The Lets Read Podcast - 236: MY COWORKER WENT POSTAL! | 19 True Scary Stories | EP 224

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

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

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Visit specsavers.ca for details. In February of last year, I found a new job at a 24-hour convenience store in my city. I'd been jobless since the lockdowns began, but assumed that I'd be able to return after everything was over. Unfortunately, the restaurant didn't survive, and I was left without employment for a long time afterwards. This didn't mean that I wasn't looking. I tried sending out resumes online but got no replies. I don't have any friends that can help, so I took to the street, going door to door filling out applications. A few places called me in for interviews,

but the jobs were either part-time or didn't pay enough. It made no sense to me to give up a reliable government check for a crappy job that paid maybe half if I was lucky. I'd long given up when I got a call from the gas station, and all was going well until the manager mentioned the shift was overnights. I'm not a night person, nor am I fond of the people who are, and just before I could turn it down, he added that the shift paid an extra dollar an hour. And believe it or not, that changed matters greatly. I would have been an idiot to say no. My first month, I worked alongside the manager as he trained me.

We got along really well, and I look forward to working with him for the foreseeable future. The work itself was simple. Even the customers didn't seem as bad as I thought they'd be. My concerns about robbery quickly faded on the first night. The store just so happened to be a regular stop off for cops as they patrolled. An hour didn't go by without one or two dropping in for coffee or just to pass the time talking. The only real downside was that it could be boring sometimes, but after I learned how to space out my tasks, even that ceased to be a concern.

Considering what I was being paid, I had no actual reason to gripe. It's hard to complain when you're getting paid to stand around and talk for most of the night. Just as I was beginning to warm up to the place, I got some bad news. Carlos, the store manager and the guy who had been training me, was going back to days. It appeared that I'd misread the circumstances. This had been his intent all along. I was very nervous about who'd be replacing him. His laid-back attitude made him easy to talk to and fun to work with.

I was afraid the new guy would be the exact opposite. I was left with little choice but to wait and see. Maybe the new person wouldn't be that bad, and when I arrived for work the next Monday night, I got my answer. Standing behind the counter was the tall and gaunt shadow of a man. The rings under his eyes made him look half dead. I walked up and introduced myself. As I offered my hand, he let out a sort of loud yawn directly in my face. He stretched his arms out wide and only then slowly lowered his hand to meet mine. His name was Mark, and this was his first night on graveyard shift, and I could tell he wasn't happy about it. It wasn't a great first impression but I could understand his reluctance to be there. I'd been in his position until very recently and I wasn't totally acclimated to it myself. We began the night by choosing what tasks we wanted,

an exercise that shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes but it drug on forever. Any excuse that he could think of he he made, and out of frustration I offered to do all of the outside jobs. He reluctantly agreed, and I could tell from his tone things were going to be difficult, at least for a while. I left him alone to help customers when I cleaned up the parking lot. When I was out there, a cop pulled up. The two of us talked about the weather or something equally unimportant for about ten minutes before he left on a call. I returned inside and Mark made a rude comment about the cop. I just ignored him but he kept it up and I could tell that he must have had a bad history with the police or something. I didn't say anything and I guess he got the hint. He went back to being

silent and I got back to work. This would be the norm for the next three months. I did briefly consider asking to go to days, but I wasn't willing to lose the extra money. I could only hope that he hated the job so much that he'd soon quit and I'd get to work with Carlos again. Until then, I just gritted my teeth and tried to stay busy. Soon after Mark began, I started to notice a weird habit that he had. Sometimes I'd be outside and glance into the store and he'd be missing. The rules stated that one of us had to be behind the counter or nearby at all times. He continued disappearing and I didn't know where. By chance, one night I saw him shuffling off to the restroom. I started watching him closer and

sure enough, every time I went outside, he'd slip off to the restroom when nobody was around. I tried to come up with a good reason. The only possibility was that he had had an incontinence issue or something weird like that. I couldn't imagine how terrible of a thing that would be to deal with at such a young age. I'd probably be grumpy most of the time and I certainly wouldn't want to talk to anyone, so I kind of just chalked it up in my head to that. After that revelation I tried to be nicer and more thoughtful toward him. Maybe he wasn't really all that bad. His attitude was somewhat off-putting but I was pretty sure that was because of his bathroom problems and I was sure that he'd stop nodding off all the time once he got used to the late nights.

Just because I acclimated in a couple of weeks didn't mean he would. From then on, I focused more on myself and stopped worrying about his performance. Our working relationship began to improve from then on. We'd worked out a system that worked for the both of us and we no longer butted heads. There hadn't been any complaints from Carlos. If he had no problems with the way we were doing things, then why should I? I refocused on myself and left Mark alone to do the same. Although far from a fun environment, work became less about my co-worker's personality and more like most of my former jobs, just getting through the shift and getting home.

Then, as the weeks passed, a funny thing happened. I was warming up to the guy. As long as he avoided certain topics, he could be okay to talk to. Maybe I hadn't given him enough of a chance, but I'd never get a chance to find out though. The two of us were working as we usually did. I was outside getting a measure of the fuel tanks when a customer yelled out to me for assistance. I glanced in and noticed Mark was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't unusual, but he was generally good about coming out when the door chime went off. I dropped what I was doing and returned inside to ring up the customer. Mark was still nowhere to be seen. I remained behind

the counter in case another customer came in. Fifteen minutes passed before I began to work. Mark had never been missing this long before. Although reluctant, I walked back to the restroom and lightly knocked on it. I asked if everything was okay, but I got no answer. I decided to give him a little more time. When I came back ten or so minutes later, I did the same thing and still got no reply, and I was beginning to get scared now. Just in case he'd fallen asleep, I pounded on the door and called out to him. No answer again. He must be having a medical emergency, I thought. That was my only conclusion. And so I stood back and just kicked the door with all my force.

The flimsy door flew open and I barged into a terrible sight. It was far worse than I'd expected. Slumped over before me was Mark on the toilet. And I rather sheepishly reached over to check his pulse, but there wasn't one. His skin was ice cold, and a whitish foam was on his mouth. I guess I must have seized up or disassociated, whatever you call it. There are a few minutes that I can't account for. At some point, the door chime went off and jarred me back to my senses. I closed the door behind me and headed for the counter. The customer paid and left and

I returned to the restroom. As I entered this time I stepped on something and I looked down and realized that it was a needle and the seriousness of the situation finally dawned on me and I called 911. While I waited for the police to arrive, I drew up an out of order sign for the restroom and taped it on the door. I also took that time to call Carlos. At that moment, I only mentioned that Mark had a medical emergency and was rushed to the hospital. I don't think it was my place to determine what had killed him despite the evidence. The police and ambulance showed up not long after and took Mark away. The cops and I spoke for the better part of two hours, and during this time, Carlos arrived and also spoke to them.

I waited until it was just the two of us before I told him the full story. He seemed just as shocked as I had been. Neither of us had ever seen any sign that he was an addict. Although in retrospect, his long trips to the restroom and nodding off may have been an obvious indication to a more experienced person. I didn't bother to mention those facts to Carlos though. I didn't want him to know that there had been problems between us. We worked the remainder of the shift after which I just went home. When I returned the next night I was pleased to see Carlos there. He was back on graveyard until we found a replacement, and now that things were back to the way they used to be,

I found myself somewhat torn inside. I loved working with Carlos, but it seemed a terrible way to get him back. Hardly worth the life of a fellow human, you know. I fought with this for several weeks, but it seemed as time passed all the bad aspects of working with Mark came creeping back to me. The facts were that he was a miserable person that made everyone around him miserable. I excused this in light of his perceived medical condition but now that I knew the truth I found myself feeling a lot less compassionate. I couldn't help but get angry at myself for being such a pushover. Why had I let him take advantage of my kindness?

After all, no one has any right to suck you into a hole with them, no matter their plight. And as you can see, I may have still been in shock at the time. My emotions were really all over the place. When the funeral came around, I filled in on a day shift so one of the other employees could attend. Mark had been on days for over a year before moving to nights and had managed to befriend a few of the other employees. Behind closed doors, I was something of a nervous wreck, and the idea of going to the funeral scared the crap out of me. Carlos continued working with me for another two weeks until we

found a new employee to take Mark's place. This was Crystal and she was everything Mark was not. Her upbeat and bubbly personality made work fun. Even more fun than Carlos. Her presence did a lot to help me get past what had happened. I wasn't the only one who enjoyed her presence either. I noticed how much more often the night shift officers came around and our number of regulars increased too. As much as I thought it, it didn't take long for us to catch feelings for one another. A few months passed before we realized the relationship was actually becoming serious. At this point, we discussed our options and Crystal chose to move to Days. As with most workplaces, it's frowned

upon for employees to date each other. Since there were talk of me becoming an assistant manager, she decided it would be better if she moved. I knew I had no say in the matter, so I just nodded my head in agreement. And as I write this, I'm currently night manager of the store. It's not a major accomplishment, but considering I was unemployed a year ago, I'm happy to have achieved it. My co-worker at present is a short and funny guy named Damon. He's a very hard worker and we get along well. Sometimes in the quiet moments of this shift, I catch myself remembering my short time working with Mark and all the turmoil that came with it. I've somewhat softened on the guy.

Despite the cloud of misery he carried along with him, I can only guess how hard living with an addiction like this must have been. I realized I probably could have been more understanding, and in my defense, I really tried to be. But that's all in the past now, I suppose. Wherever he ended up, I hope, it's a happier place. To be continued... the privacy of the subjects discussed. In the case that you do discover their true names, I ask that you just don't harass anyone. They have suffered enough and don't need malicious trolls making things worse. I thank you for your courtesy and understanding and let's get on with

the story. Commerce is a relatively small company that specializes in making quality affordable storm doors and windows. I began working there when I was 20. For the first year and a half, I was in the janitorial department. We did exactly what it sounds like. There was a lot of sweeping, mopping, and cleaning up toilets. I was told at the time that I was hired that if I did it well, I would be moved on to the production line once I turned 21. They were good to their word.

When the first position came open after my birthday, I was moved up, and although I was now on the line, it took a few more years before I was an actual assembler. It could be tedious at times, but the pay was good, and our supervisors treated everyone really well. Three years went by really quick. I had now achieved my goal of becoming an assembler and was making way more money than I ever could have imagined just a few years prior. My life was going very well outside of work too. I was in a long-term relationship and we were in the early phases of actually planning our marriage. This was the way of things when

a new guy came onto the line. Kurt was about my age and grew up in Florida. He'd served in Afghanistan before opening his own gym. When the gym didn't succeed, he and his wife moved west in hopes of a better life. I'd been assigned to train and evaluate his work, and in the end, he proved to be quick at learning and a hard worker. During this training period, I got to know Kurt pretty well. We had similar upbringings and opinions and soon began hanging out off the clock, often spending our afternoons drinking at my favorite bar and playing pool. On occasion, we'd get together with our wives and have dinner at a nice restaurant or catch a concert. My wife and I always enjoyed these

evenings out with them and if we got together at their home, they were always great hosts. I noticed almost immediately how different Melinda, Kurt's wife, was from him. He was energetic, sometimes loud, but fun-loving. Where she hardly spoke and if she did, it was very quiet, bordering on a whisper. She was very attentive to Kurt's needs and from all appearances, they had a very happy marriage. Not long after Kurt became permanent, we began riding to work together. The factory was half an hour from our town. We lived so near to each other and were going to the same place that it made no sense to take two cars and we'd been doing this for about nine months when some cracks began to show in Kurt's

facade. It was late on a Friday, I'd dropped him off, and I was bringing my things in from the car when I noticed Kurt had left his jacket behind. Once I'd had a shower and dinner, I called him to let him know. He thanked me, and I promised to come by and drop it off the following afternoon. He agreed, and I let him go. My wife and I had errands to do Saturday morning, but after just about 1pm, we swung by his place to drop off the jacket. My wife waited behind in the car and when I rang the doorbell, Melinda answered the door. I was a little shocked to see the fading marks of a black eye, but I hid it. No more than five seconds had passed when Kurt rushed up to the door and hastily pushed Melinda away. The nervous look on his face told me that I'd seen

something that I wasn't supposed to. The tension in the air was very heavy and I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. I thrust the jacket into his hand and said goodbye as fast as I could. He thanked me and quickly closed the door behind him. An already uncomfortable situation was made that much worse as I rushed back to the car. Through an open kitchen window, I could clearly hear Kurt yelling at Melinda, calling her just thoughtless and stupid among other things. When I sat down in the car, I could tell by the look on my wife's face that she'd heard it too. It was something neither of us had seen coming. In a matter of just a few minutes, every bit of respect that we had for him just completely evaporated. I considered cutting all ties with him right then and there, but maybe because I was a coward, I just kept riding with him.

