually come out and tell me what he wanted to touch, or more accurately, who he wanted to touch. When I realized he wasn't going to say it, I told him to get help, and that I was going inside to tell the cops exactly what he told me, including the implication. I also threw in that if I ever saw him hanging around the funeral

home, or any other kind of place for that matter, I was going to beat him until we walked like Donald Duck. The guy looked like he was trying to say something and I gave him a minute or so to get it out but he couldn't, so I went back inside to call the cops. The guy never showed up again and that really was the last time and I'd like to think it was all me keeping it gangster that scared him off but I get the feeling that he'll just try another funeral home and another and another until he finally gets what he wants. After I got out of the army, a fellow ex-squaddie lined me up with a job as a security guard working for a regional contractor. They paid for me to get my SIA license, which is the bit of paper you need if you want to

work security in the UK, and then after working with them for a while, I bounced from company to company, trying to work my way up the ladder. I ended up working for a major supermarket chain, which I dreaded at first, but I took to it more than I thought I would. It's a sociable job, which suits me and considerably less dangerous than the army, but not exactly boring either, which was one of the main things I was worried about. I thought I'd be sat on my butt all day long, chasing kids off from pilfering streets or what have you, but it turns out that there were a couple of quite hair-raising moments too. Nothing too dodgy for the most part, but there was this one incident that was worse than anything I'd seen in the army,

and I've been to the bloody Falklands. This was mid-May of 1996, and I remember that because what I'm about to tell you happened just a few days after Manchester United beat Liverpool in the FA Cup final. My father-in-law, God rest his soul, was a Liverpool fan, and the sour face he had on the next day at Sunday dinner still makes me chuckle to this day. I was in the security office of this large supermarket, not sure I should say which one, and I must have been quite engrossed with whatever paperwork I was getting done, because when my radio buzzed, it just about scared me half to death. It had been awful quiet, weekday afternoon and all, so I wasn't expecting anything major, but when I heard the voice coming through the static, I realized something bad was happening. I was coupled with this big soft lad called Liam, the six foot something lummox who wasn't in the least bit fazed by anything,

and Liam sounded very nervous when he called for assistance on the radio that day. He told me that he was in the beer and wine section, which was right at the back of the store near the bakery, and that that meant that I had to walk all the way through the shop to get there. The closer I get, the more I can see some commotion coming from the beer and that that meant that I had to walk all the way through the shop to get there. The closer I get, the more I can see some commotion coming from the beer and wine aisle. One woman even pushes her trolley up to me and starts begging me to go and help my colleague, saying that there was a scary man with no shoes on, threatening him with a bottle. I immediately get a jog on, turning into the beer and wine aisle to see big Liam facing down a man in a long coat. The woman was right in saying that he had no shoes on, but he also wore what was clearly a hospital gown,

and I remember thinking that if it wasn't for the long coat, I'd probably be able to see the hospital tag on his wrist. The bloke was maybe in his late 20s or early 30s and he kept telling Liam to keep away from him. Liam hadn't intended to go anywhere near the guy as standard procedure called for two guards to be present during any attempt at neutralizing a threat. But then as I arrived and as he started edging towards the guy with the intention of tackling him, he started grabbing bottles of spirits off the shelves and smashing them down in front of us. Since it was a clear and present danger to the customers, I told Liam to start clearing out the store and to enlist the help of the staff in order to do so.

This obviously left me alone with our subject, but since he was evidently on the defensive, I reckoned that I'd be able to keep the situation contained until Liam had helped clear the area. In order to try and distract the man from any further violence of destruction of stock, I started to ask him what his problem was, in the nicest way possible of course. I had no idea what kind of response he was going to give to that, but I reckoned it'd be something a bit loopy. After all, he was in his hospital gown, clearly having some kind of mental breakdown, so I didn't expect anything coherent out of what I assumed could, well, be a mental patient. But when he actually spoke, what he said sent chills through me. They put something inside me. I need to cut it, I need to get it out.

I'm asking him what he meant by put something inside him and do you need to go back to the hospital. And I honestly thought listening to him and asking him questions would calm him down. Turns out my second question provoked a massively angry reaction in him. He started screaming. I'm not going back there. You can't make me. And all that and he grabbed a bottle of something and hurled it down the aisle at me. It was a wild throw so it didn't hit the target

but it was enough to make me back off a few meters while I assured him that no one was going to make him go anywhere. It was a lie of course, once he was in the hands of the police, they could do whatever they bloody well liked with him, but for the time being, I had to keep him from hurting anyone, as well as focusing on loss prevention. I focused on telling him that he wouldn't be going back to any hospital and that all I wanted to do was make sure that he was okay, and after enough of that kind of talk, he seemed to relent a little bit. But then instead of calming down, the guy seemed to go completely the other way. To my horror, he started walking towards me, through all the broken glass on the floor. I started telling him, hey, don't do that, you're gonna hurt yourself.

But he didn't listen, and the first crunch of glass under his foot made my skin crawl. I thought he'd jump back and fall on his butt. I mean, the pain must have been unimaginable. You've got all that broken glass cutting into him and all the spirits on the ground and they must have seeped into his cuts. But the weirdest thing was that he just didn't seem to feel any pain. He just kept walking. And as he did, he started tearing up. He said, I just need to get it out of me, in this wobbly voice that made it sound like he was about to cry, and then he just sat down among the booze and broken glass which, again, made me wince like nobody's business. I kept asking what

it was that was inside of him, and who he thought put it there, again, anything to distract him and make it seem like I genuinely cared. Don't get me wrong, I did care what happened to him, I'm only human after all and the guy seemed to be actually suffering from something, clearly. He couldn't seem to give me an answer though, and I'm not even sure if he was listening by that point because he kept pushing his fingers into his face and neck and arms. It looked like he was searching for something, something underneath his skin, and I guess that he was looking for whatever they had put inside him.

God knows who they were and I had no idea what he thought they'd put inside him, but he seemed really bloody convinced of it and he proved beyond all doubt with his next action. When the bloke first picked up a large chunk of broken bottle, I thought that he might be planning on attacking me with it, so my first instinct was to back off from him even more. I told him to put it down, that there was no need for anyone to get hurt today, but again, he seemed to barely even hear me. I watched as he started prodding at one of his eyes. Then he started whispering to himself. And then, before I could get close enough to stop him, he started pushing a piece of broken bottle into the skin below his eyeball. All I could do was react. I nearly went bottom over top as I went through the giant puddle of

spilled booze, but I made it to the other side, grabbed the arm that was holding the piece of glass then wrenched it away from his face. If you remember, in his other hand was the bigger piece of broken bottle he was holding by the neck and he got a couple of decent swipes at my leg before I was able to circle around and drag him away from the broken glass. I remember hearing some screams from the people who hadn't been properly moved out of the area and realizing that it was quite a lot of blood trailing along the floor from where I was dragging the guy. I didn't really know what I was going to do from there. It was all just a short-term solution to a problem of the bloke wanting to harm himself, but luckily, he took care of the biggest problem for me. In order to be able to find his feet again,

