The Lets Read Podcast - 235: SHOCKING VIEWER CONFESSIONS | 19 True Scary Stories | EP 223

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Walmart Traffickers, Sleepovers, & Viewer Confessions... 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.

Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, Tread Experts is always there, helping you with Michelin tires you can trust. Until May 30th, receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard with purchase of four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Hi Joel, this is my first time writing to you and since this is a very sensitive topic in my old hometown, I'd rather remain anonymous if that's okay with you. I had a friend back in elementary school, not my closest friend, but we moved in the same circles, and at one point she invited me over to her house for a sleepover. I was only too happy to accept, it sounded fun, but little did I know it was a night that would have some seriously far-reaching implications. So this friend of mine, we'll call her Annie,

lived with her mom and stepdad. They seemed like nice enough folks and their place was nice enough, but I guess a lot of us come to learn as we grow older, appearances can be deceptive. On the night of the sleepover, her mom wasn't due home until later in the evening. This meant that we were in the care of my friend's stepdad and because of our bedtime, we weren't likely to see her mom until the following morning. This was no big deal to me at all, but it was to my friend, who kept bringing it up at odd moments while we were playing. It also became increasingly obvious that she didn't really like her stepdad at all that much, which I guess is about par for the course for some children of divorce, so I didn't really read into it all that much. But then came bedtime. We got into our PJs, brushed our teeth,

and went back to Annie's bedroom to climb into bed. I asked if she had a nightlight or anything and went to turn off the bedroom's main light, but she stopped me, telling me that her stepdad would be up soon to check on us. Only when he made sure that we were tucked in bed would we be allowed to turn the nightlight on and talk for a while. It seemed like a weirdly strict way of doing things, but I figured that I better just respect their systems, so I lay down on the blow-up mattress that they'd put down for me and got tucked in. I remember talking to Annie about something, I can't remember what exactly, but the conversation took this sudden turn when out of nowhere she said, I'm real glad you're here tonight Sarah, thank you for sleeping over.

I guess from how it looks on paper that sounds like a pretty wholesome moment, right? But that just makes me wish y'all could actually hear Annie saying those words, because the way her voice sounded gave them a distinctly unsettling feel. It was almost like my presence was going to prevent something bad from happening and at the time, I figured that bad thing was just Annie being lonely on a Friday night. She also wasn't the most popular girl around and I think it played on her insecurities so it made sense that our friendship meant a lot to her. But in truth, there was a whole other reason she was glad I was there. I remember me and Annie hearing her stepdad walking up the stairs

and her swiftly laying back in bed with the covers up to her chin. Now looking back on it, there was a kind of military precision to it. Annie seemed nervous, like she was focused to pass some kind of inspection, which is exactly what I assumed was going on. I figured if her stepdad was that strict, I had better do her a solid and just act likewise, so I did. I lay back down on the blow-up mattress

and pulled the covers up to my chin. Annie's stepdad then walked into the room and instead of carrying himself like some drill sergeant, he seemed perfectly warm and friendly, just like he'd been all evening. Then he walks over to Annie's bed to take a seat on the edge and leans in to give her a goodnight kiss. Only instead of a quick peck on the cheek or forehead before standing up again, he lingers a little too long after the kiss itself. It didn't strike me as being wrong or anything, just weird. Then as he started to whisper something to Annie, she said aloud, I want to talk to Sarah. I remember thinking, so talk to me, I'm right here.

Like the whole situation just seemed really off to me for some reason and I couldn't figure out why. I knew different families did things differently. I guess I was just too naive to recognize something that would have seemed obvious if I'd seen it today. So as I'd said, Annie had thrown out some vague ultimatum, which signaled her stepdad to leave. He shifted a little, looked back at me for a moment with a smile, then turned back to start whispering something to Annie again. She cuts him off even more assertively that time, saying, Dad, I want to talk to Sarah, please. There was a brief pause, and then he said, Okay, sweetie. And after that, he finally left the room. Like I said, I knew that I'd just witnessed something significant, I just didn't know what.

But the vibe in the room afterwards was very intense. Annie stayed quiet for a long time. Then when she finally spoke, she said that same heartwarming, turned creepy kind of thing. I'm glad you're here tonight, Sarah. Thank you for sleeping over. I didn't sleep over at Annie's house again. I think she knew that her stepdad had kind of creeped me out that night, but we stayed friends for the remainder of elementary school, and she even came over to play for a few times during the summer after graduation. Sadly, our friendship was basically doomed because we were headed for different middle schools once summer break was over. We kept in touch for a little while but by the end of that

first year, we had all but drifted apart completely. Over the next two years or so, I saw Annie around town a number of times. We were always happy to see each other, but the final few times that we bumped into one another, Annie had started to look increasingly unwell. She didn't look like she was eating or sleeping very much, but insisted that she was fine when I asked her. I just wished her all the best and carried on shopping for track shoes with my mom. About four months go by and I don't see or hear anything of Annie. And then, probably the most infamous crime in our town's recent history occurred. My mom broke the news to me, how a man had killed his wife, his kid, and then took his own life, before setting

fire to the family home. I grew up in a real quiet mountain town, maybe only 3,000 people altogether, the kind of place where someone running a stoplight was gossip worthy. Nothing ever happened there, so for something so awful to happen out of the blue, it rocked people to their very foundations. When mom told me I remember feeling awful for the wife and kid while wondering what the hell had gone so badly wrong in a man to make him something so unspeakable. But that wasn't the worst part. My mom knew who the family was. The kid that got killed was Annie, and her killer was her own stepfather.

I was devastated, beyond devastated really, and it hit me harder because I felt like I'd known that he was bad. He acted all friendly and warm on the outside, but what I saw in Annie's room that night was a glimpse of a man he really was. Like I said, someone older might have been able to piece it together, but I just didn't have the emotional toolkit, so to speak, to do so, and in my mind, that meant Annie's death, kind of felt partially my fault. I couldn't say that though, I just bottled it all up, knowing that even if I had said something, nothing would have happened. It's not illegal to be a little strict or weird, that was my thinking anyway, but as I came to learn, that's not quite

how the law works when it comes to kids. I should have said something. That's the moral of the story, really, and it's just as much a warning to others as it is a lesson to myself. If I'd have raised the alarm, even if it was voicing some minor concerns about the way Annie's stepdad acted with her at night, that would have gotten the ball rolling, meaning there was a good chance someone would have gotten around to asking him a few questions. And if that certain someone had been a three-letter agency, and they'd looked through his computer, they'd have found Pandora's box of vile, indecent images.

Annie's stepdad was abusing her. He had been for years, and he's been documenting it too. Neighbors heard a whole bunch of shouting just before the murders and were right about to call the sheriff when they heard the first few shots. They said it sounded vicious, the argument I mean, and that they were pretty sure someone was smashing things in between yells. It's not 100% clear, but people generally agree that the fight occurred after Annie's mom found the pictures or videos or whatever it was on her husband's computer. The way I imagine it is that all the smashing was either him smashing phones or him trying to stop Annie's mom from getting to one so she could call the cops. Then, when Annie's stepdad realized that there was nothing he could do or say to get Annie's mom to stop or calm down, he grabbed his gun and shot her, Annie, and then himself after trying to destroy the evidence.

He probably would have been successful if their neighbors hadn't heard the gunshots because the cops that arrived on scene quickly summoned the fire department who put out the blaze and preserved all the digital evidence in the process. The whole thing didn't come out for months and months afterwards, which I guess was a deliberate decision to try to keep people from freaking out too hard. But all it really did was divide all the grief and outrage into two parts. Hearing that Annie was being abused reignited the whole thing and had this big black cloud hanging over the town that never really went away. Me and my own family ended

up moving out of town about two years later and I did my final couple years of high school someplace else. When people figured out where I'd moved from, they kept asking if I'd known the girl who had been murdered by her stepdad. I used to lie and tell them I didn't, but every time they asked, I'd have to find an excuse to take a quiet moment in order to fight back the tears. I felt horrifically guilty for a long, long time too, and it took a therapist to get me to understand that it wasn't my fault. But even so, I know there's a small part of me that will always feel partially responsible. It's all just a case of keeping that part's voice, the one that tells me it's all my fault, as quiet as possible. To be continued... for a weekend-long sleepover. His parents were divorced, but this was the mid-90s, so almost

everybody's parents were divorced or probably seriously considering it. We were sad for him, sure, but then we learned about the other less detrimental stuff and we stopped feeling so sorry for him. I'm talking the whole two Christmases, two birthdays thing, on top of having almost total freedom due to his newly acquired latchkey kid status. We were in our early teens, but Tommy's mom treated us like adults in a lot of ways. She let us stay up all night and order whatever food we wanted, all with the logic of, if you want to sleep all day after eating yourself sick, that's your problem, not mine. I guess that makes her sound like a bad mom in some ways, but I can assure you that

she wasn't. Tommy was always a good kid, and although she worked long hours at whatever job she had, Tommy's mom loved and took care of him. The sleepover was planned for a Friday night, so me and the other kid brought a change of clothes and whatnot into school with us. That way, we could just head back to Tommy's place when the bell rang. Tommy's mom was there to meet us, but she had to head into work almost right away, so after leaving some money on the kitchen table for us to order pizza with, she headed out. We had the entire place to ourselves, with Tommy's mom not due back until the early hours of the next morning. And it was wild, man. Total freedom, but being the good kid

that he was, Tommy stopped us from getting too crazy. We threw a football around in his backyard for a while, and in all fairness, we did get pretty rowdy out there. So when we went back inside and quickly heard a knock at the front door, we figured that it might be the neighbors coming over to tell us to keep it down. Tommy had this attitude of, I'll handle it, and told us to stay put while he went to talk our way out of trouble. Me and our mutual friend, shout out to Casey, did as we were told and kept quiet in Tommy's kitchen while he worked his magic. But when he came back, the look on his face didn't fill us with confidence.

We asked him what happened and he told us it wasn't one of his neighbors at the door, it had been a friend of his dad's. I didn't piece together why that might have bothered him so much and he looked really anxious when he reappeared. So out of sheer ignorance I asked him why that might be a problem and Tommy sighed, took a seat at the kitchen table and then explained the situation with his dad. To keep it short and not so sweet, to use Tommy's exact words, quote, my dad is a psycho and so is his friends. He told us a bunch of stories about how horribly his dad had acted towards him and his mom and the whole time mine and Casey's jaws are just glued to the freaking floor. He used to hit him a bunch and he always had a

bunch of guns in the house. He abused drugs right in front of a much younger Tommy like I wasn't even nothing, he would say. Real bad stuff. I think he must have been one of those guys who keeps insisting that they can change than just going back to their old behaviors because Tommy's mom lasted a good few years after he was born before he finally got them out of there and somehow got the marriage dissolved. Me and Casey had no idea Tommy's childhood had been so crazy. I mean, we'd only known each other for a matter of months by that point, so it was all this horrifying revelation to us and obviously something Tommy didn't want to share unless he really had to. And now, he had to. But then,

he got to explaining why the appearance of his dad's friend had him so spooked. First off, his dad always had a lot of different dudes coming by the house, all claiming to be his friend. So even if Tommy had been able to see the guy's face, he still might not have recognized him at all. And yep, that's how Tommy dropped that the guy had his face covered, right there in the middle of his frantic explanation. And both me and Casey were both like, what do you mean he has his face covered? And as we started to get panicky, Tom got even more agitated, and then insisted that we call the cops and his mom in that order. He'd let slip to the mystery caller, whose face had apparently been partially concealed with a scarf or something,

that we were home alone that night, which in turn meant that we might well be in a whole heap of trouble. Tommy's dad had been refused any chance to see him for a few years by that time, and had been trying out increasingly creative ways of circumventing the court's decision. Tommy figured that the surprise appearance might be just that, some fresh new attempt to ruin his mom's fresh start. So like she'd always taught him to do, Tommy rushed to call 911 at the first sign of danger. I feel that at this point I should make it clear that no one had any idea that Tommy's dad would try anything like that.

In fact, he supposedly didn't even know where Tommy and his mom had moved to. But as I came to learn much later in life, his dad was way richer and way more powerful than I ever could have imagined at the time. He wasn't just some rich businessman or something. He was high up in the Kansas City Mafia. Running from anyone else might have worked, but with a guy like that, finding them was just a matter of time. And it just so happened that when that moment came, me and good old Casey had to endure it too. By the time Tommy had explained the potential danger, we were all in a state of full-blown panic. I didn't think that I could get any more scared, but after we rushed to the phone and tried to call 911,

things got way worse. Tommy picked up the phone and put it to his ear, then hammered 911 into the keypad. Then he did it again. Then he hung up the phone, picked it up again, and after holding it to his ear for a second, stammered out, The phone's dead. Now, if this had happened just a few years later, the phone being dead wouldn't have been a problem. We'd have just used a cell phone to call the cops and that would have been it. But we didn't have cell phones, and whoever had sabotaged the home's phone cables knew that we had no other means of contacting authorities. Then, right as we were about to totally lose our minds, we heard this huge smashing sound coming from the front door. Someone was trying to break in.