I could tell that Monday that he had something on his mind, but he didn't say anything. And as the weeks went by, I'd see less and less of Kurt outside of work. Our rides had become increasingly silent. Neither of us had the courage to face the problem, so it remained hanging there, just out of reach, I guess. When the day came where he decided to begin driving himself again, it was hardly a shock. In fact, it was something of a relief to be honest. The couple's nights out had ceased months before, each family being sure not to bring up the true reason when calling to cancel on each other. Without any excuse to speak left,

Kurt and I became all but strangers once more. We now worked at separate ends of the building and only saw each other in rare circumstances. Here and there I would hear how he and a few guys from work went out to strip clubs or bars and picked up women. None of this was my business so I just kept my mouth shut. Of course I felt bad for Melinda but there was nothing I could do about it. I did mention it to my wife though. I think her and Melinda were still speaking to each other at this point but I never asked what was said between them. As the day drew closer to our wedding my focus shifted. Now with Kurt out of the picture I asked my brother to be my best man. He helped me tackle all of my last minute tasks before the ceremony and threw me an amazing party

the night before. It was a night to remember and not once did I miss Kurt not being there. The wedding went off without a hitch. After the honeymoon, the two of us moved into our first house. It was bigger and much closer to commerce. If things weren't going great already, we found out that we actually had a baby on the way. Our lives had become more about the future and our growing family than the past. Then, just like that, we were sucked back into that old life and all the misery that went with it. My wife and I were just sitting down to dinner when I received a call from a guy at work. What he said took me and my wife by total surprise. According to him, Kurt was dead.

He had been murdered the night before. If this wasn't already a lot to him, Kurt was dead. He had been murdered the night before. If this wasn't already a lot to process, he went on to claim that Melinda was the one who did it. I thanked him for telling me and we ended the call. Later on, my wife told me that I had turned completely grey when I returned to the table. Despite being in shock, I had the presence of mind to take her hand as I told her. She was handling it well until I mentioned Melinda's involvement, and that's when she broke down. The rest of the evening was spent searching for more information, but little was available at that early time. However, as more pieces of the puzzle came together, an already crazy story grew

into something beyond belief. Most of what I would find out in the coming months came from my fellow employees at the factory. Here and there small bits came to me through the rumor mill. I can't swear that all of it was true but even if it was a little true, it showed me just how much of a stranger Kurt had been to me. Word was that Kurt had been basically pimping his wife out to other men. Some were even guys we worked with. This supposedly started before he and I ever became friends and only got worse after we stopped hanging out. More than one of these men said that Kurt was abusive to her in their presence and treated as no better than one of his cattle, quote unquote.

If this wasn't already bad enough, his adultery was rampant and well-known, even by Melinda. He'd often bring women home after a night of drinking and sleep with them in his and Melinda's bed. Although we may never know what happened that fatal night, I'd wager Melinda had become fed up and reacted the only way that she felt she could. The neighbors had called the cops several times because of all the yelling coming from inside the house, but it solved nothing. Even after Kurt had been arrested for beating Melinda on the front lawn, he was soon released after she refused to press charges. It's a sad thing to say, but when things have gone that far, the situation rarely ends well.

The assistant DA was kind enough to weigh the circumstances when he offered a plea of 10 years. Melinda wisely accepted it and I'd wager with time served and good behavior she's out by now. Neither of us had any contact with her since before the stabbing so I can't give you any inside perspective on her mindset since. I will say that both of our hearts go out to her and we hope that she's been able to readjust to life outside. On the off chance Melinda does hear this, I want you to know that we're there for you if you need us. Feel free to contact us if you wish. The past is just that. We will always be your friends and we blame you for nothing.

Should she choose not to contact us, we'll understand. I could see how we may represent a time that she wants to forget. There's also the chance that she may hold some ill will against us for stepping away. Although I disagree, there could be an argument made in support of that. For the present time, we are focused on growing our family and living the best life possible. If Melinda wants to be a part of the 2000s. I was working as a cook at a pizza hut during the evening and taking classes during the day at a community college. On an unusually slow Friday night, a delivery driver

and I were told to go home early. He and I had hung out together before and figured that this was a great opportunity to do so. We both went home to clean up and met back at the store an hour later. From there, we walked a few blocks to downtown. Our first stop was my favorite restaurant for dinner and a few drinks. It was 10pm when we were seated. After a massive dinner and a few beers, we left and headed to a small bar around the corner. This was the pattern for the rest of the night, hopping from bar to bar in search of entertainment and a pretty girl or two to take home with us. Everything had been going well until we came upon a small club at the end of an alley.

Dancing wasn't really something that interested either of us, but all the pretty girls in little dresses kind of did. In this story I'll just refer to my coworker as Luke. Luke was an outgoing and fun guy to drink with. At work, he was professional and willing to help without having to be asked. Just as we were about to head inside the club, Luke stopped me and pointed at a group of people a few yards away. From where I was standing, I could see three girls talking to an unshaven, dirty-looking man. Luke walked toward the group and I followed. We approached and Luke asked the girls

if the man was bothering them. They looked reluctant to speak so Luke took the initiative and walked up to the guy. He stuck his index finger in his face and yelled at him calling him all sorts of names and then told him to leave people alone and just go away. The man quietly mumbled and sort of cowered away into the darkness, and I never expected to see him again. Luke took this opportunity to chat the girls up. They thanked us for getting the bum, their words, not mine, to go away and introduce themselves. I stood back and watched with equal amounts of jealousy and admiration. His confidence amazed me.

Before I knew it, we were walking inside a club with the girls. I joined them at a table while Luke went to the bar to order drinks. He returned a few minutes later with a pitcher of beer and five mugs. Everyone took turns pouring themselves a glass while Luke continued getting to know the girls. According to them, they had been stopped out front when the homeless man approached them and asked for money. They denied having any, but the man changed the subject and continued to talk. And that's when Luke and I showed up. As the night moved on, everything looked to be going well for both of us.

I had moved over to a separate table with one of the girls and we were talking about our classes and our majors. Luke was at the first table, still talking to the other two. When last call finally came, the girls slipped off to the restroom. Luke said they wanted to keep the night going and had agreed to come back to his place for some more drinks. I hoped that meant that we were going to get lucky. We stood around for probably 15 minutes before we realized the girls weren't coming back. I was understandably disappointed, but Luke looked enraged. His face was red and he was spitting and cursing through his clenched teeth. This was a side of him I'd never seen before. I tried to calm him down, but nothing worked.

I slipped him a $20 bill in hopes that this would soothe his ego, but he refused to take it. I assumed he was just going to have to sleep it off. We left the club and I pulled out my phone to call for a cab. At the very least, we'd save a little money by sharing one and maybe even laugh about our misfortune during the ride home. I made the call, then turned to Luke to let him know the cab was on its way, but he was already gone. I thought maybe he'd gone in search of the girls. In his state I figured that he may take things too far so I looked around for him as fast as I could. I pushed my way through the crowd in a frantic search for this guy. Suddenly I caught

sight of him off in the distance having a very animated discussion with the homeless guy from earlier. I ran in that direction as fast as I could. As I got closer, I could hear him screaming at the man, telling him to get a job and stop harassing hardworking people. The homeless man looked absolutely terrified. I was about 10 yards away when Luke hit him for the first time. When I reached him, I tried to pull him back, but he just threw me aside and continued assaulting this guy. From my place on the ground, I half-heartedly attempted to draw his attention away from the man, but he just kept up the attack. The homeless guy was curled up in a little ball on the ground while Luke kicked him repeatedly, and it all became too much for me. I got back up

on my feet, and I just ran away. The thuds echoed behind me as I fled, and the shame that I felt at the time had never really ever gone away. The cab was waiting for me when I turned the corner. I just jumped in and barked at the driver to go, and I cried quietly to myself all the way home. It's not something I enjoy telling, but it needs to be said. My weekend was then spent locked inside my apartment, terrified the cops were going to show up at any second, associating me with the assault on the homeless guy. I purposely avoided any news or any social media and just ignored all incoming phone calls.

I even considered turning myself in for a few hours. When Monday came around, I knew that I'd have to face Luke. Had I not been so strapped for cash, I may have even quit. And that's just how far I was willing to go to not see this weirdo again. At work, I kept my head down and just did my job. Luke and I happened to be the closers that night, so I waited until it was just the two of us before I mentioned it. To my disgust, he claimed to have no memory of it. I didn't know whether to be angry or laugh.

There was no way he'd blacked out. I thought he may have been messing with me, but when I brought it up again, it gave me a look of complete confusion. Had I not been so willing to get past it all, I may have pressed it, but I was, so I just let it go there. I closed up as usual that night and did my best to move on. Luke and I continued to work together on a regular basis, and I kept a friendly facade. But deep down, he made my skin crawl crawl and I didn't want him near me. Just a few weeks after that night, he invited me to join him and another guy from work to go out again, but I declined.

I made up some lame excuse, but I think he got the message because he never asked again. Thankfully, that year ended rather quickly and my time at that school was over. I transferred to a larger university across the state and never saw Luke again. And even as I write this I have no idea what became of that poor man. Without Luke's side of the story I might never know. And I'm pretty afraid to find what I might find if I actually go looking or snooping or asking him. I'm well aware of what could happen to me by writing this and to be honest I don't really care anymore. I'm willing to spend the rest of my life in prison if it means

I can rid myself of this sort of shame. I'm too much of a coward to find out but the weight I've been carrying is slowly driving me crazy. Running away that night is the biggest regret of my life. It's kind of a curse that I would never wish upon anyone, not even someone as cruel and evil as Luke. To be continued... but they made it clear that I'd be expected to begin working directly after high school. I would have preferred to have a little time off, but I knew that I was pressing my luck. Just two weeks after graduation, I began my first job at McDonald's. It wasn't the job I'd hoped for, but it was a job. I stayed there just long enough to find a full-time position as a line cook at a small family restaurant. The business was close enough for me to walk and the people who owned it were very cool. The pay wasn't much more than McDonald's

but I had insurance, a perk that would often benefit me when I broke my arm riding my bike. After I left there I'd bounced around for several years until I came upon a great position at one of the large chain restaurants around here. The job came with a lot more responsibilities and paid much better, but in a lot of ways, it was a world that I was unprepared for. This was where I'd find out that I was capable of doing the right thing, even if my job was at stake. At this point in my career, I'd become fairly accustomed to the ways things happen in the food industry. In a lot of

ways a restaurant is like a family. The employees spend a lot of time together. When they're not on the clock, they come in on their days off to socialize and sometimes date one another. The managers, who are effectively the parents of the family, do all they can to keep their underlings happy, even at the cost of propriety. I've worked at places where the bosses would regularly buy alcohol for their minor employees and then party with them. As you can imagine, things get weird on occasion. That had always been off the clock though, but this new place that I was working at took things a little further than I was used to. Just my first day there, I was shocked to see how close the male managers seemed to be with the employees, especially the female ones.

I'd only been on the clock for a few hours when I came out of the kitchen to discuss something with the manager. He was standing in the bar area talking to a couple of the waitstaff and sitting in front of him was the hostess. I looked up for my paperwork to see him giving the 17 year old hostess a shoulder massage. This was out in the open and in a restaurant full of customers mind you. I was shocked but hid it as well as I could. Even as I asked my question he continued doing it. He'd obviously been doing this type of thing for a long time and had become very comfortable doing it, as had the other employees. And although I didn't approve of this, I kept my opinion to myself. My first day wasn't

really the right time to rock the boat, you know. And besides, the girl didn't appear to mind. Despite being creepy, it wasn't exactly assault. I just let it go and got on with my work. Sooner or later, I knew a time would come where this would bite him in the butt, but that time came a lot sooner than I'd expected. From there on, a few months went by, I learned my job for the most part and was enjoying it. As sous chef, part of my job was to handle the supply orders for the kitchen and the rest of the back of the house, as it is sometimes called. One evening after the dinner rush, I was preparing the order while the rest of the back of the house, as it is sometimes called. One evening after the dinner rush, I was preparing the order while the rest of the

cooks shut the line down. Once again, I had a question and made my way to find the same manager. I checked the dining area for him but was told that he was in his office. I headed back into the rear of the building where the offices were located. The door was cracked open, and this had always meant that it was okay to come in so I didn't bother knocking. When I entered, the manager appeared to have one of the servers trapped in a corner. He also had a hand on her chest. I wasn't sure what was going on but the girl looked distressed. I cleared my throat to get their attention and the manager turned around quickly. He had a very shocked look on his face.

Now with his focus elsewhere, the girl took the opportunity to just walk away. She hurried out of the room but not so fast that I couldn't see that she'd been crying. I knew I'd seen something that I wasn't supposed to but I pretended that I hadn't. He gave me this sort of questioning look and asked what I wanted. I told him and he gave me the sort of questioning look and asked what I wanted. I told him and he gave me the shortest answer possible. The tension sort of hung in the room and I could feel myself beginning to choke. I thanked him and rushed out just as the girl had.

I avoided him for the rest of the night. It was this sort of sick feeling as it ate away at me until I couldn't handle it anymore. I told my girlfriend what had happened and she helped me process what I'd witnessed. My conscience told me that I needed to inform corporate. Although the girl involved was an adult, the company as well as me would be included in any lawsuit should one be filed. But before that though, I figured that I should hear the story from both people. If there was any chance that I misread the situation, I wanted to know. The next morning, I called the girl who had been involved and asked what had happened.

