The Lets Read Podcast - 22: Episode 022 | Glitch In The Matrix & Christmas Stories| 31 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Welcome to the twenty-second episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Glitches In The Matrix, Christmas & Nightclub Stories. SPONSOR: wix.com/podcast to get 10% off! HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON- ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music: Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFvrqVSJE8E PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

I worked for a cleaning company for a little over a year, and I'm convinced that at least two buildings that I cleaned in the evenings were haunted. I very easily could have had evidence for a lot of this, but the phone I had during all of this boasted a battery life of about 20 minutes. I'm tearing up just thinking about how awful that was to deal with. And opening the camera almost always immediately killed it. Sometimes it worked and when it did I tried to capture evidence but since the phone itself sucked, none of it is very quality.

I also occasionally had a co-worker with me but they each had their own experiences that I will include here. One building was a community activity center and since these experiences were less terrifying and more unsettling than anything I'll start here. I cleaned two areas, two bathrooms and two locker rooms. The locker rooms were down the end of a large dark hall. I could have easily turned lights on in this building every night to make things less creepy but I wanted to save an extra 30 seconds since I'd be at this particular location anywhere between 1 and 4 a.m. In the men's locker room in particular I would get a feeling of uneasiness upon crossing the threshold. The room itself seemed safe but while I was in there, the rooms around me began

acting up. I would hear lockers opening and slamming shut in the woman's room next door. There would be the distinct sound of someone sprinting up and down the hall with heavy footsteps. One time I asked for a very specific sign for whatever was there to show itself. I requested that it open seven lockers on the north side of the men's room. As I walked in, maybe ten seconds after saying that, I caught the tail end of the motion of seven lockers right in a row finishing swinging open. I started to cry a little cause, I don't know, I didn't really need that at 2am alone with a very dead cell phone. But before I shakily continued with my work, I said something along the lines of,

Hey, you're valid. This is your space too. Just let me do my work and I'll be on my way without bothering you. After that, I noticed a couple of things. Waiting at the doors where I entered, oftentimes there would be a shadowy shape just sitting there. I don't know, waiting. One time I swear on my life it waved at me. On these nights I felt a presence that seemed there but in the distance like it respected my space. Possibly the one I spoke to before but I also

noticed there were other feelings there. Some nights I would walk in feeling nauseous and the closer I got to the areas where my brain told me not to look, inside the gym where I hear footsteps, a dance room with mirrors where I'd see a large figure and even the bathrooms as a whole, I would feel a pressure on my head. So bad it would set off my tinnitus and even trigger migraines sometimes. One night when I was feeling this pressure and negative energy, I was cleaning the sinks and mirrors and underneath where my knees were, a cabinet door opened hard on my knee then slammed shut a second later. The doors were ziplocked shut because

little kids put gross stuff in there so they shouldn't have opened and I checked afterward, the tie was still in place and holding the door shut. Two co-workers of mine also had experiences there. My friend was cleaning one bathroom and I was using the other. While I was out of the room, she heard a sound like a hand running itself along the middle of cyst bars in the handicapped accessible stalls. She also swears she heard footsteps in the bathroom but no one else was in the building but us. My fiance who didn't believe me about any of this experienced the same cabinet thing I described earlier. Same bathroom, same cabinet, still tied shut.

So my big question here, if this place is haunted or whatever, which I'm pretty sure it is, could it have been something to do with the fact that it's pretty much across the street from a cemetery? Could that explain the different, uh, beings that I felt with distinct personalities? Do these sound like average run-of-the-mill ghosts just haunting a building late at night? The second building I want to talk about is much worse. The feeling here was just dark. It stuck with me for hours, sometimes days after leaving, and I had anxiety attacks when I thought of having to be there.

It was only twice a week, thank God, at the local USDA building. It's just a little place, maybe 15 deaths total. Took at most two hours to clean, but they were the worst two hours of my life every single week. It started out as kind of a gross feeling, like I was being watched. My shoulders were tense, accompanied by what almost felt like fingers on my back and neck. I felt sick, often walked away with a headache, that sort of thing. It got slowly worse over a while. I'd hear an odd

clunk in another area of the building, maybe a door would shut somewhere. Things I could explain away at the time. Things that had rational explanations but still left me feeling shaken. During the time it wasn't horrible but the little creepy things and the noises has definitely picked up in frequency. By the way, I'd start seeing shadows that would dart out of rooms as soon as I'd look at them directly, which is to say the least unnerving. I sent a friend a snapchat of the room in general, nothing spooky, just complaining about being at work. She replied telling me that if I ever sent her another photo of that place she would block me. She's very into supernatural stuff

and she claims she has a ghost in her house that just kind of hangs around. I don't know, that just put me on edge. It must have angered whatever dwells there that someone didn't want contact with it because things got a lot worse after that really fast. One night that I will never forget, I actually thought I might legitimately die there. The sick feeling was immediate upon opening the door, like the air was thick with it. By my supply closet door in the dark since I hadn't turned on the light yet, it looked like a huge trash bag was lounging in the hall blocking my path. I averted my eyes because I was already terrified and turned the light on.

The shape was gone. Nothing could have cast the shadow in this virtually empty hallway. When I went to open my closet door, it was hard to pull open as though something was forcing it back shut. I gathered my supplies and walked away to begin my job and move on, and the door slammed shut. I kept cleaning, you know, cause I had to otherwise I would have gotten right out of there and continuously felt a hot breath on my neck that I heard over the music blaring in my headphones. At one point I heard the rattle of a rattlesnake but of course after thoroughly investigating I found no snake was in the building. I probably would have rather

have found a snake though. The door slamming sounds happened several more times throughout the couple of hours that I was there and that was always jarring. However, it was somewhat easy to brush off and ignore after a minute since I was so used to it by then. But when I was walking in front of the doors another glass, I noticed in the reflection there was another me behind what was actually my reflection. It moved a half a second slower than me and was placed several feet behind me. I even heard the footsteps and felt something there behind me but I was too scared to look. Overall it was just wrong. I avoided looking in most reflective surfaces after that until the day I quit.

Later, when I was cleaning the bathrooms, I noticed a sink turning on without me being anywhere near it. Not a motion sensor, mind you, but a good old handle turning sink. One that should under no circumstances turn itself on. The mirror was also dirty again, even though I just cleaned it. It kind of looked like someone clawed at the mirror with soap on their fingers. Thankfully the bathrooms were the last part of my night and I rushed out and had a really nasty anxiety attack in the car. My previously mentioned friend also cleaned here sometimes. She also experienced the nasty feelings I was talking about, even down to the headaches. One night, she didn't want to

work alone there. It was so scary, guys, I'm telling you, I often couldn't go alone despite company rules. So she brought her boyfriend. When she was cleaning the bathroom, the same one with the faucet incident, she began feeling hot breath on her neck. Then she heard her boyfriend from the entrance of the bathroom ask, you okay in there babe? And she said, yeah I'm fine. Then her necklace, which is I think the Virgin Mary and was blessed by a priest, got hot and she left the bathroom. Her boyfriend was sitting in another area of the building entirely and had not spoken to her or left a spot. He couldn't have talked to her at the bathroom doorway. What I'm wondering is what was that? I've never felt so scared and the blessed necklace thing nauseates me every time I think about it. Please help me figure out what that was.

Am I still in any danger of that following me around since I interacted with it and took photos of it. I just want some thoughts. I quit a month ago and still feel uneasy when I think about or even just drive past this building. This happened to me several years ago while I was living in California and working a great job in a coffee house downtown. I loved everything about that job. I worked with fantastic people and our shop was located in the city's historic district in a very, very old, beautiful building that had once been a hotel in the 1800s, but had since been converted into apartments, lofts, and, of course, the big coffee house on the main floor. Being an early birdie and living

only a couple of blocks away from the coffee house, I was always secluded to work the opening shift, which started at 4.15am. It was always the most unpopular shift, but it happened to be my absolute favorite one because I loved walking to work in the quiet of the early mornings as the rest of the city was sound asleep. Normally downtown was quite loud and busy, full of people and constant activity, but in the early hours of the morning it was still and silent and I felt as if though I was the only person in existence walking through a ghost town. Every day I arrived about 10 or 15 minutes early for my shift and would wait for my manager on the patio outside of the shop. It was always just the two of us working that early shift and my manager was often running a little bit behind and never arrived before I did but I didn't mind at all. I liked to spend some time by myself on the patio outside of the darkened shop

gathering my thoughts while I waited for him to walk up with his keys to unlock the doors. mind at all. I liked to spend some time by myself on the patio outside of the darkened shop, gathering my thoughts while I waited for him to walk up with his keys to unlock the doors. One morning, as I was walking to work and approaching our building, I noticed that the coffee house was brightly lit up, as all the lights were already turned on and shining through the store's giant glass windows. I was about 10 minutes early that morning so I was very surprised to see that my manager had arrived before me and had already started opening up the shop. I walked up to the glass door and pulled on the handle to let myself in only to find that it was locked shut. That wasn't really unusual as we often kept the doors of the employee entrance and main entrance locked while we got everything ready for the day and went through our morning procedures until 5am, which was our official opening time.

What was unusual though, was the sound of music I could clearly hear drifting through the speakers inside the store. This was during the holiday season, so we were playing Christmas music throughout the day, but we never turned it on until around 9 or so in the morning out of respect for all of the tenants living in the apartments above us. But on this particular morning I could hear the Christmas music already playing its familiar loop at a rather high volume inside the store. I thought it was odd but decided that maybe my manager was just feeling extra festive that day and wanted to listen to some tunes while we worked. I knocked on the employee entrance door and waited for my manager to come and let me in.

I looked through the glass and watched for him. He didn't come so I knocked again and waited some more. He still didn't appear so I knocked again and again. I then walked to the main entrance doors and tried knocking on those with no luck. I checked my watch and saw that I had five minutes until I needed to clock in. I knocked again, much louder this time, and looked inside through the glass door for any signs of my manager. And that's when I heard the muffled sound of voices coming from the back of the store where the kitchen of our coffee shop was located. At that quiet early hour in the morning everything seemed to sound amplified and what I could distinctly hear was two male voices

talking and laughing together. That was very unusual as I had mentioned before that it was normally just me and my manager who opened up the shop but I figured someone had probably just needed to pick up an extra shift. I knocked yet again and continued to listen to the sounds coming from the coffee shop. The men kept talking and laughing loudly. They seemed to be having a really great time. In addition to the music and the talking and the laughter I began to hear the sound of clanging dishes and also the sprayer of the three compartment steel kitchen sink being turned off and on, which was very, very unusual as there would be no dishes to wash before the store had even opened. I was also confused as to why my manager, and whoever was with him, were in the kitchen in the back of the store

because so much of our opening procedures, setting up the pastry case, brewing the coffee, preparing everything for the espresso machine were done at the front of the store where I was waiting to be let inside. At this point I was getting a bit irritated as I was supposed to start work in just a few minutes and needed to punch in on our time clock. I hated clocking in late for work. I dug out my phone and dialed my manager's cell phone. He didn't pick up. So I dialed the number to our coffee shop instead and the two phones inside the shop, one in the back office and one up front by the register started ringing. Once, twice, three rings and no answer. Now four rings and five. I hung up and immediately dialed again. Annoyed that they were making such a racket in there with all the music and all the talking and laughter that they probably

couldn't even hear the phone at all. Just as before, nobody answered. I hung up and redialed the store for the third time. The phone rang and rang and went unanswered so I banged on the door yet again to no avail. I looked at my watch. I was officially late for work. As I was standing in front of the locked door with my phone against my ear, becoming more and more irritated, I noticed a pair of headlights reflecting in the glass rolling up behind me. I turned around and saw something I didn't expect at all. It was my manager. I'm so sorry I'm late, he said as he climbed out of the driver's seat and shut his car door and hustled up to the shop's entrance. I tried to get here as fast as I could, he said

as he moved toward me and fumbled with his keys trying to find the one to the shop door. You're mad, he said. I can tell. I'm really sorry. Completely confused, I put my phone away and turned to head into the store with him, and that's when I lost my breath for a minute. The coffee shop was totally dark. None of the lights were on. Not one single light, and it was dead quiet. The Christmas music had stopped and so had the voices and laughter. All of the loud noise had disappeared. Every sound I had been listening to just seconds before it suddenly vanished. I promise I'll be here on time tomorrow, my manager said as he fit his key into the lock. I'll even be early, you'll be shocked.

Little did he know that I could not possibly be more shocked to see him than I was at that very moment as he opened the door to the silent, completely empty coffee house. The first story centers on my maternal great-grandmother, who emigrated from Norway to the United States in the 1920s, and would sometimes travel back across the ocean to visit her family for a period of time. During these trips, she would have her neighbors watch over her house, water the plants, collect the mail, etc. while she was away. Her neighbors were very good and reliable people and were always happy to lend her a hand whenever she needed some help. On one such trip, my great-grandmother planned to be staying with her family in Norway for a month and asked her neighbors to take care of her house while she was away.

They told her that, of course, they would watch after her house for a while while she was out of the States and that it would be no trouble at all looking after her things. So my great grandmother left them with a house key and headed back to her Norwegian homestead to see her family with one less worry on her mind. A month passed and my great grandmother returned home from her trip but when she arrived back at her house she was very surprised to find that her neighbors seemed to have not taken care of anything for her at all. Her mail had not been collected and neither had her newspapers and when she walked inside she found that her plants were completely dry and many had not survived her week-long absence. She was confused as to why her neighbors

had not looked after her house as they promised they would, as they had done for several times before. But it was late in the evening and my great-grandmother was tired from her travel, so she decided to head to bed and talk to them about it in the morning. The following day, my great-grandmother knocked on her neighbor's door and when they answered, she greeted them and told them that she had returned from her trip. They said, Yes, we know that you've been home and we them that she had returned from her trip. They said, yes, we know that you've been home and we saw that you had returned early.

This confused her, as she had returned home at the time that she had originally planned to arrive. She told them that she had only just come home the previous night. Her neighbors were very surprised at this news and insisted that she had been home for several weeks. They told her that they had taken care of her house for the first three days, but when they came over on the fourth day, they found her shoes, the very shoes my great-grandmother was wearing on her feet at that moment, placed in front of the main door where she always left them. Norwegians don't wear shoes in the house, and further, they distinctly heard her inside the house, the unmistakable sound of her footsteps moving through the rooms. They assumed that her trip had been cut short as they continued

to see and hear her going through her normal household routines from that point forward. During the days that followed, her neighbors swore they heard her cleaning, heard pots and pans and dishes clanging around in the kitchen as she cooked, saw her opening and closing windows, saw lights being turned on and off in the nights and watched her silhouette move all through the house just as they always had. They also saw her outside of her house sweeping the front porch and walking through her front and back yards tending to things she normally did. Everyone was beyond confused at this point. My great-grandmother was 100% certain that she was across the ocean in Norway for a month,

and her neighbors were 100% certain that she was home the entire time. The second story centers around my maternal grandmother and my aunt, who had an extremely close relationship. My aunt had been living in Arizona for a few years, but she and my grandmother, who lived in New Mexico, spoke to each other regularly on the phone, sometimes daily, but at least once a week. One particular month, my aunt had been very, very busy with work and had not been able to speak with my grandmother on the phone for a couple of weeks. This was very out of the ordinary for her to not call my grandmother for such a long time while she simply did not have the time being so absorbed in her job.

