The Lets Read Podcast - 230: MY COWORKER LOST HIS MIND | 23 True Scary Stories | EP 218

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Crazy Co-Workers, Pizza Delivery Drivers, & New Town stories... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/

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🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 This is a story of two parts. The first is my own story, told from the perspective of my 11-year-old self,

while the second part is told from that of my late father's. In September of 1989, just after my 11th birthday, my parents loaded up all of our stuff into a car and moved us all the way from Pennsylvania, steel country, to Rhode Island. The move was sudden to say the least and neither myself nor my older sister were particularly happy about it. But mom explained that dad had secured a very good job out there and we could use the extra money to buy us new bikes, horse riding lessons, and all that good stuff, you get the idea. So we get there and the house was amazing. It was brand new but still looked super old and fancy and according to my parents the best thing was that it was free. The house was provided for anyone who held the position my dad had recently

acquired, which was the vice principal of the very fancy private school we'd be going to. That didn't really mean much to us kids though. We were more than swayed by the promise of new bikes, but the thing that really won us over were our new bedrooms. They were huge compared to our old rooms and when mom and dad said that we could help furnish them ourselves on a little trip into Newport, me and my sister were walking on air. We'd gone from very unhappy about the move to positively ecstatic, but as time went on, things started to seem really, really off. The first thing I noticed was how our new place was compared to all the other homes and buildings around the township. The place was nothing but old money New England elite and it had the architecture to match.

Most homes dated back to the 1800s and some of the older cottages were built back to the 1680s. We weren't exactly complaining about that, better to live in some new build than some rickety old cottage, no matter how storied it was. But the contrast was something that we picked up on as time went by. The second thing I noticed was the way people looked at our house whenever they passed. I remember looking out of my dad's office window one day when I spotted a kid riding down our street on his little redline BMX, the exact same kind of bike I wanted. Our house was one of only three on that street, all real big houses nicely spaced out. So when he slowed to a stop outside of ours, I found myself hoping that he was about to come and kind of hit up the new kid in the town,

which might allow me to try out my dream bike way earlier than expected. But then, instead of getting off of his bike and walking up to our driveway, the kid just stared at our house with this real nervous look on his face. I started to wave and I quickly managed to get his attention, but instead of waving back or anything, the kid jumped right back on his bike and went back the way he came, as if I'd suddenly spooked him or something. I honestly figured that it was a me problem, that the kids at school were going to treat me like an outcast or something and it really bummed me out. But as I came to find out, what was spooking that kid was nothing to do with me.

It was the house. Speaking of school, I didn't notice the third weird thing until me and my sister had started classes. The kids didn't treat me like a leper, and to my infinite relief, they were actually pretty welcoming. At least until they found out who I was and where I lived, and that's when I started acting strange. Two things seemed to trigger the reaction, either mentioning where we'd moved into or mentioning what my dad's new job was. I'd be talking to some kid, get along with them, making a friend, and they'd just switch whenever I'd mention the job or the house. They wouldn't exactly run away screaming or anything, but there'd always be a noticeable shift in their attitude towards me, and that continued for weeks until I finally found out what had happened up at that house. It took an unusually long time for us kids to find out,

but that was down to almost everyone in town adhering to an unofficial code of silence. But that didn't last though, and weirdly enough, the kids lasted longer than the adults did. I guess that's just because they knew less about it, but they still knew that it was bad, and bad enough they didn't need to have some moratorium imposed on them, they just didn't want to discuss it at all. Until finally, a kid I'd made friends with told me the truth of why our house was so new, and why some folks stopped and stared whenever they walked by. About six months before we'd moved in, there had been a fire at the old vice principal's house. The only survivor had been the guy's wife, while the VP and his three children had all sadly lost their lives.

Everyone had decided that the place was haunted, so instead of just fixing the place up, it was torn down entirely before a new house was built in its place. At least, that's what my buddy told me. And in case it wasn't obvious from the whole haunted thing, that wasn't quite how things happened. My dad, on the other hand, he got the full story. Something he soon passed along to my mom, and once us kids found out the half story, it triggered a kind of crisis. We didn't want to stay there anymore. Convinced that the ghosts of the old VP and his three kids were wandering the halls at night,

and mom wasn't going to keep us there if we were going to end up sleepless and traumatized. And that's how my parents ended up separating for a while, at least, until the bad juju in that house got to dad too and we ended up getting a place in Newport with my dad commuting to and from school. I didn't find out what really happened in that house until many years later and when I did, I wondered how my dad could have slept in that place alone for a single night, ghosts or not. According to him, the whole story starts with this kid named Freddy Washbach. Freddy was a rich kid but that didn't mean that he was immune to regular old teenage angst. He was into heavy metal, he stole his sister's nail polish, and spent most of his time hanging out with other punks over in the city. He wasn't just the black sheep of his family, he was the black sheep of the whole

township by the sounds of things, and he was forever falling foul of the late vice principal, as they would say. This vice principal had apparently taken a personal interest in straightening out young Freddy, and whenever his behavior started to slip, he'd called Freddy into his office for an impromptu disciplinary action. Apparently, this continued for an extended period of time, and Freddy's behavior did actually improve somewhat. But as it did, Freddy became increasingly withdrawn. His parents were overjoyed at the improvement and apparently saw his sort of melancholy attitude as a form of emotional growing pains. They figured that he'd be over his little rebellious phase in time for college

applications and all that, but neither Freddy nor the former vice principal ever made it that far. One night, Freddy Washbuck walked all the way over to the former VP's house and knocked on the door. When the VP came to the door, Freddie produced a shotgun, then ordered the VP and his family into their TV room. Once they were all present and secured, Freddie took out a cassette tape, slid it into the VP's stereo system and pressed play. It wasn't the only copy of the tape. Freddy had posted the original to the chief of the Newport Police Department.

He wanted the truth to come out, but as for the punishment, he was content to handle that himself. Freddy made the VP's family listen to a secret recording he'd made, one which documented the events of one of his disciplinary sessions. I don't know the exact details of it, no one really does, but it's safe to say Freddy was being subjected to some of the most horrifying and venal abuse imaginable. Then, once the whole family, including the children, had heard what a soulless monster their father and husband had been, Freddy Washbach opened fire. He made sure to wing the VP and his wife. He wanted to make sure that they watched their kids die. Then, once their kids were gone, Washbach fired another few shells at the parents, and then set the house on fire, and then turned the shotgun on himself.

Yet in focusing most of his rage on his abuser, Freddy had neglected to ensure that the VP's wife was dead. Somehow, she managed to drag the bodies of all three of her dead children out of the burning house and onto the lawn outside. She didn't once try to go back in for her husband. She just let his body burn, along with that of young Freddie Washbox. After giving the police a full and frank account of what had happened, leaving them in no doubt of her husband's true nature, the late VP's wife simply skipped town and was never to be seen again. The townsfolk had the place bulldozed and rebuilt and spent the next

six months or so pretending the whole thing never happened. Then finally, they placed a few ads for the vice principal's position, and that's where we enter the story. As it turns out, mom and dad were basically getting the same sort of treatment as we were. Everyone was all nice and friendly with them right up until the subject of work or home came up and then just like the kids at school, they'd start acting all cagey and shifty. The school basically refused to answer any of the questions dad had regarding his predecessor and only told him stuff like he wasn't suited to the role. We were months into living there when my dad finally confronted the principal and demanded that he tell him what

was going on, and that's when he found out why the salary was so generous. It was a well-paid position as it was, but the salary had been marked up as a kind of unwritten don't ask and don't tell rule, one that turned into a keep your mouth shut rule once he found out. The school had somehow managed to keep the whole thing out of the papers, at least the truth of the matter anyway, and although they claimed it was for the family's protection, their only interest was their own reputation. That's what really pushed my dad to leave in the end, not what had happened or the fact that he was living over the site of such a horrific past event, it was the fact that the school wasn't prepared to put any kind of preventative safety measures in place, because that would force them to actually

acknowledge what had happened. The way dad put it, it's one thing to try to move on from a sudden tragedy, but it's another to refuse to put any safeguards in place and risk the same thing happening again. It was like the school saw it as a the mess cleaning up itself sort of thing, and they refused to accept that anything like that could possibly happen again. Washbach and the VP were unique cases, a perfect alignment of disasters waiting to happen, and no amount of safeguarding could prevent it from reoccurring.

It was a disgustingly fatalistic way for a school to approach such an event, and in the end, no amount of money could have kept my dad there, and at the end of his first year, he quit before taking a job near Hartford. what had happened in that little Rhode Island township. I'm surprised the whole story still hasn't hit the news. You'd think some journalist would have found out about it by now and have the whole thing written up for the Times or the Post. But then the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's down to me to write it up. I guess this will serve as a kind of test, to see if I have the chops to actually tell the story right and if it all works out then I guess I know what I'm going to do with my spare time for the foreseeable future. The End

During the fall of 1986, Keith and Elaine Dardeen of Mount Carmel, Illinois, were in the beginning stages of starting a family. They already had a two-year-old son named Peter, but Keith's unemployment meant that they had nowhere to live and no means of providing for their infant child. Yet one day, Keith's relentless job search paid off and he landed the role of plant operator at the Wren Lake Water Conservancy facility over in Ina, Illinois. Ina is a small town of around 1,500 people, set on the shores of Wren Lake. First settled by Cherokee refugees in the 1840s, Ina had a long association with tragedy and bloodshed. For many years, it was contemptuously referred to as the Reservation by those in neighboring settlements. But by the early 20th century, Aina's citizens were mostly of European or African American descent.

However, as the population demographics slowly began to shift, strange things began occurring around the town, and perhaps the most disturbing of those events involves a man of the cloth, named Reverend Lawrence Haidt. By 1924, the Reverend Haight had become a pillar of Ina's community. He was well-liked, well-trusted, and well-visited by the townsfolk, who often sought his advice and meditation on a variety of different matters. Yet during the spring of 1924, neighbors noticed that the Reverend was being visited by one of the members of the community a little too often. Elsie Sweeten was young, pretty, and appeared devotedly pious. Yet in reality,

she and the reverend Haidt were conducting a shockingly illicit affair, one that would only be brought to light after a pair of suspiciously sudden deaths. In July, Elsie Sweeten's husband passed away from an agonizing and protracted illness, yet local coroners were at a loss of his cause of death. Then, less than a month later, the Reverend Height's wife suddenly died by the hands of a rapid and violent affliction. This time, the coroners checked for poisoning and discovered that both corpses tested positive for lethal doses of arsenic. Height and Sweeten were both promptly arrested, and searches of their homes uncovered significant quantities of the deadly poison. Both were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Yet in the coming months, a rather strange thing happened. Despite being outright convicted of murder, with poison being found in her residence, Elsie Sweeten was granted a retrial, acquitted, and released. A judge ruled that Elsie had been thoroughly corrupted by the Reverend, who had been so overcome with jealousy and lust that he'd seen fit to break the Sixth Commandment. Yet as resolute as Ines town folk were that the Reverend should face justice, the idea that he had been the Corrupter seemed impossible. What's more, how had Sweet and herself landed an acquittal despite playing an integral part in her husband's murder?

It seems reasonable to believe that something else was going on, something invisible working just beneath the surface, and it was this place that the Dardines chose to call home in the fall of 1986. Keith Dardine secured some temporary accommodation for the family, in the form of a trailer situated on some farmland. To call it humble would be an understatement, but until the paycheck started rolling in, it would have to do. To supplement their income, Elaine Dardeen found a job at an office supply store in nearby Mount Vernon, and the couple began socializing by joining a small musical ensemble at a local Baptist church. By mid-1987, the couple had really started to put down roots in the area, and although they were still living in the old trailer, they were happy.