Tommy didn't say a word. He didn't need to. The look on his face said it all. He ran out into his backyard with me and Casey in hot pursuit. We followed him into the woods behind his house, then just ran, and ran, and ran, until we couldn't run anymore. Luckily, we were maybe only a minute or two walk from a collection of houses, so after knocking on their doors until we found someone that was home, we got them to call the cops for us and we finally got a chance to calm down. By the time the cops showed up, Tommy's house was empty again but the whole place had been trashed, probably in an attempt to find Tommy. His mom came home from work early and was talking to the cops while me and Casey waited for our parents to come get us. The adrenaline high had completely worn off by then,

and I remember feeling really tired after it finally sunk in that we were going to be okay. As it turned out, the two guys who showed up to abduct Tommy were picked up by the cops as they attempted to leave town. The craziest thing was, if the sheriff hadn't received another call about a guy threatening a waitress after she got his order wrong, Tommy's potential kidnappers might have escaped completely. You heard that right. There were two guys that showed up that night. The two guys could have gotten the hell out of Dodge before anyone really knew what happened, but instead, they stopped for food at some all-night diner. Then one of them brandished some steak knife at a girl, and well, the rest is history. Apparently, the two guys Tommy's dad hired weren't actually members of the Kansas City Mafia, as he didn't want his father and uncle, who were even higher up than he was,

knowing about the kidnapping. And this gave him a kind of plausible deniability. But the 50 grand he'd promised each of the guys wasn't nearly enough to buy their silence, and they rolled over almost as soon as they were arrested. The local PD were only too happy to pursue a kidnapping charge, and when all was said and done, Tommy's dad ended up doing close to 10 years on some kind of conspiracy to kidnap charge, as well as a few others thrown in to beef up the sentence. I don't talk to Tommy much these days, although we are still Facebook friends. I like knowing that I can reach out if I wanted to,

knowing that he'll always be an integral part of the single craziest and scariest story of my childhood. Hey dude, so I know this sucks and makes it sound like I'm just making this up, but I don't want to name anyone here. I watch a lot of your videos and sometimes either too much or not enough detail makes me wonder if a story is fake, but now that I come to actually write my own story up, I kind of see why people sometimes want to remain anonymous. The kid I'm about to tell you about might have grown up or turned himself around and doesn't deserve people to know about some dumb isolated incident when he was just young. But then again, if he's still as much of a psycho as he was back then, I don't want to risk becoming the object of his attention. So back when I was a kid, I went to this sleepover with a bunch of friends from middle school. I say friends, but it was

pretty loose association to be honest with you. For example, one of the kids that got an invite actually didn't get along with the kid that was hosting. But if he didn't get an invite, he'd feel left out and if he felt left out, the kid's mom would make it an issue and so on and so forth. So he ended up getting one anyway. And this is the kid I want to tell you about right here. Inevitably, the two kids who didn't get along ended up clashing. Not in a physical way, but the tension ramped up pretty quick and the weird kid who got the forced invite ended up storming off. The host kid's parents had quite a big place so the weird kid who got the forced invite ended up storming off. The host kid's parents had quite a big place, so the weird kid basically disappeared for a while, and there was no one watching us aside from a babysitter who wasn't really watching us at all, to be honest.

The only other person aside from us and the babysitter was the host kid's little sister, but she'd been put to bed much earlier than us, so we didn't see her past maybe 7.30pm. So the weird kid is gone for a while but then he suddenly reappears, all sheepish looking, telling us that he thinks we need to call 911. Someone was in the bathroom and they sounded sick. We go to investigate and on the floor of the bathroom is the host kid's little sister with a bunch of puke all around her and an empty bottle of pills lying there too. The rest of the night is kind of a blur and obviously our parents ended up getting called so they could come pick us up but I swear to god there was a moment during all that chaos where I caught the weird kid smiling to himself. It was around the time that the host

little sister was being loaded into the ambulance and I don't think the kid knew anyone was looking at him but I saw this real distinct smile on his face and that's when I realized that the girl swallowing pills hadn't been some freak accident. She hadn't thought that they were candy at all. The weird kid had gotten her to swallow them somehow. I told my mom and dad what I'd seen and what I thought and it caused a ton of drama with all the various parents. The weird kid totally denied it and said he's been crying in a dark bedroom because we've been picking on him. The little monster even taunted us with his motivations while simultaneously denying it. The whole thing broke up our little friend group and as our parents basically wouldn't

allow us to hang out anymore and the weird kid and his family left town a few years later, something that everyone and their dog was happy about. There were no consequences for the kid either or his family except for the social ones and I sometimes wonder if he's still the same kind of person these days. I've even googled his name a while back but nothing came up. That got me thinking though. He didn't get caught the first time. And if something like that happens when you're a kid, that's gotta embolden the person, right?

He knew how to talk his way out of trouble, and he was good at it. So to me, there's no reason why I shouldn't assume that he's still out there doing the same evil crap and getting away with it all the while. P.S. The host kid's sister turned out to be fine. In March of 1997, three-year-old Cody Stepp was living with his aunt Mickey on Hosack Street in the Hungarian village area of Columbus, Ohio. During the late 90s, Columbus was one of the safest cities in the entirety of the Midwest, yet there were still areas of the city that were considered no-go zones after dark,

with vicinity of Hosack Street being one of them. Cody had been living with his aunt since December of 1996, after his mother's struggle with drug addiction inevitably landed her in jail. Robin's step had a long history of theft and selling her body, but managed to take relatively good care of Cody, with her only shortcoming being minor neglect. It was accepted among the Stepp family that Cody would be returned to Robin's custody as soon as it were legally possible, but on March 11th of 1997, a dark fate chose to intervene. It was just after 7pm on a Tuesday when Aunt Mickey took a quick visit to a nearby corner store.

She left Cody playing in her home's front yard, but due to a miscommunication with Cody's grandmother, no one was watching the boy during Mickey's trip to the store. She was gone for no longer than 15 to 20 minutes, but when she returned, Cody was gone. Aunt Mickey immediately reported Cody missing and in her mind, the timing couldn't have been any worse. Cody's mother was scheduled for release the following day and when she learned of her son's disappearance, she was furious. As police helicopters circled the city and canine officers ran their dogs through nearby fields and wooded areas, Cody's mother all but accused her sister of manufacturing her son's disappearance. In her opinion, the timing was no coincidence,

and she believed that there was a concerted effort to keep her away from her son. It was a heartbreaking situation, and the Stepp family begged local law enforcement to bring Cody home. The FBI became involved almost immediately, with the Columbus Police Department sparing no expense in organizing one of the largest search efforts in the state's history. Patrol officers were reassigned to canvas entire neighborhoods, while all investigations into financial crimes were suspended, allowing the relevant detectives to dedicate themselves to the search for Cody. Even recruits at the CPD's training facility were requisitioned for the effort, with many of them scouring the banks of the nearby Scioto River. While Cody's disappearance had initially been treated as a standard child abduction, one detective refused to rule out the possibility that Cody had become embroiled in some kind of intra-family dispute.

Many of Step's distant relatives had openly questioned their ability to raise Cody in a healthy environment, and a degree of suspicion was firmly placed on Cody's paternal relations. The case became even more complex on March 13th of 1997, just two days after Cody vanished, when the Columbus Dispatch reported that not a single one of Mickey Step's neighbors had stopped her nephew playing outside that evening. However, what they had witnessed was the highly unusual sighting of Mickey and her mother cleaning out their backyard shed after dark. This struck many in law enforcement as an odd contradiction, as it was already highly suspicious that Mickey allowed her three-year-old nephew to play outside so late in the first place. On March 15th, less than a week after her son had vanished, Robin's step

was back in jail on the charge of soliciting an undercover officer. Her arrest fueled rumors that she had been detained in relation to her son's disappearance, forcing Lieutenant David Murray to clarify the reason for her arrest. It was a public relations disaster for the Steps, and even though they continued to cooperate with local law enforcement, their trial by media was far from kind. Further suspicion seemed to cast their way when police searched the vacant property next to Mickey's home. It was reported that Cody sometimes played there, completely unsupervised, another detail which contradicted Mickey Strepp's claim that Cody never played alone or out of their sight. Detective Murray was once again quick to stifle any attempt to turn suspicion onto the steps,

stating that, quote, This is the nature of investigations. We can't exclude anything. The investigation appears to have stagnated until August of 1997 when the nationally syndicated TV show America's Most Wanted took an interest in the case. Local police took the opportunity to beg the public for information, asserting that it was never too late to come forward. There has to be people out there who initially were afraid to call us, and maybe they thought we would find him, Detective Mark Annen was quoted as saying. But we're asking them to call us, anonymously if need be, because we still need their help.

When the Columbus dispatch contacted Robin Stepp in jail, her prognosis was grim. She firmly believed that Cody had been abducted by a friend or family member, and that he'd most likely been trafficked across state lines to either Kentucky or West Virginia. Robin claimed that her family had complained to Child Protective Services about her, and openly argued that she wasn't fit to be a mother. In rebuttal to these accusations, Robin was quoted as saying, I love my son more than anything in the world, and I want him back. Cody was the best gift I had ever gotten in my life. I want him to know that mommy loves Robin also stated that she was taking part in a jailhouse rehab program and planned to dedicate herself to the search for her boy once she was released. As summer turned to fall, law enforcement's official line of thinking still focused on an opportunistic abduction.

But behind the scenes, an increasing number of detectives began to surmise that Cody's Aunt Mickey was responsible for the boy's disappearance. After months of intense interviews with a plethora of different witnesses, it became clear that Cody had been missing long before March of 1997. In fact, certain close neighbors claimed that they hadn't seen the boy since the summer of the previous year. Supporting this assertion was the fact that a search of Mickey's home had turned up very little evidence that Cody had been living there in the first place. A few items of suspiciously clean children's clothing were found, but there were no toys, no baby food, and no potty training devices, all things one might expect to find in the home of a three-year-old.

Mickey Stepp denied that this was the case, claiming she'd taken Cody to a doctor's appointment that summer. Police contacted the doctor in question, who confirmed that Mickey Stepp had brought her nephew into his clinic for a routine checkup. However, when shown a photograph of young Cody, the doctor appeared perplexed. The boy in the photograph was not the same child he had seen to that day. But if he wasn't Cody, who was it? It came to light that on the night before the doctor's appointment, Mickey Stepp had contacted the parents of one of Cody's friends and invited their child to come over for a sleepover. The parents of this child trusted the steps completely, but were forced to admit that they'd never actually seen Cody in their care.

