The Lets Read Podcast - 233: WE WERE OFF THE GRID | 22 True Scary Stories | EP 221

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Being Off the Grid, Kidnapping, & Psycho Family... 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/ This show is brought to you by BetterHelp.

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or visit them at 7200 Victoria Park, just north of Steeles. A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group. My stepmother Maggie had always been kind of distant. From the moment she married my father, I knew that there was something kind of off about her. She was cold and calculating, always keeping her distance from me and my siblings. I never understood why my father had married her, but I tried to make the best of the situation. As the years went on, my relationship with Maggie kind of deteriorated. She became increasingly hostile towards me, blaming me for things that I had no control over, and she would often say hurtful things to me, like how I had taken her son away from her and how I wasn't good enough for my father. Whenever I would bring this up to my dad, he would tell me

that I was the one being crazy. To this day, I still have no idea what she meant when she would yell at me for quote unquote taking her son from her. And despite her behavior, I tried to be civil with her. I didn't want to cause any trouble and I knew that my father loved her for some reason. Part of me thinks that she may have been jealous since we all love my mom's new husband, but didn't share the same love for Maggie. As the years continued, our relationship was rocky at best. I went away to college after high school, and then after I graduated, I moved into my own place right away. I didn't see my dad a lot, which really sucked. I loved him and I knew he loved me, but Maggie was enough of a deterrent that it just didn't happen a lot.

I lived about 40 minutes away from them, so it wasn't around the corner, but I would have made the trip at any time if my dad called. A few years after graduation, I ended my long-term relationship and lived alone for the first time in my entire life. I don't like being alone in general, but it's especially hard after a breakup. Right around this time, my father and Maggie split up, which was just about the only good news in my life at this point. I talked to my dad and we decided that when he came back from his business trip, I would move back in with him. I was so excited to be a part of my father's life again since we were basically strangers at this time in my life. I asked about Maggie and he didn't really go into

detail but basically summed everything up by saying that all of us kids were right about her all along. While my father was away on his trip, I packed up my entire place in two days and I was ready to move when he came back in a couple more days. One of those nights I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of something hitting my bedroom window. At first I thought it was just a branch from a nearby tree but the sound persisted. I cautiously got out of bed and peeked out the window but I didn't see anything. I made my way to the kitchen to get some water to try to calm my nerves a bit. As I walked back towards my bedroom, I saw something that still makes me shudder when

I think about it and just the memory alone gives me goosebumps. Standing in the middle of my room was my former stepmother, Maggie. She was staring at me with a dead look in her eyes. I was frozen with fear not knowing what to do. My voice began to tremble as I asked, What are you doing here? She smiled at me, a smile that I had never once received in all the years she was with my father.

I could sense a shred of irony in her face as she said, I just wanted to see you, darling. I didn't know what to do. My stepmother had always been distant and I couldn't understand why she would be here in the middle of the night breaking into my house. I tried to reason with her and get her to leave, but she was insistent on staying. And as the night wore on, Maggie grew more and more agitated. She started to talk about things that made no sense. She kept bringing up the strange arguments from a long time ago, like how I had taken away her son and how I needed to pray. I was terrified. I tried to leave the room, but she wouldn't let me. My phone was on the kitchen counter and I

didn't know how I was going to get out of the bedroom. And suddenly, she lunged at me and I fell to the ground. She was now on top of me and I could feel her hot breath on my face. I struggled to get free but she was too strong. And with a menacing look in her eyes, she shouted, I won't let you take him away from me. In a moment of weakness, she let her guard down and I managed to wriggle free and run out of the room and I locked the door behind me. Because there are no locks on the outside of the door, I grabbed a chair that was in the hallway and propped it under the handle so she remained stuck in that room. I could hear her pounding on the door, screaming my name. I was terrified, and I didn't know what to do. All I could think to do was call the police, and thank God,

they arrived within minutes. They found my stepmother still in my room, just kind of muttering to herself. They arrested her and took her away, but the terrifying memory of that night has stayed with me for a long time. After that night I was afraid to be alone and thankfully my dad came home the next night so I didn't actually have to be alone. I couldn't sleep without the lights on and I was always looking over my shoulder afraid that she would come back for me. I couldn't understand why she had done what she did, but I knew that I could never forgive her this time. Years have passed, and I've tried to move on from that night, but the memory of my stepmother breaking into my house in the middle of the night still haunts my mind. I'll never forget the fear and helplessness that I felt in that night,

and I'll never forget that dead look in her eyes. When I was growing up, my grandparents always seemed a little off to me. They weren't like a lot of grandparents like the ones my friends had. Their grandparents would go to their sports games and family functions and just be great pillars for guidance and love. My parents would try to get me and my siblings to bond more with my grandparents. It just always felt so tense and weird. They lived in the big house in the countryside and whenever we visited, I couldn't help but feel a sense of unease. My grandfather was a big man, like huge. He was about 6'8 with a thick beard and a gruff voice.

He would always stare at me with a stern expression as if he didn't approve of me, and those eyes would just scream judgmentally at me. My grandmother, on the other hand, was a small, frail woman, probably close to half the size of my grandfather, with a soft voice and a kind smile. However, somehow I felt even more uneasy around her. There was something about my grandmother that always made me uncomfortable. At first, I thought my discomfort around them was due to their stern demeanor, but as I got older, I started to notice some strange things about them. Whenever I asked my grandparents about their past, they would just kind of clam up and usually just change the

subject. Sometimes they would say they didn't like to talk about it and then just end the conversation abruptly. With my uncertainty, I became even more curious. I would notice that they never had any photos around the house except for photos from the last 20 years or so. Whenever I asked my dad, he would just say that he really didn't know and he didn't care. He didn't have a good relationship with them and that's probably why he wanted us to have a better relationship with them like he didn't. My dad actually spent a lot of time at a boarding school, I guess, so he didn't see a whole lot of my grandparents growing up. By the time he was 18, he was already on his own. One day, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to kind of look around the house, very intently.

I made my way to the attic and while exploring, I stumbled upon an old trunk. Inside, I found a stack of old photographs that left me feeling kind of confused and uneasy. You see, the first big stack was older photos of my grandparents. They were young and my grandmother was beautiful. I was confused as to why they didn't have any of these photos hanging up. There were several photos from their wedding and many more from what I assume was a honeymoon or vacation. What left me uneasy wasn't the pictures of my grandparents but the other stack of photos

that were in the trunk. The pictures showed unknown people, all staring straight at the camera with seemingly no visible expression. They were older black and white photos from the waist up of random people. These people were not family members and I didn't recognize any of them. Even with their sort of static expression, I somehow could sense the fear of these people in the photos. There were dozens of these photos and not one picture was the same. When I flipped the photos over, they all had been marked with a pen. They had two letters which I assumed were probably initials of the subject in the photo and an arrow that pointed up, down, left, or right.

I spent about an hour looking at every photo, trying to figure out some clue as to what these photos could be. I knew if I spent any more time in the attic my grandparents would find out, and I didn't want to see what the reaction would be. So I threw the photos back in the trunk and just joined my siblings downstairs. I knew that I needed to be careful around them, but I didn't know why, and I didn't know whom to talk to about this. I felt trapped in a sort of strange web of secrets and I couldn't shake the feeling that

people in those photos were most likely in danger of some kind, but it could just be my imagination. Either way, years passed and my grandparents began to just grow old and frail as many do. And they become more reclusive and they stopped leaving the house altogether and even stopped allowing us kids to come over and visit. And one day, I received a phone call from my aunt and uncle. They told me that my grandparents had been found dead in their house. And the cops ruled that their deaths were natural causes, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to their passing. As I cleaned out their house with my family, I found myself wanting to visit the attic and look at the old trunk.

The photographs were still there, but this time there was something new in the trunk. A handwritten letter from my grandmother that she had dated, and if I had to guess, it appeared to be right around the last time that I was there and went through the trunk. And the letter said, I know it was someone in this family that went through our trunk. I am appalled and horrified that someone would go through our precious memories. Besides, they're just photographs. She signed her name with love. I realized then that I had never truly known my grandparents, nor did my father or aunt. They had been living some sort of strange secretive life, one filled with mystery and I guess intrigue just to make it sound more special. But it's hard to know if they were just

strange and artistic people or if something much darker was at play in these photographs. I still have that note that I found and I keep that in the trunk of keepsakes at my house. I showed my family the photos and nobody seemed to really care at all and just assumed that they were just a bunch of random pictures. I may be thinking too much about this and maybe you don't find this story very scary, but if you knew my grandparents, the way they acted, the energy they gave off, the way they lived, you'd be suspicious too. To be continued... hear stories of real-life horror, more times than not they're rarely resolved or, at the very least, remain wildly unsolved and very mysterious. And the story I'm about to share is a little on the

darker side, but as you will see, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. This isn't your typical scary story. There's no ghosts or ghouls, no stalkers or creeps, just the real horror of a loved one struggling. Growing up, my family was a bit on the weird side. My dad had some inner demons and my mom struggled with depression. But the real problem in my family was my cousin Jeremy. Jeremy was a troublemaker from a young age. He would steal from stores, lie to his parents, and bully other kids. But as he got older, his behavior got worse. He started getting into fights and he dropped out of school. He was only a year younger than me, but he was already out of school

by the end of his 10th grade year. And as the years went on, life didn't get any better for Jeremy. His relationship at home with his parents got worse with every new year that passed. When I was in college, I had my own place, and I invited Jeremy to come stay with me for a few weeks. I thought that it would be good for him to get away from his troubled home life for a while, but I quickly realized that things were worse than I had thought. Jeremy would disappear for hours at a time, and when he came back, he was always messed up or under the influence of something. He would talk about how he was going to start some kind of crime empire and become rich. It seemed that the older he got, the more entranced with that crime-filled lifestyle he became. I always tried to talk to him to get him

to see how dangerous his behavior was, but he wouldn't listen. One night I woke up to the sound of breaking glass. I had previously thought that my apartment was being broken into. I went to investigate and I found Jeremy in the living room, smashing everything in sight. I could still see the image of my cousin clearly in my mind when I think back to that horrible night. He was screaming, his eyes were wild, and against my better judgment I tried to calm him down but he just became more agitated. He picked up a lamp while it was still plugged into the wall and threw it at me. I managed to avoid it, but I realized that I needed to get out of there. It was as if he hadn't even noticed that I was there when he

threw the lamp. A sort of cold and vicious look was in his eyes, and it kind of looked right through me. Whatever the instance of rage was, it wasn't getting any better with me trying to talk to him. Unfortunately, there was only one thing left for me to do, and I knew that it was going to be hard. I called the police, and thankfully, they arrived quickly. They managed to subdue Jeremy, but he put up a fight. There really isn't anything quite like watching the physical struggle of a family member and the cops when they're standing only about five feet away from you. As they led him away in handcuffs, I couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. I looked at him one last time in the back of the car and the fear evolved into sadness.

He just stared straight into the distance, like the lights were on but nobody was home, metaphorically. I didn't even recognize him as my cousin anymore. I knew that Jeremy needed help, but I also knew that I couldn't be the one to give it to him. After that incident, I didn't hear from Jeremy for a long time. But then, one day, I got a call from his mother. She told me that he had been arrested for stealing from a string of homes in the neighborhood where we grew up and that he was facing charges for burglary.

I was shocked. I knew that Jeremy had always been a troublemaker and he always talked a big game but I had never thought that he would resort to real life burglary. I asked his mother what had happened and she told me that Jeremy had fallen in with an extremely bad crowd. A lot worse than the crowd he used to hang out with back in the day. They had convinced him to start stealing things and it had quickly spiraled out of control. Jeremy was now facing serious legal trouble and his future looked pretty bleak. I felt a sense of sadness and even regret. I knew that I had to try and help Jeremy but I'd failed. I'd been too focused on his

behavior and I hadn't paid enough attention to his struggles, whatever they may have been. Over the next few months, I tried to stay in touch with Jeremy. I sent him letters and called him in jail, but it was clear that he was still struggling. Eventually, Jeremy was released from jail and he had a hard time getting his life back on track. He had burned bridges with his family and he couldn't find a job because of his criminal record. I tried to help him as much as I could but it was clear that he needed professional help. He began going to therapy and slowly but surely he started to turn his life around. It wasn't easy but Jeremy eventually got a job and moved into his own apartment. He started taking responsibilities for his actions, and he made amends with his family.

It was a slow process, but it was also a reminder of the importance of not giving up on somebody, even when they seemed beyond help. Jeremy had hit rock bottom, but he had found a way to climb back up. And in the end, he emerged stronger for it. I always knew my family was a little eccentric, but I never realized just how crazy they were until I moved back home from college. It started with little things at first, I guess. I would hear strange noises coming from the basement, doors opening and closing on their own, but it quickly escalated into something far more terrifying. My uncle had always been a bit of an oddball. He lived in a sort of ramshackle house in the woods

surrounded by junk and old cars. He rarely left his property, and when he did, it was usually to wander the nearby woods, muttering to himself. Yes, I was one of those people that had a family member who literally wandered in the woods like a madman. My family didn't talk about it much, but I always got the sense that they were afraid of him, and trust me, I can see why. He looked like how a wilderness serial killer would look in a movie or something. Long and wild hair and a massively long and mangy beard and he had no teeth and was always so dirty. One night I woke up to the sound of shuffling footsteps outside my bedroom door. I assumed it was just my dad getting up to use the bathroom but then I heard a strange scratching noise. It sounded like someone was running their nails

along the door frame. I sat up in bed and my heart was pounding and I called out to my dad, but there was no response. The scratching continued, getting louder and more frantic. I tried to convince myself that it was just my imagination, but then I heard a voice. It was sort of a low and guttural sound, and it sounded like it was coming from deep within someone's throat. Let me in, it said. I screamed and jumped out of bed, fumbling for the light switch, and when the room was finally illuminated, I saw that the door handle was flipping back and forth as if though someone was trying to get in, but thankfully it stopped after a few seconds. When I hadn't heard anything for several minutes, I did the

most logical thing I could do in that moment. I ran to my parents' bedroom, babbling about the voice and the scratching. My dad got up to check the house, but he didn't find anything out of the ordinary. I was too scared to go back to sleep so I spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch listening to the creaks and groans of the old house. The next day my dad sat me down and told me the truth about my uncle. He wasn't just eccentric but he was in fact dangerous. He had a history of mental illness and he had been in and out of institutions for most of his adult life. My dad continued to tell me that my grandma, his mom, also suffered from some

type of mental illness that went undiagnosed for her entire life. I never knew my grandparents on that side of the family. They had passed away before I was even born, so I have no memories of my grandma being unruly or violent. The scratching in the voice were just the beginning though, my dad said. If we didn't do something about it, things could get much worse. We tried to avoid talking about my uncle as much as possible, but it was hard to ignore the feeling of unease that hung over the house. Every time I heard a strange noise or saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye, I wondered if it was him. One night I woke up to the sound of breaking glass, and I crept down the hallway to check it out, and my heart began to pound in my chest.