Their low overhead costs meant that they lived extremely comfortably and their living situation afforded them additional savings intended for the purchase of a more permanent home. Yet despite appearances, all was not well beneath the surface. By the fall of 1987, Elaine had started to notice a change in her husband's mood. He seemed to be surviving on less and less sleep and was noticeably more irritable and stressed than usual. On more than one occasion, Elaine asked him if everything was okay, yet Keith would simply brush off her concern with some vague excuse. Ever the patient's spouse, Elaine assumed her husband's disposition would brighten following a change of scenery, but failing that, she soon discovered some other good news to share with him. She was pregnant. Elaine and Keith had been discussing another child for quite some time,

with the former believing that the latter would greet news of the conception with joy. Yet to her surprise, Keith was not overjoyed at the news. In fact, he was horrified. When asked what his problem was, Keith only alluded to the couple needing to move as soon as possible. His behavior had worsened to the point of extreme paranoia, yet still he refused to share his fears with his increasingly concerned wife. Finally, after Elaine threatened to move back in with her mother,

Keith relented and told her the truth. Ena, the wider region of Jefferson County, was a very violent place, with 15 homicides having been recorded over the previous two years. On top of that, some of these homicides were truly horrifying and defied any kind of rational explanation, and perhaps the worst of those were committed by a young man named Tom Odle. Odle was convicted of killing his parents, 14-year-old sister and two brothers, ages 13 and 10, in 1985. He claimed to have been high on LSD at the time and was taking revenge for years of abuse

he'd suffered at the hands of his mother. Yet witnesses stated that although it was fair to characterize Odle's mother as authoritarian, she was by no means abusive, and that Tom's claims that he had been tied up and starved were patently false. In reality, Tom had been engaged in drug use and petty theft since his early teens, and once his 18th birthday rolled around, his parents gave him a choice, grow up and get a job, or move out of the house. Tom found a third option, complete familial annihilation. The Odo family murders were just one of 15 separate incidents of homicide, most of which remain unsolved and, to Keith Dardeen, Jefferson County was no place to raise a family. Then, after a 15-year-old girl was violated and murdered just a few miles away from where the family lay their heads,

Keith reached a breaking point. He purchased a firearm and once threatened to brandish it at a stranger who had knocked at the Dardenne's trailer one night asking to make a phone call. Keith seemed convinced it was some kind of setup and when Elaine asked why they as a family might be targeted, Keith gave a cagey and rather unconvincing reply. He was so scared that he was willing to quit his new and well-paying job just to get out of town, and by November of 1987, he was frantically searching for a new place to live. But it was already too late, and what came after has become a chilling and enduring mystery. During his time working at the water plant, Keith had been a reliable and punctual employee,

so on the morning of November 18th, when he failed to show up for work, his supervisor began calling him at home to see if he was okay. After his calls went unanswered, the supervisor then called Keith's parents back in Mount Carmel, but neither had heard from him and assumed that he was at his trailer. With the call having raised his concerns, Keith's father, Don Dardeen, contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and arranged to meet them at his son's trailer in order to perform a welfare check. Don then drove over to the patch of land between Route 37 and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks just north of Franklin County Line where he found the officers waiting for him. After getting out of his car and greeting those in attendance, Don produced a spare key to the trailer and, after handing it over to the officer in command, he stepped back and allowed them to do their work. Don later said that he'd had a bad

feeling in the pit of his stomach for the whole ride over there, but he hadn't once considered the possibility of the horror which greeted him inside that trailer. In the bedroom, the police discovered the lifeless bodies of Elaine and Peter Dardenne, along with the corpse of a newborn baby girl. They had been bound, gagged, tortured, and then beaten to death with a child-sized baseball bat later found at the scene. Elaine had been so badly pulverized that she had gone into labor unwillingly giving birth to her newborn child before she too met the same grisly fate. Keith nor his car were anywhere to be found and at first, law enforcement assumed that he'd

murdered his family and was attempting to flee. A heavily armed SWAT team rushed to his mother's house in Mount Carmel, but she'd neither seen nor heard from her son in days. The search continued until late the following day when a group of hunters came across Keith's body lying in a wheat field near Wren Lake College. He had been shot, stabbed, and castrated. Although his body had been located, Keith's vehicle remained missing. It was identified as a red 1981 Plymouth, but just as deputies were about to put out an all-points bulletin on the vehicle,

they realized something shocking. There was an identical red Plymouth paired right outside the police station in a town called Benton, about 11 miles south of the Dardenne's trailer. The inside was splattered with blood, blood which had once belonged to Keith Dardine himself. As word of the murders spread through the local community, the already palpable sense of fear only intensified. Some residents went about their business while openly carrying firearms, and a total curfew was imposed on anyone under

the age of 18. The local high school cancelled all outdoor gym classes and additional police officers from neighboring departments were called in to aid in the investigation. Residents were desperate for information, and limited flow from law enforcement only fueled the fear-based rumor mill. Some purported that Keith was involved in criminality, while others blamed a hidden cult of Satanists for the murder of Elaine's unborn child. However, a third theory, while equally grim, was much more feasible. A family physician based in Jefferson County later told a regional newspaper that many of his patients had confessed to how deeply disturbed they were. One man who

lived fairly close to the Dardines' trailer told the doctor he was having difficulty sleeping and had lost 14 pounds as a result of the stress. The Dardines' landlord's daughter also suffered a great deal of trauma and told her parents that she kept her bedroom light on and was sometimes so scared to fall asleep that she stayed up all night long. When contacted for comment, the Franklin County coroner stated that he felt much of the fear was unjustified. Quote, I don't think there is a rational basis for the near hysteria, he told one newspaper. People are frightening each other. Yet although it was arguably a form of hysteria, people's fears were very real. It was said that if someone ran out of gas in Jefferson County, they would not seek assistance in nearby

homes, but would instead walk to the nearest highway and hitch a ride. Such was the level of fear and distrust around Ina. In the aftermath of the coroner's verdict, a task force of around 30 different homicide detectives began working full-time to follow leads and carry out interviews. Yet despite their efforts, progress was hard won. A man taken into custody early on was released after being questioned, as was a co-worker of Keith's who he apparently didn't get along with. Aside from that particular co-worker, no one who knew the couple had anything bad to say about them. The autopsies found no drugs or alcohol in any of the victims, leading police to believe that the small amount of marijuana found at the scene was actually left

there by the family's killers. It was determined that the entire family had been murdered at night, and within the space of one hour of each other. Inside the trailer, the killer had apparently taken the time to not only tuck Elaine's body into bed along with her children's bodies, but also to clean up the scene, suggesting they did not feel any sense of urgency to leave and that they were fully cognizant of their actions. But despite the scene yielding many clues, the motive of the killer confounded the detectives. The back door had been left open, and there was no evidence of forced entry. A VCR and portable camera were in plain sight in the living room, and elsewhere in the house,

equally valuable cash and jewelry remained untouched. These facts essentially ruled out robbery as the motive, and the lack of any sort of carnal violation on any of the bodies precluded any theories of criminal perversion. Both Keith and Elaine were found to be innocent of any kind of extramarital affair and no such evidence of chronic gambling was discovered, meaning that there was no chance the family had been killed due to exorbitant underworld debt. While some suggested that the Dardines had been randomly targeted by an unhinged criminal element, the Franklin County coroner disagreed. I believe it was a very personal, deliberate thing, he told a regional newspaper,

and a police expert on cults agreed that the rumor that Satanists were responsible was untrue. In his experience, such groups would often mutilate bodies more extensively, harvest organs, and leave symbols and lit candles at the scene of their crimes. No such items have been found at the Dardines trailer. However, police did allow for the possibility that there had been a case of mistaken identity by the killer or killers. Keith's mother, Joanne Dardeen, later opined that there had been some other motive for killing her son and his family. I think someone wanted Keith to sell drugs and he refused, she said during a 1997 interview. Or there's a possibility someone liked Elaine and she wouldn't accept his advances and he took out his rage on both of them.

We just don't know. Before the case officially grew cold, it perplexed two FBI profilers who had traveled down from their Chicago headquarters in order to review evidence. One stated that the crime defied their typical analytic methods and that it was rare for so many possibilities to all hold sway. Joanne Dardeen continued her efforts to keep the public from completely losing interest, and throughout the 1990s, she regularly contacted law enforcement to offer possible leads and request new information. However, as time went by, the most likely explanation was whittled down to an early theory that the Dardines had fallen victim to a serial killer. For a short time, law enforcement showed interest in Ángel Matarino Reséndiz,

then known by his alias Rafael Reséndiz Ramírez, following his apprehension by Texas police in 1999. Reséndiz often traveled around the country by hopping freight trains, choosing his victims near the tracks he traveled and often beating them to death. While those elements suggested the Dardines' killings, authorities in Illinois were never able to connect him to the crime. However, it wasn't long before yet another serial killer would come to the attention of local authorities. On December 31st of 1999, a man by the name of Tommy Lynn Sells cut the throats of two girls near Del Rio, Texas. Sells claimed to have suffered blackouts prior to each bloodthirsty crime, which he described as a coping mechanism to deal with the abuse he endured as a child.

Miraculously, one of the girls survived the ordeal and went on to aid the police in identifying her attacker. Sells was eventually convicted and sentenced to death, but while he was awaiting trial on the first murder charge, he began confessing to a whole host of other murders. One was the Dardeen family. In the mid-1980s, Sells mostly resided near St. Louis, Missouri, and made money from working at traveling carnivals and fairs as a day laborer, or through theft. He hopped rail cars as his primary mode of transportation, and on one such trip through Jefferson County in November 1987, he claimed to have met Keith at a truck stop near Mount Vernon. Sells then claims that Keith invited him home for dinner, and after the meal, Keith apparently angered him by proposing they engage in intimate homosexual relations.

Sells' reaction was to force Keith to drive at gunpoint to the location he was killed, and after castrating him, Sells returned to eliminate the witnesses. I was just so angry that I took it to the maximum limit, Sells later explained. Rage don't have a stop button. However, Sells later brought his reliability into disrepute by completely changing his story. In his second version, after spotting the Dardene trailer with its for sale sign outside, he saw an opportunity to commit a heinous act of violence. He could maim, kill, then dispose of the Dardenes and people might assume they'd just move on.

After all, Sells knew first hand that little attention is afforded to the poor and the destitute. After drinking beers and waiting for the right time, he knocked on the door and told a wary Keith that he was interested in buying the trailer. Then after gaining entry, Sells overpowered his unsuspecting victim and forced him at gunpoint to bind and gag his wife and son with duct tape. Once the act was completed, Sells drove Keith out to the field, where he castrated him, shot him, then left him there to die. To some, Sell's eventual execution was justice for the Dardines. Even though he was never charged with their murders, both the Jefferson County State's Attorney and Sheriff Roger Mulch agreed that he remained the number one suspect. And this was down to the fact that although Sell's had completely changed his story at one point,

he was privy to information that only a select group of investigators knew. In their eyes, there was no doubt that Sells had committed the murders, or had at least been present when the crimes had occurred. The fact some of his statements completely contradicted the evidence didn't seem to bother the investigators, who deduced that Sells was attempting to cover for an accomplice by taking sole responsibility. Regardless of his involvement in the Dardines' murders, police in Texas confirmed Sells was responsible for 22 murders. However, many began to suspect that Sells was inflating his body count in order to avoid the death penalty. By continually confessing to murders he was not

connected to, Sells could either arrange a plea bargain or could delay his demise for as long as he could deceive the authorities for, and in the process, scores of killers might potentially avoid justice. Yet only one thing was abundantly clear. Sells wasn't telling the whole truth regarding his interactions with Keith. For one, friends, family, and investigators were extremely skeptical that Keith would have just invited a stranger home for dinner. If he wouldn't let a young girl in to use the phone, he wouldn't let a grown man in, a friend later said. They also refuted Sells' claim that Keith made advances on him.

The detectives who interviewed Sells believed that if he did indeed kill the Dardines, he invented that detail to make the crime seem more justified. At first, Keith's mother was convinced of Sells' guilt and actually wanted to meet with him at one point in order to obtain a degree of closure. I've always wanted to know every detail, she said. Some people may think that's gory, but when someone does something to my family, I want to know why. Sells, on the other hand, remained averse to any potential meeting. Joanne wants to talk to me. If she wants to come here and talk to me, scream at me, yell, kick me, hit me, she should have that right, he said. But sorry ain't gonna cut it.

So what's there to say? I could tell her sorry every day for the rest of my life. It's not gonna stop her pain. And one thing I do know about is pain. And it don't go away. However, on the eve of Cell's execution, Joanne Dardine revealed that doubt had crept into her mind of late. There's just a little bit of doubt there, she told journalists. Not that he didn't do it. I'm wondering if maybe somebody helped him. The two never did get around to having that meeting, but by the time of Cell's 2014 execution, Joanne had come to believe that he was not the man who killed her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. I wanted him to stay alive until I know positively that he didn't do

it, she told the Associated Press shortly following Sel's time of death. The things he said do not match up with what I know about Keith. A lot of people think it's done and over with, but to me, it's not. For me personally, it will never, ever be over. So this might be the single craziest story I've ever heard. It also is weirdly straddling this blurry line of scary and kind of funny. I think about it sometimes and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. But then at the same time, if it was happening to me, I would definitely not be finding it funny. This is technically my old middle school buddy's story, but it's been 100% confirmed by both of his parents and he's not writing this up in an

email anytime soon, so I'm just going to tell it instead. Me and him were friends in middle school but he ended up moving out of town for a while. We thought that that was the end of our friendship pretty much as the place they were moving was all the way on the other side of the state. But then less than a year later, he moved right back to town as if nothing had happened. At first I was too happy to question why they'd moved back to town so quick so I didn't. But then as time went on, I got more and more curious so I asked my buddy why. And I swear, of all the answers I expected him to give, the one he gave was nowhere near the top 100 list. He sighed and without a hint of humor in his voice he said, some naked guy kept pooping in our yard. As you can probably guess, I laughed my butt off at his answer and I swear the fact that he said it with a straight face made me laugh even more.

I thought it was a joke. I mean it had to be a joke. But it wasn't. My buddy was deadly serious. I remember when he first told me we were just sitting out in his backyard, and since I was friendly with his parents, having known them so long, I decided to go ask them myself. But then my buddy grabs me and with this scared, pleading look on his face, asks me not to say anything to his parents about it. And that pretty much convinced me that he was just talking crap and that it must have been part of some elaborate joke with myself very much at the center of it.

But then years later, like I'd already mentioned, I found out it was 100% true. After buying the house at a discount rate from a couple who seemed desperate to leave, my buddy and his parents found out pretty quick why they were so keen to sell. Night after night, for like a week at first, a big pile of poop would appear on either the front or back lawn. The piles were so huge that at first they thought it was a bear or something, and his dad ended up staying up all night with a gun for maybe three or four nights straight until he finally caught the culprit in the act. It wasn't a bear. It was a man. A naked man who climbed into their backyard, took a squat,

and then pooped on the grass. My buddy's dad said that he was so stunned that at first all he did was watch the guy just stuck in this half-stunned, half-terrified stupor. He did his business, then climbed back over the fence and ran off into the night again. The guy called the cops, told them everything, and they gave him two options. Either shoot the guy, or get a good enough photograph of him so they could ID and arrest him. And my buddy's dad chose a little bit of both. He already had a gun, so he bought himself the camera, not just wanting to kill the guy or let him get away so he could carry on pooping in yards. So once again, he starts staying up all night, half kind of killing himself in the process because he's still working all day too. Then one night, he catches the guy.