the guy had to let go of the broken bottle to use his one free hand to get a bit of balance. That gave me a golden opportunity to drag him away from it before flooring him again, then after pinning his arms down, I was able to basically sit on his chest until Liam came back to give me a hand. I was hoping he might have tired himself out, but no. The whole time he was bucking and writhing and I don't know if it was the adrenaline, but he was much stronger than he looked. Honestly, if Liam hadn't gotten back when he did, I'm not sure I'd have been able to hold him for much longer. He was completely manic, still up for a fight despite all his

injuries. He kept saying all this really distressing stuff too, saying I was with them, whoever they were, and if I had any kids that I should kill them because they'd be coming for them next. I told them I had no idea who they were and I swear to god he says to me, but now they know you and that means you're effed. I know the guy was off in his head and that I shouldn't have paid attention to anything he was saying, but in the moment, thinking about my daughter, some of that stuff really got to me in my head. Eventually, the police did turn up, and we helped get the bloke into cuffs and into their van. He was kicking and spitting the whole

way, but in the end, the job was a good one and we were back to the office to wipe ourselves down with antiseptic wipes before we filled out incident reports. And that, boys and girls, was the single worst incident I'd ever dealt with, and I was on duty for the riots back in 2011. That was just mob rule, something I could understand given how young and scummy the rioters tended to be, but what happened that day with the guy in the hospital gown has stayed with me for decades. We never found out what the matter with him was or if he ended up getting better, but I suppose that's life, isn't it? Just a series of unanswered questions. But what I've figured out is that there's some that I'd rather not know the answer to. I used to work night shift at UPS as a security guard. The security shed was at the entrance of the gate to make sure no one could get into the facility.

The job wasn't hard, I was mostly checking seals on semi-trucks coming in, and when the shifts changed, I'd check in and out the package handlers working inside the facility. Package handlers would have to walk through a metal detector and scan their ID cards in order to enter. Their ID would make a green light go off when they scanned in and we'd let them pass. If they didn't have their ID that day, they had to wait with me and my coworker while one of us contacted a supervisor or HR to let them in. One night, my coworker and I just finished up checking in and out of the shift change. I was about to do our hourly parking lot checks when I saw someone approaching the shed. I yelled

out, late today? And he said, yep. Then I walked back to help my coworker check him in. I don't know why I walked back in. My coworker could easily check in one late person by himself, but maybe because I yelled out to him, I felt obligated to finish our conversation. When the late guy walked in,

I noticed that I'd never seen him before, but new people come in all the time time so it wasn't a big shock. As he scanned his ID, I noticed for the first time ever that the green light showed up and followed by a loud buzz. Shocked because I'd never seen an ID fail. Then as he passed through the metal detector it went off near his hip. He showed us his belt buckle and said, must be this. Protocol when the metal detector goes off is the person removes what is setting it off and tries again and, if it is a belt buckle, they need to empty all their pockets.

Against protocol, my coworker lets him in after he removes only his front pockets, but since his ID failed we couldn't let him in anyways. So my coworker lets him sit down in the shed with us while I call a supervisor. None of the supervisors answered their phones, probably because a shift just started and they were busy organizing workers. A few futile calls later, the late guy said, hey, I'm gonna be super late, can I just go in? I said that he couldn't because I could get fired. He said, no one's gonna know. But then I pointed up to a camera in the corner of the shed looking at us and his face almost jolted to look at it. I told him that I would try HR. The night shift HR was a pretty cool guy that would

shoot the breeze with us on our breaks. He told us that a night shift HR worker is pretty much just a human complaint box. People just go to him to complain about other people. When he answered his phone, I asked him if he could come out and check the late guy in. He said that he was talking to someone and if I could just tell him his name and the ID number. I gave him the name and number on the late guy's card and HR told me that he'd get back to me. While we waited, the late guy asked us if we'd ever seen anything crazy while working. I told him no and my coworker told him a story about a guy with a hatchet in the parking lot. I got a call from HR and when I heard what he had to say, I almost froze. HR told me that the late guy was actually an ex-employee.

He was fired because he was involved in a violent altercation with a supervisor. HR told me to ask him to leave and to call the cops if he didn't. I didn't know what to say, so I made up a lie that there was only a new supervisor working tonight and no one could verify if he worked there. He then said, Let me go get some co-workers. They know, so they can tell you I work here. I again pointed to the camera and said that if it's not a supervisor, I would get in trouble. He then said, well, how will I get paid? At this point, I know he doesn't work here anymore, so I told him that I would inform them that he showed up to work and that they will pay him for

a full day without him even having to actually work. Clearly frustrated and out of excuses, he got up and left. As he left, I noticed something in his back pocket, something that looks like the shape of a small firearm or knife, definitely not a phone or wallet. And the rest of the night was normal. The next day I came to work and my supervisor was there to greet me. He shook me and my co-worker's hand and said, good job.

He informed us that the guy from last night came back in the morning and crashed his car through the gate. I guess he was high on something so when he crashed, he went unconscious for a while until the cops showed up. They searched his vehicle and found weapons and duct tape and a shovel. Pretty much a murder kit. He was arrested and I never heard anything from it since. And I quit only a few weeks later. I still can't believe I sat in a room with a would-be murderer for over 20 minutes. And I wonder what would have happened if I just let my co-worker check the guy in late, by himself. Right after I dropped out of college, my life sucked.

And to support myself, I had to get this temp job working overnight security for a hotel. It was maybe only five weeks of work before the permanent guy came back after surgery or something, but it kept me afloat while my parents were on my back to pay them rent. Harsh, but fair. Working there was mostly uneventful, especially during the later hours, but after a while, the lack of sunlight really started getting to me. I started at 11pm, do a few walks around, help empty the bar out when it closed, then I was generally free to watch late night TV and raid the kitchen for pastries, then watch the sun come up on the roof before clocking out at around 6.30 in the morning. The five weeks went by like a breeze, and it was literally my last shift before I started a new job when I went through one of the most heart-pounding incidents of my young life. Everything was going smoothly until just after 6am when the front desk calls me on my radio and says there is a noise complaint from one of the occupied rooms. Apparently, the guest clock radio alarm had been going off for almost 20 minutes straight,

and it was angering a lot of the neighboring rooms to the point that they were calling the front desk to complain. To add to it, the front desk tells me the room requested a wake-up call 30 minutes before and hadn't answered multiple attempts to call. I tell them I'll go check it out, then I start heading up to the room with Ted, the maintenance guy, joining me just in case. We get to the door and, sure enough, the alarm clock is blaring full volume, one of those really annoying old style ones too. I can hear the phone in the room ringing too, the big heavy older type phone with an actual bell in it so I could totally understand why people were up in arms about all the noise. I knock on the door and shout over the noise, no answer.