One morning my aunt arrived at work as she was getting ready to begin her shift. She crossed paths with one of her co-workers in the hallway. The co-worker stopped her and said you need to call your mom she was just here looking for you and she's really upset and worried about you. My aunt thought she had misunderstood her co-worker and said, you mean my mom called here looking for me? Her co-worker told her that no, she hadn't called. She had just been right there inside the building looking all over for her aunt. This was not possible, as my grandmother was hundreds of miles away in New Mexico. She explained this to her co-worker, who continued to insist that my grandmother had definitely been inside the building and had in fact just left only a few minutes prior to my aunt's arrival. Still thinking her co-worker must be mistaken, my aunt opened her wallet and pulled out a picture of my grandmother and showed it to her,

asking if this was the woman who she had just spoken to. Her co-worker immediately recognized her and said she was definitely the same woman. My aunt was extremely confused at this point, so she found the nearest phone and dialed quickly. After the first ring, my grandmother picked up the phone, hundreds of miles away in New Mexico, and told my aunt how worried she had been about her and how relieved she was to finally hear from her. The last story centered around me. I was out shopping for some new clothes one afternoon and was sifting through some shirts on a rack inside a thrift store when a woman came up behind me and said excitedly,

I thought that was you. Hi, how have you been? I turned around and looked at her bright smiling face and had absolutely no idea who she was. Absolutely none. I had never seen her before in my life, though she seemed quite certain that she knew me. She must have read the expression on my face because she said, do you remember me? From the festival last week we met in the parking lot. I was still drawing a complete blank and I definitely had not been to our town's summer festival the week before where she thought we had met. I told her that she must be mistaking me for someone else but she was adamant that she had met me in the parking lot after the festival

was over. She said that she had been drinking during the festival but she was sure it was me who she had crossed paths with that night. She said I had slipped her keys out of her hand just as she was about to get into her car and had convinced her not to drive home until she had sobered up a little bit and that I had spent the next several hours sitting and talking with her in that parking lot having a deep discussion about life. I told her that I was very sorry, but I just was not who she thought I was, as I didn't go to our town's festival that year and, in fact, I didn't ever go out at nights at all. At first, she seemed to be frustrated and a little insulted that I couldn't remember her, but then she seemed to be genuinely hurt about it and I felt terrible that she thought I was simply pretending not to know her. She said, well, I just wanted to say thank you for not letting me

drive that night. And then as she turned to leave, she said, it was really good to see you again. Not long after that, I encountered another person who I had never met before who was, again, quite certain that he knew me. I was delivering groceries to a husband and wife who had recently reached out to our church looking for some help. They had fallen on some very hard times and the husband was struggling with cancer and was extremely ill. The wife had contacted our church and asked if we had any food at all that we could spare. So we got a load of groceries together for them and I was helping to deliver the bags of food to the couple's house. When I stepped inside their front door the wife

greeted me and was showing me the way to the kitchen. When I noticed her husband fast asleep in the living room on the couch. He was very frail and hooked up to an oxygen tank. I was trying to be as quiet as possible as not to disturb him, but as his wife was showing me into the house, he opened his eyes and sat up on the couch. He looked at me and his face just lit up. He says, Oh, it's you. I remember you. I did not remember him, at all. He was a complete stranger to me and this was the first time I had ever seen him.

He said, I met you that night after I got diagnosed with my cancer. You were in the parking lot at the church and you talked to me all night long about life. He said, you made me feel so much better. I could tell it was difficult for him to speak and I did not want to correct him and tell him that he was mistaken, that it was most definitely not me who he had spoken to that night. So instead, I let it be and just smiled at him. And just like the woman in the thrift store, he told me, it's really good to see you again. Before he laid himself back down on the couch and closed his eyes.

As a child, I moved a lot. My mother couldn't ever really settle in one place. Although we'd often leave my hometown, we'd always end up back there and this time was no different. I was ten and we had lived in a different town with my mother's boyfriend. However they broke up after a very abusive relationship and after living in a woman's shelter my mother grabbed the first house she could find back in her hometown. The house was a pretty normal house for a cotton mill town, Darwin UK. It was a terraced house, small with two bedrooms, dining room, living room, and an extension with a kitchen, at the very end of the kitchen the only bathroom in the house.

My mom's sister, C, only lived two streets away with my six cousins, so I was very excited to be back with them after living in another town where I knew no one. We moved in without even looking at the house as mom was so ready to be out of the shelter. At this time my mother was about five months pregnant with my brother. I think she just wanted to find somewhere to settle ready for his arrival. The house wasn't in good condition. It was really damp and it smelled very strongly of mold. The carpets were old, it was a rental, and the wallpaper was falling off the walls. But home is a home I guess. The firstets were old, it was a rental and the wallpaper was falling off the walls, but home is a home I guess. The first night was scary, I'd been used to moving around so much so

I was used to first night nerves, but this felt different. My room was very small, just enough space for a single bed to go along the wall so my feet, or head depending on which way I'd decide to sleep would be pretty much against the door frame. I had decided to sleep with my feet or head depending on which way I decide to sleep would be pretty much against the door frame. I had decided to sleep with my feet by the door so that I could keep my eye on the door which was open as my mom had asked me to leave it open so she could check in on me. The whole night I sat under my covers with my eyes firmly on the door. I could feel someone watching me. I got no sleep that night. The next night my mother's boyfriend moved in. Not the abusive one, another ex that she had got back with. A pretty good guy. The

whole feeling of the house got worse once he moved in. We'd be sat watching TV and hear walking upstairs. We'd hear things moving, taps running in the kitchen, but when we'd look, they'd be off. Lights would turn off and on. One night I awoke to see someone standing outside my doorway. I couldn't see features or even a gender. It was late and dark. I assumed it was my mother checking on me. I watched the figure move towards the stairs and go down so I got up, thinking it was my

mom and I was far too creeped out in the house to go downstairs alone at night so I thought I'd go down while she was there to get a drink. However as I got to the top of the stairs I couldn't see any lights on downstairs thinking it was odd. I checked in my mom's room right next to the top of the stairs and both my mom and her boyfriend were in bed asleep. I very quickly went back to my room and closed the door. After a few weeks we discussed the creepy things happening and the feelings we felt in the house. My mom decided that we'd look for somewhere else to move. My mom's boyfriend had things thrown at him in the house and heard breathing in his ear one night when he fell asleep on the sofa. Moving day came, the men in our family

decided they'd do the moving. My mom's boyfriend, two of my uncles, and a family friend all went into the house to start moving the boxes to the van. I was at my aunt's two streets away so this day I didn't see what happened with my own eyes, but all of the men in our house left the house within an hour and refused to go back in. Apparently a male voice told them to get out and one of them was pushed down the stairs. In the end, my mom, my aunt C and I ended up doing the moving because they flat out refused to go near the house. My mom's boyfriend even told her to just leave the stuff and he'd buy her new stuff. After we moved out, my other aunt S who

my mother doesn't really talk to said how she lived in that house for a short time in the 80s and it was one of a number of houses in the town that offered rooms to addicts. She had said a few people had died from overdosing in that house and that she had paranormal experiences in her short time there. I wish I could find more about the house. I don't even remember the house's number. I know the street name but the house is long gone. It was knocked down in the mid 2000s and now there are new houses there. Although I'd love to know if whoever lives in that house that stands on that land now has had experiences. I've had experiences in a number of homes I've lived in

but that was the only one I felt was truly evil. I've always believed in ghosts and the paranormal. I've never been able to see spirits but I can feel their presence and their emotions. When my son, who was autistic, was three, he's now twelve, we lived with his dad's sister in a huge house. I don't know how old the house is but one day my son and I were home alone and we were in our room playing. I was grabbing him by the ankles and flipping him over on the bed. We've been doing this for about 30 minutes. All of a sudden my son starts looking past me to the corner of the room and looks terrified. I should also mention that he was completely non-verbal until the age of 6.

He grabs the blanket and throws it over his head. I pull the blanket off his head and say, What are you doing silly? Still looking past me and still looking terrified he puts the blanket back over his head. I pull it off again and ask him what's wrong. He points behind me. I turn around but I don't see anything so I tell him, mommy doesn't see anything. He then looks even more terrified and puts the blanket back on his head.

Again I pull it off and this time I ask him what he sees. He makes a motion like to demonstrate someone hanging and makes a face with his tongue hanging out. This time, I don't let him put the blanket back over his head. I tell him to wait a minute. I turn around in the direction he's been looking and say out loud, Look, I understand you're probably trying to communicate with my son because you realize he can see you, but he knows I can't see you so it's scaring him and he's autistic. I need you to leave please. I watch my son's gaze follow from that corner of the room all the way to

the door. He then looks back at me with a big smile on his face, claps his hands and is ready to play again. If I hadn't been a believer before that day, I definitely would have been after that. I spend a lot of time at cemeteries and my girlfriend is constantly bringing flowers and toys to forgotten children. We also love to thrift shop for old dolls, pictures and books. The creepy or more unusual the better. I guess I'm just trying to make it clear that I frequent many places where spirits might be and bring all kinds of weird things into my home. I also want to make it clear that I am always very cautious to be respectful. I feel like I need to add that I am polyamorous and have both a husband and a

girlfriend. The story may get a little confusing without this information as we have each experienced some things. Strange things have been happening at home. Each time my husband has tried to convince us that there is a logical explanation. I'll try to break down each incident as well as what we think could have logically happened. Incident 1. The first things we experienced were weird noises. We would be in bed and it would sound as if someone was in the closet moving hangers around. We would hear things like this constantly and then upon investigating we couldn't find anything. During Halloween I had hung plastic around my living room giving it the feel of a creepy circus tent.

This plastic has a very distinct sound when someone rubs or brushes against it and we would hear this rustling constantly but never when we were in the room. Pretty creepy. My husband tried to convince us that the breeze happened but my girlfriend wasn't so convinced. Incident number two. I make little nude clay sculptures as a hobby and they take quite a bit of time and are pretty detailed. So I will work on them for weeks or months sometimes and while doing so I just leave them out on my working mat. Recently I started coming home and pieces would be cut. The first time it was the middle

of one of my woman's torsos. My husband's explanation was that the clay simply got too heavy and pulled apart right down the middle. This seemed logical but now it's happening all the time. I came home and one of my sculpture's thighs were cut in half. Incident number three. I went thrifting on a Wednesday at my local place and I got a really cute skirt that I tried on at the store. I am always super careful to check out any defects. As an avid thrifter, I have made the mistake before. The skirt seemed perfect and I planned to wear it to dinner the next evening. I left it out so that I could wash it before we went out but when I got home the waistband had

been cut. Not torn, a perfect little cut. My husband suggested I might have missed this at the store. It made me roll my eyes. I am a pro. I will spend 6-8 hours in the same thrift store. It's like he doesn't even know me. I just know I would not miss something like that but logically I must have. Incident number four. I woke up in the middle of the night to pee. Not something unusual and when I opened our bathroom door I found the shower curtain on the floor. The end of the rod was unscrewed and it just totally freaked me out. Our bathroom door is literally in our bedroom and I am convinced I would have heard the shower curtain and rod fall on our cement

floor. By this time I'm freaking a little. Incident number five. So technically this is two different experiences but I will list them as they had happened on the same night. I was about to fall asleep when I heard my girlfriend ask my husband, what did you say Chad? She swears she heard him say something but he was fast asleep on the other side of me. Later that night, I woke with someone's hand on my shoulder from behind me. My arms were wrapped around my girlfriend, who I was spooning, and I assumed the hand was my husband's. I just remember it very heavy. After a few seconds, my mind realized that my husband's arm was around mine and my girlfriend's wrist,

and that he couldn't be touching my shoulder. I literally jumped so hard it woke my girlfriend. We convinced ourselves that I must have been dreaming. Incident number six. This is where things get even weirder. My husband woke up a few mornings ago to find the top surface of our bedroom dresser soaked in water. His PlayStation 4 literally had water pouring out when we picked it up to clean the mess. I'm 100% sure the substance was water. I smelled and even tasted it in the name of science. We have gone through every possible explanation as to how this could have happened. There were no cups, glasses, bottles or anything containing water anywhere near the dresser. There was no damage to the ceiling, no leak. It's not under any vent or fixture and we have cement flooring. The amount of water was pretty insane. All the clothes in

his top drawer were wet as well. However, there was no splashing, the carpet and surrounding areas were bone dry. Now even my husband is freaked out. This morning as I went to leave the apartment, I turned off the light under the kitchen cabinets. As I turned to leave, the light flipped back on. I didn't bother switching it back, I was a little freak so I just left. I guess I should mention my girlfriend has saged and used Palo Santo wood in the apartment, and asked anything that may be there to leave. This was before the water incident.