It's also worth noting that no other yards were being pooped in around this time, so my buddy's dad was livid at the idea that he was being targeted for some reason. So then when he finally sees the guy again, he waits until he's full squat, then rushes out with the camera and the gun to get some pictures of the guy up close. He figures he's safe because, I mean, he has a gun, but I suppose he didn't count on the guy being a complete psycho, which, considering the circumstances, he has a gun, but I suppose he didn't count on the guy being a complete psycho, which, considering the circumstances, he really should have. The moment he starts taking pictures, the guy just lunges at him. Only my buddy's dad doesn't quite have the instinct or the training to even fire the gun at all. He just falls back and the crazy naked pooper grabs his gun.

A struggle ensues. Lots of screaming. Neighbors get woken up and then finally, the naked guy wrestles the gun from my buddy's dad. I get why it must have been terrifying but the idea of this dude being naked the whole time just makes it all seem so surreal. Then he points the gun at my buddy's dad and pulls the trigger. Nothing. He tries again. Nothing. By that point, some of the neighbors were over the fence, and they tackled the guy before he had a chance to cock the thing, which my friend's dad had completely forgotten to do before he confronted the phantom pooper. In that struggle, he dropped the gun and made a beeline over the fence.

Luckily, he had gotten some pretty good pictures of the guy's face and although the camera got smashed in the struggle for the gun, the cops were able to get the raw film processed. Wanted posters went up and the guy's picture appeared on local news and eventually he was found and arrested. Only get this, the cops let him go. I don't know how exactly they managed to screw something that big up but somewhere down the line someone bungled some file or evidence or something and the guy got to walk. As soon as my buddy and family hear poof they're gone without even a word. Went to stay with some in-laws or something before they could buy their house back from whoever or whatever realtor was

holding on onto it. I think in actual fact my buddy's family moved back because some psycho was going to come back and potentially kill his dad. But the way he avoided such a traumatic thought by saying someone was pooping in our yard still cracks me up even all these years later. But like I said earlier, I don't think it'd have been very funny to live through, especially if it was me looking down that barrel of a gun in the hands of some naked, scat-obsessed psycho. To be continued... My name is Luca, I'm a long time subscriber and to be honest, this story has been sitting in my draft emails for quite some time now. I wrote it up almost two years ago with every intention of sending it to you but at the moment of truth, I lost my nerve. You see, I'm honestly not sure whether this was a genuinely creepy moment or just something that became creepy to me because I overthought it. But after reading it over, my wife thinks it's something you'd like to hear because after reading it back,

she thinks it's pretty creepy too. She remembers me mentioning it, but I don't think she understood how unsettling it was in the moment. She remembers thinking the guy was being rude, which is definitely not how I remember it. I suppose this is all just confusing information, so I guess I'll get on with the story. Now a slight epilogue here, I'm first generation Italian American and my family have owned restaurants for as far back as anyone can remember. So when my father brought his expertise to Chicago he did very well for himself. When he died, ownership fell to me and as much as it was my honor to carry on the family tradition,

the restaurant scene had become more and more competitive as the years went by. It got to the point where I wasn't making enough to comfortably put both kids through college and contribute to my retirement fund. So instead of battling it out in an already oversaturated market, I started scouting out relocation options. I don't want to name the town this whole thing happened in. I don't want to dock some poor innocent gas station owner because of some dumb misunderstanding. What I will say is that it's in the Midwest, about 20,000 people, and its proximity to a pretty decent college was a big attraction to me. It looked like a totally regular place at first. Schools, hospital, a whole lot of real nice houses too. But then the more I drove around, the more the places started to seem,

I don't know, dead. If I had paid a visit on a weekday afternoon, I could understand the place being so quiet. But this was a Saturday afternoon. For a town of 20,000, the main high street should have been teeming with folks all looking to make the most of their one real day of recreation. This was most of the appeal for me too. Out in those small towns, there were still the four bottles of wine in every appetizer crowds, as opposed to the grubhub vultures who only hit you up when there are two for ones. Those were the fine people that were going to put my babies through college, but they were nowhere to be seen in this wholesome looking farmer's town that, in actual fact, didn't feel very wholesome at all. I ended up parking my car

somewhere before taking a short walk up and down the high street. With the total lack of people around, and I swear I counted all the foot traffic on one hand, it was a wonder some of the stores weren't all boarded up, and I started to wonder if I'd arrived during some sort of event that drew people out of town or something. I ended up asking an older lady what the deal was, intending to ask her if the town was always that quiet, but then when I approached and asked her as she made her way down the main street, she completely ignored me. I'm not talking a rude side eye and a cold shoulder, I mean, it was like I was a ghost. She just didn't even flinch as she walked past me and I'd walked right up to her to talk.

It was so jarring that I actually chuckled out loud to myself and I quickly approached someone else to make sure that I wasn't totally invisible. This next person talked to me but they were far from friendly. Not outright rude but definitely on the spectrum of passive aggressive. I asked him where everyone was and he just sort of shrugged before saying something like, it's a quiet town, we like it that way. Then he excused himself and carried on about his day., these were obviously not good indicators And I'd pretty much made up my mind already that this wasn't the place Then on the way out of town I saw my car's fuel gauge was getting pretty low So I pulled into a gas station on the edge of town for a little top off And that's where things got really weird

I started filling up my tank from these old looking gas pumps and I swear my eyes almost fell out of my head when I saw the price meter. It crawled up shockingly slow and I realized this gas station was selling fuel at an extremely discounted rate. Obviously this was just about the least terrifying thing I could possibly imagine and it put me in a pretty good mood as I walked into the gas station itself to pay the attendant. Inside was a kind of rubish-looking older man, sitting behind a counter watching a little box TV, and for the first time since I arrived in that little town, I actually met someone friendly. The guy was warm and welcoming and smiled when I told him how much I appreciated his gas prices. As I paid him, he asked what I was doing in town and as he opened

up the register and put the bills inside, I told him. The second I mentioned the possibility of moving to town to open up a restaurant, the guy's face changed. Not a rude expression, but almost like a fearful one. Then I swear to God he looks me dead in the eyes and says in a voice barely above a whisper, Don't move here. I heard exactly what he said, and the whole thing took me by surprise so hard that I found myself responding with, Huh? What did you say? At that, a woman I assume was the guy's wife emerged from the back rooms to see what was going on. I don't know if she actually heard what he'd said to me,

but she seemed to know that something was off and after addressing her husband by name, he just totally shut down. He shot her a look with that same spooked expression then started busying himself like a child caught doing something they shouldn't. I was so taken aback that I just sort of stood there for a moment, totally dumbfounded, until the guy's wife asked me if there was anything else they could help me with. Then when I told her no, she replied with, Then I think you better leave. After that, she disappeared into the back again, with her husband flat out refusing to make eye contact with me. I didn't exactly want to make a scene or anything, and the whole interaction made for one of the most awkward of my entire life, so I just walked out of the gas station, got back into my car, and started off on the drive home.

And this is where I started to overthink the whole thing. The way I see it, if it was just a town full of rude idiots who didn't want some slick city guy moving out there to bring all his fancy schmancy food, that I could understand. Heck, I'd even appreciate them being honest enough that I wouldn't make the mistake of moving there. But then with the gas station guy, this wasn't small town xenophobia in his voice when he told me not to move here. It was fear, clear and unmistakable. Then the way he reacted when his wife or whatever that was appeared, it was like he'd been caught giving away some old dirty secret or something. I mean, he really did act like a scolded child

back there but over what exactly? Like I said I told my wife about the whole thing the moment I got back home but I guess she figured that everyone was just kind of being rude. But after hearing it all like this she admits that she'd have been just as freaked out as I was if it were her in that gas station that day. But all we can do now is wonder what in God's name was going on in that town, and although I know there's no sure way of finding out, it's something I'm nowhere near willing to do. Snooping around that town, poking in other people's business, that sounds like the surest way to me to get killed that I've just about ever heard. Besides, whatever it is, I'm not sure I even want

to know at all. That gas station attendant didn't seem unfriendly, he seemed like he was trying to warn me, and I'd like to think that I'm smart enough to act on that. I suppose the reason I'm writing this is that you have a pretty big audience, and I figure that someone out there has had the same experience as me in the same eerily quiet midwestern town. Naming it would be pointless. All kinds of people would descend on that place and hunting for all manner of god knows what and that sounds like the perfect recipe for disaster to me. Anyway, maybe if you read this on your channel you might be able to help solve something that had been bothering me for the longest time now. But if not, if this just seems like some dumb city boy is overreacting to a little rural

frostiness, then me and my wife will still be big fans of yours. Keep up the great work. Thankfully, I don't have any personal stories to share with you, which makes me kind of lucky, I guess. But my uncle from my mom's side has a pretty good one from when they were kids. My mom claims to have zero recollection of this, but she was a baby at the time, so go figure. It all involves a potential move that my grandpa was looking at and the house he was going to renovate before the move. So the story goes that my grandparents needed to upsize from their double Y to their first real house. My grandma was in the latter stages of her pregnancy with my mom so my grandpa went off searching for somewhere to live. The trouble was, money wasn't exactly flush at that, so instead of buying a brand new house, Grandpa chose a fixer-upper.

And from what I heard, boy did he choose a fixer-upper. The place was practically in ruins. But to Grandpa, that was a positive. In his mind, he was just purchasing the land, and he had big plans for it. Grandpa and his buddy got to work clearing out the house, and while they were waiting for some plumber or something to come out, they got to work on the backyard. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but apparently the soil was completely ruined or spoiled or whatever happens to lawns,

so they wanted to dig it up and replace it. They'd need to hire someone to bring in all the new soil and whatnot, but they could get to work on the digging themselves. And that's when they found this big, buried stash of bones. in all the new soil and whatnot, but they could get to work on the digging themselves. And that's when they found this big, buried stash of bones. The fact that one of them happened to quite obviously be an animal skull, they figured that it was just some old pet grave or something. But then they later found another skull, and then another, and another. And the more they dug, the more bones they uncovered.

Only then they found a big one, one way too big to just be an animal bone, so that's why they called the cops. Once they got up there, the cops told them that they'd probably just uncovered one of the biggest animal cruelty cases in the state's history, but once the larger bone was confirmed as being human remains, things got way more serious. The whole place became a crime scene, so my grandpa couldn't do any work on the place for like a year while the cops dug the entire place up, searching for more burial sites. When my grandma heard this, there was no way on God's green earth that she was about to go raise a family in a place like that. And in the end, Grandpa was forced to wait until the whole thing had blown over before selling

the land on to someone else at a discount rate. The whole thing was a big setback during that early period as a family and for years, Grandpa used to catch a whole bunch of crap about his cheapskate self accidentally buying some psycho's homemade cemetery instead of somewhere that they could, you know, actually live. I asked about the bones, and if they ever worked out who it belonged to or how it had gotten there, but no. Aside from one visit to the local sheriff's office to give an account of how they'd found the bones, the cops never got back in touch with them. Well, besides again when they were packing up their stuff, and they could actually access the land again of course. But they didn't ever get to find out if it was a murder, a family grave of some kind, or even when the bones had been buried. They just took everything off to a lab and that

was pretty much it. I've always wondered what those bones were all about, and if they might have been some weirdly innocent explanation for it all. If they were from a time when people and animals just got buried where they lay, like the old frontier settlers or something, then that'd make a lot more sense. But something just seems real off about all those bones, and I have a bad feeling that they were way more than just the bones of someone's beloved pets. When you really break it down, the thought of someone delivering you food is objectively an unnerving thing. Now think about it for one second. A complete stranger is preparing your food, another complete stranger is driving to your location, and then you have

an interaction with this stranger who is standing one foot away from you. What's even more unnerving is when this happens and you didn't even order food. About five years ago I was dog sitting for my old roommate. I didn't mind at all since I figured I would just stay at his house. I lived there for two years, so I didn't feel strange or anything like that, and he had the dog when I used to live there, so I already had a great relationship with the pup. In my mind, this was going to be an easy endeavor. His dog was basically the easiest dog in the world to take care of. I swear that she was part cat or something.

You could fill up her food bowl once and she would eat it throughout the day. Most dogs I've seen just go nuts when their bowl gets filled, but not this pup. She never barked and she went out twice a day and did her business. At that point in my life, I was also just really looking for some space and time alone since I was nearing the end of a long-term relationship. I figured the space is just what I needed for a few days to clear my head. This house was beautiful. He had a finished basement with a cartoonishly large fireplace next to a massive TV.

I figured I would post up down there for the few days that I was watching the house. My job was boring at the time and it could be done from my computer at home. So I set up my laptop, grabbed some snacks and basically lived in the basement for a few days with the pup. On Friday night, I was feeling a little lonely since I had been there since Wednesday and I hadn't left the house yet or really seen anybody. I called a couple of buddies over to watch some college basketball and just hang out for the night. We ordered pizza and wings at around 7.30pm and it was delicious. However, this is not where my unfortunate story takes place. My friends left at around midnight and I cleaned up a bit and then decided to get ready for bed. Once I lay on the couch, I ended up pulling out my laptop and starting some work just because I wasn't really tired yet.

