The Lets Read Podcast - 231: HE BECAME A PSYCHO OVERNIGHT | 22 True Scary Stories | EP 219

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Psychos, Evil Children, & Night Shifts... 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/

Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, Tread Experts is always there, helping you with Michelin tires you can trust. Until May 30th, receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard with purchase of four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca On October 28th of 1975, Melinda Loveless was born as the youngest daughter of Larry and Marjorie Loveless. Some years earlier, Larry had been drafted into the United States Army and was sent to fight on the blood-soaked, attritional battlefields of South Vietnam. The experience left him with deep emotional scarring, and as a result, he began to behave very strangely upon his return. Larry began conducting numerous extramarital affairs and was once caught trying on Marjorie's makeup and clothing.

When confronted on his infidelities, Larry suggested that he and Marjorie partake of the southern Indiana swinging scene. And by 1974, the Loveless family were living in the upper-middle-class suburb of Floyd's Knobs, Indiana. Their finances were flush and their lifestyle gave the outward appearance of happiness and prosperity. Yet under the surface, all was not as it seemed. Larry remained violent and abusive and refused to share anything but a meager portion of his income with his wife and three daughters. Instead, he squandered his income on impulse purchases of cars, motorcycles, and firearms. Extended family members often described the Loveless daughters visiting their homes with

empty stomachs, and how the idea of three square meals a day was almost completely alien to them. Meanwhile, Larry Loveless was far preoccupied with driving his wife into neighboring Louisville, Kentucky, to search for wife-swapping opportunities. He would often pretend to be a doctor or dentist and introduce Marjorie as his girlfriend. The practice led to several instances of group intimacy, with Marjorie finding them increasingly more disgusting. During one such meeting, Marjorie became so despondent that she attempted to take her own life. She made several more attempts over the years that followed, some of which were witnessed by her young, impressionable daughters. On another occasion, the girls witnessed their father beat their mother so badly that she had to be hospitalized. The extent to which Larry Loveless abused his daughters is frankly sickening, and there would be no way to adequately describe the horrors he inflicted on them without incurring

a community guideline strike. If you wish to know the details, I suggest you look it up on your own time, but be warned, what occurred in the loveless house was nothing short of evil. Thankfully, by the time Melinda was five years old, her parents had become passionately involved with the Graceland Baptist Church and had sworn off drinking and swinging. Larry went on to become a preacher, while Marjorie once again footed the family's bills by working as a middle school nurse. One could be forgiven for assuming that Larry had completely changed his ways by the time he became a man of God. But unfortunately for his wife and three daughters, the reality was quite different. At one point when young Melinda Loveless began to repeatedly misbehave, Larry arranged for her to be subjected to a brutal

five-hour exorcism. The incident traumatized her beyond belief, and the move only cemented Larry's reputation within the church. But before long, everything he'd worked towards came crashing down when it emerged that Larry had assaulted one of the members of his flock. But before long, everything he'd worked towards came crashing down, when it emerged that Larry had inappropriately touched one of the members of his flock. No charges were ever filed, but the scandal rocked the church and Larry was forced to flee with family to avoid the fallout. The end of Larry and Marjorie's marriage finally came in November of 1990, when Melinda was just 15 years old.

Melinda had a friend over and whilst they were changing outfits in her bedroom, Larry crept up to the crack of the door and began spying on them while they changed. Yet moments later, Larry heard a noise behind him in the hallway. It was Marjorie, and she was holding a knife in her hand. She didn't give him a chance to speak, and although Larry eventually managed to wrestle the knife away from her, the wounds he sustained ensured a lengthy hospital stay. Larry never returned home to his wife and daughters and instead moved down to Florida, where he eventually remarried.

This might seem like a long-winded way to introduce a person, but I can assure you, understanding Melinda Loveless' history and psychology are essential to understanding what came next for the traumatized young woman. Around the same time her mother sent her father to the hospital, Melinda began dating a girl named Amanda Hevrin. It had been an anxious, excitable, but innocent relationship, but after her father abandoned the family for the sunny climbs of Avon Park, Melinda's behavior began to deteriorate rapidly. She got into fights at school, began experimenting with narcotics, and often lashed out at Amanda when the subject of family came up. As a result, the couple began to drift apart, and it's at this point that a young lady named Shonda Scherer enters the picture. Amanda and Shonda had met early in the fall semester at Hazelwood Junior High and ironically their blossoming friendship had started out with a fist fight. The pair were sent to detention and through some subtle note swapping, they began to get to know one another.

By the end of detention, Amanda and Shonda had developed a deep romantic attraction. They soon began dating, but instead of breaking things off with Melinda, Amanda Heverin kept their mutual affairs a secret. She maintained the ruse until October of 1991, when Melinda uncovered the infidelity. Naturally, the already emotionally fragile Melinda was distraught and placed the blame squarely on Shonda for stealing her girlfriend. After several death threats, Shonda's parents transferred their daughter to a nearby Catholic high school in late November of 1991.

A number of these death threats were handwritten, and after the Scherer family forwarded each of them to the local police, they were assured that the issue would be dealt with. Melinda received a brief visit from the cops, and after breaking down in tears under the force of their questioning, she assured them that her threats were empty and were fueled by heartbreak, not bloodlust. The holidays passed without incident, and the Scherer family came to believe that conflict had been averted. But they were wrong and Christmas of 1991 would be the last Shonda would share with her family. On the night of January 10th, 1992, 17-year-old Lori Tackett picked up two of her friends in their hometown of Madison, Indiana and drove down to Albany to meet up with Melinda Loveless. The group then drove over to Shonda Sherriff's home and Tackett's car, and after parking outside,

Melinda told the girls to go to the door and introduce themselves as friends. Once Shonda came to the door, the girls claimed to be friends of Amanda, who wanted Shonda to meet her at a place known as Mistletoes Falls, a ruined stone house located on an isolated hill overlooking the Ohio River. Eventually, Shonda agreed to accompany the girls and Tackett's car, but when she climbed into the passenger seat, she discovered it was a trap. Melinda Loveless had been hiding in the back seat of the car, concealed under a thick woolen blanket, and within seconds, Shonda had a knife to her throat. Melinda began interrogating Shonda of her relationship with her former girlfriend but there were no correct answers to her questions.

No matter how honest Shonda was, no matter how much she begged for mercy, Melinda continued to beat her about the face and neck whilst intermittently threatening to cut her throat. The girls drove Shonda out to an abandoned cottage known as the Witch's Castle, and once inside, they bound Shonda's arms and legs with rope. Melinda began to taunt Shonda as she sheared the hair from her head, telling her she wasn't so pretty without her bouncing brown curls. Shonda was then beaten and partially stripped before the girls threatened to set her on fire, but fearing the flames might be seen by passing motorists,

she was bundled back into Tackett's car and then driven from the area. Sometime later the girls arrived near a densely wooded area back near Madison. Lori Tackett joined Melinda in leading their prisoner to a dark abandoned building located just off a logging road lined by huge, thick pines. There, Shonda was beaten, strangled, and stabbed repeatedly before being locked in the trunk of Tackett's car. Assuming that Shonda was dead, the girls drove over to Lori Tackett's house to clean themselves off,

then at around 2.30 a.m., Laura and Melinda went out for a drive again. Whilst they were traveling, the girls suddenly heard screaming coming from the trunk of the car. They pulled over, opened up the trunk, but as they did so, a terrified Shonda sharer lunged at them, coughing up blood as she attempted to escape captivity. Laura then grabbed a tire iron, then beat her already bloodied prisoner until she was silent. She later claimed to have felt Shonda's skull fracture and splinter as metal collided with bone. Then when she was finished, Lori raised the gore-soaked tire iron to Melinda's nose and told her to smell it. Having assumed Shonda was dead for the second time,

the girls drove to a gas station near Madison Consolidated High School, pumped some gasoline into the car, and bought a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. Yet almost as soon as she'd bought it, Lori opened the bottle of Pepsi, poured out the soda, then refilled it with gasoline. It was a grim omen of Shonda's fate, and after driving her to a place known as Rippy, the girls dragged her from the trunk, wrapped her in a blanket doused with gasoline, and set her on fire. But Shonda was not dead, and only when she'd stopped writhing and screaming within the confines of the blanket did her killers finally walk away.

Lori and Melinda then drove to a McDonald's where they apparently joked about how Shonda's corpse had resembled the meat they were consuming. After getting some sleep, Laura and Melinda traveled over to Amanda Heverin's house to tell her what they'd done. Melinda believed that such a display of violent dedication would win Amanda's heart, but as you can imagine, the young woman was beyond horrified at the admission, and refused to believe that Shonda was dead. It wasn't until Lori Tackett showed her the trunk of the car, complete with Shonda's bloody discarded clothing, that Amanda realized that her claim was genuine. Fear drove her to silence,

and when Melinda Loveless made her promise to keep quiet about what she'd done, Amanda complied, then retreated to her bedroom to grieve in secret. Lori and Melinda then went about their business, having assured that Shonda's body had been burned to ashes, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. Earlier that day, two brothers from the small town of Canaan were headed for a day's hunting at the Jefferson Proving Ground when they noticed something lying by the side of the road. At first, it looked like a badly decomposed piece of roadkill, but as they slowed down to get a better view, they realized what they were looking at. It was the badly burned body of a young girl, who had evidently

been crawling alongside of the road for quite some time before she finally expired. The brothers called 911 at exactly 10.55am, and following a brief period of questioning, State Trooper David Cam and Jefferson County Sheriff Buck Shipley joined forces to begin an investigation. Following a brief analysis on the scene, law enforcement's initial theory involved a drug deal gone wrong. In their experience, the kind of brutal violence the victim had been subjected to was reminiscent of violent narcotics gangs, and they suspected that hardened male criminals were responsible.

But as we know, the reality was very different. By the time the girl's charred corpse was discovered at the roadside, Shonda Sherr's parents had already noticed that their daughter was missing. After calling around neighbors and friends all morning, they filed a missing persons report with the Clark County Sheriff. The deputy who took their statement warned them that they'd have to be patient, as runaways sometimes took weeks to make contact or return home. The Sheriffs braced themselves for a lengthy, anxiety-ridden ordeal.

Little did they know, Shonda's fate would be revealed in less than twelve hours. Around 8.20pm, two hysterical 15-year-old girls walked into the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office with a shocking confession. Their names were Hope Rippey and Tony Lawrence, and they claimed to have been the two other girls present at Shonda Sharer's beating. Having been stunned and appalled by the news of her horrifying immolation, they were desperate to offer their cooperation in exchange for as lenient a sentence as possible. Once it was confirmed that the charred cadaver was indeed Shonda Sher,

Melinda Loveless and Lori Tackett were promptly tracked down and arrested, with the state declaring they'd both be tried as adults due to the severity of the crime. The fact that the four teenage girls would be tried as adults meant that the death penalty was on the table, a prospect which horrified Americans from coast to coast when the news began to circulate nationally. To prevent the issue from snowballing into a wider political issue, the judiciary were quick to offer the girls a plea bargain which lowered the maximum penalty to life imprisonment. One judge cited the serious mental health issues that each of the girls suffered, and claimed a psychiatrist had discovered Lori Tackett suffered from a terrifying form of borderline personality disorder characterized by horrifying hallucinations. An extensive history

of the Loveless family's abuse at the hands of their patriarch was read out to the court. Melinda remained chillingly indifferent to the details being made public, while some of those in attendance were close to tears by the time her history of abuse had been recounted. At the conclusion of their trial, Melinda Loveless and Lori Hackett were sentenced to 60 years in prison plus 10 years medium supervision upon release. Despite her cooperation, Hope Rippey received an extensive 35-year sentence Owing to the fact that she played an integral role in binding and torturing the late Shonda Sher Tony Lawrence, on the other hand, was only convicted of criminal confinement And received the lowest sentence of 20 years imprisonment

Lawrence ended up getting released in December of the year 2000 After having served just 9 years of the original 20. Hope Rippey was released in April of 2006 but remained on probation until April of 2011. Lori Tackett served almost 26 years before being released on January 11th of 2018, the 26th anniversary of the crime she was convicted of. Finally, Melinda Loveless, the broken young woman who masterminded an act of pure, unadulterated evil, was released from Indiana Women's Prison on September 5th of 2019. She had served just over 26 years, almost double the length of time she'd been alive at the time she murdered Shonda Sher. The incident had been fictionalized in a number of true crime primetime TV shows, including Cold Case and Law and Order, but perhaps the most jaw-dropping of

television features was an edition of Dr. Phil, which aired on May of 2011. The show featured Shonda Sher's mother and sister, who harshly confronted a now-adult Hope Rippey. Rippey tried her best to distance herself from the crime, but welcomed the judgment of Shonda's still grieving relatives. It makes for extremely uncomfortable watching, and unlike other very similar attempts at resolution, the meeting is characterized by a stark lack of progress and an absence of forgiveness.

But then again, how many of us could truly forgive someone who put one of our loved ones through a living nightmare, before finally burning them alive? On November 29th of 1859, Jesse Harding Pomeroy was born in Charleston, Massachusetts, to Thomas J. Pomeroy and Ruth Ann Snowman. While Jesse was just a baby, his father enlisted in the Union Army and marched southward to put down the slave traders of the Confederacy. It was a noble pursuit, but it left young Jesse without a father figure during his crucial formative years. And when his father did finally return, he was but a shadow of his former self. Thomas Pomeroy had no interest in raising his two boys. He returned

from the war with little passion for anything but chronic alcoholism, and although Ruth Ann tried her best, she was unable to keep young Jesse's behavior from degenerating into savagery. Around the time of Jesse's 13th birthday, several neighborhood children spoke of being lured to a secluded area by a slightly older boy. Once alone, the boy would begin to savagely beat them with a leather belt, and on one occasion, a young girl had her face carved up with a knife. The local constabulary conducted an investigation but sadly, no viable suspects were identified and the attacker was unpunished. Ruth Ann Pomeroy was terrified that her two darling boys would suffer a similar fate and berated her drunkard of a husband for his callous indifference. In the end, she left him, moving to South Boston with her two boys in order to protect them from danger. Yet to her horror, the attacks in the old

neighborhood seemed to cease from the moment they moved, and instead recommenced around their new South Boston home. Local children became terrified, and their fearful parents kept them off the streets after sundown. Yet to his mother's grim curiosity, young Jesse never once seemed afraid that he might be targeted, and came up with a variety of bizarre excuses as to why he should be allowed to roam the streets at night. After weeks of being unable to prevent her son from his late-night prowling, and with a number of victims mounting, the truth became evident for all to see. Little Jesse Pomeroy was the boy responsible for the string of violent beatings, and he was arrested by a pair of Boston police officers. Jesse was originally sentenced to four years at the State Reform School for Boys at Westboro, Massachusetts.

However, after just a year in confinement, he was determined to be mentally deficient and was released back into the care of his mother in February of 1874. By that point, Jesse's mother ran her own dressmaking shop and was generating a respectable income for a single mother in the late 19th century. His brothers supplemented the household income by selling newspapers and planned to learn a trade once an apprenticeship opened up. In short, Jesse had everything to look forward to in a family

who were prepared to love and support him following his release. He could have done almost anything, pursued almost any passion or vocation, yet Jesse chose the only thing he ever really wanted in life. Inflicting pain and suffering on those weaker and smaller than him. During March of 1874, 10-year-old Katie Curran went missing from the streets surrounding her childhood home. Jessie's mother begged her son to assure her of his innocence, and the boy swore on his eyes that he had changed his ways. As the days went by, Ruth Ann began to detect the scent of something rotten in the basement of her dress shop. She didn't object when a brace of police officers darkened her door. She simply directed them towards the basement and offered up the location of her bloodthirsty son.

The young Miss Curran had been hastily concealed in an ash heap and had been horrifically mutilated both before and after her death. Chunks of her thigh were missing, with clear bite marks surrounding the indentations. Her eyes had been removed, replaced with small pebbles and dirt, and a great deal more had been stuffed down her throat. Sections of her skin had been sliced and peeled away as if her killer had performed some kind of amateur dissection, exploring the flesh which lay beneath. It's said that the police officers who caught young Jesse that day dragged him back to his mother's dress shop to make him look at what he'd done. One officer sought to confirm his guilt by outright

asking the boy if he'd murdered little Katie Curran. Jesse said nothing, he just looked up at the officer and smiled. The case of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Pomeroy was heard in the state's Supreme Judicial Court on December 9th and 10th of 1874. Jesse was pronounced guilty, but with the jury's recommendation of mercy on account of his young age. Given the extremely brutal nature of the crime, this request for leniency was completely disregarded by the presiding judge, who assured Jesse that he'd burn in hell before sentencing him to be hanged. Pomeroy's attorney, Charles Robinson, filed two exceptions which were overruled in February 1875, at which point Pomeroy was sentenced to death by hanging.

But then, in a highly controversial ruling, the governor of Massachusetts refused to comply with his own executive responsibility. After that, he not once but twice refused to comply with the rulings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council, and furthermore refused to resign, even when threatened with removal from office. The confrontation, made for one of the most intensely controversial political ordeals of its time, and almost every American in the country became aware of the complete breakdown of civil governance up in Boston. Then finally, in August of 1876, the council took a third vote, anonymously this time, and Jesse's sentence was commuted to life in prison in solitary confinement. He was 16 years and 9 months old, and had been condemned to spend what remained of his life almost completely alone. As the years went by, Jesse was interviewed in his prison cell by a journalist from the

fledgling Boston Globe. He claimed to have taught himself several foreign languages, including Hebrew, and stunned one visiting German-born psychiatrist who found that he had learned German with considerable accuracy. This suggests that Jesse was in possession of a sinister kind of intelligence, one that could have enabled him to remain undetected for so long. Jesse wrote poetry, studied law, and spent decades composing legal challenges to his conviction. A 1914 psychiatric report noted that Jesse had made between 10 and 12 determined attempts to escape and that he'd lost an eye attempting to destroy a wall of his cell by

redirecting a gas pipe. The same report asserts that Jesse had shown the greatest ingenuity in a persistence which is unprecedented in the history of the prison. As a result, Jesse's sentence was commuted from permanent solitary confinement to life imprisonment among the general prison population. Jesse partook in regular prison life for around 12 years, but by 1929, he was an elderly man in frail health. He was eventually transferred to the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he died on September 29th, 1932. His death marked the end of an old and sickly man, still suffering due to the crimes of his youth.