I pound on the door, no answer. I dip my keycard and start to open the door and that's when I realize that the upper latch is still connected. I immediately freeze. I guess I had unconsciously assumed that the room was empty given the volume of noise in the room but the security latch can only be closed by someone in the room. My mind starts racing. I use a card to pop the security latch then open the door and laying face down on the bed, half covered by a bed sheet, is a middle aged man. And it didn't look like he was breathing. I look at the maintenance guy who gives me a look that says, what do you want me to do? I enter the room and say, excuse me sir, and the loudest voice I can

muster, loud enough to be heard over the alarm and the phone, just praying for him to wake up and for everything to be fine. But I get nothing, no response. It sounds crazy, but even though I kind of figured that he was dead, I gave it one more try at a pure wishful thinking. I get next to the bed and then much louder this time I shout, excuse me sir, reaching out to grab the dude's hairy shoulder and shake it while I shout again, excuse me sir, as loud as I can. Suddenly, the guy lifts his head up, looks at me confused while we explain that we thought he was dead. It turns out, he was just trashed and didn't hear any of his alarms, then asked us in slurs if we could turn off the alarm for him. We oblige, walk out of the room, and breathe a sigh of relief. Thinking that guy was dead and

then thinking that me, a 19 year old, was now somehow responsible for him. That was the scariest feeling of my life up to that point. I'd never done CPR, barely listened in the first aid lessons we'd gotten in high school and for a second I really thought it was going to be all on me to save that guy's life. Thankfully that wasn't the case. The feeling so unprepared bothered me so much that I think that incident became the catalyst for me actually becoming a man and not acting like a kid anymore. Nothing I could brush with mortality to make you realize that we've only got so much time on the clock and so you better not waste it. I used to work security at a strip mall here in Texas. The mall was owned by some company who rented the units to the various businesses,

but hired us as security for the whole thing. This meant we were in control of all the security cameras as well as the footage, and it was through this that I helped a gentleman recover videos from our DVR system. Long story short, it showed him shooting three men that tried to rob his store. And it went kinda like this. The store owner is behind the counter just doing his thing, then the three robbers burst into his store. Two of the men run for the beer section while a third points a gun at the guy. Then as soon as the two kids grab the beer and start running for the door, the third kid drops his gun.

Yep, Butterfingers drops his pistol. And there's this perfect oh crap look on his face. In that instant, the store owner pulls out a shotgun from behind the counter and just starts blasting. You see the first kid go down right outside the door on both the cameras, as they were pointed at the inside of the door and the ones outside. The third kid begins shooting wildly in the general direction of the guy after picking his gun up again, but he doesn't hit anything besides display shelves. Store owner hits the floor, then comes back up with a shotgun and opens fire on the shooter who goes down halfway out of the store, basically clogging the doorway up. The last robber is trying to make a dash out the door but his buddy's body slows him and the clerk chases him, shooting him down in the parking lot.

The kid with the gun died, while the first kid who got shot survived. I don't remember what happened to the one that took the closest shotgun glass but I don't think he died either. Unreal to think about but I guess that's life. The whole thing happened so fast it's all over in just a few seconds when you watch the video but the thing that really creeped me out was the way the store owner acted while watching the whole thing back. I know he was entitled to defend himself and that no one should have to apologize for it but I don't know. If that was me I wouldn't be so celebratory about it. It seemed like he enjoyed knowing that he killed the one kid. It didn't seem to faze him at all. I guess there's some

folks out there who are better than killing than others, and I don't care what anyone says. That's just straight up creepy to me. To be continued... This was almost ten years ago now and I have since left the security industry, but I'm not naming any names in order to protect the innocent. This happened on the very night of my very first post. I had to do fire watch, which was basically what we called the night shift at this ultra-scummy two-story hotel that had about 40 rooms to it. The entire hotel was condemned because of the back stair set that separated each floor was about to collapse. Code enforcement and fire department

condemned it. Anyway, my job was to get everyone out of the hotel to move to another hotel the owner had. The entire place was full of mostly crackheads and near homeless people trying to survive and making weekly payments. The parking lot was full of junky cars not running. It was run down and derelict. It was something out of a movie, bad part of Stockton, California in the middle of the summer. Needles everywhere around the property and oh my god, the roaches. The cockroaches these rooms had. I had to knock on every door with a code enforcement guy. I wore a body cam as door with a code enforcement guy, a war, a body cam as well, and a fire department guy. Everyone that answered the door to their rooms was clearly an addict and

not all there. I remember knocking on the door of a woman's room. She had five kids in there with her. Single mom and trash bags piled to the ceiling and side, and cockroaches crawling everywhere. It was a horrible sight. Every single occupant had four hours to get what they can carry and leave. Most of them tried to pack up their lives, but they couldn't. A lot of stuff was left behind in these rooms. So many people asked me for help or what they need to do. I didn't have answers. I was just the guy needing everyone out. I couldn't believe the living conditions these people lived in to keep from being on the streets and it made me realize what I had. I burned my pants and boots when I got home. I washed my uniform shirt about six times. I threw my gloves away. I was so scared

to bring cockroaches home to my own home. Millions upon millions of roaches infested this place and they all slept in it. It makes my skin crawl to think about, even all these years later. I've been a security guard for the past seven years. For my first four years, I worked at this really, really old factory, like over a hundred years old, something like that. Two creepy things have happened to me. The first one happened at around 1am on a weeknight. There wasn't a single person in the plant except my co-worker who was in the office. I was doing my rounds and I approached a kind of back corner of the building. There's a door that I'm supposed to go out, take a look around,

and come back in. As I approached the door, the lights around said door went completely out. So basically there was around 40 feet of darkness in front of me and my entire body froze instantly and I could not for the life of me convince myself to walk through said darkness. Second thing, a little explaining is needed. When I leave the office, there's a door I used to leave and immediately to the left is a hallway which I used to start my rounds. I take a left down that hallway but there's a door to the right that goes into a small side parking lot that is always empty. Only the owners and other VIPs park there during the day since I worked at night and it was always empty. Now anyways, I'm coming out of the office, look down at my phone and put on music.

Boom. The door to the right slammed shut. I mean like it made me jump out of my boots. Of course my coworker was on rounds. I walked out to the door and nobody. I walked out into the parking lot. Nobody. Up the stairs immediately inside said door. Nobody. I couldn't explain it. I have since left this site because, without a doubt, the worst thing about the job were the jumpers. The number of people that took their own life while I was there was haunting. There were roughly four per year in the eight years that I worked there. The worst one for me was this little old lady. She went to the top floor and jumped, fell through a tree and splattered into the sidewall.

She left a body-sized hole in the tree. The fire department came to hose off the sidewalk. Little did they know a good-sized chunk of her liver was under the parked car she landed next to. It wasn't found until the next morning when that person left and the liver was just sitting there. Her sons had to fly in to take care of her estate. On the table in the dining room was a note. She explained that because they weren't going to visit her that year, she didn't need to exist anymore. And they both broke down sobbing when they read that.