A little after 1am, I thought I heard the doorbell through my headphones. I put my headphones down and sat still for a moment with my heart beginning to race. When nearly a minute went by and I heard nothing, I felt much better. I figured that it must have been a noise or something in the music that I was listening to that sounded like a doorbell. But then, I heard it again. Clear as day. A doorbell. Now being in the basement, I had the slight advantage of seeing the driveway.

The window sat just above my head, but if I stood on the tip of my toes, I could see the driveway. So to my surprise, more than my horror, there was a car running in the driveway with the headlights beaming. I couldn't tell what type of car it was from where I was standing because of the bright headlights. My first thought was one of my friends that were there earlier had come back. I thought that maybe they forgot their phone or something and that's why they showed up. I went upstairs and approached the door cautiously. I had all the lights off upstairs and only had the outdoor light above the front door on. As I got closer to the door, I couldn't make out the details of the person on the doorstep. They seemed to have a hood on and then another brown jacket over the hood. When I got to the door, I cracked it open.

Thankfully, there was another screen door in front of that door that was also locked. Can I help you with something? I said with some reluctance in my voice. The person grabbed the handle on the screen door and noticed it was locked and took a slight step back. At that moment, I didn't even look at that as alarming, it just happened so quickly that I figured it was an instinct to open the door on his part. He made a small grunting noise, I guess, and then said in an almost shy voice, hey, I got your small pizza and wings. He then held up a brown paper bag that was rolled up at the top. I was still trying to make out the details of his face, but he kept his head down at a downward angle.

In a very annoyed voice, I said, It's one o'clock in the morning. I didn't order a pizza. The guy looked around nervously and then back at me and said, Yeah, yeah you did. This is the address I have the order for. Then he continued to repeat the address back to me, which was in fact the address of the house that I was staying at. But I slammed the door in the guy's face and shouted, Well you guys got the wrong address!

Good night! I made my way back to the basement and I was incredibly annoyed at this point. Just as I sat down on the couch, the doorbell rang again. I went back to the window and saw that the guy's car was still there. Thankfully, the dog slept through all this doorbell nonsense so I didn't have to deal with the barking dog in addition to everything else going on. I called my friends and asked if they had played some joke on me since I was going to be home alone in the house, and all my friends that were over were already home and in bed. It's also worth noting my friends are not the type of people to really pull jokes like that,

especially one as elaborate as this. Then I tried calling the pizza shop that we ordered from earlier. Maybe something weird happened in the system and they accidentally put down my address for another order, but when I looked up the number online, they had closed at 10pm, so it wasn't that pizza shop. It had only been around two minutes since I looked out the window, but the car was still there, and then the doorbell rang one last time. I contemplated going upstairs again, but I noticed the delivery guy was finally walking back to his car. The relief didn't last long though.

He got into the car, turned it off, and then just sat in it. He didn't leave and he appeared to be on the phone. I was hoping that maybe he really was a pizza guy and they just had the wrong address and he was talking to his boss or something. Call me crazy, but I don't think I ever met a delivery guy that was this persistent. I tried to make out the license plate number, but the number was faded out a bit. I know it just started with JC, but that's all I could see. Finally, he backed out of the driveway and drove off. I was slightly concerned though, because he drove off very slowly and didn't turn on his lights. He just sort of rolled away in the car. I figured this uncomfortable ordeal was finally over and I was not in the mindset to work anymore so I figured

that I would finally try and just sleep. I turned off the TV and sat listening to some music in front of a low lit fire. In between songs I thought I heard a car engine. I got off the couch and looked out the window and there was the same car again, this time parked in front of the house with no headlights. I snuck upstairs to the owner's bedroom to see if I could get a better look. I'm not sure if he noticed me but then he drove off again. I hid behind the curtain and looked out the window for the next half hour and the car kept driving by every few minutes. I was scared to this point because I knew something just wasn't right. I grabbed the dog and my laptop and locked

the bedroom door upstairs. I was paranoid but I felt safer doing this. Shortly after 2.30am, the doorbell rang again. I looked out the window and saw no car this time. Then I heard a bunch of knocks at the door, and then that same voice from earlier loudly said, I have your pizza. I have your delivery, sir. Your food's getting cold. I sat quietly and didn't do or say anything.

I should have called the police right there and then, or at least told the guy that I was calling the cops. But it wasn't my house, and I had never called the police before, so I was just not thinking straight. Then the knock stopped. I didn't hear the voice anymore, and I didn't see the car. It was as quiet as could be, and I sat and stared at the ceiling all night until the sun came up. I fed the dog and let her out in the backyard quickly.

I looked around for a few minutes that we were outside and then ran back into the house. I made sure she was okay and then I decided I was going to leave. He was going to be back later that night from his trip and I didn't want to stay in that house for another minute. When I left, I nearly tripped walking out the front door. A rolled up paper bag was on the front steps. I opened it and it just had an empty container that you put wings in sitting at the bottom of the bag. I felt sick as the thoughts flooded into my head, thinking about everything that could have happened. I drove away and as I got to the end of the street I saw what I thought may have been the car from the previous night.

It was a dark sedan with a license plate that started with JC. I called the owner of the house right away and he didn't seem too concerned at all so we just kind of discussed it for a little while and I left it at that. Nothing ever happened again regarding that incident. I asked my friend countless times if anyone had ever showed up to his house since that night and he said never once has he ever experienced anything like that. I have no idea what happened or what kind of danger I was truly in. It was the most uncomfortable and frightening night of my life. I know it may be irrational but I have yet to order pizza or any other kind of food since. This story took place about 6-7 years ago when I was dating my college girlfriend. We were staying at her parents' house while they were out of town for a business conference in Phoenix.

She had a lot of pets that needed to be taken care of, a bunch of fish, and a few guinea pigs and a rabbit. I never realized how much work some of them were, cutting up lettuce, cleaning cages and whatever else went into the maintenance. Anyway, the night started out like any other. We were just watching TV. Actually, I think we were watching the Disney movie Heavyweights, if any of you are familiar with that movie. There is a scene where the entire camp absolutely pigs out on junk food. Once I saw the pizza, I knew that's what I wanted for dinner. Not good pizza though. I was in the mood for Papa John's. I love their plain breadsticks and all the different sauces that come with them and for some

reason, that's what I was in the mood for. My girlfriend begrudgingly agreed but asked if we could pick it up instead of being delivered. After I took a look outside, I told her that we should just have it delivered as the weather was getting really nasty out. It was a mixture of sleet, snow, and rain. She agreed, but asked if I would call in the order, and I didn't mind. I called in, paid with a tip included, so they could just leave it at the door. They said it would take around half an hour or 45 minutes to deliver, which seemed reasonable to me. But after an hour and a half, I was starting to get hungry. I knew the roads were wet and honestly felt kind of bad for ordering it, as her parents' house was probably a good 7-8 miles away from the pizza place. Just as I was beginning to give up on the fact that food would never arrive, I saw headlights

pulling up the long driveway. But as the vehicle got closer to the house, the lights stayed on with no movement. No one got in or out of the car, it was just parked there for a good five minutes. I opened up the door and waved them on, trying to acknowledge that this was the right place. Still, no movement as the headlights glared right at my face. Then suddenly the headlights went off, but the car wasn't moving closer to the house, it was moving further away. The car was backing up down the driveway and heading towards the road. I was both confused and increasingly hangry. I called the shop and

asked for the status of the delivery and if I should cancel due to the weather. They told me that the delivery driver should have been there as they left a while ago. My girlfriend also seemed overly concerned or anxious about the whole situation. I told her it wasn't a big deal and if worse came to worse, we could just make a sandwich or something. Still, I could tell something was wrong and that her mood had suddenly shifted. I tried to brush it off and not pry, and as soon as we pressed play on the TV, we heard a huge bang at the door. It was like someone was pounding on it as hard as they could. We both jumped up, eyes darting toward the door. I told her to stay behind the couch and just let me go check.

I told her that I'm sure that it was just the delivery guy leaving the food at the door. And told her to stay behind the couch and just let me go check. I told her that I'm sure that it was just the delivery guy leaving the food at the door. And I was right. The food was sitting on the porch and I didn't see a sign of a person or vehicle which I thought was peculiar. I brought the food inside and locked the door, then put it on the counter so we could start eating. When I opened the breadstick box, there was a napkin inside that looked like it had been written on with red pen. It said, I hope you enjoy. XOXO. I showed my girlfriend and her face turned white. I asked her what was going on and why she was acting weird. She then said that one of her exes, Sean, used to work at Papa John's or maybe still did. She didn't want

to make a big deal of it as she was sure that it would be a non-issue, but she said that she thought the car that had pulled into the driveway earlier looked like his old car. At least the one that she remembered from when they were dating. But she said that he always used to leave her notes that had XOXO at the bottom. Even after they broke up, she said that he would leave them on her car. She said that when she decided to leave him, he didn't take it well and began contacting her non-stop trying to get back together and mailing and leaving her letters. She said that after she changed her number and made her social media accounts private, she never heard from him again and never had any further issues. I really didn't know what to say. I wanted to say I'm sure this one was a big coincidence,

but I didn't know if it was or wasn't. I told her that anybody that was here is now gone as I didn't see a person or car outside. I told her that we should skip dinner and go to bed if she wanted, but she said she was fine and that we should eat. About 15-20 minutes after we got done eating, we heard another loud crash coming from outside. It sounded like glass or ice had been hurled against the sliding glass doors in the kitchen. Again, I told her to stay in the living room while I went to check it out. The motion sensor was activated in the backyard but I didn't see anyone or anything. I didn't see anything that could have hit the glass. Nothing was broken that I could see.

I asked if she wanted me to call the police and she was reluctant. One of her parents would have to be notified and she said she really didn't have any proof that someone was there. We decided to call it an early night and try to get some sleep. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to sleep much. My anxiety was definitely going to keep me up most of the night. Thankfully, the remainder of the night was uneventful. It was 3am and we hadn't heard or seen anything else. However, to this day I swear that I heard scratching and whispering from 3am on to the morning.

I felt like someone was outside the window, but every time I shifted the blinds to look, nothing was there. In the morning, I chalked it up to the animals making noise, maybe to make myself believe or feel better about the situation from the night before. To my knowledge, nothing else came from the incident, and my girlfriend at the time never had another weird occurrence. We broke up a few years later, but almost every single time I order pizza I think about that night and I half expect there to be awesome pizza shop with my brother. The business was great and we worked well together. My brother and I cooked the pizza and wings and our wives took the orders and operated the cash register.

We would usually hire college kids to deliver the food for us and we could focus on the pizza and running the shop. We had a lot of turnover with the delivery drivers because it's not a glamorous job. Where I live, we get a lot of snow and nobody wants to drive and deliver pizzas in the snow. On top of the tips, I paid my drivers well, more than any other pizza place would pay a driver. My only condition was, please tell me when you're going to quit so I can make arrangements. This worked for a while and honestly still works today. The only thing I was not prepared for, though, was my driver calling in for a while and honestly still works today. The only thing I was not prepared for though was my driver calling in for a shift. It was a Saturday night and it was busy of course.

My brother was out of work for a month for some minor surgery that he had had so I was insanely busy. My driver called in and said that he was sick which I can't really question. I was able to get a friend to come in and help me, but he didn't have a license, so I had to deliver the pizzas while he cooked, and my wife answered the phones. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, stressful of course, but smooth. I was making my last run of deliveries for the evening when I pulled up to a house that was having a loud party. I walked up to the door with three pizzas and two young ladies answered the door. It was clear that they were college girls and they definitely had a little

too much to drink, but it's a college town and I'm not one to judge. I gave them the pizzas and as she was trying to pull money out to tip me, I saw my delivery driver that called in standing in the room behind the girl. Without thinking, I shouted, David, what are you doing? He turned around and saw me, and then just ran, as if I was going to chase him or something. Now, I was angry, but I wasn't so mad that I was going to chase the poor kid. The two girls looked confused, and I made a joke and told the girls that if they see David, give him a nice kick for me. I was mad at the situation but I understand. As I said, it's a college town and I know these kids just want to hang out and have a good time. I probably would have busted his chops about it but

I wouldn't have been that mad. I'm just not that kind of boss. And that night I told my wife about seeing David and she just had the same reaction as me. She called him some ridiculous name I can't remember and we kind of just shared a laugh about the situation. We had a couple of drinks to cap off the night and then got into bed at around 1am. I hadn't fallen completely asleep yet when I thought I heard a noise from outside the window. We live in a one story ranch house so you could be standing right outside my the window. We live in a one-story ranch house, so you could be standing right outside my bedroom window. It sounded like something bumping and tapping the window. I woke up to my wife and asked if she heard it as well, and she did. After a brief deliberation,

she told me to move to the curtain and see if someone was there. My logical brain told me that there wasn't, but something did feel wrong. I whipped back the curtain, and to my relief, there was nothing there. I thought I could make out the smudge of some sort of fingerprints on the glass, but I was sure that it was my mind playing tricks on me. We both rolled over to go back to sleep, but I wanted a drink of water before bed. I made my way to the kitchen, and that's when I saw someone trying to break into the sliding glass door in my kitchen. I immediately jumped to the side in hopes that the darkness would shade me. My phone was next to the bed so I couldn't call the police and I was

too scared to move. You can't even imagine how scary it is to see a figure actively trying to open your door in the middle of the night. I have chills now just writing this and reliving that memory. I finally worked up the courage to run back into the bedroom and I called the police right away. My wife jumped right up and I told her to hide in the closet. I grabbed my left-handed driver from the golf bag and slowly made my way down the hall again. The figure was now trying to open the window above the sink, and he was succeeding. The window was small, but it was budging, unlike all the other windows and doors.