Perhaps it's unjust to punish a man for the crimes of his youth, and this is why juvenile murderers sometimes see only a decade inside of prison. But perhaps there are some who were born with an urge to kill, one that will never be beaten or conditioned out of them, high school janitor Dennis Freeman and his wife Brenda lived in Salisbury Township, Pennsylvania, with their three sons. The eldest was Brian, followed by David, then young Eric, who remained the baby of the family despite him being 11 years old. The Freemans were deeply religious and raised their sons as devout Jehovah's Witnesses. Yet while they were receptive to the scriptures at an early age, Brian and David grew to resent their parents' religion and instead chose to place their faith in something far from holy.

As Brian and David entered their mid-teens, their parents began to notice something about their clothing and behavior. Both boys shaved their heads to the scalp and began to adopt a more military style of dress. They wore combat boots, camouflage pants, and a variety of bizarre-looking t-shirts featuring strange cryptic symbols. Then came the day that Brian returned home with the word Berserker tattooed at the crest of his hairline. His strict religious parents were apoplectic at the decision,

but there was just one problem. They were terrified of Brian, and they weren't the only ones. Almost all of Brenda Freeman's friends and neighbors found Brian to be extremely intimidating, and although he was never outwardly violent, the threat loomed constantly. Dennis found that he could no longer verbally discipline his son without Brian barking back, and thanks to his incessant weightlifting, any physical confrontation with his son would be short-lived and one-sided. It was a huge problem for the Freemans, a problem only confounded by Brian's influence over his little brother David, who returned home one day with two small words tattooed just above his eyebrow. Seek and Heil. Having her sons behave so savagely was one thing, but realizing that they were descending

deeper into neo-Nazi politics was a whole other kind of crisis. Brenda quickly contacted a handful of regional psychologists, each of whom advised her to place her sons in what was referred to as a deprogramming session. In cooperation with local police, Brenda convinced her sons to attend a number of anti-skinhead educational sessions run by the state police. But sadly, despite the repeated attendance, the sessions failed to have any measurable effect on the two boys. As time went by, Brian was admitted to the hospital after being diagnosed with a serious mental illness, while David was placed in several juvenile detention

facilities to combat his rampant substance abuse. These events kept them away from the family home, isolating them to the extent that between the years of 1993 and 1995, Brian and David returned home only five separate occasions, and one of those involved a violent altercation following a disagreement over the use of the family's car. Another involved the Freeman parents visiting Brian's high school, following his suspension for drawing racist cartoons in a school textbook. Brian's father told him his patients had run dry, and that as soon as he was 18 he'd be kicked out of the house to find his own way in the world. When Brian rejected the ultimatum, his father told him the only way he'd be staying at the house was

over his cold, dead body. Brian took this as less of a threat and more of an invitation. On the night of February 26th, 1995, 17-year-old Brian and 16-year-old David arrived at the Freeman family home in the company of their cousin, 18-year-old Ben Birdwell. The trio had caught a movie that evening, but when they arrived back at the house, a confrontation quickly arose. It was very late at night and both the boys' parents had been asleep in bed, so when Brenda began berating the boys on their loud and unruly behavior, she did so from the top of

the stairs. She told cousin Ben that he had to leave and that the boys either quieted down or removed themselves from the house completely. Upon hearing this, Brian essentially told her, make us. His mother then marched down the stairs, furious at the display of insolence, yet it was merely a trap. As soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, Brian grabbed her by the throat, then forced a piece of dirty laundry into her mouth to stifle her screams. It then produced a kitchen knife that he kept tucked inside of his belt, and began plunging the knife into his own mother's chest, over and over again, until she fell silent and still.

The boys then climbed the stairs, entering the bedroom of their 54-year-old father as he slept. Then, after surrounding the unconscious man in his bedside, the boys smashed his skull to pieces with a metal exercise bar and an aluminum baseball bat. Following the execution of their long-suffering parents, only one member of their family remained alive. Perhaps at any other time the boys might have made a more level-headed decision regarding what to do with their baby brother, but in the moment, while they remained in the grip of some terrifying bloodlust, the boys barely debated before coming to a resolution. Little Eric had to die. The sleeping boy was beaten to death in the same manner his father was,

and the only consolation is that he didn't realize what was happening. Once he was dead, Brian and David took their father's 12-gauge shotgun and fled the scene in their mother's 1988 Pontiac convertible. The following day, Dennis Freeman's sister, Valerie, paid her brother and his wife a visit after they failed to answer their telephone. She found the front door locked, but the back door open, and when she entered the house to search for her brother and sister-in-law, she was greeted by a scene more horrifying than she ever could have imagined. A coroner based in Allentown, PA, later said that the Freeman murders were the most brutal, stomach-churning crimes that he had ever seen in all of his years on the job.

He stated that the faces of the victims had been so badly disfigured that they were completely unrecognizable. Given the Freeman's boys' history, as well as the fact that they were nowhere to be found, police correctly assumed their involvement in their family's murder. They were tracked down to a small Michigan town where they were attempting to lay low in the home of a fellow skinhead named Frank Hesse. The police closed in, surrounding the home, and arrested the two boys after storming the residence. In order to avoid the death penalty,

Brian Freeman pled guilty to his mother's murder, while the younger David confessed to the murder of their father. Ben Birdwell, the boys' elder cousin and potentially their gateway to extremist ideologies, was also put on trial for the murder of his aunt and uncle. Each was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and were all sent to separate prisons. It should be noted that the day after the Freeman boys were tracked down and arrested, a bizarrely similar murder occurred elsewhere in the Lehigh

Valley region. On March 2nd of 1995, 17-year-old Jeffrey Haworth shot and killed his parents, George and Susan, with a hunting rifle. He attempted to evade justice, but he was arrested just two days after the killings, after his car ran out of gas on a Missouri highway. At his trial, it was confirmed that Haworth had been inspired to murder his parents after hearing of the Freeman murders, but later that year, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. However, his acquittal didn't mean that he was clear of any punishment, and he has since been confined to the Warnersville State Psychiatric Hospital, which houses Pennsylvania's most criminally insane. It is measurably harder to be released from such an institution

than it is for convicted murderers to be released from prison, and in all likelihood, Jeffrey Haworth will die a patient there. Perhaps Jeff was always bound to murder his parents, in a way that wasn't necessarily true with the Freeman boys. They made a conscious decision to commit an act of pure evil, after slowly brainwashing themselves with a steady stream of violence and hate. But in committing their act of familicide, the Freeman boys tipped young Jeffrey over the edge, and triggered a severely mentally ill young man to murder the very same people who'd brought him into this world. It seems that such an act of violence are like drops of water on a still lake. The area of impact might be small, but the ripple effect extends far further than one might ever expect. Mary Flora Bell was born on May 26th of 1957 in the northern English county of Northumberland.

Her mother, Elizabeth Bell, was a well-known escort who often abandoned her children for long periods of time when traveling to surrounding cities for work. Mary was her second child born when she was still just a teenager and the identity of her father remained unknown. Instead, she was partially raised by a violent alcoholic criminal by the name of Billy Bell. Mary was an unwanted child, and as a result, she suffered from severe neglect and abuse. She frequently suffered injuries following household accidents, leading some in her family to suspect that Elizabeth was deliberately harming her infant daughter. On one occasion, Elizabeth dropped a three-year-old Mary from a first-floor window, and on another, she plied her daughter with sleeping pills in lieu of securing a babysitter, just so she could head out for a night on the town. She is also known to have once sold Mary

to a mentally unstable woman, and was only recovered after her older sister searched high and low to bring her home. By the time she started school, Mary was exhibiting several symptoms of severe psychosis. She was known to openly urinate while sitting in class and retaliated to her classmates' teasing with ultra-violence. In one instance, she attempted to suffocate another child and was only prevented from doing so by the swift intervention of her teacher. In another, she held down a playmate in the school's sandpit and forced her to swallow so much sand that the girl was hospitalized. As a result of her abhorrent behavior, Mary found

herself ostracized by other children, and her only friend was a 13-year-old neighbor girl by the name of Norma. Norma shared one of Mary's more violent tendencies, and this proved very dangerous to the other neighborhood children. On Saturday, May 11th of 1968, a three-year-old boy was discovered wandering the streets that Mary and Norma frequented. He was dazed, weeping, and bleeding. The boy told police that he had been playing with Mary and Norma on top of a disused World War II-era air raid shelter when he had been pushed from the roof to the ground. The impact caused a severe laceration to his head,

but he was unsure which of the girls had pushed him. The same evening, the parents of three small girls contacted police to complain that Mary and Norma had attempted to strangle their children as they played in a sandpit. That evening, a then ten-year-old Mary received a visit from the police, but she staunchly denied being present for the boy's fall, and insisted she and Norma had stumbled across him shortly afterwards. Then, when confronted about the attempted strangulation of the three young girls in the sandpit, Mary denied all knowledge. But when the police spoke to Norma, she told them everything. According to her, Mary had asked one of the girls,

I wonder if I choke you, you will die. Before she wrapped both of her hands around the girl's throat and squeezed. The girl started to go purple, Norma said. I told Mary to stop, but she wouldn't. Then she put her hands around another girl's throat and she started going purple as well. Another girl, Susan Cornish, came up and Mary did the same thing to her. Police notified the local authority of the incidents and of Mary's violent nature, but due to their

age, both girls got away with nothing but a warning and no further action was taken. To understand the backdrop of Mary Bell's childhood, one has to have a base knowledge of the socio-economic situation at the time. Post-war Britain was essentially in ruin for the better part of a decade following the cessation of hostilities. Food was rationed, poverty was rife, and it took a long time for government investment to reach the further reaches of the country. It wasn't until the 1960s that this wave of urban renewal reached northern England, and it turned some neighborhoods into giant construction sites. Huge craters and rows of derelict houses became common sites, and with a complete lack of parkland or play centers, children were left to roam the streets in order to keep themselves entertained.

It made for an extremely ugly environment to grow up in, and it made for a very dangerous one too. On May 25th of 1968, the day before she was due to turn 11, Mary Bell found four-year-old Martin Brown playing in nearby St. Margaret's Road. She approached the boy, and once certain that he was alone, she lured him into the derelict house at number 85. Once upstairs, and safely out of sight of the street outside, Mary attacked the hapless young boy, throttling him until his heart stopped. The boy's body was discovered by three of his friends at approximately 3.30pm, and after raising the alarm, a local workman attempted to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. But sadly, he was unable to revive little Martin Brown. But as he stepped back, almost in tears from the sheer horror of what he was seeing,

two little girls appeared in the doorway of the derelict bedroom. It was young Norma and her friend Mary Bell, come to show her what she'd done. After being shooed from the house by the still horrified workmen, Norma and Mary walked over to the home of one Rita Finley, the late Martin Brown's aunt. There, they hid their delight in breaking the bad news to her, even going so far as to exaggerate the condition that he was found in to subtly twist the knife. Little did the girls know it, but Mary had conducted something resembling the perfect murder. At the time, there was no DNA or advanced forensic evidence, and the manner in which Mary had killed the boy made identifying the cause of death almost impossible. She was too weak to do any real damage to the boy's throat, and instead

of strangling him in the traditional sense, she had slowly suffocated him over the course of a few minutes. This meant that there were no discernible bruises around Martin Brown's neck, which completely threw investigators off the scent. Some even suggested that the boy had died of poisoning, possibly after finding his way into an old medicine cabinet and confusing the pills for candy. A day after Martin Brown's murder, Mary and Norma broke into an old abandoned nursery in an adjacent neighborhood. There they left four scrawled notes. Two of them read,

We did murder Martin Brown, and quote, I murdered so that I may come back. The other two notes contain homophobic slurs and are too obscene to repeat. The police were informed of the graffiti a few days later when workmen entered the property to begin renovations, but it was dismissed as a cruel and childish prank. Yet the pranks didn't stop there. Just a few days before little Martin Brown's funeral, Norma and Mary called at the home of the boy's mother and asked to talk to him. When the grieving June Brown told the girls that her son had passed away,

they laughed before asking to see him in his coffin. Before June could even react, the girls ran away laughing. A few months later, on the final day of July, three-year-old Brian Howe was playing in the street outside his home. The boy was last spotted in the early afternoon before he suddenly seemed to vanish. His parents and siblings searched the surrounding streets, but there was no sign of young Brian and as afternoon passed into evening, a sizable number of search parties were combing the surrounding area for any signs of him. The search ended at approximately 11.10pm when one of the search parties arrived in an old

railway yard named Tin Lizzy. There, lying between two large concrete blocks and covered in dirt and clumps of grass, was the body of little Brian Howe. His lips were blue, and there were several large bruises and scratches upon his neck. A local coroner concluded that Brian had died of strangulation, and that he had been deceased for up to seven and a half hours before the discovery of his body. His killer had clamped his nostrils closed with one hand, while they gripped his throat with the other. Numerous puncture wounds had been inflicted on the child's legs before death, apparently with a pair of sharpened scissors and sections of his hair had been cut from his head. But perhaps the most striking aspect of his mutilation

was the large capital letter that had been carved into his stomach. It was the letter M for Mary. The discovery of Brian's body sparked one of the largest manhunts in the history of the Northumberland police. More than a hundred detectives from across the region were assigned to the case, who set about questioning more than 2,000 children regarding their whereabouts on July 31st. Two of these children were Mary Bell and her friend Norma. Both girls gave evasive and contradictory answers in their initial statements, so were questioned further the following day. In her second interview, Mary

Bell claimed to have seen Brian playing near a tin Lizzie while holding a pair of sharp-looking scissors. Quote, I saw him trying to cut a cat's tail off with the scissors, Mary claimed, attempting to incriminate the boy in some other crime. In reality, she had only incriminated herself. No one else knew that a pair of scissors had been used in the murders, not the press, not the public, only the police and little Mary Bell. Instead of choosing to arrest her, the police took a novel approach to their pursuit of Mary's confession. Instead of pressuring her in an interview room like any other criminal, detectives approached Mary's parents to share evidence of their daughter's guilt. They did the same thing with Norma's parents, and once it was clear their

daughter was responsible, they pressured her to come clean. A few days later, Norma told the police everything she knew, including how Mary Bell had strangled and stabbed the child, while later admitting that she enjoyed it. According to Norma, when the trio were alone on the Tin Lizzy, Mary seemed to go all funny, pushing the child into the grass and attempting to strangle him. A drawing Norma made of the wounds inflicted to the boy's abdomen precisely matched those described by the coroner, confirming that she had indeed seen the poor boy's body following his murder. At dawn the following morning, the police raided Mary Bell's home and when confronted, she displayed an alarming knowledge of her legal rights for an 11-year-old girl.

I will get a solicitor to come get me out of this, she reportedly screamed while being bundled into a police car. A forensic examination of the girl's clothing revealed the grey fibers discovered upon Brian's body were a precise match to a woolen dress owned by Mary, and that the maroon fibers upon the child's shoes were a precise match to a skirt owned by Norma. Furthermore, the same gray fibers had also been found upon the body of Martin Brown, implicating Mary in a murder she'd almost gotten away with. One of the detectives working the case was named DCI James Dobson, and after Mary was arrested, Dobson recognized her from Brian Howe's funeral. He claimed that she stood outside the Howe household as little Brian's coffin was carried past.

She stood there laughing, he later said. Laughing and rubbing her hands, I thought, my God, I've got to bring her in. She'll do another one if I don't. The trial lasted for nine days, with the jury taking just three hours to reach their verdict. Mary Bell was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Norma, on the other hand, was acquitted of all charges. Upon hearing the jury's verdicts, Norma clapped her hands in excitement whereas Mary burst into tears as she was led from the dock. The judge described Mary

as a dangerous individual who posed a very grave risk to other children. He added that steps must be taken to protect the public from her, whereupon she was sentenced to serve an indefinite period of imprisonment. At the time of Belle's manslaughter convictions, she was 11 years and 6 months, making her the youngest female killer in British history. She was eventually released from Her Majesty's prison, Ashcombe Grange, in May of 1980 at the age of 23. She had served 11 and a half years in custody and was granted complete anonymity, allowing her to start a new life elsewhere in the country under

an assumed identity. Her current whereabouts are unknown and remain protected by a 2003 High Court order. One journalist, who was granted an interview with her, claims Mary accepts she was fairly convicted and freely admits the abuse she suffered as a child does not excuse her crimes. She is also now a grandmother, a woman who's watched two generations of her descendants grow up. But it's hard not to wonder if at some point during their youth, Mary Bell looked at them and remembered hunting children just like them, back when she too was just a child. Born on March 29th of 1967,

Ricky Casso Jr. grew up in a comfortable middle-class household in the small town of Northport in New York State. His mother and father were employed at the nearby Cold Spring Harbor High High School, a well-funded, highly acclaimed institution that offered them generous salaries. They were attentive, well-meaning parents, but both were harsh disciplinarians and it seems their child-rearing style had the opposite effect on young Ricky. As he grew into his teenage years, the clashes with his parents grew worse and worse, meaning Ricky was often kicked out of the family home for extended periods of time. His parents believed that a night on the streets would knock some sense into him, even if those streets were some of the safest in the state. Rather than run home with his tail between his legs, Ricky found that living off the grid wasn't nearly as difficult as it seemed. In the summer, Ricky would sleep in a makeshift camp

in some nearby woods, then in the winter, he'd either couch surf or break into cars to sleep on the back seats in a bundle of blankets. It was through his life on the streets that Ricky became friends with a loosely affiliated group known as the Knights of the Black Circle. It was essentially a dumb name a group of metalheads gave themselves, and they were far from being a conventional street gang. But the group remained heavily involved in the sale and distribution of narcotics in their small hometown. Their mainstay tended to be beer and marijuana, but as time went by, they began to experiment with LSD, PCP, and mescaline, the sale of which funded their nightly misadventures.