She was understandably reluctant to talk to me, but she made it clear that it was not consensual. I asked if she was pressing charges and she told me that she just wanted to forget about it. I assured her that I had no problem backing her up if she changed her mind and she thanked me. Her silence made my problem that much worse now. I didn't want to drag her into something that she didn't want to be a part of, but I wasn't sure that I could actually keep quiet. It just didn't feel right. My manager was a predator and staying quiet could get me fired. I decided that I'd wait to speak to him first. A few nights later, I went into the office and confronted him. At first, he tried to deny it, and that was until

I told him that I'd spoken to the girl. And then, he just admitted it, but made it out to be a mutual situation. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but something told me that he was lying. As I continued to press, he began to tell me how well I'd been doing and asked if I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but something told me that he was lying. As I continued to press, he began to tell me how well I'd been doing and asked if I wanted a promotion. Although this felt good to hear, I just declined. I was happy where I was at. All I wanted was to find a way to resolve the situation where none of us lost our jobs or got sued. At the time, I had no idea what that that was but he promised me that he'd figure it out and get back to me. Hearing this went a long way in relieving my stress. I went away from

that meeting feeling a lot better about things. I came back to work that Monday hoping to find things were fixed and instead they had only gotten worse. I was preparing for the dinner rush when a member of the wait staff brought me to the bad news. The server who had been touched was fired the night after I had spoken with the manager. The server who told me this said the fired server was crying and mentioned me, quote, shooting off my big mouth. And this made me livid. I approached the manager about it. He pulled me into the office and closed the door. Before I could say anything, he reminded me that he was the boss and he was in charge of who was hired and fired. If I didn't want to join her, I would get my attitude in check. I was too shocked to reply.

I just walked out of the office and closed the door behind me. It took a moment to regain my composure but when I did, my mind was pretty clear. I kept my head down for the rest of the shift and got out without having to see the manager again. I told my girlfriend when I decided and she was actually overjoyed to hear it. The following morning I made myself a pot of coffee and called the district manager. He sounded angry but thanked me for informing him of the situation. I hung up and waited for the fallout. There was no news until I got to work at around 4.30 or so. I knew there may be some conflict from my boss and I prepared myself accordingly.

To my surprise, the assistant manager was there instead. He didn't say anything to me but I could tell by everyone's demeanor that something major had happened. After closing, the assistant manager got us all together and announced our manager had, quote, moved on. There was no mention of why, just that he was sad to have to leave on such short notice and apologize for not being able to say goodbye. It was all the usual corporate spin. Nobody but myself and the assistant manager knew what was going on at the time but when the truth did eventually come out, I was shocked at the way I was treated. I won't pretend that I didn't expect a little pushback but I was totally unprepared for the

overwhelming amount of hate that I got. Even after I'd explained everything I'd seen and heard, most of the employees showed nothing but disgust for me. I'll be honest, I felt the same way about them before long. The idea that anyone would stand up for a predator was unimaginable to me, not to mention many of the most strident offenders were female and called themselves friends of the victim. After a while, all the hate became too much for me and I just took another job downtown. I never got the full story of what happened to the manager. All I know for sure is that he lost his job. It's not exactly the result that I had in mind, but I don't regret my decision for one second. A few years ago, my husband was laid off, so I began working part-time to help out until we could get back on our feet. I worked at several places during this time, but my longest-term position was at a TJ Maxx store.

Even though the job could make me crazy sometimes, my bosses treated me well and allowed me to work extra hours if I needed them. Because of the nature of the job, turnover was very high. Most of the employees were young and didn't last very long. Those who did spent most of their time complaining or screwing around on their phones. All in all, I stayed there for over a year or so, and I think I was the longest lasting employee when I moved on, except for two young men. They had been at that location since it opened and would probably both still be there had one of them not lost control and done something terrible to the other. To make the story easier to follow, I'll call the two men Joe and Steve.

Joe was tall and boastful, while Steve was short and fat with a weird speech impediment that made him sound like he was using baby talk. I can't think of a better way to describe it to be honest. Both rarely showered which made it difficult to be around them. I think management brought this up to one or both of them more than once but it did very little good. They didn't seem to understand why anyone cared. I gradually came to the conclusion that both were probably on the spectrum somewhere, especially Steve. I don't say this to mock them, I just think that it would help you grasp why maybe they did the things that they did. Steve seemed to be a very kind person once you got to know him. This was made difficult by

his hygiene issues, but on the rare occasion I was able to be around him for more than a few minutes, I got a really kind feeling coming from him. While Steve gave everyone who knew him a good vibe, Joe did not. He was everything you picture when describing a quote-unquote neck beard. I'm sure he would have had the beard had management allowed it. Although his aversion to bathing made him unapproachable, his cocky attitude made things even worse. There wasn't a subject that he wasn't an expert in, nor a person he didn't vastly outpace in intelligence in his mind. Had he actually been as smart as he claimed, he may have been interesting to talk to. But it became clear

within moments of meeting him that he knew very little about anything. If this doesn't make you dislike him already, you're about to hear something that almost certainly will. After getting into an argument with an African American female customer, I overheard him calling her a slur. This incident, along with a few others, showed me that Joe was not just racist and sexist. He was also a complete insufferable egomaniac. As you can probably tell by now, I couldn't stand the guy. Even though Steve wasn't anything like Joe, the two were inseparable. I suppose when you feel unable to navigate the world around you, it's comforting to be friends with another person as lost as you are. As sweet as he could be,

Steve's inability to sometimes grasp the norms of society could bite him in the butt. For instance, I wasn't working with him long before I noticed how much he loved pretty girls, especially their hair. On one specific occasion, he got lost in himself and started touching a customer's hair. Luckily, she had an autistic son of her own and realized that he meant no harm. The situation could have ended much differently had she not. Therefore, after a discussion with the manager, it was decided to move him to the back. He didn't mind it much. In fact, before long, Joe would get moved to the back too after his clash with the African-American customer and Steve was reunited with his best friend.

The two would stay in the back until Joe had his unfortunate incident and Steve may still be working there today as far as I know. I guess this is probably the point in the story where I should address the event that led to Joe losing his job. It wasn't something that anyone saw coming. Other than the fact that he was always very off-putting, no incidents had happened to put him on edge. He, Steve, and I were in the back discussing a stalking issue when he made a comment I didn't like. The subject involved the race of the customer, if you get my drift. I'd had enough of his racist crap and called him out on it.

A sneer grew across his face and he said something to the effect of, shut your mouth you fat cow. This was when something surprising happened. Steve interjected himself into the argument and told Joe to leave me alone. Joe called him a dummy and told him to go away. Witnessing the argument between the two friends was a bit disorienting but Steve fired back with a rather witty reply that made me chuckle. This made Joe furious, and he came at me. Before he could reach me, Steve placed himself between us. Joe didn't lose a step, though. He just shoved Steve aside onto the floor. This didn't stop Steve. He sprang to his feet and wedged himself between us again. This was the point at which Joe lost control.

He grabbed his best friend and began pummeling him mercilessly. He continued punching him until a few of the other employees pulled him off and threw him into a rack of clothes. Now his face showed it all. He knew he'd screwed up, and nothing could save him. With an indignant smirk on his face, he stood up and dusted himself off. He looked over at Steve, curled up and crying on the floor, and hurled a gob of spit in his direction. We all stared back in shock as he turned and walked out the back door of the store. Now that the immediate threat was gone, I hurried over to check on Steve.

He had a bloody nose and a few scratches, but that was about it. He curled up into a ball almost as soon as the attack began. I figured that's what saved him from being injured anymore. Instead, it was his feeling that took the majority of the damage. As he wiped the tears from his cheeks, he kept saying that it wasn't right what Joe said to you. We're all friends here, and friends don't talk to each other like that. He also couldn't understand why Joe had assaulted him. I thought he was my friend. Why did he do that? He kept repeating it over and over. It was a very heartbreaking thing to see. My mothering instinct kicked in, and I held him while he vented out all his pain and disappointment.

The decision was made not to call the cops. Once he'd gotten all of his anger out, Steve was back to his regular kind and caring self. He didn't want Joe to go to jail and the rest of us were happy the jerk was finally gone for good. Joe obviously knew that he was fired because he never returned or contacted anyone at the store. Our manager, Cindy, mailed him his last check and that was the end of it. The daily running of the store went on as normal. A new person was hired to take Joe's spot and we never brought him up again. Like I said, as far as I'm aware, Steve is still working at the store to this day.

I left around six months after when my husband was called back to work. In spite of all the times I complained about his hygiene and stubbornness, I find myself missing Steve and his simple view of life. He really was the best of all of us. In times as complicated as these, I wish more people were like him, and maybe the rest of the world would be just a little bit nicer to each other if there were. It had been a long day at school, and the sun was setting as I sat in my classroom just grading papers. I was a high school history teacher, and though I loved my job, it came with its fair share of challenges. One of those challenges was a particular student, James, who was struggling to keep his grades up. He was a bright kid with potential, but his recent lack of focus was jeopardizing his chances of graduating. James was one of those kids that clearly understood the material but put zero

effort into his work. The previous afternoon I spoke with James and told him that to graduate he would need to make a major effort in the last week of class. I gave the kid a chance to write an essay on any topic he wanted that we covered in the year and that I would give him enough credit so he could graduate with his peers. He seemed unresponsive but just sort of nodded his head. As I marked the last paper and packed up my things, I really couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that I was being watched. I glanced around the empty classroom but there was no one there. I dismissed the feeling as sort of a product of my tired mind and locked up the classroom before heading to my car.

I thought perhaps my conversation with James had been just weighing on me. I had only been teaching for several years at this point, but I had never had to fail anyone and I really didn't want to start now. The feeling persisted over the next couple of days. I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder, feeling eyes on me even when I was alone. At first I thought it was my imagination, but then I began to notice things that made me question my own sanity. Little things, like finding my desk rearranged, or the sense that someone had been in my car when I knew I had locked it. Each incident really was minor, but it started to add up, creating an unnerving sense of dread that settled over me. And one evening, as I was leaving school, I noticed a figure, kind of lurking in the shadows, and the figure seemed to be following me, always staying just out of sight.

My heart raced as I heard in my car, fumbling with my keys. As I drove away, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being pursued. I tried to rationalize my fears, but the incidents just continued to escalate. I received anonymous phone calls at all hours of the night, with heavy breathing on the other end of the line. I found threatening notes slipped under my door, promising that I would pay for holding James back. I reported the incidents to the school and the police but there was really little they could do without concrete evidence. The note that contained James' name was typed and not handwritten so they couldn't really even match the handwriting and they suggested that I just keep a record of

everything that happened and try to capture evidence if I could. I became increasingly paranoid, always looking over my shoulder and double checking my locks. My once pleasant job now felt like a nightmare that I couldn't escape. I couldn't shake the feeling that James was the one behind it all, but I really had no proof to throw at this kid. One evening, as I was grading papers in my empty classroom, I heard a faint tapping on the window. I looked up and my heart skipped a beat when I saw James staring at me with a twisted smile on his face and he held up a note that read, I'm always watching. I called the police but by the time they arrived, James was gone. They scoured the school grounds but found no trace of him. I was left with this chilling feeling of helplessness and fear. The police even

suggested that I had been even making it up, asking if I had issues with this student and maybe that's why I'm singling him out. I was outraged by those accusations, but I just kept on living my life. And the stalking continued, and the line between reality and paranoia started to kind of blur. Sleep was difficult and I felt trapped in this sort of waking nightmare. As the school year finally drew to a close, I knew that I had to find a way to put an end to this torment. The next day was the last day of classes, and I hadn't received any paper from James. I decided to make one last effort to reach him before he failed or something much darker may have happened. I reached out to James' parents, even though I was instructed by the

school not to reach out to them. I was hoping that they could intervene and help their son get back on track. I planned on telling them that it wasn't too late to get James on track to graduate and I was willing to be flexible. To my surprise, they were unaware of the situation and were horrified by what I told them. The school nor the police reached out to James' parents. They had no idea James was potentially not graduating and they didn't know what to say about the potential stalking situation. They promised to address the issue and get James the help that he needed. As the school year came to an end, the incidents ceased almost seemingly overnight. I never discovered the true extent of James' involvement or why he chose to target me,

other than the fact that he may not be able to graduate. The experience left me with a lingering sense of dread though, a reminder of the darkness that can lurk beneath the surface of even the brightest minds. And graduation day came and James never showed up. A reminder of the darkness that can lurk beneath the surface of even the brightest minds. And graduation day came and James never showed up. We tried to reach out to his parents, but the phone wasn't in service and it turns out that James and his family had moved and just didn't tell anyone. To this day, I don't know what happened to James or where he ended up in life. I continued teaching, determined not to let one student's actions define

my career. But the memory of this incident still haunts me. The reason why I'm writing this story now is that last night in the middle of the night I received two very strange phone calls. And both calls were nothing on the other line. Maybe a little bit of breathing, but I wasn't too sure. Something that hasn't happened since the James incident. And I can't help but think, is he still watching me? This story took place eight years ago, shortly before I graduated. I remember that time very vividly, the hope and the fear that came with closing one chapter and starting a new one. My friends and I rented a house during our last two years of school and most of us had already packed up some of our belongings to head back home shortly after graduation. All of my friends that lived in the house besides I went

to high school with me so I knew that we would still be in close contact in our hometown after graduation. Anyway, the story starts out with three or four of us going into campus to pick out our cap and gown for the ceremony. I think we had to go to the bookstore and wait in line to pick up everything we needed. I was last in line and could see that my friends were finishing up but I had yet to be helped. I was then waved over by a young guy who looked like he may have been a freshman volunteer or something. When I walked over, he said something to me but the tone was so low that I had to say what a few times for him to speak up. He then apologized, cleared his throat and asked me for my name. I gave him my name and stood there as he sorted

through the list looking for my name. He eventually found it when he came back to the boxes and pulled out my cap, gown and some paperwork and handed it to me. He must be shy or nervous I thought because he had been avoiding eye contact this entire time. As I said thank you and was ready to leave I heard him mumble something again under his breath. Excuse me? I said, and this time after clearing his throat, he looked right at me and said, do you know what you're wearing under it? His stare was blank. I didn't know what to say. I think he sensed that I was taken aback, and he quickly put his head back down and shuffled paperwork and said, My sister wore one of my grandmother's dresses under hers.