In truth, the invitation was a ruse, and it was Cody's young friend who was taken to the doctor's appointment in his place. When news of the deception reached the Columbus chief of police, both Mickey Stepp and her mother were invited down to the precinct to undergo lie detector's tests, but refused the invitation, with the decision marking the end of their cooperation with law enforcement. By March of 1998, police found more possible evidence against Mickey and Janice. A detective, Jim McCoskey, revealed that Cody's maternal grandmother, Janice, was suspected of having a history of child abuse. Back in 1964, Janice had lost her youngest daughter, Tenny, under highly suspicious circumstances. She too had been just three years old. Her official cause of death had been bronchitis, but an autopsy revealed several indicators of serious physical abuse, one being cigarette burns. Detective Makotsky also discovered that Tenny would be sat on a hot stove as a punishment for potty training accidents,

and that prior to her death, she'd been sick for weeks on end before Janice finally sought medical attention. In Makotsky's own words, the fact that no formal charges had ever been brought against Janice was shocking, and he began to doubt that Cody would ever be seen again. In the spring of 1998, just over a year after her son was first reported missing, Robin's step attempted to have Cody declared legally deceased. Some observers were stunned that Robin would be so quick to give up bringing Cody home, but legal experts seemed quite certain that the move was a strategic one. On August 24th of 1998, Judge Lawrence Belkis ruled that there was not enough

evidence to declare Cody deceased, saying that, at this point, we don't know if the child is missing, sold for ransom, murdered, or if he fell down a sewer drain. It was a major milestone in the case and had forced many a cynical detective to re-evaluate their previous convictions. The investigation had only slowed on the assumption that Cody was dead, and although there was a great deal of support on such a theory, it was just as probable that he was still alive and in the custody of relatives out of state. And with that in mind, detectives began to re-interview Aunt Mickey and Grandma Janice, only this time, their questions had a much more accusatory tone. Although Mickey admitted to feeling responsible for Cody's disappearance, she flat out denied any direct involvement. One detective then asked Mickey to confirm that Cody had been wearing shorts and a light tea when he vanished. Mickey reportedly nodded, but was swiftly reminded that it was just 28 degrees

Fahrenheit on the evening of March 11th. For anyone measuring temperature in Celsius, 28 degrees Fahrenheit is just below freezing point, meaning Mickey's step was either extremely neglectful that night or she was lying. Another detective was sent to question one of Janice's more estranged daughters, a girl from her first partner named Diane. She was only too happy to confirm that her mother had been a monstrous disciplinarian. Janice abused all her children, but Tenny received the worst of it. Despite such damning testimony, the police determined that there simply wasn't enough evidence to support the theory that Mickey and Janice were responsible for Cody's disappearance. This ruling was

challenged in the summer of 1999, when Robin Stepp attempted to prove that Cody had been exposed to the specific peril of death. If she won, it would open up the legal avenues that she needed to mount a civil lawsuit against her sister and mother. Robin's attorney claimed the appeal was based on Cody's potential exposure to the cold weather, his extreme vulnerability, and the inference that he lived in an abusive home environment. But bizarrely, a court ruled that Cody had not been exposed to any excess danger, citing that exposure to the cold and Janice's history of abuse were insufficient. If Cody had been spotted in the company of a stranger either on the day he disappeared or

during the days prior, that would be a different story. But the fact remains that there were serious inconsistencies with the given narrative, and until they could be resolved, no such ruling could be made. Five years later, Mickey Stepp passed away, maintaining her innocence on her deathbed. She also claimed that her mother was also entirely innocent of any involvement in Cody's disappearance, saying that she hoped that one day, the mystery would finally be solved. On March 11th of 2007, the Columbus Dispatch published a 10-year anniversary article which detailed Cody's disappearance. The article included an extensive interview with Detective Jim McCoskey, who told reporters that the case remained so dear to him that he kept a box of

his evidence at his home. Cody could have quite literally been sold, he said, adding that the boy might be living under an assumed name, having no idea that he's been missing since infancy. A reporter then asked McCoskey if it were possible that Cody was living happily in his ignorance. No, I don't, the detective replied. If he is alive, he might well have been sold into some kind of human trafficking ring. We just don't know. Eighteen months after the dispatch ran their anniversary piece, police received a call from an anonymous tipster who claimed that the child's body was buried in a field off Parsons Avenue, not far from where Cody had been staying with Mickey.

A cadaver dog was dispatched to search the field and it indicated that human remains were present in several different spots. A large backhoe was used to excavate the area of interest, but frustratingly, nothing was found. Robin's step welcomed the news, reasserting that her boy was alive, an assertion that was vindicated a short while later when a rather intriguing blog post began to make the rounds. A woman by the name of Linda Fox claimed to have had a very unusual interaction with a boy near Lebanon, Ohio during December of 2007.

Linda said that while driving around three miles east of the town, she'd spotted what appeared to be a nine-year-old boy walking at the roadside. Given that it was raining, Linda offered the boy a ride and struck up a conversation with him during the drive. The boy told her his name was Erwin and that he was 13 years of age. This immediately struck Linda as odd as the boy seemed no older than elementary school age. Then when she asked him where he lived, the boy appeared to have no idea. He knew that he was living with his aunt named Donna, but had no idea what either of their surnames were. Undeterred by the boy's apparent ignorance, Linda continued to drive him around, until finally deciding the best thing to do was to drop him off at a local police station.

The officers there would be much better at helping young Irwin, and if there was indeed something untoward going on, then they'd most certainly pick up on it. However, when Linda announced her motherly intentions, little Irwin began to protest dramatically. He insisted that he wasn't in trouble, and then fled from the car as soon as she parked outside the precinct. Following the encounter, Linda said that she searched ohio's missing children database making a shocking discovery in the process while browsing one organization's website linda noticed the missing person's profile of a certain cody step the profile included an age progressed picture of the boy depicting what he might look like at this current age. The picture looked almost exactly

like little Erwin. Linda ran to her car to retrieve the small ice cream carton that Erwin had been eating out of during the previous evening. Linda had briefly stopped to buy the boy ice cream to calm him down, but he still fled her car once they arrived at the police precinct. Linda claimed that she drove straight back to the same precinct and turned over the ice cream carton as potential forensic evidence. She also directed police to the missing person website she'd been browsing, vehemently insisting that the boy she'd seen was Cody Stepp. An officer attempted to assuage her fears, telling her that the boy was most likely just a local runaway, but Linda wasn't convinced.

She tried to keep in touch with the officers she'd spoken to, but there seemed to be no developments, and in the end, they politely asked her to stop calling. Linda's story certainly makes for an interesting one, but it's worth noting that it's never been properly verified. Most of the details in her blog post are information that was freely available to the public, meaning there's always a chance that her account was fabricated. In the fall of 2014, the Columbus Monthly published an article which revisited Cody's step's disappearance. They spoke with his mother, Robin, who had been clean for four years by that point. She said that she thought about Cody every day, how chubby his cheeks were, and how full of energy he was. She was still optimistic that Cody would be found one day,

yet Detective Jim McCoskey did not share her optimism. By 2014, McCoskey was convinced that Cody was dead, and that his aunt and grandmother were somehow responsible. Both Mickey and Janice had both passed away by that time, meaning any secrets they held had been taken to the grave. Pamela Taylor, whose son had given Robin a ride on the day that she got out of prison, told ABC that she was hopeful that Robin would one day be reunited with her son. There's no closure, she said, and there never will be until the day we find him. I just hope that it's here on earth. If he's still alive, Cody Stepp is 29 years old and may not even remember his old family. Perhaps Detective McCoskey is right and Cody was dead before he even was reported missing.

But then again, maybe a mother's intuition is correct, and Cody is out there somewhere, be it in West Virginia, Kentucky, or maybe even Lebanon, Ohio. On December 29th of 1999, two high school friends named Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman organized a sleepover to celebrate the latter's 16th birthday. The plan was to hit up a local pizzeria, then spend the evening over at Ashley's house. They'd watch movies, eat ice cream, talk about boys, all the typical activities one might expect of a teenage girl's sleepover. But little did the girls know, that night would be their last. At around 5.30 the following morning, that night would be their last. At around 5.30 the following morning, a motorist contacted the local fire department to report that the Freeman home was on fire.

After dousing the flames, firefighters quickly determined that the cause of the blaze had been arson, but were unprepared for the horror which greeted them inside. Lying on the floor of her bedroom was Ashley Freeman's mother, Kathy. She had been executed with a single gunshot to the head. There were no signs of Ashley or Loria, although the latter girl's car was found in the Freeman's driveway with the key still in the ignition. It became evident that, whatever had happened, Loria Bible had attempted to flee from it and and more likely than not, she had been unsuccessful. At first, some detectives began to theorize that Ashley's father, Danny,

was responsible for the murder of his wife, but the possibility was quickly ruled out after his corpse was discovered under the smoking ruins of his own home. He, too, had been shot execution style. The crime caused a wave of shock and outrage to ripple throughout the local community of Welsh, Oklahoma, as well as the wider region. But despite a vocal public's impassioned demands for justice, no arrests were ever made, and law enforcement was unable to track down either Loria or Ashley. Ten years went by, and police were still no closer to apprehending the girls' abductors.

So in a show of dignified acceptance, Ashley Freeman's surviving relatives had her declared dead in absentia. In that time, two convicted serial killers named Tommy Lynn Sells and Jeremy Jones attempted to confess to the girls' murders. In what amounted to a striking contradiction, both men claimed to have abducted and murdered the girls, with Jones claiming to have murdered the Freemans due to their avoidance of drug debts. He also claimed to have driven both Ashley and Lauria to an abandoned mine in neighboring Kansas, where he shot them and threw their bodies into an abandoned mine. Jeremy even named the

mine that he'd used to dispose of their bodies, but unsurprisingly, no such remains were recovered during the subsequent search. It later emerged that Jones had fabricated the story to get better food and phone privileges whilst incarcerated, a depressingly common criminal practice made infamous by serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. It should also be noted that just a few years after the murder, serious questions were raised regarding the conduct of the Craig County Police Department. Prior to their untimely deaths, the Freeman family had been engaged in a civil dispute with the local branch of law enforcement, prompted by the shooting of their eldest son, Shane.

Shane had been caught red-handed stealing a car near East 2nd Avenue and was shot when an officer suspected him of reaching for a weapon. An internal inquiry found the shooting to be a lawful one, but the Freemans ignored the verdict and proceeded to file a wrongful death lawsuit. Experts would later opine that the Freemans had a very convincing argument for wrongful death lawsuit. Experts would later opine that the Freemans had a very convincing argument for wrongful death and there are claims that the chief of police tried to browbeat the Freemans into dropping their lawsuit. This same chief of police would later profess regret over the way the situation was handled but denied that his officers were involved in the Freemans' death or the abduction of Ashley and Lauroria. By April 2018, the Freeman and Bible families had

long since given up on the idea of seeing their girls again. They had accepted the tragic reality that Ashley and Loria was most likely deceased, but there was one wound that hadn't yet healed. Almost two decades later, law enforcement seemed no closer to identifying a suspect as they were in the immediate aftermath. Until one day, their phones began to ring. It was the Craig County Chief of Police. Ashley and Lauria's killers had finally been identified. Each family remained in a state of shock as they were contacted by a team of state homicide detectives. There was good news, but there was also bad news. The good news was that a 66-year-old named Ronnie

Dean Busick was about to be charged with four counts of first-degree murder, each pertaining to the Freeman murders. Two other men were believed to have been involved, but had passed away in prison some years prior. Yet the evidence against Ronnie Busick was so strong that a conviction was inevitable. The mention of evidence allowed detectives to segue into the bad news, at which point the horrifying details of Ashley and Lauria's final few hours on earth were finally brought to light. It was revealed that the girls were indeed murdered over a drug debt, but one belonging to them, not Ashley's parents. Both families were reportedly stunned when they learned of this, as both girls had a clean-cut and innocent figure against a backdrop of casual experimentation. The girls were apparently given repeated warnings before finally,

their debtors called in Dean Busick, Warren Welsh, and David Pennington to make an example of them. Detectives heard that the men had murdered Ashley's parents before her very eyes, telling her such was the fate of those who tried to steal from their employers. The girls were then dragged outside, kicking and screaming, while one of their childhood homes burned bright in the darkness. They were thrown into a van, driven out to Warren Welsh's secluded double-wide trailer, then subjected to some of the most horrific tortures imaginable. To provide evidence that their work had been completed, the men took Polaroid photographs of the girls, bound and gagged, with terrified looks on their faces. The Polaroids

also showed the girls' physical deterioration as they gradually succumbed to the horrors they were forced to endure, while some depicted the men lying next to the victims, smiling and waving, a sickening pride in their eyes. Once the men grew tired of such depravity, the girls were shot, dismembered, and then tossed into a cellar which was later filled with concrete. Busick claimed that only his two departed accomplices knew the location of the cellar, meaning their final resting places are likely to be uncovered sometime in the far future. When the news of Busick's arrest and forthcoming imprisonment were made public, Loria Bible's mother, Lorene, requested an audience with Busick so she might personally question him. Her request was granted and on April 26th of 2018, she spoke with the daughter's killer by phone.

It's believed that Busick offered her his deepest apology, saying that he deeply regretted the horrors that Lori had been subjected to. However, he denied all knowledge of the location of their final resting place. Lorene Bible spoke to the media shortly after her conversation with Busick, telling them, We welcome all information leading to their recovery. Until they are home with us, this will never be over. Dean Busick officially pled guilty to being an accessory to the Freeman murders during July of 2020 and was sentenced to serve a total of 15 years behind bars. His incarceration marked the closing chapter of a long and deeply haunting tale,

but there were some who felt that justice had been insufficient. Two of the three men involved had escaped the shame of being identified as the monsters they really were, and although they were already incarcerated for various other crimes, there's no doubt that if their fellow inmates had been wise to their criminal histories, their lives in prison would have been painful, terrifying, and very, very short. In the 20 plus years since the events of this story, I've only ever spoken about it once before today. That was with a therapist, and the conclusion of our long and very expensive sessions was that I needed to either find a way to forgive myself or learn to live with the guilt of what I'd done. There was no cathartic moment, no miracle mantra or medication. I am alone with my own ghost. But now I'll only be alone with this for the time that it takes to send this email.