For the most part, the group's interest in drugs and heavy metal was purely recreational. They were symbols of teen rebellion and, at their core, the majority were good kids. But Ricky Casso, on the other hand, he took to the heavy symbolism much more than most. At first, Ricky's friends thought his interest in Satanism and the occult was pretty cool, but it soon became obvious that it was no casual interest. He claimed to have once spent the night alone in the Amityville Horror House, desperate to communicate with whatever spirit still lingered there. He also went out of his way to purchase a copy of Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible, but rather than confine it to the bookshelf as a kind of counter-cultural trophy, he studied it

intently, over and over again, until it was practically committed to memory. Ricky also went way harder than his friends when it came to psychedelic experimentation. Not only did he dose higher than everyone else, but Ricky often tripped on his own, off in the woods, surrounded by satanic paraphernalia. His love of LSD became so debilitating that Ricky's parents had him shipped off to South Oak Psychiatric Hospital in Amneyville for drug rehabilitation and psychiatric care. After showing signs of improvement, he was released back into the care of his parents, but without the specialist addiction counselors, he quickly fell back into old habits. After one particularly intense trip, Ricky was discovered desecrating a colonial-era grave inside a local cemetery. Following his arrest for the crime, Ricky claimed that he had heard the long-dead person begging to be released from their coffin. Shortly after this incident, Ricky contracted pneumonia, apparently in such a weakened state from

chronic drug addiction that he had to be hospitalized. During his hospital stay, Ricky's parents tried to convince the doctors to commit him for involuntary psychiatric care. But according to hospital psychiatrists, Ricky's antisocial behavior was neither psychotic nor violent, and that all the boy needed was a lengthy detox. On top of that, Ricky seemed desperate to get out of the hospital. Apparently, he had a score to settle. Ricky was embroiled in a feud with a 17-year-old named Gary Lowers, with Ricky convinced that Gary had stolen around 10 bags of PCP from him while he was passed out at a party. Ricky and Gary had already clashed over the accusation,

with Gary promising to pay him back for the theft, but once it became lax with repayments, Ricky subjected him to a vicious beating. The cycle was repeated on four more occasions, with Gary sometimes flat out refusing to pay back what he owed. Then finally, Ricky decided that Gary had to pay. One night, Ricky joined two of his friends, Jimmy Triano and Albert Quiones, in inviting Gary to come and get high with them.

Gary was suspicious at first, but Ricky assured him that bygones were bygones, and that he'd paid his fair share in blood. As a peace offering, Ricky offered Gary several free hits of micro.lsd, and after Gary accepted, the four boys walked deep into the Astakia woods to set up camp and build a fire. It's not clear at which point the ambush occurred, but at some point during the evening, Ricky lunged at the unsuspecting Gary and sank his teeth into his neck. After tearing out a chunk of Gary's flesh with nothing but his teeth, Ricky laughed as his prey writhed around in the dirt, stricken with mortal terror.

He then produced a knife and began to repeatedly stab the fallen boy in the chest and stomach. Gary was stabbed at least 30 times and his eyeballs had been cut out during the frenzied and sustained attack. Jimmy Troiano and Albert Keones later testified that Ricky had told a dying Gary that if he shouted, I love Satan, his life would be spared. But once he did so multiple times at that, Ricky simply finished him off with a few well-placed stab wounds to his heart. Following the concealment of Gary's corpse, Ricky boasted of his misdeeds to friends, claiming that Satan had manifested himself in the form of a black crow at the moment Gary's heart stopped beating. When some of his friends accused him of telling tales, Ricky led them to the spot in the woods where Gary's body lay, kicking the dirt from his face to prove that it was him.

They stayed quiet for two weeks, until the local police received an anonymous tip on July 1st of 1984. A few days later, police sniffer dogs located Gary's severely decomposed body and granted him a proper burial. Ricky Casso was promptly arrested, along with his two accomplices who facilitated the murder. But a few days later, Ricky was found hanging in a cell, dead by his own hand. There are many murders that have been blamed on heavy metal, video games, or other alternative art forms. Nine times out of ten, it's pure media fear-mongering. But Ricky seems to be the exception that proves the rule. Perhaps some kind of

undiagnosed mental illness was to blame because, although his parents were strict, they certainly weren't overly abusive or domineering. Plenty of kids endure being grounded and yelled at without resorting to stabbing another's eyes out in the name of Satan. Some have theorized that Ricky was suffering from some kind of LSD-induced psychosis, and that's what set him apart from his scampish, fun-loving, metalhead peers. But others have argued that Ricky actually believed in the power of satanic worship, and that to him, it was as real and potent as the power of prayer.

Similarly, there are those who deny that Ricky took his own life because he was scared to spend the best years of it in prison, and rather, that he wasn't in the least bit afraid to die, because he truly believed that he'd descend to meet his master. When I was pregnant with my first child, I worked the overnight shift at a gas station near my house to pick up some extra hours. I know this may not sound amazing, but this gas station was beautiful. It was one of those full market gas stations, and it was in a really nice section of town. I know most stories that take place in these 24 hour settings are usually in dark and eerie places, but I never once felt that way in this company. Usually after 11 o'clock at night, it was slow. I would spend most of my shift watching YouTube or Netflix on my phone,

talking to my fiancé or stocking the shelves. I didn't even get that many overnight truck drivers buying coffee or snacks because the gas station wasn't that close to any highways. It was an easy job, especially being pregnant, and it paid well, which was the main reason behind this job. One night early in my shift, a taller man came in. I shouted from behind the counter, Hey there, how you doing this evening?

The man didn't respond. He didn't even look in my direction, he walked straight into the bathroom. That wasn't that alarming to me though if I'm being honest. I knew better than most at this point that when you gotta go, you gotta go. So I just figured that he just really had to go to the bathroom. After nearly 20 minutes I noticed that he had never come out of the bathroom. I was a little concerned and was thinking about knocking on the door to make sure he was alright. I slowly started making my way to the bathroom and saw that he had finally come out.

I got a good look at his face at this point. He was as normal looking as can be. He was clean shaven with a tan complexion. He had short gray hair that was parted and combed nicely. Even though his hair was gray, he couldn't have been older than 40 years old. He was wearing jeans, a flannel, and work boots that looked really beat up. I got the impression that this guy was just some blue-collar worker, and he was just stopping to use the restroom. He walked right by me again and didn't say a word.

He walked outside, but didn't get in any vehicle. He looked like he walked to the side of the building. That's when I noticed that there was no vehicle out there. So whoever the strange man was, he must have walked. That whole ordeal was a little off-putting, but overall I stopped thinking about it just a couple of minutes later since it was uneventful. Part of working these late night shifts is you get your array of strange individuals. As the night continued, I ended up calling my fiance and we were just talking on the

phone passing the time. It had to be at least an hour later. The door opened and to my surprise, it was the same guy. This time I didn't say anything to him, figuring that maybe he spoke another language or something. Well, that theory went out the window instantly because instead of walking to the bathroom, this time he walked right up to the counter and asked in a polite voice, Hello ma'am. You can't say hello to me? He smiled as he said it, indicating me that he was joking around. I nervously smiled and responded,

Sorry about that sir. Hello, how are you doing this evening? He smiled and only responded with one word in an abrupt tone, Jerky. I jumped back a little bit and said, excuse me? The man then leaned toward me and a polite voice changed into a more aggressive voice and he said, I want beef jerky. Where is it? I pointed over to the rack where all the jerky and Slim Jims were located. He smiled at me and now in a polite tone once again he said, why thank you ma'am.

He slowly walked over to the beef jerky and stopped once he got to the rack. He was standing completely still when he said to me, You know, you look just like a Disney princess. I was a bit creeped out but said thank you anyway just figuring that he was trying to be nice. I look like a lot of things but one thing I do not look like is a Disney princess, trust me. Without grabbing any jerky he marched back over to the counter and started to stare at me. I know staring on its own is harmless but this stare felt intrusive and made me uncomfortable. His eyes were flying around like ping pong balls and he said, Yeah, that's it. Disney Princess. I can see it now.

I gave a little half smirk and apparently that wasn't good enough for this man. He started to shout and I mean quite literally started to scream, What? You don't like Disney? I didn't even have time to respond before I started to shout again. My daughter used to like Disney and now she's just like you. I started to gather that, clearly, this man wasn't right. I had no idea what that statement was even supposed to mean. His daughter is just like me.

As calmly as I could, I said, I'm sorry if I offended you, I'm just... He cut me off and started to scream uncontrollably. At this point, he wasn't saying anything that made any sense at all. It was just a lot of gibberish and nonsense, saying things like, Instead of a princess, you all want to be the heroes. And even more strangely, I could be a king. And instead, I'm here. It was clear to me that this man was having some sort of nervous breakdown.

Thankfully, I never hung up the phone with my fiancé who was witnessing this entire unhinged conversation. He felt like something was clearly not right and he didn't want to take any chances, so he called the police and told them what I was dealing with, an unruly and potentially hostile customer. Well, I have never been more thankful for my fiancé because during the man's rant, he did start becoming hostile. He stormed back over to the beef jerky and knocked over the entire display. Even though this guy was clearly not right, this was the first moment that I actually felt unsafe. After knocking over the display, he turned and looked at me and his eyes were almost indescribable. They looked void of any emotion.

At that moment, two cop cars pulled up and the man didn't even flinch. He didn't move. He just stood over by the rack and continued to stare at me. The cops walked inside and to their credit, they didn't overreact and remained cool and calm. One of the police officers came to me and made sure that I was alright, which I was. The other officer went over to the man and was talking to him quietly. I couldn't make out any of the words the cop was saying to the man. The man looked upset but didn't lose his temper as he did moments ago and the officers escorted him out, not in handcuffs or anything like that.

They literally just walked outside and had a conversation that lasted a good 20 minutes. One officer left with the man, with the other hanging around at the gas station with me and just making sure the man didn't come back. I have no idea what would have happened if my fiance wasn't still on the phone and called the police. The man was becoming more and more enraged with every moment. I never saw the guy again, and I never placed any official report, really. After this night, I didn't work another overnight shift. I know some people may have had far worse and more terrifying stories of working overnight, and I feel for those people.

However, this was the worst thing that's ever happened to me personally, and even though I left with no physical harm, the fear that I felt that evening just looking at that crazed man is something that will always be burned into my brain. To be continued... Anybody who has ever worked at a fast food restaurant overnight knows just how unique some patrons can be. To add another variable to this already great combination, I worked at a 24-hour McDonald's that was directly off an exit, so it was a frequent stop for truckers, cops, drunks, and anybody looking to get hot food in the middle of the night. As you would expect, I met countless characters that I could describe.

I could write a book about every strange and unique human I met while working at that job. I've even had some wild experiences with people who decided to have an all-out brawl right in the middle of the restaurant. But none of these experiences were scary, just crazy to witness I guess. Only once in the two years that I worked at the restaurant did I experience something that really indeed horrified me. That night started like most nights that I did the overnight shift. I got there at 10 and it was extremely slow. It was always really slow at that time and then you would get a rush from about 11.30pm to 1.30am and then depending on the day, it would be sporadic throughout the night. On this night, I was hoping for a slow night.

It was just one of those days when I was not feeling it at all. My car wouldn't start in the morning and my husband tried to figure it out but unfortunately, cars aren't his strong suit so I was without a car. On top of that, I felt so under the weather. It happens to me every fall season. I felt like a house fell on me and I just wanted to get under a blanket and pass out, but unfortunately, I got bills to pay, so unless I was extremely sick, calling in was not an option. Thankfully, I was able to take my husband's Silverado truck to work. A little after 2am, my coworker and I were just hanging out. I ended up getting my wish with it being slow. That night was one of the slowest

nights I could remember working. Eventually, my coworker went into the office to do some paperwork. I think that was an excuse to go take a nap or something, but I didn't have the energy to call him out. When I was alone at the counter, listening to YouTube on my phone, I heard the bell from the door. It was a peculiar looking man. He wasn't an old man, but he wasn't young either, maybe mid-forties if I had to guess. He looked homeless, but not grungy and dirty, more like he was just not put together right. He was shorter than me, but I'm tall for a woman. He couldn't have weighed more than 130 pounds even with his big winter coat on. As he slowly approached the counter, I asked, hey there sir, what can I get you tonight? The man just looked at me and smiled. I wish I could have a picture of that moment. The look that he was giving me made me so unsettled. Something about the way he looked

at me was just not right and it gave me the creeps before he even spoke. His eyes were so dark that they looked almost black and his mouth was just open enough with his smile that I could see his yellow teeth. Finally, he spoke after what seemed like an outrageous amount of time and I was surprised at the deep southern voice that came out of this little man and he said, wow, aren't you gorgeous? I thought I wanted fries, but maybe I'll order something else. Yeah, so I know that's weird and creepy, but working this graveyard shift at a restaurant that gets a lot of customers who are under the influence, I'm used to weird attempts at flirting. So I just smiled and said very politely, okay sir, well, when you know what you want, just let me know. The man now grinned from ear to ear, flashing his full set of yellow and gray teeth. He set his hands on the counter and all I could see were his long and dirty

fingernails. Trying not to look visibly disgusted, he spoke up again and said, forget the fries. What time are you done? Usually something like this, I would just smile and say I'm married and move on with my life. But I don't know if it was because I didn't feel good or maybe because the guy gave me the creeps from the start. But instead, in an annoyed and aggressive voice, I responded with, if you don't want to order any food, you can leave. The man started to laugh as if though I told him a great joke. Before I said or did something that I would regret, I turned around and started knocking on the office door. When my co-worker opened the door, he could tell that I was visibly shaken. I told him about the creepy guy who was clearly in sight and he smirked because he knew right

away what I was dealing with. He told me to go take a break and that he would take care of the guy. Without even thinking or looking back, I grabbed my coat and went outside, sat in my husband's truck for 15 minutes and just listened to music. I had almost forgotten about that creep up until right before I went back inside. I noticed him wandering on the far side of the parking lot with a to-go bag in his hands. I was relieved that my coworker was able to get rid of him and I decided to wait in the truck for another 5 minutes just in case. I didn't want this creep to see what vehicle mine was. When I finally got back inside, my coworker looked a little freaked out. I asked him about the interaction with that freak and his answer just really freaked me out. I asked him about the interaction with that freak and his answer just really freaked me out.

He said in a tentative voice, I don't know if I should tell you. I started to jokingly hit his arm and I told him to tell me, to which he complied and he said, that guy was crazy. When I came out to take his order, he just kept asking where the girl was. So I told him that you went home for the night and he started to lose his mind, screaming and swearing. I ended up just giving him a free medium fry just to shut him up and get him out of here. Then he turned around and as he was walking out, he said, Tell Monica I said goodbye and I'll see her soon. This little story almost made me faint,

mainly because I don't wear a name tag at this job. I had no earthly idea how this man knew my name. For the remainder of the shift, I couldn't focus. I just kept looking over at the door, expecting this man to stumble back in, but thankfully, he never did. Close to 4.30 in the morning, I asked if I could leave early. He knew that I wasn't feeling well and with the creepy guy on my mind, he knew that I just needed to get away. Just to make my night more enjoyable, as I was leaving, it started to snow and it was

the first truly hard snowfall of the season, even though fall basically just started. I was thankful to have my husband's truck once again and I figured if I just took it slow I'd be safe. I couldn't have been more wrong. Only about a half mile from work I ended up driving into a ditch because I couldn't see the road from the snow falling. I was alright and it didn't seem like too much damage but I couldn't get myself out of the ditch. I called police and surprisingly the cops were there in about a minute. I got out of the truck to greet the cop and that's when it happened From the bed of the truck, the man from the restaurant jumped out And started to run full speed into the night

I screamed and then was at a loss for words The cop didn't know what to do and started to yell at me to tell him what was going on. I finally told him and he radioed some other cops but they never caught him. We eventually went back to the restaurant and I gave the police my entire story. They looked at the cameras but it wasn't enough to ever actually catch the guy. The worst part was watching the video of the guy getting into the bed of the truck. It was no more than 10 minutes after my break. He came storming back into the parking lot with the food bag still in his hands. He looked around for a few minutes, tried the door and when it was locked, he just jumped into the back.

I'm so lucky I drove into a ditch that night because if I hadn't, who knows what would have happened to me. The bag was left in the back of the truck with the fries still in it. This guy never even wanted the food. He knew my name from the start and he knew when I worked and he knew the vehicle that I would have. This happened several years ago and I'm still not quite ready to work overnights again. Always lock your doors and please be careful. Some people really are monsters. The story I'm going to share took place a little over 11 years ago. At the time, I was a nurse at one of our local hospitals and working primarily on the cardiology floor. I was a relatively new employee at the facility so I was taking pretty much any shift I could get. A lot of my shifts were

overnight shifts or shifts that started late afternoon and went through to the middle of the night. At the time I didn't mind but looking back on it now I have no idea how I wasn't in bed by 10pm every night like I am now. There are probably a thousand experiences I've had throughout my career that would make for an interesting story. But there is one that sticks out more than others and still bothers me to this day. On the cardiac floors, we allowed different visitation rules than some of our other floors. Due to the sometimes unexpected and catastrophic nature of the illnesses, it wouldn't be uncommon to have visitors get approved to stay a majority of the day or night. If a spouse had just experienced a heart attack, it was natural to have someone stay the night even if they had been stabilized and moved to our floor.