Sorry, I was just making conversation. Thank you. And walked away. I slowly walked away and saw my friends laughing in the hallway and I caught up to them. One of my friends, Stacy, asked if I was okay and she said I looked like I was ready to throw up. I told her about my strange encounter and she laughed and said she felt bad for the poor nerd. She said he would probably think about it all day and wish that he had said anything else. And that somehow made me feel better and quickly pushed it out of my mind. A few nights later we were having a small send-off party at our house.

It was a small group of maybe 15 or so people and it was nice to see some of my extended friends whom I wasn't sure if I would or wouldn't stay in contact with once we officially graduated and went back to our hometowns. The night was fun and mostly uneventful. And then at about 1.30am we got a knock at the front door. I think the three or four of us who heard it all huddled in the living room to try and see if we could see who it was on the front porch. We looked out all of the adjacent windows and really couldn't see anything. We decided to leave the chain lock attached and crack the door just in case someone was there. But when we cracked the door, no one was there. Most went back to the bedrooms but Stacy and I stayed in the living room on the

couch and turned the TV on. After we chatted for a little bit, I could feel that I was getting tired again so I decided to head to my room which was just off the living room. After about 20 minutes in bed, I felt like I was hearing a scratching sound and I couldn't figure out what it was but I thought maybe something under my bed was scratching the floor when I moved or something hanging on the wall was moving and scraping. I'm not sure what persuaded me to do what I did next but I got up and locked the bedroom window which I noticed for the first time was unlocked. After hearing it on and off for another 20 minutes, I got up out of bed to see if I could find the source of the annoyance once and for all. As soon as I got out of bed, there was a huge thud on my bedroom window, which scared the absolute crap out of me. I ran quickly to the window to see if I could see anyone or anything. I didn't see anything but after that the scratching noises stopped. I stayed awake for most of the night

after that. I wasn't able to get comfortable and didn't really feel very tired after the front door and now my window. Two days later we were getting ready on the morning of graduation and some of us had a drink or two to celebrate but mostly we were packing up some final stuff in our cars so we could head home after the ceremony. I remember I was doing my hair when we heard another loud knock at the door. I was running a little late so I didn't bother answering it even though I was closest to the door. I remember hearing someone answer the door and then calling my name. They said it's for you in a weird voice. I hopped out of my room excited thinking maybe it was my family on their way to the venue for the graduation but what I saw stopped me dead in my tracks halfway to the door. It was the person who helped me with my cap and gown on campus, the nerdy kid.

I don't really remember exactly how the conversation went so I'm just going to paraphrase, but I asked, why are you here? To which he replied in a soft voice that I could barely hear, I wanted to wish you good luck. Annoyed and a little creeped out I said, okay, but how did you know where I lived? And he responds, well, I was here the other night. You had a party, remember? Increasingly more creeped out, I said, yeah, we had a party, but you weren't here.

He then looked up at me and said, I didn't say I was inside. I just yelled right in his face and said if he didn't leave right away, I was going to call the cops. My friends heard me yelling and came rushing to the door, but it was too late. I had already slammed it and locked it. I told my friends what had happened and acted like I was fine and it didn't faze me, but inside it really put a damper on the day. I couldn't quite focus and enjoy graduation, and I felt as though I was going through the motions. I know for some this story may not be insanely scary, but this was one of the most unsettling events of my entire life. I often think about what would have happened if I didn't lock my windows that night. The positive thing is that after that day, I was back home and have only been back to my college town I think once or twice to

visit. This time of the year, I tend to think of this story. When you start to see graduation cards and decorations at the stores, I'm just thankful that I never have to see that creepy cap and gown guy ever again. I had spent months planning my graduation party. As a newly minted college graduate, I wanted to celebrate my achievements with my friends and family. I had also invited a few online friends, people I had connected with through various social media platforms and chat rooms. One of them in particular piqued my interest. His name was Mike and we had been chatting for months, bonding over our shared love for books and movies. I understand the fear of meeting people online, but after really doing my research, I was confident that not only Mike was real,

but that he was a genuine person. The day of the party finally arrived and my excitement was just palpable. As the guests began to trickle in, I eagerly scanned the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mike. We had never met in person, but we had exchanged pictures and video chatted countless times, so I had a general idea of what he looked like. When I spotted him standing by the refreshment table, I felt my heart race. He looked even more handsome in person, with a charming smile and deep-set eyes. I approached him and we struck up a conversation, immediately hitting it off. I was relieved and excited that Mike was exactly the Mike that I had imagined.

As the party wore on, Mike and I spent more and more time together. He was witty and engaging and I found myself drawn to him. However, as the evening progressed, I began to notice subtle inconsistencies in his stories. He would mention details that didn't align with what he had previously told me and he seemed to dodge certain questions about his past. It seemed fishy, but I was trying to chalk it up to just my imagination, I guess. The more I observed him, the more I realized that there was just something off about his behavior. He seemed overly interested in my friends, asking probing questions about their lives and relationships. At times, his gaze would linger on them for a little too long, making them visibly uncomfortable.

My unease grew as the night wore on and I decided to confront him about the inconsistencies in his stories. He brushed off my concerns, assuring me that he was just nervous and had misspoken. I wanted to believe him, but this nagging voice in the back of my mind told me that something wasn't right. I used to have a horrible tendency to always believe people and be naive and give them the benefit of the doubt even when alarm bells were blaring. I exhausted myself to the bathroom and pulled out my phone, doing a quick search for his name and any information I could find about him. And believe it or not, to my horror, I discovered that Mike wasn't who he claimed to be. The man I had been chatting with online was in fact a convicted stalker who had served time for harassing and terrorizing multiple women. All the information you could ever want was right there, including his haunting mugshot, and now this guy was sitting at my party. How I didn't think to look this stuff up before was just another indication to me of how naive I am about the world. And panic set in as I realized the danger I had unknowingly invited into my life. I knew I had to get him out of my house and away from

my friends. I called the police, and they advised me to keep him occupied until they arrived. Even though Mike wasn't doing anything illegal, I don't think, they figured it would be safe to check in and make sure the party was safe. I returned to the party, trying to maintain my composure as I re-engaged Mike. It felt like an eternity, but eventually, I saw the lights of the police cars outside my window. As soon as Mike saw the lights, his expression instantly changed. With intense anger in his eyes, he looked at me and said, what are they doing here? And he became erratic. Without even knowing why the police were called, he assumed it was for him,

and he started to shout, I can't believe you do this. You know me. You think I'd do this to you? I tried to play stupid since I assumed that there was no way he could even know that it was me who called the authorities. The officers entered the house and swiftly tried to apprehend Mike, who at this point was just starting to go completely off the rails, yelling things. He started to pick up chairs and end tables and throw them around the room. He looked at me and shouted in my face, You're going to be sorry. As the cops finally got a hold of him, he started to calm down. They were speaking to him in a quiet and calm voice, so low that I couldn't hear what they

were saying. I could only see Mike panting like he had just run a marathon and he looked genuinely shocked by the turn of events. As they led this guy out of the house, not in handcuffs, he stared at me with a mixture of confusion and anger. I couldn't help but shudder, realizing how close I had come to potentially falling prey to his sinister intentions. And according to one of the officers, apparently this is how Mike engaged his last victim, by winning their affection via social media and various other social platforms. What was scary about Mike was that the man you would see in the pictures and videos was the man you got. There was no catfishing,

no tricks, and no ruses. This sociopath would invite himself into your circles and break down the walls from the inside. A lot of monsters hide behind the internet, but not Mike. He used the internet as a jumping pad to enter your real life. The party ended on a somber note, I guess, but my friends and family rallied around me, offering their support and comfort. The experience was a sobering reminder of the dangers that can lurk online, hidden behind charming smiles and carefully crafted personas. I vowed to be more cautious in the future, grateful that I had managed to escape whatever harmful situation I could have fell into. I had been the maintenance man at a local high school for years. I had seen countless students come and go and I took pride in keeping the place clean and safe for them.

Over the years it has truly been a sight to behold to see just how many students change year after year. The fads come and go, the styles change yearly, and the language they use is different and yet the end result is always the same. One group always moves on and a new group starts, just like clockwork. It was the night before the graduation ceremony, and I was tasked with setting up the gymnasium for the big event. I was honored to have such an important task, but more likely they just couldn't afford to have anyone else do the job. The school was empty and quiet as I worked. The faint hum of the air conditioning was my only real companion, which is how I liked it if I'm being honest. I had always found the school kind of eerie at night, but I brushed off the feeling as I focused on my task.

Gradually, the gymnasium transformed into a pretty impressive venue if I do say so myself, complete with rows of chairs, a stage, and a dazzling array of decorations. It was transforming into something that even I really didn't recognize. It was hard to imagine the gym was hiding underneath all those decorations, and as I was putting the finishing touches on the setup, I heard a strange noise coming from the hallway. It sounded like footsteps, but I knew I was the only one in the building. I shrugged it off as my imagination played tricks on me and continued my work. Moments later, the lights in the gymnasium flickered and went out, sending me into darkness.

I froze, and my heart was pounding in my chest. I started to fumble for my flashlight and scan the room, but there was no one in sight. The power going out was not something that should have happened. The weather was beautiful outside and it wasn't even windy. If something had gone wrong, it needed to be fixed before tomorrow. I cautiously made my way to the fuse box, located in a storage room down the hall. As I walked, I couldn't shake the feeling like I was being watched or someone was there. Every creak and groan of the building sent shivers down my spine and I hurried to the storage room, eager to restore the lights and banish these shadows. During the short walk, I tried to focus on my breathing because if I didn't,

I swear I could almost hear the unearthly sounds of whispers. When I made it to the room I flipped the breakers and the lights flickered back to life. I let out a sigh of relief and turned to leave, only to find myself face to face with a grotesque figure with a hood. I stumbled back in surprise, my heart leaping in my throat, and as I fell to the ground the figure fled in the hallway letting out some low groan. I had no idea what I'd just witnessed. While I was laying there on the floor of the supply room I could clearly hear the sounds of multiple footprints scattering in the hallway. I jumped on my feet and shut the door. I was nearly crippled by terror as I felt that. I could hear the voices outside the door.

These voices weren't making any words, just weird freaking sounds. After a few moments of silence, I decided to open the door and just make a run for the gym. I knew the hallway would be dark, but the gym light should be on now and I knew the light of the gym would guide me. As soon as I whipped open the door I started to sprint down the hall. Instantly a group of things emerged from the darkness chasing and groaning as if they were in pain or something. I just screamed. I was in genuine terror. When I was only a few feet away from the gym, the groans started to turn into a chuckle, which then turned into full laughter. Once I got to the gym, I finally turned to look at the figures chasing me.

One of them let out some low, menacing laugh and I realized that I was being pranked by a group of high schoolers. Angry and embarrassed, I tried to chase them off, but they just scattered in all directions, disappearing into the darkness. As I returned to the gym, I noticed that they had completely sabotaged my hard work, scattering chairs and decorations in their wake. Frustrated, I spent the rest of the night cleaning up their mess and resetting the gymnasium for the graduation ceremony. I was determined not to let their childish prank ruin the events for the students who

had worked so hard to reach this milestone. As the sun began to rise, I finally finished my work, exhausted but satisfied that the gymnasium was once again ready for the ceremony. I reported the incident to the school administration and they promised to investigate and discipline the students responsible but nothing seemed to come from it. As the day went on and the ceremony began, I watched from the sidelines with a mixture of pride and some resentment. I was happy for the graduating students but I couldn't help but feel bitter about the thoughtless prank that had turned a routine task into a night of terror. In the end, I reminded myself that the actions of a few misguided

individuals shouldn't tarnish my view of the entire student body. I continued my work as the head of maintenance, always vigilant but also more understanding of the unpredictable nature of high school students and their pranks. Every year new pranks and challenges hit the internet and unfortunately someone in my position usually pays for them, either at my expense or I'm the one left to pick up the pieces from the messes caused by their damage. If any young people out there read this please think about what you're doing before you do it. Luckily I didn't sustain any injuries or damage, but not everyone is

as lucky over me. High school was finally over and my friends and I couldn't wait to celebrate our newfound independence. We had planned a weekend trip to a nearby lake house, eager to kick off the summer and leave our high school days behind us. We set off immediately after the graduation ceremony, our cars packed with swimsuits, snacks, and infectious excitement. The sun shone really brightly as we cruised down the highway, the wind whipping through our hair as we sang along to our favorite songs. Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus may have been played two or three or maybe even twelve times.

But as we drove, I could not but notice a car that seemed to be just following us. It had been behind us since we left the school and the longer it stayed there, the more uneasy I felt. At first, I thought it was kind of funny that it had been following us for so long but once we got to the part of the trip where traffic was rare is when I really started to get uncomfortable. I mentioned it to my friends but they just dismissed my concerns, assuring me that it was probably just some coincidence. The few times that I looked back all I could see from my vantage point were two unsettling looking men who both sat just completely motionless in the car. They looked to be older but that's about all I could make out

from where I was sitting. My friends were probably right, I was always the one who always worried in high school and I was a little bit paranoid. We arrived at the lake house in the late afternoon, the sun casting a golden glow across the water. We quickly unpacked and headed down to the shore, eager to enjoy the last few hours of sunlight. I had almost forgotten about the car that would follow us, my worries washed away by the sound of just laughter and the gentle lapping of the waves. As the sun began to set, we gathered around a bonfire, roasting marshmallows and just reminiscing about our high school adventures. The evening was perfect, and I felt a surge of gratitude for the incredible friends that surrounded me.