We almost had to put them on watch. And over the next three weeks, they would come into the office and demand the security footage that shows their mom going into the elevator, getting out at the top floor and throwing herself off, then landing on the ground. Our general manager and attorney both refused to release this footage to their sons. That stuff still haunts me to this day. Those loud deep sobs of just pure sorrow those grown men let out will forever be in my memory. Thrifting is my favorite hobby, if you can call it that. It's something I like to do alone when I get the time as it's a chance for my brain to shut off and just let go as I scan aisles crammed with random things for hours. Now note, I'm about 5'5 and a former elementary school teacher.

I'm about as intimidating as a wet sock and I'm pretty quiet and stay to myself in public. I had decided to go out of my way to a store I hadn't been to before and followed my usual routine. When I'm in a store, it's just me and the items. I don't pay any mind to anyone around me as the stores are crowded and I'm really only there to do my own thing. So imagine my surprise when an older woman turned to me and said in a huff, Can I help you? I turned and looked around me to make sure that it was I who she was talking to. I just shook my head no, making a confused expression, and went back to looking at shoes.

Things were okay for a minute before I heard her in the next aisle talking to her friend. Oh my god, this creepy woman is following me, every time I look she's there. There was only so much space in the store. I usually go along the edges and then make my way to the center of the store, so there's a good chance that she probably just saw me doing my thing. I tried to avoid her until I realized that she had started talking to random people around me about how creepy I was and how I was stalking her. People started giving me funny looks,

but paid no mind once they realized how harmless and shrimpy I look. Her? Really? Someone said. Yeah, and I'm gonna mess her face up if I see her again. She began making more and more aggressive comments and I just decided that I'd had enough. I've never fought anyone in my life and I wasn't planning to that day. I left my items and went to my car. Yeah, there was something messed up with that lady's head and I wasn't sticking around to find out what it was. To be continued... This happened three nights ago and I am going crazy trying to figure it out. I just moved into a new apartment one month ago and I'm still unpacking and settling in.

I've been using my parents' address as a mailing address, who live a few towns over, 20 minutes away, all my life. Three nights ago my parents called me at 2am, freaked out, and proceeded to tell me this story. Apparently at 1am someone starts banging on their front door and repeatedly ringing the doorbell. My stepdad walks downstairs and opens the door, leaving the front glass door closed and locked. There was a man standing outside who looked to be in his 30s with a black hoodie on with the hood pulled up around his face. He didn't have any distinguishing facial features, facial hair, or tattoos. The only thing my stepdad said was that he looked slightly Hispanic. Neither my stepdad or mother, who was watching the whole thing out a window, recognized who the man was. And the man proceeds

to say, I'm so sorry to bother you, but I'm looking for, and then says my full name. My stepdad plays dumb and says, who? The man proceeds to state my full name again and says that my boyfriend is worried because I didn't come home that night. He claims to be a friend of my boyfriend and tells my stepdad that they are both out looking for me, worried because I didn't show up at home. I don't have a boyfriend. I live by myself with my three dogs and haven't been in a relationship in the past six months. And here's the weird part. My stepdad asked the guy what boyfriend he was talking about and the man tells him the name of the boyfriend I had when I was in 10th grade, nearly 20 years ago. My boyfriend in 10th grade has a very, very unique Italian name, and I've never met anyone with a full name even close to his. He says my high school boyfriend's

name a few more times to ensure my stepdad heard him and repeats that they are very worried about me. Is my stepdad sure that I'm not inside? At this point, my stepdad is weirded out and closes and locks the door in his face. But the man doesn't leave. He lingers in front of my parents' house for the next ten minutes, smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone. Finally, my parents just decide to call the cops. About five minutes before the cops arrive, the man walks down to the dead end on their block and drives away in a silver car. Stepdad was unable to get the license plate.

My parents file a police report and nothing else happens. After I hear this story, I'm going nuts over the weird details. How would someone know who I dated nearly 20 years ago? And what would the motive be of making up a story that included that weird detail about my past? I had not had contact with a 10th grade boyfriend in over a decade. And yesterday, I decided to message him on Facebook to see if he has any insight. I tell him the whole story and he's just as confused as I am and claims to have no part in it. I'm at a loss.

I'm also really freaked out that some strange man is going through that much trouble at 1am, looking for me and corresponding with other people. Any insight or ideas would be greatly appreciated. And no, nothing else weird has happened since then. Call me paranoid all you want, but I can't help but think someone comes into my house while me and my roommates are away, or even worse, home. I'm going to change a few things because I'm genuinely scared, but the basis of this story is the same. My housemates and I are all about 21- 22 year old females and we recently moved into a house near our college campus. We don't have keys and instead a code that we use in our doors. Note we have three pretty calm pets as well. It started with weird individual experiences,

random small things going missing either from public spaces. But things were easy to look over. And also to mention, we're all very close and honest with one another. The things missing couldn't even be stolen and the house is not big, there's only so many places items could have been, you know. Then there's been occurrences where we'd leave with all the blinds open, come back, and they're all closed. Blankets that were left out but randomly folded. It's been getting spookier recently. One of my roommates was home alone and heard a thud. She looked around and all the pets were in the living room with her.

She then hears footsteps and calls out to us, with no answer. So she grabs the pets and loads them into her car because she's hysterical and convinced someone else is in the home with her. To top it off, the other day I was trying on some clothes and getting a hint of something foul. After much investigation, I realized it's the very shorts I'm wearing. Confused, I rummaged through my drawer and I opened my three rows of shorts. The row in the middle smells and stained with urine. I was so disgusted. When I tell you, we have pondered every possible explanation from our pets to even ourselves. The smell wasn't that of a cat or a dog,

and there was no rat droppings, and I immediately registered it as human urine. After doing all my laundry, I notice two identical pairs in my underwear are missing. Nowhere to be found at all and in a place no pet could get into or take or hide. We're not crazy, right? If someone can please give us a logical explanation because maybe, just maybe, yours is the one that our brains will believe enough to help me sleep at night. If not, what do we do? To be continued... use a fake name. This happened a few days ago whilst I was on my way home from visiting my friend's house. I was driving on a back road late at night in my Tesla Model 3 while it was on auto

drive. I'll admit that I was not paying attention to the road and I was on my phone while I had my music in the car playing. The ride was okay and chill for a while but I'm not really sure because I wasn't paying attention to the time. Out of nowhere, my car immediately braked and made an alarming sound. I was scared out of my mind and immediately took control of the wheel and looked through the windshield. When I looked, I saw a figure standing inches from my car barely avoiding being hit. My heart was racing from the impact and now seeing what I could only assume to be a person. They didn't even flinch from the sight of almost being hit.

I looked at them for a good ten seconds before I put my car in park and turned on the megaphone to ask them if they're okay. They didn't respond and proceeded to walk near my window. I locked my doors while they were approaching because I was terrified. They asked me if I could roll down the window to speak to them but I refused and told them that I could hear them from the other side. I then asked why they were out here all alone in the cold and they told me that their car had broken down and that they were hoping someone would stop to help them. As they were talking I got a good look at their face and they seemed to be about 25 to 30. They also asked me my name and I told them my name was Rebecca and they told me that their name was Ashton. And after that small

talk they attempted, I told them that I would be calling someone to come assist them with their situation. They weren't happy with that and insisted I drop them off at a friend's house who lived nearby. And that's when I become really freaked out and suspicious. They told me that they were waiting for someone, and now they need to be dropped off. I then put my car back into drive and told them again, from the windows since the megaphone is not available in park, that I could call someone to come help them. They then tried to reach for the door handle, but I guess they forgot that Tesla handles are embedded into the car.

When they did that I immediately stepped on the pedal and went flying down the road. I didn't even look in my rear view mirror or put the car back into autopilot. The whole ride back I was scared out of my mind. And I got back into a main road where I would hope to see cars and just floored it home. I couldn't get my mind off of it for the rest of the night. I have my suspicions that that guy was not alone and that there were other people with them. I pray that they didn't get someone else who wasn't as lucky as me, and I'll never in my life stop to help some random person ever again. My college was very safe.

The worst that happened was some crazy drunk frat boys get the police called on for mischief or something. It was your typical campus fitted with those blue boxes where you can call for an emergency. Now when I walked around campus I'd often scroll through Reddit or Instagram. I know it was stupid but don't judge me, I was just a college student. Anyway, this particular night it was dark out but only about 7pm. There were lots of other students walking around and the campus was pretty well lit. Yet for some reason I didn't

go on my phone this time. I just had this feeling that something was off. I couldn't quite place it, but in the back of my head, I felt like something bad was going to happen. The walk continued normally, and by the time I got back to my dorm, I had begun to laugh at myself. Now, these were apartment-style dorms you entered from the outside via a pathway. The feeling from before returned, and this time, I was hit by a sudden feeling of intense fear, much stronger than before. I looked around the common area and noticed a light coming from my room. Something told me not to investigate, and instead I muttered,

Seriously? I forgot it? and went back outside. I felt a bit paranoid for the next few minutes, crouching down behind the window like a crazy person. I began to think that I was just being weird when I heard footsteps. I slowly peeked into the window to see a man I didn't know coming out of my room and pouring himself a glass of soda. He brought it back with him and disappeared again. I stayed there for what felt like forever, until about an hour passed and I heard footsteps again. He was headed to the front door and I bolted to the stairway. I climbed to the floor above and waited a few minutes before returning. Sure enough, he was gone and when I entered my dorm I no longer had a bad feeling. I checked the place thoroughly and found nothing out of the ordinary until I laid down to

go to bed a few hours later and felt something weird under the covers. I jolted up and turned on the lights to find a few condoms wrapped in plastic. I'm not sure what would have happened, but I'm fairly certain now that somebody was waiting to do god knows what to me. I didn't recognize this man from class, but he definitely was about my age. I don't know how he knew me, but the thought that I could have been stopped without realizing it struck me hard. I never saw that man again, and I never got the same feeling on campus. Somehow I subconsciously knew that something was wrong. I have no clue how, and maybe there's an explanation, but that bad feeling may have saved my life. I'm sorry. Last year I was going out for drinks with my friends, but since I had to go to uni the next day, I only stayed till around midnight. My boyfriend promised to pick me up and go home with me because I don't like to take the subway alone at night,

but since I was pretty drunk by then, I took a little too long walking out of the pub. Unfortunately, we had to wait for the night bus, with multiple stops since the subway closes on weekdays at night. For context, my boyfriend and I don't live together, but very close to each other, around 15-20 minutes walking distance. Both are pretty scummy areas. He lives near a train station with many crackheads, homeless, and a lot of sketchy people about. And I live in a cheap, bad district with a high crime rate. My building has two entrances on two different streets because it is a corner building site leading to a patio and then to the apartment building and its doors. To get into my apartment, I have to open up three doors.

I usually use the entrance that is nearer to the subway and on the side of my apartment. We had to take two buses to go home. One drove us to the train station and the next one from the train station to my apartment. After getting out of the first bus, we realized that we would have to wait for around 20 minutes or something for the second bus to come and since I really had to sleep at home as I had class the next day, I didn't want to stay at his place. My boyfriend didn't want to wait so he persuaded me to walk instead of taking the bus, which sober me would have never done, but since I was still drunk I didn't care how we got home so I agreed. So we started to walk home and passed a few sketchy people, mostly individuals who clearly were selling drugs but nothing really bad.

Then I saw a guy walking in our direction and I somehow got a bad feeling. So I told my boyfriend that I wanted to change to the other side of the street because I didn't want to walk past him. Suddenly the guy yelled, Hey! As if he wanted to ask us something but we ignored it and continued to walk. He got louder and louder until he started to yell. I could see from the corner of my eye that he was coming over so I whispered, run, to my boyfriend, took his hand and ran the fastest I could while he was chasing us.

We ran, ran and ran and then made a turn to the right, the street where I live, and hid. It seemed like he was gone, so I took my keys out and started running towards my building, taking the other entrances in my building that I normally didn't use. As I was trying to open the door, my boyfriend started panicking, throwing me inside the patio and closing the door aggressively and then pushing me to the building. He explained the guy came running from the other side of the door aggressively and then pushing me to the building. He explained the guy came running from the other side of the street, meaning he took a shortcut, probably thinking we were going to run to the subway or bus stops. If we had taken the other entrance,

he would have been clearly the faster one. Being in shock, we unfortunately didn't call the police, which I regret. I stopped going out for drinks and clubbing for half a year after this and slept at my boyfriend's place for two whole weeks because I was scared that he would come back. I think the worst thing about this is that he really wanted to get us for whatever reason. I still want to know why he chased us for so long. Two weeks later a girl a few streets away was actually assaulted in front of her building by a guy who chased her home. And I wonder if it was the same guy, or just a coincidence. To be continued... I've noticed my neighbor doing some pretty creepy stuff. The initial encounter was about a month ago while I was walking my dog up a street that's about a quarter mile from my house.

The man was talking with a group of people, three of them, and as I walked by he ran up to pet my dog. He was asking me questions about my dog, such as name and gender. He then began to ask questions about where I lived, but more so asking for confirmation as if he somehow knew already. For example, you live at XYZ, right? Questions like that. And this made me uncomfortable, so I went to leave and then he attempted to give me a hug and kiss me on the cheek. Previous to this, I had never met this person.