When I got to the living room, I saw that the window had been smashed in, and that there was a trail of mud leading towards the stairs. I knew then that my uncle must have gotten inside the house. I woke up my parents again and we barricaded ourselves in their bedroom, but it didn't take long for my uncle to break through the door. He was wild-eyed, wielding a knife in one hand and something else in the other hand, but I couldn't see what it was through all the chaos. I won't go into details of what happened next, suffice it to say that it was the most terrifying night of my life.

We were lucky to make it out alive. Truly lucky. My uncle was eventually caught and taken back to an institution, but the damage had been done. I still have nightmares about him, about the scratching, and the voice, and the way he looked at me with such hatred in his eyes. I try to tell myself that it's all in the past, that I'm safe now, but sometimes when I'm

alone in the dark I can't shake the feeling that he's still out there, watching and waiting for his next opportunity to strike. My family and I never spoke about that night again, but we all knew that we had been forever changed by that experience. We became more cautious and paranoid. Every little creak and groan of the house put us on edge and we jumped at every unexpected noise. For a while I couldn't bring myself to leave the house. I was afraid that if I did I would run into my uncle or someone like him. And it wasn't until I met my now husband who encouraged me to face my fears and seek help that I began to slowly recover from the trauma.

But even now, years later, I can't shake the feeling that my family is cursed or something. That there's something in our DNA that makes us susceptible to madness and violence. I try not to dwell on it too much, but there are moments when I catch myself wondering if I'm the next one to snap. I've tried to distance myself from my family as much as possible, but sometimes it feels like they're always there, lurking in the shadows. I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully escape the legacy of my crazy family member, but I'm determined to try. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound?

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TreadExperts.ca Usually, holidays are a great excuse to visit family and reconnect with loved ones. However, I never want to spend another holiday with my family after one Thanksgiving several years ago. On that Thanksgiving, I didn't have a choice. My parents guilted me into coming back to their house for the holiday, even though I knew that it was going to be a disaster. They were always judgmental and critical, and they never let me forget that I wasn't good enough for them. But this Thanksgiving was different. It wasn't just my parents that were crazy. It was the whole family. As soon as I walked into the house, I knew something was wrong.

There was sort of an eerie silence that filled the air, and the smell of burnt turkey lingered in the kitchen. My mother greeted me at the door, but her face was different. Her eyes seemed kind of wild and her smile was too wide. It was like she was a completely different person. She said, hello darling, we're so happy you're here, grabbing me in a tight hug. I tried to pull away, but her grip was really strong and it was like she was trying to squeeze the life out of me. Mom, you're hurting me. I gasped, finally breaking free. Oh, I'm sorry dear, she said, her eyes sort of flickering with something that looked like amusement. I'm just so excited to have the whole family together again. I looked around the room and saw that my siblings were all there.

My brother, who was always my favorite, had brought his new wife. She looked terrified, like she had stumbled into a war zone. My sister, who was normally quiet and reserved, was pacing back and forth like some type of caged animal. In an attempt to break the tension, I asked, is everything okay? My mother's smile faltered. Of course, dear. Why wouldn't it be? But I could see the fear in my siblings' eyes, and they knew something that I didn't. It was so strange. We all sat down to eat, and that's when things really started to go wrong. The food was just cold and tasteless, and that was the least of our problems, though.

My mother kept making strange comments, like how it was so nice having everyone together before the end, and how we needed to savor this moment before it was too late. And then she said something that sent chills down my spine. Did you know that the pilgrims used to eat their own dead? She said, her eyes glinting with madness. What? My brother exclaimed, his wife looking even more mortified. It's true, my mother said, nodding her head. When times are tough, they would turn to cannibalism to survive. We all sat there in just sort of a stunned silence trying to process what

she had just said, but apparently it was only the beginning. As the night went on, my family started to reveal their true selves. My brother's wife was actually his third wife, and his first two wives just sort of left. That's how he put it, whatever that means. My sister was secretly addicted to drugs, and my mother had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. But the scariest part was when my father revealed his plan. He had been stockpiling food and supplies for years, preparing for the end of the world.

He was convinced that society was going to collapse, and he wanted us all to be prepared. We can't survive on just canned food, I protested ironically. We need to find a way to grow our own food to create a sort of sustainable community. And my dad just laughed. You don't understand, son. When the end comes, it's going to be every man for himself. Can't trust anyone else.

I looked around the table. At my insane family. My crazy family. And I knew I had to get out, but I didn't know how. My family was too unpredictable, and in some ways I just felt dangerous. I felt like a trapped animal, waiting for some type of slaughter. And the tension in the room was truly palpable. My mother's eyes darted around as if she was searching for something. My brother's wife was hyperventilating and my sister was sorting the pick at her skin.

I don't even know what she was doing. And suddenly my father stood up from the table. I got something to show you, he said, his voice low and urgent. We all followed him down to the basement where he had set up sort of a bunker. It was stocked with enough food and water to last for months, maybe even years. This is where we'll be safe, my father said, and his eyes just seemed like they were gleaming. We can ride out the storm here and emerge victorious when it's all over. But I knew that wasn't true. There was no storm, no end of the world, no collapse, and certainly no victory in cannibalism, and I had a sickening feeling that I knew that's where this all was headed.

I made a split-second decision that I still can't believe that I was able to pull off. I grabbed a can of food from the bunker and just bolted for the door. I didn't know where I was going since my parents lived pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but I knew I couldn't stay there. I just ran through the woods, my heart pounding in my chest. I didn't stop until I nearly collapsed from exhaustion. When I was finally able to catch my breath, I realized that I had no idea where I was. But I felt free. Free from my crazy family and the darkness that seems to have consumed them.

Now granted, I know I might sound a little bit insane, and maybe I did have a breakdown at that point, but I don't know. I eventually found my way back to civilization, but never returned to my family's house. I even heard rumors that they may have moved or even passed but knowing that group, it's more likely that they had turned on each other and consumed themselves in some sort of crazy fashion I don't know, I don't care. The truth is, I really don't know what happened to them and I don't even want to know. All I know is that I'm glad that I got out when I did. And now, every Thanksgiving, I make sure to spend it with the people who love me, who don't have a secret bunker stocked with canned goods and potential thirst for blood. I realize how this story sounds, and perhaps my biased opinion of my family clouds my perception.

All I know is how I felt that evening, and the looks in the eyes of my parents I'll never forget. And now I'm grateful for every moment that I'm alive and free, away from the horror of my aunt who lived with us. My aunt was my mother's sister and she had always been a little strange. Never in a bad way, just off for some reason. More awkward than anything else. She was never married and she didn't have any children of her own, so she spent a lot of time with her family. Growing up, my aunt was always kind to me, but there was something

unsettling about her. She had a strange way of looking at me as if though she was trying to see something inside of me. As I got older, I started to notice that my aunt's behavior was getting more and more erratic. She would disappear for hours at a time, and when she came back, she would be covered in scratches and bruises. One day, when I was about 15, my aunt disappeared for several days. I remember this being a tense time in the household. My parents would have these secret arguments about her. At the time, I really didn't think too much about it, but now I wonder why we never reached out to any authorities. My mother knew her better than most, and I assume she just accepted that this was a part of my aunt's character.

When she finally returned, she was acting even stranger than before. She would stare off into space for long periods of time and she would talk to herself in hushed tones. Whenever I tried to talk to her, she wouldn't respond to me for the longest time. That's when I started to notice things going missing from our house. At first it was just small things like pens and books and then it started to escalate. My mother's jewelry went missing and then my brother's laptop disappeared. We searched the house but we couldn't find any trace of the missing items. I started to suspect that my aunt was the one taking things but I didn't want to believe it.

She had always been kind to me even though she was strange and I didn't want to think that she could do something like that. But then one day, I caught her in the act. I had come home from school early, and I saw my aunt sneaking out of my brother's room with his new laptop in her hands. When I confronted her, she just looked at me with those sort of strange eyes and told me that she was borrowing it. But I knew that wasn't true. I suspected that I knew what was going on. After that, things started to get even more disturbing. My aunt would sit in her room for hours on end, just talking to herself in this sort of low, almost insidious voice.

Sometimes I could hear her laughing maniacally. My parents didn't seem to notice anything was wrong. They continually told me it was just my imagination, but I knew that something was very, very off. Then one day, my aunt disappeared again. This time she was gone for over a week. When she came back, she was just different. Her eyes were wild and bloodshot, and she was covered in scratches and what seemed to be bite marks. She wouldn't tell us where she had been or what had happened to her. And this was the first time I finally witnessed my parents being rational adults and at least attempting to take action. I remember them spending time researching her behaviors and even contemplating calling the police, but ultimately decided against it.

And that's when things started to get really scary. One night, I woke up and heard what sounded like scattering footsteps. I would have chalked it up to an overactive dream but I noticed my door was half open when I opened my eyes and I always sleep with my door shut. It's one of those things that I religiously check before I go to bed. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't shake this feeling of dread. I must have dozed off eventually because I ended up waking up to the sound of laughter, and when I opened my eyes, I could see my aunt standing at the edge of my bed

with an empty glass vase. She was muttering to herself in that same low, insidious voice, and I could see her eyes, and the low-lit bedroom was completely blank. I screamed for my parents, and they came rushing in to find my aunt holding the vase. When they started to approach my aunt, she lunged for me and tried to strike me with the vase, but my dad was able to knock the vase from her hands. My mom grabbed her and sat her in the corner of the room, screaming in her face while she was essentially holding her down. I ran to the living room with my dad and just heard the almost unnatural sounds of my aunt screaming and laughing. We had to call the police finally and my aunt was taken away to some sort of

mental hospital I guess and it turned out that she had been suffering from severe schizophrenia and she had been experiencing hallucinations and delusions, but that didn't make it any less terrifying for me and my family. This is a serious disorder and it's not always like how it's portrayed in movies and shows. It's actually more sad than scary when I think about it in hindsight. I remember as a teenager I assumed her problem was something much different. I figured that she was stealing the stuff around the house to support her illegal activities, but there was no evidence of that in her system at all, which begs the question, where did she take all that stuff she stole, and where did she receive all those bruises and marks on her body. Even now, years later, I still have nightmares about that night and just the experience with my aunt. I can still see my aunt's just sort of wild, blank look.

I can still hear her muttering to herself in that low, horrifying voice. It's a memory that I'll never forget, and it's a reminder of just how fragile our minds can be. Growing up, my sister and I were best friends. We shared everything and did everything together. However, as we got older, things started to change. My sister, Jenna, became increasingly distant and moody and I started to connect with her. She lost most of her friends in school and made zero effort to rekindle any of those fractured relationships. One summer we decided to go on a camping trip together in an attempt to bond and recreate

the relationship we once had. Then and now I would do anything for my sister, and this was the best idea I had to reconnect. We went to a remote part of the woods where we would be alone with nature. At first, it was great. We spent our days hiking and exploring and our nights around the campfire, sharing stories and roasting marshmallows. But as the days wore on, I started to notice something strange about Jenna. She became obsessed with finding a certain spot in the woods, and she would spend hours studying maps and walking to towns so she could talk to the locals. She wouldn't tell me what she was looking for,

but I could sense that there was something important to her, and I just wanted to be supportive. I was interested because whatever she wanted to find was probably something I'd like too, at least that's what I thought. I assumed it was some sort of local folklore, which is something she and I have always enjoyed. No matter how hard I pried though, Jenna would not tell me what she was looking for and just told me to mind my own business. One morning before dawn, while still on our trip, I woke up to find Jenna gone. I searched the campsite but she was nowhere to be found.

I panicked and searched the woods in near darkness, calling out her name. And after hours of searching, I was beyond relieved that I had finally found her. I couldn't believe it. After hours of looking, she was only ten feet away. She was sitting alone in a clearing, staring off into space. Jenna? What are you doing out here? I asked, trying to keep my voice calm. She looked at me and gave me a little smile and said, I found it. I finally found it. I looked at her with confusion and said, what did you find?

She looked at me like a child on her birthday and said, the portal. I didn't understand what she was talking about, but I could tell that she was excited. She led me to a spot in the woods where I saw a small circular clearing. In the center of the clearing, there was a strange symbol carved into the ground. Feeling a little strange about the entire situation, I asked her, what is it? Jenna's eyes grew wide and she looked at me with a big smile again and said, it's a portal. I looked with bewilderment at her and then she said, well, not just a portal, it's the portal. The one I've been looking for. I had no idea how to react to that. There was nothing unique or strange about the symbol.

It was literally just a symbol on the ground. Jenna could have put it there for all I knew. I tried to convince her to leave, but she was determined to stay. She told me that the portal would lead her to a world beyond her own, a world where she could be truly happy. I tried to reason with her, but she wouldn't listen. And this is when I started to realize that something was not right. She eventually came back to the campsite to eat a couple of handfuls of chips and then she went to bed. As the last few days of our trip carried on, Jenna spent more and more time at the portal. She would sit there

for hours, staring at the symbol, lost in thought. I tried to talk to her, but she seemed distant and uninterested. It was as if though I wasn't even there. On the last day of the trip, I woke up to find Jenna gone again. This time I knew where to find her. I made my way to the portal and I saw something that made my blood run cold. It was Jenna, standing in the center of the portal with her arms outstretched. Her eyes were closed and it looked almost like she was praying. Suddenly, she put her arms down and stood as still as the statue again. And she turned to me, which surprised me because I didn't know that she knew I was there, and she said, This is your fault. You're the reason the portal won't work.

She started to sob uncontrollably. It wasn't easy, but I was finally able to get Jenna into the car and we made the several hour drive home. I tried to talk with her the entire time, but she wouldn't talk to me except for the occasional I hate you. When we got home, she went to her room, closed the door, and I don't think I've ever had a real conversation with her again. She moved away not long after that. Even my parents really couldn't get her to stay, and it's been years since that camping trip, and I still don't have any answers. I've tried so many times to reach out to her, but she wants nothing to do with me. I have no idea how she began to think like that. I have no idea if maybe she was on some type of LSD or some type of hallucinogen.