And that's when I noticed them. Two men, standing at the edge of the woods, their faces seemingly obscured by the shadows of the trees. My heart skipped a beat as I realized that they were the same men that I may have seen driving behind us earlier. They just seemed to be watching us. I felt it in my intuition, and I instantly felt sick. I quietly alerted my friends to their presence and we collectively decided to head back to the safety of the lake house. As we left, I couldn't shake the feeling that the men were

still watching us, their intentions unknown but still very unnerving. We locked the doors and windows, our laughter replaced by this sort of tense silence. We tried to brush off our fears and enjoy the rest of the night, but the knowledge that we were being watched cast this dark shadow over our celebrations. My friends eventually passed out, but I was up the entire night, gasping and jumping at every little sound I heard. It was truly one of the longest nights of my entire life. The following day, we ventured out of the lake house, determined not to let the creepy men ruin our trip. We stuck together, always keeping an eye out for any sign of them. And as the day wore on, our anxiety began to fade and we once again found ourselves

laughing and just enjoying each other's company. But as night came, the men returned, and this time even closer to the lake house. Terrified and unsure of what to do, we decided to just call the police and report the situation. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. None of us had any service on our cell phones and even the Wi-Fi was pretty shoddy there. Eventually, one of us was able to get through, and they advised us to remain inside and assured us that they would send a patrol car to check on us. Hours later, yes, I said hours later,

an officer arrived and spoke to the men who, at this point, were basically on our property line. The cops instantly told us to calm down as they approached the men. They claimed that they were simply camping in the area and meant us no harm. The officer warned them to just keep their distance and left, assuring us that we had nothing to worry about. One of the officers even said, if you don't be like being alone in the woods, then don't camp. Despite the officer's weak reassurances, being somewhat rude as well, we couldn't shake the feeling of unease that lingered in the air. We spent the remainder of our night on edge, the carefree excitement of

our graduation celebration tainted by fear. Shortly after 2am we thought that we could hear floorboards creaking just outside the house. We all grouped up and, to the horror of all of us, those two men were now standing on the back porch, right outside the sliding glass door. They just stared inside, not moving or saying anything at first. They both had these sort of expressionless faces. They were easily in their fifties at least. Both were skinny with patchy looking beards and those skinny faces that appeared to be almost sunken in. Finally one of the men spoke in a weak and shaky voice. Hey, can we borrow some ketchup? almost sunken in. Finally, one of the men spoke in a weak and shaky voice.

Hey, can we borrow some ketchup? We ran out. One of my friends was screaming and the rest of us were basically in tears. The men didn't even react to our reactions. He just kept saying the same line repeatedly about the ketchup. The worst part of this nightmare was when he grabbed the door handle and tried to open it, saying, I just need some ketchup, guys. Come on, open the door. Finally, one of the friends got through to the police again, and frantically she explained what was happening. Thankfully, the cops showed up much faster this time and actually looked to have a sense of urgency. When the light could be seen in front of the house, the two men fled into the woods and thankfully never returned.

Probably because the cops stayed in our driveway for the rest of the evening. At dawn, as we packed up our belongings and headed home, I couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. Our weekend trip had been marred by the unsettling presence of the two men and I was eager to put that experience far behind me. The incident served as a sobering reminder that, as we embarked onto the next chapter of our lives, we would also face new challenges and dangers. We learned to be more cautious and aware of our surroundings. Anywhere, anytime, it can happen. As I stepped into the dimly lit house, the atmosphere of the graduation party enveloped me. Laughter and chatter filled my ears, while people in their late teens and early twenties mingled, sipping drinks and reminiscing about their high school and college years.

I felt like a stranger here, a friend of a friend, and I really didn't know anyone. My buddy, Mark, had invited me, assuring me that it was going to be a great time. He had an uncanny knack for disappearing at gatherings like this though, leaving me awkwardly to just navigate the landscape on my own. As I wandered through the crowd, I stumbled upon a small group of people huddled around a game of truth or dare. I thought this was a little strange since I hadn't played truth or dare since I was in middle school, but I have to say I was intrigued, so I joined them and introduced myself.

The game seemed to be the perfect icebreaker, and my turn came quickly, and I just said dare, confidently hoping to make an impression. One of the girls, with this mischievous grin, dared me to explore the abandoned house at the end of the street. Judging by her look, I thought that I was going to get dared something much more interesting like kiss somebody or something like that. Exploring an abandoned house was not something I found objectively scary, but I could tell by the gasps and glares that this house had a notorious reputation among the locals here. Now not wanting to lose face, I agreed, and a small group of partygoers decided to tag along for the adventure. As we approached the ominous looking house, I couldn't help but feel chills. The dark windows and overgrown yard gave the place this really just sinister vibe. It looked like every cliche abandoned horror movie you've ever seen in any movie or show.

And I hesitated for a moment, but the laughter and jeers from my new companions pushed me forward. We pried open the front door and stepped into the darkness. The air was stale and a thick layer of dust covered everything. Our flashlights illuminated the interior revealing walls covered in peeling paint and the remains of once pretty elegant furniture. At first I was fascinated by this place. I had this weird fascination with abandoned things. For me, there was a strange beauty in the history of

something that had just been forgotten by time. I looked around some more and I could tell that people that came with me were terrified. One girl named Chantel was draped on my arm as if though she had known me her whole life. Two other guys, whom I can't remember their names, just sort of followed behind me in an extremely tense fashion. Part of the dare was that we had to explore the house and then stay inside for at least 10 minutes which again seemed like nothing to me. We made our way to this gorgeous looking back room with all wooden interiors and this high cathedral like ceiling. The room appeared to be some sort of study or office when the house was in use. Books, desks, and a few couches were scattered throughout

the room. I told the group that we could sit here for the next few minutes and wait out the clock. Reluctantly, though, they all agreed. While we sat there, I asked why everyone was so afraid of this house. One of the guys started to tell this story. He said in a shaky and terrified voice, I'm not exactly sure how long ago, maybe 30 years or so, a couple lived here. They sent their kids to some boarding school and while the kids were away, the wife went nuts and murdered her husband. When the cops came, the woman was just sitting in the house, probably in this room, holding the gun in like a trance-like state. And the cops arrested her immediately.

Nobody knows what happened to her after that or whatever happened to the kid. But judging by the actions of the woman, people think the house is haunted. Like an evil presence lives inside the house causing the wife to do that to her husband. I must admit, I enjoyed the story, but I audibly laughed out loud when the kid told me the story. I couldn't help but think of movies like Amityville Horror or any other number of possession movies. I could tell the group was a little annoyed at me, but I didn't want to come across as the young person who tried to diffuse tension and anxiety with laughter, but I truly felt that this was all just ridiculous. I tried to be as polite as I could, but basically told the group that I don't believe in any supernatural or paranormal stuff and just told

them not to worry. With about two minutes left on our timer, I suggested that we go wait by the front door. Just as we approached the main hallway that would lead to the front door, I stopped abruptly. The group was paralyzed. Chantal whimpered out, What is it? Why should you stop? And I couldn't believe what I had seen. Just up ahead, I saw this person moving from one room to another. My brain tried to rationalize what was happening. My first thought was that somebody from the grad party had come in and was trying to play some joke on the younger guy. I told the group I saw somebody, and they became hysterical with fear,

begging to go back into the room. I decided to prove to everyone once and for all that ghosts and demons don't exist and that if this was a prank, they weren't going to scare me. I approached the room that I saw the person run into. I busted through the doorway and shouted, hey, I know you're in there. Without hesitation, from the dark corner of the room, the person ran right at me. I shouted, falling out of the way, and in that same instance the closet door swung open and two other people ran out of the room. I got up and looked as the three figures ran down the hall into the main room and barreled through the front door. I could hear the screams and shouts from my peers that remained outside, and I got up and grabbed my group and we ran outside next to confirm to the other party goers that we were okay and unharmed.

When we were outside, we could see those figures way out in the distance, still sprinting. Our adrenaline was through the roof as we collectively tried to catch our breath from this horrific experience. I went back inside and expected the room where I saw the person run from originally. There were cans and empty bags of chips and candy. It became clear right away that these shadowy figures were not entities, but just some homeless folks who were squatting in the house. Even with that logical explanation, it didn't make the experience any less scary. Several months later, I had to write a paper for a college class and I decided

to look up some information about the house. I was surprised by just how accurate the story was that the partygoers told me. A woman did murder her husband in the house and as far as I know, she's still locked up somewhere and still alive. To anyone who reads this though or hears this on Let's Read, there's no demons or evil spirits. This was the unfortunate outcome of a couple in a poor mental state whose brains were just not wired correctly and the outcome was horrific. And these are the types of stories that tall tales are born from and it's easy to see why. I will say some good came out of that graduation party that Mark took me to all those years ago. I started to date that Chantel

person I told you about, not her real name, but several months after we explored the house and now, after everything is said and done, we're actually engaged to be married. So not only did this graduation party give me an exciting thrill and memory that I'll always have, it also introduced me to my future wife. Life sometimes, my friends, can be strange. The graduation party was in full swing, the room filled with laughter and the joyful chatter of friends and family. I stood by the bar sipping on my drink when I noticed her. She was stunning, with long dark hair and a smile that could light up the room.

We made eye contact and she approached me with an air of confidence that I found captivating. We struck up a conversation and I learned that her name was Emily. She had just graduated with a degree in psychology and we quickly found common ground in our shared love of music and film. The chemistry between us was undeniable and as the night went on, we grew closer. Eventually, Emily suggested that we head back to her place for a little nightcap. Excited by the prospect of getting to know her better, I agreed and we left the party hand in hand. As we arrived in her apartment, I couldn't help but feel a sense of unease. The building was old and run down, a stark contrast to the vibrant and charming woman that I had just met. I shrugged off my apprehension and followed her inside,

eager to continue our conversation in a more intimate setting. Besides, sometimes, especially while in college, you can't control where you live. Emily led me into her living room, where we sat down and continued to chat. As the minutes ticked by, I began to notice something strange about her behavior. She seemed increasingly agitated, her eyes darting around the room as if she was searching for something. Curious, I asked her if everything was alright. She hesitated for a moment then confided in me that she had been experiencing some troubling events in her life. She explained that she had been receiving mysterious phone calls and unsettling messages from some unknown source.

As she spoke, I felt a chill run down my spine. The atmosphere in the apartment had just shifted and I could sense the fear had gripped her. She showed me some of the messages that she'd received and my heart raced as I read the words. Despite my own fear, I felt a strong urge to protect her. I offered to stay with her for the night to provide some comfort and reassurance. You'll do all sorts of crazy things when the heart overrides the brain's logic. She hesitated, then agreed, a lot of relief crossing her face. As the night wore on, we heard strange noises coming from the other rooms. Footsteps, creaking doors, and whispers that seemed to come from

nowhere. Each sound sent shivers down our spines and we clung to each other for comfort. As crazy as it may seem, it sounded like someone was literally in the room next to ours. In the early hours of the morning, as the noises grew louder and more frequent, I decided to finally investigate. I crept through the dark apartment, my heart pounding in my chest. As I reached the hallway, I noticed a door that had been left slightly ajar. I pushed it open, revealing a room that looked like it had been almost ransacked. The walls were covered in paint and holes and a collection of objects and trinkets lay scattered across the floor. The horrifying truth began to sink in.

Emily may be in serious trouble. As I turned to confront her, she stood in the doorway and her eyes were filled with fear. She admitted that she had not been entirely honest with me. I tried to ask her what exactly was going on, but she seemed distant and confused and even angry. I heard the door to Emily's apartment open and the sound of a bigger person could be heard barreling down the hall. As I stood there, helpless, watching and listening to this all unfold, I looked up and noticed Emily, who now looked even more visibly upset. She looked up at me and mouthed the words, I'm so sorry. Before I knew it, the person of the strange and terrorizing noises made himself known. It was a large bald man with a huge red beard. He greeted Emily with a disgraceful insult and

started asking her questions about things like, did you accomplish your task yet? When Emily didn't answer right away, the man seemed to become irate and turned his attention away from me and looked his eyes on Emily. I knew that was my only moment to act in this weird situation. I grabbed some wooden debris that was on the ground and hit the man over the head, which was hard enough to knock the man over and keep him dazed for a minute. Emily screamed. She told me to run, and so I did. I then realized

that the horrifying truth was not that Emily was some sort of monster, but she appeared to be a victim, trapped in some cycle of fear and manipulation. As I reached the door, I told Emily to come with me, and in some moment of heroism, she agreed and left that man moaning in pain on the ground. In the days and weeks that followed, we faced numerous challenges as we worked to sever Emily's ties with this dysfunctional man, and I learned a lot about Emily and the many horrible things she and this man would do to people like me. He would use Emily to lure men into this run-down apartment and then jump them and rob them. Emily wasn't a grad student like she claimed at the grad party, and she dropped

out a couple of years ago due to this guy. Emily just re-enrolled in school and is excited to start her future free of this monster. Even though this was the most terrifying night of my entire life, I'm thankful that it happened. As a result of this graduation party, I met Emily and together we brought that red-bearded monster to justice. But through it all, we grew closer and our bond forged in this crucible of fear. At the risk of stating the perfectly obvious, you see a lot of messed up things working as a uniformed police officer. It's like the potluck of policing. Homicide knows what to expect.