After walking away, I thought the whole situation was super weird, but would proceed with caution in the future. Since then, there's been an increase in encounters with this neighbor, such as, walking up the street with my significant other, then the neighbor seemed to be waiting for us as we were walking by. Without saying anything, he began calling our dog and trying to pet him. He continued this even as we were walking away, two days after the initial encounter. He drove by the house ten times within a short period of time, and this happened at night while my boyfriend and I were walking the dog. When he saw us, he slowed down, turned on his hazards, flashed his headlights, honked,

and shouted hay out the window with his music blasting. The song he was blasting happened to be Window Shopper by 50 Cent. The circling began once we got in the house, and this was two weeks ago. He was in his vehicle at one time, waiting at the edge of the property. I noticed him when I walked out with my dog, and then he quickly drove off, and this was four to five days after the circling began. I also saw him lurking in a stop sign in front of my home. As I was returning home from walking the dog I noticed the neighbor standing near the stop sign looking toward my home and he ran off when he noticed that I had seen him and this was four days ago.

He was also waiting in his vehicle on the edge of the property where he had clear view of the basement door. He was noticed by some guests as they left through the door, and then he proceeded to drive off, and this was tonight. All of the encounters happened to coincide when we walked the dog, about four times a day. I noticed that he tends to be outside more around the times that would normally walk the dog. In that situation, I go back inside and wait 45 minutes to walk or go to the dog park for an hour instead. Unfortunately, we weren't able to record those encounters, but we plan to start recording our walks from start to end, along with when we go outside just in case he's there.

The frequency that he made me feel targeted as well as unsafe while walking my dog. I've taken a photo of the license plate, but I don't have much physical evidence. I'd like to call the police, but without evidence I doubt that they can do anything. But I do truly believe that my neighbor is stalking me. This happened approximately five years ago when I was 19. I was studying in college and sharing an apartment with Emma. Emma was a year older than me and even though we didn't know each other before becoming flatmates, we quickly became friends. One day she told me that she had to go to the art school where she was studying to bring home pieces that she needed to work on. She told me that she could

use an extra pair of hands, so I went with her. The school is located on a small square in a pedestrian zone. We went, grabbed what she needed, and left. We were heading out of the square and towards our apartment, distracted by the conversation when Emma taps my shoulder. I look at her and she points to our right and she says, There's a man there. He's recording you. I turn my head and there he is. A man in about his forties pointing at us with a cell phone. He wasn't even trying to hide it. I immediately start walking in his direction and Emma follows me close behind.

Hey, I know you were recording or taking pictures of us. You better delete that right now. He started laughing and pretending not to speak my language. Okay, no worries. I'll repeat it in English. Delete the video. He laughed again and told me he wasn't doing anything wrong. I was having none of it. My blood was boiling at this point and with a rush of adrenaline I snatched the phone out of his hand.

I opened the gallery and, of course, there I was. A video mostly zoomed in on my chest area. Not that it matters, but I was wearing a top without a bra. I delete it and before me appears what seems to be a similar video of other women. Before I have time to react, he snatches the phone again, looks at me with a grin on his face and tells me, Hey, don't worry, I got other women in there. I was very shaken up, about to burst into tears, and decided to just turn around and walk home with my friend. In hindsight, I know this could have ended badly for me. He could have gotten violent

when I took his phone, but a part of me regrets not smashing it on the ground when I had the chance. Now for some context, due to previous stalking issues and just wanting to feel safe, I chose an apartment that had a gated garage and key fob locks to enter the building. Consistently, the gates are broken to the garage, I'm talking about 5 months. They'll fix them and within the span of a week they'll be broken and unlocked for months at a time. They're just left open and unlocked. The stairwells are not locked if you enter them from the parking garage. And there is a second door that you use the key fob for to open and enter into the interior hallway of the apartment building. This door is directly across from my apartment door.

This lock too is broken and if you simply pull on the door, it opens. I've reported this and it hasn't been fixed and it's been a month. Okay, to the issue now, last week at 9.15pm, some guy was pounding on my door. They were wearing a white hoodie with red script writing, baseball cap and hood on top of hat. I was immediately terrified as it was late and was not expecting any visitors. I looked through the peephole and didn't recognize the man. I stayed quiet, hoping that he would think that no one was home. He knocked on my door again and then proceeded to wait in the hallway for about 8 minutes while texting on his phone. I called my boyfriend, freaking out because I was

scared and he said it was probably just someone at the wrong apartment, maybe they were drunk or something. So I calmed down and sort of just wrote it off. Now flash forward to Saturday, I get home, take my dogs out and go back to my apartment. I was supposed to go on a date with my boyfriend, so I get in the shower and start getting ready to go out. I'm in the shower and I hear pounding on my door again. It's loud enough for me to hear over the shower, bathroom fan and podcast that I'm listening to on my phone. I turn the shower off, put on my robe and sort of expect to see my boyfriend since we have plans and he does have a fob. I look through the peephole and it's the same man, in the same hoodie and cap. At this point, I'm terrified and just try again to be as quiet as

possible and begin to call my boyfriend over and over again. He lives about 6 minutes away, so I thought that he would be able to get to me quickly. Unfortunately, his phone was on silent from still being at work. The man waited in the hallway texting again and eventually left after about 10 minutes or so. My boyfriend sort of implied that I am overreacting. I know that I can be hypervigilant, but I don't know who this man is and I don't know why he keeps coming to my apartment. It's supposed to be a secure building. I've asked the apartment complex if they knew who this was or if they sent anyone to my apartment, to which they said no, and they really didn't do

much except say that they'll have someone fix the door lock today. I guess I'm just sad that my safe place no longer feels safe. I haven't been able to sleep there since, and maybe I am overreacting, but my intuition tells me I'm not It happened a couple of months back. My housemates, house of girls, and on one of the main known student roads in the city, were on a night out and I decided to stay in and watch a movie with my boyfriend. At midnight, someone knocked on the door. I answered assuming it was one of my housemates and it was this young guy who must have been around 18 to 21

years old. I asked him if he was okay and he told me that he'd lost one of his airpods behind my house and in my garden. He asked if I would help him look for it. The student house had a backyard with a very high brick wall. There wasn't even a walkway behind the back of the house, just a little path to the shop's garage a couple of garden gates down. I immediately had an awful feeling about him. He didn't look threatening at all, and my height was maybe 5'6'ish and it just didn't

feel right. He couldn't have been in my garden and why was he back there anyways? It's not a walkway. There was no justifiable reason as to how he could have lost his airpod there. I started questioning him but not too harshly. What do you mean you lost your earphone? You can't have lost it in my garden. Why were you back there? How'd you get access? I don't understand. Whilst this was going on, I felt that he was trying to get into the house because he kept moving forward. My boyfriend eventually came out of the living room and the guy at the door kept asking us to help him look and specifically for me to get my housemates. My boyfriend was about to help him,

but I'd half hidden myself behind the door and gave him a death stare. I did not want my boyfriend to help this guy. My boyfriend ended up saying something along the lines of, I hope you find your earphone. Sorry about that, to the guy. The guy aggressively responds, So you're not going to help me? My boyfriend said no, shut the door, and that was it.