I have no idea. But I guess I know she's doing okay at least. We're friends on Facebook and apparently she has a fiancé, but she won't talk to me or a family for some reason. I can at least feel good in the fact that she's alright. I've gone to that campsite and even the so-called portal several times, and I hadn't found anything. I have no idea what caused Jenna to just essentially snap and lose her mind, and why she won't talk to any of us. I still hold out hope that one day, Jenna and I will reconnect, and I'll have my sister back for good. This particular story didn't happen directly to me, but it did happen to a relative of mine who

lived in Mexico about three or four years ago. I live in the United States, and I'll start by giving some backstory about my relative, whom I'll refer to as Tio, in this story. To be quite honest, I wasn't really that close to Tio. I only ever had one interaction with him growing up and it wasn't in person. Instead it was through MSN when it used to be relevant. Yeah, I'm a little on the older side, but I believe that I was around 13 years old when Tio messaged me out of the blue with the usual hello and how are you. However, the message that he sent that day caught my attention when he asked me something along the lines of what clique or gang I belonged to. I'm ashamed to say that when I was a teenager, I did have friends involved in gangs and I was starting to dabble in them myself, but I didn't mention it to him. I'm no longer involved with any gangs and am far from the teenager I used to be long before the outcome of the story took place, if you're curious.

But anyways, I was in the living room when Tio messaged me, as the only computer we had at the time was there and it was right next to the main hallway of my home so my mom saw the message. She was infuriated that Tio would ask me such a question and she scolded me for having been messaging Tio in the first place. I was surprised at this since most Mexican families are very family-oriented and I brought that up to her. And this is where I learned for the first time a little more about the darker side of Tio and some of his family. My mom explained that Tio's father and uncle have a long history of being involved with gangs in Mexico, with Tio's father being the leader of the gang and Tio's uncle having joined it as well. She mentioned that we've run into Tio's uncle on multiple occasions when we've gone

to get our vehicle looked at by a mechanic since he worked as one. Tio's uncle wore an eye patch, and I brought that up to her. She told me that the reason he wears it is that back when he was living in Mexico, Tio's father was getting jumped by a rival gang and when the uncle found out, he immediately went to help fight them off. Unfortunately for him, one of the rival members had a morning star and threw the spike ball end onto the uncle's face, causing his eye to burst. And now Tio was following in their footsteps, so my mom wanted me to stay away from him and no longer communicate with him either. Tio's mother lived in the States at the time to pursue better pay to send money to her kids back in Mexico, so you can see why he was interested in gangs.

Skip forward two years later. Tio's mother caught wind of him being heavily involved in gangs and now officially being a member of his father's gang, and she leaves the states to go back to Mexico to stop him. That, my friends, was the last I had heard from them until about three or four years ago, when I heard the first bit of news of what happened to Tio. The first thing I heard was that Tio had gone about a month and a half without being seen or heard from, and that his family was looking for him. Unfortunately, the situation escalated to the point where his and his best friend's bodies were found in a ditch about an hour away from the village my family is from. Both of them have been tied up with a bullet hole in their head, having been executed. To this day, no one knows exactly what he did for work, or at least his direct relatives haven't told the rest of the family.

Based on how he would go pretty far away and go about two weeks without communicating with anyone, some of us speculate that his work had something to do with capturing hostages and demanding ransom money. Others believe that he was involved with el huachaco, which entails stealing fuel from tank trucks to sell gasoline at a lower price than gasoline stations do. Of course, the group of killers weren't caught and probably never will be. The justice system, police force, and any other branch responsible for investigating deaths in Mexico are all corrupted by power and money. They could care less about investigating another murderer or two. It's not like the US, unfortunately. Now, you may be thinking, what happened to the mother then?

I thought she left to stop him from doing things like that. Well, my family comes from a poor background, so money was always scarce, and we are a pretty big family. When his mother left the States, she definitely did her best to try and stop him, but she soon saw how much money Tio was making and giving to the family, driving nice cars and such, and needless to say, she let him continue with whatever he was doing as long as they were living well. Most of the family was devastated, and I was surprised at first, but since I never really knew him that well, I can't say that I was too affected. I know I'm being insensitive about the situation,

but that's what happens when you get involved with the wrong crowd. Fortunately for me, I stopped getting involved with the wrong crowd a long, long time ago. To be continued... My name is Lyle Birkin, and I heard of your YouTube page through a friend of mine. She told me you make videos on a lot of unsolved mysteries, and that you have a large audience that gets personally invested in the stories that you tell. Well, if that is true, then I need your help with something. My story is an old one, and one that not many folks are interested in hearing anymore, but if you can help me spread the word a little and rekindle a little interest in it, I think you and your viewers might finally be able to put an old and very painful mystery to

bed for me. You see, all the way back in 1989, my little brother Jody had a nervous breakdown. His wife picked a lucky scratch off, then had some airtight divorce papers drawn up before she'd even cashed her winning. Because of the way the state law worked at the time, her unemployment status entitled her to more than half of their physical assets. Then after her fancy-pants West Coast divorce lawyer presented some overly exaggerated evidence of his drinking to the family court, she took the kids too. Jody then hired his own lawyers to try and overturn the court's judgment, spending almost every penny that he had left in the process. The bid failed, and after that, he was dead broke and he spent a very long couple of months just wasting away in our spare bedroom. I remember at one point my eldest daughter asked my wife,

Mommy, what does Uncle Jody do? My wife replied, Uncle Jody's up there growing his beard, honey, and it's better he's left alone while he does it. Honestly, that just about summed it up for a while until one day Jody seemed to start getting better. Initially I didn't question it, I was far too happy to see an improvement in him. But then as time went by I found myself wondering what his miracle medicine had been, just in case I needed a dose of it in the future. When I asked him what his secret was he told me without a hint of irony, this time next year, we're going to be multi-millionaires. Naturally, I wanted to know what kind of scheme he was cooking up, and that's when he led me down the mother of all get-rich-quick rabbit holes.

To help get his mind straight, Jody had started making daily visits to the local library. He said he liked the quiet and I figured it was simply part of his new sober routine. But the more he read, the more he learned. And then after a while he began to fixate on something. I remember him taking me into our guest room to show me a bunch of maps and geology books. His explanation was manic and sort of fragmented. And he used a lot of terms like ley lines and tectonic plates and really weird ones like vibratory essences. I think he lost me after about ten seconds of just talking, and I gave him at least another minute or so before I cut him off.

He admitted that he didn't know exactly what he was looking for, nor did he know exactly where it was. All he knew is that it was somewhere out in eastern Arizona, near the San Carlos Apache Reservation. To say that I was in two minds about it would be the understatement of the century. On one hand, my brother was clearly obsessing over some crazy tinfoil hat pursuit, while on the other, the focus it gave him was making him better. He was showering every day, he'd quit drinking, he was going out and exercising. Why would I ever want to interrupt that? I figured my best bet was just to let him have his fun, keep an eye on him, and see how it all played out.

Things went on that way for a while until one morning I asked my daughter to go wake Uncle Jody up to tell him breakfast was ready. Minutes later, she walked back into the kitchen and told me he was gone. His room was empty. All that remained of him was a handwritten note that he left on the dresser saying, Gone to Arizona. I'll call when we're rich. That was June 12th of 1989, the last time I ever heard from my brother Jody. Since he hadn't left any way of contacting him, we still weren't entirely sure of his mental well-being and I reported him missing in Virginia and Arizona.

I even told them that Jody was almost certainly somewhere near the San Carlos, but neither state nor local police had ever found him. By the end of 89, law enforcement had all but given up on finding my brother and aside from a handful of civilian volunteers, no one was looking for him anymore. I knew I had to take matters into my own hands, but there was no way in hell that I'd be able to find him on my own. Our parents had made Jody and I go to Boy Scouts when we were kids and he excelled at it, I did not.

I'd need help, serious help and that's when Mr. Calder Hayes stepped in to offer his assistance. You see, Hayes was a self-proclaimed master outdoorsman, so he told me, and specialized in tracking down missing people in mountainous and woodland terrain. He'd worked with a few different police departments all over the country, and he had helped close one or two of those open cases in the process so I gave him a call and explained her situation. He was a real straight shooter though and he told us that he'd work a week for free before asking for any payment. If he couldn't find Jody by then, then he wasn't in the area. So even if Jody wasn't found,

we could at least eliminate the San Carlos as a search area. I took him up on the offer, thanking him from the bottom of my heart, and when I told my wife the news, she broke down into tears of gratitude. By the time Mr. Hayes arrived in Arizona, it was early February, and my wife and I had been in a state of panic for almost eight months. We were exhausted, emotionally and physically, and our resolve was wearing very quickly. If Jody wanted to be found, he'd have been found, my wife once said, and in many ways, she was right. But it was also her way of saying that there was a good chance that Jody was no longer with us. It was a thought that I couldn't bear to entertain, given how the last

words I ever said to him was something to the effect of get a job. I prayed he'd be found so I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my life knowing that I'd missed the chance to say goodbye. Within just a few days we got a call from Mr. Hayes and despite being prepared for the worst, he sounded hopeful. Along with walking the surrounding hills, Mr. Hayes had toured nearby towns and homesteads showing the locals Jody's picture in the hopes that they might recognize him. And believe it or not, one person did. A part-time checkout girl in a small hardware store said that she was almost certain that he'd stop by to pick up some construction supplies.

After digging through their receipts, they produced evidence that Jody purchased a whole bunch of two-by-fours, lattice girders, and batteries, and flashlights, and concrete, and the kind of heavy-duty respirator masks that painters sometimes wear. Hayes ended up asking the store manager what a man might do with materials like that, and thinking it over for all of two seconds, the manager replied, either a basement or a tunnel or one or the other. Suddenly it became clear that we'd been looking in the wrong place. The area around the San Carlos Valley is highly irrigated with sandy earth and chalky rock that would have made tunnel digging a colossal effort.

However, the terrain further up north, up near Mount Baldy, is much more suited for excavation. Mr. Hayes asked us to give him a few more days to hike around the mountain and of course we accepted. Then a few days later, he gave us a call. He'd found a well camouflaged campsite in the pines up near Mount Baldy. It was in a region that had been covered by aerial search teams, but not any of the ground teams. Hayes told us that there were no signs of Jody himself, but plenty of evidence that the camp belonged to him. Inside of a large but well concealed tent were all those same pseudoscience books regarding ley lines and spiritual energies and weird stuff like that. On top of that, there was almost $2,000

in cash, a stack of military rations, a water purifier, books on covert evasion techniques, and signs that he had been hunting and foraging for food. He'd been living way off the grid for quite some time and dotted among the evidence of that were dozens of worn out picks and shovels. My first instinct was to fly there right away so that I could personally aid in the search efforts, but to my surprise, Hayes issued a stark warning to me. Jody had indeed been digging a tunnel, one that appeared to reach deep into the bowels of Mount Baldy. But after briefly exploring it, Hayes had retreated for two reasons. Number one, Jody had most definitely learned to tunnel on the fly, meaning his excavation was far from safe.

And number two, after advancing just 20 or 30 feet into the tunnel, Hayes began to feel lightheaded. And this explained why Jody invested in a respirator. But without properly reinforcing the tunnel, Hayes warned that spending too much time down there would risk both our lives. I heard him loud and clear. It just didn't deter me. Because I felt like if I'd done my job as a big brother and stopped him from going down both metaphorical and physical rabbit holes, he wouldn't be missing in the first place. My wife suggested that I simply get back in touch with the local sheriff's department so that they could organize a rescue effort on their end but I wasn't content to just sit on

my butt anymore trying to save my baby brother's life using nothing but a freaking telephone. So that's how I ended up driving all the way out to Arizona while picking up the supplies I needed for the task ahead of me. Calder Hayes told me that he'd guide me to the camp but wouldn't accompany me in the tunnel. He knew he couldn't stop me from going down there and, out of courtesy, he said that he'd hang around to make sure that I made it out okay. But the way he saw it, the tunnel was far too poorly constructed to support even two men walking back and forth. It was a dangerous plan, there was no doubt about that, and the smart move was to either splash out on private contractors or to wait for the cops to get back around to

organizing another search. But I guess at the time, I wasn't in a very smart frame of mind. To me, we'd wasted enough time already, and if Jody was down in that hole, I was going to get him out of it, even if I had to drag him out. It was the morning of August 2nd, 1989, that that Mr. Hayes led me up to the foothills of Mount Baldy to where Jody's final abode stood. It was just as raggedy and unkempt as he described, every part of the residence of someone who'd completely lost their mind. Hayes had described how he'd been living off the grid, so to speak, but I didn't really believe

it until I saw it for myself. The camp was one thing, but the tunnel, that was another thing entirely. I'd pictured something at least five or six feet wide with something resembling standing headroom. The reality was very different. Jody's tunnel was barely wide enough for a grown man to walk down and if he did, he did so at a crouch. It was very clear that speed and not precision had been the order of the day, with Hayes claiming that if he's dug any further down the valley, he'd have been buried alive before he got ten feet down. The idea of climbing down there was a distressing one, but not nearly as distressing as the idea of my baby brother toiling day and night in the dust and darkness without me being there to stop him. Once the respirator was securely attached to my face, Hayes unfurled a long length of sturdy looking climbing cord and told me to wrap it around my waist. When I asked

him why, when he had ourselves a pair of shortwave radios, he told me that he called it a weekly county walkie-talkie, on account of all the deep caves in that part of Tennessee. After a certain depth, radios would be useless, and if anything happened to me down there, Hayes needed to know about it. So after tying the cord tight around me, I climbed down the rough plank ladder Jody had hammered into the rock and trudged off into the darkness. Of course, the tunnel didn't remain dark for long. My flashlight saw to that, but once it flickered on, I realized the extent of my brother's work. The tunnel extended deep into the earth, almost like a kind of broad staircase

so that from any one place you couldn't really tell how deep it went. I must have walked for a good few minutes, treading deeper and deeper into the mountain before my eyes began to sting. It wasn't an unbearable sensation, something sort of like chopping onions, but it made pushing on much more difficult. As I kept on walking, wiping stinging tears from my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket, until there came a point where the tunnel seemed to open into a sort of vast, pitch black cavern. When I say vast, I really mean it. There must have been at least a hundred yards of darkness on either side of me, swallowing up the beam of my flashlight before it could reach any

kind of surface. I remember thinking, Jody sure as hell didn't dig this place out. And after walking a few feet further, I saw the rocky cave floor disappear into a sheer drop. It suddenly made sense why my footsteps seemed to echo so much. The cave was even bigger than I'd first imagined. I carefully crept towards the edge of the precipice, shining my flashlight down into it to try and gauge how deep it went. Again, my already powerful flashlight wasn't sufficient to penetrate darkness of that depth. I tried shouting echo to get an idea of how deep and wide the precipice was but my respirator made it next to impossible to make enough noise to

truly gauge it. And around that same time, I ran my flashlight beam along the edge of the cliff and spotted something sticking out from the rock. It was some piece of climbing equipment, a kind of heavy duty nail that Jody had hammered into the rock before tying a section of rope around it. The rope then extended over the side of the cliff and although the prospect terrified me, it was clear that Jody's search for whatever it was had taken him god knows how down into the darkness of the cavern below. And that's when I had an idea. I walked back to the narrow tunnel and picked up a pair of fist-sized rocks. Jody's minimalist approach to housekeeping meant that there were plenty of them around, so with one in each hand, I walked back to the cliff edge and tossed one of the rocks into the abyss.