I'm sure I'm leaving out some things, but I wanted to give a quick outline of what's happening. I feel like this mostly has been directed at me, except maybe the PlayStation thing. We all spend an equal amount of time on it so I can't really say. Any advice would be great. I'm a 25 year old female living in a small town in Idaho. I have always been fascinated by the paranormal. Obsessed might be a better word. Despite my fascination, I have only encountered a few instances in person,

and the following recollection is one of my favorites to tell. The story in which this happened and the names of the co-workers involved will be kept anonymous, even though the store had been closed, for no other reason than to protect the company which I no longer work for. At the time this story took place I was 20. Me and my boyfriend had just moved to Twin Falls, Idaho for a career opportunity. I had landed a management job doing signage and shipment for a retail store that happened to be located right along the canyon's edge. We packed up what little we had and moved with very little notice to a place we had never been. We found a small, very run-down apartment in a not-so-nice part of town. It was all we could

afford at the time and I had truly thought I would make it big here. This new job was our ticket to a better life. It was December, very close to Christmas time, although I can't remember the exact day. The holidays are a very rough time for retail workers as the business picks up immensely. Due to this, so do the hours of operation. On this particular night, we were open until midnight and I was tasked with the closing shift. I remember feeling this was very unfair because I would be the one opening at 7am the next morning. The way the closing shift worked, we would have four people scheduled from 2 to 10, then two people scheduled from 6pm to 1 in the

morning. We would adjust this as needed but it was a Tuesday and half of the night shift had already been sent home due to slow business, so when I arrived only two people were in the store. The night manager, let's call her Jess, and my closing cashier, we'll call her Kim. I had only been working there a few months and I had somehow managed to get on the night manager's bad side. Looking back I'm sure I wasn't the easiest person to get along with as I took my job very seriously and the others really didn't. Jess had been working there for a very long time and clearly disliked me. She was known for being a bit of a prankster. She had made it her life's

mission to be a nuisance to myself and the other employees. She would be hiding behind corners and dressing rooms and anywhere she could out of sight in order to scare someone. I however was not easily scared. I'm horribly anxious all the time and constantly on guard. Besides I could usually hear her snickering from across the hall. This infuriated her. It was as if scaring me was her personal responsibility. All of this is important to events that would follow. She was more than eager to leave the moment I stepped in the store. She grabbed her things, clocked out and left at 10 without saying more than eager to leave the moment I stepped in the store. She grabbed her things, clocked out, and left at 10 without saying more than a brief greeting or goodbye. I was fine with this, as conversations with her were like pulling teeth. The store was quiet for

the entire evening. No more than a few customers stopped in, and the night felt like it was dragging on. That was until it was time to close. As soon as the clock hit midnight I did my nightly check, walking from the back of the store through each dressing room, the bathrooms, the employee area, around each department and up to the registers checking to make sure there was no one left. I conducted this walk every night and I did this thoroughly. The point of this check is to make absolutely certain no one had still been in the store. Once I made it to the register, I informed my cashier, Kim, that we would get out early, as I had to work again in the morning. She agreed, put in one headphone, turned off the horrible Christmas music everyone hated, and began to sweep up. I grabbed her

till tray, the only one left open, and proceeded to the back office to count down and finish the paperwork. As I made my way back, I glanced over each department one more time to check for customers. Looking back, I don't know why I did this. I usually don't, I trust my checks, but that night I felt like someone was still in there. This bothered me to the point I did my check again, just to be certain. I didn't see anyone and returned to the office. This store was a fairly large warehouse-style building with concrete floors and tall rafters in the center of a shopping complex. Being here after close always gave me a weird vibe, but especially tonight.

I summed it up to the falling snow outside, sleep deprivation, and working long hours. However, I would never mistrust this gut feeling again. Every employee was required to wear a clip-on walkie-talkie with a wired headset. This was the main way we would communicate with each other. These headsets were known to pick up interference and act up on a regular basis and tonight would not be any different. I was typing up some numbers, completely focused in what I was working on, mostly just rushing to get out as soon as possible. The headset cackled to life, sending a loud mesh of static voices into my right ear. The static was loud enough to make me jump, almost completely out of my seat.

I muttered curses under my breath and turned the volume all the way down. As soon as I resumed my work, I noticed the familiar sound of jingle bells ringing from outside the office. I rolled my chair back and leaned backwards out the door. The music had been turned back on. Merrily and rather loudly playing jingle bells, I picked up my headpiece and called out for Kim. She answered in a confused tone asking why I turned on the music. The controller for the music was up at the front registers and I had no way of turning it on from where I was. What? I didn't touch the music. You're the only one up there. Why did you turn it on? I asked rather annoyed. Kim had always minded her own

business. She wasn't well liked among the crew either and stayed out of Jess' little vendetta against me. All this intermingled drama was quite common for a business full of girls. store music off. We both continued with our work. Less than three minutes passed and the walkie-talkie crackled to life again. I looked back at the cameras, a symphony of static in my ear. This time a familiar voice broke through the noise. Can you hear me? Please? Static overtook the voice. I... walkie... home? The words broke through with static in between. It was common to hear static over the walkies, but never voices like that. I pressed the small button on the headset. Jess? I knew that voice anywhere.

She sounded almost panicked. What? No one else is in here, it's just us. Kim's voice clear as day through the headset, no static. Didn't you hear that? I asked, watching Kim move slowly over to the center of the store on the camera. No, I didn't hear anything. She looked visibly confused on the camera, spinning around, searching each department. The walkie crackled yet again. Please, is anyone there?

This was much louder and more clear. There was no way Kim wasn't hearing this. She resumed her work as I watched her closely. She hadn't taken a side on the drama in the store, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to. I grinned at the camera. Well played, Jess. I almost laughed out loud. This woman would stop at nothing to spook me but staying three hours past her shift to make it happen? That seemed like a little bit of a stretch but if she wanted to scare me that badly I suppose

this was a good time to do so. I calmly stood up from my chair, stretched and grabbed my bottle of water off the counter. If she did in fact try to jump out at me when I found her, she was going to get a face full of water. My mind was racing with where she could have hidden. I was almost certain that I had checked every nook and cranny when I did my walk. Maybe she had left and managed to sneak back in using her store key. These racing thoughts stopped instantly as I made my way out of the office. The table that held the charging ports for the walkie talkies was right outside the office. Glancing at the receiver I noticed only two walkies were missing, mine and Kim's. We didn't have any extras, six in total and four sat charging. The lights all flashing green indicating that they were fully charged.

My overactive imagination began running scenarios through my head as I made another walk through the store. Searching every room, every corner, the bathrooms, the rafters, even under displays in between racks. Everywhere. I took a peek outside the front doors. A thick blanket of snow had fallen over the dim parking lot and the only two cars in the entire stretch of the canyon were ours. No footprints in the snow as we hadn't had a customer almost all night. I shook my head and went back to the office.

I summed up the noise as interference began closing out the day. It was almost 1am and I wanted to go home. I closed the door and turned back to my paperwork but not before suddenly getting the strong urge to look at the front camera. Something caught my eye. There standing next to the register was Kim. Standing perfectly still, her head turned towards the front corner of the store by the main entrance. She stood so still for a moment I thought the security system had crashed. I watched the scene for a moment and caught the steady snow falling out of the front window.

She held a broom in one hand and held completely still as if frozen in time. I stood up slowly to get a better look at what she was looking at. Suddenly she dropped the broom, spun on her heels, and began sprinting towards the back office. This girl was by no means fit. I had never seen her move faster than a brisk walk, but she was sprinting. Leaning forward, her headphones bouncing wildly behind her, I shot up from my seat and opened the office door for her. She sped right past me, almost ran into the counter, spun around, and slammed the door behind us. Completely out of breath, I stared her up and down.

What is wrong with you? My heart felt like it was pounding as hard as hers. She was white in the face and her eyes were tearing up. There's something up there. There's a man in the store. Her voice was very high-pitched and she was almost choking on her breath her eyes were wide and there was no hint of humor in them I leaned forward glaring at her this girl was terrified this wasn't a

prank at least if it was Kim was not in on it she was legitimately afraid at this point all my alarm bells started going off. Twin Falls was hardly a safe town as I had decided to move there at a rough time where drug problems and homelessness seemed to be at an all-time high even for such a small town. I whirled around to search the cameras. Fight or flight mode had officially been activated and my main priority now was to keep my employees safe. I began switching through channels. There was nothing on the cameras. Kim steadied her breath and pointed to the front doors slightly to the left.

That's where I saw him. That's all men, I think. In a black, a big black overcoat. The coat almost touched the floor. I kept looking. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Sifting through each channel over and over. He's wearing like... A top hat. I stopped. Suddenly I was frozen, staring at my hand on the mouse. A top hat. I turned back to look at her. She was visibly shaking and crying. I'm not seeing him. I said looking her over and over. She shook her head.

I don't think you can see him on those. I nodded. The only way out without setting the fire alarms off was through those doors. If there was someone in the store, he would certainly see us leaving. But I hadn't seen anyone. Something wasn't right for certain. But if it was just someone playing a prank and I called the police, I would certainly get in trouble. On the other hand, if there was actually someone here with ill intentions and I didn't call the police, I would get in more trouble. I was completely at a loss at what to do. My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps.

Hard, heavy footsteps outside the office door. Impossible, I thought. We hadn't seen anyone on the cameras coming this way. There was no way for him to be back here without us noticing. I suddenly felt dizzy, nauseous and out of breath. My hands started shaking and my knees felt weak. I had felt this before. Suddenly imminent and certain danger. I had to get us out of this building. It wasn't until this point that I realized this wasn't something I could just rationalize. This was beyond explanation.

But explanation didn't matter. Not right now. Right now we needed to run. It didn't even cross my mind to lock the door and call the police for some reason that didn't seem to make sense at the time. This thing, whatever it was, was at the back of the building now, which means our best bet was to run out the time. This thing, whatever it was, was at the back of the building now, which means our best bet was to run out the front. I grabbed Kim's coat and threw it at her. We have to make a run for it. She nodded and put her coat on, grabbed her purse and nodded at me. I grabbed my keys,

leaving my coat and backpack completely and grasped the handle. I didn't hear the footsteps anymore, but at this point I think I was acting purely on instinct and intuition as nothing about my actions made sense to my rational mind now. I ripped open the door and we ran. I'll admit I didn't even look back. I could feel it. I knew something or someone was there. I could feel its eyes on me. It felt like the back of my neck was on fire. We ran. I could have easily outran Kim but I stayed a few steps behind her making sure she got out first. She hit the front doors hard. She unlocked them quickly and was out of the store faster than I've ever seen anyone move. She was at her car in no time, getting in, sobbing. I,

however, had stopped just outside the front doors. I stood in the snow and cool, silent night air and watched as she tore out of the parking lot. I stood there for what felt like hours collecting my breath and turned slowly to face the building, the light still shining brightly out of the full face of windows. I couldn't leave the store like that. I was terrified beyond belief, my hands and knees shaking, but I couldn't leave the store, lights on, unlocked, alarm unarmed all night. So full of fear of losing my job and fear of what was in that building, I went back in. The store was completely silent. There was no movement, no shuffling, no footsteps, nothing. Even the heavy feeling of danger I had felt so strongly before was completely gone. I slid sideways over the alarm system. I punched in

my code and hit the arm. The system beeped and didn't arm. I stiffened and turned to face the system. The only way it would set was if there was only motion in section 1, the front of the store. After it was set, employees would have 30 seconds to get out of the building before it would actually set for the night. This was telling me there was motion in the back of the store heading up to the front. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry and yell and tell this thing to leave me alone. I was tired, I was afraid, and I was angry. I punched in my code, hit system override, armed the building, turned off the lights, and ran out that store. I slammed and locked the doors behind me and stepped back into the snow. Everything was silent again.

Calm and silent. I stared at those doors for what seemed like another hour before finally turning around and going home for the night. I had hoped to see someone. I had hoped this man would pop out and try to leave the building, setting off the alarm, but nothing moved in that store. Not while I was watching it, at least. I went home that night, crawled into bed, and cried in my boyfriend's arms until finally falling asleep as the sun rose. Of course I had to go back the next morning. I felt almost hungover as I dragged myself through the snow to the front doors of that awful place, really debating if I needed this job. To my surprise I wasn't the first

person to show up. As I arrived my general manager stood shivering in the snow in front of the building with a police officer. My heart dropped. The lock had been broken off the doors from the inside and I tripped the alarm. The police had arrived finding nothing in the building, nothing stolen and no footprints in the snow. The alarm company had woken my boss and told her the alarm had been tripped and she arrived to the store the same time as the officer. Her expression was of pure rage. I had hoped nothing would be amiss and I wouldn't have to tell her. With a big sigh I explained to her and the officer what we experienced that night. They of course didn't believe a word of it. The policeman left assuming the door had been broken by wind or something of the like and

simply asked for security footage if we chose to send it. I was taken to the office to review camera footage. My boss sat in silence as she reviewed my whole night, only commenting on the fact I didn't finish my paperwork. The camera showed nothing, only Kim and I running around looking like lunatics. It was after I left that anything tangible showed up. It was the front doors, clearly locked and armed, swinging open at three in the morning effortlessly and the locks dropping off them as if they were not fastened to the doors at all. Jess arrived shortly after, obviously to take over my shift as I was being sent home. When asked about the incident she of course knew nothing and swore she had gone

straight home without ever touching the walkie-talkies. My only other hope for redemption would be Kim's story. I hadn't experienced this alone and I knew she would back me up. The problem was Kim never returned to work, she never showed up for her shift, she never answered another phone call and she never came to pick up her last check. Last I heard of her was through another co-worker who simply said she had moved back in with her parents in Arizona. I put in my two weeks that night. We moved back home to where we felt the most comfortable and seven months later that store closed permanently for cost related reasons. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life and on everything I hold dear I swear it's true. I simply wish I had some evidence to back it up.

I'm a 24 year old woman and I've had a few strange experiences in my life. There's one in particular that stands out. I finally decided to share it. I've also added a picture that I took around the same time which I will explain in the context of the story. Decide for yourself what you think. I can only assure you that the picture is not altered and that my story, as I experienced it, is completely true. First I think it would be useful to provide a little backstory. My childhood home was very old and burned down due to faulty wiring when I was in the 8th grade. My family decided to rebuild on the same spot and six months later, we were living in

an essentially reincarnated version of the old house. The layout was almost exactly the same as before. I always used to joke that our new house was haunted by the spirit of the old house. The layout was almost exactly the same as before. I always used to joke that our new house was haunted by the spirit of the old, but in secret, I sort of believed it was true. When we moved into the house 2.0, I took a different room than I had stayed in before. I had never liked that my old room faced the street, since it had large, low windows that anyone could look directly into if they had hopped our short wooden fence. Instead, I took the room on the opposite side of the hallway which, in its previous life, had simply been a storage room. Another interesting bit of backstory is that I have

always suffered terrible insomnia and am prone to nightmares when I do sleep. As a small child, I often had nightmares that would bring my parents rushing into my room, not knowing what I'd do as I screamed and cried totally unconscious. However, I hadn't had an experience that extreme for many years before the time my story takes place and I had never felt that there was something unusual happening in the house. I was 15. I hadn't been staying in my new bedroom for very long before I started to have terrible nightmares all the time. At first I didn't think much of it since I had a history with bad dreams. I figured it was just a psychological pattern that was bound to return.