It really spooked me, and it left me with so many questions. I'm not close with my housemates, but I let them know what had happened, and none of them knew the guy. I'm very intuitive, so I still believe something sinister or weird was going on. When I was around 24, I moved out to an apartment near my college since the dorms were unavailable or just not spacious. However, I quickly realized that renting would be very expensive, especially for a college student. Thankfully, I was actually able to meet up with another student who wanted a buddy and lucky me, he is a chef in the works and would love to cook every other night without having to pay him. I would basically be his tester and rate his cooking. Our first month together was the best. He made such exotic meals that could only be found at high-end restaurants. Almost every cook night would be something that I would look forward to.

However, one Saturday morning I woke up to some tummy ache. I had to rush to the bathroom and puked. I was actually surprised by this and went to my roommate who was making breakfast. I was surprised to hear this too and checked yesterday's leftovers and didn't see anything bad. I figured that it could have been that I simply ate too much since prior to dinner last night I hit the gym and lifted heavier than usual. Every other night in no particular pattern I would experience more belly pain, kind of like both in and on my stomach. I assume my habits of working out hard had to be the reason and eating a lot afterwards but I also noticed that after eating I would get so tired and usually go to bed right after

which never happened before moving in with my roommate. I also noticed that he always plated my food for me and if I tried to help or pour it myself he would tell me that I would ruin his masterpiece. I can understand what he means but it still made me a little suspicious. I finally decided to open up about this and talk to a close friend. She told me that she would stay with me for the night because I was suspicious that he was doing something to me but couldn't figure out if he really was. Now mind you, I know that I would probably move out and find another place to live but I still had a few months in the lease

and I didn't really have enough money to just leave. So that night everything went as usual. I came home from the gym, came home and had dinner with my roommate. But as I'm finishing up, my friend shows up and I pretend that I forgot to mention that my girlfriend, not really but just to make it believable, was sleeping over. And surprisingly, my roommate took this very well. It was about that time that I started to get tired, and I went to my room and soon fell asleep. So this is the perspective from my friend. She also went into my room and saw that I was fast and in a deep sleep. And she knows very well that I'm a light sleeper, and in fact, breathing hard enough could wake me up.

But she was patting and shaking me and I just wouldn't budge. Now hours later, my friend woke up to the sound of the door opening. She stayed still, but from her original position, could see the door and from adjusting to the darkness, she could see someone peeking in. At least five minutes passed by and whoever it was, most likely the roommate, left and didn't come back the rest of the night. When I woke up, I didn't feel any sort of pain and my friend told me everything and was worried my roommate was the cause of my pain. So for a week I decided to stay with her and occasionally I would get texts from my roommate when I was coming back and they would send pics of their delicious food.

As much as I wanted to stay with my friend, I couldn't because she lived far from the college and it was a hassle traveling far. She doesn't attend the same college. However, she gave me the idea of buying some secret spy camera that looked like a regular thing. So I bought two small wall clocks and two charger plugs. The layout of my room when looking from above is basically doors on the upper left side of the room, TV and small table it stands on is also left center side, bed is on the right back corner of the room, and closet is at the front center of the room. I set one clock to face the door, other clock right side of the closet to face me, end of bed, one charger plug on table connected from extension cord to face me, side of bed, and the other on another extension cord on a bed facing me from top. I had a bad feeling having

two clocks and two extension cords in my room would be suspicious but hopefully he wouldn't notice. Night came and same routine. I went to bed that night and woke up at around the same time with my belly aching. I then logged into my laptop and reviewed the footage. What I saw was that he did in fact enter my room with something in his hand. He came in as if I wasn't home and what my friend said was right. It was like I was dead asleep. He pulled the blankets off of me and began with rubbing me before revealing the object to be a toy. He proceeded to torture me while whispering something that sounded like how he wishes I loved him and why he can't do this to me when I'm awake. I think this all lasted for like half an hour before switching to another for a few and left the room. And I was in complete shock that I went straight

to the bathroom and puked in the shower till I swear my stomach was completely empty. For the record, I'm not gay and I don't have anything against them but after seeing the footage, I sort of started to feel a fear towards them. I never ate another meal from him ever since, and as much as I could, I would either sleep at a friend's house or have them over. I even installed a lock on my door to have a key, since the previous door only had those basic locks that can be opened with a screwdriver. I never spoke to my roommate the same,

and he noticed this and tried to sit down with me as if he's concerned for me, but I always brought up excuses that I'm late for something. I talked to my friend about this and she forced me to speak with the college. I really didn't want to talk about this, but I eventually did and I even showed them the footage. I don't know what happened to my roommate afterwards, but he was evicted from the apartment and probably expelled from the school. I don't know if happened to my roommate afterwards, but he was evicted from the apartment and probably expelled from the school. I don't know if he went to prison, but I hope he did, and sometimes I hope he gets the same experience of what he did to me last week and I'm not sure how to process this. My boyfriend and I were out of town visiting some friends and spent all day out with them.

On our way back home we stopped by a gas station close to midnight. While my boyfriend was filling gas, we were still about an hour away from home so I offered to get some coffee. He said no but I ignored and got it anyway. Going into the store I walked over to the coffee counter and when I pulled out a cup from the stacks I turned to grab some creamer and scrolling through my phone when my cup was knocked over. I simply just bent down to pick it up before I heard an iPhone camera go off. I froze for a second before getting up and turned to find some guy in a camp hoodie. I swore that I was by the coffee counter by myself, but I was pretty busy in my phone too.

For reference, some pretty small 5'1 girl with a kid-like face without makeup and this man was probably 6'2 and looked to either be homeless or a drug addict. Hey kid, it's pretty late huh? Mom forgot she left you behind? Don't worry, I got a large pickup and I can take you home. The store was empty beside us and even the clerk was in the back and I'm guessing the man thought that I was alone because the gas pumps are places outside where it's not able to be seen out the door. He literally reached for my face and I started to's not able to be seen out the door. He literally reached for my face and I started to have flashbacks to when I was a kid.

This is another story for another time. I felt his dry hands touch my skin and instantly fight or flight kicked in. I don't know why, but I kicked the man in the leg, even though it did nothing, before I ran out of the station and proceeded to crouch down and made myself puke. I used my sleeve to clean off my mouth before I limped back to my boyfriend who saw me hugging my stomach and ran up to me. He knows me too well, as well as my history, and suspected that I was just victimized by something. He took me into his car and told me to wait, but I burst into tears and just begged him to go home. Thankfully he listened and we just headed back. I told him what happened and he was upset that I went inside when he said no but I was able to relax. But I still felt so uneasy

because even though I'm an adult, I felt like a kid in front of that man and I really had no idea why I didn't move, till I did. So this is a story from many years ago, but I still remember it as if it were yesterday. I was a student who played volleyball on a college team. One day we had a very late match quite a distance away from where I lived. Us all being students and almost none having cars, it was quite a challenge to get there and back. I could drive along with the coach, a male student years older than me. Everything was great until we went back.

The coach lived about two miles away from me and he thought it was fine to just drop me off at his address and let me walk home alone. But then it was past midnight. They assured me that I was going to be fine and so I started walking. It was a well-lit road with flats on the right-hand side and a cemetery and trees on the other. There was no traffic. About halfway a white car approached me and slowed down the moment the driver noticed me. My heart jumped immediately, but I told myself that I was just seeing things, so I carried on. A few minutes later, the same car drove by from the back, very slowly.