I expected maybe a few seconds of silence before impact. It was clearly a long way down, but there had to be a cavern floor down there somewhere, right? But a few seconds dragged on, and on, and on, until it suddenly hit me that I wasn't going to hear any kind of impact at all. I was hit by this sudden sense of vertigo as I realized that the cavern extended deeper than I ever thought possible. I ran over to where the rope was hitched, pulled it up to see just how far my brother had gotten before he either climbed back up or found his way onto some kind of ledge or tunnel mouth.

There must have been a hundred feet of rope there, easily, and no signs of breakage or snapping either. So if Jody had fallen, it hadn't been as a result of an accident. Dead or alive, he was down there. He must be. Nothing else makes sense. I remember rushing back to the surface to tell Hayes what I had found. The news surprised him as he wasn't aware that any such cave system existed in the area. The discovery of new subterranean cave networks isn't entirely uncommon, but the question was,

how had Jody figured out where it was? I told Hayes all the stuff that he talked about, regarding ley lines and energies and whatnot, thinking that he might recognize the significance of it. But it didn't. It only confused him further. In fact, I think the one thing Hayes was certain of was the search for Jody just got a whole lot more complicated. He seemed to think that state-run search and rescue teams would be reluctant to act on our new information, and when I spoke to them, I found out why. To put it bluntly, the risk-to-reward ratio was skewed way in favor of risk. Given the amount of time that had passed, there was a good chance that Jody was no longer with us.

In which case, in keeping in mind that his digging that had been amateur at best, attempting to retrieve his body would pose an unnecessary risk to rescue workers. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was the truth. Jody had made his choice, and frankly, it's something of a miracle that he'd managed to dig as deep as he did without getting buried alive. Yet there's still a part of me that just doesn't feel like he's gone, and call me crazy, but I think I'd feel it. But instead of that feeling of loss, of grief that my little brother is gone, all I feel is urgency, frustration, and guilt. Jody's still down there in that cave, and by God, I think by some

miracle, he's still alive. If I wasn't as old as I am, I'd be down there again, climbing into that abyss, searching for my brother. But seeing as doing so would be as good as eating my gun, I figured that I'd do the next best thing and try handing things off to another, you see. I'm not asking you or your viewers to go putting yourselves in danger or anything like that, I promise. The last thing I want is for any more folks to get hurt. I'm also not convinced that anyone's going to be able to bring Jody home, not in one piece anyway. All I really want to know is what's down in that cave, and why Jody drove himself half-mad trying to find it. It's a mystery that's haunted me for more than 30 years now, and before I die, I'd like to see it solved.

I just don't want anyone else's brother or son or father to go down there, only to never see the light of day again. Back in the mid-90s, my brother started college as your typical sports-loving, girl-chasing dude bro. He didn't care about politics, he wasn't into drugs, and all he cared about was football, partying, and maybe getting himself a degree in business management at the end of it. But then, right at the end of his junior year, he met a girl. I remember the summer it happened, because he kinda just dropped off the face of the earth for a while. It later turned out that he was staying with his new girlfriend's stepdad, but he didn't bother to let anyone know. This upset our mom a bunch, which got dad pissed, and he made it a whole thing when my brother finally did get home,

because apparently he was acting weird and withdrawn and all this sort of stuff. This signaled a big change for him, and by his senior year, my brother was almost the polar opposite of his freshman self. He was super into politics, he called himself a psychonaut, and he never ever left the side of his new girlfriend, who held a share of the blame for his total personality shift. The next thing we know, my brother dropped out of college just two months before graduation. He said he didn't want some dumb piece of paper and that, this is the line that freaked my mom out, he, quote, wouldn't need it where he was going.

Mom asked what this place was, but my brother refused to say. Then after a little more yelling from dad, he hung up. That was the last we'd see or hear from my brother for almost a whole year. Then, right when we started to think that we might never see him again, who shows up to darken our door but my long lost big brother? It was a happy time. It was amazing to have him home but it was a sad time too because he returned a completely broken person. He'd lost a ton of weight, looked like he'd aged 10 years, and he was totally burned out. It was honestly pretty scary to see.

But then, where had he been all that time, and what had he been up to? I was kept in the dark on that for the longest time. Mom and Dad just said that he'd been through a rough time of an organ, and that he just needed time to recover. I was almost 20, old enough to know better than to go asking any sensitive questions, but I was still curious. It took him a few months before he finally told me what happened. There had been hints here and there, but I never heard the full story, not until I caught him with a cold one out on the porch one night, way after mom and dad had gone to bed. One of their rules was, if he was

going to live in their house again, he was going to be clean. But after a few months, he finally broke and decided to enjoy a few quiet brewskis all on his lonesome. He told me that he'd give me one if I kept quiet. Then the more of the beer I drank, the less and less inhibited I became regarding certain burning questions. Then finally, right as I'm about halfway through my second can, I finally asked him what happened in Oregon, and after collecting his thoughts for a moment, he started his story. Right around the holidays during his senior year, my brother and his girlfriend, who we'll just call Mia, heard about this community living project up in rural Oregon. They called

themselves the Yochico Co-op, and with the new millennium approaching, they were going to lead the way in terms of ethical and sustainable living. They made arts and crafts, which they then sold at little markets in the city, allowing them to buy whatever they couldn't forage, hunt, or make themselves. But aside from that, there was no money, no personal possessions. It was total communal living. And my brother and his girlfriend wanted to be a part of it. They were originally going to wait until they graduated before traveling up there, but after getting in touch with someone based in the co-op, they were told it was basically now or never. 1999 was right around the corner and it meant that the co-op was about to go into overdrive in terms of their mission statement. Recruitment was up, productivity was up,

and if my brother and his girlfriend didn't make it up there by late spring, there was a chance that there'd be no space for them. This really sold it for them, the idea of a well-organized and well-led community. And that's what made them think that it could be a place they could really start a life for themselves. But boy were they wrong about that. When my brother called to tell our parents that he was dropping out of school, he actually intended to tell them where he was going. He never wanted to make anyone mad or disappoint anyone, but when my dad reacted badly to the whole dropping out thing, he basically

thought, screw you, and didn't tell them where he was going. This is also what stopped him from getting in touch with us when things started to go bad at the co-op. He didn't think mom or dad wanted to hear from him. I guess partly out of pride, too, and the regret of not reaching out was still something that really guilt-tripped him, even many years later. And so off they went up to Oregon, with this real attitude of, this is our life now, and we're never going back. So they get to Portland, where they meet the contact who had been recruiting them. Then, after a brief orientation, they're driven out to a forest encampment in the middle of freaking nowhere, where they find a bunch of people

living almost totally off the grid. All the money they earn went to medicines and everything else they got from gardening, foraging, or hunting. No one wanted for anything because someone else would just share their own and honestly, from the way he described his first few months of living there, it didn't sound all that bad. The group had like three different leaders, as well as a council, so there was no single messiah that anyone followed, like a Manson or whatever. There wasn't any immediate red flags, is what I'm trying to say, and far from it actually. It seemed like a really cool place at first. But then, a few months in, things started to get weird. So the closer it got

to the turn of the millennium, the more interest the group received from potential recruits. It might sound insane in retrospect, but back then, people were actually really frightened of the turning of the millennium. It was called Y2K, and it was a hugely popular theory back on the internet when it was still kind of in its infancy. The theory went that, and don't quote me on this, but when all the digital clocks went from 1999 to all zeros, computers were going to crash, planes were going to fall out of the sky. You get the idea. It turned out to be a bunch of nonsense, but in the run-up to it, a lot of otherwise very rational people started believing the hype.

Then, because of this, recruitment for the group ballooned over a real short of time. Wealthy middle-aged professionals were having nervous breakdowns, giving all their money to the group's council, then just living like wild men in some big tent. The group attracted another type of person too. People with histories of substance abuse and although the vast majority were good people who needed a different way to live, there were definitely some bad apples in there too. Before the big influx of new people, no one stole, there was no violence, and although there were a lot of pot and mushrooms and stuff, there was never any hard drug use. And that all changed very quickly.

Since people were free to come and go as they pleased, certain people would go back into the city, score some drugs and then just hitch their way back to the co-op so they could eat for free while freebasing or whatever they were doing. They also never did any work, which was a bigger problem than their drug use by a mile. This ended with a bunch of people getting kicked out, but instead of leaving, it turned violent and the bad apples only backed down at gunpoint. After they left though, lots of people were scared the bad apples would come back and they were right to be scared, because they did. And one night, a tent fire sent two

people to the hospital. Neither were smokers, there were no open flames and the scorch marks on the forest floor outside suggested the fire had been started outside with some kind of accelerant. It was no accident, it was a deliberate arson attack, possibly by one of the expelled former members. People were really angry. Some wanted to call the cops, others wanted to go after them and deliver some vigilante justice. The co-op's council was equally torn and they only agreed on one thing, that the local authorities would not be contacted for any purpose whatsoever. It was also decided by a vote of 5 to 2 that there'd be no kind of proactive retaliation, mostly for the same reasons as above. No one wanted to give the cops a reason to show up

and break up the party, and in all likelihood, a bunch of skanky junkies weren't exactly running to the boys in blue. It was the council's view that the best course of action would be to post armed guards around the co-op. That way, any interlopers, as you might call them, could be kept at bay, without risking the overall security of the co-op by giving away its position. You gotta keep in mind that these people were not supposed to be out there, just living out in the middle of the woods, and the co-op had grown so much that no one wanted to have to give it up. Safety and security was absolutely paramount, and nothing else mattered.

To cover the whole perimeter of the camp, almost all of the guns and all the experienced hunters needed to be shifted from actual hunting to co-op security. That meant that less food was coming into the co-op, which meant people got hungrier and hungrier, and in the end, people began to steal from each other. Then, when people began to steal from each other, violence increased by a hundredfold in a terrifyingly short period of time. People got beat up. One guy got his nose broken, and some other girl was stabbed with a little gardening fork. Meds started going missing too, all kinds of stuff, but mainly pain pills,

and it meant that a whole bunch of hungry, anxious people got even more fearful and frightened. And then, just when things seemed that they were just getting better, a girl that we'll call Amber went missing. My brother said that she left all of her stuff behind, just disappeared one night and was never seen again. Naturally, people were worried. People had already started leaving, but no one ever just left all their stuff behind like that, so obviously people were starting to really worry for her. Days went by, people went looking for her, and that's when they found one of the guys they expelled living out there on his own, living off food that had quite clearly come from the co-op's stores. I asked my brother how they knew this and he said it was because of the brand.

Either he'd gotten it from the stores or he'd gotten it from friggin North Carolina or something. It was something that you didn't see out west much, let's just put it that way. But then the thing that got people really mad, as in incredibly livid, was the fact that the guy had a piece of the missing girl's clothing in his possession. My brother said it was never really clear what it was or how he'd come into possession of it, but that the rumors were pretty gnarly. Some suggested he killed her, then took the clothing as a trophy, and as much as the guy denied it, no one seemed to believe him. The people that found him tried to bring it back to the co-op but in the struggle, the guy pulled a knife and then stabbed one of them.

They had to beat the hell out of this guy just to subdue him and the wounded man was taken to the hospital and the promise that he'd never tell a soul where the co-op was or who stabbed him. And that last part became real important. My brother said a select few from the co-op security team started questioning the guy, asking him where the missing girl was and why he had her clothing. It was sold on the co-op as an investigation, but they knew it was torture. They knew because they could hear him screaming through the trees.

The team had tried to take him as far away from the co-op as they could, but on a quiet, dreary day, they could still hear his faint cries for mercy as the security team worked him over. As brutal as it sounds, a lot of the co-op just didn't care. Even if the guy had nothing to do with Amber's disappearance, there was a chance that he was involved in the arson attack, something the co-op still wanted payback for. Even some of the more civilized of the co-op still wanted payback for. Even some of the more civilized

of the co-op members didn't condemn what was happening. They were that worn down from weeks of deprivation. If someone needed to get hurt to keep the co-op safe, then so be it. Then came the morning when everyone was roused from their tents or shelters, then summoned to what served as the co-op's town square. There was the prisoner, tied to a tree, beaten to a bloody pulp, but still alive. One of the co-op's leaders, and apparently by far the most hawkish of the bunch, told the gathered crowd that the guy had confessed to killing Amber, but was refusing to say what he'd done with the body. It was pretty obvious the guy would have told them anything they asked him to, just to get the torture to stop.

Then, right there in front of everyone, the council member announced that Amber's killer had been sentenced to death, and that his execution would serve as a warning to those both inside and outside the colony. My brother said it was almost impossible to believe that there was a part of him that thought it would be like a mock execution. He joined the co-op because the leadership comprised of some of the kindest, gentlest folks around, but here they were, just less than a year in, and the experience had almost completely transformed them. My brother never, ever believed

that they were capable of something so horrifying. Only, they were. And after the three-man firing squad took up position, aimed, and fired, the prisoner went limp before his clothes started soaking up the blood pouring from his chest. My brother wasn't the only one who thought the whole thing was just some kind of brutal theater. Screams came up from the crowd when the shots rang out and some started to weep when they realized just how far the co-op had fallen. After that, people started leaving in the middle of the night, just packing up their stuff and disappearing in way bigger numbers than they had before. It got to the point where certain co-op members were being told that they were core members, which was code for, you're not allowed to leave. Luckily, my brother and his girlfriend weren't on the list,

but they still departed under the ruse that they were headed into town to pick up some medicine. To make it look more believable, they all left their stuff behind, all of it. Then they walked to a nearby highway, then went to stay with some old friends over in Portland. A few weeks go by, all is quiet, so my brother's girlfriend figured that they might be able to go back to retrieve some of their stuff if it hadn't already been appropriated by the rest of the co-op. He calls her crazy, refuses to go, and begs her not to either. Like I just said, there was basically zero chance of her getting any of her stuff back, even the stuff with sentimental value, but she insisted on going alone, even in spite of all my brother's warnings. He figured that they'd either hurt her or somehow convince her to stay. So when she didn't arrive back in Portland when she said she would, he started to worry. Then at some point the next day, he sees a news report about a forest fire

and how firefighters had found three or four charred bodies out near what appeared to be some kind of ad hoc camping spot. The whole co-op, or whatever had been left of it, had been caught up in a forest fire, either deliberate or natural, and either Mia, my brother's girlfriend, had gotten caught up on it, or she decided to just duck out on him and break off a long-term relationship like she was a deadbeat dad stepping out to pick up some smokes. The people my brother had been staying with weren't exactly his friends so he wasn't welcome there much longer after Mia didn't come back.