There was one particular patient who had their spouse with them for two to three days as they recovered and worked to get discharged and released home. They were both very nice people, especially my patient who still remains one of the sweetest people I'd ever met. Her husband, who was nice enough even from the beginning, seemed to have something a little off. I remember the wide smile that he would have when talking to me or coworkers. At first it seemed kind and inviting, but after holding a few minutes of conversation it got kind of uncomfortable.

Anyway, the first occurrence happened on the second night of the stay. I was working an overnight shift and it was later in the evening. I was at the nurse's station and saw the light flashing outside the patient's room, which notified me that they had used the call button to request something. I made my way to the room and went in to check and see what was going on. When I got there, the lights were off, but the TV was on and the patient looked to be sleeping. I was kind of confused and thought that maybe the patient accidentally hid it in their sleep. Then I heard,

Smells good. Right behind my ear. I jumped and kind of shrieked and saw that it was the patient's husband. He said, Oh, it was just me playing a little joke and hiding in the bathroom. He stammered and said, oh yeah, sorry, your hair smells good. I just kind of stood there in silence for a second and replied, please let me know if there's anything else either of you need. Just

only use the call bell if you guys actually need assistance, okay? I left the room and went back to the nurse's station which sat directly across from a bank of elevators. The location was annoying because the old elevators made a loud noise when they went up or down. A few hours had passed and the elevator was making its oh so lovely sound again and it dinged to open the doors to our floor. I looked around the desk but no one was there and the doors closed and the elevator went back down. Weird right? Well this happened five more times in a row so I finally decided to see who was messing around and calling or sending the elevator. I got into the elevator and it went down to the second floor where the doors opened.

Again, no one was there. Being annoyed, tired and confused at this point, I went back up to my floor to head back to my desk. When I got back up, the elevator had thankfully stopped its constant noise and movement. However, when I reached for my cup of water, I noticed a folded piece of paper. I thought maybe it was something I left in one of the patient's rooms or that it was something that I wrote down that I didn't want to forget to do. But when I unfolded it, it said, for my favorite nurse, with a small drawing of a rose or some type of flower. I sat it down and looked around to see if there was anyone around.

I didn't see anyone outside of another nurse who was all the way at the other end of the hallway coming out of another room. Thankfully I was able to keep myself busy for most of the night and it was almost time for me to hand off my patients to the next shift. As I was finishing some paperwork I felt a feeling like someone was behind me or I was being watched. I sat up in my chair and kind of looked around and saw a head sticking out of the doorway of a patient's room. Yep, it was the smells good person from earlier in the night. As soon as he saw my gaze going that way, he popped his head back into the doorway. I angled my chair so that I could see the room, but it still looked like my head was facing my computer. every so often I could see a head

popping out of the doorway and then darting back into the room. I tried to ignore it the best I could so I could just finish my shift and go home and get some sleep. I did just that and returned to work the next day to find that the patient from that room had indeed been discharged and when I was getting my new assignments one of my colleagues said, I heard you made a new friend last night. I asked what they meant and she said one of your patients that got discharged today one of their family members were looking for you and asking for you and wanted to see if you were here and we told him you were gone and we didn't know when your next shift was. When we told him that you weren't here, his face went from a smile to a frown and he just

walked away and we figured you just made a good impression or something. I just smiled at my co-worker and went back to reviewing some charts. I will say that things always seem a little more unnerving on the night shift and I've always wondered if that's our subconscious at work or if weird things really do occur, more at night. This is the first time I'm trying to share my story other than with the police the night of the incident. I guess you could argue that I have no real reason to be as freaked out as I am since nothing really happened to me but mentally I'm still scarred and the terror I felt at that moment is something that still shakes me to my very core. I used to work for a service that would go to various businesses and clean mop and wax the floors. As you may expect, this type of work may be tough when there are

workers or customers walking around, so the company works in the middle of the night so as not to disturb any of the businesses. I personally only worked for this company once a week for some extra money because I was saving for a house with my soon to be wife. The business was great but getting help was not. It got to a point where the owner would send all of us to different businesses to basically work alone unless it was a big business or a hospital or something. That specific night, I was alone, which I really didn't mind. I put my headphones in and get to work on the floors. It was really mindless work, which was great because for me it was easy money. In the town where I lived, there is a small grocery store that is popular among the locals. This store is one of our accounts and I would usually tackle

this entire store by myself once a month. The night started just like every other night. I started with my sweep and then got ready to mop the floors with the machine. Every so often when doing the floors you must go to the back and empty the machine which is filled with water. While I was draining the hose I thought that I saw something out of the corner of my eye move on the sales floor. I know nobody was supposed to be in the store, so I figured either my mind was playing tricks on me or maybe my boss showed up, which isn't that unlikely. I paused my music and took my headphones out for a minute. I set my phone and headphones onto the counter next to where I was disposing of the water. I slowly walked back out

there and walked around for a minute to see if I could see anything. I walked to the front end of the store and just as I was getting ready to head back to the floor machine, I heard voices. I froze in place for a moment just trying to process what was going on. Within seconds I realized these were not voices that I was supposed to hear. Without thinking, I jumped into one of the little cashier nooks and stayed hidden. It was at least two men that I could hear, and they started to argue, nothing of note, just bickering back and forth. One of the voices sounded like an older, perhaps middle-aged man, and the other voice that I heard was definitely

that of a younger man, maybe twenties. I stayed in that cashier's nook, lying in the fetal position just hoping that whatever was happening was nothing serious. The men sounded like they were standing right next to the cash register that I was hiding behind, and the older man said, okay, you got the information, let's get it and get out of here. I heard them walk away, and that's when I grabbed my first glimpse of the intruders. I was able to confirm that it was indeed just two men. One very large man and the other was probably what you may consider an average sized man. They were at the customer desk trying to open what I assumed was a safe or small vault of some kind.

At least from my vantage point it looked like a safe. The younger guy was trying to open the vault while the older guy was harassing him saying things like, hurry up or I'll knock you out and crazy and equally disturbing things. What I noticed was most scary was that these men were loaded with weapons, like real actual weapons. They both had several weapons in their waistband and I didn't dare test these men to see if they knew how to use them. My first instinct was to call the police but my phone was still in the back with the floor machine. I decided the best and most efficient course of action was to stay hidden.

If I hid, hopefully this horrifying event would be over soon. Since I didn't have my phone or watch I don't know how long I was hiding in this cubicle but it felt like it had been at least 10 minutes. And that's when I heard the bigger guy yell, You idiot! And then I heard both men running out of the building. I slowly peeked over the ledge and I didn't see anybody. I stayed hidden for a few minutes until I knew that I was alone.

I finally got up and ran towards the back where I left my phone and I immediately called the authorities and my boss. Before I knew it, a middle-aged man was standing in the doorway with a police officer. A brief mix-up ensued as the middle-aged man assumed that I was the one trying to rob the store. The man was the owner of the store, who had got a call from the security company who monitors the store. And somehow, the intruders tripped the alarm and when the police and the owners showed up, well, I looked pretty guilty. Thankfully, it only took a few minutes to clear my name and I was able to give my side of the story. As far as I know, they never caught those guys. At least I've never heard from my boss or anybody else that the robbers were caught.

Even if I googled the incident, this doesn't even really come up, leading me to believe the investigation just kind of ended or never really got solved. And this was a horrible and traumatizing night. I assumed that these men had some familiarity with the store since they knew exactly what they were doing. If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, sometimes the best thing to do is to just stay quiet and hidden. Your life is way more important than being a hero. Lately, I have been rethinking my career choice. I currently work as a location manager in the city where I live. For those people who may not specifically know what I mean when I say location manager, it just means that I'm responsible for finding locations for directors to film and secure locations for film production. I know it may not seem like a glorious job, but this industry is crazy, and I had to secure any job that I could get. I love movies and the entire entertainment industry, and it has always been a dream to work in this field one way or another. Well, as it turns out, I was quite good at being a location manager. Over time,

I was able to build up a little bit of credibility which made it much easier to secure locations. I worked on a bunch of films for the last several years, some bigger than others, but mostly low-budget films. During my time doing this, I met a ton of famous actors and influential people in the industry. At this point, you're probably wondering why I would be rethinking my career choice. Everything seems super cool. The simple answer is, this world of film and entertainment burns you out quicker than anything else. However, that is not the main reason why I've been truly rethinking my career. In actuality, the straw that broke the camel's back is much darker and more sinister. The last movie I worked on was not a great movie, plain and simple.

Everybody is entitled to their opinions, of course, but objectively speaking, this was one of those ultra-sappy movies that you find on the Hallmark Channel and it just felt uninspired. I will say, though, that the crew on the Hallmark channel and it just felt uninspired. I will say though that the crew on this production was amazing. I love the writers and directors and even some of the actors. We ended up getting to know each other and going out on a couple of occasions. The beauty of working on these smaller productions is that you really get to form a bond with a lot of the crew which is something I imagine doesn't happen on massive Hollywood film sets. One of the extras in the film, who had a handful of lines, started to hang out with me quite a bit. Her name was Hannah, and like a lot of extras, she was, and I believe still is, an inspiring actress.

Hannah is someone that I would describe as remarkably beautiful. When she walked into a room, heads would turn, and that's not even an exaggeration. When the director met her, he was so blown away that he gave her a very minor part in the movie. She literally had like five lines, but I assume that's sort of a big deal for your first movie. In the several weeks that we worked on the movie, Hannah seemed to take a liking to me, which at first I was really into. After Hannah's small part, she stuck around with me and helped me. She basically was an unofficial assistant to me and helped me with day-to-day tasks, and I made sure that I was able to get her paid for her efforts. Like any production,

towards the end of shooting, tensions can get a bit high and people can get short with you. However, what happened on our last day of production was something altogether different. Often on film sets, filming can take place overnight and that was the case for this final day of production. Hannah was on location with me just helping, but she didn't seem like herself. Hannah was always upbeat and excited, but tonight she was in another world. She was quiet, dismissive, and kind of rude for lack of a better word. I'm not sure exactly what time it was, but it was sometime in the middle of the night.

We had a small crew of art department guys setting up the location. I was there basically just overseeing everything and Hannah was there just helping me. The director and the actors for this scene were there, but they were all resting in the back room in the building while we were filming inside. When the art guys finished, they all headed out and it got to be just myself and Hannah awake in this location. In all the years I've worked on movies, I had never seen such a light crew. You could tell the feelings and vibes of this project just weren't all there. I tried making conversation with Hannah and joking around with her, but all my efforts sort of just failed. She just kept brushing me off and I honestly didn't really care. I figured once we wrapped the film up I would never see her again. While I was awkwardly just walking around the set,

I heard Hannah shout for me and it sounded like it was coming from a distance. Seconds ago she was right next to me so I found it weird that she was in the next room. I rushed in there to make sure that she was okay, and when I got in there, she was standing in the back of the room with the lights off. I could only barely see her. The only lights were the lights shining into the room from the doorway I was now standing in. Anna? Are you alright?

What's going on? I said with genuine concern. She just smiled at me and said in an almost sed seductive voice and yet it still sounded off. She said, Hi, I have something for you. Well, as you may expect, my mind was racing. I had a feeling that maybe this girl had an interest in me and now she wanted me to join her in this room alone. I slowly approached her because I was still feeling some apprehension about all of this for some reason.

When I got about five feet away from her, I noticed her hand behind her back. I stopped and asked, What do you got behind your back? You're not going to stab me, are you? I laughed, trying to make light of the strange situation. At that moment, Anna started to cry and sob uncontrollably. I didn't know what I did to upset her. Before I could say anything, she shouted, I liked you so much and all you ever cared about was this stupid movie. I hate you. As I tried to take all of that in, she threw a knife

from behind her back onto the ground and ran right through me and knocked me off my feet. My heart was beating out of my chest at this point and when I approached the wall where I was standing, I looked down and it was in fact a knife. A real knife. For some reason I never reported this to the director or the authorities. I have no idea why, I just figured since nothing happened, I'm better off just leaving it alone. The more time that passes, the more I think about that night. What would have happened if I kept walking toward her?

Would she have stabbed me, or was it all just a trick? If it wasn't the middle of the night, would she have even tried anything like this? And perhaps most horrifying, I have no idea where she is or where she went. She's got no social media anymore, I looked, and no other film credits, at least that I could find. This industry is crazy, man. You meet a lot of strange people who sometimes just aren't all there. Hannah, for example, is a sweet, beautiful girl, and one night, I don't know if it was the sleep deprivation or all the hours we were working, but she just lost it. I think the highs and lows of this industry have always taken enough toll on

me. As I've stated, I assume she's probably still trying to act, probably under another name, but honestly, this poor girl has some inner demons and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if the demons in her head won. So let me first say, I don't know if this story I'm about to tell is super scary, but it was for sure the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. At the moment, it was really upsetting. It wasn't until I reflected on the evening that I realized just how strange the occurrence really was. Five years ago I worked as a security guard for the strip mall. If you're not familiar with what a strip mall is, it's just like a block of stores in a single lot that is usually connected by one big building. The complex that I worked for was a

bigger building consisting of either eight or nine stores and a restaurant. The strip mall was new at the time and the management team wanted to keep the area clear of trouble or potential robbers. I figured someone trying to rob these stores would be a long shot since the surrounding area was a very high class neighborhood and there really was no crime. I took the job mainly because I needed the money. I figured it would be easy because I could sit in my car in a back office that was located in the back of the building complex and just listen to podcasts or audiobooks. The back office that I mentioned served almost like a central hub for all the stores in the strip mall. For each of the store's back stock rooms, you could walk out into another hallway, which led down a long narrow corridor that led directly to the office. It was a small little room with monitors connected to the cameras in each one of the

stores. Most nights I just sat in the back office and waited until about 6.30am. For all the years I did this job only once did I ever have an intruder and that still freaks me out to this day. The very first thing I did every night at 11pm when I showed up to work was to check every lock on the door of every store. I made sure everything is buttoned up tight just in case and I usually then would walk around the entire strip mall parking lot. I would like to tell you that it was to monitor the surroundings but the real reason was to just stretch my legs. I usually did this walk several times a shift. That night at around 2 in the morning reason was to just stretch my legs. I usually did this walk several times a shift. That night at around 2 in the morning, I was still sitting in the office.

I thought I heard a loud crashing sound. Whatever it was, it was loud enough to have made me jump. And the first thing I did was check all the cameras and had made sure none of the alarms were going off. Everything still looked locked up and it appeared like nothing was going on. Whatever noise I had heard, I ended up just chalking it up to some sort of stock in one of the stores falling or something. I did a quick walk by all the storefronts and saw nothing out of place or broken and all the locks were still locked. When I got back to the office was when I noticed something strange.

In one of the monitors, which was a cct camera feed from one of the stores, I could see what looked like a faint light. I just walked by all the stores less than two minutes prior and I saw no lights so whatever the strange glow was had just appeared. The cameras in these stores were not so insanely high tech so I wasn't able to adjust the cameras to see any more of the store. Only this one section. The store was an electronics store of some sort. They did sell all kinds of tech and electronics but their main selling point was that they would rent out cameras and microphones and all sorts of technological equipment. I made my way through the narrow hallway to the back room of the

electronics store. From the back room I could see the flickering of light through the door that led to the store. Before going through the double doors which separated the store's back room and the sales floor, I looked around the window of the double door to see if I could locate any intruder. To my amazement and horror, there were two elderly people standing in front of a giant TV, just watching a solid blue screen that said, no signal. I had no idea how these two had gotten into the store. I checked the lock more than once and there was clearly no sign of forced entry. I waited for several minutes to see if they had moved or talked or did anything, but they never moved. They stood there like statues watching this blue screen. Eventually, I decided to confront them. I made my way onto the sales floor slowly

and asked what those two were doing and that they couldn't be in here. The old woman of the two turned to me, whom I could clearly now see was a very old woman, and she said, I'm sorry, hon. This is the only show that makes him happy. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she had tears in her eyes. The man never turned around, but stood in an almost hunched over position and continued to stare at the TV. After a moment, the woman turned back around and started to make weird noises with her mouth, like humming or something, but it sounded very unpleasant. I went into the back room and alerted my boss, who then alerted the authorities.