Once he got the windows open almost all the way, he looked up, and we made eye contact for the first time. It was my delivery driver, David. I gasped his name and stared in disbelief as the kid stared at me from the window above my sink. He turned white as a ghost and instead of continuing to try and climb through the window, he just jumped back and ran away. I stupidly tried to call him but his phone was going right to voicemail. The cops showed up several minutes later and I decided on something that most people probably would not have. I did not give the cops David's name. I told them I saw

an intruder breaking in and he ran when he saw me. I gave a statement and they left. I never saw David again. He never showed up at the shop and he never showed back up at my house. Maybe once he realized the cops weren't coming after him he figured I didn't report him. Or maybe he had too much to drink that night and he wasn't thinking straight. Either way, kids make mistakes and I just hope wherever David is today he's doing alright. At the time I didn't have any children yet because if I did, that ending may have played out a little differently. I have no idea what

David intended on doing that night, whether he just wanted to rob my house or actually cause us harm. I'm thankful that he found some sense in that moment and actually ran away. I know we caught him out that night with his friends and he was just kind of faded I guess from drinking but I really held no ill will towards him, so the fact that he ended up in my house and tried to break in, I don't know whether it was coincidence or he truly had some sort of ill intent. But David, if you're still out there, I sincerely hope that a people person. I've had more jobs than I can count on two hands at this point, and I have yet to find one that suits me.

Someone in my position, with no college education and no real-world skills, really struggles to find and then keep a job. Every customer service job I've had has ended in a very ugly fashion. One time, a couple of years ago, I was even arrested and escorted off the property of the store that I worked at because I may have accidentally threatened a customer. In my defense, he called me something he shouldn't have and I may have said some things. That was a long time ago though and I'd like to tell you that I changed but sadly I'm still the same old me. Closing in on 30 years old in a few months and I decided I need to do something with my life and that led me ultimately to the best decision I had ever made in a long

time and that's going back to school. I'm studying computer science online and I'm loving it. What I love most about it though is that my human contact is limited. What I realized quickly is that school was outrageously expensive and I was just about out of money. As a result of my record in previous employment history, I was really struggling this time around to find a job. Finally, I found a pizza place near my house that was hiring a delivery driver. I figured since human interaction would be limited, what could go wrong? Clearly, quite a bit as it seems. The first few weeks were fine.

I delivered a lot of pizzas and barely said two words to any of the folks who ordered them. A huge amount of people actually requested for me to just leave the pizza at the doorstep, which was even more ideal. Then I met Deanna. Oh, sweet Deanna. Apparently, the people at the shop knew this woman and she was a terror, I guess. She would always order the pizza with this weird special instructions that honestly made no sense. If anybody has ever worked in a service job, you know what I mean when people ask for the stupidest things. My supervisor that night, who happened to be the owner's son, thought it would be funny to let me deliver the pizza to Deanna, considering my track record with fellow humans. I didn't know prior to delivering that I was headed for sweet Deanna's house. And I pulled into the driveway, and this frantic, middle-aged woman ran out of the house

in a robe and curlers in her hair, I kid you not. She was waving her arms in the air and screaming at me, saying, Are you insane? Get out of my driveway! That's for owners of the house only! Don't make me call the police! I could already feel my heart pumping. Now, in a calm voice, especially for me, I said to Deanna, Ma'am, I just have your pizza. You want me to drop it here or what? The woman screamed at the top of her lungs and then shouted at me again, saying, I won't ask you again! Move your car! Now a few years ago, I would have probably thrown the pizza at the lady, but somehow I had the patience to get back into my car and move to the road. I got out and started my way up the driveway. I extended the pizza out, trying to hand it to her but she stared at me like I was holding a dead body or something. Annoyed, I said,

you gonna take your pizza? Deanna stared at me. Her mouth was half open and her eyes looked enraged. In an instant, her eyes bulged open and she said, This is all wrong. This is wrong. How dare you? I was beyond confused at this point. I basically was done with this and said whatever. I set the pizza down gently in the driveway and started walking back to my car. I'm a big guy and this was a smaller woman so I was shocked when the next thing I know, the woman jumped on my back and started to beat on the back of my head like some type of drum. While she was hitting me, she continued to yell, it's all wrong, it's not even the right box. I couldn't even begin to understand what she was talking about. Was she mad that the pizza was in a different box?

I finally was able to gently lift her off of me and set her down. I was annoyed and increasingly angry, but the last thing I wanted to do was hurt this poor woman accidentally. I got to my car and when I looked up, the woman was running at my car with a knife in her hand. And that was the final straw for me. I peeled off and looked in my rearview mirror to see her standing at the end of the driveway, waving the knife in the air like it was a flag or something. I didn't call the cops,

and trust me, I know that was stupid considering this woman legitimately threatened me, but I was scared to get in trouble. I've had a lot of issues in the past with the law, and nine times out of ten, I'm the one to blame. I just feared that in case the system failed, I didn't want to jeopardize the only good thing I have going on in my life, and that's school, and sort of this job. I didn't tell the guys at the shop exactly what happened, and I just told them to never ever make me deliver there again.

The more time that passes, the more I'm thankful to be alive. I have no idea where she pulled the knife from. This woman was hanging on my back and I couldn't see her at one point. If she had decided to pull that out then, I may not be writing this today. Life is weird my friends and crazy stuff happens all the time, especially when you least expect it. To be continued... fired from the job that I secured right out of college and wasn't able to afford my rent so I moved home with my parents. I was slightly depressed and I didn't even want to contemplate a new career choice yet. When I was only 22 years old, I was on pace to make 100k a year and that number could only grow and by the time I was 25, I couldn't find a job anywhere.

The most unfortunate thing about my whole situation was that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that's what got me fired. The company that I worked for didn't ask questions and just let me go. To make a long and painful story short, a co-worker whom I considered a mentor and a friend had gotten into some real bad and illegal stuff. He started to bring that stuff into the office where we worked. I tried talking to him and it went nowhere as you may expect. At one point during the day I saw him go to the restroom and I knew exactly what was going on. I went into the restroom to try and stop him or at least try and communicate with him but it didn't get very far. The company must have known that he

was up to something and they were watching him. As soon as I went into the bathroom, not two minutes later did the owner and security barge in and escort us both out of the building. I tried for months to plead for my job back, but it went nowhere. The cameras only picked me up whispering to him and I must admit, it does look sketchy. When I was 25, I decided it was time to get on my feet and at least try to make something out of my life. One of my buddies from high school worked at a pizza shop in my hometown that his family owned. It wasn't glorious, but I needed money badly. Anything to make ends meet. I did this for a little while and I was shocked at how much money I was making in tips.

I always thought working at night would be better, but delivering pizza to businesses during the lunch rush always produced a substantial number of tips. One late afternoon when I was about to call it quits for the day, I heard a minor argument coming from the front of the store where the cash register is located. I didn't really rush out there or even look at the commotion because the owner was a bit of a wild card, and it wasn't unlikely to see him go off on rude customers. I heard the man yell, never again, and then stormed out of the shop. The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it at the time. After the angry man left, the owner walked into the kitchen where I was standing and looked at me with a smirk on his face.

In his American-Italian accent, he said, Hey Tony, what the hell do you do with that guy? He don't like you one bit. And I shrugged and told him I didn't see the guy. Then he proceeded to tell me, The guy saw you walking into the kitchen and said I know the guy. He's bad, he's trouble, fire him. I told him I wasn't going to fire you and he said I'd never order pizza here again or something.

Eh. And we laughed about it for a couple of days and then it passed. By the following weekend, I had forgotten all about it. We got an order to deliver somewhere that was just out of our zone, but he agreed to pay extra if we could please deliver it. I, of course, didn't mind and was happy to take the massive tip. I made the 30-minute drive to a mansion on the edge of town. This place was beautiful. The type of house i always wanted to live in i approached the massive front doors that

were accompanied by two giant pillars i rang the doorbell and a voice came out from a speaker on the button and it said in a muffled voice door is open my friend would you please just come in and set the pizza on the counter? I got a broken leg and I'm not moving too well. The voice sounded familiar, but it was just muffled enough that I couldn't quite tell if I knew it for sure. I walked into the house and it was far less striking on the inside. It smelled horrible in there and it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. There was trash everywhere, bottles and cans lined the floor and ants were all over the place. It was disgusting to say the least.

I walked into the kitchen and found a spot on the counter to set the pizza box. I took one more look around at the disarray of the home. As I was turning my head I noticed a man standing in the doorway on the opposite side of the room. I barely recognized him at first, but after a second it was clear. It was my old mentor from my old job, and he didn't have a broken leg. He just stood there staring at me with one hand firmly concealed behind his back. I put my hands out in a defensive position and asked, hey man, you okay? He took a half step forward and then stopped but didn't say anything. His eyes were wide and he looked like he was about to burst at the seams. I started to slowly back toward the front door which was probably like

20 feet away from where I was standing. As I slowly walked backward, never breaking eye contact, he finally spoke and said, it's your fault. I lost everything because of you. You turned me in. I tried to respond and tell him that I was fired too, but I couldn't find the words. He still didn't move really other than a few small steps and he just kept saying, I blame you Tony. I blame you. I couldn't stop noticing the arm behind his back was starting to shake and twitch, and I knew he had something behind his back, and I didn't want to find out what it was. I was about a foot away from the door, and I grabbed the knob, turned, and ran to my car.

As I sprinted out of the house, I could hear him moving much faster now, but I didn't turn to see if he was chasing me. When I got to the bottom of the driveway, I turned and saw him standing at his front door, waving at me with this wicked smile on his face. I just got back to the shop and told everyone there what happened, and we all had a laugh about it at the time. I didn't really understand just how scary and severe that incident could have been until just a little while ago when I was talking to my girlfriend about my delivery job. She said I was lucky that he didn't try and attack me, and she claims that he probably wanted to but was so messed up on something at that moment that he couldn't move very well. After talking to her and remembering that look in his eye, I remember just how dark and dead those eyes looked when he stared at me. If anybody ever picks up a job delivering pizza to make ends meet,

never go inside, because you may not this crisis differently and in their own way. For me, it was a pizza, and shamefully, Tinder. Both of which usually left me feeling like a truck hit me. After a few, let's call them Tinder dates, I decided that I was done with Tinder, at least for a while. Things get weird and almost scary sometimes. I decided that the best way to deal with this loneliness was to order an amazing loaded french fry pizza. I'll say this, if you've never experienced the glorious bounty of a loaded french fry pizza, you need to change that immediately. I ordered my pizza and about 45

minutes later the doorbell rang. It was a beautiful woman delivering my pizza as well. I know anybody can deliver food but I personally have never seen a woman so gorgeous delivering pizza at that time. I made some stupid jokes when I answered the door and she giggled. I figured it was now or never to make a move. Strike while the iron's hot, I suppose. So, I just asked if she wanted to hang out and to my surprise she said that when she was done with work after this delivery that she'd love to chill. I was pumped and perhaps more pumped than my pizza. She said she needed to go home and freshen up and then

she would head over at around 10 p.m. We exchanged numbers and I decided that I probably should freshen up myself. 10 o'clock came and she never showed up. I waited a bit and then finally texted her and asked her where she was. I never received a text back until about 11.15. I was angry at this point, but as soon as she said she was coming over, I forgot how angry I was and agreed to still let her come. Before I knew it, it was midnight and she still wasn't there. I finally started listening to my brain for once and I decided to text her and tell her not to come. She texted back and claimed that she was almost there and that she

really wanted to hang out. I was upset and decided that it would probably be like all my other Tinder dates if I let her come over so I stuck to my guns and told her that I wanted to pass out for tonight and that maybe we can hang out again in the future. She responded with a simple text that was just a laughing face emoji. A weird response, I thought, but I shrugged it off and decided to go to bed. I had no idea what time it was, but it was at some point in the middle of the night. I was awoken by my doorbell. I cautiously made my way to the door and there was nobody there. Directly behind the front door is my living room and in the living room is a back door that leads to my backyard. As I was staring at the front door, I thought I caught movement out of the

corner of my eye. I turned around and I swore that I saw someone running by my back door. I snuck over to that door and I thought I could hear giggles and whispers through the door. I couldn't make out any words and I guess it could have been the wind, but it definitely sounded like voices. A few moments later, my worst fears came true. While I was sitting next to the back door, I looked up across the room at the front door and at the door were what I believed to be five people. Whoever was standing in front then started to ring the doorbell repeatedly. I yelled from the other side of the room, what do you want? They stopped at the doorbell and then a deep, burly voice responded, we want to hang out. Don't you want to hang out?

I shouted back, a threat that I was going to call the police, but I had no intention of calling them if the threat worked. And then I heard a bubbly female voice shouting, They would never get here in time. Now the panic started to take me over. I ran back to my room and grabbed my phone to call the police. The entire time I was in my room, they kept ringing my doorbell and banging on the door. I half expected them to break the door down at any point. About five minutes later I could see the lights of the cop car shining through my window and I ran back to the living room. The group of people was gone and I let the cops inside so

I could give a statement. I told them about the girl at the pizza shop and that I was sure that it was her and most likely her friends. The cops didn't seem too interested if I'm being honest. They asked if I had seen any cars either when the woman delivered my pizza or when I had the alleged intruders and sadly, I didn't see the car either time. They asked if I had any proof that it was this girl and of course, I didn't. I didn't even know the girl's name. She was listed as pizza girl on my phone. Unfortunately, you can't charge someone based on feeling. I tried texting her that night and she responded right away, indicating me that she was awake and she claimed that I was insane.