I saw the driver checking me out, and I started to freak out. The car drove on and turned into a side alleyway. I ran towards the nearest flat and hid behind a wall and waited. And yes, after a few minutes the same white car came back again, driving very slowly where he expected me to be. But as I was hidden, he couldn't see me and sped off. I was terrified by then and was contemplating my options. The flat where I was at was completely dark but the next flat had one window where I could see the light burning. I figured that would be my best option. There was no cell phones back then.

Yes, I am that old. I decided to run as fast as I could to the apartment with the lights on. I was in tears by that time and shaking from top to toe. I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. I rang again and now I saw someone look out the window. A middle-aged woman looked down at me and she looked startled. She opened her window a little bit and asked what I wanted. I rattled about what just happened and begged her if I could use her phone to call my boyfriend. I reluctantly agreed and handed her my phone through the window gap, making sure I couldn't enter.

She was obviously freaked out as well. I called my boyfriend, but he didn't pick up. He probably was already asleep. I was shaking and crying, and the white car came passing by again. The woman saw me freaking out and then decided I was no threat to her and she invited me inside. She gave me something to drink and gave me some time to calm my nerves. After a while she offered to drive me home and I happily accepted. She dropped me off right in front of my apartment and made sure I got in safely. Of course, the next day I paid her a visit, brought some gifts

and profusely thanked her. She told me how spooked she was herself, but that she was glad that she could help. About a week later, it was on the local news that a guy was arrested who had assaulted several women that he had picked up in his white car. I know this may not be creepy or scary to anyone, and I know this is more of a confession, but let's just start by saying I don't really care about anything. I'm not sure if I was born this way or if this was done throughout my life, so just tell my story and hopefully you'll understand for yourself. When I was young I was drowned in a pool and my life was saved by a relative. Fast forward to my school years, I never had a lot of friends.

If someone I knew had a group of their own I'd just tag along with them naturally and they accepted me only because I knew someone. I was later removed from my kindergarten class and put into another class. I still don't quite know why. I was later put on medications for my mental health, but pediatricians couldn't figure out what was wrong, so they put me on anything. The second grade, another student had an issue with me and wanted to fight, and I agreed to fight him. We, he and his friend and I, met after recess to fight. I still think it was a fair fight even though I beat him in the head with a rock numerous times until the principal pried me off of him.

He was bleeding from his nose and his mouth and his eye was swollen. His friend had been crying and I felt nothing for them. After I got sent home my parents told me about David and Goliath and I already heard the story numerous times in church. I went to school and was forced to stay in a conference room all day that my teacher didn't want anything to do with me. They'd forget to bring me lunch sometimes. It was quiet all day long. One day they brought in another student for the day and moved my desk and myself from the conference room to a storage closet. I had to ride home with my parents every day. I still feel like my parents saw me as some

type of monster from that point on. In middle school, I had moved out of that town. I was bullied by everyone at school. They claimed that they were joking, and to this day I don't know how true that was. I hardly made any friends. In fact, I wanted to kill just about every single one of them. These thoughts would soon come out and would force my parents to put me into therapy to get help. Well, that's what they called it. I'm still not sure what that really accomplished. I coped by starting fires in the woods near my house. I made a friend in the neighborhood. We'd steal beer from one of the neighbors and start playing with roadkill. If we couldn't find roadkill, we used a BB gun to kill a squirrel or bird. I wanted to cut open the birds and cook it over a fire. This was apparently too much for him

and he soon stopped being my friend. After that, I passed time by throwing rocks at geese and setting snare traps for rodents. I enjoyed it. Once my mother got angry that the neighbor's dog was barking and I honestly was too. And one night, I opened the back gate and let the dog out and put it on a leash and then I took it into the forest and snapped its neck. I went home and went to bed. I woke up the next day and started walking to the bus. The neighbor was out looking for his dog and I still remember his face when he asked me, have you seen my dog? I told him I hadn't seen it. He then said, he's my service dog. As if that would change my answer and I told him,

not my problem. Then he walked away, shocked. After school, I buried the dog in the creek, and I'm pretty sure it's still there. By the way, service dogs don't bark as far as I know. In high school, I made friends by making people like me. I then joined their friend group by tagging with them and wedging myself in with them. Not everyone liked me. A lot of people thought that I was strange. One student had an issue with me. He and his friends always went to his car to smoke. He parked his Malibu in a place where the cameras weren't pointed. I know this because I watched him every day for about a month. One day I decided that I had enough. I brought a jerry can with gasoline and skipped my first class,

hoping his car windows would be rolled down. They were. I began pouring the gas into the car. I dropped the can by accident, but it worked out that I lit a cigarette and tossed it in the car. I don't know what happened afterwards, but I don't really care, and I can only assume they got in trouble for smoking at school, and I never saw him after that. If you couldn't tell already, I wasn't a good student. I'd much rather skip class and smoke or drink than be in class except criminal psychology. I finally found an interest. I felt like I could relate to the people we studied in that class. It made me realize I'm not the only person who just doesn't care. Another thing I loved to do during high

school was cheating on girls who were foolish enough to think I cared about them, let alone wanted to date them. I wasn't interested in dating them. I only wanted one thing from them. Then I'd break their heart. When I said I never loved them to begin with, this gave me pleasure watching them cry and sob or get angry. Anytime I was confronted for hitting on another man's girlfriend, I liked the thrill of being yelled at. They'd get confused when I'd start to smile. I knew I could take them if I wanted, whether it was then or later. I graduated a year late, probably due to skipping class. My closest friends are either dead or in

jail, and last I heard from one, he was dealing drugs in California or something. Another has kids, good for them, whatever. I wish I could care, or have enough empathy to even have kids. I'm now in my twenties and living alone. I never go anywhere except work in the grocery store. I try not to associate with anybody. I spend a lot of time at home mostly browsing the internet, reading about human experiments, serial killers, studying human behaviors, also looking at gore on reddit, if you can believe that. Sometimes I feel like an alien, trying to play human, it's hard to behave. Sometimes I follow random people, mostly women in the store or I'll go to the mall and watch

people while I sit in the food court. I think about what kinds of things I'd do to them if I got them alone. But I never act on any of these urges I get. I still think of the kid's face after I beat him with a rock. Honestly, that's all I remember of him and it doesn't scare me, honestly. It makes me feel powerful in some strange way. I was recently diagnosed with psychopathy by my psychologist and that made me realize a lot. To a lot of you that would be a nightmare and to me I feel nothing. If being human is to have empathy then I don't know what I am. I do have anger issues,

I always have. People say I seem like a great person but if they read my thoughts they might be terrified of me. I don't know if I'm going to lash out or not. I thought I'd share my experience, but you might not want to meet me in person. To be continued... bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm 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.