But then I began to notice other things, little things, that increased my feeling of uneasiness. In the given picture you can see there is a small window directly to the overhead of my bed. I began to feel like someone was outside watching me at night. Many nights as time went on, almost every night, I would also hear quiet shuffling directly outside that window. It was always just after I went to bed as it often takes me a long time to fall asleep. There was a line of bushes all along the side of the house my room faced and I could distinctly hear movement in the gravel below my window, the disturbances of branches and the most disturbing thing of all, what sounded like

fingernails, lightly scraping up or down the mesh screen. I am admittedly an easily startled person. When this first began to happen, I would freeze, suddenly fully awake, and wait for several minutes before timidly peeking between my blinds to see if I could spot anything. I never did. It kept me up many nights, but after a while the experience became so regular and nothing besides the noises would occur, so I gradually got used to ignoring it. I tried to tell myself it was birds or other small animals, we live in a very rural area, and that they must sleep in our bushes at night for safety. But some months later things began to escalate. My dreams were no longer simply

bad but full-blown terrifying. I would sometimes wake up crying, totally in shock and sit with the lights on for the rest of the night. Once I could swear I heard our front door open and slam shut in the middle of the night but when I checked it was still locked and everything was quiet. This was bad enough but then I began to have experiences with sleep paralysis. Of course it was always scary when this happened, but there's one night in particular that stands out. I was having a particularly terrifying dream, one that only became bad after a dark figure appeared in it, upsetting an otherwise normal series of events and forcing me awake. I knew I was paralyzed right away. The room felt very strange. Many people describe paranormal presences as chilling, but for me, everything was uncomfortably warm,

and it faintly smelled like something was burning. It was too quiet, as if sound had been sucked out of the room. I was able to look around just a little bit, and in my peripheral vision I saw it. The blurry dark figure, the same as in my dream, standing near the edge of my bed, just watching me. I felt like it was moving closer, slowly as to be nearly imperceptible. I could feel myself crying, struggling to break free. I wish I could describe how I felt in that moment. It was beyond fear. It was a terror so huge that it felt more like despair. It was nauseating. I had never felt anything that awful before or since. This silent suffering went on for what

felt like hours, the figure creeping nearer to my face, before finally exhaustion and stress caused me to lose consciousness again. Things were relatively quiet after that aside from the sounds at the window. Plus I had read about sleep paralysis experiences before and their commonalities so I didn't think my story was particularly unique. But a couple of months after that last nightmare I found this picture. I was just bored and looking through pictures on my phone, probably trying to delete some from memory space. I don't remember exactly which night I took this picture, I only know it wasn't the same night as the paralysis, but I remember taking the selfies. There were a few others in this set, taken in quick succession, but for some reason I got distracted and leaned away during this picture, exposing the window behind me. I never bothered

to look closely at it before, but in the right lighting, that thing in the window behind me. I never bothered to look closely at it before, but in the right lighting, that thing in the window became visible to me. Here I brought up the fill light in the image somewhat and sharpened it to make the shape more clear. Before anyone asked, the window was open in this image. What you're seeing cannot be a reflection, since the mesh screen does not reflect. To me, it looks like

the torso of something dark, standing directly against the window. To me, it looks like something that could have made all of those noises. The shuffling, the tapping, the scraping of nails. I've shown several people over the years and while we don't always agree on what it looks like, everyone agrees that something is there and that the images make them feel uneasy. Since that night, I'm grateful to report I haven't experienced anything remotely like this. I still heard the noises outside for a long time but since moving out of my parents' house, I've never heard them again. All that remains is a mild sense of uneasiness whenever I sleep in that room and only after the lights go out.

This is a true story my dad told me a few years ago. It takes place when he was in his early teens if I remember correctly. He is not one to make things like this up so I believe him wholeheartedly. He was in the car with his dad and they were having a casual conversation when all of the sudden he got the feeling of deja vu but it wasn't just an ordinary I've done this before type of deja vu. Along with this feeling came the knowledge of what his dad was going to say next, and what he was supposed to say in response to what his dad was saying. This went on for several minutes, with him just following the script of the conversation. Everything was going exactly

as he knew it would. After a while of this, he decided he wasn't going to follow the script anymore. He knew what he was supposed to say next, but he purposely said something different. The feeling immediately went away and has never come back since. I think about this pretty often. If he had continued to follow the script of the conversation and even beyond, where would he have ended up in life? If it was some glitch or accident that he became aware of this, does that mean we're all following our own script and are unaware of it? I have a few theories about this, but at the end of the day, all I can do is wonder. Christmas is a time of year to be happy, merry, and joyful. At least for most people.

I love spreading cheer to family and friends on Christmas. My joyful mood usually translates to my co-workers as well. I work in customer service, which many people know can be a nightmare at Christmas time so it helps to try and stay upbeat. Well on this specific Christmas Eve customers were doing some final Christmas shopping before Christmas day. Right at the end of my shift I cashed out a pretty normal looking guy. I would say the average height range of like 5 foot 7 and maybe 150 pounds. He had parted black hair, glasses and was probably in his mid-40s. He was buying some fairly normal stuff and not really

anything Christmas related. The whole interaction was mostly friendly until the very end when I said something I now wish I didn't say. I ended our transaction by saying in my bubbly voice, Thank you, sir, and have a happy holiday. He stopped and turned back to me and said, What did you just say? I responded nervously and semi-confused, Have a happy holiday? He stormed back to my register and screamed at the top of his lungs, It's Merry Christmas!

I backed away in a slight panic and just said, Okay sir, I'm sorry. He walked away mumbling to himself but I could tell he was furious by his recent actions. For a couple of minutes I kept staring outside and I could see him pacing in front of the store, still seemingly mumbling to himself. A few people actually came into the store and said that there was someone outside talking about Christmas and Jesus' birthday. I began to panic, thinking this guy was going to come into the store again or wait until I got out and try to follow me home or something.

Well luckily for me, my boyfriend worked at the same store and he was driving us to my mom's house for a Christmas Eve party at the end of the night. We left shortly after six and at first I was relieved when I didn't see the man outside. We were almost to my boyfriend's car when we saw the man running after us from the side of the store. My boyfriend opened up the backseat door so I could hop in and he stood there in front of the car. My boyfriend said in a stern voice, Hey, is there a problem man?

The man still in a rage said, That lady has no respect for Jesus or Christmas and she should be punished. My boyfriend confused told the man to back away and leave us alone and the crazy man actually tried to jump past my boyfriend to get into the car to punish me or whatever that meant. My boyfriend slammed the guy down to the ground and got in the car and we drove off. Like fools, we decided on the drive not to call 911 because we didn't want to bother them on Christmas Eve, so we thought, and just wanted to forget the event. On December 26th, we did alert our store manager of the situation so we could call the police if the guy ever came back into the store. I still work at the store, and almost a year later, I have never seen that man again.

I can say for certainty that I will never say happy holidays again. I love Christmas. It has always been a great day to spend with my family and call me cheesy but I really just enjoy the spirit of the day. My whole family and I had just finished a beautiful Christmas dinner and most of my family went into the living room to wait for me to exchange presents. Christmas day was when we did presents with the grandparents and cousins. I was in the kitchen washing dishes with my brother Jake and cousin Teresa. While I was washing dishes, I looked out the window and thought I noticed somebody out by my shed.

I didn't really let it bother me because I figured it was some kind of shadow from the tree. After a few more minutes of washing, I noticed the figure again. And this time, I was definitely sure that it was a man. I told my brother and cousin to look out the window, but don't make it obvious. They noticed it as well. We all talked quietly among ourselves trying to figure out what we should do. Our thought was that this man was technically trespassing in my backyard so we decided to call the police. They told us that they would send somebody out to take a look right away. Trying not to panic and hoping everything stayed how it was until the police showed up was not easy. The kids started to get restless as well as the grandparents were wondering what was the hold up.

My parents knew something wasn't right but they did a really great job of keeping everybody in the living room. After a couple of minutes we noticed the man starting to approach my house and he wasn't alone. There were three more men that came out from behind the shed. They started to surround my house. Confused and terrified we tried to remain calm. What happened next was nothing shy of a Christmas miracle. The flashing lights appeared and we heard a minor altercation outside of the house. The officers were able to catch one of the men while the other three fled. While somehow not bringing a lot of attention to my family inside, I spoke with the cop outside and gave my statement. Well, it turns out my cousin Teresa had broken up with her boyfriend

several months before Christmas and the man they detained was in fact her ex-boyfriend. Teresa had started seeing somebody new and this man figured the new boyfriend would be at the house for the Christmas party. Her ex and his friends clearly planned on attacking him or at least putting a good scare into him, so I thought. Until the officer informed us that my cousin's ex was equipped with a knife and brass knuckles in his back pocket. Luckily, nobody got hurt, and I'm not actually sure what kind of trouble he got into for this. The rest of the night went smooth, then we opened presents, but I had an uneasy feeling for the rest of the night that the other men might return and try to finish the plan they started.

Being the father of two small children, Christmas Eve is usually a very early night for my family because the kids wake me up around 6am for Santa's presents. At about 10pm I got into bed with my wife and started to fall asleep. Shortly after this I was jolted awake by our doorbell. I jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs. More angry than anything else that some idiot rang my doorbell on Christmas Eve after 11pm with two small children asleep. Without even thinking I opened the door and said, what do you want? It was an old man with a dirty black beard. He was wearing a red jacket and red sweatpants. His face was filthy. He said in a slow and haunting voice, please let old Chris Kringle come inside and get warm.

I slammed the door in his face and said through the door, if you don't leave right now I'm calling the cops. The man was quiet for a moment and then knocked on the door slowly. I yelled one more time trying not to wake my kids. Do you want to be arrested? He then started to bang on my door vigorously and relentlessly. My wife then ran down the stairs who I might add is a third degree black belt and asked what was going on. I told her to call the police and then make sure the kids were alright. The man must have heard me on the phone because he stopped knocking. I could hear him muffled through the door say, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

And then he laughed as he walked away. After feeling a slight moment of relief thinking this ordeal was over, I decided to wait at the front door until the police showed up. A cop showed up several minutes later and I explained the situation to him. He stated that he had no other calls or similar reports like this tonight and that's when we heard my wife scream from the kids room. The police officer headed up the stairs first with me right behind him. The man was trying to break into the window where my daughter slept. The cop immediately tased and arrested the man who just kept saying, don't worry, I'm Santa Claus, over and over again. The situation was

never really explained to me. Apparently he was just a homeless man who was wandering around. The cop said that he may have been possibly on something. Either way, I never sleep quite right on Christmas anymore. First, let me say I come from a somewhat unconventional family. We are all a little weird or wacky in our own way. Sometimes we get along great and sometimes not so much. On Christmas Day, my parents and I usually stay home and don't see any of our extended family. Over this past year, we decided to go to my grandmother's house. This is a little different because my grandmother and I have a very rocky relationship with one another.

I have overheard my dad mentioning stories about my grandmother and my now deceased grandfather that bordered on child abuse. I remember being really young and my grandparents screaming at me for the smallest things and my parents abruptly taking me home. But anyway, I'm in my twenties now and my father decided since it was Christmas, we could give spending the holiday at my grandma's a chance. The day started out pretty uneventful and, dare I say, pleasant. A lot of conversations and happy memories. My dad and aunt were reminiscing about snowball fights and such from their childhood. There was a healthy conversation about politics, which I thought for sure would change the mood but surprisingly did not. After several hours and a nice dinner everyone

made their way to the living room for coffee and to just hang out on the couches. I left my coffee on the kitchen table and made my way to the back of the house where the only bathroom was. I washed my hands, fixed my shirt and walked out of the bathroom. When I walked into the hallway I was greeted by my grandma who was just standing there staring at me. I said, hi, what's going on? And I tried to keep walking but she wouldn't move. Now this is a narrow hallway and you're only fitting one across. Excuse me please. I said semi-annoyed yet still she did not budge at all. Finally she spoke up and said,

What do you think you're doing? She sounded nervous and almost a little angry. I was just going to the bathroom. I said starting to get uneasy about the entire situation. She started to poke my chest and said, Where is he? At this point, I was beyond confused. I told her I had no clue what she was talking about. Where's who?

I finally shoved past her and started to make my way down the long hallway. That's when it happened. I heard her scream like a banshee and chase me down the hall. I turned around and she lunged at me with a small kitchen knife. She was trying to stab me. She just kept screaming, where is he? Where is he? At this point she had fallen to the ground trying to take me down with her. After a minute of this my father finally came running in with my aunt and lifted her up. I was too scared to use any force because I didn't want to hurt her but I also didn't want to get stabbed. I was so angry and upset I started to grab my things and told my family I was leaving.

As I made my way toward the door she walked back into the living room and said in a calm voice, oh where are you going? You haven't even finished your coffee. I just left and didn't even respond. This woman, my grandmother, tried to stab me and I still have no idea why. I found out several weeks later from my cousin that after my father and I left my grandmother cried for hours and was basically inconsolable. She didn't know why we were so angry and left so abruptly. Clearly my grandma had some sort of episode that night that she can't remember but there are so many unanswered questions like, who was she referring to? I haven't seen or spoken to her since. My dad did try to reach out and explain to her why we left and why we won't be coming back, but she doesn't believe

he is telling her the truth when he transcribes the events back to her. The worst part about all of this is that this will probably be the Christmas that I always remember the most This is a short story that happened to me approximately 3-4 years ago I used to work for a charitable company that would distribute presents to families or individuals in need during the holiday time. For the most part, I loved this job. I paid decently well and was incredibly rewarding, but on this one specific Christmas Eve, it was enough for me to never want to do something like this again. I usually worked or traveled with another associate named Jose, but since it was Christmas

Eve and it was our last stop, I told him I would go alone and he'd go home to his wife and enjoy what was left of the holiday. It was about 5pm, so it was getting pretty dark as I made my way toward the recipient's house. I arrived and went up to the door with a big tote of presents all wrapped and ready to be distributed as they pleased. A man answered the door in pajama pants and a skin-tight sleeveless shirt. The guy was overweight and clearly did not take care of himself. He looked like he hadn't shaved or showered in weeks. I said to him in my still bubbly voice, Hi, I'm Jamie and I'm here to drop off the presents. He stared at me and smiled with his yellow unbrushed teeth.

He looked right at me and said, Wow, you sure are pretty. Which freaked me out a little bit. I just awkwardly smiled and said, Thanks. He then said, Honey, I have a lot of trouble with my back and I can't live these presents. Will you please bring them into my living room for me? Like a fool, I complied as

this wasn't an uncommon request to bring the presents in the home for those receiving them. I walked in and the man shut the door behind me. I walked slowly in his near pitch black house. What I noticed in the few seconds of being in this house was that there were no signs of children, Christmas decorations, or anything that even looked remotely festive. I turned around to ask him where I was going and that's when I noticed him. He was hunched over and staring at me like I was a piece of meat, basically salivating. He started to approach me and put his arms out like he was going for an embrace or a hug. More creeped out than I've ever been in my entire life, I decided the answer was to just run away. I dropped the presents there and ran to the door. He locked it behind me.

The knob was locked and so was the chain. I quickly was able to get them undone and out of the house without any further incident. I got into my car and called my supervisor and explained the situation to him. What he told me next made my eyes fill up with tears. I had mixed up two of the numbers in my GPS when I set out for the house. I was on the wrong block and clearly at the wrong house. The guy wasn't expecting presents and played along to get me into his house. I have no idea what his intentions were and am thankful nothing else happened. Running through the scenario in my head makes me wonder how I was able to undo the locks before he grabbed me or made a move towards the door. However, his pause in action or change of heart may have very well saved my life.