And that's when he threw in the towel and made his way back to California, totally wiped. I guess for a lot of people, my brother's story makes for one of the craziest they'd ever heard. And I've had some people question whether or not it actually happened. We didn't see any pictures of the co-op, we didn't meet Mia, and I admit that no one actually knows where he was or what he was doing for that year my brother was missing, but I believe he was living off the grid, and I believe he saw some heavy stuff up there too. Because even after all this time, even after all the improvement he's made, he's still not quite the same guy that left for Oregon all those years ago. I know that no man or age is as full of life as they used to be, but if you'd seen my brother on the day he started college versus the day he came home from Oregon, you'd have seen it in his eyes.

He'd been through hell, and it had taken something from him. I think one of the most disturbing cases I worked as a detective involved a suspected serial killer. We just couldn't track the guy down, no matter how hard we tried, and this was in spite of having some very clear security camera footage of our suspect. He fit the description given to us to a tee, and we quickly moved a forensics team into position to try and obtain a usable fingerprint. We got one that we believed was our suspect's but feeding it through the state and federal databases yielded no matches. Since our victim mentioned grease under her attacker's fingernails, we also showed the guy's picture to every mechanic and machine shop in a tri-county

area. But again, we didn't have any luck. The guy paid cash during his transactions and to our knowledge, he didn't own any kind of vehicle either. For all intent and purpose, the guy was living completely off the grid, which as you can imagine, posed a huge problem for us. Digital investigative techniques are basically the mainstay of policing these days. Whether it be tracking the use of credit or debit cards, license plate recognition on major highways, or mapping out a suspect's movements using the pings from cell phone towers, gone are the days when we'd rely solely on witness statements and fingerprints. Sure, DNA is a big factor too, but being able to prove when a person was in a particular place,

along with why, is how you land those judicial two-punch combos that are almost guaranteed to put the bad guys in jail, usually for as long a spell as possible. But like I already said, we had none of that on this guy. Just a rough image of him with sunglasses and a beard that not a single person seemed to recognize. A few weeks in, we got another victim, telling almost the exact same story as the first, only with a drastically different physical description. We knew it was the same guy. He said all the same stuff to the victim, acted in the same way before and after the attack. Hell, he even had the same accent as our suspect. But without any way to track the guy down and put cuffs on him, he was free to operate with near impunity and if he kept up his current

rate, we were looking at dozens of separate assaults taking place over the following few months. It was a scary situation to be in as a police officer. An active perp, intelligent and motivated, and I didn't have the faintest first idea of how to pick up his trail. In the end, it was pure luck that got us our man. Local PD got a call from some abandoned house out in one of the poorer neighborhoods. Big old place, too, and it's been derelict for years. One of the neighbors said someone had been living there for quite a while, and they'd seen them coming in and out a couple of times. They always acted real strange and since the caller had seen one of the many appeals for information we'd put out there, they decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

Turns out the place had been the subject of another report a few weeks earlier, only this one had been completely disregarded. The call was from someone who sounded audibly disturbed and who claimed the house was haunted by something hungry, quote unquote. The dispatcher logged the call but neglected to dispatch any units on account of how downright crazy the person sounded. When contacted for questioning, the elderly lady who we assume the call came from claimed to have no recollection of it. It's still not clear how the call ties into the case, but we can only assume it does. Anyway, after the second call, a pair of uniformed officers are dispatched to investigate, and upon arriving, they commence a search of the derelict house. They search the ground and first floors and find nothing, but on their way out,

they discover an entrance to a basement covered up by an old dresser. They pull it away, rip open the door, creep down into the basement, then... There you go. They hit the mother load. There are two rooms down there, one that looked like it was stuffed with a whole load of junk, and another that was quite obviously a darkroom, you know, the kind old school photographers had to use. Someone had set up a bunch of battery-powered lanterns, each with red filters and pegged to a bunch of clotheslines, were photographs of at least a dozen different

women. Two were later confirmed as their victims, but at the time, the officers had no idea of their fine significance. Obviously, it's not illegal to keep a dark room, so our two uniformed officers weren't exactly rushing to call it in, but before they departed, they figured they better search the other basement room, the one with all the junk in it. And that's when they find an old refrigerator, the real tall and deep kind designed to feed larger suburban families. It didn't look out of the place among the other old trash down there, but regardless, something caught one of the officer's eyes during the search. Someone had drilled or bored holes into the fridge's doors. The officer approached, examined the unit for a moment, then pulled open

the door. Seconds later, they were calling in a moment, then pulled open the door. Seconds later, they were calling in a bunch of other police and medical units, with the dispatcher later saying that the cop in question sounded out of his mind with fright. Inside the fridge, the officer had found an 11-year-old girl. Whoever put her there had bound her hands and feet, gagged her, then left her inside with no access to food or water, and for lord knows how long too. When asked, the girl had no idea how long she'd been kept prisoner for, but was able to direct officers to both the places she was kidnapped and to the home of her parents. Shockingly, neither parent was even aware their daughter was missing, but leaving her to be staying at a friend's house. CPS got involved at a later date, and that's another story entirely, I guess.

Once we'd confirmed that the house was the residence, or at least one residence, of our suspect, we set up a surveillance team which included two undercover officers working in shifts. We were pretty sure the guy would return to the house at some point, but he didn't. We stalked the place for a whole week, but not a single person fitting our suspect's description went anywhere near the house, and in the end, we had to call the surveillance team off to work other cases. And that's where the case really starts to frighten me. I for one was so, so sure that we had him, but either we got extremely unlucky or he happened to be in the neighborhood at the time his young prisoner was found or one of two realities are true. Either our suspect was working in concert with another criminal or the suspect was or

continues to be a serving police officer. We had a few guys retire or leave the department over the next year or so, but no one I really liked to be our suspect. There was also no single officer whose off-duty time coincided with both attacks, which kind of fed into my double suspect theory, both without any serious evidence, leveling an accusation on a fellow officer would be a complete waste of time. It's been years now, and whoever attacked our two victims before kidnapping the third has still not been brought to justice. I believe that we're dealing with a sophisticated, non-pulsive criminal who had committed at least half a dozen attacks prior to the ones we dealt with. I also have no doubt in my mind that, barring certain unknowable variables, he's still subjecting young innocent women to ordeals they might never fully recover from.

I can only hope that's not the case. But if he's anywhere near as compulsive as I think he is, this is a man who threw his whole life away, choosing to live totally off the grid so he could carry on indulging in his despicable, predatory urges. One of the strangest and most chilling things that's ever happened to me is receiving an inheritance back when I had just turned 15. I used to have a great uncle who lived way up in Alaska. We called him Uncle Jerry. This was way back before FaceTime or Zoom or even reliable cell phone calls. So I think I met or spoke to Uncle Jerry all at once before he passed away.

He and my mom didn't get along very well. She called him crazy, said he didn't much like people, and that he lived quote-unquote off the grid out in the woods somewhere. I had no idea what that meant back then. I thought it might have been a football metaphor or something, but as I came to learn, it meant Uncle Jerry was just really crazy. So after he passed, I get this package in the mail. It was from Uncle Jerry's attorney or whoever he'd put in charge of his estate, and inside was a large cigar box looking thing. I took it out, opened it, and found the inside to be stuffed with all kinds of little

trinkets and knickknacks. There was a brief note explaining that Uncle Jerry wanted me to have it and that there was something very important inside that he wanted me to have too. But then, that's all it said. Nothing about which particular item it was and there was at least two dozen different bits and pieces. I remember carefully taking them all out of the box one by one, examining each thing carefully to try to work out if it was the special item. I remember there was a tiny little monkey figure in there, some old war metal, foreign currency that I couldn't recognize, then a bunch more random stuff that honestly felt like old junk. But then, once it was almost emptied, I saw what looked like another little note, stashed right at the bottom of the box.

Figuring that it might be a clue or something, I pulled out the little fold of paper, only to discover that it's a kind of origami envelope. I unfolded it, carefully as I could, and I remember recoiling a little bit as a bunch of hair fell out. It was all jet black, straight like horse hair, and on the inside of the paper, there were indeed a few lines of writing. I can't remember what Uncle Jerry had written word for word but I know that I'll never forget the gist of it, not until I'm as cold as a dead body in the grave. It said, Nephew, this hair belongs to a man I killed. Do not show your mom or dad, they will take it from

you. It's important that you keep it always, because if you die with it on your person, the man I killed will be your slave in the next world. I'll see you soon. If I'm being honest, it was the see you soon part that really freaked me out at the time. Was he actually dead or was Uncle Jerry about to start haunting us? I didn't think he was for real about killing someone. I mean the way I saw it, if he killed a man he'd be in prison for it, right? The first part didn't spook me as much as the last line but Jesus Christ did it spook my mom who took the box and the hair straight to the cops and forbid Uncle Jerry's name ever to be mentioned in her house again.

I have no idea if it was some elaborate prank from beyond the grave or if my Uncle Jerry really was some deranged psycho. I just hope that if it's the second one, it's not hereditary in any way. To be continued... It was my third year of elementary school, and with my dad working odd shifts, he sometimes came to pick me up from school. Then this one time, he turns up with my grandma, which was always a welcome surprise. He had to drop her off somewhere on the way home, and she'd be coming back to our place for dinner once she was done. Grandma didn't walk so good back then, as this was back before her hip operation, so more often than not, she needed help getting up large

or particularly steep flights of stairs. When we got to wherever we needed to drop Grandma off, we asked my dad if he'd accompany her up the front steps. He obviously wasn't about to say no, so he got out, helped her from the car, and started walking her towards the front steps. He obviously wasn't about to say no, so he got out, helped her from the car, and started walking her towards the stairway. It was only steps away from the car, so apparently my dad thought nothing of leaving the keys to own the ignition, but I was way too small to notice, and even if I did, I don't think that I'd have the wherewithal to really spot the

risk. So, they're out of the car, and I don't know what it was that caught my eye, but I lean forward and to the back to try and reach something under the front seat. It must have been a Pokemon card or Pog or something, because I remember straining really hard for it when, suddenly, someone got back into the driver's seat. This causes me to sit back up in my seat, expecting to see the back of my dad's head in front of me. Only when I look, it's not the back of my dad's head. A total stranger had climbed into the car and I watched in horror as they closed the driver's side door again and started up the car. I was too stunned to speak at first and I remember thinking to myself, is this supposed to happen?

I mean, for a dude to just so brazenly get into my dad's car like that, there had to be some kind of reason for it, right? But then, as he closed the door and started the engine, obviously intending to drive off, I realized something else was going on. Something very bad. When I finally found it in myself to speak, I sort of stammered out something like, please don't. I thought the guy might not have known that I was there and he only

wanted the car. If he knew I was, then maybe he'd let me out so he could drive off without accidentally kidnapping someone. But then the moment I spoke, he said, shut up, and then just drove off with me screaming in the back seat. It's important to note that my dad's SUV had child locks on the rear doors, and with my little sister being a few years younger than 8-year-old me, he kept them locked all the time. So, if I was going to get out, the guy needed to disengage the child locks, and that's how I ended up trapped and unable to escape when I had the chance. As the guy drives off, I'm just wailing like a banshee in the backseat of my dad's SUV, begging this guy to let me go after it dawns on me that he might actually want me too, not just the car. I'm screaming, but the whole time he's screaming back at me to shut the F up or he's going to kill me. All this other terrifying stuff. I don't know how long this

went on for, but I was definitely crying by the time the guy slammed on the brakes, which threw me off my seat because I'd taken my seatbelt off. I was thrown forward into the seat in front of me, and I remember it hurting really bad, but before I had a chance to wonder if anything was broken or not, I heard the distinct sound of the child lock disengaging. The back doors were open, and my escape route was assured. I scrambled to get to the door handle, all to the sound of the car thief in the front seat screaming, Get the hell out of my car right effing now, kid. He did not need to tell me twice.

I ran screaming back up the street, not even bothering to close the door behind me, which I think probably closed on its own from the sheer momentum of the guy zooming off in my dad's car. I ran, and ran, and kept running until I met my dad in the street, who was in the same kind of hysterics that I was. I remember my dad being in tears too, and I'm not sure who gave us a ride back home, be it a cab or a good Samaritan or something, but the next thing I remember is hugging my mom, crying a lot, and then my dad carrying me to bed so I could sleep the whole thing off. It's a memory that's stayed with me for a long time, and I honestly think it's had a profound effect on how I developed as a person. I won't bore you with all the details on that, as I guess they probably belong in another thread, but in terms of recalling how I felt that day, it's something that I used to revisit daily,

and a lot of that is down to the fact that they never caught the guy who stole my dad's SUV. This was way back before microchipped cars and stuff like that, and we used to live in a pretty shady area of Newark, so I my mind, this guy's just walking around New Jersey, waiting to bump into me so I can relive that same crippling terror all over again. Obviously, that didn't ever happen. The odds would be astronomical, but the possibility haunted me, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. This might be the most important story I ever tell, so listen up and listen good. A few months ago now, I was in the shower washing the old crown jewels when I felt a bit of painful twinge coming from my right plum. Now given that I was washing a particularly sensitive part of the male anatomy, I just thought that I'd been too overzealous and had accidentally

injured myself. After I got out of the shower, my right testicle felt a bit swollen and sore, but as anybody will tell you, they're prone to do that after you get a bit of a knock. Anyway, a few days go by and the problem doesn't really seem to go away. There was no pain or anything, but I definitely noticed a difference in size between the two. My right plum still felt quite rigid, while my left one felt unusually small. Now what I didn't feel on either of them were any scary lumps or anything like that. As men, we're told to check for lumps on our testes on a regular basis, but I didn't feel any lumps, so that was a huge weight off my mind, and I figured the whole thing would just go away if I just got some rest and just sort of protected that general area.

After about a month of having the same medical issue, I finally decided to give the doctors a ring. I know we're warned not to do this, but I'd looked up my symptoms online and decided it was one of two things. One required surgery, which was very scary, while another just needed antibiotics, which wasn't as scary. So, while crossing all my fingers and toes that it was the condition that required the old sleepy, sleepy, choppy, choppy, I booked myself a doctor's appointment before attending it on the next day. I got called into the doctor's office, told him what the issue was, and then was told that I needed to be examined. Because of the sensitive nature of the examination,

physically and ethically, I was told that there had to be a chaperone present. So minutes later, in walks this guy who looked like he was just on work experience and he looked terrified. He'd obviously been told, Sorry, but you're going to have to watch me examine this patient's, you know, old jewels just in case I start touching him. It's a very professional way of doing things and keeps doctors accountable, but my god, this guy really didn't want to be there. Weirdly enough, that made me feel a lot better about the whole thing having seen that there was someone in the room even more nervous than I was. I even cracked a joke to him, telling him that I hoped that he'd already had his lunch for the day. I got a smile going and after that the atmosphere got quite relaxed.

Well, as relaxed as they were ever going to be given the circumstances. So the doctor had a little look at myself and did a bit of poking and prodding and then told me what he'd found. He too couldn't find any lumps but there was still an obvious size difference in rigidity to my right testy. I needed some kind of treatment alright, he just didn't know what. It was about this time that I asked him, so you don't think it's the big C then right? Obviously referring to cancer and he told me no. According to the doctor, if it was indeed the big C, it'd be the first kind that he'd ever seen that manifested itself with no other symptoms. Speaking of which, some of the symptoms

of testicular cancer are really scary. The doctor asked me about my new headaches, new pains in my lower back, both of which I wasn't experiencing. But then he asked me if I'd had, and I'll try to phrase this in a way that's less gross and more amusing, leaky nipples. There wasn't all that much time to process what he just said, and since I hadn't had any leakage, I just told him no and we moved on. Then at the end of my appointment, the doctor told me that I didn't have too much to worry about, but that he was going to put me on what Britain's National Health Service calls the cancer pathway. I was told not to let the terminology spook me too much, as it was merely the medical pathway that all men are sent down

when there are mysterious but concerning problems with, you know, the stuff downstairs. I tell him okay. I thank him. Then I leave the office and head home. About three weeks later, I get a call from a nurse asking me to come in for an ultrasound. There were still no pains down there, but the problem still hadn't gone away so as you can imagine I was very keen to get things sorted as quickly as possible. On the day itself I head down to the hospital, I get my ultrasound and then this very pleasant Indian doctor calls me

into his office. I should have known that I was about to get bad news as this guy was like a walking ASMR YouTube channel. Honestly, everything from the way he tapped his pen on his palm to the ultra-calm, slightly accented English that he spoke with was like it was tailor-made to keep a person just chill, even in the face of something, well, I'll just tell you. The doctor sat me down, talked me through the ultrasound results, then hit me with the news in such a jumbled, drip-feed way that it was slightly disorienting. The mass in my right test wasn't confirmed as being cancer, but the medical playbook said to remove the whole thing so as to not take any chances. There was a minuscule chance that it wasn't cancer, and with some other undiagnosable issue,

but the longer it stayed in my body, the higher the risk of it spreading. It was a better safe than sorry kind of deal, and when it actually hit me that I was going to have one of my balls removed, I literally felt the color drain from my face. I tried to act as calm and collected as I could possibly manage, but I still felt like I was about to fall out of my chair. I mean that literally too, like I kept leaning forward to listen to the doctor more intently and in the end, a pinch more lean and I'd have toppled out of my chair. Shell-shocked is the word I wanted to use, not shocking. Shocking is when some Hollywood starlet is discovered to be lying about domestic abuse, whereas finding out you need to have a body part chopped off to save your life, that's another feeling entirely.

What brought me back was the doctor saying, I'm so sorry, after I'd been quiet for a minute or two. I don't quite know what came over me, but I suddenly felt incredibly sorry for the doctor who had been forced to give me the news. Slight tangent, but I'd actually dated a hematology consultant during lockdown and one of the big parts of her job was telling people that they had cancer. Blood cancer too. Not nearly as simple as testicular cancer. I realized I felt incredibly bad for her and it made sense why she was so keen on getting a bottle of wine or two on a Friday night. She spent all week telling people that they were dying and she was

only barely staying psychologically afloat. And maybe that's what did it, thinking of her and not wanting this doctor to feel that same sort of guilt. I understand they've got nothing to feel guilty about but trying to explain that to someone who had to deliver bad news day in and day out is not nearly as simple as it seems. To cap things off, I have my orchidectomy on the 29th of this month, March 2023 actually, and it was a pleasant surprise to learn of how simple a procedure it is. They go in through the groin, pull the bad ball out, and replace it with a prosthetic. Survivors all over the world say the same thing. It doesn't feel any different, and it doesn't look any different, and unless you have both testes removed, there's no need for testosterone supplements or anything like that.

I suppose this is probably one of the weirder answers to scariest event of your life, because as terrifying as it was for me, my message here should be a plain and simple one and that message is don't be scared. After having lived with the news for a few weeks now and after having done quite a bit of research on it I want to implore every single man especially if you're around my age of 30 to have a quick check of your privates. Don't wait. Don't put it off. Just do it now. You're going to feel all kinds of weird squishy stuff down there. Don't let it psych you out.

Squishy and sensitive is normal. Hard and not so sensitive is bad news, and you need to get your butt down to your doctors as soon as possible. Testicular cancer has a 95% survival rate for a reason. If you get an early diagnosis, you got nothing to worry about. Well, aside from a few jokes from your friends about having a bionic ball bag. Thanks, Danny. Or if my prosthetic testicle comes with a built-in Wi-Fi.

Thanks again, Danny. So again, let me end with not so much of a warning, but a bit of reassurance. Boys, please check your bits. Check them often, check them thoroughly. Don't be one of those people who puts off a doctor's appointment out of embarrassment or shame or even sheer idleness. Because when it comes down to a choice of lose your testicle

or lose your life, the choice suddenly becomes a very simple one. So I used to work in a museum that closed fairly late. During summer we'd be open until about 10pm and living in the city I unfortunately had to always pass very crowded places in order to get home. This happened when I stopped to get some food in a restaurant near a shopping center on my way home. As I left the tram, a guy immediately stopped me to ask for a donation. We had a very short conversation, but before we finished, two guys, seemingly older than me, I was 20, they could have been like maybe 30, that both had a very large muscular build stopped by and started asking me weird questions. They were both holding beers but neither of them acted drunk per se, which means they were creeps by nature.

At first they commented on my blue hair, telling me how much they loved it, which is fine. Then they asked if this guy that was still awkwardly standing there was my brother and so on. Thankfully they left soon after. I made my donation and started making my way towards the restaurant again. I didn't notice them at first due to the place being overcrowded, but right in front of the restaurant they stopped me again. This time their questions got a little creepier. They asked me if I would be willing to perform all kinds of intimate acts on them since they're here to have fun and I was apparently very attractive to them. They kept being awfully pushy, saying that I should suck them right there on the spot. I tried to walk away but they just blocked my path.

Then they asked me for my number. Me being anxious and hoping they'll just let me go if I obey, I gave it to them and indeed, they let me pass. As soon as I entered the restaurant, I started getting spam calls so I immediately blocked their numbers. I messaged my boyfriend asking him to pick me up. I don't think I ever felt that scared before. Planning to stay inside the restaurant till my boyfriend comes didn't work out however as one of them later literally entered the completely full restaurant, came up to me, and started inappropriately touching me, hugging me, and even tried to kiss me. I was so dumb that I didn't scream or say anything, I just tried to push him away but

otherwise I was just frozen in place and insanely scared due to his large build. It's insane to me that I clearly tried fighting him off as everyone around us just looked away or silently watched. I even let out a sort of help and stop a couple of times. Clearly he got tired of that and decided to take it one step further by literally dragging me out full force. I felt like at that point I'll just get kidnapped and no one's going to do a thing. Thankfully, after all that time, a group of girls that I'd never met before entered the restaurant and said something along the lines of me having to go because we all have plans for the evening together and thank God he just let go and left without a word.

It baffles me that I could have gotten kidnapped or God knows what else in the middle of a place completely full of people. And needless to say, I hugged those girls like I never hugged anyone before and left them only like a half hour later when my boyfriend finally came. I left my job and literally never returned to that place, being awfully paranoid even now, two years later. 9 years ago today, I was working as a tree surgeon in my hometown of Limerick here in Ireland. The firm that I was working for got a job in a nice quiet part of the suburbs, as you Americans would say, only instead of these nice wide streets like you have over in the States, over here we have these little narrow

winding ones that were laid out before cars were even a thing. They're very quaint and charming, don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to have been born in such a beautiful place, but they're a right bugger to work in and the street in question was so small that we didn't even have space to park a wood chipper. That meant that I had to cut all the smaller branches inside of our trailer so that we had enough space to transport them all away. A lot of people would since ask me why I'd do something with an increased risk for just the sake of leaving a neat and tidy job site, but the simple truth is, if you leave a load of wood and sawdust around, you'll simply not be paid for your work. On top of that, using the

chainsaw inside of a trailer, which was just the smallish kind that you see on the back of four wheel drives, was something that we'd done many times before without incident. All you have to do is keep the blades away from the metal sides of the trailer and you're grand. And I was grand, right up until I wasn't. Honestly, I have no idea how it happened. All I remembered is a sudden jolt through my brains, then what felt like a punch to my throat. There was a moment of confusion because the impact wasn't that painful, but I knew that I'd hurt myself somehow because I could feel the top of my t-shirt getting all warm and wet. I stepped down from the trailer and that's when I saw just how much I was bleeding. Then when I tried to take a breath, it felt labored.

My boss was standing just a few feet away, but then before I could reach out to grab him, someone else shouted something about an accident and he turned around to see me. The look on his face said it all. He turned white as a sheet, then lunged for my neck, clamping both hands over what I realized was a wound. And that's when I knew how bad it was. When everyone started screaming and shouting, seeing my own blood just didn't do it for some reason. But hearing everyone's terror drove the point home. I was literally dying. One of the lads that I was working with at the time, a Polish guy that he was, he suddenly appears with the first aid kit that we kept in the van,

and then he pulled out some kind of gauze bandage and started wrapping it around my neck. He was trying his best to stop the bleeding, to the point that my boss was scared that he was going to throttle me and I was just lying there, letting him do his thing with this really weird sense of calm having come over me. I appreciated everything that they were doing for me, trying to save my life and all that, but come on. I cut my bloody throat open like and I was convinced that I was a goner. I remember listening to one of the other lads calling 999 telling the person on the other end how badly we needed the ambulance and thinking how sad it was that those words would be the last that I'd ever hear. Not sad like boo hoo. I mean sad like what a bollocks end to my life.

Some crappy accident at work. Any second now I thought.ocks end to my life. Some crappy accident at work. Any second now, I thought. I'll close my eyes. It'll be just like going to sleep. And when I open them again, I'll be with my nana and granddad. It's so spooky thinking back on it now because it's the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. I don't know where all the calmness came from. I had no idea that I had it in me.

But then the minutes went by and I'm thinking, alright, I don't know where all the calmness came from. I had no idea that I had it in me. But then the minutes went by and I'm thinking, alright, I don't feel so terrible. I can still breathe and all that. Maybe I'll survive for a bit. A few minutes later I started hearing sirens and the lads are going, this is you now. Hang on big man, you'll be alright. All that kind of stuff. The paramedics got me on a stretcher, stuck something in my arm, then loaded me onto the back of the ambulance. One of the lads were allowed in with me and he kept all the words of encouragement as he went. I just remember looking at my legs the whole time, then having to squint all these lights that were in my face. The last thing I remember before everything went black was a doctor telling me that they were about to put me to sleep so they could have a look at my neck. His last words to

me were, everything's going to be fine. And I distinctly remember thinking, you liar. Turns out he wasn't lying. And I woke up God knows how long after with my neck all wrapped up in gauze. I thought I'd be in the hospital for a month getting well again but I was only in there for a week. I can promise you though it felt a lot longer than that. The worst part of every day was when I had to get my tracheostomy dressing changed. It wasn't all that painful but it was psychologically horrible because you can feel where there's a bloody great hole in your neck. And apart from that though, I'm honestly quite surprised at myself for how I handled the whole thing.

Like I said before, it's honestly really frightening to think back to how calm I was about losing my life. It felt like more of an annoyance or inconvenience than anything tragic or scary and the recovery was a hundred times worse than the accident itself. The doctors tested me for PTSD and all that kind of stuff in the months that followed, but I honestly think all the lads that I was working with came off worse than me in that department. A good example would be when I went back to work. I said I didn't mind getting back on the saws if it wasn't cooped up in the trailer, but my boss was having none of it. That was three weeks later. Just three weeks and that's the craziest part to me. You think that being close to dying would mean more of a recovery time and I suppose I would have been entitled to more time off but the idea of sitting around on my butt doing nothing was fit to drive me mad.

I just wanted to get back to work and forget about the whole thing and I know that sounds insane considering I had the accident there but I wanted to sort of reclaim my work from the trauma so to speak. I wanted to nip that fear in the bud so that the sight of a chainsaw wouldn't come to bloody haunt me or something. I'm sorry. Sometimes, I feel like I can divide my life into two distinct categories. There's everything that came before October 28th of 2004 and everything that came after. I've never had trouble remembering the exact date because it was the day after the Red Sox won their first World Series in almost 100 years. I lived in Westfield at the time, working as a bartender and living with my mom so I could save money for college. My dad had died years before, so it had always just been me and my mom, and as much as we had

a great relationship growing up, things had gotten a little strained as I transitioned from my late teens to my early 20s. It began around the same time that she started watching The Gilmore Girls, and I guess she just got wrapped up in the idea that at some point in the near future, I was going to leave her. It was a totally irrational fear, and I was constantly reassuring her that we could visit each other frequently, but I came to dread that I'll follow you anywhere theme song because it inevitably meant that another bout of hysteria was on the way. The night after the World Series win consisted of another Gilmore Girls marathon and I came home to find my mom in another one of her funks. All it

took was telling her that I was seriously considering Amherst which was only about 30 minutes drive away and she was feeling herself again. Honestly, I really was considering applying and it would save me a ton of money if I could stay living with my mom so it wasn't like I had to lie to her or anything. After that, I fixed myself a plate of leftovers and convinced my mom to turn over from the Gilmore Girls and we shared a few laughs watching drunk Red Sox fans injure themselves during the previous night's celebrations. I went to bed at around 11pm, leaving mom nursing one last glass of wine on the couch, and then I climbed into bed and fell asleep, having no idea that everything was about to change.