I don't know if you'll be able to use this for one of your videos and I'm not even sure if it's the kind of story your viewers will want to hear. But if anyone can sit through this and say that they're not sickened or creeped out, then they need more therapy than I do. I've never been academically gifted, and I work my butt off to get into my first choice of college. The day I arrived, we all had to go through the first phases of freshman orientation, which included being assigned our dorm rooms. Most students had already pre-selected which style of accommodation they wanted, which was divided into three tiers. One, there were the top tier dorms, which came with internet access and big bathrooms, but cost a few thousand extra per year. Two, and then there

were regular dorms, which had bathrooms and showers but no internet.. Two, and then there were regular dorms which had bathrooms and showers but no internet. And three, and then there was my dorm, the ones they offered to save students a little money. In terms of reputation, I'd heard of confusing mix of they're not that bad to they're worse than you think, and everything in between. But when it came down to it, I knew that it made sense to put up with no internet, communal showers, and everything in between. But when it came down to it, I knew that it made sense to put up with no internet, communal showers, and crappy cafeteria food to come out with less debt than everyone else. I was there to learn. It wasn't some spa or resort. Suffer now, reap the reward later. That was my mentality. The older, cheaper dorms weren't purpose-built at all. In fact,

not only did it become obvious that it used to be some kind of hospital, the huge heavy doors and barred windows kind of gave rise to rumors that our dorm had once been an insane asylum. And as you might expect of such a place, long stretches of corridor weren't totally uniform, but on the wings of the building, the layout totally changed, and this is where I'd been assigned a room. There were three dorm rooms, kind of cut off from the more uniform stretches by a frosted glass door. One was identical to the more uniform rooms, but the remaining two were either excessively small and excessively large. I've seen closets bigger than the smaller rooms, and I'm not even exaggerating there, while the larger room had huge windows, much more space, and even its own small master

bathroom. It was only a toilet and a washing area or a sink, but in a living space where most facilities were communal, this was a heck of a luxury. I had been assigned the more standardized rooms, so I started moving my stuff into it, and then as time went on, I noticed the larger and small rooms remained unclaimed. That evening, all of the dorm's new occupants went down to the cafeteria for dinner, and I used this opportunity to ask one of the RAs about the possibility of moving into the larger dorm room, should it remain unoccupied. They took down my information and told me that they'd give me a call once they'd checked

the register. The next morning, the RA told me the room hadn't been assigned to anyone and that I was welcome to move my stuff in at my leisure. I thought jackpot. I'd bagged a larger room for the same price, and freshman year was looking a little bit better already and all I had to do was go claim the key from the relevant RA. To kind of lay claim to it, I tossed some of my stuff into the larger room then went down to the RA to claim the key, but when I got there, I found that they

no longer had it. There was a moment of confusion on my part. It seemed impossible that what was there less than half an hour ago had gone and vanished. I walked back up to my room, it seemed impossible that what was there less than half an hour ago had gone and vanished. I walked back up to my room, trying to get the first RA on the phone to see if there had been any kind of mistake, but when I arrived, I found all of my stuff had been tossed out into the hallway, and in the largest one of the two free rooms was some total stranger. Somehow this guy had heard that there was a bigger room up for grabs and gotten the key before I had. I realized that while I'd been patiently and politely asking around for the key, this complete jerk-off had been throwing my things out into the hallway in preparation to move his own stuff in.

I was furious. Beyond furious, really. I wanted to punch him in his freaking mouth. But he was bigger than me, and I didn't. I tried telling him it was my room, but he just gave me some Disney Channel chuckle and told me that I was mistaken. He'd arrived a day late, hadn't been assigned anything, and had simply moved into the room that the RA had told him to. I knew this was a huge pile of steaming nonsense, but he gamed the system, just like I tried to do, and he'd just gotten there first.

Maybe if I was bigger or less conflict-averse, I'd have at least tried to intimidate him, but I'm not that kind of person. I'd never been that person, so I simply allowed myself to just stay in my assigned room. I was angry, but not nearly as angry as I was when the water pipe burst. I had to move again, only this time it was into the box room. A few days quickly became a few weeks, and I was eventually told that I wouldn't be able to move back into my original room until after the holidays. Unless I did something, I'd be stuck in this freaking closet for two more months. But then, what could I do? It was a question that I kinda pondered over for quite a while. It was abstract at first, but more practical as time went by. Harassment wouldn't work,

at least not directly. If he got wise to me, I'd be due a serious butt-kicking, in which case I'd have to be much more creative. Like I said, it was all about plausible deniability, because worst case scenario, I'd be kicked out of school for harassing another student. To me, that was an even worse prospect than a beating, so I'd have to be patient and I'd have to be smart. We'll name the guy who stole my room Chad, just to make people not feel so bad. You see, Chad is named Chad here because he was one. He was popular among the girls in our dormitory, and it didn't take him long to find himself a girlfriend. I don't think it was a particularly serious relationship,

more what my niece might call a situationship, and just before the holidays, the popular kids in my dorm decided to throw a little open door party. I could hear the whole thing through my door and the divider outside. It was that loud of a party, and although the dorm was a strictly alcohol-free zone, I know the RAs turned a blind eye to their drinking. Putting up with the outside noise was a huge gripe of mine and boy was Chad noisy. Every time he entered or exited his room I could hear exactly what he was doing or saying every freaking time and it annoyed me quite a bit. The night of the open door party was particularly bad and I honestly considered putting off my

study session until the following morning but then then as the night wore on, I heard something which made my ears prick up. It was Chad and he was outside in our small partitioned section of corridor and he was crying. It wasn't a full-on bawling but you could tell from the way his voice wavered. He was drunk and talking to himself, and something bad had happened and I wanted to know what. I didn't approach him directly, not at first. I just put my ear to the door and listened. He was struggling with his keys, that much was clear. You could hear the heavy jangle of metal on metal as he tried and failed to unlock his door.

I jumped at the sound of him kicking or punching it, and at first I was honestly about to tell him to keep the noise down because I was already livid with him. But then, a thought occurred to me. Here was the guy that I'd come to loathe, and he was vulnerable. I unlocked my door, opened it enough to kind of stick my head out, and that's when I saw Chad. He was teary-eyed, swaying, but when he detected my presence, he quickly tried to mask his vulnerability with aggression. He responds with, What are you looking at, dude? You got some problem with me? I told him that there was no problem. I just wanted to see if he was okay.

He clearly wasn't, but lied and told me he was fine, just having some trouble unlocking his door. When I asked if there was anything I could do for him, he told me no at first. But just as I was about to retreat back into my room, he asked me, You got any beer? I didn't have any beer. Alcohol wasn't my thing at the time, but that's when Chad let me in on something not so secret. He told me he and Stacy had just broken up after a drunken disagreement, and that he could really do with a few more beers to drown his sorrows. That's when I tell him that, although I didn't have any booze, I did have something else.

I asked Chad if he wanted to take a hit from a little ganja pipe that I kept hidden away in my room. At first, he seemed impressed that a little dweeb like me was even able to get my hands on that kind of stuff, but little did he know. That was my whole thing. Not to sound like a douche or anything, but I was into microdosing before all this new contemporary interest in it. I used to use THC to dampen my anxiety, psilocybin just for kicks, but for longer, more intensive study sessions, I used tiny, tiny amounts of lysergic acid. I wasn't that 420 stoner kid that seemed to infest college campuses around that time. I didn't advertise my recreational use whatsoever,

and I suppose that's what had Chad so surprised when I suggested that we light up. college campuses around that time. I didn't advertise my recreational use whatsoever, and I suppose that's what had Chad so surprised when I suggested that we light up. He accepted and seemed really grateful that I offered. We'd definitely gotten off on the wrong foot and any other person might have used that opportunity to begin a wholesome kind of mismatched friendship. But not me. I saw an opportunity for something else. I told Chad that I'd pay him a visit once I rolled up a joint and promised him that it wouldn't be too strong. It'd be just enough to chill him out and put him to sleep. Only, that's not exactly how I built it. I did put a little flour in there, but before I sealed it up, I laced the latter two-thirds of the paper with a healthy amount of lysergic acid, then placed it on the radiator to quick-dry it.

Minutes later, I'm knocking on Chad's door, joint and iced tea in hand, and he welcomes me inside, totally blind to the wolf under the sheep's clothing. He seemed nervous at first. He clearly hadn't tried smoking before, but after I talked him through what he should expect, he seemed eager to blast off. It wasn't a good kind of eager, though. He had a lot of negativity about him. Usually I wouldn't trip with anyone in that kind of headspace, but if I played it right, I wasn't going to trip at all.

He was. Remember what I said about lacing the latter portion of the joint with acid? Well, after I lit the joint up, I showed him exactly how to smoke it, warning him with an analogy that I thought he'd relate to, sip and not chug. He almost completely ignored me though, just like I figured he would, but by that point my plan was working exactly how I wanted it to, and God was that exhilarating. As he sank deeper and deeper into his haze, I got him talking about his breakup with Stacy, not her real name of course, but get the idea. He was real sad about the whole thing and talked about how much he liked her, how it took

him by surprise, and how he'd do almost anything to get her back. So I decided to put that to the test. I waited until he was fully in that, I feel funny dude, looking around the room phase of his trip, and kept his mind occupied with thoughts of Stacy. I fed him a bunch of false guru nonsense about how women's liberation was a net positive, but that it came with certain caveats. I agree wholeheartedly that a woman does not need a man to be happy. The reverse is also true. Relationships and procreation are all well and good, but real fulfillment comes from within, not without. And Stacy was only able to let Chad go because she didn't think he needed her. And while that was entirely true, he needed to change her mind on that if he was going to win

her back. He needed to show Stacy that he needed her, not emotionally, but physically too. He needed to show her that he couldn't live without her. Although he was tripping pretty hard by that point, Chad anticipated my train of thought almost perfectly. It freaked him out, but the idea of physically hurting yourself is distressing while sober. Fortunately, and I use that word very loosely here, I was there to keep his head straight. I kept his mind away from things like cutting or actually taking his own life and focused him on something he could handle. Chad played a lot of football in high school, not quite well enough to earn himself a scholarship or anything like that, but enough to

be familiar with sports injuries. He knew they hurt, but he also knew that with the right kind of rehab, he'd be back on his feet in a matter of months. Maybe opening his third story window and scouting out a non-fatal place to land wouldn't be such a bad idea at all. Maybe it'd be worth the short-term pain to secure his long-term romance. When he showed any doubt, I told him to listen to his heart. Stacy was the right girl for him, and if he kept it Chad and just moved on, he'd lose her to someone else. Good things come to those who wait, but great things come to those willing to suffer for them. It was that last line that decided it for him, and after that, we opened up his window and started looking for a good spot to land. Chad thought that he found one pretty quick, and he climbed up

onto the much nicer desk in his much larger room and then edged towards the window. Before he jumped, he made me promise that I'd go tell Stacy right away. He wanted me to call 911 or whatever too, but he made that point abundantly clear. Stacy first, and then 911. I couldn't believe he was actually about to do it, and there was a moment where I almost admired his sheer pig-headed determination. He was either extremely brave or extremely dumb, and possibly a heady mixture of the both. He scooted right up towards the open window, looked out one more time as if to gauge his jump. Then after one more round of assurances that I'd run to tell Stacy, he actually took a moment to thank me. It remains the single most surreal moment of my life.

I'd talked a guy into throwing himself out of a window, and he was actually grateful for it. And then, before I even had a chance to understand exactly how successful my plan had been, Chad just rolled himself out of the window, and I heard him hit the ground. I always want to say that I was able to simply saunter away with an evil grin on my mouth, but the truth is, I completely freaked out. I figured that he'd be rolling around and groaning down there, but when I peered out of the window to look, Chad was just laying there in a very unnatural looking pose and he was completely still and silent. I just ran back to my room, turned off the light and jumped into bed. I didn't wipe down the door handle and my fingerprints were probably on the joint Chad was holding when he rolled out of the window, but I didn't dare go back.

I just thought of a plausible explanation as to why I'd been in his room that night and why I had to leave before he threw himself out of his window. I knew I should have called for help, but I also knew that if he made a full recovery, there was a significant risk of him recalling my involvement in his destructive misadventure. That couldn't happen. I'd be kicked out of school. It wasn't malice that kept me from getting Chad help. It was just fear. Chad didn't lose his life that day, but the fact that he laid there bleeding internally for a full six hours before someone found him, meant his injuries were life-changing. He was still a student, officially speaking, but he wouldn't be resuming his studies for at least another year, and that was the best-case scenario. I know all this because I pretended to be just as shocked and horrified as everyone else. I masked what I'd done by playing into the narrative of party, breakup, drug use, and him attempting to take his own life. I thought Chad might remember that I had talked him into it, but he didn't.