She could be right. And I was unfortunately just targeted by a group of freaks that night and this poor girl was just caught in the crossfire but I don't think so. Everything just seemed off from the beginning. She agreed to hang out with a stranger after delivering a pizza, yes. More weird things have happened. But it does raise a red flag. Claiming she would be over at 10 and then she just kept postponing saying that she was almost there.

Then the weird laughing text and then the intruders saying things like do I want to hang out. It just seemed weird and oddly suspicious. Nothing has ever happened since that night but I can tell you for sure that I don't sleep well anymore. And I have yet to order any pizza since that night. I still have her number on my phone, and maybe now that I've written this story, I'll text the pizza girl and most unsettling thing happened to me while I was delivering a pizza. I started this gig delivering pizzas about six months ago to make some extra cash on the weekends. I'll say this, anybody looking for some extra money should consider delivering pizzas.

I know it's not glamorous, but depending on where you work, you can make some decent side money. For the most part, I never really had any interesting stories about delivery. I've heard people describe all sorts of things from their experiences. Everything from being invited inside to a party. There's someone I used to work with being invited inside after dropping off the pizza and six months later he ended up marrying that woman. But for me, it was always the status quo until a month ago. In the area I deliver, there aren't too many apartment buildings. It's mostly residential neighborhoods and just a few business parks.

However, there is a massively large apartment building within our delivery area. The apartments are new, but the building itself is quite old. In the early 1900s, the building was some sort of warehouse or factory. I think they made candles or something random like that, but it mostly had been abandoned for the last 40 years. Just recently, they renovated the entire building and made these beautiful apartments. They're open and spacious floor plans, and because the warehouse was huge, they were able to add a ton of apartments. I think the cheapest apartment in the entire building is $2,100 for one bedroom. Basically, you need to have some money to afford one of these apartments. When Saturday night came and I received a call to deliver a pizza to this building,

I was pumped to see it for myself. I'd only seen photos up to this point. Ordinarily, I don't love delivering to apartments. It's not the apartment's fault, it's just sometimes it can be annoying trying to navigate which building is the correct one, especially when it's dark out. But not this time. This time, I was excited to deliver to these apartments and selfishly, I was hoping to get a nice tip. The drive should have taken me about 10 minutes, but it ended up being almost 20 minutes due to the horrific weather. It was raining and storming so badly outside that the visibility was almost non-existent. When I arrived at the

massive building, I pushed the button for the address of the pizza. They unlocked the door and I stood in a lobby-like room. There were two elevators, one to my left and one to my right. At the end of the room, straight across from me, was another door that led to the stairs. I don't love elevators so I decided to take the stairs even though it was on the sixth floor. I got to the floor and started making my way down the confusing corridors. It was like a maze on the floor. I assumed the floor was a giant square with rooms all the way around but it had a lot of turns that honestly blew my mind. From the outside of the building, it was just a giant rectangle, but inside was like something out of an abstract

painting. I was briskly walking down the hall, looking at all the numbers trying to find the address of my delivery. Then, without notice, the power went out. It was completely dark where I was standing. Of course, my cell phone was outside in the car so I didn't have any light on me. The hallway was completely blacked out. I had no idea where I was and how far away the stairs were. It was as if I entered a funhouse. I tried to use one hand to guide myself on the wall and the other hand was firmly holding the pizza in wings. If you're afraid of the dark, then this would have been enough to do you in, but unfortunately, it gets worse. In my dwindling composure,

I heard a door open slowly, and then close abruptly. It sounded close in front of me, but I literally saw nothing. If someone left their apartment, they weren't using a light to navigate. So I had thought, that was probably whoever ordered the pizza and they were just checking to see if it was at their door. I decided to shout, hey, I got your pizza. A brief silence ensued and then a voice emerged from the darkness that had to be no more than ten feet away and said in a low and raspy voice, I didn't order pizza. I stayed quiet and stopped moving. I wanted to turn around and go back to the stairs but at this point I had already walked by a ton of doors and I wouldn't know which one was the stairs. As I stood still, hoping that the power

would turn on, the voice emerged again, this time right in front of me. I could feel the heat of the breath on my skin, and they said, You're coming with me. Thankfully, I was holding the pizza because this person tried to grab me, but they ended up grabbing the pizza box. I threw the box, turned, and ran back the way I came. I don't know why I wasn't yelling for help. I think I was paranoid to give away my position. As I ran down the blacked out hall, I tried every doorknob I passed until I found one that wasn't locked and thankfully it was the stairs. The stairs had these emergency lights, so I was able to faintly see where I was going. I ran outside, got into my car and drove back to the pizza shop in the rain. I told my boss everything

and we decided to call the police. The person who ordered the pizza called furious that their order was thrown out in the hallway, but I didn't care. I gave my statement to the police who informed the apartment management, but as of writing this a month later, nothing has happened. I did find out that the floor I was on was also supposed to have these working emergency lights but for some reason they didn't operate. I'm still not sure if this was some cruel joke to play on someone in the dark or if this strange person intended to harm me. Either way, I'm thankful my pizza box saved my life that night and at this point, I'm just happy I have an insane delivery story I can finally share.

If anything happens, I will for sure write up follow-ups, but at the moment, there is a demented man in the darkness, just waiting to strike. This happened a few weeks ago. I work at a petrol station. I have years of experience in a previous one, so getting this job was just a piece of cake, I guess. Only this was different. It's lone working. Can you imagine eight hours entirely by yourself? And especially doing late shifts. So my shift started early afternoon, about maybe half an hour into my shift. This guy walks in, and I've seen him before as he entered the shop the day before and randomly asked me if I had any shopping bags to spare.

The guy was giving me some uncomfortable vibes, but luckily someone else was working with me that day for a short while, so I asked them to deal with that guy. My colleague said that we don't have anything to spare you and told him bye, and I guess the guy leaves. Anyway, back to this day, this guy walks in and I thought, for God's sakes, what does he want now? Another handout? Of course he just walks up to the desk and just starts chatting to me. He was asking me some advice about his living situation as he told me he used to be homeless. Since to me it's not really my place to give advice,

plus I just really didn't want to be stuck talking to this guy, I just shrugged and told him to just sleep on it and have a think about things. And of course he left. He didn't enter the store to buy anything at all, just a chat, but thinking back I remember that he asked me what time I got off, and stupidly I told him 11 o'clock at night. I got on with my shift as usual up until about 9.30pm and he returns but with another guy who may I say looked very dodgy, all dressed in a black hood.

The guy who entered the shop previously pokes his head into the door and asked if I do phone top-ups. We do, but something in my gut was telling me, make him leave now. So I lied and I told him we don't. So the guy and his dodgy friend hang outside the store for a bit while I was serving customers, then until the shop seemed quiet again, they both entered the store and it looked like they were looking around all around the shop. I noticed the dodgy guy kept his hands in his pockets the whole time and then that thought struck me. Oh my god, I'm gonna get robbed tonight. So I took some deep breaths and tried to keep calm and just thought of my training and I

repeated in my head, just comply with them, give them what they want, then call the police after they leave. But of course from the panic I thought to myself I better plan so I stood ready with one hand under the desk hovering over the panic button. I thought to myself the minute they pull a weapon out on me to hit the button as it's a silent alarm and show hands and comply and hope the police arrive on time to catch them. They both leave the store but again hang around outside right by the door. Then I see the car drive away and I thought to myself, I don't want these guys in the store again, not while I'm completely alone. So I flip the switch that automatically locks the main door.

A half an hour passes, I had no customers and still the two guys are still hanging around outside. I called my boss to tell him what's going on and to give him a heads up that at some point I'm going to have to call the police and have them move them along as it's making me very anxious. Then another guy shows up and joins the guys all dressed in black and wearing those covid masks. He also hands his friend's mask too, then he makes his way around the back of the store. Then I realize, oh god, the back door. The one I go out from to puff on my vape,

and I ran to the back door and slammed it shut and locked it. At this point, I was scared for my life, as these guys stack around the place, to which it started to feel like an hour and a half had passed. But I was hiding in the office watching the cameras. I picked up the phone and dialed the non-emergency number for the police. At this point, I was really freaking out. But of course, I had to listen carefully while a bit on the phone was going through those

pressed one for this. I couldn't focus on the next thing. A colleague calls me on my mobile to check in on me. I told him what's happening, then I came out of the office to take a peek and, of course, those guys were right up to the window, knocking to grab my attention and, yes, they saw me with two phones to my ears. Oh god, they saw me. I said to my colleague on the phone, then I came up with an idea. I put the phone I had making a call to the police down and kept my colleague on the phone

and I said, Listen, I'm going to see what they want. You just stay on the phone. I'm going to put you on speaker. Stay quiet, don't say a word, just listen. If you hear me say, the till is slow, you hang up and call the police. 999, okay? I mean it.

That's me telling you that I'm in danger. So I put him on speaker and hid my phone in my bra and head to the window. What's up, guys? Can I help you? Why's the door locked? I take a deep breath. That's because we're in night mode now. Door is locked, but I can serve through the hatch.

What can I get you? They just look at each other and whisper amongst themselves. We'll just take... And a brand of tobacco they named. And a lighter. Sure, one moment. I grab what they ask for, and they push a 20 note through. I quickly grab the 20 and of course check it.

Then I rang them up, but as I had their change ready I saw one hand go through the hatch. I dropped their change into that hand avoiding contact. Okay, thank you, bye now. And I stared them down, closing the window in the hatch. And thank god, as they stood there, they finally left for good. As soon as they were gone, I fell to the floor and burst out crying, after holding in that fear for so long. I demanded that my shifts are to be changed to morning shifts after that night, and I guarantee you that I'll be quitting. One time I was walking home from the train station after I spent the weekend at my aunt's house. It was about 11pm at night and very dark outside.

When I was almost home, I noticed a guy on crutches in front of me. He walked the same direction and then stopped every couple of meters to turn around and look at me before continuing to walk on. Since he was walking with a limp, I quickly passed him. When I did, he stopped walking and grinned at me in this really creepy way, so I kept moving. Since I lived in an apartment over a burger restaurant, for a moment I considered to ask one of the employees to walk me to the front door, because to get to the entrance of the apartment slash part of the house, you had to walk around the house into a dark court. But I didn't ask, because I thought what could possibly happen, the guy is on crutches,

and I didn't want to come off as childish. So I was walking through the court of her house and wanted to pull out my keys while walking. Suddenly I couldn't find them in my handbag. I realized that I had thrown them somewhere in my travel bag because I didn't want to lose them from my handbag while staying at my aunt's and being out with her all the time. So, still standing in the middle of the court, I had to search the whole travel bag for the freaking key. I was so distracted by the whole key searching incident that I totally forgot about the creepy guy that I had encountered before. When I finally pulled the key out of the bag, I looked up and the creepy guy from before was standing right in front of me, grinning. I always thought in a situation like

that that I'd start screaming, but instead, I couldn't get myself to make any sound at all. With the keys in my hand, I started running to the front door, opened it, and jumped inside the house. The guy, still walking with a limp, followed me as fast as he could. Luckily, due to his injury, he wasn't as fast as me. Unfortunately for me, our front door was one of those doors that slowly falls back into the lock automatically, but when you try to push them in order to shut them quicker, it pressures back and stops you from slamming it. So there I was, trying to push the door into the lock while the creepy guy was on his way to follow me into the house. Believe it or not, the door fell into the lock while the creepy guy was on his way to follow me into the house.

Believe it or not, the door fell into the lock right in the second that he reached the doorstep. Through the glass door we just looked at each other, both sort of breathing heavily from the race and him clearly chasing after me. He looked very disappointed. I quickly ran upstairs to my apartment and locked myself in it. Later that night I looked outside my window and I saw that same man walking up and down the road in front of the house. He stayed there for about three to four hours after the incident. I can't tell you what it was that made me not call the cops. I guess I was like, after all, nothing really happened, what can they do about it? After that I didn't feel safe in my home anymore because I knew that he knew where I lived. I only left my apartment when being picked up or dropped off and made sure to be home before it was turning dark every day for about two weeks.

Finally, I decided to go to the police and tell them about it to ask whether they can keep an eye on the neighborhood for a bit. I went to the police station and it happened exactly as I feared. They took notes and just sort of said, mhm, we can't really do anything about it now. You should have called before, but we'll take note of it, okay? A couple of days passed and suddenly I get a call back from another police officer who asked me a lot about what had happened. He tells me that they'd been looking for the guy on crutches for months already because he had hurt several girls in our town and followed them into their apartment and even slept in front of their doors. He had been in police custody before, got out and violated probation. He had some kind of mental illness I guess as well. The police officer

told me to immediately call in case the guy showed up again. He luckily never did. It was only then that I understood the seriousness of the situation and realized that I most likely escaped an attempted assault in some sort of way by just an inch. I in a way really didn't believe myself that the whole thing had actually even happened before the police guy actually called me back. And this was five years ago, but I still think about it from time to time, and it still gives me the creeps. Last night, my boyfriend and I got into bed. The lights were off, TV on, in bed, and we weren't wearing clothes as usual. It was pretty normal for us.

And a couple of minutes go by of us talking and our cat jumps up on the nightstand and is staring outside. He does this all the time so I assume it's just a stray cat out there. He runs across the bed to my nightstand so I peek outside to see. My cat's tail is all fluffy so I think it's just the cat that he doesn't like. I look out the window and I see a phone screen. I have no clue what was on it, I didn't think to actually look that hard. It was a red thing in the middle but that's all I really know. I look at my boyfriend assuming that I'm just seeing the reflection of his phone. When I see my boyfriend is not holding his phone, I back myself into the corner of the wall so the window can't see me. I just repeatedly say,

there's someone outside, until my boyfriend finally gets up. I grab a sweater and pants from the floor and we're just walking around the house as he calls 911. We come to the room and the guy is still out there but my cat will not let me get near the window without growling so I don't get to see his face. The cops get there a few minutes later and search the block. They come from the front yard and the backyard climbing some fences and they don't find anyone. They just say that they'll be on the lookout and to stay aware pretty much. My boyfriend and I are both reasonably shaken up. I point out that the cat was acting similarly last night. Not exactly but she was all fluffed up and on edge. He pointed that with how often I sleep without my clothes on or close to it's possible that the guy has done that multiple times so he could see. He also points out that with the lights on, you could definitely see

onto the bed from that window, so he would have been able to actually see us, you know, doing our thing last night, and he probably caught us in the midst of it. There's no proof that he's been there more than once, and with our neighborhood, he was probably just some guy on drugs wandering around. He left the gate open, stood there even after we clearly spotted him, and just didn't seem too smooth in his operation. I don't know. I just hope it was a one-time thing. I feel so helpless. I didn't go outside and do anything because I didn't know if he had a weapon or something, but I wish I could have. My boyfriend wants to buy a gun this weekend, and I hope that can at least give me some sense of security. Four years ago, I trained a new worker who was honestly a nice guy at the time. Early 30s, seemingly healthy, very much into yoga, had a beautiful girlfriend, etc. He seemed very

balanced and healthy, and I'll just name him coworker A. We had another longtime coworker who was sort of Mr. Popular with managers, but honestly super annoying, really large personality, and people mutually could only take him in small doses. He was essentially the embodiment of a TikTok frat boy who would randomly dance on the job and freestyle. It was extremely annoying, but anyway, I'll just call him Coworker B. Now before I explain I should include this, Workplace just sucks. It barely holds a single star on Indeed. It's a large factory with no windows, toxic management, long hours, and it was very hard on most people's mental health.

So anyway, roughly a year into co-worker A's stay, things started changing. He and I were mutually friendly to one another. We would have a long, civilized discussion about interesting things, but something was really out of place when he mentioned his new beliefs about the world being flat and a hologram moon theory. It was really unlike the old version of him who was super rational. I sort of shrugged it off and said it's probably just a phase or maybe he's trolling. Now fast forward a few weeks, coworker A has seemingly took a lot of interest in co-worker B and sort of developed some of his mannerisms but in a much more endearing way,

kind of copying his silly dances and laughing and it seemed harmless. But as months go past, he continued to dance more and more to the point that he had to be asked to stop by supervisors. He would even be moving around at the morning meetings, using all the same mannerisms and phrases as coworker B. This really started to creep out coworker B to the point that he switched shifts. We theorized maybe that he was on drugs or something. But coworker A was very logical against all substance uses, including alcohol, weed, etc. And he was also vegan, I guess. Where things change for the worst is where coworker B ends up getting with a new hire at work. She ends up becoming his girlfriend, and they move in together, etc.

And this is when co-worker A shows up to work using co-worker B's name. Even signing himself in on the logbook as him, referring to himself as B all morning. Then, later that day, A stands up on a work table screaming, I'm in love with, and co-worker B's girlfriend's name. With his arms spread out in a cross Jesus formation, face to the ceiling, and the whole place was silent, and after he ended up standing in the corner with a broom sweeping nothing up for the next several hours. He wouldn't turn around from the corner either, not even when tapped on the shoulder or called by name. The only time I saw him away from that corner was when it was time to go home, and he was the last one out. Unfortunately, my job being QC, I'm always

among the last ones out as well, Despite both of us being the last in the building, I did my best to act normal when passing him in the hallway. I glanced at him. He was looking directly at me, head tilted down, making a pseudo-snarling dog face, eyebrows in a V, tongue and teeth out. And the next day, our boss co-worker A needed to go to the hospital so we actually made an appointment and got him in with an Uber. He was put on leave for a week and the security guards, who I was friends with, told me A was showing up in the middle of the night trying to sign in for work at the card reader, sometimes at 2-3am. Anyway, surprisingly a week later, co-worker A comes back and seems somewhat normal,

almost like he has no recollection of anything he did. He even wrote an entire album on his phone in that time, which, surprisingly, was better than I thought it would be. But I noticed it was all just love lyrics, sort of wanky country love songs. As things seemed to normalize with coworker A, he stated he really wanted to hang out with me and go for a hike and throw axes at trees and stuff like that, I guess. I sort of didn't agree or disagree and told him that I'd get back to him on that, as I secretly was still a little on edge. He asked me later that day if I was still down and I said unfortunately I had other obligations and he said, well I guess I can't throw axe at

your face then, huh? And I laughed, not knowing how to really react at all. I told the manager about that and he kind of just scratched his head uncomfortably and shrugged his shoulders. Anyway, coworker A ends up finding coworker B's address due to a work get together where everyone was invited and someone leaked it to coworker A. They eventually find rocks and sticks and weird formations on their doorstep, like shrines or something, and we all collectively knew that it was A. Things got really weird when they actually found A looking through the windows at night. He was also scratching the windows with his nails, calling out B's name, repeatedly whispering, B, I need to tell you something. And this is when our manager finally decided to take

action and agreed to fire A. Four years later, co-worker A still stalks co-worker B's now ex-girlfriend who had to get a restraining order against him. He annually makes new Facebook accounts and adds all 200 plus workers who used to work there as the place got shut down. And he uses a new name each time with a different selfie. He sends a message to each one of us as well saying, hey you, it's B from work. So I guess my question is, what would this behavior be called? And how did such a normal, likable, level-headed person turn into this? Is there a term for this behavior? What would your diagnosis be?

One of my friends had the balls to ask him in a reply, which I can share a screenshot of if he recalls anything, which he doesn't seem to. But he sure remembers B's ex-girlfriend and says some extremely concerning things about how she's the one and the only one. Quote, I'm the bigger one, she's the smaller one. He was put on this earth essentially to save her, I guess. And he also seemingly has no support at all from family or anything and is working at a new job, living alone unattended. I feel like this is sort of a risk, you know? Anyway, I'm interested in some of your feedback we were on vacation somewhere in Europe. Me, my sister and

my sister-in-law were skating and were approached by this British lady asking how to get into the ice rink. I, having watched and read so many murder mystery documentaries and posts immediately had a bad feeling since the kiosk that you have to pay for renting shoes is facing the rink and you can't miss it and there were so many people there but the couple came straight up to us. Three vulnerable Muslim women. I ignored it and just kept skating. My sister and sister-in-law however were roped into a conversation with this woman. I came over to listen in and all she was saying is how pretty they are and urging them to take off their sunglasses so she can get a better look at them and asking their ages and where they worked and this just confirmed it to me. Before I could say

anything she turned to me and went, oh my god, you look like a model, you should work for Chanel and this confirmed it even more to me. It just smelled like BS, calling a four-foot woman a model just to stroke her ego. Her husband then walks over to us right after, stares really creepily at me and offers a handshake and proceeds to call me a Kardashian. At this point, I wanted to signal to my sisters to leave immediately, but the lady goes, oh my god, we should all take a picture. I shook my head, told my sisters in Arabic that they're bad news and that we should leave. I left, but my sisters were gullible enough to agree to take the picture.

Moments later, I told my dad about what had happened and how creeped out I am by the whole situation, how those two have my sister's pictures. My dad and I decided to walk over to them and have them delete the pictures. As we approached them, I could see that the guy that took the pictures had the photos selected and was in the middle of sending them to a WhatsApp group chat, which made my heart drop to my stomach after hearing about all those trafficking stories. Human trafficking. After I asked them to delete the pictures, the man looked flabbergasted and fidgety, kept saying how he's not offended and how lucky I am to have a father so caring to worry about us. His whole speech before he allowed me to delete

the picture was just weird to be honest. I genuinely felt like we were, but do you think that we were being targeted by traffickers? It was my 11th grade year in high school and I signed up for my junior and senior year to do a business and technical career course in culinary arts. So how it works is half the day we go to a separate campus for the class we choose, then go back to our home school for the other half of the day. On the first day arriving, people were finding where their building was for the specific career class they chose. I found mine and we waited for all the class to show up. As we waited, I sat by a few girls I just met and was talking away as a boy walked up to me with a pen and paper, asking for my Instagram handle. He was about 5'11 maybe, skinny tall with a shaggy blonde hair and a Nike

tank top and shorts, normal looking kid. I thought it was strange considering most people ask for your number or snapchat but being polite I just said sure and wrote it down for him. He took it happily and walked to where he was sitting down before. I didn't think much of it as the rest of the day went on and we were getting the class introductions for the year. Later that day after I got home I got a message on my insta from him. We'll call him Jay. It just said Jay started following you and Jay sent you a message. So I opened it up and it was just a simple hi and him explaining how he thought I was very pretty and that he was glad that I gave him my insta. He seemed a little socially awkward in person and on text, but I texted him back saying thank you.

We made small talk about what schools we go to and hobbies and interests and all that kind of stuff. He seemed interested in me very fast. It was very flattering despite me not being super attracted to him. He would ask me what I like doing in my spare time and favorite movies and shows and foods. Just absolutely everything that I was interested in. I didn't mind and actually liked the attention since I really didn't get much at the time. I thought it was just harmless flirting but boy did I have no idea how infatuated this guy was about me. But it was soon to find out.

He started showing up to class with random gifts for me. He would bring me my favorite snacks, chocolate, and even bought me a giant teddy bear. I was flattered and super appreciative of the gifts despite being surprised by them since we were just talking. I'll admit, part of my personality is flirtatious and this was a few years ago when I was still learning how to use it. We would still chat daily and eventually he asked if I would be his girlfriend. I hesitated and said I've never dated before and wasn't ready, which was true, but I also wasn't sure my type Which sounds horrible I know but I was also a very anxious person And hated rejecting people or being mean to people in any way since I grew up being rejected So of course I sucked at trying to find a way to say I'm not interested

So I just say that I'm unsure about it and why don't we just be friends for now He said okay but would still try to ask and convince me to be more, saying he could get me anything I wanted and protection. I was confused on what he meant by that, and he said then he had online friends who apparently a 27 year old guy that did cyber security protection stuff, and that he supposedly paid this guy $7,000 to watch over me and quote unquote be my guardian angel. Jay said he was rich from doing his own cyber hacking legal stuff that he couldn't talk about. This is a red flag but I didn't really care much at the time as long as he didn't hack me,

you know, dumb stuff I know. But I was confused and creeped out about this random guardian angel that he supposedly hired. He would tell me this guy was going to reach out to me on my Instagram and be someone I can talk to if I have any issues with anything or anyone. I was very weirded out, but being honestly dumb and naive, I said okay and thanks and just waited for this random account to contact me. It did, and the account was named Anonymous with a bunch of numbers after it. I was like, okay, weird, but whatever. They sent me a text saying that they were my new guardian angel, and that they were there to watch over me.

I stupidly said okay thanks, and trusted this random person. Then Jay asked me if they got a hold of me, and said yes and he said great. This anonymous account said they knew when I would go to school and when I went home and a bunch of other creepy things that I honestly can't remember because like I said my brain blocks stuff out after a while and throughout this whole thing going down which was for about a week or two I did have a voice in the back of my head saying that this just wasn't right. But stupid me didn't listen and ended up connecting the dots way later than I should have. Jay was growing more increasingly adamant on us being a couple, but I would keep giving him the same response. He would then supposedly tell his cyber friend

about his feelings for me. Then his cyber friend would reach out to me and tell me, Jay is such a good guy and really cares about you. He would be a great boyfriend to you. You just gotta give him a chance. And blah blah blah. Obviously, trying to get me to be with him and I would explain that I'm just not ready to date yet. Until one night, I'm in my living room having one of these conversations with Jay and the cyber friend and caught something. So Jay had some spelling issues with certain words. I would normally overlook it since it wasn't way off what he was trying to say, but as I was talking to both Jay and the cyber friend, I saw one of the words would be misspelled often that the cyber friend just misspelled to me as well. Yes, it took me this long to realize that Jay had made up the

whole cyber friend and guardian angel nonsense. He made this fake account as a false protection and really just tried to use it to manipulate me into being with him. When I came to that realization I instantly had a panic attack. Jay was trying for so long to get me to be with him despite me giving the same response over and over. When I found out I immediately texted Jay's account and said that I knew the cyber account was him and that I'm done talking to him and we're never going to be a thing. He quickly started to deny it at first and then apologized when he knew that he messed up with the wording and then started apologizing and saying that he just really wanted to be with me. I responded saying that that was really messed up and you're crazy for

doing that and told him to leave me alone and that us was never happening. Then I blocked him. Apparently after I did that he threw himself off a cliff and he's dead now. He was picked up by the candy crew. They wore a bunch of white hazmat suits and they scooped up his blood and turned it into a twizzler or something. I don't know, maybe you guys have eaten him recently. Anyways, that's how the Hershey's factory started. Then I blocked him. Apparently after I did that, he threw himself into a rage of anger and punched a hole in his wall at his house. I found this out from a classmate who was a mutual friend. I'll try to be as short as possible.

So my boyfriend's uncle lives two to three hours from us, so we barely see each other. Maybe once or twice a year. He's giving off weird vibes, I guess. Not necessarily super creepy at first, but definitely weird. I noticed him checking me out sneakily, but I've been the victim of abuse a few times in my life and I brushed it off as me being overly cautious or sensitive. The way he talks and his accent are quite unique and you can recall it pretty easily even without knowing him better. I know he was

addicted to alcohol in the past, but he claims that he's sober now. So this happened twice, last year and the year before. Now, mind you, I have social anxiety, so unknown callers are a huge issue for me. The year before, a rather quick event, unknown number called me and a male voice very similar to his asked me if I'm fine and what I'm doing right now. I was immediately stressed out and kept stuttering until he said that he had to hang up. Though it was super weird, I just brushed it off and forgot about it after a few days. Last year, the phone rang around night time about 9-10pm. It was very unusual, only a few family members call us in general and never that

late. Since it was an unknown number and my mom calls with unknown numbers, I picked it up thinking it was her, not even remembering the creepy call that I got a year beforehand. There was a male voice, speaking with the same accent, rather unusual where I live and sounding very similar to him but with slurred speech as if he was drunk. I panicked and didn't ask for his name which I later regretted. Once again he called me by name and asked how I'd been and saying he missed me. At this point my anxiety is through the roof and I'm nearly crying. I now remember the last call but I'm not able to ask any questions that would confirm his identity because I'm freezing at this point.

He was breathing heavily and kept talking which was hard to understand. He then asked me if I was bored and if I'm alone right now and he'd love to visit me. I immediately said no, my boyfriend's here and he answered, what a pity, only to hang up again. He didn't call me again but this still lives in my head, not gonna lie. I avoided him when he visited and tried to talk to my in-laws, but they think I'm simply confusing some random weirdo with him. I am absolutely sure it was his voice and his accent. Also, I wrote my boyfriend's aunt about it on WhatsApp and asked if he called at night by accident.

I tried to approach her slowly before opening up about the story and she just absolutely blocked me without saying a word. And everyone in the family think that that's normal somehow. They're like, she's just weird, don't think about it, she's always a bit weird. What? I didn't do anything. I think her reaction clearly was proof that I was right. I'm still creeped out today. The way he talked to me on the phone, breathing heavily. It sounded like the creepy guys in movies who call women while they're touching themselves

or something. It was just disgusting and triggering and everybody behaving as if though I'm just some complete nut job. It really sucks. This took place around 15 years ago. I would have been about 13 years old, and my dad has always taken an annual fishing trip with friends that would put him out of state for about a week. I have numerous stories about weird things happening while he was gone on said fishing trips, from paranormal events to someone attempting to break into our house, but this one is the most unnerving to people when I tell it. When my dad would go on these trips, I would usually sleep in my parents' bed.

My mom and I treated it like a little sleepover and we would watch movies, stay up late, even on school nights, and just gossip about things. I remember falling asleep after a late night movie and being roused from sleep what felt like just minutes later. My mom is a light sleeper while on the other hand it takes a catastrophic level event to wake me up from a dead sleep. I remember waking up feeling as if something was wrong. The room was illuminated oddly and there was a distant rhythm I was only partially aware of.

I'm half asleep and as I open my eyes, I can see my mom on top of the bed, on her knees, peering out the window above her bed. I started to ask, what's going on? When she turned around to me quickly and shushed me. I quietly joined her looking out the small box window that was slightly cracked open and the distant rhythmic chanting became more and more clear. Our house sat in front of a strip of woods. The trees aren't too thick and you can see through most of the wooded area. The chanting was getting louder by the second and the odd illuminations finally made sense. You could

see a line of hooded figures in dark clothes holding torches marching east, chanting what sounded like demonic, dark things. It felt surreal and scary as we held our breath waiting to see what they would do. Were they headed towards the houses to burn them down? Were they going to attempt to break in and sacrifice us? It felt like ages that we sat there watching this line of people walking through the woods, their torches raised high and their chanting continuing through the night. But that was it. They just walked away. After what was probably more like two minutes, my mom and I laid back down and discussed what we saw, trying to get back to sleep.

We told my dad first thing in the morning when he called to check in, but I remember him not believing us. He thought it had to be a dream or something, and that kind of thing didn't happen in our small town in Ohio. But the next day, there was an article in the local newspaper about a lamb being slain on a makeshift altar on the east side of town. My dad stopped doubting us then. My mom and I got even more freaked out. My parents still live in that house and we have never seen any other cult-like behavior in the area. But that one evening freaked us out enough that I decided to permanently camp out in my parents' bedroom every time my dad left town until my late high school years. It was April of 2008.

I was 20 and living in Denver for a long work contract with a non-profit in Boulder. My girlfriend, now wife, and my best friend Tim drove to Colorado from our home state to visit me for my 21st birthday. The non-profit I was working for housed their workers in dorm rooms and drinking was not allowed on site, nor were visitors allowed to stay overnight. So I booked a hotel room in downtown Denver for the weekend where we could drink in honor of my 21st. The hotel was big, very nice, and in a safe central area of the city. So nice in fact that it was the same hotel that most of the politicians would later stay at during the DNC convention of 08 that took place in Denver later that summer. My wife and Tim arrived Saturday morning and we all met up at the hotel. The day was fantastic. We drank across the city most of the day. By about 1am, we got back to the hotel.

The room was typical with two queen beds. Bed number one was close to a big window looking out across the city. Bed number two was pushed against the wall with the door that opened to the bathroom. You couldn't see the door or entryway to our room unless you were at the foot of bed one. We drank more and chatted in the room until about 4am. My wife was laying in the bed at bed two, flipping through the TV. Tim and I were seated at the foot of bed one, staring out the window as we talked. As we talked I heard some movement and the sound of a door opening. Without looking away from the window I assumed it was my wife

getting up to use the bathroom. A few minutes passed by and I thought I heard movement again so I finally turned around to look. I saw my wife still lounging in bed number two as she had been. Did you get up a few minutes ago and use the bathroom? I asked her. No. She replied. I thought I heard a door. I said back to her with her just looking confused back at me. Yeah, I thought I heard a door. I said back to her, with her just looking confused back at me. Yeah, I thought I heard that too. Tim said, breaking his own gaze from the window.

It was then that I started to run cold and sobered up pretty quick, and very softly I heard Tim say, I think there's someone in our room. I lurched forward from the foot of the bed to look into the pitch black entryway. I could barely make it out, and I wanted to believe I wasn't seeing it, but there was a man dressed in all black with a baseball cap pressed into the 90 degree corner of the entryway where the room door and wall met. Absolute silence fell on the room and it felt like hours passed by as I started to panic in my mind, like no way I ever have in my entire life. We all knew. We knew we weren't alone and hadn't been for a while and he knew we spotted him.

Eventually, Tim got the courage to meekly speak in the direction of the entryway and said, Hey man, is there something we can help you with? Another period of silence that felt like an eternity went by and he slumped off the edge of the wall a little into the light and made eye contact with Tim and I. We all just stared at each other, then eventually he spoke up and said, Is this room 1709? No man, it's not. Tim said, stroking his beard nervously. He stared at us for a while longer, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head. He then turned around and left.

We then erupted into a million curse words and paced around the room. I called the front desk. They told me that he was drunk and they found him in the stairwell but directed him back to the right room. Minutes later Tim called the front desk and they told him he was not a guest and he was apprehended in the stairwell and taken into police custody. Then a while later they told my wife that he disappeared and they had no idea who he was or what he was doing. They told her there wasn't even a room 1709 in the hotel, so we got three different stories. We still have no idea what that was all about, or how he managed to get a keycard to our room. We were sure the door was closed. It was easily the most terrifying moment

of my life. Always use the latch in hotel rooms. We got the stay refunded and about $200 in credit for food from the hotel. We should have sued, but we were young and dumb. I was homeless for a couple of years and parked to sleep at a campsite up north of where I am. I pulled in, parked, fed the cats, and started to cook and relax. Flashlights appeared in my face, four of them all looking in the windows, so I assumed it was rangers asking me to move since the campsite was technically closed.

I rolled down my window a bit and asked what was up, and apparently it was a family of four also parked and camping. They had a fire going and a dog, so I figured things were okay here, but there was a really weird feeling. My boyfriend at the time decided to try and befriend them, and we got out to chat. They asked a lot of very pointed personal questions. Are you married? Do you live around here?

Do you have any kids? But actually, it was their two kids asking all the questions. They spoke like adults which made me assume maybe trauma was a real part of their life. At some point the kids put themselves to bed by basically going, mom, dad, we're headed to bed. And that really rubbed me the wrong way. But whatever. And it all got worse from here though. They talked about their converted truck they lived in. apparently the kids shared a bed, and a key point they made was that the van was soundproof.

They really wanted to quote-unquote play with our cats, but no such luck. The husband and wife, I only remember the dude said his name was Scooter, which, really? Also the daughter's name was Olivia, and son, Skeeter. Obviously fake names. They started to try and separate me and my boyfriend, saying stuff like, let's walk to the river, let's go look at the car. They were really interested in hearing about any injuries we had and at some point, they started letting the fire go out and standing behind us a lot. And that was enough. We left some stuff behind and got in the car and started it up and just kind of talked for a while like what in God's name just happened.

It took two minutes for the woman to walk up to the van and asked if we were leaving. We said no, obviously, and that we were just cold. She asked to sit in the seat behind us. I asked why. She didn't answer and asked if she could sit with us or on my lap and again I asked why. She again didn't answer. She said we can't leave her there because her husband beats her and so I asked if she wanted to call the police. She didn't answer, pulled out a cigarette and lit it up, leaning against the door of our car. We looked at each other and I heard someone douse the fire. I said, baby. Just out of so much nervousness which is when I found out my boyfriend was

suspicious from the beginning and didn't think to say anything until now only to add that if I had stayed and not followed him to the car he would have just left me there. He was a waste of space but before I could process it, I heard the husband grab something off of the fire tool set. One thing I noticed in there was a large red axe and I just got tunnel vision and hit the gas. I felt that woman bounce off the side of my van as we pulled away and just as we got on the road, an ambulance was behind us with lights flashing. I wasn't stopping for it if you know how easy it is to buy emergency lights for a car on Amazon. There was just no way.

The ambulance turned off to a dead-end road eventually after a while of demon driving into town, and we never heard a siren. Looked it up, and the aforementioned river was two and a half miles into the dense woods. Apparently, a lot of people go missing out there. Hmm, I wonder who's to blame. To be continued... for Georgia alone. I'd separated from my husband at the time in 90 or 91. I worked at a convenience store and lived alone in an awful trailer. Being from the north, I wasn't used to the heat so I took to taking walks for air and exercise late at night and early in the morning between 11pm and 2am. I'd stop to watch this band practice in an open shop in a strip mall and just meander around until I felt like sleeping, then I'd walk home. One night I realized that I was being followed by a cop car. I didn't think much of it. It happened a few more times, until one night,

the car pulled up next to me and this mid to late 20s handsome blonde cop asked me if I wanted a ride home. When I refused, he starts asked me if I wanted a ride home. When I refused, he starts asking me what I'm doing out so late and where I'm going. From the time that cop car pulled up alongside me, the deep gut alarm bells were going off in every cell in my body. I'd never feared cops before this. I was a quiet white chick who was raised in the time of cops are your friend and will protect you. But this guy had my heart in my throat.

I've only ever had this reaction to one other person. I stayed as calm as I could on the outside and answered his questions. I had to refuse his offer of a ride home two more times in the conversation. And I stayed as far as I could from his car door. And never took another walk late at night again. I'm so glad that I found this subreddit because I love remembering the story. It's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. And this was in 9th grade. There was this huge state park right outside the town that I lived in.

My friend and I would go down the trails every now and then. We had been walking for maybe ten minutes when we realized that there was an older woman not far behind us. I only really noticed because of how out of place she looked, like she came straight out of an old folks home and was just dropped in the middle of the woods. We were joking around about how creepy she was and sped up to put some distance between us, but every time we did, we'd look back and still be able to spot her. And we did that probably three times. We still thought it was funny though. We ended up running down the trail until we got to a small bridge. We hopped off the bridge into a creek and then went around a bend. We could still

see the bridge from where we were. We were cracking up about the whole thing when we saw the old lady again. We had run for a good couple of minutes, like she shouldn't have caught up to us that fast, and it was like she knew that we got off the trail because she was just standing on the bridge looking around. I think that's when we stopped thinking it was funny. As soon as she left, we just took off running the other way. I'm a 21-year-old female and I went out to a sushi restaurant with my mom, just two women having fun and enjoying our time there. Needless to say, we were not out to flirt with anybody. I started noticing the waiter was extremely close to us all the time,

even taking his long time to service our plates while standing less than one feet from us. I didn't really think too much of it. The bill came and I took out my credit card and paid. He then proceeded to talk about registering for a rewards program for discounts and loyalty points. Normal, right? He says he only needs my email and phone number. My mom said that I should sign in so I could easily book a table for her upcoming birthday. I give him my information thinking it would be used for this purpose only. We leave and I get home at about 2am. At this point he started to email and text me from his personal email and his phone number. I immediately responded that I thought I

was giving my info for commercial purposes only and I just block him. I immediately responded that I thought I was giving my info for commercial purposes only and I just block him. I had a panic attack because I was stalked before and it always starts with them thinking that we were giving mixed messages or flirting which was not the case. I told the manager the next day and the manager said it was inappropriate and might be motive for his termination. Am I in the wrong for being so panicked about that? The manager said there's no such thing as a rewards program in there and I was not in any way flirting with anyone. To be continued... I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official,

and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. And I'll see you again soon. you