Vice knows what to expect. vice knows what to expect, but when it comes to uniform, you just don't know what's coming your way. I've seen some of the most humbling, awe-inspiring things a man could ever witness on some random middle-of-the-day calls, but I've also seen the absolute worst that people can do to each other. After working many calls like that, I learned that I could divide them up into two basic categories. There's the stuff that made me mad, and the stuff that made me sad. I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of things I'm talking about. I'd rather not rake over old coals,

and this comment doesn't need to be any longer than it needs to be, so I'll just cut to the chase. It took a year or two two but I learned that there was a third category. Something distinctly different to the sadness or anger that I felt after other calls. I've decided on different words for it over the years but recently I've settled on haunting. Some of the stuff you see literally haunts you and I don't think I need to believe in the supernatural to apply that word. There are ghosts you truly never are able to get rid of. Ghosts that bring on all the cliches of seeing them whenever you close your eyes, hearing their voices whenever things get a little too quiet, or having them visit you in dreams that shift to nightmares before you wake up in a cold

sweat. I don't particularly want to revisit all the things that haunt me. They got no problems visiting me all on their own, but I will tell you about the first. One morning, me and my partner had this detective come talk to us about a missing person's case. The focus was on this guy's common-law wife because she'd failed to report a missing. The guy's boss ended up calling it in, and by the time we got involved, there were strong suspicions that she was hiding something. She'd refused to allow a search of the house that she and her husband had lived in, so after securing a warrant, the detective asked me and my partner to conduct the search.

We didn't need to consent to search the house, so we just waited until there was nobody home, took the back door off its hinges, and then proceeded to take a look around. The back door led right into the kitchen, which looked totally normal, but then as we walked into the ground floor's main corridor, we started to smell it. You learn to recognize the scent of death the moment it touches your nostrils, and all you have to do is find out where it's strongest and, bingo, you know where to look. The stench was its most gag-worthy in the upstairs bedroom, apparently where the woman had been sleeping the whole time,

and after poking and prodding a suspiciously full-looking suitcase, we unzipped it and found our detective's missing person. I can see the look on the guy's face as clearly as the words on the screen here. We unzipped it and found our detective's missing person. I can see the look on the guy's face as clearly as the words on the screen here. He died terrified. The last moments of his life were wrecked with such a desperate hopelessness that it twisted his face up into a kind of death mask. His eyes were all wide, mouth agape in a desperate final attempt to get some oxygen, and the fact that he was curled up like a fetus just made the whole thing even creepier.

Opening that case was like a sick parody of childbirth, but the question remained. How did he get in there in the first place? We drove over to the female's place of employment, put her in cuffs, and then took her down to the sheriff's office so the state detective could question her. I heard she continued to deny any knowledge for a while, but she cracked in the end, and the truth, or whatever version of the truth she gave us, all came spilling out. It turns out the deceased male was a total piece of work. He had priors for a whole bunch of financial crimes, but the most pertinent to his untimely demise were a slew of domestic battery arrests. He was never formally charged for anything, but considering it's not uncommon for the victim to drop charges in cases

like that, his record painted a very clear picture. He was beating the life out of his long-term partner, and he'd been doing it for a depressing amount of time. Now while this might explain why his wife felt contempt towards her husband, it still doesn't explain how she got him in the suitcase. I mean the guy wasn't a giant or anything, but she was built like a field mouse. Unless it was at gunpoint, there was no way that she could have gotten him into that suitcase if he didn't already want to climb into it himself. And this is where the story gets really weird and really dumb.

Over the past few years, the husband had been running some kind of pharmaceutical scam by driving up to Canada, buying bulk amounts of drugstore items, and then driving back south of the border to sell them. This is technically legal, but you need permits to import pharmaceuticals, and even if you get one, you can only bring a certain amount back over the border. Apparently, the husband gets caught doing this, but the Canadians just let him go with a slap on the wrist after only confiscating the illegal portion of his haul. But then, the reason he only gets a slap on the wrist

is because the Canadians hand him a lifetime ban from entering their country. The guy's devastated, as his little scam was a huge earner for him, but for some reason, he can't just send anyone else to purchase his halls, so he has to think of a way to smuggle himself into Canada. The plan was that just before he and his wife got to the border, the husband would climb into the suitcase and have his wife zip it up. I could then breeze through the border checkpoint and back again without ever alerting the authorities. Then to test the plan, the husband buys the suitcase, brings it home, climbs inside it, and gets his wife to close it up. It's almost a perfect size. The guy fits in there all snug, but not so it looks like there's a person inside. It looks like their plan might actually work, but when the husband asks his wife to unzip the case,

she freezes. She realizes that for the first time in God knows how long, she's in no danger of being beaten up by him. She's the one who's in control, not him, and I can imagine the feeling must have been pretty overwhelming for someone in her position. She told the missing persons detective that she just went for a walk so that she didn't have to listen to him scream. A long walk too, didn't return home till after dark. But then, her husband was quiet and he didn't make a noise again. That was four days before we searched her house, and then by the end of the month, she was in prison on a voluntary manslaughter conviction. The judge gave her around ten years,

but I know she'll be released after less than half of that. If I'm honest, I don't think that's even a bad thing. If it took years of abuse to get her to snap like that, I reckon the rest will be just fine if we pay her a little common courtesy. Besides, if there's one thing that being a cop has taught me, it's that pieces of trash like suitcase guy are all living on borrowed time. If this old lady didn't get them, someone else would have, and I certainly wouldn't have minded it being me. To be continued... Nah, from 1967 to 1969. But not in a way you might imagine. Personally, when I first learned of his military service, I pictured him wading through the jungle, soundtracked by All Along the Watchtower, or landing in some rice paddy as the door gunner of one of those iconic green transport choppers.

But in reality, Grandpa didn't see a single minute of actual combat, and that's because he served in the U.S. Army Quartermaster's Corps. Quartermasters mostly supplied troops with the three Bs, bullets, beans, and bandages. But there's a special department of the AQC known as Graves Registration Service, and that's the unit that Grandpa served in. To save some of you a Google search, the GRS is now known as Mortuary Services, which should give you a better idea of what their work entails. But for clarity's sake, the GRS was tasked with recovering U.S. war debt.

The dead men were then examined, identified, and then shipped back wherever home was. My Grandpa's job was basically a military mortuary assistant and he and his buddies worked under an army doctor in determining cause of death, etc. As you can imagine, he and his buddies dealt with a lot of dead bodies, mostly Americans and South Vietnamese, but every so often they got a dead Viet Cong or NVA soldier. This is a very rare event from what I understand, as the enemy often dragged off their dead to obscure casualty figures. But every so often our boys found a dead communist and whatever was left of them sometimes ended up in front of my grandpa. Now the Vietnamese are a very spiritual people. Even with all that no religion communist propaganda

they were being fed, the Viet Cong and NVA were highly respectful of what you might call their ancestor spirits. They also have a big role about burying their dead in their respective homelands because failing to do so results in the dead person's spirit being unable to rest. That probably had a big influence on the whole dragging bodies away thing. But the point is, it wasn't very often that GRS found a communist on the table in front of them. Apparently, if the dead guy was Viet Cong, they at least had a chance of IDing the guy based on the fingerprint or dental records of the South Vietnamese prison system, but if the guy was suspected North Vietnamese, there was zero chance of being able to return the body.

The North Vietnamese totally denied that any of their soldiers were in South Vietnam, meaning they wouldn't take the bodies, which in turn meant these guys were cremated, boxed up, and then just filed away somewhere in some ARV and intel facility. A far cry from being buried among their ancestors in their home village back in the north. So, my grandpa gets the lowdown on this one day from one of the morticians he's working under, and ever since then, working with the unidentified enemy bodies got decidedly creepy. But then one day, they get this draftee forced on them. The guy's a complete wimp, and couldn't cut it in any combat unit at all so to punish him some full bird colonel decided that this tour should be spent working for graves

registration. If he was just some kind of conscious objector my grandpa said that he might have at least felt sorry for the guy but he turned out to be a complete and just utter circus clown. He couldn't do anything right, refuses to try and better himself and generally proves out to be a complete and just utter circus clown. He couldn't do anything right, refuses to try and better himself, and generally proves to just be a pain in the butt. As a result, this kid got all the worst jobs, and one of them was cleaning down any bodies that came in. This was a crappy job for a number of reasons,

but one of them was this. In order to properly clean a body, you need to move it around the table, and if it was mostly intact, as in torso and cranium mostly all there, some pretty creepy stuff might actually happen. Corpses sometimes exhale, make noises, sometimes twitch a little, and it takes a hell of a long time to get used to it. We hoped a little incident like that might shock some competency into the kids, so they kept on body-washing duty, hoping that he might give himself a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. He ended

up doing just that one evening, only he ended up giving my grandpa and the mortician the heebie-jeebies too. Grandpa and the mortician are sitting there, taking a coffee break while numbnuts cleans this North Vietnamese soldier's body. And lo and behold, they hear a scream. And the guy comes running out of one of the stations, wet as a sheet. Grandpa and his boss milk the hell out of the situation when this idiot told them the NVA guy's corpse had made a noise, telling him it must have been the guy's spirit leaving his body. Well, this guy is on the verge of a total breakdown when Grandpa and his boss finally burst out laughing and then the penny drops that he's the butt of some kind of joke. This only half calms him down, but he's obviously pretty mad that they're making fun of him.

So when he mentions that the guy's body was crying, Grandma and his mortician boss think numbnuts is trying to pull a fast one on him. They call him on his BS, and then this guy insists on it, telling them that they can go look if they don't believe him, so they do. Well, the idiot wasn't making it up to try to scare them back. This corpse was lying there, clean as a whistle, but mincemeat from the knees down. And he was crying. Not like blubbering and sobbering, but his tear ducts were leaking, so much so that the tears were pooling up in the lower depression of his eye socket before they trickled down the sides of his face. Corpses do weird things sometimes, things that'll make your skin crawl.

But Grandpa said he'd never seen one cry before. Even the mortician was shaken up by it. So much so that he checked the dead man's pulse just to make sure that he was just that. Dead. Obviously they had to write this up as part of the post-mortem and when one of the South Vietnamese co-workers got his hands on the report he came to confirm that this is true. The U.S. Army mortician who's running the operation tells him it's true and that he saw it with his own eyes.

They never saw that co-worker again, didn't even stick around to clear out his desk. Grandpa always said that he'd seen way too many dead bodies to believe in ghosts or anything of that nature. He tried his best to be a God-fearing man, but there's a difference between a belief in heaven and a belief in restless, wandering spirits, ones so powerful they can make a corpse cry. I got a spot about 4 or 5 miles deep into a nearby national forest area where I like to hunt.

Usually speaking, I'll take a half day off work so I can get dropped off in the early afternoon, and then I'll hike around all weekend before getting picked up at a pre-arranged location. We got all kinds out here too. Hogs, white-tailed deer, black bears, even mountain lions sometimes. There really isn't much I haven't seen out there at some point. So to avoid becoming something's lunch, you'd learn to stay acutely aware of your surroundings. I've had a couple of close calls before now, once with a black bear, once with a mountain lion, but they just left me really shaken up with an increased respect

for Mother Nature's monsters. But then there's this one other close encounter I had whilst out there in the woods, one that stayed with me for many years now and one I'm not quite able to explain. It was the middle of November when I trekked out to my usual spot. When I arrived, I set up my tent and my trip wires and got ready for an early night so I could be fresh for the next morning's hunt. I swear I was just on the verge of falling asleep when I hear what sounded an awful lot like a howling wolf. Obviously there were no wolves in the Carolinas, none that I'm aware of anyway, so I immediately sit up and grab a hold of my rifle. I knew it was more likely a person mimicking

their cry, as I doubted it to be a little old me that made a National Geographic level discovery out there in the Smokies. But if it was a person howling like that, and they weren't just doing it out of good spirits, I wanted to make sure that they couldn't, or wouldn't, creep up on my camp. I grab my rifle and my binoculars and my bushcraft knife, then simply stood outside my tent for a few minutes, listening out for any signs of them. After a few minutes I hear the same howling, only way off in the distance this time. So, reassured enough to head back to my sleeping bag, I turn and start heading back to my tent. But then as I turned, I'm almost frightened out of my skin by the sight of a woman, squatting on one of the rocks above my camp. She was sat in such an unnatural way that at first I instinctually unshouldered my rifle in preparation to defend myself, but when I realized it was just some girl, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

I don't mean to sound sexist here. What I really mean is I was glad that it was a human and not some mountain lion ready to pounce. I re-shouldered my rifle and forced out a chuckle as I told her how much she freaked me out. She didn't say anything in reply. She just kept staring down at me with this dumb looking smile on her face. It was around then that I noticed how all her long unwashed hair was almost completely covering her up as she squatted because underneath it didn't look like she was wearing any clothes at all. She kept on smiling as we sort of stared at each other down and continued to stay silent when I asked if she needed any assistance. The only sound she made was this faint giggle as she raised something up in her hand so I could see it.