He had no memory of that night, and if something has returned to him since, he certainly hasn't tried to look me up or confront me over it. I'm such a coward that I didn't even move into the larger room once Chad had vacated it. I was terrified that doing so would implicate me in some way, but I benefited in other ways. The victim status that Chad's injuries endowed me with allowed me a much easier ride during that first year. I wasn't expected to attend classes for a while. Other students shared their notes with me and I got an automatic A on two papers that following semester. All I had to do was play the grieving friend who'd made the mistake of sharing a little pot with him. But as we know, that's not what happened. But getting away with it was almost too easy.

I changed a guy's life for the worse, robbed an athlete of his peak fitness over nothing but a dumb dorm room. Then I lied and I lied, soaking up everyone's pity, kind of hoping that he wouldn't make it so I'd never be implicated. I think what I did is the worst kind of evil to be honest, because it did something terrible and then ran off into the dark to hide. I lied, I made myself a victim of my own crime, and then just went on with my own life. But the scary thing is, is that I know that there must be more people like me, wolves in sheep's clothing, and you just never know who it is until it's far too late. Hey, Joel. Hey Joel, I've been a big fan of your channel for a while now and I have a personal experience I think you might be interested in but sharing it puts me in a very difficult position. If my role in what I'm about to tell you got out, I'd be a dead man.

I'm not saying that to sound dramatic, I'm saying that because I'm about to tell you got out, I'd be a dead man. I'm not saying that to sound dramatic. I'm saying that because I'm 100% certain that a person, someone I used to call a friend, would hear about it, find me, and kill me. Now I suppose you might be asking why even risk it, if my life truly is on the line. Honestly, I'm not sure that I can answer that. I guess I just need people to know because of how unfair it all is. I tried to do the right thing. I tried to do something good for someone who actually deserved it, and instead, I destroyed two different families. I've since moved away from my hometown, the place it all happened, so I've been able to talk about it with one or two people, but for some reason, it's just not enough.

Now I know your comment section is very active, so if you see fit to use this story, I'd be very grateful and I'm very interested to know what your viewers have to say. I guess I wrote enough fluff already, so here goes nothing. I grew up in this really crappy little town. I know a lot of people say that, but sometimes it turns out their idea of crappy is two churches, one stoplight, and zero Starbucks. A place like that sounds positively heavenly compared to my hometown, which is more like two dive bars, one meth lab, and zero hope. Everyone with even a semblance of decency got out as soon as they could, but even so, that wasn't many. Most were anchored there through

their family or fate, with life there slowly grinding them down until they're just as screwed up and bitter as everyone else. Crappy parents raise crappy kids, who were parents themselves by their late teens or early twenties. Then the cycle just started all over again. And one of those kids, not the worst, but not a good person by any stretch, happened to be a real close friend of mine growing up. We'll call him Rick, cause it rhymes with prick, and that's the best word for him. He wasn't a bad person, not for most of the time I knew him anyway. He was just kind of a jerk. He was fun to hang out with, and he was pretty cool to me for the most part,

but he was sorely lacking any serious moral fiber and seemed to have zero empathy for others. We used to have a fallout sometimes and go for weeks without talking, but there were only like four people in our town who were into metal music and other such related stuff, so we'd inevitably start hanging out again after however long because we were in the same social circle. And this went on from the start of middle school until we were like 22 or 23, when he started dating this girl that we'll call Angela. I'm calling her Angela because she was the closest thing to an angel that I've ever known. I understand that might sound cringe to some, but if you knew her, you'd agree. Everything was about other people with her.

She was a real people pleaser. Then combine that with the fact that she was a single mother, with a baby daddy in prison, and she's a textbook example of someone whose hometown becomes just as much a cage as the one her kid's father was in. But anyway, Rick starts dating Angela, and for a while everything goes fine. He even seemed cool with the fact that she had a kid by someone else, a felon no less, and from what I could tell, he was actually enjoying the whole stepdad thing. Angela must have recognized how valuable that was, and I wasn't surprised when she asked him to move into her place, even if it was after less than six months of dating. She owned her own home and inheritance from her grandparents who passed on and honestly, it kind of seemed wholesome at first. We didn't see much of Rick anymore, but I guess we took it on the chin because it all seemed to

be so positive. Rick stopped smoking and drinking so much. He got a job and it wasn't a total transformation or anything. Rick was still a prick, but it was an impressive change of attitude nevertheless. About two more years passed, and our little social circle is as tight as it ever was. We're all maturing, coming into our stride, getting serious about careers and all that kind of stuff. And we could afford to do things for once, and it was a good time. Me and Rick started going on camping trips, something we always talked about but always been kind of too poor to do, and we didn't really have dads or anything like that to take us.

Most of the time, these trips included a beer-fueled shoving match or two, but these also included a lot of heartfelt confessions and sharing of deep thoughts, or at least what we considered to be deep. Sometimes we shared fears or certain moral dilemmas that we were in, and this one trip, Rick starts telling me about this girl that he works with. He's working nights with her, and she's really cool, and they might have done some stuff together once or twice. Not like third base or anything, just doing stuff because they were bored more than anything.

It turns out the whole thing was a soft introduction to the fact that Rick was cheating on Angela, and he was cheating on her regularly. That was also the camping trip when Rick told me that he paid nothing towards the couple's bills, only occasionally contributed to things like groceries or home supplies, and actually seriously resented having to raise someone else's kid. The whole thing was just a convenience for him because he was such a saint for taking care of Angela's kid when she was at work or needed a break that he was entitled to cheat. I was appalled, but aside from telling him that he should stop, there wasn't much I could do. We were in the

middle of nowhere, had all of our supplies split between packs. I couldn't just knock his teeth out like I wanted to and walk back home again. I was stuck with that guy. I ended up being kind of glad that I didn't just punch Rick in the face because throughout the remainder of our trip, I thought that I'd talk him out of cheating and have him seeing it from her perspective. We had yet another heartfelt moment where he swore that he'd change his ways, like he'd started drinking a bunch at that time too and he agreed that needed to change as well. For a while after we got back he seemed to be sticking to his word, but then came when he asked me to drive him to a Rite Aid to buy a pack or bottle of Plan B, whatever form it comes in, and I knew that all of his promises

had been bullcrap. He told me it was for Angela, but he also made me swear that I'd never mention it to her, so I just knew that he was full of it. To say that I was angry would be a huge, huge understatement. He'd been taking this wonderful person for a ride this whole time, and maybe things had been good in the beginning, but they sure weren't now. He had no intention of staying with her in the long run, that much was clear and his cheating was already a solid sign that he had one foot out of the door. Angela was placing all this faith into a guy that was about to let her down big time, and I'm not sure anyone knew it but me. If it was any other circumstance, I'd have been able to just keep my mouth shut, but there was a kid involved.

A kid who needed a stable father figure in their life, not some prick like Rick. She and her kid actually had a chance. They needed to get out of town and start a life someplace else, and for some reason, I got it into my head that I could be the one to help them. It wasn't an overnight decision or anything. I wrestled with the idea for weeks. But in the end, I came up with what I believed was an airtight plan, then set to work. First off, I created a fake Facebook account,

filling in the high school section with the name of the school and all that that I went to, and then I sent Angela a friend request and just waited. Just like I expected, she accepted the friend request, but was still kind of confused as to who the person was. She sent a nice message saying how sorry she was that she didn't remember this fake person that I invented. This was typical of her, assuming that it was her at fault, or at least pretending that that was the case out of sheer politeness. And that's when I hit her with a pre-written message that I'd been working on while waiting for the friend request to be accepted. The long and short of it was this. Rick is cheating on you and if you want a future for your kid, a real future, you need to leave town. I know money is

tight but I can set you up with a place out of town for the next couple of weeks at least. You can take as long as you need to think about it, but if you decide to do the right thing, all you gotta do is reply to this message with a date and a time, and I'll come pick you up from the house. You can't know who I am just yet, but it'll all make sense. I promise. I felt stupid in the moments after I pressed send, and I honestly didn't think that I'd ever hear back. But then, I did. Angela's reply said something like, I didn't believe you at first, but now I do.

I want to leave, but I don't know how else to do it. I also need to know that you're real somehow. I don't know how you're going to do that, but just please let me know that you're genuine, somehow. I don't know how you're going to do that, but just please let me know that you're genuine, somehow. I didn't know how else to prove that it was real, so I drove out to a motel in the next county over, grabbed a little brochure that they kept on the front desk. I took a picture of it, along with a few hundred bucks in cash that I'd planned on giving to her, then sent it over using the fake account. She sent a reply back almost instantly, telling me a date, time, and location, but when I showed up, she wasn't there. I waited for quite a while. Faking some minor engine trouble was a kind of cover story, I guess,

but when it became obvious that Angela had gotten cold feet, I drove home and sent one final message, just saying, offer still stands. I remember watching the chat window for a minute or two hoping that the little gray scent would turn to scene before my eyes, but it didn't, and that's because it was already too late. And the news broke the next day. I don't know exactly what it was that drove Rick to hit her. No one does. But in my head, it happened for one of two reasons. Either Rick was such a monster that he always had it in him to hit a woman just for wanting to leave, or he started beating her out of frustration.

And honestly, I think it's the second one. I think Rick found the message, my message, and he wanted to know who'd sent it. Of course, Angie didn't know, but Rick wouldn't have believed that. Quite the opposite, actually. He'd have been certain that she was lying to him as part of some grand gaslighting escape plan. I think that's what drove him to it. The fact that there was something he couldn't know, something he couldn't control. And that's why he beat Angie so bad that she was confined to a wheelchair for the better part of a year afterwards. Doctors said that she had no right to pull through, but figured it was something to do

with how much she loved her kid. Rick tried to run, but the cops caught up with him and he ended up going away for eight long years. But he wasn't the only guy to get time. Angie's dad ended up getting an even longer sentence because he showed up at Rick's parents place one night while he was drunk. He hammered on the door until someone opened up and that person happened to be Rick's little brother. Angie's dad shot him through the mouth, said he wanted to paralyze him just like Rick had done to his daughter. Said he wanted him to know what it's like to have a crippled family member. Well, Rick's little brother ended up bleeding out on the way to the hospital and Angie's dad ended up going away for life.

And that was exactly ten years ago this year. And Rick is out of prison now. I haven't met with him in person, nor do I intend to, but I've heard some of the things he's said about finding out who told Angie that he was cheating on her And that's how I know that he'd kill me if he knew this Literally kill me Which leads me back to my original question How am I supposed to reconcile this with myself?

All I tried to do was do a good thing for a good person But now her life as she knew it is completely over. Her dad's in prison and her ex-boyfriend might just come back to hound her again, wanting to know who was behind the fake Facebook account that ruined his perfect scam. It wasn't so much what I did, but the way I did it that got her hurt. So please, if this makes it into a video, which I highly doubt it will, please tell me how the hell I'm supposed to just go on living with all this in my head. I've managed ten years, ten long years, and I don't think I can do it anymore, not

without people knowing that I tried, even if it all counts for less than nothing. A A long time ago, after a relationship far, far away, I ended up having to move into what's lovingly known here as a bedsit. Imagine a studio apartment, but much, much nastier. All the fittings are from the 80s, and they're usually in some old Victorian or Georgian, meaning the plumbing is god-awful and they're usually in some old Victorian or Georgian, meaning the plumbing is god-awful and you get mice in the winter. I had no choice but to move into one of these. It was that or move back in with my parents and I happened to move into an area that was full of them. It was actually a very nice area, with these big old mansion-style houses. Only thing was,

they'd all been chopped up into tiny bedsits, so instead of it being some affluent upper middle class haven, it was more like an open air lunatic asylum really. No offense to anyone who lives in a bedsit, plenty of good people have been saved from homelessness over the years thanks to cheap and cheerful accommodation I'm sure. But they do, then they'll know as well as I do that they're often utilized by a certain kind of people. For example, starving artists and musicians or students who like to drink and play loud music late into the night. For every charming foreign master student, there's some absolute mental case who's barely fit to live among their fellow humans. I shouldn't really get on my high

horse about anything. I think I turned out to be something of a nightmare neighbor myself, but this is purely to set the scene, nothing more. Anyway, I'm living on the second floor of some dusty, crumbling old three-story, as it was probably the lowest point of my life at that point. Because I'd been foolish enough to let my ex sign all the tenancy paperwork in my absence, it was technically her place. Legally speaking, I knew I wouldn't have a leg to stand on, and living with her after the breakup was agony, so instead of sticking it out in a place I wasn't wanted, I decided to get out while we were still on relatively good terms. Only thing was, this was right in the middle of the big pandemic, you know,

so I literally couldn't have picked a worse time to try and move anywhere else. Some estate agents were closed indefinitely, others wouldn't meet face to face, and the market was just stagnant because who the bloody hell decides to move flats during a pandemic? I basically went for the first thing I found, which was the cheap but nasty bedsit I found myself living in at the time of this story. Like I said, lowest point of my life, but it honestly wasn't that bad to begin with. Apart from the smell of God knows what wafting down the stairwell from the flat upstairs, the neighbors were actually an alright bunch. Everyone kept to themselves, and everyone kept the noise down. But then, some new neighbors moved into the apartment around the back of the house

and this place is only maybe 50 meters away from my bedroom window. I remember catching a glimpse of them as they were moving in and they seemed no weirder than the usual crowd but then once they got all their stuff moved in, they started being loud. Like really loud. I don't know what these people did for work, but they slept all day and blasted music all night. I mean blasted it too. Not just playing a few tunes with their window open on a sunny day.