The Traumatizing Events of this Story happened to me several years ago. This is the first time I'm sharing my story publicly in hopes it may help others who read it. At the time, I was a mother of a four-year-old daughter. Her name is Juniper and she is my entire life. The day of these events, my husband was at work so I decided to do some Christmas shopping

at the mall. On the way in, Juniper saw Santa sitting in the middle of the atrium and began jumping because I assumed she associated Santa with presents. We decided to get into line even though it was long. We could get a picture and she could tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. When it was finally Juniper's chance to sit on his lap I immediately felt uncomfortable. I didn't like the way he was staring at her. His eyes were big and looked as if though he had been on something. She sat there for a moment and told the man what she

wanted as I watched, filled with anxiety. After about two minutes he got her off his lap and winked goodbye to her and said Merry Christmas. Happy this ordeal was over, we did the little bit of shopping we had to do and pressed on through the day. While I was browsing around one of the clothing stores, I looked up and thought I noticed the mall Santa sitting outside of the store we were in. Not taking any chances, I grabbed Juniper and walked out of the other entrance of the store. After a little while longer of shopping, we decided to get some lunch in the food court of the mall. I kept my eyes peeled because I just had mother's intuition that something wasn't right. We were finishing our food and literally as we were about to get up, the mall Santa came over to our table.

He walked right up to Juniper and said in a jolly Santa-like voice, Hey there, Juniper. Remember to be good so Santa can come and bring you lots of presents. She was so excited, and so were all the people around me. It's easy to say what you would do in that situation, but I just stood still. I thought freaking out my daughter and rushing her away from Santa would be a traumatizing event so I grabbed her hand and told her it was time to go. She said goodbye to Santa and we left. That night at home I told my husband about the entire story.

He was angry but agreed with my course of action. The next day I woke up at about 8am. My husband was already gone for work for the day. I happened to look outside and saw a strange blue car that I had never noticed parked outside my house. This didn't really bother me considering it could have been anyone but it was just peculiar. At about 11am I looked out the window again and noticed the car was still in the exact same spot. I made the choice to go out to my mailbox in front of my home and investigate the car. The car was empty except for the passenger seat. There was a Santa hat on the seat. I tried not to jump to any conclusions but it was just starting to make too much sense in my head.

I ran inside and called my husband. He said I was grasping at straws, but decided to come home anyway to make sure I was okay. A couple of minutes later, my worst fear was realized. I looked out the window and saw the man in his car. It was the mall Santa, and he was taking a picture of my house with his cell phone. Once he saw me, he drove away, and he drove away so fast I couldn't get the license plate number. Minutes later, my husband came home and I explained what I saw. We called the authorities, but there really wasn't anything that could be done. I felt angry with myself that I looked at the car all morning and couldn't get a license plate number.

My husband stayed home from work the next day just in case. At about noon we walked around the house and noticed footprints outside of Juniper's window. Footprints in the snow that neither of us left. That night I couldn't sleep. I felt like I was just waiting for something horrible to happen. My husband, Juniper and I all decided to have a camp out in the living room so she could be with us all night. Shortly after midnight, my husband and I were alerted to the sound of a car pulling up. It was the mall Santa car from the day before, and he was approaching the house with a giant bag

in his hand. I called the police as my husband stalked him through the windows. The lights were off so the mall Santa couldn't see us through the windows. He made his way all the way to Juniper's window. He started to tap on the windows almost as if though he was trying to wake her up. My husband stood on the other side of the window, trying not to scare him away until the cops came. That's when we heard it. Hey Juniper, it's Santa. Come take a ride in my sleigh and I'll show you the reindeer. Praying that the cops would show up any minute, I sat in the fetal position not knowing if this lunatic had a gun or any other weapon.

He kept tapping and whispering, It's me, Santa. Finally the cops showed up and when we heard the sirens out front my husband jumped out the window and tackled them all Santa. My husband yelled for the cops and the cops detained the man. He didn't have any weapons on him but his car did have duct tape and rope. It gives me nightmares to this day thinking of that horrible situation and what could have happened. My Christmas miracle is that my family is safe and my daughter didn't have to really experience any of the intense feelings my husband and I did over those couple of days. If you as a parent have instincts about the safety of your child, please follow them.

If I would have just left them all when I felt uneasy, I could have possibly avoided this entire series of events. This happened two years ago, but I always think about it. Every Christmas Eve, we spend the evening at my grandparents' house where we have a feast and swap presents with cousins, all the people we won't be with on Christmas morning. It was a merry and festive evening, and spirits were high, if not a little worn out on our way home. Pulling into our driveway we instantly felt something was off. In the corner of our house decoration lights were hanging haphazardly free of the roof and something else we couldn't quite pinpoint right away. Luckily the kids were already asleep from the soothing dark car ride so we sat

in the driveway, the motor off and ticking as it starts to cool. Did we leave that many lights on inside? My husband asked me. Because he would never, he is a stickler for turning out lights before we leave. I shook my head no, the Christmas tree was the only thing we left on. But now there was a soft glow from the windows at two ends of the house. One being the primary living room area toward the front where we were and the other the window at the left side of the house, the hallway by our bedroom, and it slightly lit the side yard between our house and the neighbor.

We both agreed that it looked like someone was or had been in our home. Call the cops. Stay in the car with the doors locked. He re-cranked the car and i didn't even bother getting out i just slid over the center console until the driver's seat just in case he has a concealed carry permit so he drew his weapon and went to check the front door it was still locked so he unlocked it about the time i started telling the police that our house seemed suspicious and we thought someone might be in it. They of course said that we should wait outside but I knew that there was no use in telling my husband that as he was already starting inside and flicking on more lights. It was nerve-wracking

to sit there and watch the open front door spilling light onto the lawn. I cracked my window just the tiniest bit so I could hear sooner if something started happening. Luckily nothing did and when the cops pulled up I let them know my husband was inside and what he was wearing since he did have his gun out. But all the opening and shutting of car doors alerted him and woke the kids so he'd come back to the front door with his gun back under his jacket. I went back to keep the kids busy while he talked to the cops and then the cops cleared the house. Our visitors were no longer there but they had broken in through the backyard. Many of our Christmas presents were gone.

The heaviest ones it seemed as I'd bought most of them and they had left one of their own. A large pile of poop on the back porch mat. Decorations I had up inside were knocked down and scattered all over the place. The tree completely disheveled. Two pieces from my nativity scene were smashed on the floor. Our laptops were gone and my jewelry box had also been pilfered. But unbeknownst to them, although some had sentimental meaning, that was all custom or low level stuff.

Anything real was in our hidden safe they had not found. My husband made sure not to touch the light switches that had been on so that they could dust for prints and other evidence was taken, and we gave a report for the theft. It seems they spent a while inside the house without much fear, brazenly turning on lights, leaving a steaming pile, and maybe as they left, hopping up and tearing the Christmas lights off the corner of the house. No out-of-the-place fingerprints came back, so they must have been wearing gloves and it remains unsolved. Next year, I ask for town where I grew up.

I was 18 at the time, and I'm still a petite girl. Our store owners were greedy scumbags, so for our large city we were the only McD's staying open for Christmas, so I switched around on the schedule that I'd come in after family stuff on Christmas Eve and be home in the morning to open presents and then sleep. Somewhere around midnight, a mid-twenties man came in. He was slightly overweight, tall, his clothes kind of fit in an awkward way that's hard to describe, like he wore the same things every day and put zero thought into his appearance, the way his shirt was tucked in, the

way his belt bunched his pants, that his pants were a bit too short and showed too much ankle. His beard was patchy and uneven and grew down his neck, and you might wonder why I have such a thorough description of him, because he stayed in the dining room for at least two hours within sight of the counter, and almost every time I checked he was staring at me. He would come back to the counter at least twice or more to order additional small items off the value menu. After the second time I caught him staring again, and he gave me a creepy smile while he still had food in his mouth. I'm bad at hiding my facial expressions and I'm sure I wrinkled up in a disgusting face and turned away to go to the back.

I told the one guy on our skeleton crew that night that some lingering dude was creeping me out and asked him to switch with me on the front. It was a pretty dead night so it really didn't matter where we were stationed, so he switched with me. After a bit in the back, it was normally the time that night shift would clean the customer areas for a jump on the next day before morning rush started. My co-worker said the dude was still out there, so I asked to clean the bathrooms instead while he wiped down the tables and then we'd tackle the floor together so it was quick. I started on the men's bathroom since the only guy in the place was currently at his table but just to be sure of course I knocked on the door first then called out to anyone inside that it was time for cleaning. It's not a glamorous job to clean a bathroom but it had been a quiet

night so it wasn't that bad. Then I did the same knock to check to start cleaning the woman's bathroom. It was a bit of a maneuver both times to bring in the mop bucket and the tote with the cleaning supplies so I was a bit distracted when I came in and went to place the tote on the sink counter which is probably why I didn't notice the shadow in the stall closet to the sink. I was pulling items out of the tote right away when I kind of noticed movement in the mirror behind me and looked up to see creepy guy almost fully behind me only seconds before his hand closed on my arm. He was grinning in a way that made me feel sick right away. He pulled my upper arm in a way that made me turn around towards him and he must have seen my

face screw up as I took a deep breath because he started to try and cover my mouth with his other hand saying something like, don't, no it's okay, I think you're pretty. Not sure exactly what he was saying because I was already screaming at the top of my lungs and turning my mouth and body away from him as much as I could. With my free arm I started whacking him with the first thing my fingers touched which happened to be a bottle of glass cleaner. It seemed like it only took seconds for my male co-worker to burst in the door. He took one look at the man in the bathroom and started screaming at him too, telling him he can't be in there, calling him a sicko, trash, scumbag, among other more colorful words. The creeper dashed for the door trying to squeeze by my

co-worker who stayed with me down the short hallway, continuing to yell at him, and kept it up till creeper was all the way out the door and a minute later a car sped out of the parking lot. We called the cops. Statements were taken. Managers contacted. I went home early and quit soon after as I was always scared he'd show up again or try to grab me on my way to my car or even follow me home. So, Christmas McCreep, let's not meet again. For the most part, I just took the money for the pictures and everyone else did the rest. It wasn't exactly the most exciting thing. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that when it came to an end,

I think I was more excited for that than I was my own high school graduation. There's a lot of reasons. Things like screaming children, the ironic teenagers who had a tendency to mess with the setup, you name it. But I think the biggest thing was the fact that it was just plain humiliating. At least the people were nice. There was this super hot lady who was always nice to me. Not that I had a chance or anything, but it was a big reason why I didn't just walk away. The guy they had who played Santa was a funny dude. He played the role very well and very enthusiastically. The children, or at least the ones who weren't crying, just ate his act right up. In a lot of

ways I kind of admired the man. On breaks I would usually smoke with him in the back entrance. One time I asked him what his secret was. He looked me square in the eyes with this intense stare, which, mind you, he was still dressed as Santa, so it was somewhere between being hard to take serious and also hard not just to shrug off. Drugs, he said flatly. Then he held the look just long enough to make it extremely awkward. Finally, he burst into laughter. It was hard not to laugh with him. The guy had one heck of a sense of humor. So one day, pulls a no call knife show. I get in and everyone is freaking out. Usually nobody cared all that much as we all got to go home but seeing as it was Christmas in a few days this was when the profit was at its height.

Messing with this was not to be taken lightly. Ten minutes into me showing up and they decided I should take the role. I wasn't that old, however, I was pretty fat at the time. I put up an argument, but in the end, it was do it or get fired. I tried to convince myself that impressing the hot lady I mentioned earlier would make it worthwhile, but when that first kid crawled on my lap and told me that she wanted a PlayStation 2, I realized that nothing could redeem this. About three hours into doing this, I noticed a strange man sitting in the food court. He looked older, like his skin was leathery. He looked like he's been in a few fights too. He was looking right at me. I'm not talking about a bypassing glance either, no. This guy was giving me the stink eye.

I tried to ignore him, figuring he'd just go away after a while, but the guy just stayed right there. He wouldn't stop staring at me. I wanted to point this guy out to my coworker, thinking that they could call security, but then I started to let the possible repercussions snowball in my head. What if he realized what I did, just walked away to another location where he could attack me in, let's say, the parking lot or maybe the backseat of my car? By this point, I knew he was here for me. Nobody does what he does unless they're in it for the long run. Break time comes and I make a brisk jog like walk away from his sight. As I do, I see him get up and move to

follow me. As soon as I hit the corner, I run for it. Realizing this goon might see me at any second, I run straight into the public bathroom to my left and hide myself in one of the stalls. It's about a minute before the door bursts open and the creepy dude runs into the bathroom, slightly out of breath. I hold my breath, terrified that if I didn't, the bells on the Santa suit would give me away. Thing is, it's pretty hard to hide when you're dressed like Father Christmas. You see, you got these red pants and these black boots. They're a dead giveaway, especially when you're hiding in a stall where you can see the feet underneath. The man saw it straight away and kicked the door

open. He grabbed me by the collar and shoved me against the wall. I could tell he was in his late 30s, early 40s maybe. He demanded me to give him the money I owed him. Here's the thing, I'd never seen this guy before, not once in my entire life. Why would I owe him money? Did I borrow money from someone recently? No, that couldn't be. I don't know what you're talking about. I tell him. I'm sufficiently freaked out at this point. What did I get myself into? I mean, to an outsider, I'm sure it looks silly. A goon intimidating a Santa in a bathroom. This guy rips my mask right off my face and throws it in the sink, then he raises his fist to punch me.

But before he lets his fist fly, he takes a step back, letting go of me. You're not him. He looks more afraid than I do at this point. He demands that I stay right there as he pulls out a flip phone and calls somebody. He's pretty low key about what he's saying and I'm just standing there completely nervous. What was just a minute felt like hours to me as the man paced back and forth in the bathroom as I stand there in my beardless Santa outfit. Finally the guy flips his phone shut and smiles at me. I see he's got teeth missing. I'll never forget what he said. It was equal parts confusing and relieving. Sorry, bud. Wrong Santa. Merry Christmas.

And out he went. I was pretty confused, to say the least. I don't know how I pulled off the rest of that Santa shift, but apparently not all that great. My boss kept reprimanding me for seeming too nervous and not being cheerful enough. Later that night it all seemed to come together to me. The Santa who banged in, he was the one they were after. In the end it all made perfect sense. Why he was so animated, why he always seemed in a good mood, the whole works. All things considered, he was very naughty, and I was almost the one who got the coal. I don't know if they ever caught up to him in the end, but if they did, I for one hope that his wallet was full. I'd hate to see what they'd do if he had nothing to give. Secret Santa is a game that usually gets played in a classroom or, in my case, an office.