The next thing I remember is being woken up by my mom. She was leaning up against the side of the bed, one bloody arm covering up her stomach and she was begging me to call 911. I just grabbed my phone and dialed not stopping to think or question anything until I had to tell the dispatcher exactly how my mom was injured. I'll always remember the moment she screwed up her face in pain and said, he stabbed me, he stabbed me. Upon learning this, the dispatcher needed to know if the attacker was still in the house.

I remember telling her that I didn't know while slamming my bedroom door shut. I was leaning up against it, wondering if a knife would split the thin wood and plunge into my back if whoever it was decided to pursue us into the room. I couldn't hear anyone moving downstairs or out in the hallway, but I still didn't actually know if the house was empty aside from us, so we had to wait until the cops turned up to clear the house before the EMTs could even get to my mom. And by that time, there was a truly terrifying and horrifying amount of blood pooling underneath her

to the point that I couldn't sleep in my old bedroom while the stain was still there. But that's skipping ahead a little bit I guess because the true horror came while my mom was in the hospital. Obviously I accompanied her in the back of the ambulance, holding onto her hand and telling her to hang in there. The cops hadn't found anyone in the house but the initial story was that mom had fallen asleep on the couch before disturbing some skittish robber in the act He lashes out, stabs her a bunch and then just flees before getting to anything valuable At which point my mom crawls upstairs holding her guts with one arm and tells me to call 911 That was the story we had going into the hospital, but as the night bled into

early morning, the narrative that I knew began to shift completely. I think it must have been approaching 8 or 9 in the morning and the adrenaline crash had my head nodding as I sat in some waiting room chair. A doctor walked in, accompanied by a police officer, and they asked if they could speak to me in private. Of course, I went with them into the doctor's office, but when they insisted that I take a seat before they spoke, I knew that it was going to be bad news. I remember telling them, she didn't make it, just tell me now. But they assured me that she was fine and that the emergency surgery had been completely successful. Sure, she might need a colostomy bag for a month or two, but aside from that, there were no complications and she was expected to make a full recovery.

But that wasn't what they wanted to talk to me about. Not really. They had something else in mind. Both the doctor and the police officer had a very serious air about them and the doctor sighed before asking me, to your knowledge, has your mother ever attempted to harm herself in any way? I was smart enough to recognize that that was a loaded question and I just sat there in silence for a few seconds before I finally shook my head. I didn't know how exactly they were doing so, but I knew that they were suggesting that my mom had stabbed herself. I tried to repeat the whole someone broke in and attacked her thing, and that's when the cop interrupted with a few shakes of his head.

He told me that there was no evidence that anyone had been in the house except for me and my mom, and that all signs pointed to it being some kind of her attempting to take her own life. I was in a complete and utter state of denial at first. I flat out refused to believe that my mom was capable of something like that, and essentially accused the cops and the doctors of making a huge mistake. When they doubled down on it, I accused them of being incompetent. It took a long time for me to finally accept that what they were telling me might actually be the truth and that it might possibly be down to me to get her to admit the truth.

I was 22. Just 22 years old and these two grown adult men were telling me that I had to do their job for them. It makes much more sense to me now. She was much more likely to open up to me than anyone else, but I still didn't quite believe that she was capable of such a thing. I was still convinced that there had to be some kind of mistake. If anything, I wanted to ask her just so I could hear her tell me, no, I don't know what those idiots are talking about. Someone attacked me. Only she couldn't tell me that, not repeatedly anyway, because it wasn't true. She had hurt herself. It might have taken days for her to finally admit it, but she did. And when she did, I felt my heart break in my chest. I mean that in the truest sense too. It was a physical sensation. I couldn't make sense of why she'd go and do something so horrible to herself until it hit me.

She did it because she didn't want me to leave. I have a sense that some of you are going to think that's strangely heartwarming or wholesome in a way, and that it was all just a manifestation of their mother's love. I had one aunt give me some barely veiled comment about how it was basically my fault that she was so scared to be alone that it had driven her crazy. Maybe some of it is leftover darkness from your father passing, she said, and all I hear from other people is that I have to be patient and understanding. Mental illness shouldn't have a stigma attached to it. And they're right. I 1000% agree with that. But I feel like a prisoner now. Mom spent a few weeks in a kind of low security psychiatric

hospital, a super modern one that looked more like a rehab or a three-star resort than a hospital or a prison. The doctors just said that she was exhausted and that she'd been hiding her depression from us until one day it just all boiled over. She was released but stayed on her meds for a few months until she was well enough to wean herself off of them. I took care of her. We all did. She has a lot of sisters, which makes for an amazing support network, but the whole time I found myself feeling this sort of residual contempt for her. No matter where I go or what I do with my life, I know that I'll never be able to stray too far from her for any considerable length of time. I like having her close, but it also kind of feels

like I have a very needy second child. She's much better these days, and I honestly don't think she'd try anything like that again, but the fear is always there for me. I guess I probably need to get some therapy or something. Maybe all my anger is just a way of me dealing with how terrified I am of losing her. I love my mom a lot, and to think my relationship with her could just be snatched away because of something dark that's festering in her own mind, that's just about the most frightening thing that I can possibly think of. This all started in the fall of 1998.

I don't remember much as I was eight, but I do know what my aunt told me, and now that it's been so long, it's probably safe to tell. She and my now ex-uncle lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in a fairly nicer area of town. There were definitely some more crime-ridden areas not far from there, but the complex was gated and you needed the code to get in. Anyway, around early October, quite a few people, including my aunt, started reporting seeing a suspicious man around the complex. He was caught looking into windows of people's apartments and their cars as well as the storage areas, and management was able to confirm that he didn't live there. This all happened until around Halloween when things really went off the rails.

According to my uncle, he caught the man snooping around by my aunt's car and decided to confront him, and the man ran away. Again, this was hearsay from my uncle. When he ran, he dropped a bag that my uncle brought into their apartment. He wouldn't let my aunt open it and claim that he was going to turn it into the police, which we thought that he had as one day he no longer had this bag anymore. And months go by and this man is still creeping around but only near my aunt and uncle's apartments, cars, and storage area and nowhere else. My aunt had called the police

many times and by the time they'd show up, the man would always be gone. Now it's January of 1999, and here's the part that I remember as I was at my Nana's when this happened. My aunt called my grandpa in hysterics. She caught the man with his face pressed on the glass of her bedroom window, watching her while my uncle was away on a work trip, and when he realized that he was caught, he tried to break open her window and get inside. My grandpa grabbed his.45 and headed out to the car with my nana and I was following him all the way begging him to let the cops handle it and if he was going to go anyways to just leave his gun at home but he didn't. It took quite a few hours for my grandpa to finally return home but when he, this is what he told us.

This man was in the apartment complex dealing drugs. My uncle stole his supply and refused to give it back or pay him for it, and we later found out that it was because he was using it himself as well as selling. So he was planning to kidnap my aunt, among other things, to get his money. I'd like to say that this is the thing that made her divorce him, but unfortunately they stayed married for another ten more years after this. This happened shortly after bars were reopening after the lockdowns. I went to a dive bar near 82nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon. It was terrible, but they were one of the only bars that had karaoke that early after

lockdowns eased. I sang my song and walk over to the bar for a drink, chatting with the bartender when a man approaches me. I'm a large man, about 6'2 and a little over 200 pounds, but this guy dwarfed me. He was probably 6'6 and easily 280 pounds or more, probably 30 to 35 years old. Huge and muscular, old man strength, and he was wearing a face mask. Very common, but he was the only one at the bar doing it. He'd been wearing this mask so long that it was dirty, and the part of the mask in front of his mouth was visibly wet from his saliva and breath. It was pretty gross and he just had very cold dead eyes. He asked me if I lifted weights and I did and he questioned me about how much he could lift in my bench, squat,

and all that kind of stuff. He came off as socially awkward immediately but no big deal. He then bragged about how much he could lift. He said that he could bench something like 350 pounds, he said, and at one point he even did a bodybuilding pose, flexing his arms to his sides and encouraging me to squeeze them. I played along and did. He seemed weird, possibly on the spectrum, I guess, but dive bars are filled with weird people, so I indulged him and let him talk. The conversation continued, and he said more and more strange things, which I just tried to listen to non-judgmentally. He told me how he used to be a professional baseball player. He told me how he used to be a police officer. He told me about his drinking

habits and how he drank 25 beers that day. Not impossible for a dude his size, I thought. At this point, I feel this guy is really strange, probably completely full of it, and even makes me a little uncomfortable, but I maintained a calm demeanor because I was also curious what else he had to say. And that's when he shifted to talking about women. He said he'd noticed how I'd talked with the female bartender and how we had a nice rapport. He asked me about how to talk to women, what kinds of things to talk about, and then came the first real red flag when he said, but how do you get them to trust you? I tried to keep a straight, non-judgmental face through at this rather alarming question.

At this point, I didn't think he was dangerous, but I didn't feel good about teaching someone how to behave to gain someone's trust. But I also felt like I needed to keep him talking, so I just said generic things about being honest and caring as opposed to specific things to do or say. And then it gets weirder. He asked me if I liked to enter from the back door. I said, and truthfully, I didn't know, as at that point I never actually tried it. He tells me he likes it, a lot. It's his preferred method. Then he continued saying that he likes to go to the mall to pick up young women, 18 or 19, he said, right on the edge of legal, but I immediately wondered if he went younger. He said he'd buy them things and then try to get them to the back of his truck

where he would do those kinds of things with them, implying that it was consensual, but I had doubts. At this point, I'm convinced I'm likely talking with some sort of sociopath and alarm bells inside are going off like crazy, but I wanted to get him to admit to a crime so I can try and tell an authority or something substantive. Then came the final straw that makes me lose my cool. He looks at me and slowly says, I've done bad things.

He looks down. I've done some really bad things. He looks down. I've done some really bad things. I'm freaking out inside but want him to tell me. I ask him as cool and non-judgmental as possible. What kind of bad things? But my body language must have communicated that I was neither cool nor judgmental and he shut down and conversation ended shortly after. I went home that night and looked up the name he gave me. Surely a former baseball player or police officer would have some kind of online record but nothing came up. I'll never forget that encounter and regret not figuring out a way to ID him and failing to keep my cool enough to get him to admit to a crime.

I wonder if he's still out there luring young women to his truck. All I can say is be safe. The scariest thing that's ever happened to me, a 39-year-old male, took place over the course of about six to eight weeks during the summer of 2018. Around mid-July, New England had this amazing stretch of good weather which my wife and I took full advantage of. There's little we love more than a nice hike when the weather affords it, but in New England, periods of consistently fair weather can be as rare as hen's teeth. We must have gone hiking three times in nine days, sometimes working half days before hiking in the afternoons, and by the end of what was a very fun couple of trips, I was completely and utterly exhausted. It was a good kind of exhausted at first, the kind that allows you to indulge in a good old recovery day of hot showers, bathrobes, and slippers. But when I still felt lethargic after a state dinner and a good night's sleep, I realized that something was wrong.

I tried going back to work, but the symptoms got worse. Exhaustion turned to headaches and shivers, and I took a few days off of work. I loaded on Motrin and chicken soup, then spent two days watching Shark Tank highlights from the comfort of my couch, but I still didn't feel any better. In fact, over the course of the next few days, I felt even worse. I called my boss, told him that I wasn't going to be in for the rest of the week, then spent hours at a time just puking my guts up while hugging my toilet bowl. It was horrible, but honestly just kind of chalked it up to something I'd eaten. And when the symptoms suddenly disappeared, I figured that I was over the worst of it.

But Jesus, was I wrong. I was about a week in the clear, back to work and my usual routine when I woke up in the middle of the night with the mother of all headaches. I had to take a ton of painkillers to just get back to sleep and when I woke up several hours later, I felt even worse. I tried to get out of bed to get myself a glass of water, only to find that my legs wouldn't hold my weight. Or rather, they could, but only for a few steps before they felt so weak that I had to sit down. Bringing up my doctor's number was almost impossible as trying to focus on my phone

screen made my head spin and ache. In the end, I had to get my wife to do it for me, and we arranged for a home visit later on that morning. When we arrived, we told him everything, and that included compiling a list of everything we'd done, everything we'd eaten, and everywhere we'd gone in the weeks prior. The doctor looked it over with my wife, saying that he suddenly started to get this lightbulb moment look in his eyes. He then asked my wife to take off my socks and roll up the legs of my PJs, and within less than a minute, he'd found the culprit. Just above my ankle, right where my hiking sock would have ended, was a tiny little wound. It was a tick bite, a tiny one,

but the really frightening thing is how something so small almost changed my entire life. Most tick bites are just an irritation, this one I barely even felt, but it just so happened to give me a disease that I honestly wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Tick-borne encephalitis, from what I understand. It makes your brain swell up, which is most definitely not good for it. And that's what caused my second round of symptoms, and it's what makes the disease so cruel in a way. You think you're all better again, and then just out of nowhere, it hits you with that part that's even worse. There's no actual treatment for it either, you just manage the pain, drink plenty of water, and with most people it just goes away on its own. So all in

all, I think I was off of work for a month in total, maybe a few days more, but I was one of the lucky ones who made a full recovery. Other people, they don't get so lucky, but I guess that's a whole other story and something I definitely don't want to think about. The scariest part by far was not knowing what was wrong with me. I mean, the way it affected me physically, then mentally, I honestly felt like I was turning into a zombie or something. I could feel myself getting weaker and how it got harder and harder to even think coherent thoughts. Like I said, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemies, so please, wear long pants while you're out hiking. Swamp butt can suck, I feel your pain, but a little diaper rash is a lot more preferable than having your whole brain swell up. Trust me on that one. I'm sorry. Back when I was in middle school, newly 14 to be exact, I used to live way out in the woods,

about 15 minutes drive away from the nearest small town. There were a lot of houses dotted around like that and one of them belonged to a friend of my dad's. So when he goes away for two weeks one winter, me and my dad volunteered to watch his place for him. It was totally because we were just good, selfish folks, and not because his place was twice the size of ours, and complete with a hot tub. It was totally just because of how cool we were.

Anyway, it was midweek, and I'd just finished school, but the bus only dropped me off at the start of this long dirt track which led to the house we were sitting. I say long and I mean long because it was at least half a mile before you came to the house and about halfway down the walk, I hear a vehicle of some kind coming up behind me. I figured it was just my dad so I turned around to wave to him but when I looked, I saw it wasn't him. Some random guy in a truck then pulls up alongside me and starts asking me directions to some place I'd never heard of. I think I just shrugged, told the guy I couldn't

help him then carried on walking down the track towards the house. The guy then pulls up alongside me again and asks where I'm going. I'm still not all too suspicious of this guy at this point. Call it a small town mentality, but I just didn't grow up worrying about predators or perverts like a lot of my city friends did. Those kinds of things only happen in the big city, at least that's the way some folks around town saw things. But I came to learn first hand how that's not the case. When I pointed down the dirt track in the direction of the house I was sitting with my dad, the guy gave me this sort of weird look.

He said he couldn't see the house so I must have a long way to walk and it would be a bad thing of him not to give me a ride the rest of the way. I assured him that it was only a few minutes walk and that I didn't need a ride anywhere, but he insisted, giving me some lame excuse like, I wouldn't be able to sleep if I just let you keep walking through these woods like this. And that's the point that I started getting creepy vibes from the guy. I mean, I might be a mountain girl, but I'm not a dummy, so I figured something was off if this guy was so insistent on me getting into his car. I gave him a firm,

no thank you, please leave me alone. In response, he laughed in a way that makes my skin crawl, even thinking about it all these years later. It was a laugh that makes me think that he'd heard that line before or something, like he wasn't new to creeping on people like that. It definitely wasn't his first and it terrifies me to think that I wasn't his last. As I walked, he kept his truck rolling along the dirt beside me, asking me things like, come on girl, where you really going dressed like that? It's worth noting that I was dressed like any come on girl, where are you really going dressed like that? It's worth noting that I was dressed like any other mountain girl walking around in a town in the winter, so hardly anything revealing or skin tight. He had no reason to throw out a comment like that,

but it sure as hell let me know what was on his mind. I shouldn't have engaged with a question like that. I should have just ignored it and started running for the house, but I still thought that I could nip whatever was happening real quick, but reminding the guy that my dad was maybe only a few hundred yards away. But it was a bluff, and the guy knew it. I didn't actually know for certain that dad was there, I was just hoping he was, and maybe the guy could just smell the fear on me because the suggestion didn't deter him at all. Finally he made some other lewd comment, an aggressive one this time,

one I don't care to repeat and instead of just sticking it out and taking the abuse, I started to run. And that's when he started chasing me. Hearing the guy's engine rev so loud as he followed me up the track, that sound actually haunted my nightmares for weeks afterwards. It was this oh god oh god oh please no kind of moment where what had once been lurking suspicions erupted into full-blown terror. I hate to hammer the point, but I didn't think things like that happened in a town like mine. I thought things were all sunshine and rainbows aside from the odd DUI that had the old woman tutting in their little beauty parlors. And even if they did, what were the chances something awful was

going to happen to me of all people? And that was the day that I learned that sometimes, you are that person. You're the one they look at and think they're mine. Looking back, I know the guy didn't want to run me over, but it was sure as hell feeling that way and as I turned into the driveway of the house we were sitting, I heard his truck follow me. I ran up to the door, tried to get my key into the lock and that's where I stumbled so to speak. Me struggling to find the right key gave him all the time he needed to get out of his truck, run up the steps and grab me.

I screamed so loud that I burst a blood vessel in my eye. It was so bad that almost the entirety of my right eye was completely blood red afterward. People thought that he might have hit me or something, but he didn't. He just wrapped one arm around my whole body, grabbed me by the hair, and started dragging me back to his truck. I can't even begin to describe things that were going through my head in that moment. It was like every horror movie I'd ever watched was flashing through my brain, and I was the star of all of them. I honestly thought that was going to be the end of my life, or at least my life as I knew it. I'd be that girl you see

in all the news reports, on milk cartons, or on America's Most Wanted. People would talk about me briefly, how sad and scary my meaningless life was, and then they'd just move on. But thankfully, I really do mean thanks to God, things didn't end that way as you're probably already aware since I'm writing this to begin with. Instead, I saw something truly horrifying, something that no girl should ever have to witness and somehow it makes me feel safe and warm to remember it. I saw my own father become a monster before my very eyes. He turned into the driveway in his own truck, right as the guy was about to try and throw me into the passenger side of his vehicle. He was planning on picking up a few groceries and had played a kind of game with himself to see if he could beat me back to the house before I got home

from school. He lost his little game, but oh my god, did he show up at the right moment. He beat the ever living snot out of that guy, and he was an animal when he did it. He didn't ask questions, he didn't say anything to the guy, he didn't need to. He just punched the guy's lights out, got me into the house, and then beat the guy to a bloody pulp right there on the driveway while I watched from a window with 911 on the phone. The guy begged for his life. He begged my dad to just stop and call the cops, but he didn't. He kept hitting the guy until his words came out all garbled, and then he carried on hitting him when he stopped talking altogether. When I told the operator what my dad was doing she told me to ask him to stop and it was only when I realized that he might go to jail for killing the guy that I screamed at him to stop. I had to scream three

times dad stop the cops are coming before he finally stopped punching the guy and then he just rolled him over totally out of breath and sat on the guy's back while he wheezed. The guy who tried to snatch me broke his parole conditions and went back to prison to await fresh charges. I'll be 31 when he gets out, and that's if his fellow inmates don't get him first, and they know what he did. I know they do, and that brings me comfort at night. As for my dad, he didn't spend a single minute in jail for what he did. I know they do. And that brings me comfort at night. As for my dad, he didn't spend a single minute in jail for what he did. And as one deputy said to him, not a jury in the country would return a guilty verdict to a father

seeking to protect his daughter from a man like that. I love you, Dad. Don't ever change. The single most heart-poundingly terrifying day of my life was the day my eldest daughter didn't come home from school. Me and her mom divorced when she was still a toddler, but it was sort of an amicable split, and we agreed to chop the week in half so we could each have her 50% of the time. She wasn't staying with me that day, so I was home alone when my phone rang at around 6pm, and I saw that it was her mom calling. She sounded frantic, out of breath, either crying or on the verge of it as she asked if our daughter was with me.

I obviously told her no, but I knew it was happening right away, just from the way she sounded. Our daughter was missing. But then it wasn't just the fact that she was missing. Like I said, it was only maybe 6pm when my wife called and our daughter was 17 at the time, so I thought it was kind of odd that she seemed so distraught. But then when I asked my ex why she seemed so frightened, she explained that she had this really bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Our daughter had been hanging around with some bad kids, as my wife put it, and she wasn't picking up her phone.

I knew firsthand that if our kid didn't want to talk, she'd X your call then text you saying, leave me alone or something to that effect. So the fact that she wasn't picking up at all and the calls were just going to voicemail each time, that confirmed in my ex's mind that something bad was going on. I love my ex. She's one of my best friends in the world and I know that might sound crazy to some folks but I trust her with my kid's life, which is more valuable to me than my own. So I called the cops. I told the dispatcher that we urgently need someone to find our daughter,

and she put me through to a cop who was better trained to handle the situation. This officer started taking down all kinds of details about potential hangouts and promised that two uniformed officers would visit each of the places as quickly as they could manage. But in the meantime, the lady had a job for me. When she asked if I knew anyone who might be connected to my daughter via social media, I realized that I did. She has a cousin about her age who lives up in Maryland, and the two stayed connected via Facebook and Snapchat.

Our daughter did not allow us to follow her socials. She was way too private for that, but I was almost certain that she'd be connected to our cousin's account, which would in turn allow us to read statuses and maybe comments. And that's how we figured out where she was. From some comment one of her friends left on someone else's picture or post, her cousin seemed almost certain that she was at this one particular place All she knew was the name, but that was all we needed The cough swooped in, gained access to wherever they were And found my daughter and a friend of hers overdosing on heroin

Both were rushed to a hospital, but luckily this was right about the same time that Narcan was coming into circulation among EMTs and nurses. If they'd have done something so reckless and foolish just a year or so before, I think they'd have both lost their lives. Instead, they each made full recoveries and were discharged later that night. To say that I was angry just wouldn't even put a dent into how I was feeling. I was a hundred different emotions all wrapped into one and they each came out at different times. At first I was just so relieved that she was okay that I actually wept with joy. But then when it came time to putting her into bed for the night, I had to have my ex take over so I could just remove myself from the whole situation.

It bubbled up all at once, this one burning question of why. Why would you do something like this? But I knew it wasn't the time or place. She's much better these days and she's all about clean living, which is a huge relief for me and her mom. There was a time when we thought that the OD would be the start of something very long and very difficult for us, but thankfully, it scared her right onto the right path. I just wish that she could have learned her lesson some other way, instead of almost scaring me and her other half to death. To be continued... Hey guys, this isn't your typical let's not meet kind of story, but it was one of the most terrifying experiences I'd ever gone through. I've changed the names in this story for my own safety.

Now for some background information, at the time of this story I was an 18 year old girl right out of high school. I was a very naive person and always wanted to believe that everyone had no ill intentions and only kindness in their hearts. I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship so being the freshly 18 year old I was, I downloaded Tinder to explore my options. After some browsing and swiping I got bored and I closed out of the app, never deleting it but not really using it actively. One night as I was getting off of work, I got onto my phone to mindlessly browse Tinder and I was bored and figured why not. Instead, I saw that I had a message on Facebook. After thinking, who even uses Facebook Messenger for a second, I opened it thinking maybe a family

member was trying to contact me. I was greeted by a message from a man named Alex stating, Hello, I'm sorry if this is strange but I saw you on Tinder a while ago and we didn't match. I knew you looked familiar and we have a bunch of mutual friends here so you came up in my recommended friends. I just wanted to say that you're absolutely beautiful. Well, the compliment was nice. I hadn't matched with him because he simply wasn't my type. I accepted the compliment and thanked him for reaching out, which he took as a conversation initiation, and being the naive girl I was, I answered some questions from him. I found out he was 23, which was way out of my age range. I told him that he was too old for

me anyways, as I was freshly freshly 18 and I went to sleep and didn't hear from him for a little while. A few weeks went by and I was closing up at work at about 10pm on a summer night. My phone buzzed as I was mopping and looking for an excuse for a break. I checked it. It was another Facebook message from Alex asking if I had a job for the summer. I responded with a simple, yes, lol, why? I went back to mopping until I felt another buzz in my pocket and checked the message whenever my jaw hit the floor. You work at... and he listed my job's name. I was at the counter like five minutes ago.

I'm still in the parking lot if you want to get some food after your shift. Now I worked at a very one of a kind place so there was no mistake that it was me that he saw. I showed my co-worker who was also my best friend and we just laughed at it like what a weirdo. Whenever we walked out to our cars together there was still a car in the customer parking lot with its lights off and this freaked me out a little, only because we had closed 20 minutes ago. All I wanted after a 7 hour shift was to go home, and was honestly just more annoyed by this than anything. Even if I was naive, I listened to way too many reddit stories to not be aware, so I sat in my car waiting for him to leave before I pulled out. Call me paranoid, but I was not

giving this man the chance to follow me home. He left after about 15 minutes and I just went about my life as usual, driving home and getting some rest. I noticed this same car in the parking lot a few more times, but then again, I did work at one of the most popular summer destinations in my town. In about October, I received another message from Alex with a picture of my graduation party invitation and a text that said, do you know a person by the name of Jill? And I did. It was my grandmother. He explained that he was installing the dishwasher in her house and saw my picture, striking up a conversation with my grandmother about it. Now this really weirded me out. My

grandma lived two seconds away from me and knowing my grandma, she would have chatted him up and probably mentioned that. Later on she told me that he said we were really close friends and he knew me really well. At this point I had barely even spoken to him. He then proceeded to ask me to go to a party with him that night, but I was out of the state with some friends for the weekend. After explaining that, he again asked me for a chance at a date. I thanked him. The flattery was sweet, but explained that he was a little too old for me and he wasn't my type anyways. I laughed off the situation with my friends, but something about it just gave me this awful gut feeling. The next encounter I had with him was by far the strangest.

Our town does a little Christmas light-up night every year, and with my sister being in the marching band that marched in the parade, I went with a group of friends to support her. While standing in line for some hot chocolate, I got a notification on Snapchat from Alex. This alone freaked me out because I had never given him my Snapchat and my username isn't something you could guess without knowing me well. I did have it set so anyone could Snapchat me. Again, I was a dumb college freshman at that point. I very hesitantly opened it and only to see it was a picture of the back of my high school band jacket, which I was currently

wearing with a caption, well hey there. This creep, rather than approaching me and introducing himself, took a picture of me. This freaked me out, so I grabbed my friends and left the line. He snapchatted me again directly after, saying, wow, don't say hi then. Now I was really confused, and even more scared because I realized that I didn't know what he looked like. I never saw anything other than his zoomed out Facebook profile picture, and at this point, being stupid me, I responded and said, I don't know what you look like, lol, to which he responded with a picture of himself and a come find me winky face. I knew I didn't want to find him, but I could at least

look out for him. And soon enough the parade started and I saw an old family friend and was distracted catching up with him. I looked at my phone about 30 minutes later and had two snapchats from Alex, one being, what are you doing after this and let me take you to the movies. I just said no thank you, I'm just going to my friend's house to hang out. He said, I'll take your friend with us. This was just getting weird to me, so I jokingly sent him back a video of all my friends saying no with disgusted faces. Stupid, yes, but it was funny at the time. He then said he'd be happy to take all five of us, pay for all five of us, and everything just so as long as he could see me. My friends thought it was hilarious that he was so persistent. But I was just finding this creepy,

and yet again, I explained that he was too old for me and that I just wasn't interested. After I opened my phone after the parade to see five missed snapchats, I did what I should have done months ago and blocked him on everything. Even after everyone was joking about this, something still just didn't sit right with me about the situation. Whenever I got home that night, I told my dad everything because I couldn't shake my weird gut feeling. He assured me that just blocking him was the right thing and that I should be okay. A few months later, I was sitting in my dorm at school when my friend sent me a picture. It was a mugshot of Alex, who had just been arrested.

He had been at the mall, harassing and catcalling a little 16-year-old girl. When she didn't accept any of his advances, he choked her out and punched her in the face, knocking her out unconscious. After reading this, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Not only because what he did was extremely wrong, but for so many more reasons. His real last name was in the post. I had only seen him on Facebook as Alex Smith, but his actual name was Alex Doe. Now this freaked me out because I was 14. A boy named Alex Doe used to message me all the time on Facebook. He was 19 at that time and would message me and then say, just do not tell Kayla, who was his cousin in my grade. Obviously he had some ill intentions back then too,

but I was smart enough to stop answering. So I stopped answering until I saw one day that he got arrested for sending an illicit image to an underage boy. After all of this time, just now finding out this was the same guy made me sick to my stomach. I knew I should have trusted my gut about him. He recently got out of prison and tried following my Instagram again, to which I blocked him there. He has always made it back into my life in little ways, like hitting on my underage sister. I haven't heard from him or seen him in almost two years at this point, but I'd really prefer to keep it that way. Hey friends, thanks for listening. To be continued... Let's Read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt.

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