You'd have thought that they were facing their speakers out the window with how loud it was. It was a complete piss take. It went on for weeks too, and I couldn't for the life of me work out why no one in their house that they were sharing stopped them from doing it. I honestly thought that it was going a bit mental at first because how the hell was no one else hearing the racket that they kept playing until 3 or 4 in the morning? By the third or fourth night I just couldn't carry on having my sleep disturbed. I'd been four load, so it wasn't like I had anywhere to be, but the constant noise was driving me up the wall. I didn't want to be accused of breaking lockdown, so I had to think of a way of getting their attention in order to ask them, politely mind you, to keep the friggin' noise down.

And that opportunity came one day when I was doing the dishes. The sink was right near the window that looked down at the street behind my building, so when someone from the noisy house walked out their front door and down the driveway, I was able to catch them. I swear on my nan's grave that I called down to them in a polite as way as I could. I said, excuse me, and then called out the same thing just a little bit louder,

not aggressive in the least bit. They looked up and once I had their proper attention, I asked the girl in the nicest way possible to please think of others before they play loud music with the windows open all night. I swear to Christ, what happened next will never fail to make me angry, no matter how many times I remember it. The girl looked up at me, smiled in this really sweet way, and told me to F off. I was in a complete state of shock for a second or two. Not that I've got a particularly sensitive disposition, I just couldn't believe anyone could be so rude right off the bat like that. Once the shock wore off, I was fuming, so I marched downstairs, surgical mask on, and went over to give whoever else lived there what for. They were just as non-responsive as

their pal. I've lived alongside some obnoxious wankers before, but these two took the absolute crown. There was another night of loud music, only this time they really did prop their speakers up next to an open window and did all they could to scream and shout in the hopes of annoying me. The only saving grace was that they didn't know exactly where I lived, only that I was close enough to hear their music, and their efforts got them a strongly worded note on their front door in the morning. Not even from me, either, so it showed someone else was finally losing patience with them. And I won't bore you with the events of the weeks that followed. Let's just say that it was a steady escalation, with police being called once or twice. It turned into a bit of this house versus everyone else type of situation, and while that definitely wasn't an ideal way to live,

there was definitely this attitude of whatever gets you through the pandemic. The guy who lived above me told me that he'd invested in some really bougie earplugs and I was glad they worked for him but in my case, they'd gotten under my skin. I mean really gotten under my skin. Granted, they weren't the only thing that had me stressed out. It was a stressful time to be alive but they became the sole focus of my ire. I started drinking a lot. I started smoking again. The nightly shenanigans had my sleeping pattern in a mess too, so I was up alone at night, fixating on how inconsiderate they were being. Then one night, it all just got the better of me,

and I went over to sort them out. I say sort them out like that because at the time, that's the thought that was going through my head. I was blind drunk but not blackout drunk. I knew what I was doing and I was overflowing with spite. It must have been before 4am because it was still mostly dark out, but when I walked up our street then back down theirs, there was no sign of consciousness coming from the noisy house. There was obviously someone in there as the

windows were open and music was still playing, and I refused to believe that they were all asleep at that time. So I crept up to an open window, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, and started calling out for someone to come to the window. I called out once, then twice, then three times, but no one appeared. And after a while, it became obvious that they were just completely ignoring and hiding from me, or they were all actually passed out, exhausted. Like I said, I refused to believe it was the latter. They'd only shut the music off at 5 to 6 a.m. in the past, so there was no way that they'd gone to bed with all their music still on,

even if it wasn't blasting out the windows. I lost the plot. I didn't start screaming or shouting. I didn't start to smash windows or throw anything through the opening. I just took one long last drag of my ciggy and flicked it through the open window, still lit. After that, I just walked off. I knew what I'd done. I knew it had either caused a serious carpet burn or maybe even set something on fire, but I knew that I'd done. I knew it had either caused a serious carpet burn or maybe even set something on fire. But I knew that they were still awake, so I figured that they'd put the fire out, call 999, hell, they might even have to live somewhere else for the foreseeable future.

All that suited me just fine. After all, they deserved it. They'd done all they could to make our lives hell. Why not deliver a little of the inferno right in their TV room? I honestly thought that by the time I got back to my flat that I'd be hearing smoke alarms, some panicked cries, maybe even the whoosh of a fire extinguisher. But it was nothing. Just the gentle glow of a fire starting. One which got brighter and brighter and brighter. I smoked another cigarette, cracked open another beer, just waiting for the show to really start. It started alright. It just started in a way I never, ever intended.

Before I even knew what was happening, the entire ground floor was on fire. Or at least it looked that way from where we were standing. The fire engines turned up, hosing the place down in a frenzy, then the ambulance turned up and started stretchering some very poorly looking people into the back. Mostly they looked like they had nasty cases of smoke inhalation, but another looked quite badly burned and was making these horrible groaning sounds as the paramedics carried her out. I should have felt terrible. I know I should have. But I didn't.

I came face to face with my worst possible self in that moment and it's as shameful as it is terrifying to me. I only felt a few twinges of guilt as I drifted off to sleep. And when I woke up again, hung over to all hell, I instantly remembered what the bad thing was. I'd lived with this whole thing for a while now, almost three years, and there's more than the obvious reason that I chose not to talk about it. I don't talk about it not so much because it'd mean a spell in prison, but because I'm not actually all that sorry. The whole neighborhood was eerily silent in the weeks that followed that house fire.

Everyone managed to get a good night's sleep, thanks to me. People like that need to learn. And if it takes a few sleepless nights on my end so that other people can live in peace, then so be it. To be continued... so I'm sorry if this catches you off guard, but today I'd like to tell you the story of how I killed a man and got away with it. I appreciate that you might get emails like this all the time, but I can assure you my story is genuine. I used to sail a lot during my late 30s. I don't want to give away what my old job was, but it made me a lot of money and thanks to some wise investments,

I was able to retire at the ripe young age of 37 years old. I'd always had a passion for sailing, so I bought a 60-foot sailboat then started sailing all over the Americas in it. Those were the best days of my life, without a shadow of a doubt, but some waters proved smoother sailing than others. Way up north, you had to worry about ice sheets and fog banks, but then the further south you went, you had to worry about some other stuff too. Sharks, tropical storms. Then once you're out in the southern Caribbean, you gotta worry about the people too. If you follow the island south, you pass St. Vincent, Granada, and Trinidad, then you hit the northern coast of South America. You can turn west and sail along the coast of Venezuela all the way to Mexico.

Or you can turn eastward and sail along the coast of what I like to call the old colonies. There's Guyana, French Guyana, two separate countries, and Suriname, which used to be English, French, and Dutch colonies respectively. Guyana is a real nice place, but the amount of poverty skyrockets as you sail into Suriname and French Guyana. As you probably know, with poverty comes crime, and when you're real poor and happen to live near one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, you can guess what kind of crime becomes too tempting to resist. Piracy. I'm not talking about the Captain Phillips style of Somali piracy. Oh no. The pirates of the modern day southern Caribbean are a different breed.

They use all the same fast boat and AK combination of their East African counterparts, and they've learned from their mistakes too. Instead of targeting commercial shipping, they target civilian super yachts and corporate fishing trips. They don't need much, just phones, cash, and anything they can sell quick and cheap. And if you cause them any trouble, they'll just kill you. Shoot your boat full of holes and hey, presto, you're just another victim of the Bermuda Triangle. Savvier sailors will avoid stretches of coast known to be watched by spotters. They sail way out to the choppier waters just to mitigate the risk, but others choose to risk the

danger just for the experience, and honestly, I think it might be worth it. The people in that area of the world are some of the friendliest, warmest folks around. They'd give you the shirt off their back if you needed it it and then whip up some of the most incredible food with very little on hand. Consequently, it was an area that I really wanted to visit. Risky, off-the-beaten-path destinations are definitely in my wheelhouse and when you know a guy who can sell you a cheap pistol for extra peace of mind, a place like that gets an awful lot less threatening. I've been plenty of places where I felt safer carrying a gun. Half of them are back in the US, but no matter where I went,

I never had to use it. That all changed during that meander along the South American coast. I was moored up someplace, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. I'd gone ashore to find a place to eat, then as soon as my belly was full I hit the wall and was forced to head back to my boat to catch some sleep. A few hours later I'm sleeping in my bunk when I'm suddenly awakened by the soft bumping sound of something touching my boat's hull. That's not the most unusual of events but in this occasion something told me that I better go check it out. I took the old pistol, kept my finger on the trigger guard then started creeping up the steep stairs between the

cabin to the aft deck. Once I was about halfway up I listened out for any movement or voices but there was nothing so I'm halfway reassured when I climb the rest of the way only to be greeted by the sight of a man climbing over my boat's railings with what looked like a sawed-off shotgun in his hand. I didn't think, I just acted. I shot the guy three times and watched as he fell backwards off my boat. I expected a splash, but there wasn't one. Something broke his fall. His boat. I ran over to the railing, pointed the gun at the terrified looking man piloting the small craft, then pulled the trigger. Again, not the sound that I expected. No loud bang, just the dull click of my pistol jamming. You really do get what

you pay for. The terrified pilot grabbed a hold of his buddy who was half out of the boat and who must have almost capsized the thing as he fell into it, then just revved his engine and took off. I only mentioned it hypothetically to one other person from that area of the world. They told me, hypothetically speaking, that if I was to do something like shoot an armed man who tried to climb onto my boat, that I'd done the right thing. I was told that sometimes, if the pirates rob or hurt someone who might have friends, powerful friends, who might come after them, they'll just tie the people up, torch the boat, and then disappear back into the jungle. I enjoy visiting that area of the world, but I sure as hell ain't going there again. When I was in college, I was out and about with my then-boyfriend.

We had gone to dinner, then went to Walmart to get some typical college food so we could survive a Sunday in. I was dressed up in a casual dressy outfit. We decided to split up while we shopped, perhaps to do quicker shopping, but I don't remember the exact reason why. I was wandering the grocery aisles when I noticed a girl who was about my age. In a friendly manner, we casually smiled at each other and continued shopping. It didn't seem weird at first, but I kept noticing her in the same aisles as me, and a big, muscular man was never far behind us. Eventually, I texted my boyfriend and asked where he was and continued shopping. Next thing I knew, the girl approached me and complimented my jacket. I said, thanks, Mauricius, and tried to move on. she stopped me and said something along the lines of hey you look

like you're my age and you seem really nice i just moved here for a new job and a company my friends and i are starting and tried to ask me questions about where i was from i was vague and untrusting with what i said noticing that this wasn't normal then said, I'm looking for more people like you and me to work for our company. It's kind of a warehouse job and I would love you to be one of our bookkeepers. You should give me your number. I responded, that's nice of you to offer me a job, but I'm not a desk person and I already have a job I really love. And she says, ah, well that's a bummer. I thought we might work well together, you know. Well, would you want to give me your number so we can at least hang out? I'd love to have a friend who can show me around the city. I realized that I wasn't getting out of this

situation until my boyfriend showed up or I gave her my number. Eventually I rattled off a fake number and said, hey, I'll catch you later, I gotta go. Then I walked away, praying my boyfriend would be near so we could just get the heck out of there. While I was looking for him and trying to call him, the girl caught up to me and said, Hey, I tried to call you but it said the number was out of service. As I tried to come up with a quick excuse and say, Maybe you typed it in wrong,

she saw that my iPhone was unlocked and in my hand. She quickly snatched it and called herself on it. I was so flustered and mad at her that I snatched my phone right back when my boyfriend came around the corner. He instantly recognized that something was up and said that we needed to go. When the girl saw him approach me, she looked so disappointed to see him and stopped trying to interact. We ended up buying nothing and just leaving. And that night, we called our parents and the police. The police said they didn't think it was anything ill-intended, but I was sure that it was probably trafficking, as that's something that's happened around that area before. I was going to switch my phone number because I was so scared. I blocked them and turned off all location access on my phone. I was too scared to go anywhere alone for a while,

and I even told my coach, so she was aware. A couple of days later, I got a text from a random number. It was the girl. She sent a picture of my best friend who was out drinking downtown with some of her other friends. The text said, I met your best friend. She gave me your number because I told her I was looking for new friends. She showed me a picture of you and I said, what a coincidence. I met her the other day and lost her number when I got a new phone. Now about two minutes later, I got a text from my best friend saying I gave your number to a girl who wants to make friends around here and is looking for people to join her business And since I'm moving this week I thought of you I freaked out and told her to get away from the girl and not to leave alone with her

I stayed up all night worried until my best friend got home She said she was fine, otherwise I would have gone to pick her up. The next day, my best friend apologized and told me to block the number. She said that the girl in her group had tried to ditch her, but she kept showing up at the bus that they were at. The girl was relentless and texted my friend all night, trying to get her to go hang out at her place. My best friend also said that when she asked about the business, the girl wouldn't give her many details other than it was a warehouse somewhere and that would pay her great and it was in town. If she wanted a tour of it, the girl said

that she would take her and she even said she would take her there tonight. We never heard from this chick again and today I was listening to a podcast that mentioned different trafficking tactics including vague jobs where they would pay you well but needed you to come meet with them for some more information, and a new to town girl who desperately needs new friends, things like that. I've been thinking about this all morning, and I'm glad I felt uncomfortable and that my friend didn't go with this girl. But I am mostly mad that the cops ignored my concern and just thought it was nothing.

Even though it's pretty clear trafficking has occurred in my area and in that Walmart specifically before. I just hope they wrote down the tip that I gave them that night. But I doubt they did. This incident took place in 2011, a year after my graduation from college. I was a 22-year-old female living in my first apartment with a friend. I had adopted the sweetest dog I had ever had, a runt of the litter, Pomeranian, who loved every person she ever met. My nephew was young at the time and would sometimes handle her a little roughly. We'd correct him, but he didn't quite realize how little she was under all that fur, and she tolerated it without ever nipping or anything.

One day, my roommate was gone and there was a knock at the door. It was a handyman who said he was there for an annual check on appliances. He was wearing the apartment complex's standard uniform and had a badge, so I really didn't think twice about it, and upon follow-up he really did work there, even though I hadn't been notified that this would be happening. He came and began chatting and sort of leering. I felt uncomfortable, but not nearly as freaked out when my dog came rushing in between us, ears back, teeth bared and started growling at him. He awkwardly laughed and went to pet her, weird choice for a dog that's baring its teeth at you, and she immediately lunged forward

like she was going to bite him. He leaped back before she could. Now despite being a tiny dog and him a large man, he was obviously freaked out. At this point she was straight up barking at him. He asked if I could put her away while he worked and I lied and said that she had separation anxiety. I recommended that he come back another time when I could walk her or when my roommate was there so one of us could be in the room with her. And he never did come back. My dog lived another seven years and not once did she ever growl at another human, let alone try to bite one. You hear about dogs being able to read people so while I don't know

if he would have done anything to me while on company hours, I still think that she could sense that he wasn't a good person. She was my good girl. When I was seven years old, my mom and father got a divorce. This event prompted her to move and follow her career in a different small town, which would pay better, as she was a single parent now. On our long 12-hour drive to the new location, we stopped on the way in this little town which was very hippie. Sort of had lots of art and little shops everywhere. My mom said that we were here to meet up with her friend, Paulette.

I guess they went way back in her college days and recently got in touch after about a decade. We ended up going to this East Indian restaurant where we could meet for dinner. This slender, somewhat fragile woman walks in. She was very tall, well over six foot, big frizzy curly brown hair with blonde streaks in it. She was Caucasian, wearing a colorful shawl with feather earrings with very pale blue eyes. She looked like a mosaic tapestry or something. She walks over to the table and gives my mom a greeting and a big hug, makes her way over to my older brother and shakes his hand, after comes around to my side of the table. I lend my hand out to her and she just stood there, expressionless, with her mouth partly open with a blank gaze, just staring at me. It briefly made me uncomfortable and then

a flick of a switch, this spark ignites in her face and she makes this huge Cheshire cat smile, kneels over and hugs me tightly. She goes back to sit with my mom and then catches up over the years while we eat dinner. My mom got the bill and said to Paulette in the parking lot, you can just follow us. We got in the car and my mom explained to us that Paulette was actually coming over to live with us for a while. Paulette followed us for the next several hours. We got to the new place and unpacked our necessity items since we had hired a moving truck with the rest of our stuff arriving in the morning. There was a bunk bed already set up at this place for my brother and me. It was roughly 11pm when we arrived and we quickly fell asleep.

However, I woke up at around 1.30am to find the patio deck light on which was right beside our room. I gazed out through the blinds and saw the back of Paulette's curly hair. She was sitting on the deck, cross-legged, smoking a cigarette. I didn't think much of it and lay back down until I noticed the light from the window was partly blocked out. I looked behind me and saw the unmistakable outline of Paulette's shadow facing my window. She was there for a few minutes and I didn't want to lean up so I just pretended to sleep. Her shadow moved and I heard the front door close. The patio light turned off after a few minutes and I repositioned myself facing the wall to go back to sleep. As I began to drift off, the door to our room opened slowly but it wasn't my mom.

It was Paulette wearing a nightgown. I turned back to face the wall and't my mom. It was Paulette wearing a nightgown. I turned back to face the wall and closed my eyes. She quietly made her way to my bunk and started to comb the back of my hair with her fingers in a claw formation, running her nails on the back of my scalp. I kept my eyes closed tightly, nearly holding my breath, trying to give no sign that I was awake. I smelled some essential oils like lavender and she started rubbing oil into the back of my neck and pinching the back of my neck muscle, sometimes holding it and releasing it. I began to accept whatever was happening because it didn't feel all that bad after a while. I actually ended up falling asleep to it after my initial confusion.

I woke up in the morning and Paulette was waiting at the table with cereal for my brother and me. She put chocolate chips in my bowl but not in my brother's. And my brother and I made small talk with her and she seemed to be trying to make us comfortable with the new situation. My brother went back to his room and set up his game cube after his cereal. And since I was a slower eater than my older brother, I was always the last at the table. As I slowly ate, she sat there, watching my every move. Once I finished, I said, thank you, and grabbed my bowl to bring it to the sink. She placed her hand on mine and said, I gave you a neck massage so you wouldn't pee your bed.

I know lots of young ones pee beds when they sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. I looked up at her and said, I've never peed the bed before, but thank you. She continued to massage the back of my neck for the next few nights. I ended up telling her that I was comfortable here now and that she didn't need to do this anymore. She reacted with a sigh but acknowledged it. I started elementary school the following week which meant getting earlier nights sleep at around 8pm. Paulette and my mom would stay up much later than my brother and me and drink wine. I used to wait for everyone to go to bed before using the washroom at night to pee because my mom would scold me for being up late on weeknights. Once the house got quiet at around 11pm, I would sneak out and tiptoe to the washroom.

This became my routine for the next few weeks, until Paulette started doing the same thing at the same time every night. Every time I opened the door, she would blaze down the hallway across from my room. It happened so frequently that I started going outside to pee from the back mudroom. Every time I opened the door, she would blaze down the hallway across from my room. It happened so frequently that I started going outside to pee from the back mudroom. She began to make me very livid. I would open my door as quietly as I could and then sprint to the washroom. This seemed to work for a while until one night when I got up slightly later than usual and around midnight. I was a little more careless with noise because I was half asleep and groggy. I opened the door and Paulette's door slammed open

instantly. She barged out into the dimly moonlit hallway completely naked and quickly walked down the hallway. I was already so far down the hallway that I couldn't turn back to my room. I jumped behind my mom's jade plant, squished my knees to my chest, and tucked my head down. She whizzed straight by me so fast that I felt the wind push my hair. She stayed in the washroom for almost an hour with the door open to crack and lights off in silence. I stayed there beside the washroom, tucked in the corner behind the plant pot not making a sound I heard the washroom door open completely and she started pacing up and down the hallway I kept small and insignificant behind the plant until she went back into her room

I brushed this off as a complete accident it was just unfortunate timing but no every night going forward she would literally sprint down the hallway naked if I made a single noise, creak the floorboard, or open my door. About two months into this, my brother and I were sword fighting with tree branches outside. He ended up clipping my forehead, causing it to bleed pretty badly. Paulette saw this happen and walked up to my brother. I thought she would scold him, but instead, she stomped and kicked him in the head with her boot, causing him to fall on his back. He got up off the ground crying and ran into the house.

She grabbed me and started cradling me, rocking me back and forth like a baby. She was shaking so much that she was vibrating and repeatedly asking, Are you hurt? Are you hurt? in a shaky voice. Anyway, my mom found out through my brother what happened and decided that she had to leave. And on her final day, Paulette made a point to see me one more time in the driveway before entering her car. She knelt down and said, I hope I can see you in a different life. You remind me so much of my husband. Goodbye. And started bawling her eyes out, hugging me. I asked my mom who her husband was and I guess he was some marine who had died in Afghanistan a few months prior to her moving in with us. My mom said that she would frequently say how much I reminded her of him on a daily basis.

My mom hasn't spoken to her since. To this day, I had never told my mom about the massages or anything else because Paulette was already exiled, and I were closing shift at a store in my small town in the north, off the main road and across rent-controlled apartments. I was waiting at the register as usual and watching people come in around 10 minutes before close, watching who came in so that I could make sure that they all left. There was a guy that came in after a girl that I randomly hyperfixated on and he walked down the main aisle towards the bathrooms and went out of sight. I don't know why but I wanted to make sure that he specifically left. Customer after customer came and went, the ones that I saw come in. But five minutes to closing time, that guy never left. My manager went to the bathroom and I stayed by the register until she

came out and went to the office. I walked around the first few aisles and the front towards the door and didn't see him. My manager came out and wanted to buy some things, right before we were supposed to close. I told her that I saw a guy come in, but I didn't see him leave. I felt really uncomfortable and disturbed and thought that it was just because I'd been listening to the insanely creepy podcast The Black Tapes. But after she checked the whole store and then I went around and checked with her, we saw that he'd left a basket. We went into the office after I grabbed my stuff and we checked the cameras several times. We saw him come in, we watched the cameras again,

forwards and backwards, every camera, outside and inside, right by the exit and incoming door. He never left. We decided to leave after about half an hour and called our general manager. I never saw him leave and the cameras never recorded him leaving and I've been terrified since it just happened. So this was a few years back and I was walking home from a friend's house after hanging at hers after school. It was around 9.30pm in the summer so the sun had for the most part set. It was relatively dark but still bright enough where I could make out things that were around 9.30pm in the summer so the sun had for the most part set. It was relatively dark but still bright enough where I could make out things that were around me. I was stoned and walking very slowly down the road to my house which was only about a 20 minute walk away from my friends. The majority of my walk was spent on a straight quiet suburban street that was very familiar to

me as I had done this walk plenty of times before. After maybe five minutes of walking, I noticed the first and only car to drive past. It was an old, beat-up white Honda, which I didn't take notice much of until another few minutes passed and it drove by again. Still, I wasn't concerned and continued about my walk, admiring the cracks in the pavement or doing whatever else a stoned 14-year-old does on a walk. Another minute passes and this car drives past again, this time more slowly and I feel my stomach drop. I couldn't make out who was inside, but I knew something was off. I've always been very timid, so I try to convince myself it was just paranoia and that I was just being dramatic, until it drives past again about two minutes later and

parked maybe ten feet in front of me. As I approach the car, I kept my head down, but I hear a hey there. And sure enough, I look up and there was a rough looking man, who you could just tell from his appearance alone that he smelt like stale cigarettes and body odor sitting in the driver's seat smiling at me. The lack of teeth and dirty shirt this man had gave me a horrible vibe so I just gave a little smile back and continued walking. I looked up and noticed that he's driving alongside me and he asked if I had directions to the closest gas station. I stopped and pointed in the general direction and told him where to go and that it was less than a five minute drive away when out of nowhere he just started to laugh. I kind of

just stared in confusion and fear as he squinted his eyes at me like he was trying to get a better look at my face and then he said, I'll take a guess. But I think I can tell from those eyes that you've been smoking pot, little miss. I kind of just laughed and tried to walk away when he said, come back. So I stopped in my tracks. Why I just didn't keep walking is beyond me but I turned around and he pulls out a rather large bag of weed and asks if I want some. I tell him I'm okay and I have no money and he says something along the lines of, I don't need your money. Take it. I reassure him I'm fine and don't need it and try to continue walking but nonetheless he continued driving alongside me.

He then asks if I need a ride home and tells me it's too dark to be walking alone which really frightened me. He continued trying to coerce me into his car and I become more and more unsettled. I begin to look for the closest house with the light on and after finding one I tell him, this is my house, good night, and walk up some stranger's driveway and walk straight into their home. It was a middle-aged couple sitting in the living room and they looked extremely shocked and equally angry and I just started to sob out of shock and relief and apologize profusely. I explained to them what just happened and the very kind lady assured me that I did the right thing and she gave me a ride home. Looking back I probably should have not but I was scared, under the influence and still a child and the homeowners were very understanding.

Still one of the scariest things that's ever happened to me but I'm so glad that I trusted my gut and got away from that man whose intentions seemed anything but pure. I still consider myself lucky that I got away. When I was in my early 20s, I went to Walmart for a grocery haul. I walk in, get me some McDonald's before I go shopping. Because we all know you can't go grocery shopping hungry. I smash my two McChickens, then go about shopping. Fifteen or so minutes later, I got what was coming to me. Some intolerable stomach pains and a bathroom trip brewing. So I run to the bathroom in a panic, close the stall, and let the storm begin. There's just one other person in the bathroom with me in the stall to the left, the handicapped stall. By the shoes, I'm thinking it's a little girl, so as I'm going about my business, looking down at my phone to pass the time,

all of the sudden I see something in the upper corner of my eye. It was a phone on the top of the stall door in front of me, not the handicapped stall, with the camera facing me. There was a phone on the top of the stall door in front of me, not the handicapped stall, with the camera facing me. There was a hand holding the phone. There was someone recording me using the bathroom. The whole thing went by so quickly, but I was in an incredibly vulnerable position as you can imagine, and all I could think to do was scream, What the F are you doing as loud as possible. The person immediately runs off and I hear the little girl in the stall beside me

jump up off the toilet and run away. By the time I could wipe myself and run out of the bathrooms, obviously whoever was recording me was gone. So I'm completely mortified and I ask for one of the managers and I tell them what happened. They were not concerned that someone was straight up recording me in the bathroom with my pants down and legs wide open for god knows how long. I tell them to please look at the cameras because I feel completely violated and am concerned for my safety. Within ten minutes they return and say that a little girl ran in out of the bathroom shortly before me and that it was probably her just joking around getting pictures of people in the restroom. I argued with them and said I know it wasn't that little girl because she was in the stall next to me and she ran out after I yelled. They were adamant that that's who it was

because no one else went in before or after me. I never escalated it further with the Walmart manager. Looking back, I was gaslighted into thinking it was just some dumb kid. But the next few days when I thought about it, that's just not possible. I came to the conclusion that there is a nasty poop-peeping pervert hiding in the supply closet or something in the bathrooms, taking videos of vulnerable women doing their business. I've been convinced all of these years that I am probably out there on some website on the dark web somewhere for people who have these types of weird things that they're into.

And not long before that particular incident, I was followed by a car out of Walmart and nearly made it to my house before I realized. I drove around to make sure it was actually following me and they definitely were. I got rid of them because I drove to a gas station and screamed, this person is following me, please call the police. And once they heard what I was doing, they drove away. I never got a good look at him or her, unfortunately, and I never did file a police report either. I can't help but wonder if it was the same person that took a video of me in that bathroom. On Saturday morning, I, a 21-year-old female, decided to go to my local Goodwill.

I am disabled and suffer from chronic pain. I use a cane on my good days and a wheelchair on bad days. Luckily for me, this was a good day. I parked out front and got out of my car and immediately noticed a man sitting at the far corner in front of the Goodwill. As I was walking into the Goodwill, he shouted, Miss, do you have any extra time for me today? I'd never seen this man in my life and really did not want to engage with him so I politely said, no sir, not today, I'm sorry, and continued walking. He shouted something else at me but I couldn't make out what he said and was afraid if I stopped

and asked then he would try to engage me in a conversation. I ignored him and continued walking. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him begin to stand up. I walked faster and entered the Goodwill. Thinking I was in the clear, I began walking along the front of the store, just looking at the items. My heart dropped when I glanced through the front window and saw him walking briskly towards the entrance. I immediately thought that he might be following me. This has happened to me before at Goodwills. Every time I've wound up in uncomfortable situations and conversations where I have to continuously decline the advances of men I am really not interested in. It's gotten to the point where I wear a fake ring when I go out so I can say I'm married because sometimes they accept that answer better than me simply not being interested, I guess. In that moment, the disability left my body because

I picked up my cane and booked it to the nearby rack of ball gowns and hid behind them. Through the gaps, I observed him storming into the store and start to look through the aisles. I was scared because he looked angry, maybe because I ignored him. I didn't mean to be rude, I thought that I had made it clear in a polite way that I didn't want to speak with him. I don't think it's wrong of me to want to go thrifting without having to engage with random men. A kind woman nearby came up to the ball gowns where I was hiding and pretended to inspect them, and she whispered, Are you okay?

And I responded, I think the man in the blue is looking for me. She said that she thought so as well, and I asked her if any of the nearby dressing rooms were open. She pointed to the one that was, and when I saw that the man had his back turned, I dived underneath the door and locked it behind me. I called my boyfriend from the dressing room in tears and asked him to come to the store, and soon I heard a knock at the door. The kind woman had gotten the manager. She told me that after the man looked through all the aisles, he walked out, grabbed his bag, and left the area. They closed the dressing room that I was in and

let me hide in it until my boyfriend arrived. Then one of the male employees and my boyfriend walked me to my car. That was the end of it. Nothing really dramatic happened and since we were in public I don't think my life was in danger but it was an unsettling experience. I hate to think of the possible confrontation we might have had if he'd found me. I'm just so thankful to the Goodwill employees and the kind woman who helped me that day. Shadow, my 115 pound German Shepherd, black lab mix, started to signal that she had to use the bathroom at about 1 to 1.15am. Annoyed because I was about to sleep, I got up, put a hoodie on, and took her out with nothing but my phone for the flashlight. She started to do the usual sniff for 15 minutes just to go in the regular spot routine.

I had my flashlight on her because she is camouflaged by the night and I'd like to know where she's at so she doesn't run off. Just as she's starting to use the bathroom, I turn away and notice someone. They're standing at the very edge of my yard. Looking back at my dog, I notice that she wasn't paying attention to the person yet, so I called her to me and attached her leash. The person just stood there and watched me. I called out to them and said, Hey, you need to leave my yard,

to which I only received silence back. I cleared my throat and repeated myself, eventually attempting a third time just to change it to, hey don't make me tell you again, you're gonna be leaving this yard. Just as my partner was coming outside to see what all the commotion was, they took a few steps forward, clearly intending to continue towards me, caught a glimpse of my partner, backpedaled and turned around and left. As confused as he was, I was in complete shock. We've had to run this one person off our property because they would bring their dog over to use the bathroom in our yard, but I don't think it was them. I've seen their face and I really don't think it was them. They haven't been back, but right before that we did find footprints near our shed and windows of our home. I'm genuinely unnerved. I contacted the police and they didn't do anything

other than take a statement. I've been told it'll go nowhere until physical harm, or potentially a break-in, happens. A couple of days ago I was walking my dog around the lake at my condominium like I always do. It was around 6.30pm and the sky was getting a little bit dark. My dog is a golden retriever and she is very friendly with people and other dogs. She is 6 months old and she rarely barks or growls at anybody. She actually loves being pet by strangers but she is usually very calm regardless if people pet her or not. Anyways, we were walking and suddenly I turned around and I saw this guy coming out of nowhere. The guy looked old, he had glasses and he walked nervously. He was still far away from us so I don't think he was nervous about my dog. As he got closer to us I just stopped and moved to the

side like I usually do when there is somebody coming from behind us. I do this so they can walk ahead of us and my dog stops constantly looking back, moving its tail, looking forward to being pet. But instead, my dog just starts getting restless and starts growling nervously while looking at the guy. I tried to calm her down and I smile at the guy trying to be friendly, but the guy just looked at me with a serious face and started reaching for something out of his backpack. At this point, my dog just starts barking and I just get this bad feeling and a shiver down my spine. For a second I thought, what if the guy had a weapon or something?

The guy just kept walking, looking at me while reaching for his backpack as my dog kept barking at him. I apologized for my dog's behavior and tried to tell him that my dog usually doesn't behave like that, but the guy just seemed to ignore me. Finally, he just passes us and my dog stops barking, but she's still very agitated. I just sat down next to her trying to calm her down while the guy just got lost between some of the houses instead of just walking the lake path, which seemed kind of weird to me. Maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe the guy just didn't like dogs which is fine. I try to be really respectful to people who don't like dogs. After he got lost from our sight my dog just went back to her usual friendly self and we were able to finish our walk but something felt really weird about the guy

and the encounter made me incredibly uncomfortable. Several years ago, I walked a handful of blocks up the street from my partner's house to a convenience store to buy something to drink. It was about 11pm and I was trying to slide in there before the store closed. To set the scene, we lived in a transitory neighborhood that was chock full of abandoned houses and crime, with a few occupied residents and businesses scattered about. There were zero streetlights or illumination. Envision a more compact version of a type of Detroit neighborhood exemplified in the movie Barbarian and it won't be far off the mark. Looking back, the nighttime excursions to the store from my place to his were absolutely idiotic on my part, but after living in that environment for years you just become

accustomed to it. Anyways, it was one of my many full-heartedly nighttime store trips. My partner by then would ask me not to do it, but I just ignored that. I wanted my drink. It was very dumb of me. I got the few blocks up the street in the usual darkness, got my drink, and left the store to head back. Outside the store, a guy was standing near the trash can hassling everyone who came out, asking for money and cigarettes, etc. I told him I didn't have anything and started to cross the parking lot and head back, but this guy sprang after me like a freaking rabbit and grabbed a hold of my arm. He starts aggressively demanding that I go

to a party with him and tries to steer me down the pitch black side street just beside the convenience store. He was probably 6 foot 7, crazy tall and super thin with the dreads all over his face making it hard to see what he even looked like. His fingers bit into my arm and felt like they pinched a nerve. My heart starts pounding like crazy right away. I was used to brushing off this type of behavior having lived in the neighborhood for several years by then, but this was way more aggressive than anything I'd faced so far. I shook my arm out of his grasp, told him that I was heading to my boyfriend's place and it was only a few blocks down the street.

He was waiting for me, said sorry in an attempt to placate him, and took off, speedwalking down the street at top speed. He called after me several times, and then I heard his quick footsteps as he decided to follow me down the street. By then I could feel my heart beat in my eyeballs. My mouth had gone cotton dry and I was almost hyperventilating with fear, trying to stay quiet so this idiot wouldn't hear me. I had this feeling that to show fear to look back at him would cause him to react violently right away, so I just put on a burst of speed and tried to out-walk him. However, my 5'5 legs were no match for his crazy long stride, and I could hear little pieces of

rock and concrete crunching under his feet as he closed in on me. I literally felt like my heart would leap out of my chest or explode from fear. I tried to walk even faster, but I could hear the guy right behind me. I could hear his breath in my ear and got this overwhelming feeling that he was going to grab me at any second, maybe with a weapon, and try to force me to walk wherever he wanted me to. The neighborhood is pitch black and there's no real through traffic, not at night. If he wanted to force me to go with him, I'd be powerless, save for trying to run for him, but with his height advantage, I knew that he'd catch me fast. Then I could finally see my

boyfriend's driveway and him standing at the end of it, waiting for me. He had a terrible feeling and already worried constantly about me walking at night, so he'd come outside to wait for me. He had a terrible feeling and already worried constantly about me walking at night so he'd come outside to wait for me. I saw that he had his crowbar in one hand, his usual defense weapon kept near the front door and then my nerve broke and I started sprinting toward him and the tall dude behind me started to run after me. I reached the place where my boyfriend stood and squeaked out help, or something like that, dove behind him and cowered, waiting for the tall dude to pull a gun, or shoot us both, or start struggling with my boyfriend. It didn't happen. He gets right up

to my boyfriend's face, standing way too close to him and asks for a light. My boyfriend gives him one, holding the crowbar aloft in the other hand so that it was very visible. Then I grab a hold of him and yank him into the house, locking the door and absolutely losing it, sobbing and freaking out while trying to choke out what had even happened. My boyfriend goes looking from the windows and sees him kind of standing around and then leaving. He saw him here and there for a few months afterwards, up at the store or walking up and down the street. Unsurprisingly, I'm sure I never took another nighttime walk. I still sometimes have nightmares thinking about him chasing me in the night. To be continued... slash let's read official and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video.

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