It was clear that these older folk needed some help, seriously. When I walked back onto the sales floor, they were gone. I started to run around the room rather frantically because I still didn't know if these two were any danger to me. When I looked up out of the window, I saw the two older folks at the end of the parking lot. Whenever I made my call, they must have left. I noticed at this point the door was unlocked, so I know they left out the front door, but that still never explained how they had gotten into the store in the first place. The only thing I can think of was that they were in the store prior to them closing it,

which is still unsettling. I tried shouting to them to come back, but they just kept going, and then without notice, they both just darted into a heavily forested area that sat at the end of the strip mall complex. The fact that these two older people moved that quickly was honestly remarkable. The police showed up moments later, and I explained the entire event to them. They actually laughed because the story seemed so strange and unbelievable and even though it may have been funny to them, in the moment it was terrifying to me. Imagine just seeing two very old people watching a blank TV in the middle of the night when you're all alone. I've read enough crazy news stories to know that just about anything

is possible. After talking to the store owner, they were just as shocked and freaked out as I was. They said that they didn't know of anyone who fits that description and I guess the police looked through dozens of hours of CC footage and never could find when and where these two people had gotten into the building. I always think about that night and really just how creepy and weird it truly is. In a lot of ways, I feel bad because it just shows that of aspects of my life, and I was trying to get my future in order. I was never objectively a bad person but somehow I always seemed to fall through the cracks. I finished near the bottom of my class with my GPA, never went to college and experimented with some extracurricular things that you could

say are illegal. I was never in trouble but I also never brought anything of substance to the table. I was about a month away from my 26th birthday when I met Janelle, and that's when I decided it was time to use my brain and become a decent member of society instead of a burnout. Due to my disturbing resume or lack thereof at this point in my life, I was finding it very hard to find a job. Even jobs that you may think anybody can get, I wouldn't even get a call back. Even if I went out of my way to reach back out to them to follow up on applications, I still would never have my

call returned. It hit me hard. Just as I was about to give up, like I always did, Janelle found me an amazing job. Not glamorous by any means, but for someone like me it was amazing. The job was for an overnight warehouse worker. I would work from 9pm until 6.30am loading up pallets with boxes. Though the main premise sounds simple enough, and it was, physically the job was tough. We never had enough help and it was extremely hard to keep help once we would get workers in the door. I found myself a lot of time working alone until finally the company downsized. We started to work until 4.30 in the morning instead of 6.30 and the little help that we had was spread thin. When I was working I would put headphones on and just get

into the zone. I didn't bother talking to anybody or even getting to know anyone because chances are I wouldn't be seeing them in a week or two, and honestly, talking just distracted me and I was all about getting my job done. One night when I was nearing the end of my shift, I noticed a small looking man standing about five feet away from me. I didn't say anything at first because I figured it was a new employee just watching how I was doing things. When I finished, I took my headphones and asked the guy if he needed anything and he responded, yeah man, I hate to ask, but I was wondering if I could get a ride home. I found it weird considering I had no idea who this guy was and didn't even recognize his face as one of the workers. Being the kind of guy that I am, I told him that I would for some gas money.

He responded almost nervously and said, Yeah, yeah, man, of course. I got you. I told the guy to give me a few minutes to grab my things and punch out of my shift and to meet me outside. He nodded and agreed. I felt weird about the situation, but I'd been in his shoes before, I kept telling myself. I told one of the other guys when I was punching out that I had to give the weird new guy a ride home and

the other employees made a strange face and asked, The new guy? I don't remember seeing a new guy. We both shrugged it off, just assuming that's how this place operates these days. I went outside a few minutes later and saw the strange guy waiting next to my car. What I didn't find alarming then, and I wish I would have, was that I never told the guy which car I drove and yet he was already waiting by my car. We started to drive and right away things were getting weird. I asked him where he lived and he gave me some vague and confusing answer.

Uh, I live on Maple Drive. Well, no, not anymore. I live near the park. You know, Rose Park, by the edge of the city. I nodded and said, Okay, man, near the park. Where near the park? I just want to know where I'm dropping you off, dude.

The man said nothing for a few seconds and then said, Just near the park. Head towards the park and I'll tell you where to go. I'm still kind of in awe of my stupidity as I write this. You have to understand at this point in my life I really didn't care about much and just wanted to get from point A to point B in my day to day life. I didn't question really anything. When we got close to the park, the man finally spoke up.

Turn here. I stopped the car for a moment and said to the guy, Are you sure? This doesn't really look like a street. The man just kept saying, Yeah, in his shaky voice as he nodded intently. Against my better judgment, I turned down the long dark path. This was for sure not a road. It was a dirt path and I couldn't see anything.

I turned on my high beams and thankfully it was just in time. Obstructing the road in front of me was a massive fallen tree. Whoa dude, looks like we're gonna have to go another way or something. I'm not getting by this tree. The man didn't say anything. I looked over at him and he had his hands in his hoodie. While I was looking at him, he said, get out of the car now. He kept moving his hands inside his sweatshirt as if though he was trying to grab something he had concealed underneath. When I looked up out of the windshield, I saw two more

masked men coming from the side of the fallen tree. My heart was racing out of my chest at this point. I didn't know if I was going to get robbed or worse. The man in my car then screamed at the top of his lungs and said, get out now. I slowly started to open my car door and noticed another two men behind my car also wearing masks. When my door was open, I started to step out, and I noticed the men in my car start to get out of my vehicle as well, and that's when I made the single most daring decision of my life. As I noticed him clearly outside of the car,

I jumped back into the driver's seat and reversed as fast as I could. Thankfully, he never ordered me to shut the car off, so the car was running this entire time. I may have bumped into one of the potential robbers, or maybe it was a big tree branch, I wasn't sure in the heat of the moment. When I got to the end of the dark path and was putting my car into drive so I could peel off, I looked back one last time and I saw all five men sprinting directly at my car. They all appeared to be holding something in their hands but I didn't bother to find out what they were carrying. I didn't alert the police for some reason as when I got home I was just so tense and anxious that

I felt nauseous and just needed to lie down. I called my managers the next day and told them about the incident to which they replied, we didn't hire anybody new in the last couple of weeks. And I felt even more sick after hearing that. We looked at the cameras and saw that this man basically came out of the shadows when I parked my car for that night shift. He waited by my car for several hours and then went inside. Nobody said anything to this strange guy because help was spread so thin basically nobody noticed him.

He was watching me finish my shift for about an hour when he finally approached me. My manager said that they contacted the police, but I was never questioned, which I found kind of suspicious, leading me to believe that they never actually reported it. To this day, I have never reported it, and honestly, it was so long ago at this point that I'm sure nothing could really be done. I only worked there for another month or so after the incident and I never saw that strange man again. The only good thing that came from this horrible event was that the company started locking the doors for these overnight shifts which you may think is obvious. But you'd be surprised at just how relaxed certain businesses are when the managers aren't around. My advice to anybody who may be reading this,

be careful, and if something feels weird, chances are, you're right. As I began writing this, I'm surprised to recall how many near-death experiences I've had. From a horrific car accident to being nearly trampled by a moose, God has kept himself busy by sparing my life up to this point. But today's story revolves around an event that nearly killed myself and six other family members. I lived in southeastern Idaho. It's a beautiful and scenic part of the west. The mountains tower so high that I can see both Montana and Wyoming from my house. An hour north of home is a region called Island Park and is hands down one of my favorite places to vacation. The area is nestled inside an enormous volcanic caldera which was born out of the same hotspot that created nearby Yellowstone National Park. The rugged countryside is blanketed by tall

lodgepole pine trees and is home to some of the best fishing this side of the Mississippi. Some of my best memories have been made there. Youth conferences, musical retreats, cabin trips, boating, hiking, you name it. I'm currently married and a father of four. I love my family and enjoy nothing more than getting out of the house for a little adventure with them. Come summer of 2020, we had just recently purchased our first family-sized tent and were anxious to get out and camp. To make things even more fun, we invited my wife's parents along with her sister and her husband to join us for a weekend up in Island Park. My father-in-law, Kurt, had access to his dad's boat, which made us all the more excited to go. One of the main attractions of Island Park is the reservoir.

Nestled at the foot of Sawtail Peak, the large reservoir is lined with collections of cabins, docks, boat ramps, and a private resort. It's practically paradise. During our trip, we plan to spend Friday camping, then head out on the water on Saturday for a day of water skiing and tubing. Before leaving, I had to check the weather in case we needed to expect any rain. The forecast had predicted a chance of rain on Saturday, but given that it was only a 50% chance, I figured it wouldn't be much of a hindrance to our recreation. When we arrived at the boat ramp that Saturday, it was picturesque. The sun was beaming down on us and the only clouds you could see were miles away. As far as I was concerned, we'd gotten lucky and were spared the annoyance

of a storm breaking up the day. Given that this was 2020, everyone and their dog had descended onto every outdoor venue between here and Jackson Hole. Months of pandemic restrictions had pushed people to spend more time outdoors where the restrictions simply just didn't exist. The dirt parking lot was absolutely full, with lines of trucks slowly delivering boats onto the large boat ramp that dipped into the south shore of the lake. After some waiting, we finally got our turn to put in. I held back of the trailer into the water while Kurt directed the boat out towards the dock adjacent to the ramp. The boat itself wasn't huge. I'm no expert, but it's what you might expect for that kind of occasion. The bow had a horseshoe-shaped bench seat that ran all along the front. Spanning the center was a windshield with a hinged center

pane that could open so passengers could move along the aisle to the back of the boat. Next sat a row of bucket seats for the driver and a passenger, with another two rows of seats facing each other in the stern. As we began loading the boat, it began showing signs of engine trouble. At one point it completely died, which was ironic considering my wife's grandpa had just gotten it tuned up at a local shop. Kurt, myself, and my brother-in-law Josh set about inspecting the engine to determine the problem. Best we could tell was the battery, which then required us to detach the trailer, pull the SUV back onto the ramp, and jumpstart the boat. Luckily it started back up,

but this meant that we couldn't turn off the boat and risk it dying out in the middle of the lake. I saw this all as a mere inconvenience when I should have considered it an omen. At last we set sail with all ten of us on board, including our four kids who were all under the ages of seven. After buzzing around for a while, our two youngest kids began asking when we could go eat. Given our delayed start, it was already lunchtime. Not wanting to cut the fun short, we decided my mother-in-law would take the younger kids back to camp while we stayed out on the water. While heading back to the dock, we all began to notice a distant mass of dark clouds forming to the west.

Once we had dropped the other three off, we debated about whether we should risk going back out, if a storm seemed to be approaching. In a situation like this, I tend to be the one who says, it'll be fine. We put a lot of time and effort into getting there, and considering that I make it onto a boat maybe once a year, I wasn't about to simply cancel at all because we might get a little rain. My wife tends to be much more of a worrier and was encouraging us to just stay and maybe come back later. Somehow, we all agreed to go back out and just keep an eye on the storm. Any signs of lightning, then that would be our signal to get out. As we set out again, we headed towards the northeastern end of the lake.

Here it begins to narrow and wind into the trees like a snake, to the point where it almost looks like a wide river. There were far less boats here and it looked to be a safe place to start water skiing. Josh went first, only crashing a couple of times and managing to stay up for a good while. I volunteered to go next. By this time, the sky had morphed into grey and from our view northward, we could see dark clouds beginning to envelope Sawtail Peak. You know those storms where the sun still managed to shine through open pockets in the clouds? It was like that.

This beautiful contrast of billowing white and gray clouds with misty curtains of rain reaching towards the ground while bright golden rays of sunshine permeate through like arrows shooting towards the ground. It was a stunning scene, and a facade that masked the danger that laid ahead of us. Given the scene, my wife asked that I consider staying in the boat and that we start heading back. Being my stubborn, adrenaline-starved self, I pleaded that we go a little longer. We decided ten minutes tops. I slid into the water, which was very cold considering that we were up in the mountains and it was likely fresh ice melt. I'm lousy at water skiing since

I'd never done it enough to get good at it. After my second failed attempt at getting up out of the water, we saw our first strike of lightning. It was a mile or two north of Sawtelle. It was close enough to light a fire up my butt. Time to go. As quickly as I could, I swam back to the boat and once in, we hightailed it back in the direction that we had come. Almost on cue,

we began feeling the pitter-patter of raindrops as an eastward wind began to pick up. Thunder rumbled from behind us and given how narrow the lake was at that point, a wall of tall pines obstructed our view to the west. It wasn't until we rounded a bend that opened up to the open lake that we got a full view of what laid ahead. In the moment that we had before an angry wall of rain fully hit us, I felt a rush of both awe and terror. The once pristine and calm blue water had transformed into a roiling mass of white crests, and the sky was nothing more than a curtain of rain under a ceiling of furious black clouds. When people think of dangerous storms on the water, most picture the ocean, but storms over large lakes can cause massive swells too.

I couldn't believe how quickly everything had changed. It couldn't have been more than 45 minutes since we had last been at that spot and the storm had apparently been far away at that time. It felt like it had snuck up on us, like a hungry beast stealthily trapping its prey. Within seconds we were hit with a barrage of rain. The droplets were so large that it felt like small pebbles peppering our skin. Aside from our life jackets, we were only wearing swimsuits, so there was little in the way of protection from the elements. From where I was sitting on the back seat, I had a full view of everyone in the boat. To my left was Josh trying to helplessly shield his face from the rain. In the middle of the boat, between the forward-facing driver and passenger seats sat my

wife, her sister, and my two kids. One held towels over the kids while the other was hurriedly looking around for any other form of protection. She managed to find two square flotation pads which she then held them over their heads like umbrellas. And Kurt was at the wheel, crouching down low enough to keep his eyes under the protection of the windshield. I don't know exactly how fast we were going or the speed of the opposing winds blowing against us, but it felt like I had stuck my head out of the car window on a highway. I was finding it hard to breathe, both from the wind and the ice-cold rain that was relentlessly drenching my barely covered body. For the first 30 seconds or so,

Josh and I exchanged surprised looks and exclamations like, this is insane or holy crap dude. We knew the situation was shocking, but it didn't feel life-threatening yet. It wasn't until the waves hit us that the real fear began to set in. The boat began to bounce in short successive bursts, until suddenly we felt the bow dip down and swiftly pitch back upward again. These weren't small waves like you encounter in the wake of another boat. These were big, far bigger than any I had experienced first hand on a lake. Each time the bow dipped

and plunged into a crest, water would rush over the front rails and into the boat. It wasn't enough to fill the boat but my fear at that moment was the possibility of being capsized, especially if the battery happened to die on us again. Despite the fact that we all wore life jackets, it is possible that a capsize could trap someone underneath and injure them, or simply leave us at the mercy of the raging water. As a confident swimmer, I was less than worried about myself, and all the more worried about my wife and kids. Should they find themselves out of the boat, it's entirely possible that they could still drown by being tossed and pushed under the surface. With squinted eyes, I tried to survey the surrounding waters.

Through the sheets of rain, I could make out at least a dozen other boats, all converging on the boat ramp that still lay at least several hundred yards ahead of us. They all must have been equally as surprised by the storm as we were because I could also see that the boat ramp was jammed full of trucks and trailers frantically trying to get their boats out of the water. With this being our only way out, this meant everyone else was stuck on the lake until space opened up on the ramp. My skin burned with the force of everything hitting it. Kurt was white-knuckling the boat against the storm, his shoulders hunched and head down like a linebacker. We seemed to be keeping the boat under as much control as we could manage, making sure to hit waves head-on so as to avoid flipping. My poor kids were terrified.

Despite the shelter the women provided, they were soaked and freezing in the midst of a violent storm that had us all screaming at each other just to be heard. I could see the dread in everyone's eyes, that expression of disbelief and fear of being plunged into a potentially deadly situation. As we approached the ramp, it was clear that our only option to disembark would be to try and position the boat against the dock. However, this dock was not built into the ground on pylons, this was a floating dock, made to lay on top of the water as levels rose and fell during the year. It was anchored to a single post high on the shore, which meant that in these conditions it was a moving target. Kurt positioned the boat about 50 yards

to the windward side of the dock, intending to essentially let the wind and water push us against the dock and hopefully provide enough stability to let us get out. That point in the journey was by far the most terrifying. In this position, we were now parallel with the waves, meaning that we were now vulnerable to being capsized if we didn't reach the dock in time. In perhaps a vain effort to maintain stability, us men positioned ourselves on the right side of the boat, hoping our weight could keep the side of the boat from rising too steep. Slowly we drifted over, anticipating that once we were close enough we could have to try and get everyone off without someone getting crushed between the boat and the dock. The closer we got, the clearer I could see fellow boaters frantically mounting boats onto their trailers and signaling for drivers to go before they even had time to get off the boats themselves, all in an effort to get as many people off the water as possible. Fortunately, we came within the reach of the dock without tipping. Kurt maintained control while

Josh and I grabbed hold of the dock trying to stabilize the boat as it bounced against the side. Once I got off, I immediately reached back to get the kids out. They were sobbing and struggling to move while my wife handed them up to me. That was the first moment that I felt some level of relief, knowing that at the very least the kids were out of the water. Josh helped lead them up the dock while my wife and her sister disembarked, leaving Kurt at the wheel. Over the roar of the storm, Kurt shouted for me to try and help the boat from floating away while he went to fetch the trailer, though he would have had to leave the engine idling to avoid another possible battery failure. Seconds later, Josh returned. He and I grabbed onto the metal mooring brackets while Kurt disembarked and sprinted up to the parking lot. Given the roughness of the water, neither of us could try and find rope or fenders to cushion the boat banging against the dock. So there we stayed, kneeling down and doing our best

to keep the boat from either drifting away or crashing against us too hard. Since it was still idling, it slowly began pushing itself toward the shore until eventually it nudged up against the concrete ramp underneath us. With each series of waves, we could feel the hull scraping against it, but there was nothing more we could do other than pray that the damage wouldn't be too drastic. Sitting there trying to patiently wait for the trailers was agonizing. It felt like sitting under a freezing cold shower. The rain continued to bear down on our bare skin like rocks, the wind blowing so hard that it was almost coming down sideways. My entire body was shivering so hard that it felt like a seizure. It was difficult

to speak coherently, let alone grip the heavy boat and keep it somewhere anchored. Strangely enough, the only slight bit of physical comfort at that moment was the lake water as it splashed up onto the dock. Remember how I said the lake water was fresh ice melt? Well compared to the rain and wind it felt surprisingly warm. So every couple of seconds a wave would splash us and give a very brief sensation of warmth. We knew Kurt could move only so fast. The ramp was still packed with trucks and trailers while boats were struggling to position themselves properly and avoid hitting each other. So we waited and held on. Looking out across the lake, I wondered at how we had made it back safely.