At first, it just looked like a ball of fallen leaves. There were plenty around on the ground for her to grab at so that's where my head went to first. But then the ball of fallen leaves started twitching and I started to make out a long fluffy tail wound up among the girl's fingers. It was a squirrel and it did not sound happy. Any other time I might have cracked some joke about hoping that wasn't all she brought for dinner but at the time I had a serious sense of humor failure. This girl was really giving me the creeps, and if what she was doing was an attempt to scare me, I didn't appreciate it. I know this might sound a little naive of me in hindsight, but in the moment, I felt like I was

the butt of someone else's joke. I got a nephew who's obsessed with all those internet pranksters and stuff, the kind that take their pranks way too far on occasion, so my first instinct was to look around for someone secretly recording me. I do a quick 360 to check for anybody, but no one's there. No one I can see anyway, so I turn back to the woman, just in time to see her bringing the squirrel to her mouth. Before I could say anything, I heard this crunch, like a person biting into a stick of celery accompanied by an ungodly screech from the squirrel. I know I shouted something, but I think this comment might get deleted if I say what that thing was. It certainly isn't the kind of comment that a woman might normally find endearing, but the girl spat out the contents of the squirrel's abdomen and let out this loud

ugly cackle. I don't scare easily. I've had one or two brushes with death before and at no point did I figure this crazy little lady was a threat to me. But something in the way she laughed sent a shiver through me. She sounded completely out of her freaking mind. And crazy people do crazy things. Like forcing hapless hunters to put a bullet in them by doing something really stupid. I took down my rifle and, not pointing it at her directly, but rather taking a firm grip of it as if to tell her, stay back lady, I ain't afraid to use this. There was a minute where all I did was stare up at her while she returned my gaze. She had that same dumb smile on her face, only this time her lips and chin were dripping with fresh blood.

Last thing I said to her before she took off was something like, you bet the park rangers are going to hear about this. Kind of a Karen thing to say looking back, but it was the first thing that came to mind. The girl gave another cackle, spat a wad of bloody spit down at me, which actually almost hit me, and then she ran off through the woods. I'd be right in my first assumption, the woman was near naked as the day she was born, and just as filthy too. It didn't look like she was wearing any footwear, but she must have been because she moved way too fast and confidently to be barefoot out in the woods When she was at a safe distance I just went back to being mad again Mad that someone would find that kind of thing amusing Mad that they just hurt an animal like that to try and give me the creeps

And mad that it actually worked I told myself that I'd just camp overnight with my knife close in hand and then move at first light. I wasn't about to let some monster scare me off my old patch. But when it came to actually bedding down, I knew that there was no way I was getting any sleep. The thought that had me packing up my gear with my head on a swivel was, where are her friends? Sure, there are people crazy enough to run around the woods on their own, munching a squirrel's guts in their birthday suits. Hell, she might have been some hot shot tech executive blowing off some primal steam, I guess. The point is, one crazy person I could

handle, two could be trickier, but then three or four of these nutcases coming at me all at once, and in the dark too. I bet you started to see why I noped out of there, huh? Being armed is all well and good, but all I had was the bolt action and a knife, and since I'm not John Wick, I'd rather not take my chances. I made a point of drastically changing my route for the remainder of the weekend, and part of that new route took me directly to one of the ranger stations where I told the first ranger I met about what I'd seen. She seemed decently disturbed by what I said, just as anyone in their right mind would, and asked if I wouldn't mind sticking around until her superior returned from an errand so I could tell him verbatim what I told her. I figured he'd be just as shocked as his co-worker, but he wasn't. In fact, I wasn't

the first person to come to him complaining about crazy naked people running around the woods during the weekend. And on top of that, eating live animals was actually on the less weird scale of things they'd been reported doing. I asked the leader ranger what he meant by that, but he gave me a really cagey answer on it saying that they were trying to deal with a problem and that to date they'd never actually hurt any people just animals it was only when I was on my way back home that his words struck me as odd if the park service out there was trying to get a lid on the problem why did the junior ranger look at me like I was crazy for

the first minutes or so of me explaining what I'd seen? I guess she could have been new, and even if she had been told, hearing a first-hand account would have still been unsettling. But it still struck me as unusual. I'm actually kind of ashamed to say this, but I hunt someplace else now. It's not so much that I'm scared of those naked folks, it's that I just don't want any trouble. I like my hunting weekends peaceful and quiet, so if it means giving up an old spot for the foreseeable future, then so be it. But you can bet you're behind that if I hear that same human howl echoing around the hills near my new spot, I'll be moving again, for good. Okay, so I totally understand if you all think I'm in the wrong in this situation,

and I accept that I may have brought this on myself in some way. But that being said, this is the story of one of the scariest things that's ever happened to me. I used to play a lot of Call of Duty, like back when trash talking had become an art form. It was also around the same time that people started swatting each other and stuff like that, so there was always a concern that some uber hacker was going to find your address and turn your front yard into Waco. There was like a 0.01% chance of that actually happening, but it was still a legitimate concern. Anyways, I was playing this one game with a kid who was admittedly kicking my butt, so I was giving him all kinds of hell over that game chat. Think of the most offensive stuff

that you can think of, and I'd find a way to make it even worse before hurling it his way. I called out his mom, his sister, his grandma, his dead dog from when he was a kid, and everything and anything I could think of. The kid just stays quiet. He just keeps owning me, but every so often I get one over him and I really let him have it. Then after one really nasty insult combo, he just says, and this is without telling you my name, Hey, you're... and he says my nickname, right? The kid uses my real name, not even my street name. The goofy name my god-fearing mother gave me. I don't keep that crap anywhere near the public face xbox profile, so the fact that he

just knew it felt like a slap to the face. Like I honestly felt myself turn pale as he said it. I kept up trying to front, being all like, nah, that ain't me, I don't know who that is, but then he starts repeating my old address, like my parents, so I figured he'd gotten access to my billing information or something, cause I'd only just moved away to college, so, yeah, anyway. I'm really shook, but I figured this guy is just using sneaky internet skills to read all the info connected to the billing section, so I'm not too concerned, and I tell him I don't know anyone who lives at the address he mentioned, and then I swear to god, cold as ice, the kid says, nah, I know your parents live there,

and I'm gonna drive over there right now and shoot them. Bye. And he leaves the game, and I'm just sat there with the whole rest of the party like, you better call the cops, man. So I did. It would have been different if he'd have been threatening me. I'm not scared to beef, but threatening my mom and dad like that, that's what had me so scared. There are some real psychos out there and some of them can't handle a little trash talk. And I just seemed to be so lucky as to find one and I'd put my effing parents at risk because of it. I wouldn't normally be one to call 911 so quick either.

I'd rather settle things like men, but it's my mom, you know. That made it all different. I called the cops from my dorm room, told them everything that had happened, and they ended up sending some cops over to my parents' place back home in Wisconsin. They took the threat very seriously, especially since this unidentified COD player seemed to know exactly where they lived. The cops parked outside my parents' house, stayed there until really early the next morning, then left once they were satisfied that no one was going to show up. Meanwhile, I was able to give the guy's username to the cops who in turn took it up with Xbox who

must have given them access to the guy's profile because they paid him a visit a few days later. It turns out the reason he knew who I was was because of an old middle school friend who just so happened to be sitting in the room while he was playing and he could hear me talking on the guy's TV. He must have recognized my username or recognized my voice from the trash talking that I was doing. It turns out maybe I haven't matured since middle school but that's a whole other thing and told the guy to ask if it was me. He had no intention of hurting anyone, he just hit the jackpot in finding out my name and my old address and if I was talking so much trash, why not throw a little back my way?

No charges were pressed and my parents were more mad at me than anything else so we're all good in that respect. The only thing is, my old buddy's friend's Xbox Live account had been banned as a result, and he's sending me DMs saying it's all my fault and that I need to reverse it. I don't think that it's my fault, and it's his problem for making those threats. So, I'm asking you guys, am I the a-hole in this situation, or is it the other guy? Becoming a father was the best thing that's ever happened to me. Me and my ex-wife were in our early 20s when we found out that she was pregnant, and we were completely unprepared to be parents.

But since my wife's side of the family is very Catholic, termination really wasn't an option. I was very much in love with her at the time, so I decided, hey, why not give being a dad a try? The relationship didn't work out, but we're not like the stereotypical divorce couple who hate each other. We learned to co-parent effectively, we're still very close in some ways, and our daughter was always happy and healthy. That all changed when she entered her teenage years, and it culminated in one of the most terrifying, rage-inducing moments of my life. I appreciate that all kids go through emotional changes when they become teenagers, so me and my daughter's mom were more than prepared for that. But what we noticed pretty quick was that our daughter's behavior grew far more concerning than the other girls in her age group.

I'm pretty sure that she'd ream me out if I doxed her name, so I'll just call her daughter for the time being. Daughter was always different, but me and her mom were always different too. I wouldn't say we were goth, but we flirted with the aesthetic, and our daughter was regularly exposed to music that we liked so she grew up liking it a lot too. Because she wasn't like a lot of the other girls in her classes, she sometimes had trouble making friends but she knew how to make them anyways so she got by. But then she starts high school, we upgrade her to a smartphone and that's when the problems really began. Myself and her mom had always been in total agreement when it came to phones and we also heavily policed her access on the internet. Being younger, more computer savvy parents,

we were both able to set up content blockers to make sure that she couldn't access anything inappropriate. We also made sure that she only ever had a flip phone as phone addiction among kids was already a worry by that time but obviously we still needed a way of getting in touch with her if she was out of the house. That changed when she entered high school. Our daughter had been begging us for an iPhone for over two years by that time, and me and her mother relented when we realized that it might well serve us as a study aid, you know. We also just didn't want her missing out on all the other smartphone-related stuff, as more and more things required apps and whatnot to operate them.

Sorry to take you on a detour of our logic, but that's just the way we thought. So on the birthday before we started high school, we bought her an iPhone. As you can probably guess, she was completely and utterly smitten with the thing, but was so grateful that she stuck to our rules surrounding it. She didn't bring it to the dinner table, and she didn't take it to bed with her, and she didn't run up any crazy charges buying games or apps or music. But by the middle of her freshman year, when her depression and anxiety were getting worse and worse, the phone became like an extra limb to her. She was never off the thing and I found myself

having to fork out more and more money each month just to keep up with all the data that she was eating up. Her thumbs were tapping against that freaking screen from the moment she woke up and she kept music or videos playing even when she was asleep. I'm pretty attached to my phone too but as someone who didn't grow up with that kind of tech I started to find it pretty alarming after a while. But then our daughter started doing things that made her phone addiction look very unhealthy and her mother and me knew that we had to intervene. I don't necessarily agree with these sorts of things but out of respect for my daughter I'm going to offer a trigger warning for self-harm for what I'm about to say next.

Basically, I got a call from her mother one day to say that she was cutting. To those unfamiliar with the implications of the term, cutting refers to when a person inflicts physical harm on themselves, usually with a blade, but sometimes with very hot or very cold things like hot lighters or a cube of ice. I know those two things aren't strictly cutting, but it all falls under the same umbrella, I guess. I know all this because I personally attended some of the counseling sessions that we paid for our daughter to attend, all to get a better understanding of what was going on. They were expensive, but I can honestly say that they were worth every single penny because they helped us to get to the root of the problem which potentially saved our daughter's life.

After the fifth session, the counselor asked if she could have a quiet word alone with me. With my daughter waiting in the car, the counselor explained how she believed part of the problem was my daughter's social circle. I knew she had a couple of friends in high school, plus this one other girl that she still talked to from middle school, but they all seemed like sweet enough girls, so I wasn't sure what the problem could be. That's when the counselor explained that my daughter appeared to have been indoctrinated. Now I know to a lot of you that term sounds a lot like brainwashing, which I obviously found deeply alarming, but in the true sense of the word it just means taught. My daughter was saying things during the sessions that she certainly wasn't being taught in high school and when I heard them I could assure the counselor she wasn't learning

them at home either. It might seem very cliche, but the long and short of it was, life is suffering, the only relief is pain and eventually death. That's probably a wild oversimplification of what she was actually being told, although that just about sums up the effect that it had on her, but it's all kind of besides the point. The issue was that she didn't arrive at cutting on her own, someone had coached her to do it, and it was the view of the counselor that my daughter was communicating with this person via her cell phone. During the majority of this period I was working crazy shifts, six nights a week, trying to keep my business going and sometimes I had to travel for a few days at a time to promote in other parts of the country.

As a result, my daughter spent the vast majority of her time with my ex and only occasionally came to stay with me on weekends. So when it came to checking her phone for any worrying texts, it was solely down to her mom at first. After failing to find any worrying text messages, I told her mom to check all of her social media, her browsing history, everything. And this caused one heck of a fight from what I heard. But in the end, she got the job done and she went through all of her daughter's messages. It wasn't her proudest moment as parents. No one ever wants to violate their child's privacy, especially when having personal space starts to mean a lot more. But I don't think we had any other choice.