I'm sure you're well aware of what it is, but in case you're not, I'll give you the quick version. Everyone is assigned a random co-worker to secretly give a gift to. Usually there's something like a price cap around 15 bucks or so. It's usually a pretty interesting turn of events as we get to learn a thing or two about co-workers as you start digging up on what their interests are and what have you. Nine times out of ten, you just find out cute things like big angry looking guy has a secret passion for growing flowers, general stuff like that. We always looked forward to Secret Santa, as we had an almost family-like community here where we were all encouraged to

spend as much time as possible together. The tidbits of gossip were always playful and fun, this was not one of those times. This time around, I was the unfortunate soul who was gifted upon by the weird IT guy, let's call him Squid. Squid was a guy with no social skills whatsoever, however, at the same time, an ingenious worker in his craft, or so they told me. I don't know two things about anything that's tech-related outside of spreadsheets, email, and Amazon, if you could even call it that. A little background real quick. I'm a secret collector of these weird big-headed toys called Funko Pops. Not just any particular type either, but specifically Game of Thrones types. I have this unhealthy obsession with that show and for what started out as a joke where I bought

a Jon Snow toy quickly spiraled out of control, resulting in me owning almost all of them. You should see this shelf in my room. Jaime, Lannister, the Hound, Snow, Giant's Bane, the Night King, Littlefinger, Tyrion, Dany, Ned, Stannis, you name it. I had them all. However, there was this one character that I could never find, and that was a specific version of Tyrion. The one where he's in the battle armor with a scar across his face, you know, like in season 2's Blackwater episode. Point is, not everyone gets the whole collection thing, and Funkos are, well, different than what everyone else was expecting. Nobody had worked new, and I intended to keep it that way. On my way home between the time of signing

the secret Santas and the day we exchanged, I ran into Squid at a hobby store. It looked like he was expecting to see me there, or maybe that was just because he was weird and always looks that way. Either way, I have no clue. I didn't expect to see him there and tried to turn and leave. Me being an idiot, I looked back as I cleared the door and accidentally made direct eye contact with him. He got really nervous and looked down at the ground. I wasn't sure what to do, so instead I just left. I would talk to him next time I saw him and make up an excuse. I wouldn't bring this up, but the thing is, it plays a factor in the day we exchanged.

Turns out, he got me exactly the Funko doll I was looking for, my Bortyrion with his battle scar, specifically the one I never told anyone at work I wanted. How he knew just made those bells in my head explode. Everyone had a good laugh and Squid looked so nervous, almost pale when he gave it to me. When I asked him how he knew, he said it was just a guess seeing as we ran into each other at the store, by chance. When I got home, I put the doll in the corner of the room and never took it out of the bag. It just seemed so creepy to me that he knew to get me specifically that one doll. I couldn't even add it to the collection. I almost threw it away, but instead I just forgot about it for the next couple of weeks. Squid continued to ask me about it, specifically what I thought about it and if I

set it up yet. I kept telling him I didn't and he just kept getting more annoyed about it. He's been watching me more and more these days. I was thinking about complaining to HR but everyone knew that Squid was like this homeschooled weirdo. Uncomfortable, but accepted regardless as per the nature of the place we worked. So one day he asked me and I decided just lie and say yes. I stood the thing up in my TV room. Poor Squid looked beyond skeptical and beyond that even more annoyed, like he could just see through it. Turns out, squid can tell when I lie. Who knows? Either way, it was getting unbearable. So I get home and the first thing I do is take it out of the bag and throw it away. As I do, I notice the factory seal in the box was torn open.

Well, sort of. That wouldn't bother me so much but it had masking tape over it as if to try to hide the fact. Big deal, maybe someone got caught trying to take it out of the box and they just refurbished it, I don't know. Either way I took it out of the box to look at it closely. Part of me wanted to know if the creep slipped a note inside but there was nothing but the usual stuff. I noticed two things out of the gate. One was that the doll was heavier than usual. Like I said earlier, I've been collecting these things for quite some time, so I should know. The other was that the head had a crack in it. I take a closer look and notice that the crack

actually wraps around the entire head. I prod at it for a second and notice that it's actually a seam from when it was split open. The head came apart very easily and as it did, the small thing fell out of it. It looked like a plug or something but then I realized the plug had a small glass over the receiving part. I take a closer look and see this tiny red light. Then it hits me. This is a camera. Some kind of DIY thing, like it was homemade. As I make it to throw it across the room the light shuts off.

Squid realized I found him out. I wrapped it in three plastic bags and put it into a box. The thought of having it in my house made my stomach turn but I needed to show it to HR. When I showed up to work the next day, Squid was gone. Turns out he left a last second call saying that he was quitting, effective immediately. Turns out he wiped his entire hard drive before he took off sometime the prior night. The word got out that Squid was trying to spy on me and everyone was pretty cool about it, mostly on account of them

saying things like, I knew it. I mean, let's face it, we all did. So here's the part that really messes with me. It turns out that the main reason Squid was able to learn so much about me was the fact that I was foolish enough to leave my Google account logged into the work computer. From there, it was easy enough task for Squid to break into my account and learn all my personal information. Think about it, my entire phone was linked to Google. That thing has me on GPS granting him the ability to stalk and keep track of me just two rooms away. No wonder he found out about the freaking doll.

He had almost everything but bad for him, I didn't own a webcam or anything like that for him to hack. He just needed to see me at night when I was private and vulnerable. I deleted all my accounts, changed my numbers, got rid of everything that gave him access to my personal information. I changed bank accounts, cut my credit and debit cards, completely uplifted my digital footprint. It just scares me because I just don't know how

much information is out there about me, how far it goes. In the end, the police caught him and he was brought up on stalker charges of some sort. He pled guilty to infiltrating my life. He told them he wanted to learn the layout of my house. Do I really need to spell it out for you any further? Look, judge me if you want, but please, for the love of God, be careful when you share your personal information, especially when it comes to work computers. You just don't know who is watching. The events of this story happened several years ago. During the course of that year I lived overseas.

My company had a branch in Europe and I decided I would work there for a year or so. For the most part it was beautiful and I had a really great time, learning the culture and meeting new people. But during the holiday time, especially around Christmas, it could get very lonely and made me homesick. My family and friends still lived back in the United States and could not afford to come see me and because of my job I was stuck in Europe for the time being. On Christmas I stayed home in my apartment and decided to watch movies. After watching Netflix for a couple of hours I got bored and was looking for something to entertain me for a while. Quick backstory about me when I was in high school. My friends and I

used to crack the surface of the so-called dark web or deep web. We were all pretty computer savvy and thought we were cool being able to access it at a young age. We didn't do anything besides just surf around as we were scared to stumble across something we shouldn't. Well fast forward back to the present and I haven't done anything like that in close to 10 years. But I decided searching the dark web was just the excitement I was looking for on this quiet Christmas evening. It honestly seemed pretty harmless and I thought what could go wrong? I searched through dozens of dead end links and pages and nothing really seemed to spark my interest. After an hour or so of surfing I

decided it was finally time for bed. I closed everything down on my computer and went to the bathroom. When I came out I noticed my webcam screen was up. Being a little naive I didn't think anything of it and just closed it out. As I turned away, it popped up again. As I stood and watched for several seconds trying to comprehend what was happening, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text message from a private number that said, I see you. Beyond creeped out and starting to get worried,

I decided to shut off my lights and turn the computer off. But before I could, I had an email pop up on my desktop. The email was a picture of my apartment building. I unplugged my computer and grabbed a knife from my kitchen and stood in the corner of my apartment. Almost immediately after unplugging the computer, another text came through that said, I hope your doors are locked. I couldn't comprehend what was happening. I was frozen in both shock and fear. All I could think of was something happened while I was on the dark web and I wasn't sure what. For hours I stood in my dark apartment staring at the windows and doors.

Every little noise made me jump out of my skin. Every time I heard somebody in the hall I was getting myself ready for self-defense. Now this was Christmas night and the middle of the night at this point. There was no way there should be that much foot traffic in the hallway but I heard it. Back and forth I heard footsteps all night long but never anybody actually standing in front of or knocking at my door. Morning finally came and I still had not slept and hardly moved all night. At about 8.30 somebody knocked on my door. I slowly approached the door not knowing at all what to expect. As I looked through the peephole I noticed it was my neighbor.

I opened the door and greeted him. I hope you had a merry Christmas, he said to me in an almost excited voice. I just nodded and said, you too. In his cheerful morning voice, he then said, somebody dropped this letter off to me this morning and said it was for you, but they said they couldn't talk to you for some reason. I took the letter, knowing deep down where it truly came from. I asked, what did he look like? And he responded with, well, he was actually a she. She was pretty, you know, dark hair, pretty smile. I said thanks and shut the door.

Standing right there I opened the letter. It was a Christmas card with Santa on the front and the inside of the card was written as follows. It started with my name, my full name and then read as followed. I hope you had a nice Christmas. I am sad you never came out in the hall to meet me and my friends. I guess there is always next year. Happy Christmas. I left right at that moment. I grabbed the few things I needed and checked into a hotel. I stayed a couple of nights and returned back to the States and told my bosses I was having some sort of medical emergency and that I felt more comfortable finishing up my contract in the States.

I never contacted the police and have also never been so scared in my entire life. Every single time I get on the internet I get a little shaky and only use it for my job and not personal use. Nothing like this has happened to me again in the years since and thankfully no follow ups to this single occurrence. I still can't help but wonder what I strolled upon that night when I was targeted. If I can leave you with a bit of advice, don't be a novice strolling around the dark web, especially on Christmas. So this happened to me over 10 years ago when I was a sophomore in high school. First let me start the story by saying that at this point, the house next door to me had

been vacant for almost a year. The elderly woman had passed away and whoever now owned the house must have never got around to doing the necessary repairs to fix it. The old lady who used to live next door to me was a mean and miserable person. She always called the police on the neighbors even though they would barely make any noise or do anything wrong at all. But it was always clear that she did love Christmas. She would hire people to hang up all of the holiday decorations on her front lawn and porch. Well shortly after Christmas my freshman year she had

passed away due to falling or an accident of that nature. Her kids from out of state came and cleaned out the entire house and left it vacant. As previously mentioned they didn't sell it, repair it, or inhabit it. They just left the house to sit there and essentially rot. After they cleaned out the house they left the curtains on the side of the house open and if you looked out my bedroom window you could see right into the house. It was semi-creepy knowing that the house was just so desolate and empty. We'll fast forward now to Christmas Eve of my sophomore year of high school. My brother and I took place in our yearly tradition of watching wrestling DVDs until we got tired. We both decided to go to bed shortly after 2am on Christmas morning.

I shut off all my lights and got into bed and noticed a faint light coming through my blinds. So I got up and walked over to my window and I couldn't believe my eyes. There was a ceiling light on in the house next door and I couldn't explain it. I figured that there was no electricity at all considering the house was vacant and nobody lived there for some time. I stared into the other house in confusion and then the light shut off. Within five seconds or so the light turned back on again and that's when I saw it. A brief glimpse of a figure in the doorway of the house. It looked just like the old woman. At this point I knew my mind was playing tricks on me. The lights went off for a second and I stood there and stared into the darkness for several minutes trying to see anything but it was just pitch blackness. Then a burst of light and there she was again. The old woman

was standing right in the window staring back at me. I fell over in fear and ran into my brother's room. I tried to wake him but he was out cold. I slept on the floor in his room and stayed up all night trying to compute what I had just seen. For years I told my friends this story and nobody ever believed me. Whenever friends would stay over we would always look into the window and try and see something, but we never did. That was over ten years ago and that house has since been sold, but since it's been sold, the owners have sold it three times after moving in, so I wonder if I'm not the only one who has seen the lady wandering the halls. One thing is for sure, that is a Christmas present I will never forget.

So these incidences started about six years ago and went on for a couple of years. I used to be really into the music scene, going to shows and festivals every chance I got. This often meant meeting random people whose names I would forget five seconds later. As a result of being out in Atlanta night life so often, I got frequent friend requests on Facebook and naive younger me blindly accepted them, assuming they were just people I had met at shows that I was too distracted to remember. One day, I got a message from someone named Eddie. His Facebook profile picture was of someone at least a decade older than me

with long scraggly hair. He looked harmless enough, just another show-going hippie I assumed. His message simply asked if I was the girl that danced a half circle around him at the local show last night and then twirled dreamily away, or something along those lines. This is back in 2012 so I don't remember the exact words. I responded that I had no recollection of that and upon further investigation saw that he lived in an entirely different state so it couldn't have been me. He said that I must have had a doppelganger out there somewhere and

I left the conversation at that. Over the next few months I'd get random notifications that he had messaged me asking if I'd be at a various shows across the southeast. I mostly ignored the messages but would very occasionally respond, shortly expressing interest in a band he had mentioned, just trying to be polite. Why younger me felt the need to be polite to everyone is beyond me. I have since learned that it's okay not to respond to persistent internet strangers. The messages became more and more frequent so I just started to leave them unread. Again, why I didn't block him is beyond me. I guess I thought he was just harmless and lonely.

Fast forward about a year, it's summer of 2013, and two of my best friends and I are caravanning to Waka Rusa, a music festival that took place in Ozark, Arkansas. It was about a 13 hour drive from from Atlanta, but totally worth it. We went every year. An important note here is that this wasn't some small, intimate festival. It hosted upwards of 40,000 people, and it was often hard to keep track of my friends, let alone find people I knew who came separately. So my friends and I are on a blanket in the middle of a huge crowd, watching widespread panic. It's

nighttime so the only lights are coming from the stage, random LED toy or glow sticks or whatever. Out of nowhere someone beelines for our blanket, makes himself at home next to me without permission and strikes up a conversation. My group of friends are generally warm and accepting and it wasn't unusual to make random friends at a big hippie fest like this so we thought nothing of it at first, probably just someone high on something and looking for company. It wasn't until he started referencing me, my Facebook personally, that the alarm bells started going off. This was Eddie. I had honestly completely forgotten about him and his persistent messages. In the darkness, there was no way I could have recognized him. He was talking like I was an old

friend and tried to follow us around all night. Once I subtly alerted the others about who he was, we made every excuse in the book to try to leave, go back to our campsite, call it a night. He was painfully insistent on following us back and continuing to hang out. Obviously I didn't want him to know where I slept so I tried to appease him by saying I was exhausted but that we could try to meet up tomorrow. Again, dumb I know. I was just doing anything I could to get him away in the moment and had no intention of actually following through. He finally left us alone and we walked a long roundabout way to our campsite just in case he had watched or tried to follow at a distance. The next day I made an avid point to avoid the area where we ran into Eddie, disgust meeting up. The festival venue was huge so I figured there was

no way he'd find me again. I was behind a small stage in the back corner of the venue, hooping in the woods with my friends when I noticed him out of the corner of my eye. He was standing beside a tree alone, watching me with a weird smile. It reminded me of a proud dad watching his young daughter play but with way creepier and more sinister overtones. Still, he hadn't done or said anything explicitly creepy or threatening but his presence was so unsettling that I grabbed my friends and we pretended that we had forgotten about a set that was starting so we ran out of the wooded stage area. I remember hoping he didn't notice I had seen him. The festival ended the next day and I was relieved to not see him again.

Fast forward about another year. At this point I barely used Facebook and had all but forgotten about Eddie. My friend that I went to the festival with was visiting from out of town that night and we were going to get some drinks. He got to my house and we were catching up and the subject of the festival came up. We started talking about Eddie and how weird that whole situation was but at this point it was less creepy and more of just a strange memory. I told him Eddie used to message me all the time but that I had stopped opening them years ago. Naturally my friend wanted to look through the messages so I obliged. We began to scroll through the messages and I realized just how dire of a mistake it may have been not to block him.

He had started by asking me what shows I was going to go to, what part of Atlanta I lived in, etc. Not taking the hint that I clearly had no interest in responding at that point. Then, as the months went by, he was sending me links to tickets he had bought for me to shows in Atlanta and then links to tickets he had bought for us to go together. There was one message asking where he could pick me up for a show that was two hours away in Athens and that he couldn't wait to see me again. The messages continued to go on but at this point I was so creeped out I immediately blocked him, finally, and closed the computer wide-eyed. He sounded like he was carrying on an entire relationship with me without my consent. He never acknowledged the fact that I literally

hadn't responded to or even seen a message from him in over a year. Shaken up, we decided to just go get a drink and stop thinking about this weirdo. We get to Edgewood, a popular bar district in my city, and walk to our favorite small bar to get a drink. As soon as we walk into the bar, my heart sinks to the pit of my stomach. To this day, this was the creepiest and most coincidental moment that has ever happened. I see Eddie sitting at the far end of the bar. His face lights up as soon as I walk in and he motions me over. He says something along the lines of, I can't believe it's you, and starts firing off questions about me, my life, what I've been up to, etc. At this point,

the darkest feeling washes over me. I just feel unsafe and exposed. Why is he here? He doesn't even live in Georgia. I quickly tell him I have to use the restroom but then I'll be back to the bar for a drink. I grab my friend equally in shock and we speed walk around the corner to the bathrooms and then pass them. I will forever be grateful that the door to the patio area was just past the bathroom so we get a head start. We get outside, hop the fence and start running to my car. I glance behind us and Eddie somehow figured out in those 15 seconds that we left, even though you can't see the bathrooms from where he was sitting and he is walking rapidly across a crosswalk in our direction, eyes on me.

We book it to my car, and get out of Edgewood as quickly as we can. Shaken, I drive us around for about an hour before eventually going home to make sure we weren't being followed. As inconclusive as the whole thing was, that was the last time I ever saw Eddie, and I often wonder if this was just a string of coincidences or if it was more sinister. After all, he didn't live in Georgia. Why was he at one of my favorite bars alone the night I happened to go through all his old messages? Had he somehow gotten a hold of my location via Facebook? I made sure all my location services were off when I checked my phone so to this day I have no idea how he ended up there or what his intentions were. This takes place in a fairly large city, roughly 8 or so years ago. I'm female and at the time I was in my mid-twenties.

There used to be a gay bar that did goth nights every Saturday night and I would head out there fairly often with my friends. This night there was a group of us, about 5 of us that went together. Plus we always ran into more people we knew once we got there. At some point I left my friends on the dance floor and went up to the bar to get another drink. It was pretty crowded so the only space I could squeeze into was next to some guy on a bar stool at the very end of the counter. I ordered my drink and he looked over and said hello. He had a pretty interesting accent so I asked him where he was from. He replied that he was originally from

Ethiopia. We made small talk as I was waiting for my drink and I commented that I had a neighbor as a child that was from Ethiopia as well. The exact details of the conversation are a bit hazy. It was years ago after all and to be fair I wasn't paying super close attention at the time so I'm not sure how the conversation went into this direction, but I do remember his words snapping my brain's focus back onto him. I killed people there. Oh, well. I awkwardly chuckled, thinking maybe this was just some weird drunk guy thinking he would say weird creepy things to the goth girl at the bar. Maybe it was his really bad attempt at flirting. My drink arrived and I remember stirring it and trying to ease my way out of

the conversation but I was still waiting for my change. You used to kill people? He shook his head and replied casually. No, I still do. Uh-huh. My change could not arrive fast enough. I tried another awkward laugh and made some snarky comment about how I was fat and if he tried to kill me, I'd fight back and sit on him. I don't know. I mean, I have no idea what to say in this situation. Again, casually, without any emotion in his voice, he replied, there's no trying. If I decide to kill someone, I kill them. My change finally arrived and I took my drink, which I had not let leave my hand or line of sight for an instant, excused myself and headed back over to my friends on the dance floor. I watched as he turned on his stools so he could keep an eye on me. He just sat there,

sipping on his own drink, never looking away. Finally, at some point, I saw him put down his empty glass and move out the front door. I sighed in relief and continued on to enjoy my night. Several hours later, the goth night was ending and the next theme DJ was taking over. My friends and I were saying our goodbyes and I started walking to the front door. I turned around to see the friend that had given me a ride was stuck in a conversation with another acquaintance so I waited near the door just inside the building. That's when he grabbed me. The guy from the bar dragged me in farther into a dark corner out of line of the exit.

I was in shock and couldn't make a sound at first as he pinned me to the wall, face pressed against it and he twisted one of my arms behind my back. It seemed like in eternity he had held me there, pushing himself up firmly behind me, almost like he was trying to hide me in even more shadows. There were no lights near us and no reason for anyone to walk by this corner. Even if I yelled I wasn't sure if anyone would hear me since the DJ had started up. Somehow I managed to shove myself back against him once my flight instincts kicked in. In his surprise his grip loosened just a bit and the angle he held me at relaxed and I managed to shove my fist directly into his manhood. I have no idea to this day how I actually bent myself around in just the right way,

but he doubled over and I ran. I grabbed my friend out of her conversation and breathlessly gave a cliff note version of what happened as I dragged her to the back emergency exit. Before I could escape, I was stopped by security. He told me I couldn't go that way and had to leave through the front of the bar. I tried to explain to him that there was a guy up there that had tried to attack me but he wouldn't listen or just tuned it out or thought I was some drunk girl. Thankfully my friend and I managed to get the attention of a few other people we knew and

we headed out the front as a group. I didn't see the guy anywhere but I was terrified of getting through the dark parking lot to the car. I just knew he would be out there hiding somewhere. My friend and I ran as fast as we could, dove into the car and she pulled out of the parking space before I could even get my seatbelt on. Creeper dude was nowhere to be seen. I checked the news the next day to see if there had been any other attacks or, God forbid, murders in the area, but there was nothing. I don't really remember much of his features or what he was wearing or how he sounded, but I will never forget the emotionless, blank, matter-of-fact way he stated that he killed people and the way his dark eyes stared at me

like I was prey. I work at a restaurant and I love all the people I work with. Well, except one. The dishwasher, Jamal, is not my favorite. When I first started working there, I was one of two white girls. I say this because after the incident, my boss told me that incidents similar to mine have occurred, but only with the younger white females. They've had to fire a good amount of people because of it, I guess. All these comments and gestures only happen to me and the other girl. Anyway, the cooks would flirt harmlessly and try to get things for me and help me. Jamal would flirt but it would make my blood run cold. I would make small talk when I brought dishes back and he seemed okay. I couldn't tell if he had an intellectual

disability or if he just naturally mumbled his words. I could make out about 50% of what he was saying most of the time. Well, after about three weeks of working there, I'm bringing dishes back. If there are crates for cups above the station, then you can't really see unless you look through the cracks of the grate. I looked through to try and see if the silverware was done. As I looked through, he moved right in my line of sight. He stared me dead in the eyes and started putting his tongue out and wiggling it like a snake. I was so creeped out. I couldn't tell anyone because when I thought of how to explain it, it just sounded funny or like a joke. I could tell it wasn't though. This went on about three months until yesterday. I was getting ready to leave

work and was saying bye to my friend Derek who was working the dish pit with Jamal. Derek tends to flirt with me a lot and then just like that Jamal was able to clearly pronounce his words. He said, hey would you be able to get me something? Didn't think it was odd except for the fact that he has never spoken clearly before, ever. But I said sure because most of the time dishwashers will ask one of us for a drink or something. He asked for a root beer float and I'm thinking, uh, kind of a weird request. Also, I really don't want to make that. I say, a root beer float? In a confused way. He then looks me dead in the eyes as he creepily does every day and says,

Yeah, a root beer float, but with you on top. I kind of laugh more like, oh my god. Derek is giving me a very confused look. Then Jamal says, Mm-hmm, you on top with your legs spread wide open. And does the tongue thing again. Then says, I think about you every time I see you and then Derek is thoroughly creeped out and says what are you doing that is creepy stop messing and then Derek took his apron off and came out and kind of pushed me out of the kitchen

he asked me if I wanted him to get our manager, whose office is right next to the dish pit so I don't have to see Jamal again. I said no because I really, really did not want to tell my 6'4", like 275 pound boss this and probably start crying. Derek told me he would talk to him right after he walked me to my car and thank god he did. Jamal had left through the back and was smoking by the dumpster trying to act casual. Not an odd thing though as most employees do this. But when he saw Derek with me, he said something. But again, he mumbled so no idea what he said. But he threw his barely lit cigarette on the ground and walked back inside. Derek talked to our manager. They're going to talk to the general manager because he's the one that makes the decision to fire someone.

Derek basically told my boss to fire him. My boss called me to check in on me and gave me the next three days off. They fired him because of harassment and I have a feeling it wasn't his first strike. My ex-boyfriend used to work really late at a movie theater, like 1 or 2 a.m. frequently, so sometimes I would go see the late showing of a movie and pick him up and give him a ride home with me. One night I had picked him up and we had gotten back to our neighborhood when I noticed that there was a car behind me that was taking all the same turns as I was. Being generally a fairly aware and or paranoid person, I thought it was suspicious but I figured I was being irrational so I ignored it.

When this car turned onto my same street it was even more weird, but when the car also flipped a loop at the end of my cul-de-sac it was enough to make me not get out of my car since my house was the only one on that part of the loop and he would have had no reason to make that turn like I did. When I pulled up to the curb this car pulls in next to me and kind of at an angle so he's blocking the front of my car. I'm scared at this point but I'm obviously not getting out of that car so I just kind of sit there and see what's going to happen. The driver got out of their other car and opened his trunk and start rummaging around for a

few minutes. Not sure what he's doing just that he was digging in his trunk. Finally he stops and walks over to the window of my car and starts peeking in at us. Then he knocks on the window. I don't respond and don't open the window and he starts banging on the window. I have been beyond freaked out throughout this whole thing but finally my brain kicks in and tells me that even though I'm parked on a loop and blocked in by his car in front I can still throw my car in reverse and try to get out of there. Both of our cars were still running. As soon as I start reversing an inch, the guy sprints back to his car and hightails it out of there. I knew this wasn't a normal

encounter, so I called the police and gave him a description of his car, which was unique because he had only one working headlight and a partial plate. They sent a cop out to see me but it was clear to me that he didn't really believe me or was making light of the situation which really bothered me. They never found him and I have never heard anything about it. I honestly don't know what that man wanted. He could have wanted to carjack me but that would have involved leaving his own car behind. Many other dastardly things could have been planned and the situation could have gone much worse, but I was still terrified. Yesterday I took my dog to the park as I normally do.

It was a cold but sunny day, so when I got there about half the parking lot was full. However, everyone seemed to be leaving. As we were walking toward the wooded part of the park, I noticed a guy dressed in all black with big sunglasses and a huge handkerchief covering his face. Kind of gave me the creeps, but I ignored him. When we were halfway through the park, I heard a man yelling, and I couldn't see anyone. My dog was standing very alert and growling, and I turned around, and the man I saw earlier was standing right behind me.

Hey. Excuse me? Move your car. Mine? Yeah, move your car. Is there something wrong with it? You'll park way too close to me and there's an empty parking lot. At this point, I'm just confused and a little scared by this guy's tone. I told him it wasn't empty when I got there, but I was happy to move it because I didn't want to anger him any more than he already was. He followed me and walked behind me muttering cuss words and insults.

Then he said, you're so lucky I found you. I have a crowbar in my car and I was going to smash your windows and slash your tires. Then I was going to find you and smash your head in. But I'm having a good day today. I'm in a really good mood. It's just, girls like you, they ruin things. I had my mace in my hand and my knife in the other. We kept walking towards the parking lot, but he just kept getting angrier. He screamed at me. Aren't you going to apologize?

I told him I was sorry and that I hope he has a better day. He said. Better day? I'm having a great day. You're alive, aren't you? I started to walk faster and so did he. I made a full sprint to my car and the guy just stopped and watched me laughing. He started throwing sticks and rocks in my car while laughing as I drove off. I filed a police report. I don't know if he was just trying to scare me or what but I hope he doesn't actually, lived in a quiet rural lake community. My parents, aunt and uncle were going away for the weekend so my cousin, who was 15, stayed over at my house for the weekend. He brought over his Xbox and a bunch of games and we stayed up all night playing and chilling in my room. My room was small with a single twin bed so we ended up sleeping downstairs on the set of couches in the finished basement. I get woken up by my husky at around 8am. She was acting like she

needed to go out but this was strange for her to do. I rub my eyes, still half asleep and started up the stairs to let her out. When I grabbed the doorknob, to my surprise, the door pulled right open. As groggy and dumb as I was, I think to myself, weird, the knob must be broken. I open the door, clip the dog on her lead, but she won't go out. I coax her out, annoyed because I got only a couple of hours of sleep, and when I turn to go back inside, I notice the jam is completely destroyed. That's when everything hit me. I have no idea what to do. My cousin is still asleep in the basement.

I don't have a cell phone. Are they still in my house? I quietly listen for any kind of movement, then get back down to the basement and wake my cousin up. We stupidly decide to go up and look through the house. Thank god it was empty. Also empty of all our video games, movies, valuables, etc. I call 911 and then my parents. Police arrive, don't do much of anything except say tough luck. It took me a few hours to settle down when I finally realized the fact that this person or people who presumably knew my parents left on vacation but perhaps not that I didn't go with them watched me while I slept. Had we stayed in my small room with the

creaky door I almost certainly would have woken up and faced the intruders. My life could have been very different and this still gives me chills 16 years later. I've been lurking for a while and thought I'd share one of my own stories. Definitely not as scary as the some I've seen but it was one of those occasions where you know things would have turned out poorly if you made the wrong decision. At the time of this incident, I was 17 years old and on the way to a job interview in town at a large retail company. I was excited as it was only my second job and would be weekend work for me to continue my studies at sixth form as I wanted to go on to uni. The interview was a Tuesday morning in the spring so it was nice warm weather and fairly quiet out. I didn't have classes that day and was dressed in a

smart dress with tights despite the warm weather and a cardigan. The dress on itself wasn't revealing. It reached mid-thigh but did show a fair bit of cleavage and I had always had quite large breasts so I was used to men looking even if it made me feel uncomfortable. I was also wearing high-heeled shoes. All in all I looked older than 17. My mom was going to work so couldn't drive me all the way to my interview but gave me a lift halfway there before she turned off in the direction she needed to go. When I got out of the car I had my phone in my hand and was texting my friend to remind her what time I'd be finished in my interview so we could meet up afterward. Lots of cars, work vans, but at the bus stop there was only myself, a middle-aged Pakistani man, and a couple of younger mums chatting with their babies in buggies. I ignored everyone else as I waited for the bus, but eventually the man walked over to me. At first he just said hi and asked me the time, but quickly the conversation began to make me feel uncomfortable.

He complimented my outfit, told me I was beautiful and kept talking about how my dress made my figure look. He was particularly interested in my breasts. I was always very shy but my parents encouraged good manners so I never spoke unless I was asked a question and I didn't really know how to get myself out of the situation. I know now that neither my parents would have minded me telling this man to screw off but oh well, lessons learned. I told him I was 17, that I was going for an interview and I was hoping to get into uni next year. He kept asking me questions and I'm getting steadily more unnerved by them. He goes on to tell me that someone as

beautiful as me, I'm 5'3", slightly overweight, wear glasses and have never once been called beautiful by anyone outside my family, shouldn't be going to work. He says he can get me whatever I want and I never have to lift a finger. I just laugh him off and make a point of looking at my phone and typing out a long text to my friend who'd just wish me luck. He's reading over my shoulder and I keep trying to turn away but he's having none of it so eventually I put the phone in my bag. I decide to ignore him as his questions and suggestions get ever more creepy. He's asking me now to come with him to London where he's going for a party and that his friends will love me and they'd buy me lots of

pretty clothes and I could drink whatever I wanted. I tell him I don't drink and I'm not going to London. He keeps insisting and I lose my temper a bit and tell him that I've been waiting for a job interview for months and I have no intention of going anywhere but to get a job. He keeps insisting I don't need the money. He'll give me everything I want. He's even going to pay my ticket to London. I again tell him no and finally the bus comes. To my dismay it's practically empty and the only people on it are a few elderly people all sat together. I sit as close to the front as I can knowing full well he's going to sit beside me but make sure I'm sat near the buggy area where the other two mums from the bus stop will have to sit beside me but make sure I'm sat near the buggy area where

the other two mums from the bus stop will have to sit. Of course he gets on the bus, squashes me into the window so I'm stuck between him and the glass and he's talking non-stop. At one point I spin a lie about not going away with him for the weekend because my brother just got released from prison and we're having a welcoming home party. He looks confused but it doesn't have the desired effect of making him leave me alone. I naively thought having a relative in prison would be an off-putting thing to learn. He has sat with his hand on my thigh for most of the ride. I tried to ask him to move it but he wouldn't and I didn't really know what to do so I ignored it. He asked me for my number, and I said no,

so he kept asking and pouting at me like he thought that that would make me change my mind. I told him again no, so he writes his number on a ripped piece of newspaper and hands it to me and asks me to call him. I lie and say I will, but he insists I do it now. I said I didn't have credit, and he reminded me he'd seen me texting so I said as plainly as I could, getting bolder the more scared I was getting. I'm not giving you my number. I'm not going with you to a party and I'm not interested in talking to you. Please leave me alone. I say it loud enough that the two mums and the nearby elderly people suddenly look up and

watch us. I try to indicate to them that I needed help but they go back to their own conversations. Eventually we get to the stop he needs to get off at to walk to the station and he stands up and looks at me. Here, we need to get off at this stop. He holds out his hand to me. Of course I don't take it and I don't stand up. No, we need to get off. Are you going to make us miss the train? I already told you I don't want to go to London. I don't know you. I'm going to my job interview. Sarah, I mean it. Stop messing around and get up.

The people in the bus are now looking at us and the bus driver turns around and asks if the man is getting off. Yeah, I am. My girlfriend is just messing around. Women, eh? Or something to that effect. He's trying to laugh it off, but the bus driver seems to realize something's amiss. I'm not his girlfriend. My name isn't Sarah and I have no idea who he is. The driver starts opening his cab to get out, but the man growls something incoherent and gets off the bus. The doors are closed behind him and the man pulls out his phone and has an angry conversation

with someone whilst the driver and shocked passengers ask if I'm okay. The police are called but I don't speak to them as the driver had to move the bus as he was holding up traffic on a one lane road. I was never contacted afterward about the incident and I didn't see the man again. When I got off at the stop I needed the driver to ask me again if I was okay and told me he'd pass on the information to the police. At the time I thought he was just a creep who couldn't take no for an answer. I now work in children's services and I understand how human trafficking works. They target vulnerable girls and try to coax them away with compliments, promises of money, nice things and alcohol.

Fortunately for me I was not as vulnerable as clearly I looked. And despite being shy and non-confrontational I wasn't willing to do something I didn't want to do. I have no doubt as to what would have happened if I'd gotten off the bus with him voluntarily. I ended up getting the job. I was early enough I had time to cry down the phone to my mom and then my dad and calm down before going in. I worked there for about four years so all's well that ends well. I'm a 24 year old male who was born and raised in northern New England. I grew up hearing all the scary stories and urban legends that haunted my dreams but there was one local legend that everyone in my high school knew about. Monkey Town. Monkey Town was supposed to be a Christian retreat camp. You'd have to take this road in between a funeral home and a cemetery down this big hill and you'd

enter what looks like the set from The Village, 2004. It was a big circle of old style houses with a big white church in the middle. I'll describe it more later in the story but it was always a dare to see how far you could walk down into the camp without chickening out. I remember a couple of times in middle school a few friends and I made it halfway down the hill and definitely did that, chicken out. The year was 2011, junior year. I had just gotten my license and my first car, a classic Chevy Blazer. One night I was driving around with two friends, one who went to the same high school as me, let's call her Bessie, and one who didn't, Kale. Bessie and I thought it might be funny to take Kale down to Monkey Town to see what happens. So the three of us hopped in my

blazer and there we went. I remember putting on some of the instrumental music from Halloween, the 1978 version, to set the mood and how dumb was I. As we got down the hill, mind you we were in my car the entire time, we made our way around the circle, mesmerized by this entire community separated from society. One thing that stuck out was this red light at the top of the church's steeple. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. That's when I remember thinking, no way. I quickly turn my head to my left and see a giant man in overalls running full speed towards my car. The most messed up part about this man is he was carrying a bat or tool of some sort. I didn't even think. I slammed on the gas and we got out of

there. The three of us couldn't believe what had just happened. I'm pretty sure we just went back to my house to recover from the scare. We passed out and all was well. The next day I was chilling with another friend, James and his girlfriend Sadie. I had told them about last night's events and they sure enough didn't buy it. Me, a 17 year old teenage boy wanted to prove them wrong so we all jumped into my blazer and headed back to Monkey Town. This time my blazer was full and we had picked up two other girls who coincidentally had the same name and another buddy of mine, Joe. I made James drive my blazer and I sat shotgun. As we all headed down, the tension rose. We got halfway around the circle until one of the girls started screaming.

This time there were at least five men running at my car, and three of them definitely had weapons. James didn't know what to do. It's like he froze. The men were all yelling to get out of the car. They were legitimately shaking my car back and forth. I remember being crouched down so far in the seat as if that did anything. Finally, James slammed on the gas and peeled out of there. As we calmed down and I began taking all my friends home I got a call from my mom. Apparently two police officers were in my kitchen. One of the monkey town civilians had called the police and told them we tried to run them over. That's complete nonsense and I was furious. We raced to my

house to explain to the officers what actually happened. All in all the cops didn't seem too interested and no crime was committed. To this day I can't help but think what would have happened if we had gotten out of the car. What kind of Christian I'm an 18 year old female living in a small town in Michigan. When this incident took place I had been working a few hours a week in a small pizzeria. It was in my town and I had been working there for about a year when my boss decided to go on vacation. She and her family lived in an apartment below the restaurant and two other apartments were overhead. In order to get into these apartments you had to go to the back of the building and down a sketchy set of stairs or

the grass slope where you would find her door and the stairs leading up to the apartments above. Beyond that there is a yard and then some woods. I think it's important to mention that there was absolutely no reason to be behind the restaurant unless you were trying to enter the apartments. Now I usually work with my mom because we got stuff done easily and I hate answering phones. One night my mom was feeling ill so I had to go to work with another lady. She was very sweet but not super efficient so I was working hard to keep up and getting a bit agitated when she told me that we needed parmesan. I agreed to go get it from the store just down the road if she promised not to make me answer phones for the rest of our shift.

There was only about two hours left which was normal and pretty slow so I guess it didn't matter that much anyways. As I was getting in my SUV I saw a guy pull in the small parking lot with a beat up car and park near the back. He was lanky and wearing oil stained shop clothes which was and still is totally normal around here. He got out and retrieved a bag from his trunk and headed down the slope. I know this guy wasn't a renter because I'd never seen him before and the renters frequently ordered pizza. It was possible he was a friend of one of the renters but that didn't seem right. It was 9 30 at night and one renter was a single mom and the others were two brothers with mental health issues that were pretty antisocial.

I was getting bad vibes so I grabbed my knife from the center console and tucked it up my sleeve. Call me paranoid but there had been a lot of car fires and break-ins around that time so I was nervous to go anywhere unarmed. It might have been a stupid thing to do but I considered my boss a friend and didn't want this guy to hurt any of the renters or steal from any of the apartments. I decided to go see what he was doing just in case he had any ill intentions. I got out of my car and walked quietly to the slope. There was motion activated light so I could easily see what he was doing.

He was fiddling with an old key ring and trying to get into my boss's apartment. What are you doing? I asked loudly so that my co-worker could hopefully hear me through the open back door. He was startled but smiled and told me he worked for my boss's husband and was there to feed the dog and let it out. His smile was creepy, the kind that a liar gives when they're trying really hard to convince you. My boss did have a dog and her husband did own a fabrication shop so his story seemed to check out but I was still not convinced. I decided to go get the cheese

and check again when I got back. Okay, let me know if you need any help with anything. I tried to sound as normal as possible but I was seriously creeped out. I hustled at the store and back to work. I'd been gone only 15 minutes when I got back and surprisingly he was already gone. I was still feeling suspicious and bad for the dog who'd been shut in a good portion of the day so I decided to text my boss when I got out of work. Fast forward two hours and I was on my way home. I got to my door when I decided to check Facebook. As I was scrolling I saw something that made my stomach drop. It was a picture of my boss with her dog on the beach from earlier that day. I called my boss and then the police to make a report. It turned out the guy had been fired by my boss's husband earlier that week for

making an inappropriate comment about his 19 year old daughter and repeatedly harassing other female staff. This guy had planned some sort of revenge scheme but didn't know they had left for vacation. His bag was full of tools and a couple of knives. During questioning he told them that the only reason he left was because he thought I was watching him. Thankfully he went to jail for that and a couple of other things he had been wanted for previously. This still creeps me out to this day and I hate to think what would I worked in a residential care facility. For a number of years, I worked with a woman named Kajiri. She was generally okay to work with, but she could be intense. Sort of a joking flirtation that often finds its way into high-pressure environments

was common throughout the whole team, but when she directed it at me, it didn't seem so jokey. It took me forever to realize that because I usually don't notice someone flirting with me until someone else points it out six months later, but when she started trying to give me jewelry and chocolate bouquets, I finally caught a clue. In between things being normal and actually maybe not really normal, there was a long escalation of text messages, comments that made me feel uncomfortable, personal space violations, dropping by my house uninvited, hanging around on my shift hours after hers had finished, unwanted touching, etc. As mentioned, I can be slow to catch on. Once I realized what was happening, I put as much distance between us as possible, stopped answering calls and texts, locked down social media, spoke to other colleagues and had them running interference. A lot of interference actually. At the time it kind of became a joke but looking back it was all kinds of messed up.

She even parked outside my house sometimes and I'd sit in the back room with the light off so she'd think I wasn't home. Honestly, 2018 me is looking back at 2016 me throwing popcorn and screaming, do something you stupid cow, but hey, 2016 me was alarmingly chill. After a couple of months of my disappearing woman act, she seemed to get the hint and backed right off. I was pleased, we all got on with our lives and live happily ever after. Not quite. A few months after it died down, I heard through the grapevine that Kajiri seemed to have focused her attentions on another co-worker, Linda. Linda and I had a close mutual friend but didn't know each other well. I didn't think much of it beyond good luck you poor idiot, bad 2016 me, bad. A few months later again and I get a call out of the blue from a mutual friend Linda and I share. Without preamble, he asked,

were you dating Kajiri? Uh, no. I was shocked. He had been privy to all the awkward details in my experience with Kajiri and had helped run interference. He explained that he had been talking to Linda and she'd asked about my relationship with Kajiri. The story that followed still sounds too fantastical to have actually happened in an actual sensible grown-up workplace. Kajiri had been catfishing her own best friend Amanda, posing as Linda. In a string of emails, Linda and Amanda had discussed Kajiri's drug problem, her abusive and dangerous ex, none other than yours truly, Linda coming out to her family after her brother caught her in bed with Kijiri, and more. The jig was up when Linda got a second job, coincidentally with

Amanda's husband who mentioned how great it was to finally meet Kijiri's girlfriend, which puzzled poor straight single Linda. Some highlights of the story Kijira had been telling to Linda, her friends, and other co-workers I wasn't close to, she picked her audience very carefully, that Linda and I had physically fought at work over Kajiri. That two male co-workers Kajiri and I did some pretty questionable things in the staff office on a night shift. That Kajiri and I had broken up after I cheated on her with another male co-worker, that I would drug her against her will, and that we had planned to have children using a sperm

donor, but that I had miscarried. This woman had been living out a full-on soap opera and using her co-workers and her friends as set pieces. Linda and I reported her to management and she was immediately suspended pending investigation. She quit two days later. Unfortunately, HR decided they needed to continue their investigation of the allegation that I did those questionable things at work with a group of people. Because that was totally plausible and not at all made up by a crazy woman, right? I left that job a month later myself and when I interviewed for my current job, she had interviewed half an hour before me and they were looking to hire two people.

She didn't get the job, but there have been two other openings since since she applied for both of them. I'm terrified of meeting her again. It turned out she has a history of inpatient psych treatment for delusional behavior and was known to be obsessive about people she took a liking to. According to Facebook, her current girlfriend, real not real me, who knows, has a similar first name as me and shares more than a few physical similarities. She still knows where I live. Hey friends, thanks for listening. She still knows where I live. and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. Make some friends.

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