It literally looked like rough seas. Having lived in this region most of my life, storms like this were extremely rare. And while weather in the mountains can change quickly and drastically, I'd never seen something this extreme. It felt and looked like a monsoon or a hurricane. I don't know how long it took, but at long last we could see Kurt's trailer making its way down the ramp. Once he was in position,

he had to climb back into the boat and maneuver it around the dock. From what I could tell, we were some of the last ones to get out. We did our best to guide the boat onto the trailer, standing in the now warm feeling water until it felt secure. I jumped into the SUV and drove us up the ramp and onto the now muddy parking lot. After gathering a few personal items from the boat, I was finally able to climb into the second row seats where my wife was waiting for me with a towel. It was finally over. I don't know if it was purely just due to the cold,

but I was convulsing. My muscles felt tight and strained, and while they had the heat dialed all the way up, it was like the cold had penetrated all the way into my body and didn't want to let go. My wife kept asking if I was okay and what was wrong. I must have had a stunned look on my face because the worry in her expression said it all. As we drove back towards camp, I finally began to thaw and regain control of my hands. We all chatted in disbelief at what we had just experienced. One minute we were having a good old time, and the next we were on the brink of drowning. It all happened so fast.

It wasn't until we reached the camp that the storm began to subside. The shock seemed to wear off relatively quickly as we began cooking dinner and carried on with the remainder of our trip. I think we were all just relieved that everyone came away from this experience relatively unharmed, at least physically. It's been three years now and my wife and daughter are still nervous about getting onto boats. I did feel a measure of guilt for having not been more cautious and just playing it safe. I wasn't the only one who wanted to continue boating that day but I certainly was stubborn about it. And that desire for fun put us all into a dangerous situation especially for my kids. While I still love adventure and taking reasonable risks, this nightmare really reigned me in.

Whenever I'm out with my family, even for something harmless like a hike, I'm always on high alert with my eyes on my surroundings. Nature is something to fear and respect. Feeling the raw power of a relentless storm that couldn't care less about you, it's a deeply humbling experience. Thank you, God, for sparing me once again. To preface, I was 16 years old at the time this took place and I was living in southeast Missouri where I grew up. I had just started my first job at a Hardee's as a fast food cook. It was a nice teen job to keep me out of trouble and provide a little money for getting into trouble but the job happened to be in a

rougher side of town. I was the only white boy who worked there and on top of that I was young and naive. During my rebellious streak against the constraints of school and conservative family values I started smoking weed. At my work everyone smoked and did some harder drugs too. Fast forward to working at my job for a few months and I became closer with several co-workers. One of my managers, who I will call Bailey, really liked me because I busted my butt and actually did my job in several of their jobs too. Bailey was one of those people that never had a dull moment in their life. She had kids, was constantly seeing some random guys, and was a bit of a manipulator. You see, I was so naive that everyone around me would take advantage of me by selling me some just crap weed for $20 a gram or make me do their work for them.

Nonetheless, Bailey befriended me and I would occasionally buy subpar weed from her current boyfriend, Marcus. This led to me hanging out with her and I am not exaggerating when I say seeing things and hearing things that teenagers should not see nor hear. For example, one time Bailey was walking with a limp one day at work and when I asked her what was wrong, she brought me into her storage closet at work and proceeded to roll up her pant leg to her thigh and revealed a nasty crater that, in my not medical opinion, appeared to be infected. Then she said, I injected bad rock last night and it's killing me. When I asked her, why don't you go to the hospital? She said that she could not due to medical costs and the fact that she had a newborn

daughter at home, thus the government would take her daughter away. So, that should paint a picture of what my work environment looked like. Well, one day I was driving around with my friend who also smoked and we unfortunately ran out of weed, so I called Bailey on a Saturday night and asked her if Marcus had any. Bailey replied to come through. My friend at the same time, who I'll call Ben, was with me and was totally down to buy sketchy weed from sketchy people, even though I told him that we would have to go to her crack house and this is where things got interesting. Ben and I pulled up to a run-down duplex that looked like it was damn near abandoned besides the light coming through the windows. We both walked up and started knocking on Bailey's door. Marcus answered and let us in. We told him that we were there for some weed and Marcus was cool

with it, but explained that he would need a ride to his plug. Since Ben was driving and was very carefree, he didn't even think twice before obliging the offer. Subsequently, it was just Bailey and I alone in her living room where she immediately told me, I'm so glad you're here. I just got my tax refund and people have been acting strange lately. I wasn't particularly surprised. In fact, I was used to Bailey's paranoia and absurd lifestyle. However, I am an inquisitive person and with nothing else to do or say, I started asking why to entertain her delusions. Bailey explained that word got out that she had received a few thousand dollars from her government refund and Bailey, not believing in banks, stashed that in her house that looked like it was ready to fall in. Furthermore, Bailey

said that everyone knew it would be easy picking since they knew she wasn't going to call the police. I didn't quite question this, but I was left to wonder, what the hell my presence would do? I certainly didn't appear intimidating, why was she so happy that I was there? It had been five minutes of this talk when a car pulled up, specifically a white Monte Carlo that I saw around work before. Bailey and I were watching out the window when she exclaimed, oh that's Sherry, I wonder why she's here. Sherry came to the door and was definitely on meth. I could tell because Missouri, and particularly rural Missouri, has a huge meth problem so you can see it more often than you would think. Some of the symptoms include wild eyes, delirious fast-paced conversation, very exciting and intense persona, and running off

pure wild-ass emotions. Anyways, Sherry started talking manically about her day and such. To be honest, I can't really remember what she said exactly because I'd learned to tune out tweakers, but it got to the point where she revealed why she had come. Sherry started asking Bailey if she could watch the baby for the night. I sat back and knew that things were about to start unfolding badly. Bailey promptly told Sherry that she was hanging out at the house tonight with me and Marcus whenever he gets back. Sherry looked at me shocked with a bit of contempt as if she just noticed me and thought of me as an annoyance. She began asking who I was and what my name was. I couldn't respond before Bailey answered for me and said, that's AJ, just a co-worker of mine. His dad's a cop and he needs somewhere to smoke.

I was just as taken aback as Sherry was because my dad wasn't a cop, but I wasn't about to let some random tweaker know that. Sherry looked completely surprised and resumed asking if she could watch Bailey's newborn for the night, completely forgetting about my existence once again. After about the tenth time of Bailey refusing, Sherry finally got to the point and left right away without even saying goodbye to me and barely a goodbye to Bailey. Being a naive little bumpkin, I attributed this bizarre interaction to Bailey's bizarre lifestyle. However, I knew for sure that I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. It had been about 10 minutes since Ben left with Marcus and I was now anxious with nothing to comfort me but Bailey's wild theories. Bailey and I began discussing how

weird that interaction with Sherry was considering Sherry just randomly showed up and asked Bailey for her freaking newborn daughter. And it was weird. To provide some context, Bailey's crack house was located off of a country road in the middle of the woods. It was completely out of the way, and it is such an oddly specific request that made no sense. I honestly didn't like where this was going and quickly my mind began racing. I asked Bailey point blank, why did you lie about my dad being a cop? Bailey explained that people after her money won't mess with a cop's son. I hated hearing this and I knew then and there that I had to leave but I couldn't go anywhere as Ben, my ride, was still with Marcus and due to living in the woods, there were no neighbors despite living in a duplex. Now, Ben had been

gone for about 20 minutes and that's when I saw another car pull into our driveway and slowly started creeping up toward the house. I didn't recognize the car right away and that's when Bailey ran to the window and said, ah crap, that's DeMarco. DeMarco was her old ex who had recently gotten out of jail and was friends with Sherry from what I could recollect from work stories. My heart leapt out of my chest as I started to put pieces of the puzzle together. The car gets to the front of Bailey's house and the lights turn off. Bailey and I stare blankly out the window as we see three silhouettes of men in the car. Instantly, I was mortified and gripped by the inescapable claws of fear.

Some say you either have fight or flight, but they always forget about the third option, freezing. Next, I saw DeMarco get out of the car wearing all black jeans and a dark long sleeve shirt while the other two people remained in the car. DeMarco got out of the car wearing all black jeans and a dark long-sleeved shirt while the other two people remained in the car. DeMarco quickly approached the front door and Bailey and I were terrified. Bailey turned to me and whispered, Lock the door, quick, lock the door. I had always imagined myself as the courageous person who would charge in a dire situation and be the hero. But when the time came, I froze.

I just couldn't move as I was paralyzed by fear. Bailey, seeing that I was petrified, hastily leapt past me and locked the deadbolt as soon as DeMarco reached the door. DeMarco began banging loud on the door. Bailey! Bailey! Let me in! In a maniacal voice full of desperation. Bailey had her shoulder and body pressed in the door and shouted back, I'm not opening this door if you're on something, DeMarco. Time had slowed down. DeMarco responded a few seconds later with,

I won't be. I know your white boy's in there. My heart, which I thought was already in my feet, sank into the floor. Still frozen, Bailey looked at me and reasoned that it was somehow safe to open the door without consulting me or looking out the window to see if the silhouettes were still in the car. I wanted to scream no and slam the door with every muscle fiber I had, but I was still frozen. Unable to move, I helplessly watched as the door slowly opened to reveal DeMarco, who was staring back at us with a sinister smile and shark eyes rubbing his hands together. Bailey, wasting no time to put herself between me and him, said,

What are you doing here? What do you want? DeMarco wiped away his grin and focused on Bailey, and DeMarco calmly said, I wanted to stop by and see how you and DeMarcus wiped away his grin and focused on Bailey. DeMarco calmly said, I wanted to stop by. I see how you and DeMarcus are doing. I see you have company. As he looked back over Bailey's shoulder and into my soul. Bailey replied that I was here on drug business and was waiting for my friend to come pick me up so he had to move his car. After a few moments DeMarco looked like he was thinking very hard and said, I'll leave you be. See you around. As he turned around I saw in his jean pocket a pair of

black leather gloves. I gulped as Bailey shut the door and locked it. We watched as the car slowly backed out of the driveway with the silhouettes not moving at all and onto the road where they turned on their lights and drove off into the night. Two minutes after DeMarco left and I was slowly regaining my senses, Ben turned down the driveway. He and Marcus got out of the car talking and being friendly like they knew each other since kindergarten. I didn't care. I was exhausted and traumatized. I was pretty sure that I somehow avoided Bailey being killed and I could have been collateral for being within her proxy.

I also didn't know if DeMarco was going to be back or not, but I wanted to leave before I found out. So I grabbed the weed from Marcus and said goodbye to Bailey as I grabbed Ben and gave him the most we have to leave right now look that I could muster. In the car, I frantically explained everything to Ben and he silently listened to me and said, that's super sketchy. I don't think it was the tax return they were after though. Marcus just told me that he's looking to start to run drugs from St. Louis and asked me if I could help. Apparently he just got his first big shipment in and it wasn't weed. And that was it for me. That was the final straw that made the 17 year old me

wake up. To think that my life was put in danger for some just crap weed spooked me to my core. I never bought drugs from Bailey again and soon after I quit my job, but that was for a whole different reason. Luckily, nothing that I am aware of ever came from this. However, the reason this story sticks with me is because I know to trust my gut instinct and my gut instinct told me that I was in serious danger that night. Moreover, I am completely ashamed looking back and seeing hospital's ER. I feel like I'm fairly equipped as a person to keep my brain from melting down in scenarios where I should be just absolutely freaking out. Of the many frightening stories I have, this is the one that has always shaken me up the most. I worked at a popular hotel chain from when I was 18 to when I was 20. I worked front desk and at the time of this story I was the primary evening shift

attendant from 3pm to 11pm. However, I would sometimes cover night shifts 11pm to 7am. At the time of this story, I was a 19 year old girl working alone in a hotel during the night shift. There were no other hotel employees in the building, just me. This particular brand of hotel chain was cheaper, not as luxurious or even as well regarded as some of the other brands in the building, just me. This particular brand of hotel chain was cheaper, not as luxurious or even as well regarded as some of the other brands in the chain. We were also situated right off the highway, so we got a lot of walk-ins and drug addicts and other strange people on a regular basis, although this is true of any hotel, not just the cheaper ones. We had a couple and their baby walk in at about 12am to see if we

had a room and since it was fall and the busy season was wrapping up, we did. They seemed nice, like a regular, normal young couple. Again, I saw weird people every day so maybe my radar for this sort of thing was skewed. I'm doing my thing during my shift, beginning the audit process, cleaning up around the lobby and watching Netflix on my phone when I get a call to the desk at around 1am. It's one of the rooms on the second floor complaining about a noise complaint, saying that someone down the hall is making a ruckus and could I please have them stop. I ask if they know what room it is and they don't. I'm not allowed to leave the desk for any reason. As if someone calls or comes into the hotel, there would be no one there and the safe is located up front. I tell the guests to

call back if the noise continues. After ten minutes later, they call back and tell me to call the police because they can hear more clearly that they are arguing. I ask them their room number and immediately go into crisis mode. I take the stairs up to where the guest is calling from on the second floor and I can hear the screaming before I even get up one flight of stairs. I can't describe it. It sounds like someone was being murdered from the blood-curdling way she was screaming. I'm a 5'5", 19-year-old girl so I immediately get 911 on the cell phone. The protocol in this situation is to call the manager first to get her permission for an emergency call but screw it you know. I peek my head up through the doorway and look down the hallway and I see the man from the young

couple earlier and he is just beating the absolute life out of his girlfriend. She's holding their baby, just screaming and crying in the middle of the hallway. Meanwhile, I'm telling the operator as much as I can and I have to somehow find the courage to try and break the situation up. Every instinct in me tells me to just go back downstairs and barricade myself in the manager's office and get myself out of danger. But I am seriously frightened that this man is either going to kill this woman or their baby. I put on my bravest, loudest, strongest voice and shout down the hallway. I don't even know what I said, but it probably wasn't even real words. They both look at me and my blood runs just absolutely cold. I yell to the woman and ask her, are you okay ma'am? She clearly isn't. Her face is just red

and black and bleeding and she's still sobbing and screaming, and their newborn is wailing. She doesn't even answer. She just scrambles up from the wall and just runs to me. The guy stays standing right there in the hall looking at us, just dumbstruck. I lead her down to the front desk and have her join me behind the desk. I tell her that I have police on the phone and the operator asked to speak to her if possible, so I hold her baby and she's sobbing on the phone about her boyfriend and about how he's trying to kill her. She's providing the details about her boyfriend

when I hear banging from the staircase and I just know. I'm outright shaking, but I hand her baby back as this guy bursts out of the stairway just fuming about his girlfriend. It's like I'm not even there, and he can't even see me. He is pinpointed on her. I'm fairly convinced that tonight is going to be the night that I'm about to die. I don't even realize it, but I'm crying now too, out of shock or just as a reaction or maybe anger, I don't know. I put myself between him and this girl and I tell him that he needs to leave the premises now. He clearly doesn't listen to that. I take the rolling chair that I have been sitting on and use it as a barricade between the door to the front desk and us. And that's when I see that he has a knife. This is when it starts to get a little hazy for me. I can only remember in clarity how hard my heart was beating

and my ears ringing just the sheer terror that I was feeling when I see this guy coming at us and his baby. I don't particularly remember how it worked but I remember throwing the rolling chair at him while screaming something that was meant to be like get away but was probably not anything like that. I take this girl by her arm and I'm dragging her with me. I practically throw her and her baby into the nearby boiler room and then I throw myself in afterwards and close the door. It's a small, durable room and the only room in the hotel where the door is made out of solid metal. It locks immediately and I don't even turn on the lights. We're sitting there, crouched together in this dark room.

I brace myself against the door as he starts to just pound on it with his whole body weight, like I'm going to have any notable effect against this guy. I can hear the operator asking for us from where she dropped my phone somewhere on the ground, the light barely illuminating the both of us. We're both just crying and breathing and shaking. She's trying to comfort her baby and for some reason I take off the jacket I'm wearing and offer it to her for her face. Like that's the most important thing in the moment or something. Thankfully, our location to the highway meant that the officers were there fairly quickly. They arrest the guy without problem and we get ourselves out of the boiler room. The paramedics come and check her out and take her to the nearby hospital. They tell me to come with them. I had a cut on my arm through the jacket from the knife and

I don't even know when or where or how I got it. I genuinely have no memory of it. It didn't even hurt and thankfully it's just shallow and it didn't even scar, but I for some reason refused because I have to finish my shift. I get my phone back, call my manager, and by now several guests have flocked to the lobby to chatter amongst themselves at the commotion. One of them tells me, I heard them fighting, but I didn't want to get out of bed. My manager comes to the hotel and tells me to go to the hospital and then to go home. I end up sitting in the ER with the lady and I spent the rest of that morning as her guest, looking after her baby as she was treated in the ER for a multitude of injuries.

She was released around 9am that morning and she thanked me profusely. I don't even think I ever learned her name. I don't know where she went to after that or if she's okay or what happened to her, hopefully ex-boyfriend. I don't know if he went to jail, they don't tell you that sort of thing. I took the next week off of work and I was never able to work night shift again. It was just too scary being in that place alone with no one to back me up. I hope she's okay. I hope she's doing alright and I hope her kid is alright too. I hope she has healed and grown past what was obviously a very traumatic time in her life. I don't know the answers and I don't think I'll ever know, but that's how life is sometimes.

I think about her all the time, even though it's been years. It's just so sad knowing that this is something common that happens all the time, all around the world. I know it easily could have ended up so badly for her and for me and I'm just so grateful that it didn't. Nestled in the center of Warren County, Kentucky, lies the small town of Bowling Green. Its small size and unassuming nature belie the fact that it's actually the third largest city in the state. In the last several decades, the town has seen a massive economic boom, and its stature within the state has grown as well. The town is home to the famed Corvette Museum and Factory, Western Kentucky University, now the second largest college in the state, the headquarters of Fruit of the Loom and the Lost River Cave, one of the most beautiful and unique natural wonders of the United States. With its scenic beauty and thriving economy, Bowling Green has become a beacon of prosperity for the entire state. However, not all that long ago, things were

much different in Bowling Green. Back in 1948, the town was just starting to stretch its feet with a brand new Union Underwear factory opening up during this time, which provided a greatly needed boost to the town's economy. Dr. Charles Martin and his wife Martha lived in relative luxury due to a lifestyle afforded to them by Dr. Martin's status as a prominent physician in town. They lived on the outskirts of downtown Bowling Green in an elegant yet imposing mansion across the street from Fairview Cemetery where they raised their son Stonewall Martin. The mansion, where the Martins would live for 30 years, was bought by the family in 1918 and was considered a local landmark by the population during this time. The Martins were

well known in the community for their extravagant parties they would often hold in their home and, on more than one occasion, possibly tried to set up their son with someone he could marry. As the years went on and Stonewall grew older, their efforts grew fruitless and Stonewall would find himself a bachelor at the age of 52. Harry Edward Kilgore was born on February 28th, 1923. He lived in Glasgow, Kentucky, and much like the Martins, the Kilgores were also well-known in their hometown as Harry's grandfather owned the town newspaper. Despite this, Harry's early childhood must have been filled with hardship,

as his father Reed Kilgore took his own life in 1925, leaving his mother Ella to take care of Harry and his sister alone, though she did eventually remarry. In his youth, Harry developed an interest in music and sought schooling in Glasgow before moving to nearby Bowling Green to attend Western Kentucky University. There he met Ruth Ann McKinney, a fellow WKU student who was a few years younger than him. Despite the year gap, a connection formed between the two of them and they quickly became an item. The two students eventually crossed paths with George Daggett, who was 35 at the time and a music professor at WKU, as well as the head of the piano department. George and Harry were said to have become very good friends and would spend days and weeks together at a time. George himself said

that he only gave extra attention to him because of Harry's interest in music, though this would come into question much later on. Around this time, Ruth Ann McKinney came into the company of Stonewall Martin, most likely at a party or some other social function. Despite the 30-plus year age gap between them, the two apparently hit it off, as the two are soon married on June 23rd of 1948, leaving shortly after that on their honeymoon. Neither of their lives would ever be the same when they returned. Just a few days after Ruth and Stonewall Martin left Bowling Green, on June 29th, under the cover of darkness, Harry Kilgore drove his car to a wheat field close by Fairview

Cemetery. He then grabbed a revolver and walked the remaining distance to the home of Charles and Martha Martin. There had been some debate over the murder weapon used, though court transcripts clearly state a revolver was used. Kilgore broke in through the door and entered the home, where he caught Dr. Martin by surprise in the front hallway. Without hesitation, Harry fired several shots at Dr. Martin, one of which hit him in the head. The wounded Dr. Martin tried to flee back into his bedroom, but the 80-year-old retired physician was no match for the much younger Harry, and as he fled into his bedroom, Kilgore fired several more rounds into the doctor. Harry then shot Martha Martin in the back of the head as well when she attempted

to flee. Evidence collected by police and later Harry's own testimony showed that Harry had spent a great deal inside the Martin home after committing the murders. He allegedly tormented the Martins further, even in death, by abusing their corpses with a flashlight and shooting them both several more times. After stealing some personal items from the family, Harry left the Martin home and later told police that he disposed of the gun by throwing it into the Barren River as he fled Bowling Green and drove back to Glasgow. Once there, he sought refuge with his mother Ella, where he would be found later by police. The next morning at around 7am, the bodies of Dr. Martin and his wife were found by two workers who were scheduled to be on the property that morning. Police were quickly called to the scene and they soon had a lead on the case. Working from a tip, police traveled to Glasgow to talk to Harry.

They found him in his car, parked right in front of his mother's house. Police asked Harry to come back to Bowling Green, which Harry did willingly. A search of Harry's car came up with several of the Martins' belongings, including Martha's purse and a flashlight with broken glass along with.32 caliber shell casings. These were later used to tie Harry to the murders during the trial. In Harry's original confession, he took full credit for the murders and didn't name or list anyone else as an accomplice. He stated that he was angry with the Martins because their son Stonewall had lured his girlfriend Ruth Anne away from him, and he killed Stonewall's parents as an act of revenge.

From the very onset of the case, Harry's sanity was continually called into question, and Harry changed his statement several times after his original confession. After being judged as sane enough to stand trial, Kilgore pled guilty to two counts of murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Though 14 months later, after receiving his sentence and being returned to jail, Kilgore made a surprise confession, one that sent ripples through the case, and to this day is a source of controversy and mystery. Despite originally claiming to have committed the murder alone, he now claimed to have had an accomplice, his music professor, George Daggett.

According to Harry's confession, George Daggett and Harry, along with Ruthanne, concocted a plan for Ruthanne to lure in Stonewall Martin and use him to steal his parents' vast estate. Ruthanne was to marry Stonewall, then George and Harry were to murder both of Stonewall's parents so their assets would be inherited by Stonewall. Then after enough time had passed, they were to murder Stonewall and have so their assets would be inherited by Stonewall. Then after enough time had passed, they were to murder Stonewall and have Ruthanne inherit the entire estate. The three of them were there to share the money and live together in luxury for the rest of their lives. Harry's testimony was heavily scrutinized due to his mental state. Doctors took note of his depravity and desire to kill and this caused others to question if Harry was telling the truth.

Nonetheless, based off Harry's testimony, an indictment of accessory and extortion was handed down on George Daggett. For his part, George fiercely denied the allegations and provided a timeline of events that occurred on the night of June 29th. George stated Harry came to his apartment very distraught and asked the professor to come to the university with him. The two made their way to the music building but left after seeing that the building was occupied. The two walked around town for a time before George returned to his apartment and bid Harry goodbye sometime around midnight. George would even testify to Harry's mental instability throughout his time as a student at WKU, including his delusions and threats to kill members of his own family. But several key factors and pieces of evidence would cast doubt on Daggett's innocence. Most damningly, Harry testified that the revolver used in the murders was stolen from a former

roommate of George Daggett's. The gun had been stolen about six months before the murder and four months after George had moved out of the property. Friends and students reported George and Harry had spent a lot of time together in the months leading up to the murders, though George continued to assert that he was just helping shepherd Harry's growing interest in music. George Daggett would resign from his position at WKU as his trial commenced. George would later be convicted by a jury of his peers and sentenced to 11 years in prison. However, his convictions were later overturned due to lack of evidence and another trial would end in the exact same way, with the charges against George eventually being dismissed.

The prosecuting attorney in the trial believed that George was the mastermind behind the murders, as well as the contributing factor in Harry's downfall, but did not have enough evidence to prove this. George fled Kentucky after the trial and moved to Detroit. He apparently found work as a piano player and would spend the rest of his life there until dying of a heart attack in 1963, although the circumstances surrounding his death are shrouded in mystery to this day. For her part, Ruth Ann was never investigated and a connection to the murders was never formally established. Although some involved in the case suspected Ruth Ann and even Harry's mother, Ella Kilgore, were involved in the murders and the conspiracy, nothing ever came

of these rumors, and both women lived the rest of their lives in peace. Tragedy would continue to follow the remainder of the Martin family, though, as Stonewall would die nine years later in 1957. Whether or not it was a conspiracy or a random tragic coincidence, Ruth Ann McKinney eventually ended up with the Martin family fortune, which according to the sources close to the case, she was in a real hurry to collect. Ruth Ann allegedly visited the Martins' bank daily for weeks, hounding tellers and bankers for her late husband's money. Fate, it would seem, had different plans for the money, which was legally willed to Ruthann only under the condition that she not remarry, which she would eventually do years later.

The remaining sum of money was then donated to various charities as stated in the Martins' Will. Harry was coincidentally up for parole in 1957 and was promptly denied by the parole board. Harry's sanity was questioned several more times in the intervening years, although he was judged as mentally competent and to have known the difference between right and wrong each time. He served about 16 years of his life sentence before finally earning an early release on parole. As part of his parole agreement, Harry and Ruthanne left Bowling Green and moved to Fort Pierce, Florida, where the two lived together intermittently until Harry's death one faithful morning in 1981. Harry had left his house to go on a bike ride and was struck down by a passing motorist. Harry died in the streets and was laid

to rest in Florida, leaving behind a mystery with more questions than answers. The murders were a big news story in Bowling Green, with many reporters and journalists from surrounding towns traveling to Bowling Green to cover the story and trial. Questions surrounding the case still remain today, and documents covering the murders, as well as documents from both trials, can be found in the Kentucky History Museum located on WKU's campus. As for the town, Bowling Green moved on from the murders and has become a symbol of Kentucky's renewed economic growth. The mansion the Martins were tragically killed in still stands today and has exchanged hands several times since the murders. The house has become infamous in Bowling Green's history and is referred to as Murder Mansion by locals in reference to its bloody past. A mythology of sorts has developed around the house in the decades

since then. It was reported that when the house was sold in the 60s after remaining vacant since the murders, bloodstains could still be seen on the hardwood floors. And as is typical for such crime scenes, rumors of paranormal activity in the house have persisted since, though previous owners have denied any such activity having ever occurred in the house and these reports remained unsubstantiated. Previous owners have also taken the house's reputation in stride, carrying on the Martins' tradition of holding annual parties at the mansion, with some of these parties falling on Halloween. The newest owners of the house have distanced themselves from the mansion's infamous past and currently discourage sightseers from taking pictures of the house and visiting the property.

It seems despite moving on and establishing a new identity for itself, Bowling Green and the murder mansion will never quite escape the shadow of its violent history. This story ends on an unexpected and somewhat poignant note. While investigating the story, someone close to the case and to Fairview Cemetery reported to me that Ruth Ann McKinney had been back to Bowling Green as recently as 2012 to see if her grave marker next to her first husband, Stonewall Martin, was still there and available. Despite the tragic events that have marked her life since marrying him, it seems Ruth Ann still held deep affection for her late husband. It should be noted that though Ruth Ann and Harry Kilgore lived together after his release from prison,

they were never married. Ruth Ann would become the last survivor of the Martins' murder saga as she passed away in November of 2017. Whatever role she may or may not have played in this mystery, let us hope that Ruth Ann McKinney and the rest of the Martin family have finally found their peace. I was a 12-year-old boy in 1982 living in condos behind McChesney Park in McChesney Park, Illinois. I had a small patio with a plastic wading pool. I was a 5'3", chubby ginger kid. A few boys, maybe 6 and 7 would come over and jump into the wading pool and pet my dog Bruno almost daily. One day their big sister, 14, cute too, asked to come swim. Sure, I thought. We talked music, MTV videos, and Adam and the Ants. She asked if I had popsicles. Nope, sorry. She said, follow me. We'll go get one at my house.

We walked four condos down and went in. I said, can I use your restroom? Sure, she said. I went upstairs as she was down in the kitchen. As I approached the bathroom, a naked younger sister about 10 years old stepped out of the bathroom and screamed, ran back into the bathroom and slammed the door. I yelled sorry. I didn't know anyone else was up there. I went down and told the 14 year old and she just laughed. We grabbed popsicles and headed to the condo park swings. After the swinging and popsicles she left to go spend the night at a friend's condo a few blocks away. I was picked up by my friend and his

mother and driven to a sand park pool in Loves Park, Illinois after an afternoon of swimming. An hour into my fun, police showed up at Sand Park Pool. I was called by name over a speaker to the concession area where everyone saw me be placed into handcuffs and taken by police. They drove me to the girl's condo where the 10-year-old younger sister identified me as the man who broke into her home, went up to her room, and tried to get her when she locked herself into her bathroom and waited an hour for mom to get home. Her father saw me, confused as I looked like the ginger kid in Sandlot. I cried and explained that I was with her older sister getting a popsicle and went up to try to use the bathroom. They went and got the older sister and she verified my story. Everyone but me left. All was well and an officer offered

to take me back to Sand Park Pool. I left with him and we drove off. He wouldn't speak to me. He pulled off on a dirt road. He aimed the rearview mirror over to me and stopped the car and stared at me, right into my eyes. I felt sick and looked out the window. I glanced at the rearview mirror and he was staring at me. I looked away. I glanced over and saw him bouncing. I looked down.

And I saw him, pleasuring himself. I started to feel sick and cry. He stared in my eyes and finished groaning. He zipped himself up, drove me to the pool and dropped me off and said, I better not see you again. I was greeted at the pool by my friends, all who thought that I was super cool for being arrested. But I was sick for a week, but I got a psychiatrist. It was 2014 then and his office was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I had gotten a psychiatrist because of anger issues. I have ODD and autism. He was always amazing. I had huge respect for him. His name was Mark and he was in his early 40s when we met. He was super bright and charming and heartwarming. He really felt more like a family friend because he treated me so nice. My mom liked Mark and the rest of my siblings who needed a psychiatrist got Mark as their psychiatrist. My mom thought that he was great at times, but slowly, he had some problems with him. Now, these problems weren't super big, they just set her in a weird mood, I guess. One instance was where my older sister Alex was talking to him about her

father, I think, and how crazy he is, and I remember my mom telling me Mark talked about his ex-wife and told Alex to call him these vulgar names. Mark definitely had some issues going on. We all could see that he was selfless. He spent his own money on toys to help me fidget so I don't have my tics as much. He had this expanding ball. It was made out of these colored bendy wiry things. It's hard to explain what it was but I loved it. Now fast forward a few years, Mark and I have gotten quite close. I've always loved going to his office for an appointment. Him and I talked about my abusive father a lot. This is when he moved offices to

McQuon, Wisconsin. My father was supposed to take counseling with me in autism classes, but he refused and that upset me since at the time I wanted a relationship with my father. I remember this quote the day we talked about my dad. It went something a little like, people are a-holes. They're born like that. Some people turn into a-holes, but your dad was born one. Those people suck up the enjoyment of other people so they could just feel good inside. Don't ever turn into an a-hole. That statement sticks with me to this day. Now around New Year's Eve 2017, my insurance company wasn't going to be accepted by the start of 2018 so Mark and I had to say goodbye. When our last session came to an end, him and I hugged. He was such a warm person, I'm tearing up writing this,

and he felt like family to me. He told my mom if we can't find a new psychiatrist that we could always take sessions at his house. The place closed down in February 2018 so Mark did sessions at his home. I found a psychiatrist soon after. Fast forward to September of 2018 and I was getting ready for school when my mom came in to tell me that Mark had died. I was baffled. I asked if he had taken his own life and my mom told me in the affirmative that that's what happened. The initial story was that he shot someone in the back of the head and shot himself but a year later the real story came out. His ex-boyfriend came over during

a session and they started arguing. His ex then pulled out a revolver and shot Mark in the back of the head and then took his life. I remember reading about it and Mark said a few minutes before his murder, can we not do this in front of my kid? And this broke me while reading it. Initially I was angry about Mark but I found out the truth around a year and a half ago. It makes me mad that the media painted Mark as the killer for a year. People don't keep up with updates so most think that Mark was actually the murderer but he wasn't. Mark was bright, he was loving, enthusiastic, he was an amazing person. I'm always creeped out that if I never found a psychiatrist that I could have had a session that late August day and witnessed something absolutely horrific.

Please, enjoy people's company before it's too late. I didn't enjoy his company enough and I now live with the guilt of that. In my early 20s, I worked in a call center for a well-known tech company. If you've ever worked in a large-scale call center, you know that it's common that you're not given assigned seating, so who you sit next to depends on your shift and desk availability. After I'd worked for my company for about six months, a group of new hires entered the floor. A tall skinny man sat down next to me and said hello. I returned his greeting and accepted an incoming call right after that. As I listened to my customer, I had a chance to take a look at my desk buddy. He smelled of stale cigarettes and his

hair was greasy and his clothes were wrinkled and obviously too large for his frame. This was no surprise as the call center often hired people who were down on their luck. But the next few weeks would prove to be some of the most unnerving I'd ever experienced. His name was Ian. We happened to work the same shift which began at 5am and included weekends. His energy was chaotic, and if no one was available for him to talk to, he typically spent his breaks walking quickly around the five-floor building. He also had a habit of appearing in whatever room I happened to be in during my own breaks. If a desk close to mine was open, he would use it.

When I walked out into the entryway of the building, he would be waiting by the front door. When I exited the restroom, he would be leaning against the wall in the hallway. When I took my lunch breaks, he would always walk into the break room and make a beeline for my table. He even made it a point to leave his desk and follow me into the elevators at every opportunity. If I was left alone with him, he would tell me long, meandering stories about his chaotic life and ask uncomfortable, prying questions about my life and schedule. All of this might not have been as creepy if the majority of it hadn't occurred before sunrise and in the building that was mostly unoccupied. I lack the confidence that I now have in my early thirties and yes, I had told my supervisor and team lead about this on several occasions with no results. On Friday morning, as I took my usual lunch break at around 9am, I sat down at a table with two co-workers who had become friends. We had all been in the same pool of new hires. They were aware of

the debacle involving Ian, and if they could, they would alert me when he was nearby. On this particular morning, my back was facing the hallway outside of the break room. As I was speaking to one of my co-workers, Brittany, her face went from warm and smiling to attentive and tense as she looked over my shoulder. When this happened, I heard Ian say very loudly, Oh look, there's my cute little redhead. I shrunk into my seat. I instantly wanted to run and hide. Without acknowledging anyone else at the table, Ian pulled out the chair next to mine

and sat down. My co-workers gave him weak smiles and I looked up and realized that his eyes were red and he appeared to be unsteady. I could smell hard liquor on his breath as he spoke. His clothes looked like he had been wearing them for the last three days. He leaned on the table, looked at me and slurred, Why haven't we gone out to dinner yet? Sorry, I don't date co-workers, I said flatly. Ian looked at my co-workers. Is she cute? He practically shouted. I like you, Anna.

One of his hands flopped heavily onto one of my shoulders. Without thinking, I stood up and said to my co-workers, I'll see you guys on the floor. I should get going. Ian looked insulted as I pushed in my chair and walked away. As I left the room, I heard him yell, I love you. I sc in my chair and walked away. As I left the room, I heard him yell, I love you! I scurried to the nearest elevator.

As the doors began to close, I heard a chair scrape against the tile floor, followed by quick footsteps heading in my direction. Why won't you talk to me? Come back! Ian shouted. A couple of minutes later, the elevator doors opened and I shakily returned to my desk. My shift finally ended at 3pm. The company parking lot was huge and on that particular day, I had to park unusually far from the front doors of the building. Remembering what my mom had taught me as a teenager, I walked to my car with my keys individually squeezed between my fingers, ready to be used as a weapon if necessary. In spite of the time of day, no one else was in the parking lot at the

time. My heart thumped against my chest as my head moved on a swivel while I walked. Hey! A familiar voice shouted behind me. A cold shock jolted up my spine and I jumped, breaking to a jog. Hey! He yelled. Don't ignore me, stop! I could hear footsteps approaching and keys jingling from one of his pockets, and as I jogged, I gripped my car fob in my hand. From a few feet away, I double-clicked the fob, unlocking the doors. I flung the door open, leaped inside, and locked the doors behind me just as Ian approached with a furious look on his face. I looked out the window as I stuck my key in the ignition and started the engine.

I threw the car into reverse, backed out before he could lock me in, threw the car back into drive, and took off. In the rearview mirror, I could see him angrily throw his hands up in the air. In that moment, I decided to call in sick the next day and then alert HR regarding my experience. Human resources didn't seem overly concerned when I called them. No resolution was given, but when I returned to work two days later, Ian wasn't there. He was also absent on days three, four, and 5. On day 6, after my shift ended, I turned on the local news. Ian Elias, age 47, shot and killed his ex-wife.

After that, he took his two young daughters and went across town. He then had a standoff with the police before shooting and taking his own life. His daughters were unharmed, thank goodness. As I stood in front of my TV, I felt my mouth absolutely fall open. I could hardly believe my ears. I felt faint as I recalled my last interaction with him, wondering what would have happened if he had caught up with me in his mental state at that time. Ladies, trust your instincts. If you feel uncomfortable at work, please tell human resources. Although I was completely unharmed, I wish I had done it sooner. Clearly Ian had some serious mental health issues, but a part of me

still feels like this was a close call, and to see this man on the news later was nothing short of absolutely surreal. When I was in high school, I didn't have any friends. I mean, I wasn't a kid sitting on their own in the corner of the schoolyard kind of thing. I just didn't have any solid friendships or groups. However, my second cousin, who was related to me through being fostered by a distant relative, was in the same year level as me. Through being somewhat related, we became friendly and I was introduced to a small trio of mates. I shared similar interests with them like computers, video games,

books, and war stuff, so I didn't mind hanging out with them. My cousin was always strange. Weird and strange and peculiar, I'd say, but I'd accepted this as I'm fairly sort of an eccentric person myself, and I pretty much put it down to him being a foster kid with a rough upbringing. Apparently his biological mom's addiction is what led to him being taken by child services and ended up in a foster home. Sad I know, but not uncommon unfortunately. Although with his odd behavior, the other guys and I suspected that my cousin was also gay. It was more of an uncomfortable humorous suspicion based on his flamboyant personality and touchy-feely antics. There were a few times when we'd all play fight, wrestle, and get each other in headlocks

and all that kind of stuff, and we swore that one time he was, should we say, physically aroused from it. Needless to say, we avoided any physical interaction from then on. Don't get me wrong, we weren't against him or anything like that, but you can imagine the level of discomfort we felt, especially since we were just 14. Regardless of the strangeness of my cousin, I was dealing with an alcoholic father on a daily basis and a subsequent turbulent home life myself. So I think I stayed friends with him in a kind of kindred spirit way, based on the account of us both having screwed up families. Now to continue the story, it's important that I describe this next part, and I hope it makes sense to any non-Australians. In my town, there are a whole bunch of high schools scattered across the area, but when students have to finish year 10 from their respective colleges,

and then move on to year 11 and 12 before they graduate, almost every student is sent to the same big school, right in the middle of town. Strange concept, I know, but it's kind of cool that every public school teenager in town spends two years all together. You meet new people, attend big parties, and pretty much forget about the last four years that you spent at your old school. Importantly though, when you attend this particular school, you have complete autonomy and responsibility for your own class attendance. So if you want to skip any periods and just walk into the city to get some chips and gravy, buy some clothes or music or just loiter, there's nothing to stop you. So you can imagine what it's like to go from being under constant authority for four years to suddenly attending a new big school in the middle of town

with complete freedom to come and go as you liked. So with the school being in the center of town, there was a big public park that served as the school's unofficial grounds and, importantly to the story, neighboring the main campus building was a primary school. Like me, my cousin wasn't too interested in studying, and the newfound freedom only enhanced our apathy towards school, particularly attendance. We'd walked into town, buy coffee and food from the cheap bakery and spend hours at the Land Café playing Command and Conquer Generals in Battlefield 1942. Yep, that gives you an idea of what time period this took place in. Now one day, as I was expecting that we would visit our usual haunt, my cousin tells me that he's heading next

door to the primary school and I should come along. Apparently he had been granted access to the school to help children read and had been doing this for some time. As someone who loves reading, grammar and literature in general, I thought, that sounds fun. So we enter the primary school. The whole time my cousin is leading the way and we walk up the main stairs through the corridor and into a busy noisy classroom. The teacher of the classroom acknowledges us and continues on with her work without really paying any attention. Strangely I didn't even have to explain why I was there. I remember listening to kids who must have been in grade 3 or 4 reading and helping them pronounce words etc and thinking to myself, surely this all must be legit. But how odd is it that we just kind of walked into this like that?

I happen to notice that my cousin is spending pretty much the entire time with one particular student. He seems to have a familiarity with this boy and he even introduces me to the kid. The boy seems happy to see my cousin and my cousin likewise. Hmm, must be his favorite student, I thought, and went back to listening to the reading. The second time he took me to the school, the teacher of the classroom was not expecting us. I can vaguely remember her saying something like she didn't know anything about it, and it was best that we come back another time. It was a weird thought, but maybe there really was just some mix-up and the teacher wasn't notified of us.

In case you were wondering why I kept going, I had always shown an interest in education and at one point I even studied for three years to become a primary school teacher, until changing career choices for something a little less stressful. However, the third time my cousin asked me to join him, I agreed. But this time, it was different and I never went there again. As we were approaching the main campus building with him leading the way as usual, I got a strange feeling. It was a different time of the day compared to the last two times and there seemed to be a lack of confidence in my cousin. Upon approaching the door, he seemed nervous, like he's really reluctant to go in. He hesitates as he pushes the entrance doors open and sort of creeps through the hallway, up to the stairs, cautiously looking out for somebody. We make it to the stairs and into

the corridor just outside the classroom and he's kind of just hesitating to do anything, all the while with this sort of creepy, cheeky grin on his face. This time the classroom isn't noisy, there's no hustle and bustle, just quiet murmuring coming from inside. I can distinctly remember thinking, we're really not meant to be here, are we? And I asked my cousin what exactly it was that he was doing here. Are they expecting us this time? He still had that disturbing, presumptuous grin on his face. Assuming that they were indeed not expecting us again and we might get into trouble, I left. I just thought in that incident that my cousin was just being

audacious. I mean, he was an audacious person, stealing money from his parents, hacking the school's admin and so forth, so I just thought that was another aspect of his juvenility. That was until one day, as we were chatting, he mentioned the boy from the classroom, the one I saw him so fixated on. He told me that he had still been going over to the school to see him, to talk to him not only in the classroom, but also at the playground. My cousin also said that he'd seen him outside of the school and that he'd actually gone to watch him play soccer on the weekend and he was planning on going again next Saturday. Yeah, that's when the alarm bells went off in my head. Even more confronting was that he even proposed visiting the boy's house. I can't remember how I

reacted or what I even said, I think I just did the whole, oh, okay, and in my mind being like, what the actual F? I started to put all the pieces together, the constant visits to the school, the trespassing and sneaking into the campus. He was never, ever meant to be there. There was no helping the kids read, there was no assisting the teacher. None. It was all a cover to see this one boy. My cousin, only 16 years old, was stalking a child, and I was the only one who knew it. After much thought, I eventually decided to contact our school's

assistant principal. It was more of a, this is something to be concerned about, right? And I briefly told her everything I knew, what my cousin had said, and what he was doing, and what I had seen. I received a reply email, and she was, well, very interested to talk to me. I can remember sitting in her office, a large room with old portraits and books, thinking that I'm way over my depth here. I was soiling myself, thinking that I was going to get in trouble for being an accomplice or something and that I'd just open the lid of something bigger than I can handle. But the assistant principal was supportive and after a few face-to-face meetings, the school took action. I don't know what they actually did, but my cousin was definitely banned from even going near the primary school. He dropped out, or might have even been expelled, I don't know, but he just kind of vanished.

I also think that the police were notified too, and subsequently, this must have put him on their radar, because the story doesn't quite end here. A few years later, I saw an article in the local newspaper. It was concerning a local man who had been arrested for grooming a child and suspiciously observing and stalking the grounds of a primary school on a constant basis. His home was raided and his computers were confiscated. The hard drives were loaded with illicit images of children and personal photographs and, after numerous charges, he was consequently jailed.

Interestingly, the man's name was printed in the article and, as you guessed it, it was none other than my cousin. I was shocked, but oddly not surprised. And I think, did I without knowing begin a process all those years ago that led to the apprehension of a predator? What if I had ignored it and not taken action, and in not doing so, prevented something much, much worse? This happened in the summer of 2008. My parents were going out of town for the weekend, so my girlfriend and I decided to house sit for a few days. Saturday night rolls around and we're bored from sitting around the house so we decide to have a few friends over for a drink or two. After a low-key

night of beer pong, everyone heads home and me and my girlfriend resign to my childhood bedroom and get some sleep. Several hours later at around 3am I'm jolted awake by what sounds like someone trying to kick the front door in. I quickly jump out of bed and rush to the living room where there is a window with a view of the front porch. I look out the window and recognize the man barging on the door as my neighbor from down the street. I didn't know the guy personally but he lived a few houses down from my parents for many years and we waved to one another when driving past but that was the extent of our interactions. He noticed me looking at him through the window and began pleading with me to help him. Hey, you gotta help me. Please, please help me man. They're after me. They're trying to kill me man. Please just let me inside. The look on the man's face was one of pure terror as he begged

for help and looked over his shoulder into the darkness at whoever or whatever was chasing after him. Against my better judgment and since I knew who the guy was, I made the decision to help. As soon as I unlocked the door, the man barged in, slammed the door and locked it behind him. He was out of breath and could barely speak. His eyes were as big as dinner plates and he was covered in mud. Where's your phone? He asked. Okay, call 911.

Please, they're trying to kill me. At this point, my girlfriend was already on the phone with the police and they had officers en route. The man began frantically running around the house, ensuring that all of the doors and windows were locked. He got to a window and looked through the blinds. Here they come! He yelled. There's ten of them and they all got guns. They're going to kill us!

It took me a few moments to get my bearings. I was woken from a dead sleep less than a minute ago and my brain was not able to comprehend all of the chaos that had ensued. The man grabbed my shoulders and began shaking me. Did you hear me? They're going to kill us, man. Where are your guns? I guess that was the time I snapped out of the fog and realized the danger that we were in. I sprung into action and ran to retrieve my dad's shotgun from the closet. I loaded the gun and began shoving handfuls of shotgun shells into my pocket to prepare for the gunfight that I would soon be in. The man sprinted past me down the hall toward the pulled down attic stairs.

They're coming. We need to climb into the attic. It's our only chance of survival. He pulled down the attic stairs and ran up. My girlfriend began climbing up after him, but I stopped her. Something about this doesn't seem right. I peeked my head up to the attic and saw the man stumbling around and talking gibberish to himself. I continued to watch him for a few more seconds and he began yelling in various directions and swinging a broomstick in the air aimlessly. And that's when it clicked. The house isn't under attack. This guy was nuts. I just let a psycho into the house at 3am and put myself and my girlfriend in danger. My girlfriend calls the police back for a second time to update them on the situation.

The dispatcher told her that an officer would be arriving at any minute, and I need to put the gun away before the police arrive. I stashed the shotgun but did not want to remain unarmed, so I grabbed a baseball bat and took my girlfriend out to the front yard to wait for the police while keeping an eye on the house in case the psycho decided to come after us. Seconds later, a police cruiser drove right past the house. It turns out that my girlfriend gave them the wrong address. We began running towards the streets in an attempt to flag down the police car when we heard a loud crash from the house behind us. We were sprinting down my parents' long driveway when the man bursted out of the front door and began chasing after us.

When we turned the corner on the street, I saw the police officer and continued to run as fast as I could in his direction. The next thing I knew, the cop had his gun drawn and pointed at me yelling, drop the weapon and get on the ground. Amidst the chaos, I guess I didn't realize that running full speed toward a police officer with a baseball bat in my hand is not the best idea. As I'm trying to explain that we were the ones who called 911, gunshots ring out from the next door. Turns out that when the crazy man saw the police car, he stopped chasing us and ran to the neighbor's house where he busted through a window to break in. After waking up from hearing glass shatter, the neighbor, who was an old man in his late 80s

living alone, rolled out of bed and retrieved the pistol from his nightstand, but it was too late. The crazy man had already found his way to the bedroom and disarmed the old man before he could get a shot off. The crazy man took the gun and began firing rapidly down the hallway. When the police officer heard the gunfire, he realized that I was not a threat and began running toward the house where the shots came from. All of a sudden, it seemed like every cop in the area showed up. I was told to stay put by the patrol car and to not move. After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a couple of minutes, I heard a lot of yelling and the police telling the man to get on the ground.

It wasn't long after that when the officer that I had the initial interaction with approached me and told me to follow him because they needed me to positively identify the man as the one who was in my house. The cops led me around to the neighbor's house in the backyard and there he was, crazy man, handcuffed and laying in the grass, still mumbling nonsense to himself. I told the cops they had the right man and off he went, to jail. After talking to the police for a while and giving my statement, they asked to see my parents' house where the incident began. When we got there and walked through the front door, it looked like a bomb went off. There was a huge hole in the kitchen ceiling.

Drywall and pluffs of pink insulation were everywhere. When I come to find out, when the crazy man was stumbling around in the attic, he tripped over a box and fell straight through the ceiling onto my parents' kitchen table. After conducting their investigation, the police discovered that crazy man was on a meth binge and hadn't slept for several days prior to the incident. In his tweaked out state, he truly believed that people were trying to kill him. During an interview, he also admitted that when he took the neighbor's gun, he was shooting at the imaginary people who were chasing him down the hallway. In his mind, he was in a life or death situation.

Police told us how lucky we were that nobody was hurt or killed during the whole ordeal. Lesson learned, I won't be opening the door for anyone in the middle of the night ever again. The story happened today. I'm shocked to say the least. I'm a 20-year-old female and this happened this morning. I live in California in a small county that has spread out communities. I had to go two hours to the nearest city to get a tire for a car and we were getting ready to head out towards the city. I had to stop

by the store to get a coffee and a payday bar so I get into the store to get my items and I realize something is seriously wrong in the store. For starters, the ladies in the store are always cheery and happy. They were not, which I thought was odd. I asked the owner what was going on while the other cashier was on the phone. She didn't answer, so I had to wait until the cashier got off the phone, and they said quietly that there was an active shooter who shot and killed someone in another town over and was headed our way. I started to pay for my items, and this old man comes in and he looks like he was in his late 30s, early 40s. He had a long beard and a camo Carhartt jacket on. It was

acting really weird to where I got a bad vibe from him but that was about it. He smacked a $20 bill on the counter but keep in mind I'm not done with my transaction. I looked at him and his response is, I'm sorry, in a whisper which I thought was so strange. As I'm leaving the store I saw a black SUV car in the parking lot that I assumed was his car. I get to the car and told my fiancé what was going on and how there was an active shooter 10 miles from where I lived and we were heading in that direction as we were on the road and we see an alarming amount of cop cars on the road and EMS. And that's when we knew this

was serious. This black car came up behind my fiance, pulled over thinking it was a cop car and he sped off so fast that all of a sudden the police cars flipped back over and were chasing towards that black SUV. But I didn't think much of it. Now we get to the city and we drive past Feds and SWAT and I kid you not, we saw a SWAT team heading to the small town I mentioned. The active shooter had killed two people and while I was in the city, he went there to where I used to live, barricaded the doors, and took the family who lived there hostage. I head home and went to the store previously as mentioned and I got confirmation that he took his own life after the police fed sat outside his house for six hours.

The man in the store who smacked the $20 bill in front of me was the active shooter. So in the end, a normal person who has been loved and been a part of the community can kill somebody and you wouldn't even know until they snap. To be continued... notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm Eastern Standard Time. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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