And when all was said and done, we were vindicated. Her mom couldn't find anything. There were one or two worrying posts and our daughter seemed to have a very concerning interest in pharmaceutical drugs, but there was no smoking gun in terms of someone having a bad influence on her. I told my ex not to worry too much and to keep an eye on our kid until I could take a look at her phone myself. Maybe a week or so later she comes over to stay for the weekend and after she goes to bed one night, minus her phone of course, I take a look through it. Everything seemed pretty sterile and I figured that she was on her best behavior to keep her

mom sweet but then as I'm exploring the apps on her phone I notice something about her app store searches. The top search, the thing that came up as soon as you tapped the search bar, was something called Kik. I'd spent enough time going through my own app store to know that it was some kind of messaging app and it finally dawned on me why it was in her top searches. She was downloading it, then deleting it, and she was doing it so often that her phone remembered it. I knew I was onto something when the app remembered her login details, and all I had to do was click the lime green sign-in button to go into her account. There was only one chat box, a conversation with a user named ixtab, and I'll never forget that name, namely because I didn't think that it

meant anything at first, when it turned out to have a chilling significance to it. Besides, I was far too distracted with the walls and walls of text than by the username, at least at first anyway. I can honestly say that some of the things this person was saying to my daughter was some of the most frighteningly violent and viscerally disturbing things I'd ever read in my entire life. And the fact that they were directed at my one and only child just ramped everything up by a thousand. I didn't read everything in detail. I just skimmed through it, picking up portions here and there to give myself an idea of what their conversations were about. There was a lot of talk about self-harm and hurting yourself, and even in the

parts where the conversation just seemed casual and small-talky, this person's attitude was just dripping with pessimism. Or maybe pessimism is the wrong word. It was more like a relentless, poisonous negativity, and they tried to inject it into every aspect of my daughter's life. Another reason I skimmed through it was to try to find evidence of grooming. That was my one big fear, but there was nothing of the sort, at least not on an age-appropriate level. Instead, another kind of thing was going on, one where this mystery person was urging my 14-year-old daughter to take her own life. It was sickening, and from the way this person wrote,

they didn't seem that much older than she was. They used the same slang words, seemed to have the same points of reference, but there was an eerie sort of deliberateness to it, almost like they were older, much older, and had learned how to talk to teenagers like that. To say my skin crawled would be the understatement of the millennium. I felt sick, and I immediately called my ex to inform her that I'd found the source of the problem. Together we confronted our daughter and demanded to know who this I-X-Tab person was.

She claimed to have no idea of their true identity, but that didn't go over well with me at first. I had to go back and read through all the messages again to realize she was actually telling the truth. They met on social media and had switched to a different messaging app pretty quickly and although my daughter had sometimes asked this ix tab personal questions, the replies had always been vague at best. Me and my ex then demanded to see this person's social media profiles, which we promptly reported on the grounds that they were encouraging children to harm themselves. As you can imagine, there was a lot of dark and disturbing posts, but there wasn't

much in terms of personal details, so I decided to google their username to see what came up. And this is the part that always sticks with me. I typed in ixtab, hit enter, and the first search result is a Wikipedia article about a Mayan goddess. I figured the name had come from somewhere, but then suddenly, one word stood out in the description. Ixtab, or Ishtab, is the Mayan goddess of taking one's life, or more specifically, taking your own life by hanging. I know it was obviously a deliberate choice on behalf of this sicko who had been talking to my daughter, but it was terrifying all the same. This person considered themselves the personification of death. My daughter was already halfway down the rabbit hole before we pulled her out again.

Speaking of pulling her out, it took a long time, and a lot more counseling sessions before we were able to deprogram her. Her counselor insisted that I didn't need to use such extreme language, but that's the way I saw it, the way I still see it to this day. I honestly can't even fathom the kind of evil it would take to do something like that. Trying to talk a vulnerable young woman into taking her own life, all apparently inspired by some ancient Mayan goddess. It just sickens me that people like that even exist in the first place.

What went so wrong in their lives that they felt the need to do something like that? And the fear that they're continuing to do it is something that still keeps me awake at night. Like I mentioned, we bombarded MySpace and Hotmail with complaint emails and reports, and the accounts we saw ended up getting deleted. But you know just as well as I do, a person can make another account over and over and over again. It doesn't matter if they get banned, they'll find a way around it. I find myself hoping, with the deepest sincerity I can possibly convey, that the person who tried to take my daughter from me has a change of heart.

I hope whatever dark period they were going through has passed, and that they understand what a terrible thing they were doing. Because if not, there's still a clear and present danger out there, hungry to hurt our kids, and doing few blocks to the dog park and back. We always felt very safe too, as the streets around the neighborhood I used to live in are well lit and policed. This one evening, we were standing on set green space, letting the dogs sniff off leash as we chatted when I suddenly saw a large car coming down the road towards us. I could only see its headlights at first and I couldn't figure out why it had caught my attention for a moment,

but then I realized it was driving on the wrong side of the street and it was driving very fast. I'm just about to motion to my mom when I hear this big roar of an engine, tires screeching and everything. The car had driven onto the small dog park and was heading directly in our direction. I screamed and yelled at my mom to run, grabbing our smaller dog into my arms before I ran. I honestly thought that one of us might die that night and to think the dogs might get hurt too, that makes me tear up just to think about, even all this time later. We were only saved by two things, the direction we ran and the fact that a metal signpost just so happened to be in between us and the car. He had to swerve to keep aiming for us and I don't think he saw the metal post until it was way too late to do anything

about it. One of their back tires gets caught on the pole, and I look back in time to see what happened. Let me tell you, it was wild to see a car buck upwards and at the same time kind of yank sideways by the force of smashing into the post. I still stand on the belief that the sign saved our lives, that and the grass that made him drift a little. It gave us a window of time to run into the alley. I didn't look back as we ran, but I heard their engine and wheels going to get loose and it was terrifying. We ended up running into our neighbor's yard where we hid, crouched down, and seconds later there are headlights lighting up the alleyway as the car slows into it. It passes by us and comes around twice again as he'd loop the neighborhood looking for us.

We just sat, silent and frozen with fear in that yard for what seemed like a half hour until we couldn't hear the engine anymore. I don't know if the driver was drunk or something but it was scary having someone use their vehicle as a weapon to try and mow you down for no reason at all. When we contacted the authorities, the police couldn't do much about it either, as we didn't get a good look at the guy's license plate or his car because we were basically running away from him the entire time. I kind of hoped he was a drunk driver, because in the end he'd get caught for it. But then maybe he tried to hurt someone again, and maybe that time he was successful. I don't want to think of the kind of damage that he could do to someone, especially if they didn't see it coming at all. Many years ago, I was in love with a very damaged person.

He'd grown up in an ultra-orthodox religious community, what some people might refer to as a cult. He'd departed its ranks a long time before we met, and he'd undergone a great deal of therapy, too. When I met him, you'd never have guessed from how well he was dealing with all of his issues. But over the course of our relationship, the truth came out, and I became aware of how much fixing needed to be done. He'd been removed from an unhealthy setting, but the unhealthy attitudes hadn't been removed from him. And after a while, that became a huge problem, especially for me. After we ran into a little financial trouble, his mental health began to steadily decline And then one night, I get home from work and he tells me there is evil in our house

And we have to leave with the dogs now He was acting completely unhinged and I got so worried on multiple levels I wouldn't let him drive because of how frantic he was being But he insisted on going to his sister's and then her friend's so I drove us instead. He ends up directing me to drive to these old hiking and biking BMX trails behind a closed fast food chain restaurant. He adamantly wants me to get out with him to go down the trails. I say absolutely not. He starts praying and speaking in tongues I guess and talking about a demon in our house. I cried and tried to talk him down. It took hours and when we got back I knew our relationship could never recover and I made moves to leave everything I had made for myself during

that relationship. I left. Me and my dog couch surfed at my friend's house and her stepmom's house for a few weeks before I could figure out what to do next. In that moment, I knew if I got out of that car, I would end up dead on some random trail in Washington and my family would not know what happened to me. And I'd never been so scared in my life. This happened a few months ago. I was driving home from a trip to the store while talking to my friend on the phone at around 9 or 10pm. I pull up into my driveway, park, and talk to my friend for a few minutes while I'm sitting in my car. All of the sudden, this sketchy car pulls up directly behind me. There's no way that I could back out without hitting the passenger side of it. It's dark, my driveway lights are kind of dim and they deliberately turned off the lights of their car when they pulled up behind me,

but I faintly spotted three guys sitting in it. I'm feeling creeped out at this point so I asked my friend what I should do and we both decided that I should wait it out a bit and see if they leave. A few more minutes go by and they're still there. Eventually we figured that the best plan of action would be to stay on the phone, calmly grab my bags from the trunk without breaking eye contact with the people in the car, and walk to the door, which is only about 15 feet away. In retrospect, it probably would have been a better idea to just call my parents and ask them to open the door for me inside. I step outside, then grab my stuff from the trunk.

The guy in the rear passenger seat of the car cracks their door open, and the guy in the front seat is staring me down. They are definitely assessing if I'm a viable target. I kept eye contact with them, but I felt like a deer in headlights. It still felt like ages, but it must have been only 2-3 seconds at most. Suddenly, the guy in the rear shouts something to his buddies along the lines of, Oh, it's a guy, and shuts the door. They speed away at like 80 miles per hour on a residential street.

I was relieved, but mostly confused. I updated my friend and let them know that I'm alright and then I walked inside. I'm a male, 5'9 and slightly overweight with a bit of a baby face so I don't exactly come across as intimidating to most people I meet so I doubt I scared them off because of my appearance alone. I'm terrified to think of what could have happened to me if I were a female. It's legitimately really messed up. Why am I safe from those things? Meanwhile, my sister and female friends have no choice to keep guns in their cars,

get tiny cans of pepper spray for their keychains, and avoid being alone in general. It's a scary place out there. Whether you're male or female or anything else, always be vigilant. I used to think my neighborhood was relatively safe, but now I'm afraid of sitting in before 5am each day. The resort is located inside of an affluent neighborhood in a very wealthy town suburb. Employees had to park in one of two parking lots at either ends of the property and the lot I chose was adjacent to a long and windy road outside the resort which led to the rest of the neighborhood. The road and resort were separated by a short range of brush and trees that

no one ever walked through. I'd arrive one morning per usual and put the car into park with my headlights still on. The lights in the lot were never on in the morning since no one else really showed up before 6am when the sun was out so it was usually always dark at the start of my walk. Save for security, I was one of the first employees to arrive on the property each morning and was usually completely alone on this particular parking lot at this time. This morning didn't seem any different. I had my hand literally at my keys, my brain in the process of turning off my car, when I noticed a young girl, maybe like 14 or 15 years old, come scampering.

Her body language was the exact definition, run with quick light steps, especially through fear or excitement, through the span of trees that separates the resort from the outside world. She was directly in front of my car and my headlights illuminated a clear view of her in the pitch black. She looked like she was in high school, had long blonde hair and was wearing a jacket with pajamas, maybe like she just walked out of a house. One thing about her that bothered me was that she wouldn't stop laughing and smiling. I couldn't hear her laughing from outside the car but she was visually giggling at something I wasn't aware of or could see and it was so unnatural. She occasionally glanced behind her

as if someone else were there waiting away from the headlights. She then waved at me like it was a normal gesture at this time and then immediately ran to my passenger side door. This all happened in a matter of seconds, and I wasn't really sure what was even happening besides my anxiety spiking. I know I simultaneously yanked the aux from my phone to shut whatever song had been playing off while grabbing for the lock button. I remember feeling panic for never remembering if it's up or down to lock when the girl began pulling violently and incessantly on the door handle on the passenger side. I realized because I didn't turn my car off, it'd stay locked. She began pounding on the window and I was screaming at the top of my lungs for her to leave before pressing on my horn. I could see her laughing outside like this was some type of game, as if I were a silly friend not letting her in as a joke.

After a few seconds she stopped the pounding and trying to open my car door. Her face fell flat like I disappointed her and she started to walk away from my car back to the way she came. She waved at me again before squeezing through the trees, out of view of my headlights. This whole encounter confused me almost as much as it scared me. Most people I told this story to just chalked it up to her being on drugs, but that narrative hasn't felt right to me despite her behavior. Maybe she was just being an extremely out of touch teenager whose parents need a firmer grip on her. My first thought was possibly human trafficking but I'm not sure if that would fit this scenario

as I'm not the most well versed with the subject. I told someone when I made it to LP but they didn't seem to care much. I didn't call the police, and I regret that. I'll never get out of my brain, though, how freaking off that feeling was, watching a stranger, seemingly alone, pop out from the trees in the darkness, laughing, and then try to violently enter your car in an empty parking lot. I do think the possibility of someone else being present the whole time is a lot more scary, and I wonder who else was there, and where exactly. I'm a new mom. My daughter means the world to me. And this happened when she was almost one year old. We were in the fruit and veggies section of Fred's. It had been a normal day. Some people

waved at her, some smiled. A few others sent kind words her way. My daughter was enjoying interacting with passersby. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a man trying to communicate with my daughter. He made sounds loud enough to get her attention, but quiet enough that I wouldn't hear. I only saw because he was making some weird kissy face at her as he did it. Something about it felt terribly off. Usually people will interact with her while making it very obvious to me but this guy was making an effort to stay just out of my eyesight while keeping his eyes on my daughter. I'd never experienced anything like this before but I

was alone and unsure of what to do, so I just left that section of the store and forgot about it. Later on checking out, I saw once more that man. He was right behind me in the checkout lane next to mine, staring wide-eyed with a blank expression at my daughter. I just froze. I recall the lady checking me out asking if someone was making me uncomfortable but I was so shaken up I couldn't get the words out. She called an escort for me and an employee walked us to the car as I manically scanned the rows of cars. He loaded up my car as I buckled in my daughter and patiently waited till I locked the doors and drove off to go back inside. Perhaps I was overthinking things but that sense of terror is something I'll never forget. To be continued... and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official,

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

description below. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon.