The Lets Read Podcast - 245: SHE WAS NEVER SEEN AGAIN | 20 True Scary Stories | EP 233

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about 411 mysteries, nightmarish urbex encounters & real-life cases of brainwashing HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial Or over email: [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Music & Audio Mix: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt

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Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The End The family lived on Wanham Lane in the small village of Betchworth, and both parents earned a living as teachers at local schools. Ruth was an impressively intelligent child who took to reading and learning musical instruments from a very early age, yet she also had a healthy social life and could be found hanging out with friends when she wasn't studying or working her Saturday job at a local music shop. Yet during the late autumn of 1995, when Ruth was 16 years old,

a series of strange and tragic occurrences resulted in an eerie and enduring mystery. During the late summer of that year, Ruth's best friend Catherine delivered some bad news. She and her family were moving up to the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire. Following the move, the girls missed each other terribly. So in late October or early November, Ruth traveled up to Sheffield for a sleepover. Catherine's mother recalled that the girls were overjoyed to be reunited and equally sad to part again. However, Ruth's reluctance to leave seemed somewhat unhealthy. She asked Catherine's mother if she could live with them, and when her request was refused, she seemed to be on the verge of

tears. Catherine's mother then invited Ruth to discuss any problems that she might have with her home life, but she refused to say. Catherine's mom then contacted Ruth's parents, but they assured her that Ruth had no problems at home and simply missed her old friend. However, this wasn't strictly true. On Saturday, November 25th, 1995, Ruth worked her regular shift at the music shop and then went to get a bite to eat with a young man named Will Kennedy. Kennedy was an ex-boyfriend of Ruth's, but the pair maintained a healthy platonic friendship following their breakup. They were joined by a mutual friend named Neil Phillipson, and both boys later reported that Ruth paid for their food.

Ruth was not a rich girl by any stretch of the imagination, so paying for their food marked an extravagant act of generosity from her. Both boys claimed that they were more than capable of paying for their own meals and had initially objected to Ruth's show of kindness, but she insisted and in the end, they relented and allowed her to pay. The next day, Ruth attended orchestra practice at her local church and then visited Will Kennedy's home for dinner. Will's mother recalled how she seemed happy and healthy, but mentioned something rather curious. Before she departed, Ruth asked

Mrs. Kennedy if she had any old clothes that she could borrow. Mrs. Kennedy thought that the request was odd, but took Ruth upstairs to her closet so she could pick out a few items. Ruth seemed extremely grateful, but didn't act in a way that raised any alarm bells, at least not according to Mrs. Kennedy. That Monday, the 27th of November, started much like any other for Ruth and her family. Her father and mother left for work early, leaving Ruth and her little sister, Jenny, to catch the bus to school. Yet just before the girls were due to leave, Ruth informed her little sister that she'd be walking to school alone. This wasn't entirely out of the ordinary,

as by that point, Ruth was studying for her A-levels and thus had a much more flexible schedule when it came to classes. So, when Jenny left the house to walk to the bus stop, Ruth stayed home for a few more minutes before departing. Minutes later, Ruth was spotted by Will Kennedy, who was driving to school in a car that he'd been given as a reward for passing his driving test. He rolled down his window, got her attention, and then offered her a ride to school. Strangely, Ruth declined and told Will that she'd catch him at school later that morning. But Ruth never made it to school that day. In fact, her family and friends would never see her again.

That evening, Ruth's parents arrived home to discover that she was nowhere to be found. They contacted her school, and once they discovered that she'd essentially been missing since 9.30 that morning, they contacted Surrey police to report her missing. In the hours that followed, and in conjunction with local radio and TV stations, law enforcement circulated numerous public appeals regarding Ruth's disappearance. They described her as wearing a red knitted jumper, black velvet trousers, black pixie boots, and a small ladies watch on her left wrist. Not long after the reports were circulated, a local cab driver contacted the police,

claiming that Ruth had been one of his passengers. According to the driver, he'd driven her from the train station in nearby Dorking to a country park known as Box Hill. Box Hill is a small, steep, heavily wooded section of a rural area known as the North Downs. It has well-maintained walking trails, a parking lot, and even a small cafe. But despite being somewhat commercialized, it's one of the greener, more forested regions of the county. Why Ruth wanted to go to Box Hill is a mystery. But after dropping her off near a small riding path, the cab driver observed something strange. Instead of walking off to an intended destination, Ruth just stood there in the rain, looking lost and frightened.

Having only lost sight of her for a moment, the driver decided to go back and check on Ruth to see if she was okay. But on his return, she was nowhere to be seen. Since it was raining, the driver didn't exit his vehicle to search for Ruth on foot, but he later said that he was quite certain that she wasn't on the riding path, and nor could she have been walking on any of the nearby sidewalks or he'd most likely have spotted her. This is the last known sighting anyone had of Ruth. After that, it's like she dropped off the face of the earth. That night, Surrey police conducted a comprehensive and wide

reaching search of the area surrounding Box Hill. They utilized specialist tracker teams, sniffer dogs, and even helicopter teams equipped with heat-sensitive cameras. However, despite a solid 12 hours of non-stop searching, not a single trace of Ruth Wilson could be found. Officers then set about gathering as much intelligence as possible and questioned dozens of Ruth's friends, teachers, and family members. They discovered that Ruth visited Box Hill regularly and mostly did so alone. The police also found out that Ruth's grades had been slipping in the weeks before she disappeared. However, perhaps the most damning theory involves the Wilson family's deepest, darkest secret.

The truth is, Karen Wilson was not Ruth's biological mother. Ruth's birth mother had passed away back in December of 1982, when Ruth was only barely three years old, and her father married Karen less than a year later. Ruth was aware that her birth mother had passed away when she was still a toddler, but was told that her passing was the result of a tragic accident. However, that wasn't true. Nesta Wilson's death had certainly been tragic, but it was very much intentional. The events leading up to her death aren't clear, but on December 10th of 1982, Nesta Wilson hung herself from a banister in the Wilson family home. Ruth's father found her, contacted emergency services, and then tried his utmost to ensure that his two young children knew nothing of their mother taking their own life. For 13 years, Ian Wilson ensured his daughters remained ignorant of her mother's true fate, yet the timing of her disappearance suggested that that was no longer true.

You see, Ruth vanished exactly 14 days before the anniversary of her mother's death. But if someone had secretly revealed the truth to her, who was it? And why had they done so? Two days after Ruth went missing, an expensive-looking bouquet of flowers arrived at the Wilson house. They were addressed to her stepmother, Karen, but the attached note was left blank. The police traced the flowers to a florist on Dorking High Street, and after questioning the owner, they discovered that Ruth had placed the order on the day she went missing, instructing the florist not to deliver the bouquet until the 29th

of November. It's not clear why they were addressed to her stepmother or what the intended message was. Some interpreted the gesture as some kind of insult, but there are far less expensive ways of showing someone disrespect. Two days later, on December 1st, 1995, the police found three handwritten notes at the peak of Box Hill. They had been hidden in a bush, with one addressed to her father, another to her stepmother, and a third to her close friends. The handwriting matched Ruth's. Although the police wouldn't divulge the details of the notes, another nearby discovery became a cause for deep concern. The police had rolled out

the possibility of the letters amounting to a three-part note of her taking her own life, but they did admit to finding a half-empty liquor bottle and some empty packets of painkillers nearby. There was no evidence that these items belonged to Ruth, and nothing was missing from the Wilson family's home liquor cabinet. However, the find set the media ablaze with rumors. To rule out the possibility of her taking her own life, the local police conducted a second search of Ruth's last known whereabouts. They tailored their search plan to specifically look for dead bodies, using highly trained cadaver dogs to sniff around the areas where she had been spotted. However, once again, they came back with nothing.

If Ruth had indeed taken her own life, whatever remained of her was definitely not in the vicinity of Box Hill. The search area was then expanded to include the vast majority of the surrounding countryside, but again, no trace of Ruth or her dead body was ever found. Mark Williams Thomas, the family liaison officer for the case, told the Wilsons that there was no evidence to suggest that Ruth had been murdered or that she had even taken her own life. He also made it clear that the police had ruled out the possibility of abduction. For my experience, I would suggest one of two things, he reportedly told them. She either went up there to meet someone and voluntarily disappeared,

or she died up there, and I'm confident it wasn't the latter. Eight months after Ruth suddenly and inexplicably vanished, the investigation into her whereabouts took a very different turn. With a complete lack of evidence pointing to her death, those involved in the case became convinced that she was still alive. Her father and stepmother made numerous TV appearances, publicly stating that they believed Ruth was alive but too afraid to return home. Recent photographs were circulated, some with Ruth's hair tinted blonde or red to simulate what she might look like if she had dyed it. Sussex police made a 24-hour dedicated hotline

hoping that a tip might finally come in, but none ever came. Then one day, Ruth's old friend Catherine, the one whose house she wanted to move into, received a knock at the door of her family home. It was the police, and they had a search warrant. Catherine's family home was searched from top to bottom, and it became clear that the police suspected them of hiding her missing friend. Catherine Mayer's family found the accusation outrageous and asserted that they would have contacted Ruth's parents at the very first sign of her disappearance. They too were grieving her loss and the implication of conspiracy was nothing short of insulting to them. Yet a few months later, there was yet another unexpected

twist to the tale. Exactly one year to the day since Ruth's disappearance, a teenage girl with a short, cropped haircut walked into a convenience store just two miles from Box Hill. The girl was visibly distressed as she approached the shopkeeper, and in a trembling voice, she asked for a single copy of every newspaper they had available. The bemused shopkeeper pointed to an empty row of shelves next to the counter and explained that they had available. The bemused shopkeeper pointed to an empty row of shelves next to the counter and explained that they had sold out during the late afternoon rush. The girl seemed frustrated to the point of tears, then rushed out of the shop again without another word. Naturally, such a bizarre interaction played on the shopkeeper's mind, and it was only when he

spotted one of Ruth's missing posters that he realized why the girl seemed so familiar. He later told the police that, although he couldn't be certain, the girl who appeared in the store that day looked an awful lot like the missing teenager, Ruth Wilson. Officers managed to get their hands on a copy of the newspaper the girl was looking for, and just a few pages in, they found what they were looking for. The paper featured an article covering the one-year anniversary of Ruth's disappearance. It covered most eventualities, but essentially came to the same conclusion as the police. Ruth was still alive. She had to be. The only question was, where? In an article from January 1997, both Ian and Karen Wilson stated that they believed Ruth was still alive and will continue to do so until proven otherwise.

They believed the frightened, short-haired girl was Ruth and that she wanted to read up on the progress of her missing persons case. Hypothetically, if the girl was indeed Ruth, she might have wanted to check if people believed that she was dead or not. This raises a very pertinent question. What if the presence of the half-drunk liquor and empty pill packets was merely to make it look like she had taken her own life in the first place? What if Ruth isn't missing at all and has, in reality, faked her own death. 58-year-old retired police officer Liam McCauley once implied that Ruth's strange behavior after exiting the cab was due to the presence of a third party. In his opinion, she didn't want anyone seeing where she was going, and that's why Ruth waited until the cab was out of sight before making a move. But who might this third party be, and are they the same person who

revealed the truth behind her mother taking her own life? In the years that followed, the sheer quantity of unanswered questions has caused Ruth's case to become a high-priority unsolved missing persons case. It is reviewed on a regular basis by DCI Alex Geldert, who has stated that the investigation will be reopened if any new evidence or lines of inquiry come to light. But until then, all we can do is hope and pray that wherever she is, Ruth Wilson is at peace. Born on September 16th, 1993,

Corey McKeague spent most of his formative years in the city of Dunfermline, just across the Forth River from the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. After graduating from St. Columbus High School, Corey enlisted in the RAF Regiment, the infantry army of Britain's Royal Air Force. In 2013, after completing his training, he was posted to No. 2 Squadron, who were based at an Air Force base near the quaint southern English village of Huntington, where he continued to train as a gunner and medic. And by the summer of 2016, Corey had been with his squadron for almost two years and was a popular member of the unit. Like most military outfits, No. 2 Squadron lived and died by the maxim of work hard, play hard. For many, being issued a weekend pass meant a night of exceptionally heavy drinking. Corey was no exception.

And when he too was issued a pass for the last weekend of September, he quickly began organizing a night out. The plan was to drive into the nearby town of Barry St. Edmunds, leaving his car there overnight and then driving back to base in the morning once the alcohol had worn off. It seemed like a foolproof plan, but little did Corey know, the night would end in one of the most perplexing and unsettling mysteries in recent British history. On the night of September 23rd, 2016, Corey and his friends drove into town, found themselves a parking space, and began drinking themselves into oblivion. To those unfamiliar with British drinking culture among those in their teens and early twenties, think of it like this. While a Frenchman or an Italian might enjoy a few glasses of wine to accentuate their joy of living, the British drink like they're trying to punish their own livers. Unfortunately, Corey and his friends were no different. They drank relentlessly for

hours on end and by the wee small hours of the following morning, Corey was stumbling around a nightclub known as Flex, visibly intoxicated. It was around this time that one of the bouncers asked Corey to leave. It was against the club's policy to allow extremely intoxicated customers to remain in the venue, and unlike many others, Corey responded very well to being ejected. Despite his level of intoxication, he remained respectful and receptive to the bouncer's demands. The bouncer later said that he was no trouble at all. Corey reportedly apologized to the bouncer for being too drunk and asked if he only informed his friends that he was headed to a nearby fast food restaurant named Mama Mia's. Security camera footage captured Corey in the restaurant from approximately 1.15am to 1.30am.

However, instead of remaining in place to wait for his friends, Corey exits Mama Mia's and walks off into the night. At 3.25 a.m., a security camera on Brent Govel Street captured Corey slouching along the sidewalk. The direction that he was moving suggests that he was headed back towards the Flex nightclub in search of his friends. However, for some reason, he turns down Brent Govel Street and the camera suddenly loses sight of him when he enters a small cul-de-sac. The small space Corey walked into was apparently used as a trash storage for an adjacent apartment block, meaning it would have been home to several chest-high garbage cans, affectionately known as wheelie bins. In the UK,

it's upsettingly common for an intoxicated youth to sneak into a concealed area to relieve themselves, and from the CCTV footage, it appears that's exactly what Corey does. But if that was the case, he would emerge minutes later at the most. However, after walking into a small contained area with no other viable exits, Corey McKeague was never seen again. Given that he had a weekend pass, Corey's regimental superiors didn't notice his absence until Monday, September 26th. Shockingly, out of all the friends that he had been drinking with that night, not a single one thought his absence was suspicious in any way. They simply had assumed that he'd driven

home to Scotland to spend the remainder of his leave there, but didn't bother to call him to confirm. Once they realized that they had a missing airman on their hands, the RAF deployed its own military search and rescue teams to assist local law enforcement, but not a single trace of Corey could be found. Police then reached out to Corey's mother in the hopes that she might shed some light on his behavior, and this is how it was discovered that he had something of a reputation as a rough sleeper. Apparently, after a night of heavy drinking, it wasn't unusual for Corey to find a sheltered doorway or even a large enough bush in which to catch a few hours sleep. And it's this little detail that led to one of the most horrifying theories ever investigated on this channel.

Using records taken from local cell phone towers, police discovered that in the morning Corey disappeared. His Nokia Lumia could be traced from Barry St. Emmons Town Center to a place known as Barton Mills, 12 miles to the northwest. Phone data indicated that the journey took no longer than 28 minutes, meaning it couldn't have been carried by someone on foot, and this led to some terrifying speculation among investigators, the media, and the general public. Some believed that given his habit of rough sleeping, Corey might have climbed into an empty wheelie bin to get a few hours of sleep. And then considering how busy the local nightlife is on a Friday night, a specially scheduled garbage collection could have resulted in a truly nightmarish death by crushing. This theory led Suffolk police to seize a garbage truck on suspicion that it was carrying Corey's cell phone.

However, after an intensive analysis of the truck's storage compartment, nothing was found and the morbid suspicion was thankfully ruled out. Over the following days, the police continued to search the route between Barry St. Edmunds and Barton Mills, but sadly, not a trace of Corey could be found. As hope began to dwindle and the search started to be scaled down, Corey's mother made a frantic appeal to the general public. In her view, someone must have seen her boy. He couldn't have just vanished out of thin air. However, out of the dozen of potential witnesses in the area at the time of Corey's disappearance, not even one of them came forward with any information. In December of 2016, the police announced that they were searching an area

of woodland between Barton Mills and RAF Huntington, assuming that Corey had been the victim of a pre-dawn hit-and-run style vehicle accident. But by the 17th of that month, it became evident that the area was no longer of interest to the police. By that point, Corey's mother had publicly announced that she was mentally preparing herself for the discovery of her son's body. However, just days after the aforementioned search was called off, she went on the record with a shocking accusation. Corey's mother, Nicola Urquhart, publicly shared her belief that Suffolk police were not properly investigating her son's disappearance. She also announced the creation

of a GoFundMe page stating that the donations would go towards hiring a private investigator. The fund attracted more than £50,000 in just a few short weeks. Yet before she was able to go ahead and hire a PI, Nicola was approached by the Suffolk police and her continued cooperation was secured. A few months later, on March 1st, 2017, a 26-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice. It was later revealed that the man had made a mistake

when registering the weight of the garbage truck suspected of containing Corey's remains. The weight of the truck's load was originally registered as 33 pounds and was therefore ruled out as carrying Corey's corpse. Yet following the unnamed 26-year-old's arrest, it was revealed that the actual weight of the truck's load had been more than 200 pounds. It's not clear how the police discovered this minor detail, but they used it to revert their original theory that a barely conscious Corey had been crushed by a garbage truck after taking shelter in a bin. The day after this announcement, Nicola Urquhart appeared on a popular daytime TV show, and once again, she made a shocking

accusation. Citing inconsistencies within the investigation into the two different weights of the garbage truck, Nicola claimed that the data was either manipulated or that someone had, and I quote, lied to the police. Corey's father disagreed. In a heartbreaking statement to the nation's press, Martin McKee conceded that his son was most likely deceased and that he planned to hold a small memorial service for him during the summer of 2018. In a later statement posted on social

media, Corey's father said his son's remains were most likely somewhere in the county's waste disposal system and that they were essentially irretrievable. Despite this, Corey's mother refused to give up looking for him and stated that she would continue to search for answers on the grounds that Corey was presumed missing rather than presumed deceased. However, in early March 2022, Suffolk Coroner's Court concluded that Corey had died after climbing into a commercial waste bin, which was then tipped into a garbage truck. His eventual death was the result of compression asphyxia in association with multiple injuries. It's worth noting that

the results of the coroner's inquest amounted to calculated guess. It might be an estimate made by a highly educated and highly experienced professional, but it's still just an estimate. We don't actually know what happened to Corey McKeague, and the sad fact is that his fate might always remain a mystery. Yet there are some who purport to know exactly what happened to Corey McKeague, and according to them, it's the same thing that has taken all the disappeared since time itself began, and although one day we might explain it, we'll never, ever stop it. Checking off your to-do list? Here's an easy one from Pennzoil. Get up to a $30 MasterCard prepaid virtual card with the purchase of 10 liters of Pennzoil Ultra Platinum at Canadian Tire. Maximizing engine protection and getting a reward for it?

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See Penn's oil.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard international incorporated. Incorporated. Born on April 3rd of 1966, Lorene Rahn was raised primarily by her mother in Manchester, New Hampshire. By the time she entered her teenage years, Lorene and her mother were living in a third-floor apartment on Merrimack Street. She was said to be a good student, popular among her peers, and her relationship with her mother was a healthy one. Laureen also dreamed of becoming an actress and took singing and dancing lessons outside of her time at Parkside Junior High School. But as she approached her 14th birthday, things started to change. According to Laureen's aunt, she was an angel who

hung around with the wrong people. But perhaps a more utilitarian explanation was that Lorene began to make some very poor choices. She neglected her singing and dancing to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana. And while this is a common and relatively harmless form of teenage rebellion, it might well have been indicative of a much more sinister problem. On the evening of April 26th, 1980, Lorene's mother, Judith Rahn, left her daughter home alone so she could visit her tennis player boyfriend competing in a tournament. Lorene would normally accompany her mother on these trips, but on this occasion, she asked to stay home. Believing her daughter was old enough to take care of herself, Judith departed in the early afternoon after arranging for a handful of relatives to stop by and check on Lorene throughout the day. These checks were performed on schedule, with visitors observing that Lorene was relaxing alone. But Lorene was no fool. She was simply waiting for the last of her relatives

to come and go, and when the coast was clear, she called her friends and invited them over. A few hours later, two of Lorene's friends showed up at her apartment to find her with a six-pack of beer and a bottle of wine. The group drank and smoked for the next couple of hours until around 12.30am when they began to hear voices in the hallway outside the apartment. Assuming this was Lorene's mother returning from dinner with her boyfriend, one of Lorene's two friends rushed out of the apartment's back door and down the iron stairwell. The friend was a boy and a little older than Lorene, meaning that her mother would most certainly not approve of him being there so late. So after ushering him out of the back, Laureen locked the door and rushed back to where her female friend was to maintain the ruse. The next 45 minutes are a complete mystery.

The only thing we know for certain is that whoever those voices belonged to outside in the hallway, they didn't belong to Lorene's mother or her tennis-playing boyfriend because they didn't get home until just after 1.15am. Upon entering her apartment building in the early hours of April 27th, the first thing Judith Rahn did was flick on the light switch, illuminating the main communal hallway. Yet the hallway remained in darkness. Confused by the sudden power outage, her boyfriend checked the building's fuse box but discovered that everything was in order. It was around then that Judith discovered the reason none of the hallway lights were working. Someone had unscrewed the bulbs ever so slightly,

and they had done so on every single floor. Naturally, the couple found this extremely disconcerting and rushed up to Judith's apartment to check on her daughter. They found the front door unlocked and undamaged. When they walked inside and switched on the lights, everything seemed to be in order. Lorene's bedroom was dark and silent, but her mother could see the clear shape of someone lying underneath the covers. Judith breathed a deep sigh of relief, but just to be certain, she approached her sleeping daughter to see if everything was okay.

It was not Lorene. Judith Rahn found herself staring into the bloodshot, dilated pupils of Lorene's female friend. When asked where Lorene was, her friend had no clue. The severely intoxicated girl explained that around midnight, she and Lorene had decided to get some sleep, but instead of climbing into bed, Lorene had offered it to her guest while she opted for the couch in the apartment's main living area. The friend seemed to have no idea that she had been alone in the apartment for the last 45 minutes or so, and together, the trio started to panic. Judith rushed to call 911 while her boyfriend began searching the surrounding area

behind the wheel of her car. Just after 3.45am, Lorene Rahn officially became a missing person. In the weeks that followed, the prevailing theory among investigating police officers was that Lorene was a runaway. They pointed to the fact that there were no signs of struggle in the apartment and echoed the testimony of a bus station employee who claimed to have sold a ticket to a girl matching Lorene's description on the day she disappeared. However, when shown a photograph of Lorene, this same employee claimed that he was no longer certain. While the runaway theory could not be ruled out, police began to question the two friends Lorene had been with that night. The girl claimed to have passed out shortly after 12.30am and that her memory of that night's events was extremely hazy due to the alcohol she had consumed. She remembered hearing voices outside of the

apartment shortly before she fell asleep but considered nothing else suspicious. Lorene's male friend admitted to being in the apartment that night, but as we've already covered, he stated that he rushed out of the back once he heard the voices. It's worth noting that the boy seemed extremely nervous during police questioning and, at one point, admitted to feeling extremely guilty due to his choice of actions. While some might consider this enough to make him a suspect, he insisted that it had nothing to do with Lorene's disappearance. His regret was based on the idea that, if he had stayed, things might have gone very differently if an abduction had indeed occurred. Law enforcement seemed satisfied with the boy's explanation and have never officially considered him a suspect, but later developments bring that conclusion into doubt.

Six months went by and the police had yet to make a breakthrough in the case. Then one day, Judith Rahn noticed a strange anomaly regarding her phone bill. On October 1st, Judith was looking over her bill when she noticed a pair of unfamiliar phone numbers. One of the numbers belonged to a motel in Santa Monica, California, while the other was assigned to the Teen Health Hotline. Police managed to get in touch with the hotline's operator, who turned out to be a physician based in Santa Ana. He claimed the hotline provided health advice to teenage girls, and most of their questions involved intimate wellness and the use of

contraceptive devices. Yet the hotline served another purpose. The physician claimed that several calls came from women and girls in the group of exploitation, and that on a handful of occasions, he and his wife had helped these girls escape their nightmarish predicaments. He also added that Annie Sprinkle, an educator and former adult actress, had been essential to the effort as she provided insight into the exploitative practices employed by shifty producers. The trio had aided four or five different girls, but insisted that Lorene had not been one of them. If she had, they would have been more than willing to cooperate, but as it stood, they knew nothing of the girl's fate. Another promising lead came when police began to investigate how a 14-year-old girl had managed to get her hands on a six-pack of beer and a bottle of wine.

When questioned, the two friends who visited Lorene on the night she disappeared claimed that the alcohol had been there when they arrived and all they had brought were some cigarettes and a small amount of marijuana. They were too excited by the presence of the alcohol to question where it came from, yet they had a pretty good idea of how Lorene had gotten it. On the day she disappeared, one of Lorene's fellow junior high students had spotted her filling the refrigerators at a local convenience store. This had led some to theorize that Lorene had come to some kind of arrangement with the store's owners. Do a little work around the store and receive some alcohol as a payment. But why risk a felony arrest when you could hire someone of legal age? Unfortunately, it has never been categorically proven that the store's owner gave her the alcohol, but to many, such a detail marks a glaringly unexplored avenue of investigation.

Such an individual might well have known Lorene was planning on becoming intoxicated that night, and with predatory intention, they might have viewed it as a window of opportunity. Yet while such a theory might have a great deal of credence to it, further developments must be considered. During an autumn night in 1981, Judith Rahn was awakened by the sound of her telephone ringing. She picked up the handset, brought the receiver to her ear, and was greeted by the sound of silence. She croaked out a sleepy greeting, but still, the caller remained quiet, and after a few more seconds of chilling silence, they hung up. The call came just after 3.45 a.m.,

and the next night, the mysterious caller rang again at almost the exact same time. These calls continued on and off for the next several years, with a measured increase in frequency around the holiday season. Lorene's aunt Janet was also the recipient of some mysterious calls in the years following her niece's disappearance. Much like the calls made to Judith, Janet was generally met with silence whenever she answered the calls. But on one occasion, the person on the other end spoke up. Janet later said that she was certain that the caller was a teenage girl and that they asked only to speak to Mike. Mike was Janet's son and Lorene's first cousin. While the vast majority referred to him as Michael, only Lorene would call him Mike. On the rare occasion that Michael would answer the mysterious late night calls,

the caller would remain completely silent and then hang up after just a couple of minutes. For a long time, Judith believed the calls were in some way connected to her daughter's disappearance. But in the end, when she found the strength to move on with her life, she changed her phone number and the calls abruptly ceased. In the months after the phone calls stopped, Lorene's case grew cold and the police officers working on it were reassigned. It wasn't until 1985 that there was a development in the case, and it was as mysterious as it was shocking. The male friend Lorene had been hanging out with on the night of her disappearance was never publicly named due to his young age, but when he was found hanging by a rope in his one-bedroom apartment, the news found its way to Judith with alarming speed.

Whether or not he left a note remains unclear, but if he did, no details were ever made public. Why he chose to take his own life will forever remain a mystery, but one can't help but wonder if some kind of latent guilt was behind it. The fact remains, we have no idea what actually happened in the lead up to Lorene's disappearance, and although the police never formally considered him a suspect, his sudden death seems awfully suspicious. Shortly after receiving word of her friend's death, Judith Rahn was contacted by a woman named Carol Jensen. Carol, a private investigator, worked for a non-profit organization known as Wings for Children. Their goal was to provide support for families of missing children and in certain cases, when there was a possibility that the child

was still alive, they would provide their own private investigators. Judith shared every detail of her ordeal, from the night Lorene disappeared to the ghost calls that persisted every night for years. After hearing the account, Carol knew exactly where to begin her search. She located the Santa Monica motel that Lorene was believed to have called, and upon arriving, she discovered that it was far from an ordinary roadside rest stop. The motel was infested with pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers. By bribing a few local meth heads, Carol stumbled upon something horrifying. It is important to note that the information obtained likely came from a drug addict who would say anything for a few dollars, so it must be taken with skepticism. However,

due to one specific detail provided, we have little choice but to consider it in our theories. One guest Carol Jensen spoke to claimed to have seen numerous children around Lorene's age being taken in and out of the motel's rooms, always without a parent or guardian present. When pressed for further details, the informant appeared eager to continue but required another cash payment to share more. What they revealed was profoundly disturbing. The informant suspected that the motel served as a front for traffickers, who used it as a venue for producing explicit images of children. Although she didn't know the traffickers' names, she had overheard some of the prostitutes referring to their leader as Dr. Z. Was this possibly the same physician who

operated the teen health hotline, and if so, could his entire operation have been a cover for the exploitation of children? That same year, Roger Mowray, a child friend of Lorene's, received a phone call. Roger was unable to speak, but his mother asked who was calling. It's Lori, came the response, and when Roger's mom asked if she could take a message, the caller hung up. The numerous phone calls had led some to believe that Lorene was still alive and well, at least at the time that they were placed. They posit that after being exploited by Dr. Z and his accomplices, Lorene was simply too ashamed to return home. However, she still wished to hear the voices from time to time. It's a heartbreaking story, yet one that's dismissed

entirely by the more cynically minded. One amateur sleuth stated that if Lorene was indeed exploited, she was most likely killed shortly afterward as a loose end to be tied up. But if that was the case, who was making the phone calls? As dark and disturbing as it may seem, the traffickers themselves might have been placing the calls as a sick form of entertainment. They could have recorded Lorene saying a few words, perhaps the names of the family members she longed for, and then, when played over the phone to her grieving relatives, they would no doubt be filled with false hope. It's also possible that they didn't need to record Lorene saying anything and simply used another abducted girl of a similar age in her place. After all, if that

really was Lorene on the phone, why didn't she ever say anything other than her request to speak to her cousin, Mike? Sure, it's possible she was too ashamed at first, but complete silence, year in and year out, and she never once found it in herself to say, I love you, Mom. It's a deeply sinister theory, one made all the more gut-wrenching by the fact that the so-called Dr. Z was never properly investigated forth of 1990 in the small city of Klamath Falls, Oregon. He was an intelligent but shy young man with a love of the outdoors, and he had brown hair, dark eyes, and a bright smile. On December 5th of 1998, 8-year-old Derek agreed to accompany his father and grandfather to Pelican Butte near Rocky Point, Oregon. The trio planned to look for a suitable-looking Christmas tree that they could cut down and transport back to their home. It was an annual tradition for the

men of the family, and Derek was vocally excited to be the one to pick out the family Christmas tree. The trio drove out to the butte, parked their truck, and then wandered through the snowy forest, dodging Derek's snowballs as they went. Finally, they came across a suitably sized tree, and after making sure that it met Derek's approval, his father and grandfather began chopping it down. It was a scene not unlike one found on a Christmas card, but unbeknownst to the Engbritsons, it was a day that would end in a living nightmare. While Derek's father and grandfather worked on cutting down the tree that he had selected, they momentarily took their eyes off of him. They stopped watching him for no more than two or three minutes, but when they turned around again, little Derek was gone.

Knowing that he couldn't have gotten too far on foot, Derek's father rushed around the forest, searching for tracks and calling out the boy's name. But bizarrely, he was nowhere to be found, and suddenly Derek's father was hit with a terrifying realization. To have disappeared so suddenly and completely, someone or something must have taken his boy. Upon realizing the gravity of the situation, Derek's father and grandfather rushed back to their truck and sped off in the direction of the nearest phone. Then, at exactly 4.13pm, Derek Engbritsen officially became a missing person. Despite the impending loss of daylight, the Klamath County Sheriff's Department commenced their search effort immediately. They flooded the area around Pelican Butte with

deputies and tracker hounds, and at first, their hopes were high. Derek's parents told the police how their son had grown up in the mountains, and that he had been taught a handful of cold weather survival techniques. What's more, Derek's father mentioned that at the time of his disappearance, his son had been in possession of a small hatchet, meaning that despite being just eight years old, he had a much better chance of fending for himself than other children his age. As the police continued their search, evidence of his education was obvious. Towards dawn, deputies discovered a small rudimentary shelter made of fur bows and fallen logs.

Nearby, they found a trail of small boot prints in the snow, and after following them, deputies found that the prints looped around from the location where Derek's father had last seen him to a small woodland clearing near a highway. However, what they found there, given the circumstances, was truly bizarre. It was a snow angel, and as you might imagine, it raised a lot of questions. Since these were the only tracks found in the area, it stood to reason that they belonged to Derek, but it made no sense why he would suddenly stop to make a snow angel. There was no way he could have covered that amount of ground in the period of time his father had stopped paying attention to him, and a lost and panicked child would not be in the mood to play around in the

snow. Suggestions that the snow angel was evidence of a physical struggle were dismissed because it was too well formed to be anything but deliberate. Police then tried to continue following the small boot prints, but a sudden blizzard made their efforts extremely difficult. Once the blizzard had subsided, the search resumed. Additional sniffer dogs were dispatched to Pelican Butte, and a number of Civil Air Patrol planes joined search and rescue helicopters in scanning the area from the skies. Unfortunately, not a single trace of Derek could be found, and just eight days later, the search was called off. Derek's family continued their investigation independently of law enforcement for quite some time, but came up with nothing.

They were later joined by hundreds of civilian volunteers from all over North America, but once again, no progress was made. Then one day, a member of the public approached the police with some alarming information. On the day of the disappearance, they claimed to have witnessed a man struggling with a young boy in the area where Derek vanished. Additional reports were made of an unidentified man driving a two-door Honda who had been asking passerby for directions to the woods. The police made efforts to track the man down, but were unsuccessful. Less than a year later, on September 24th, 1999, Oregon's Harney County Sheriff's Department received a call from a horrified member of the public. They had discovered some graffiti in the bathroom of the Sage Hen Rest Area,

over 200 miles away from Pelican Butte, and it referenced Derek's abduction. Upon being informed of what the graffiti said, Derek's mother told the media, I think it's just a big sick joke. If someone took Derek, if they put this on the wall, they were wanting to be caught. If they were wanting to be caught, why didn't they leave something of Derek's there? Many have speculated on exactly what was written on that wall, but to this day, it has never been made public. This is probably to honor a personal request made by Derek's family, as if they did indeed believe it was nothing but a sick joke, it would serve no purpose to broadcast it. However, based on what Derek's mother said, it's not difficult to infer what was written.

Someone claimed to have taken the boy, and they most probably claimed to have kept him alive or at least kept his body as some kind of sick trophy. The implication that they could have left something of Derek's at the truck stop strongly implies that they were in possession of some of his personal effects. In 2008, police confirmed that a man named Frank James Milligan was considered a potential suspect in Derek's disappearance. At the time, he was serving a hefty sentence for violating a 10-year-old in a town just outside of Salem, Oregon, and the modus operandi seemed identical to the one used in Derek's disappearance. But to date, Milligan has yet to be charged in connection with Derek's case,

and an eventual conviction seems less and less possible. But to have snatched Derek out from right under his father's nose, Milligan would have had to have stalked the family through the woods and then creep out without making a sound, impossible given the thick snow on the ground. If they were using chainsaws to chop down their Christmas tree, then it would be feasible that Derek's father didn't hear his cries. But the two men were using one axe between them, which is hardly capable of making enough noise to cover a child's abduction. But if Frank Milligan isn't to blame for Derek's disappearance, who is? The truth of what happened to Derek that day has remained a mystery for a quarter century now,

and his case is unlikely to be solved any time soon. But the question still stands. Did Derek fall victim to a very despicable but explicable form of predator, be it animal or man? Or did something else happen out there in the woods that day? Something we're not quite ready to believe yet. Born on September 2, 1965, Andy Puglisi grew up in the small city of Lawrence, Massachusetts. By the time he was ten years old, Andy resided with his mother and stepfather at the Stadium Housing Projects in South Lawrence, named so because it lies in the shadow of the city's Veterans Memorial Stadium.

Residents remember the housing project as a fine place to grow up, a short walk from the Sean Sheen Ballpark and Stadium Plaza Shopping Center. There was plenty for little Andy to occupy himself with when he wasn't at school, but perhaps his favorite place to hang out was the public swimming pool just across the street from his apartment building. Around noon on August 22nd, 1976, Andy was paddling around the pool with a friend named Melanie Perkins. Then, just after 2pm, Melanie began to feel hungry. She told Andy that she would be heading home to get some lunch, but despite her family's apartment being less than 200 yards away, she professed a fear of walking home.

In the end, Melanie convinced her older brother to walk her home, and she did not return to the pool that day. Around 5.45 p.m., around 15 minutes before Andy was due home for dinner, the pool's lifeguard spotted him wandering around the water's edge. However, when 6pm came and went and Andy hadn't returned home for dinner, his parents went looking for him. They arrived at the pool just minutes later, but little Andy was nowhere to be found. They rushed to contact the police, but initial theories placed Andy as a runaway.

Being a child of divorce, the police considered the possibility that he had run off to find his father. However, when they contacted the man, he had no knowledge of his son's location. The next day, a team of police officers, civilian volunteers, national guardsmen, and off-duty special forces soldiers scoured the surrounding neighborhood equipped with sniffer dogs and portable CB radios. The search was then expanded to the city dump, while specially trained divers dredged the bottom of the nearby Shashin River. But perhaps the area of the most interest to search teams was the wooded area adjacent to

the public swimming pool. Some theorized that the woods would provide cover for anyone who wished to prey on the swimming children. It would also serve as a concealed passageway to the nearby Blue Star Memorial Highway. Additionally, there is a much larger wooded area across the highway, which extends all the way to the residential areas of neighboring North Andover. These wooded areas were extensively covered by sniffer dogs and off-duty green berets, but there were no signs of any struggle or scent trails. However, as one of the green berets pointed out, if Andy had been abducted right after getting out of the swimming pool,

there was very little chance the sniffer dogs would be able to pick up his trail. Either he had been snatched up by an intelligent, predatory, and extremely dangerous individual, or something much more terrifying and inexplicable had occurred. Just six days after Andy was declared missing, law enforcement scaled down the search, and Andy's family was forced to face the heart-wrenching reality that he might never return alive. A week later, a man by the name of Wayne Chapman was arrested in Waterloo, New York, on suspicion of impersonating a police officer.

Inside his van, law enforcement discovered indecent images of children, maps of wooded areas, duct tape, high-end camera equipment, and a single blood-stained child's sock. When confronted with the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, Chapman confessed to violating two young boys with both assaults occurring in Andy Puglisi's hometown, Lawrence, Massachusetts. Yet despite being considered a prime suspect, Chapman was never arrested or charged in relation to Andy's disappearance. And that's because, despite the mountain of forensic evidence, there was nothing that directly linked them to Andy's case. And this is where the theories get weird. In 1998, Andy's old friend Melanie Perkins rounded off seven years of hard work by releasing the documentary film, Have You Seen Andy? The

feature-length documentary explores the events of that faithful August afternoon and re-examines facts surrounding Andy's disappearance. It is a thoroughly well-researched film, and in the process of creating it, Melanie discovered something truly shocking. According to the case files, police have estimated that there were at least five known predators in the vicinity of the public pool on that day Andy vanished, one of whom stalked a school bus full of children with the intention of snatching one. But perhaps the most mysterious and chilling of all the film's testimonies comes from two local men named Alan and Tony, who were children during the late summer of 1976. Around a year or two after the events of that late August afternoon,

Alan and Tony were walking through the woods behind the same public pool from which Andy disappeared when they made a startling discovery. Set into the forest floor, maybe 50 feet away from the public path, was a large, perfectly rectangular hole in the earth. It had flat sides and a flat base, the men claimed, almost as if something large had been removed from it, like a chest or coffin. When they returned two days later, the hole had been filled in again, and so effectively that it was almost impossible to discern its original location. Neither believed it was connected to the Andy Puglisi case, but

when they heard about the documentary, they decided to finally break their silence. In the documentary, Melanie mentions how she once heard rumors of a forensic dig site in the woods behind the public pool and believes that this is what the two men had encountered. Alan and Tony disagree. The men claim that the deep pit appeared to be perfectly cut out of the earth, as if by a giant cookie cutter. There was no police tape, no shovels or picks, and no attending police officers to warn them away from an active crime scene. But most importantly, there were no piles of displaced earth surrounding the hole. The boys walked in the area often and dismiss any idea that they missed or simply didn't remember any law enforcement involvement. To them, the hole was there one day, then gone the next, and they've never been able to properly explain it.

Those more practically minded tend to lean on Wayne Chapman as their number one suspect, or tend to have some other more rational explanation. But the mysterious hole in the ground has become a point of fascination for the more preternaturally inclined. Andy's case has since attracted the attention of readers of David Politis' Missing 411 series. The books detail a number of unsolved missing person cases, but these cases tend to fall within a certain category. The subjects are often children and tend to mysteriously disappear around forests, mountains, or bodies of water. But what makes a missing 411 case so unique is the potential for supernatural involvement.

So many roll their eyes at the sound of the word, but in this case, supernatural might not necessarily refer to Bigfoot or UFOs, but rather some other more tangible yet unexplainable phenomena. Over the past hundred years, our understanding of the physical space that we occupy has changed dramatically. From the pioneers of nuclear physics to continually evolving laser technology, even our closest ancestors would be floored at the advancements we've made. So, in another hundred years, perhaps scientists will be able to explain how a quarter ton of dirt could just disappear and then reappear a few days later, or why a little boy might be with us one moment and gone the next. Get up to a $30 MasterCard prepaid virtual card with the purchase of 10 liters of Pennzoil Ultra Platinum at Canadian Tire. Maximizing engine protection and getting a reward for it?

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Allied powers were faced with the grim task of unearthing Nazi Germany's deepest, darkest secrets. Millions had perished in Nazi prisoner of war and concentration camps. executed for perceived crimes or circumstances of birth, others had died as the result of obscene, sometimes needless experimentation at the hands of SS-Sturmbannführer Kurt Friedrich Plotner. Born in the small town of Hemsdorf in 1905, Plotner would go on to become an SS doctor after a brief career as a university lecturer. By the outbreak of World War II, he had achieved a rank equivalent to that of a U.S. Army major when he was assigned to the

research team at Dachau concentration camp. The same research team had been performing horrifying experiments on unwitting political prisoners in the hopes of improving treatments and prophylactics for malaria. Some were deliberately given fatally high doses of various medications in order to establish safe dosage levels, while others were denied treatment altogether and were simply observed while they died in abject agony. After proving his competence and resolve in the execution of countless war crimes, Plotner was given command over what was referred

to as Department R. The function of Department R was also involved turning prisoners of war into human guinea pigs. But unlike other projects, which focused on conditions of physical health, Department R focused on their subjects' mental health. One of the department's flagship projects involved the development of a so-called truth serum. The interrogation and torture of prisoners of war often yielded less than reliable information. This inspired Klotner to administer hallucinogenic drugs to his human guinea pigs, and although the results varied from person to person, the compound mescaline proved to be somewhat effective. Researchers observed that some naturally occurring psychedelics had a tendency to mitigate the adversarial relationship between the interrogator and their subject,

meaning they were much more forthcoming with accurate information that would otherwise be dearly given up. After the war, Plotner's malevolent research came to the attention of an American intelligence officer by the name of Boris Pash. With the approval of United States Naval Intelligence, Pash was recruited in late 1945 and was given full permission to continue his interrogation research. But possibly due to the French government's insistence on prosecuting Plotner, his tenure with Navy intelligence ended prematurely, and he was forced to go into hiding in West Germany. Plotner's association with US intelligence

might have been a brief one, but his research would become the foundation of a later project, one that came to be known as MK-ULTRA. On April 13th of 1953, CIA Director Alan Dulles tasked agency chemist Sidney Gottlieb with developing mind-controlling drugs for use against the Soviets and other communist enemies. The project was not only inspired by Kurt Plotner's research, but also by reports that China and North Korea had employed mind-control techniques on American prisoners of the Korean War. The CIA not only sought out to counter such techniques, but also saw practical applications close to home, such as manipulating foreign leaders or interrogating captured spies. While most of the project's records were destroyed in the early 70s,

many of its documents survived, including this one from the year 1955. It gives us an idea of the scope and scale of MKUltra by listing the kinds of chemical compounds the project sought to develop. The CIA sought a drug that would promote what was called illogical thinking in an effort to publicly discredit a target. Yet it also wanted drugs which would counteract those developed by its enemies. For example, MKUltra would ideally produce drugs which would increase mental acuity or counteract the effects of alcohol. Conversely, the project also sought to find drugs which would exacerbate the effects of alcohol. Conversely, the project also sought to find drugs which would

exacerbate the effects of alcohol or induce a state of hypnotic suggestion. These might be considered the lighter sub-projects of MKUltra, whereas the darker are considerably less savory. MKUltra wished to develop compounds which permanently disabled a subject from the waist down, as well as those which would induce blindness, deafness, and incontinence. Researchers also sought to develop compounds which would have a devastating effect on a person's mental health, as well as compounds so addictive that even the most diehard communists would betray their motherland in exchange for another hit. But in the end, MKUltra settled on advancing the research of Kurt Plotner using a cutting-edge chemical compound known as LSD-25. John D. Marks, author of 1976's The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, discovered that as early as 1953, the agency was purchasing LSD manufactured by the Swiss chemical company Sondos Laboratories. He also discovered that the CIA

planned on making mass purchases from a dozen global companies as a way of choking off supply to rival nations. Experimentation officially began in April of 1953, with LSD being secretly administered to federal prisoners in the mentally infirm, or as one former operative phrased it, people who couldn't fight back. In one shocking instance, CIA researchers dosed a lone Kentucky psychiatric patient with LSD for 174 days in a row. The ordeal no doubt shattered the patient's already fragile mind, but subsequent records have since been destroyed, meaning there's no way of knowing their ultimate fate. LSD was also overtly administered to CIA agents, military personnel, and doctors, as well as the general public. Those who spoke up were threatened with court-martial or arrest, and have since been offered monetary reparations by the federal government. Perhaps in one of the more shocking

chapters of MKUltra, the CIA executed what they called Operation Midnight Climax. Midnight Climax involves setting up several brothels around San Francisco, brothels which would actually serve as fronts for the Central Intelligence Agency. The rooms were equipped with one-way mirrors and secret recording devices and could be used for blackmail or observation purposes. There was a heavy emphasis on LSD being the so-called truth serum the CIA had been looking for, but Sidney Gottlieb believed it showed potential in other areas. Given its temporary effects, Gottlieb believed LSD could be used by covert operatives to influence the course of

meetings, speeches, and sometimes even policymaking. This is what truly initiated attempts to dose regular people in regular settings, but without their prior knowledge. At first, every member of the project's technical services department sampled LSD before sitting opposite another test subject and taking notes. This way, the researchers had personal experiences that would allow for deeper insights later on, and once this phase was completed, more unwitting test subjects were sought out. In one instance, a CIA operative suffered an extremely adverse reaction and was found running around Washington, D.C. on the

afternoon that he was dosed, complaining of how monsters were following him. The experiments became more and more reckless, until one day, a US Army chemist by the name of Frank Olson threw himself out of a hotel window and plunged 13 stories to his death. Olson had been heavily involved in NK Ultra and had been covertly dosed by a CIA handlers just nine days prior to his death. It's now believed that Olson had been seen as a potential whistleblower and as a result had gone from one of the project's researchers to one of its targets. As time went by, the focus shifted from LSD and towards other narcotics such as heroin, psilocybin, and even scopolamine, which is famous for inducing mental states akin to sleepwalking. The CIA also experimented with hypnosis and its potential to make a subject forget or

recall certain pieces of information. Towards the end of MKUltra, CIA worked with Naval Intelligence on their top-secret Perfect Percussion program, which hoped to produce a kind of sound gun which could erase memories and induce extreme confusion. The project was eventually shelved, along with MKUltra itself, and the records were buried in the agency's Langley headquarters, all classified as top secret. Those involved in the experiments believed they'd never see the light of day, but little did they know, faith in government institutions would one day be rocked after an inept break-in at a hotel named the Watergate. In the immediate aftermath of 1972's Watergate scandal, CIA Director Richard Helms oversaw the

destruction of vast swaths of the CIA records, including much of the documentation of MKUltra. Strangely enough, the only reason records of the project remain at all is that 20,000 of them were incorrectly stored in the CIA's financial records building, which were unearthed following a Freedom of Information request in 1977. But accusations of foul play were being thrown around long before then. The family of the deceased Frank Olson, along with others affected by the experiments, had been highly critical of the CIA, and in late 1974, their efforts drew the attention of journalists from the New York Times. The resulting article was one of the first open accusations against the U.S. intelligence

apparatus, and the allegations were so shocking that Congress sought to immediately investigate them. The following summer, the Congressional Committee charged with investigating the Times' claims revealed they'd come to their conclusions, and those conclusions were nothing short of stunning. The committee stated that it had seen irrefutable proof that the CIA had conducted experiments on both unwitting and cognizant human subjects as part of an extensive program to control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs. They also revealed that Frank Olson, whose family were some of the first to raise the alarm, had died following a massive dose of LSD-25. It was a moment of vindication for the Olsens, and despite MK Ultra's chief chemist Sidney Gottlieb repeatedly denying any recollection of the project, the truth was laid bare for all to see. It was revealed that, a few days before his death,

Frank Olsen had resigned his position as acting chief of the Fort Detrick Special Operations Division due to a severe moral crisis concerning the nature of his biological weapons research. His chief concerns were said to be experimentation with biological weapons in populated areas, collaboration with former Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip, and the CIA's reckless experimentation with LSD. When Frank's body was later exhumed, cranial injuries indicated that he had been knocked unconscious before he exited the window, and in 1975, his family received a $750,000 settlement after his death was officially ruled

a homicide. Prompted by intense public outrage, President Gerald Ford issued the first executive order which restricted the power of U.S. intelligence agencies. The order was so popular that it was expanded by Ford's Democratic successor, Jimmy Carter, and even further expanded by Republican President Ronald Reagan, a show of bipartisanship that seems unthinkable in today's volatile political climate. Further investigations revealed that the CIA had hoodwinked several universities and research institutes into contributing to MKUltra by engaging with them through a series of shell companies. After reading the report, Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor. Over 30 universities were involved in a program in which dangerous drugs were tested on

unwitting citizens at all social levels, high and low, Native Americans and foreign, he said. The names of many of those citizens have since faded into obscurity, but many went on to earn fame and sometimes infamy by themselves. Some of those who were administered CIA-sourced LSD during MKUltra went on to become some of the leading figures of the counterculture movements of the 1960s. World-renowned poet Allen Ginsberg claims that he first tried LSD in an experiment on Stanford University's campus, in which he was permitted to listen to records of his choice while making notes on the experience.

Ginsburg later said that the drug resulted in a Ginsburg later became an outspoken advocate for psychedelics, and in response to rumors that he was an unwitting participant in a CIA experiment, said, Am I the product of one of the CIA's lamentable, ill-advised, or triumphantly successful experiments in mind control? Another confirmed recipient of CIA acid was the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey. While he was a student at Stanford's University,

Kesey volunteered for what was referred to as an experimental therapy at a nearby Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park. The therapy turned out to involve a dose of LSD, and unbeknownst to Kesey, the entire experiment had been engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency. Kesey's experiences inspired him to promote the drug among the burgeoning hippie movement, and it quickly became a cornerstone of their turn-on, tune-in, drop-out philosophy. Grateful Dead associate Robert Hunter also participated in the Stanford LSD experiments and wrote the following passage while under the influence. Sit back. Picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall into the sea of morning creep very softly mist, and then sort of cascade tinkly bell like must I take you by the hand ever so slowly type and then conglomerate

suddenly into a peel of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly bloody singingly joyously resounding bells. By my faith if this be insanity and for the love of God permit me to remain insane. Other unconfirmed participants of MKUltra, some backed up by strong anecdotal evidence, are the likes of Boston Gangster, Whitey Bulger, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Kennedy Assassin Sirhan Sirhan, and Charles Manson. The story of Project MKUltra is shocking to say the least, and we can be thankful that such experiments might never be repeated. Yet in knowing of its existence, grave questions still remain. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the CIA destroyed hundreds of thousands of documents in an attempt to conceal its more egregious indiscretions.

But the documents relating to the MK Ultra files were just a fraction of what went up in smoke. What else didn't the CIA want us to know about? What else had it been hiding from the very people it was duty-bound to protect? And if in the future this central intelligence agency once again decides to test dangerous experimental drugs on vulnerable unwitting Americans, just what kind of effect will it have on society? And just what kind of monsters will it create? On the morning of June 25th, 1950, as dawn lit the skies over the Korean peninsula, all hell broke loose. The tens of thousands of soldiers from the People's Army of North Korea advanced into the heartlands of the South, under the cover of tanks and artillery fire. Their southern counterparts were almost completely unprepared, and within two days,

Seoul's defensive detachment had been routed, and the government had been evacuated. In the ensuing chaos, the South Korean army blew up a bridge over Han River, while 4,000 civilians happened to be crossing it. Hundreds were killed in the blast, and hundreds more were engulfed in the collapsing concrete and drowned in the river below. Five days after the invasion, the South Koreans had lost more than 70,000 soldiers. The situation was desperate, and when the South Koreans called out to the world for help, the world replied. A coalition of 16 nations pledged to send combat troops to repel the North Korean invasion. The usual suspects of the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand were included, but also the likes of France, Holland, Sweden and a number of other European countries.

Yet the likes of Colombia, Ethiopia, Thailand and Turkey also sent combat troops. Despite the massive influx of foreign soldiers, the Korean War would continue for three long years and would culminate in a bloody stalemate that endures to this day. Millions were killed, tens of thousands of them soldiers, and thousands more were taken prisoner on both sides of the firing line. Many such prisoners endured hell on earth and made it home to see their families, whereas some became the subject of one of the most controversial and widely discussed phenomena of the era, brainwashing. Born in Benton Harbor, Michigan on December 5th of 1918, Colonel Walker Budd Mahurin enlisted in the United States Air Force in September of 1941, just a few months before the United States entered World War II. Upon his graduation from flight school, the 23-year-old was sent to England to engage the Luftwaffe in the skies above Europe.

He went on to score almost 20 confirmed aircraft kills in combat in Europe and was transferred to the Pacific before the war's end. Then, after a brief reprieve, Bud returned to combat in Asia, but this time it was in Korea. In July of 1951, Bud became the commander of the first fighter group who flew the state-of-the-art F-86 swept-wing jet fighter, but while on a routine air patrol, Bud was shot down after engaging a North Korean logistical column. He survived the crash landing, but was gravely wounded and was soon captured by communist soldiers. Bud spent the next 16 months in a North Korean POW camp where the treatment of prisoners was abominable, to say the least.

Bud was forced to share a tiny cell with several other prisoners and was fed only food and water to keep him alive. He was forced to endure sub-freezing conditions with minimal clothing, while brutal interrogations at the hand of his North Korean captors would sometimes last all night. Despite being severely sleep-deprived and being subject to constant threats of summary execution, Bud stayed strong and refused to answer his captors' questions. But then one day, their approach changed significantly, and instead of asking Bud questions, the North Koreans presented him with a statement to sign. The statement was a fraudulent admission

that the United States was engaging in chemical and biological warfare against the North Koreans and their Chinese allies. The veracity of these claims is still hotly disputed today, but many believe them to be a part of a Chinese-driven propaganda campaign to encourage vaccinations. For example, one Chinese-made Korean language poster reads, Vaccinate everyone to crush the germ warfare of American imperialism, and shows a stoic-looking Korean man pulling up his sleeve in preparation for a shot. As far as Bud Mahurin was concerned, he'd never heard of any germ warfare being conducted against the communists, and being a high-ranking Air Force officer, it's reasonable to believe that he'd be aware of it. As such, he refused to sign the North Koreans' false statement, but the longer he refused, the more his maltreatment intensified.

In one instance, Bud was kept awake for days at a time while being inundated with so-called evidence of America's war crimes. The North Koreans claimed that in late January of 1952, a Chinese Army HQ south of Incheon suffered an outbreak of smallpox. Almost 30 other communist soldiers were said to have contracted malaria and bubonic plague, while almost 50 recently deceased infantrymen were said to have died of meningitis. Although the Chinese and the North Koreans did not know exactly how the soldiers contracted the diseases, the suspicion soon fell on the

Americans, with the North Korean foreign minister claiming that the U.S. had dropped infected insects onto North Korea and had done so in collaboration with Japanese war criminal and head of Unit 731, Shiro Ishii. Day after day, Bud was bombarded with the same narrative and commanded to sing the statement. The sleep deprivation wore him down to the point that he considered taking his own life as an alternative to betraying his country. But just as he was reaching his breaking point, his treatment suddenly and dramatically improved. proved. One day, instead of a grilling at the hands of the usual brutal camp guards, Bud was led into the interrogation room to be greeted by a well-spoken officer of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The officer welcomed Bud into the room as if he were a guest of honor, offering him tea and bread in quantities he hadn't seen in years. The officer engaged Bud

in cordial conversation for a while, but the true purpose of his visit became clear. His visit was just another attempt to convince Bud to sign the false statement, but when he refused, the officer's tone became considerably darker. He reminded Bud that the Allies did not know that he was a prisoner of war, so he could be held until his death, never seen by his wife and children again. The confession was the key to his survival, and further refusal would instead sign his death warrant. Bud finally relented, having no idea that he'd been held so long that the war was already over. Following his release in an official prisoner exchange, Bud was informed that what he'd experienced was a primitive form of brainwashing. But while its effect remained limited on Bud,

and it was arguably thoughts of family that drove him to sign the confession, others proved much more susceptible to the communist mind-control techniques. Claude Batchelor was born on December 14th of 1929 in a small Texan town named Kermit. His formative years were characterized by grinding poverty, and he later recalled sharing a single bed with two of his eight siblings. At 16, he dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, and while he was too late for combat in Europe or the Pacific, the Korean theater of war soon beckoned. Claude deployed with the 1st Cavalry Division and was in combat from July to October of 1950, but on Halloween night of that same year, Claude's war ended in terror and confusion. While maneuvering between strong points,

Claude's company was ambushed by a much larger force of heavily entrenched Chinese infantry. The Americans fought off the numerically superior Chinese troops for the better part of two hours, but after running out of ammunition and taking numerous casualties, Claude and his comrades were forced to surrender. The survivors were taken to the Piao Dong POW camp, way up near the Chinese border, where they were subject to the same harsh treatment as Bud Mahurin. Most soldiers bitterly resisted the attempts to break their spirits, while others cooperated solely to ensure their own survival.

Yet there was another kind of soldier, who, after prolonged periods of intense sleep deprivation, began to sympathize with those holding them prisoner, and unfortunately, Claude was one of them. It started when Claude was offered a place on what was referred to as the Camp Peace Committee. Those who, and I say in air quotes, volunteered for the position, were given additional rations of higher quality food, along with superior sleeping conditions, but little did they know, the committee meetings would amount to little more than re-education sessions. The Peace Committee was fed the same narrative of U.S. war crimes and illegal biological weapons, and received additional favorable treatment after signing a joint letter urging the United States withdraw from the Korean

Peninsula. Meetings were also supplemented with lessons on Maoist political theory, and once again, eager participation was rewarded with better rations. Before long, a rather disturbing pattern began to emerge. The Peace Committee prisoners would try to outperform each other in terms of Maoist communist zeal, as those thought to be progressing in their education would receive the highest rewards. Claude was no exemption. He ended up writing a letter to his hometown's newspaper, the Winkler County News, in which he denounced capitalism and the American way of life. It was also said to have proselytized to the more loyal of the American POWs,

and while his attempts were rebuffed more often than not, this apparent betrayal was devastating for the morale. When hostilities ended in July of 1953, Claude was among 21 American POWs who refused to return to the United States during the post-armistice prisoner exchanges. By that point, he was an ardent communist and had even learned to speak a little Chinese in preparation for his new life on a communist collectivized farm. However, upon arriving at the farm, Claude was dismayed to find that he was treated much like any other worker. He had expected something of a celebrity reception from his new co-workers, but instead, he was treated with disdain and distrust. Claude later claimed that he'd read an anti-communist article in a copy of Reader's Digest that had been provided by his Chinese handlers, and decided to return

to the nation of his birth. But the reality was he'd most likely fallen out of favor, and in doing so, realized what a terrible mistake he'd made. Upon returning to the United States, Claude was promptly charged with collaboration and was court-martialed on August 30th of 1954. Claude's defense claimed his treachery was the involuntary result of brainwashing and cited psychiatrist Leon Friedman's opinion that Claude had suffered from induced political psychosis after being led to believe that he was a potential savior of humanity. However, the prosecution brought a number of Claude's fellow prisoners to the stand,

who testified that his collaboration had been anything but involuntary. According to them, Claude took a distinct pleasure in foiling their plans for escape, as it entitled him to a life of luxury when compared to their own. He walked around with the Communist Manifesto in his pocket, willfully aiding the efforts of his captors in his attempts to reduce his comrades' morale. Claude had repeatedly stated that his efforts secured additional food for all U.S. prisoners, but either this was a lie or he'd been deceived, as no such extra food rations were ever received by those who didn't collaborate.

Claude was eventually convicted on the verbose offenses of communicating with the enemy without proper authority and promoting disloyalty and disaffection among the civilian populace of the United States. The sentence was a dishonorable discharge and life imprisonment, but eventually paroled after less than five years following extensive cooperations with the authorities. After being paroled, Claude settled into San Antonio, Texas and went on to work for the Remco Corporation, a manufacturer of air conditioning parts. Claude found a way back by proving that he'd been brainwashed and that his communist zeal was nothing more than the result of extreme deprivation. Others proved less penitent. Born in Holland on November 11th of 1922, George Blake was the son

of a Dutch mother and a naturalized British father. He later attended Cambridge University's Downing College, where he studied Russian language and literature extensively. At 22, Blake enlisted in Her Majesty's Royal Navy and, after the Second World War, he was posted to Hamburg to assist in the interrogation of German prisoners. It was during his time in Hamburg that intelligence analysts over at MI6 noticed Blake's potential, and he was soon sent to undergo what amounted to spy training at a top-secret facility. Following his induction, Blake was sent to the South Korean capital of Seoul and arrived there on November 6th of 1948. Then, disguised as a common diplomatic aide,

Blake set about gathering intelligence on the communist trifecta of North Korea, China, and the Soviets. He proved an alarmingly effective spy during his tenure in Seoul, but his blossoming career in espionage was soon cut short by the North Korean invasion. Blake, along with his colleagues, was taken prisoner during the rapid communist advance, and he ended up in a prisoner camp on the banks of the Yalu River. He spent the next three years enduring the same political re-education as other western prisoners of war, but unlike others, Blake's mind proved a fertile seedbed for radical left-wing ideologies. He began to read the work of Karl Marx, and became particularly

fixated on Das Kapital, his iconic critique of political economy. As we've already learned, many prisoners of war flirted with Maoism or Marxism out of sheer desperation, whereas others did it for meaningless luxuries. But for Blake, his conversion seems to have been genuinely heartfelt. In his later years, Blake was asked by a journalist if there was one moment or one instant which inspired his conversion to communism. A Chinese officer told me about the bombings of small villages by enormous American flying fortresses, he replied. Women and children and old people were getting killed. It made me feel ashamed of belonging to these overpowering, technically superior countries fighting against what seemed to be defenseless people. I felt that I was on the wrong side, that it would be better

for humanity if the communist system prevailed, that it would put an end to war. The brutality and carnage of war is indisputably abhorrent, and only those without a heart would scoff at the idea of civilian casualties. But we have to remember that when North Korea struck first in invading the South, they had no problem with indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas. This is not to justify the actions of the US Air Force at the time, but rather to explain that the communists' appeals to Blake's conscience were hollow at best. They didn't give a damn about the deaths of the innocent. Their only goal was to break Blake's spirit and wash his brain. And in the end, it worked.

Blake arranged a secret meeting with his North Korean jailers. He volunteered his services as a spy. Then, through the close but very temporary partnership between China and the USSR, Blake ended up being handed over to the Soviet's MGB spy agency for training as a double agent. Following his second round of spy training in just a few short years, Blake was returned to North Korea, then released as part of a prisoner exchange in 1953. He returned home a hero, made a gallant return to British intelligence,

and then spent the next several years selling out his friends and colleagues to the Russians. In 1955, after being sent to Berlin to recruit double agents, Blake compromised dozens of his compatriots by betraying their locations to KGB hunter teams. Almost 40 of his former comrades met their deaths at the hands of Russian assassins, and no doubt spent their final moments wondering who had betrayed them and why. MI6 only ever admitted to 40 of their agents being caught and killed with Blake's help, but he later said the number of betrayals to be around 500. For six long years, George Blake almost single-handedly compromised MI6's entire operation in East Berlin and the

wider Soviet bloc, making him one of the most prolific traitors in British military history. But he was living on borrowed time, and in 1961, he was implicated as a potential double agent by a high-profile Polish defector. He was promptly arrested after being recalled to London, but remarkably, rather than denying that he was a Soviet spy, Blake made a full and frank confession, emphasizing that everything he'd done had been of his own volition, and for a cause that he was fanatically subscribed to. Following his trial at London's Old Bailey, Blake was sentenced to 42 years in prison and the national media seized on the opportunity to characterize his sentence as a year for every hero he betrayed. It was the longest non-life sentence ever handed down by a British court,

but as it turned out, Blake only served an eighth of that sentence. Five years into his imprisonment, Blake orchestrated an escape with the help of three other prisoners, fracturing his wrist in the process. Blake was then smuggled into France in a camper van, driven to the border between East and West Germany, and then met up with his Soviet handlers before being transported to Moscow. By 1966, news of Blake's conviction and escape had bitterly divided the British public. He was loved in some circles, loathed in others, and many were undecided on what they saw as a complicated situation with far-reaching political implications.

Blake didn't show an ounce of regret until March of 1967, when a British court granted his wife, Gillian, a divorce on the grounds of his absence. He had always hoped she and the children might one day join him. News of her hatred for him was said to have broken his heart, but not his resolve. In 1992, Blake was interviewed by Canada's CBC Radio, and although he expressed a deep regret over the deaths of his fellow British agents, he praised the general concepts of communism and professed a sadness over the fall of the Soviet Union. Blake eventually passed away on December 26th of 2020 at the age of 98. Vladimir Putin expressed his deep condolences to Blake's family and friends and noticed his invaluable contribution

to maintaining peace on the planet. Colonel Blake was a brilliant professional, Putin said, a man of special vitality and courage. But while such a glowing appraisal might be appreciated by some, Blake's old colleagues did not share the sentiment. It's clear that in the case of George Blake, the subject displayed something of an interest in Russian language and culture from quite an early age. This was most likely instrumental to his eventual decision to spy for the Russian intelligence services, and some see this as an argument against the idea that he was brainwashed. But what's curious to note in Blake's case is

that until he was confronted with stark evidence of his crimes, he refused to believe that his treachery had resulted in the deaths of British servicemen. Blake believed whatever his Russian handlers told him, despite having unfettered access to contradictory evidence. In a sense, he was completely disconnected from reality, but in the way that allowed him to function in it without a single crisis of conscience. And if that isn't reminiscent of brainwashing, I'm not sure what is. As for the other American prisoners of war who abandoned their homeland for lives in communist countries, we can't blame everyone of their decisions on an abstract concept such as brainwashing. Some, such as Corporal Clarence Adams of Memphis, Tennessee, had legitimate grievances with their lives back in the United States.

After refusing to return to the United States, Adams took part in numerous North Korean propaganda projects, one of which included a broadcast intended for an African American audience. You are supposedly fighting for the freedom, Adams told them, but what kind of freedom do you have at home, sitting in the back of the bus, being barred from restaurants, stores in certain neighborhoods, and being denied the right to vote? Go home and fight for equality in America. Given his speech was composed in the mid-50s and makes for a remarkable foreshadowing of the coming civil rights movement, it's reasonable to assume that Adams did not require any brainwashing to abandon his homeland. But others, who later returned to the U.S. knowing all too well that they'd face court martial and imprisonment, it's also reasonable to assume their judgment had been

somewhat impaired. But what's to be learned from the story of the Allied POWs is that there is no miraculous method of washing the human brain. All you need to do in order to break a man's spirit, to turn him from a person into a beast, is keep him frightened, hungry, and sleepless, then simply wait for his mind to fall apart. We'll be right back. Same game, Paul A's gets all fine. You'll put a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with BetRiver Sportsbook. Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531old Colleen Stan decided to hitchhike from her home in Eugene, Oregon, down to Northern California, where a close friend was throwing a birthday party. Colleen was an experienced hitchhiker and didn't just climb into the first car that stopped for her. She knew to look for certain red or green flags to let her know if someone was safe to ride with. So when 23-year-old Cameron Hooker stopped with his wife and infant child in tow, Colleen figured that he could be trusted. And she was wrong. At the first opportunity, Hooker put a knife to Colleen's throat,

forced her into a small wooden box, and then padlocked it closed. As she was driven to God knows where, Colleen placed a small amount of hope in the idea that Hooker's wife would object to such a horrific abduction. But in truth, Janice Hooker had not only approved of it, she had helped plan the abduction herself. Long before Colleen was ever taken, Hooker and his wife had come to an unholy arrangement. As long as she remained exempt from his violent fantasies, Janice would help imprison and enslave just about anyone her husband wanted. The only problem was ensuring their compliance. In order to dampen her resistance, Hooker kept Colleen locked in

the same wooden box for up to 23 hours a day, until finally, she agreed to the terms of their agreement. It's believed her breaking point came when she was shown a picture of Marie Spanhaig, a previous victim of the Hookers, whose body has never been found. But for weeks prior to this moment, Hooker had convinced Colleen that he and his wife were part of a large and powerful organization known as The Company. The Company were supposedly involved in hundreds, if not thousands of cases of human trafficking, and were not afraid to tie up loose ends and punish those who tried to escape. Colleen was told that if she did attempt to escape, her family would be tortured and killed

in a way that no one would ever learn of their involvement. Within just a few weeks, a powerful combination of fear, torture, and sleep deprivation broke down the final remnants of Colleen's resistance, and she quite literally signed her life over to her captors. She adopted the slave name Kay and began referring to the hookers as master and mistress and was forbidden to talk without prior permission. She was given a copy of a French novel from the 1950s entitled The Story of O, which details the enslavement of a young Parisian girl by a cruel and heartless master. Colleen was told to study the text in order to better emulate the novel's protagonist, referred to only as O. Colleen did as she was told.

When Colleen completed what amounted to slave training, she and the hookers moved into a mobile home in the large town of Red Bluff, around 30 miles south of Reading. She later said that religion and hope of escaping kept her from taking her own life, but that she well and truly was convinced of the company's existence, meaning despite her will to free herself, she was paralyzed with fear. To avoid the worst of Cameron Hooker's punishments, Colleen did all she could to comply with his demands, and as she

did so, he granted her more and more personal freedom. At first, she was permitted to work yard work unsupervised, but later allowed to go out jogging and even provide childcare for the Hooker's two young children, something she considered something of a privilege in her brainwashed state. Then one day, after four long years of captivity, something truly shocking occurred. Hooker approached Colleen and asked if she wanted to see her parents. Her family had long since decided that something terrible would happen to her and were far too relieved to question the nature of her return. Too scared to reveal the truth, Colleen told her mother and father that Hooker was her

boyfriend, and the following day, Hooker himself visited the Stan family to reassure them of her daughter's safety. Colleen's parents even took a photograph of their daughter, her arms draped around Hooker, whose cheeks are flushed with a deep red. They put up the facade of a happy but hermit-like young couple, but they couldn't have been any further from the truth. The incident caused a crisis of confidence in an increasingly anxious Hooker, who believed his crimes were on the verge of being discovered. Colleen's hard-won privileges were suddenly and dramatically stripped away, and she remained locked away for 23 hours a day for the next three years. The Hooker's children, along with their neighbors, were told that Kay had gone back to

live with her parents, and her existence was reduced to a nocturnal one to the point that she began to develop illnesses associated with lack of sunlight. Once Hooker felt the heat was off of him, he began to grant Colleen privileges again, partly as a way to keep her from going insane and partly as a way of ensuring that she remained relatively healthy. But in allowing her more freedom, Hooker saw an opportunity to profit from her labor and force Colleen to take a job as a maid at a nearby motel. She worked there for months and didn't breathe a word of her abuse to another living soul. Hooker saw this as an immense display of loyalty and asked Colleen to

be his second wife. This was the final straw for Hooker's first and current wife, Janice, who had also been severely abused by him over the years. One of her rules in allowing her husband to keep a slave was that he never attempt to make her his wife, and in defying this, Janice felt deeply betrayed. One day, in August of 1984, Janice Hooker waited until her husband was out of the house and then pulled Colleen out of the box where she had been kept and told her the truth. Cameron wasn't a member of the company. There was no such thing. After years of complicity in her captivity, Janice told Colleen that she was free to leave.

At first, Colleen didn't believe her, and thought it was just another method of psychological torture. But when it became clear that it was no trick and that Janice was doing it out of loathing for her psychopathic husband, Colleen didn't thank her, nor did she cry. She simply gathered up her meager belongings and wandered out onto the streets of Red Bluff. Hours later, Cameron Hooker returned home under the impression that Colleen was still in captivity. However, when the telephone rang and he heard her voice on the other end, the proverbial penny dropped like 10 tons of lead. When Colleen told Cameron that she knew the truth and was never coming back to him, he reportedly burst into tears.

She also told them that if he attempted to pursue her, she'd have him arrested. However, bizarrely, Colleen did not plan on contacting the police. Instead, as a way of saying thank you to her liberator Janice, she decided to give Cameron a chance to reform himself. In the end, it was Janice who reported her husband to the police, telling them the entire story of kidnapping, abuse, and violation. Initially, authorities attempted to focus on the abduction and murder of the Hooker's first victim, Marie Elizabeth Spanhaig. However, as they were unable to find her body, no murder charge was brought. Regardless, Cameron Hooker was brought to trial in 1985, with his soon-to-be ex-wife taking the stand against him in exchange for full immunity. A jury later pronounced him guilty on all charges, and he was sentenced to 104 years in prison for kidnapping, assault, and false imprisonment.

Hooker was originally due to be paroled in 2023, but had his hearing moved to 2015 as part of California's elderly parole program. Thankfully, his early parole was denied and his next hearing is scheduled for the year 2030. After the trial, Colleen tried her best to move on with her life, but as you can imagine, she was haunted by the horrors she'd endured. She eventually went on to volunteer for Reading Women's Refuge Center, an organization that helps abused women. Janice Hooker, who reverted to her maiden name of Lashley, attempted to atone for the misery she'd helped facilitate. She became a social worker and mental health professional, specializing in cases of abused or battered women. Whether or not Janice repaid her

debt to society, that's not for me to say, but it's clear that Colleen has no interest in having any kind of relationship with her. Perhaps she simply wishes to move on and enjoy what time that she has left when so much has already been taken from her. Natasha Maria Kampusch was born on February 17th of 1988 in the Austrian capital of Vienna. Her mother and father separated when she was just a child, and although she split her time between their care, Natasha and her two older sisters were reportedly happy and healthy young women. By the time she was 10 years old, Natasha was enrolled at the Buryoska Veg Primary School in Vienna's Kangra neighborhood, and by all accounts, she had a bright future ahead of her. But on the morning of March 2nd of 1998, a terrifying series of events would change the young girl's life forever. That Monday morning, Natasha departed her family home with the intention of walking to school,

but the girl wasn't present at registration, and nor did she return home that evening. After the German police urged members of the public to come forward, a 12-year-old boy reported seeing a young girl being dragged into a white van by two much older men. The revelation horrified police, who originally believed Natasha had merely run away from home, and it spurred them into action. Almost a thousand white vans were stopped and searched by the Vienna police over the days and weeks that followed, including that of a 36-year-old man named Wolfgang Priklapil. Wolfgang lived just half an hour's drive from where Natasha disappeared, but stated that he'd been using his van, moving rubble from a construction site on the morning in question. His story seemed to check out, so the police said their goodbyes and eliminated him as a suspect.

Yet upon their departure, Wolfgang walked into his garage and pulled a large plastic sheet away from the stone floor. The sheet had been hiding the small entrance of a root cellar, one that had been locked shut with a heavy steel padlock. Wolfgang took out a key, unlocked the padlock, and then swung open the cellar door. And looking back at him through the darkness, was little Natasha Kampush. In the weeks that followed, investigators failed to make any headway in what proved to be a deeply frustrating search. A great number of children are abducted by a family member or close family friend, but after exhausting those avenues of investigation, the police were stumped. Outside of the obvious suspects, Natasha could have been literally anywhere, and if she was en route to another country, one outside of Interpol's reach,

finding her might prove impossible. In the absence of solid information, dark speculation began to emerge regarding Natasha's potential fate. Some speculated that she had fallen victim to a human trafficking ring or had possibly become the target of black market organ smugglers who sought out clean organs to auction off to the highest bidder. It was also theorized that Natasha had fallen prey to the prolific French serial killer, Michel Fournier. What's more, Natasha had her passport in her backpack at the time she disappeared, owing to a family trip to Hungary that had taken place just a few days prior. This meant the longer Natasha went unfound, the more likely it was that her abductor would take

her out of the country, and then travel too far from the jurisdiction of Interpol, and she might never be returned alive. Weeks turned into months, then months turned into years, and still, the police were unable to make any solid advances in the case. Their focus was on international people smuggling rings, huge operations that span entire continents, but the truth was, Natasha was imprisoned for eight long years within walking distance of her childhood home. The small cellar she was forced to live inside was only five square meters of space. It was constructed almost entirely of concrete and was reinforced with steel beams. It had no windows and was completely soundproof to ensure that, no matter how hard she screamed, no one would hear Natasha and come to her rescue.

For the first six months of her captivity, Natasha was forbidden from leaving the chamber at any time. Then, as time progressed, she was given increasing amounts of freedom relative to how well-behaved her captor believed she was acting. She would be allowed to explore Wolfgang's home during the day but would swiftly return to her subterranean bedroom before nightfall. She would also be locked in the tiny sleeping chamber for eight to nine hours at a time, five days a week whenever Wolfgang was at work. Some years later, Wolfgang's business partner stopped by his home to borrow a trailer when he spotted a young lady relaxing in the garden.

She seemed happy and relaxed, and the partner merely assumed that she was one of Wolfgang's nieces or some other kind of female relative. Wolfgang certainly didn't act suspicious when asked who she was and calmly directed him to the trailer that he was set to borrow. Following Natasha's 18th birthday, she was permitted to venture out of Wolfgang's home, but only in his company. He made it clear that if she attempted to alert the authorities or otherwise escape, both she and her family would be tortured, killed, and dismembered. Natasha continued to display satisfactory behavior over the months that followed, so much so that Wolfgang saw fit to take her on a trip to a nearby ski resort. It seems like a risky maneuver for someone terrified of being caught,

but Wolfgang had so completely broken down Natasha's resistance that he must have been very confident in her lack of will to escape. For about a year into her captivity, Wolfgang would wake Natasha up and the pair would have breakfast together. Wolfgang made sure to pick up a number of school textbooks relevant to his captive's age and Natasha eagerly consumed the book's contents to give herself an informal kind of education. Many young women her age might grow to resent being robbed of the youthful experience, but bizarrely, Natasha considered herself, and I quote, spared of many things. I did not start smoking or drinking, and I did not hang out in bad company,

she said. But make no mistake, and to use her own words, Wolfgang's home was a place of despair for her. Along with additional freedoms, Natasha was allowed to watch television, but she seemed unaware of the fact that Wolfgang only showed her heavily edited, pre-recorded versions of movies and TV shows designed to exclude any mention of appeals or the ongoing search for her. It was around this time that Natasha made her one and only escape attempt. While accompanying Wolfgang on a routine errand, she flung open the passenger door of his van, unbuckled her seatbelt, and sought to tuck and roll out of the vehicle while traveling at high speeds. The attempt would have most likely killed her, so it's a twisted

kind of blessing that Wolfgang was able to drag her back onto the seat before coming to a stop at a nearby roadside. As punishment, Natasha was beaten so badly that she could hardly walk, and the privileges she'd been granted over the years were suddenly and completely rescinded. Instead of being permitted to read books or watch TV, Wolfgang forced Natasha into long hours of sometimes meaningless household chores. The idea wasn't so much to make use of her, but to exhaust her as a way of lowering the possibility of an escape attempt. Wolfgang would sometimes order Natasha to unload a series of heavy items from his van, then immediately command her to load them back in again. She did so unquestioningly, as in the aftermath of her escape attempt, Wolfgang had taken certain steps to prevent a second instance. Whenever he left the apartment, Wolfgang would show his captive the explosive booby traps he'd fitted to all the exterior doors

and windows. Barely perceptible fishing wire ran along the openings, each connected to a small block of what Wolfgang claimed was dynamite. Now not only would she risk death if she attempted to escape, but anyone who came looking for her in the right place would risk being blown to smithereens. Yet incredibly, after enduring weeks upon weeks of the harshest treatment so far, Natasha developed a new kind of resolve. After a particularly vicious display of defiance, Wolfgang pulled out a pistol, put it in Natasha's head, and threatened to execute her. But to her captor's shock, Natasha called Wolfgang's bluff. She screamed at him to kill her, to finally end her torment, claiming if he didn't,

she'd find a way to kill him in his sleep. The threat is thought to have terrified Wolfgang. It was clearly losing his grip on control, so instead, he changed his strategy. Instead of threatening to kill her, Wolfgang told Natasha that if she didn't behave, he'd murder his neighbors instead. Over the course of her captivity, Natasha had developed a great deal of affection for Wolfgang's neighbors, who often proved her only source of outside contact. The threat worked, and Natasha appeared more compliant in the days and weeks that followed. Yet little did Wolfgang know, she was gearing up to make her great escape.

She began bashing her plastic water bottle against the walls of her cell at night in the hopes of attracting the attention of a passerby, and tried in vain to suddenly attract the help of strangers on the rare occasion she was taken into town. Natasha was persistent but careful and once again reminded herself to wait for an opportune moment. It took eight long years but one day, that moment finally came. On August 23rd, 2006, Natasha was in the process of cleaning out Wolfgang's van while he kept an eye on her from the nearby garden. She was around halfway through the filthy ordeal when suddenly, Wolfgang received a call on his cell phone.

To Natasha, it sounded as if it was from her captor's business partner. And as she listened to the conversation meander this way and that, an idea struck her like a diamond bullet between the eyes. She hopped out of the van, grabbed the vacuum cleaner that she'd been using just minutes prior, then began feverishly re-cleaning the van's carpets. She cranked the power up to maximum, making sure to leave the van's doors ajar, and then watched Wolfgang out of the corner of her eye. Soon the noise of the vacuum cleaner began to muffle the sounds of his partner's

voice, and although one might expect him to command her to stop, Natasha knew all too well that he wouldn't. Addressing her while on the phone call might arouse suspicion as Wolfgang tried to keep knowledge of her presence to a minimum, so rather than tell her to stop vacuuming, Wolfgang got up from his sun lounger and walked off deeper into the garden. Natasha saw her chance, leaving the vacuum running to give the impression that she was still at work. Natasha leaped from the van, ran to a nearby fence, and climbed into a neighbor's yard. She continued to jump fences, terrifying though she happened across until she came to a house of the neighbor Wolfgang had threatened to kill.

The 71-year-old woman, known in court documents only as Inga T., was shocked to see her usually cheerful neighbor following a loud hammering on her door. But when she asked what had happened, and if Natasha was okay, the reply chilled her to the bone. The name Natasha Kampusch was known in almost every household in Austria, as over the years sporadic media appeals had kept the case in people's minds. Inga T. had always known Natasha by a different name, but when she learned of the girl's true identity, she rushed her inside and called the police. At exactly 1.04pm, an entire task force of Austrian police officers descended on the sleepy Vienna neighborhood to positively identify Natasha.

In the end, her identity was confirmed by a rapid DNA test. Although she was shaken, pale, and severely underweight, she was in alarmingly good health for someone in her position. It is believed that the police had long found Natasha before Wolfgang realized she was missing. Realizing how effectively he had been deceived, he decided to go on the run. He fired up the engine of his red BMW and drove around Vienna for a while before arriving at the Wiener train station. After waiting on the platform for the next available train, he jumped in front of it and was crushed to death. Natasha wasn't surprised when she heard the news, as Wolfgang had told her many times before, they'll never catch me alive. After a search of his home, police discovered that Wolfgang was

trying to procure forged citizenship documents for the neighboring Czech Republic. He was evidently planning a new life for himself and Natasha, but only God knows how close he was to fulfilling his ambitions. After an emotional reunion with her friends and family, Natasha was reluctant to talk to the press. However, in the years that followed, she began to accept offers for interviews. I feel more and more sorry for him. He's a poor soul, she said of her former captor, before admitting that she wept uncontrollably when the reality of Wolfgang's death had set in. The Austrian people were stunned at Natasha's apparent sympathy for the man who imprisoned her for eight grueling years, and many suggested she was suffering from what's referred to as Stockholm Syndrome.

Natasha has vehemently denied this being the case and argues that her relationship with Wolfgang was, and I quote, complex. But it's clear that on some level, Natasha felt some kind of residual affection for the man who made her life a living hell for the better part of a decade. In 2010, Austrian authorities sought to auction off Wolfgang Priclip Hill's home along with the land it sat on. Given the infamy attached to the place, only a handful of lowball offers came in. Then, one day, a member of the city council received a very strange telephone call. A young woman claimed to be the legal heir to Wolfgang's estate, citing an Austrian law which dictated that if no legal heir has been named by the deceased, the land would be given to whoever

else was living there at the time of their death. But that could only mean one thing. Natasha Kampusch was attempting to take possession of the place where she was held captive. The story was soon leaked to the press, and when journalists reached out to Natasha for their statement, she told them that she wanted to protect the home from damage. However, in 2010, it was revealed that she made semi-regular visits to the house and was preparing to renovate it. Then, in 2011, Natasha dispelled a rather nasty rumor by releasing photos of the newly renovated garage and showing how the cellar she'd been kept in was now filled with concrete. By 2017, it became clear what Natasha's plan was all along. The house where she was kept prisoner had been completely renovated and restructured,

so that barely a trace of her former prison remains. By the time she puts it up for sale, it's likely that few will remember the horrors she endured there. But when some wholesome young family moves in, completely ignorant of the ghosts in the walls, then Wolfgang Preklopil's legacy will have truly been erased. The End Born on December 20th, 1977, Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gallete spent his formative years in the Chilean capital of Santiago. Little is known about his childhood, but we know that at the age of 18, Ramon enrolled

at the Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences to study pedagogy. Considering what he went on to be famous for, Ramon's choice of subjects is interesting. You see, pedagogy describes the theory or science behind teaching techniques. It helps determine which teaching techniques are effective and which aren't, and helps refine our ideas of how human beings learn, along with how to teach them. Used as a force for good, a teacher may impart a theory or concept to a student in a way that allows them to come to a conclusion on their own, the equivalent of teaching a person to fish versus giving them one. But used as a force of evil, pedagogy could theoretically allow someone to plant ideas into another person's head

in a way that allows for coercion, manipulation, or maybe even mind control. After dropping out of college in 2003, Ramon joined a Chilean musical group named Amaru. They enjoyed some minor success and toured the wider Andes region, playing shows for appreciative rural crowds. But then, in 2006, the band's manager approached them with an offer. Through a contact in the local music business, the manager had learned that a promoter over in China was in need of foreign musical acts to perform at a series of music festivals. The pay was astronomical compared to what they were accustomed to, and they get to perform in a faraway country, full of new and

exciting people. It was a no-brainer. The band accepted, and they were soon flying out to rural China to begin their tour. While driving through tiny countryside villages and hamlets, Ramon developed an interest in ancient Chinese religion. Chenggu Minzhan Xinyang, or Chinese folk religion in English, is an incredibly ancient form of ancestor worship that remains popular in the Chinese-speaking world. It's been described as an empty bowl which can variously be filled with contents of institutionalized religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese syncretic religions. Practices include the veneration of ancestor spirits, the exorcism of demonic forces, and

a belief in the rational order of nature. Worship is devoted to gods and immortals, who can be deities of places or natural phenomena, and stories of these gods have become the mainstay of modern Chinese mythology. Ramon became obsessed with the folk religion and spent his every spare moment trying to learn as much about alternative medicines as he could. He seemed to pay particular interest to hallucinogenic drugs, along with their capacity to induce what we might refer to as a religious experience. It was around this time that Ramon gave himself a new name,

Anteris of the Light, in reference to the brightest star in the Scorpius constellation. He became increasingly egotistical and claimed to possess a deep enlightenment that allowed him and him alone to decide the best musical direction for Amaru's music. As you can imagine, his bandmates quickly grew tired of his behavior, and they parted ways with Ramon in 2009. Not long after, a despondent Ramon moved into a grubby, shared apartment in the San Diego neighborhood of Las Condes, where he and his new roommates engaged in a heavy amount of drug use. Ramon adopted a new name, Calypso, and began performing what he referred

to as healing rituals on his roommates. Through the use of ayahuasca-derived substances, Ramon convinced his new friends that the rituals were genuine and that, following his extensive study of Chinese folk religion, he was in possession of magical powers. As you can imagine, Ramon and his new friends were every landlord's nightmare, so they ended up getting evicted every so often, and then they'd find a new place. By the time the group was living in Mantagua, a small resort town northwest of Santiago, Ramon had gathered up a collection of twelve companions, each willing to perform increasingly extreme tasks to fulfill his mysterious master plan. He soon convinced them to begin performing animal sacrifices in the name of

some ancient eastern deity, with the ceremonies followed by sessions of mass intoxication using powerful hallucinogenic drugs. It was during one of these sessions that Ramon approached Natalia Guerrera Shakir and asked her to go to bed with him. Ramon maintained the encounter was consensual, but Natalia later said that she was coerced and violated against her will. Regardless, nine months later, Jesus Castillo Guerrero was born at a clinic in Reneca, with Natalia as the mother and Ramon as the father. Natalia was unsure of how Ramon would receive the news, and it's she'd kept the pregnancy a secret from him. But to her surprise, he seemed eager to see his newborn son.

When Ramon arrived at the clinic, little Jesus was in another room, undergoing a few checks at the hands of the clinic's nurses. Ramon told Natalia that he was going to take a look at his new baby and would return in a few minutes. He never came back. Before Natalia realized what had happened, the clinic's nurses flew into a panic. Little Jesus was gone from his incubation chamber while Ramon was nowhere to be seen. The clinic's nurses rushed to call the police, who promptly drove over to Ramon and his followers' residence to rescue the vulnerable infant, but when they arrived, they found the place deserted. Ramon and his followers had moved on.

Where they went remains a mystery, but what they did there has become embedded in local folklore as one of the most hideous acts of evil in the nation's history. On November 23rd, just two days after the birth of his son, Ramon and his followers gathered around a campfire somewhere in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. Holding baby Jesus in his arms, Ramon announced that the child was the Antichrist, and unless they did something to rectify an apocalyptic mistake, the entire world would end that very night. As the group began to perform a religious chant Ramon had taught them, the man himself placed a strip of tape over the mouth of his newborn son. Then, as the chanting reached fever pitch,

Ramon tossed his infant child into the roaring bonfire before him and watched as the child roasted alive. Ramon then claimed that another child would have to be sacrificed within ten days or a second scheduled apocalypse would come to pass. This proved to be a sobering moment for many of his followers who were either unwilling or unable to procure another newborn. Then lo and behold, the apocalypse did not occur and his followers realized that they'd been lied to.

Furious that he'd tricked them into committing an unforgivable sin, a handful of Ramon's companions approached the police to inform them of his whereabouts. Ramon had anticipated their betrayal and already slipped away into the maze of the Andes foothills. Four of Ramon's companions were arrested and interrogations revealed that he'd fled over the border to Peru with around $20,000 of the group's savings. Ramon was tracked down to an abandoned house in the Peruvian city of Cusco, but when officers raided the premises, they found he'd taken his own life via hanging in a bid to avoid justice.

In the aftermath of his discovery, Ramon's followers were put on trial for baby Jesus' murder, but the results were as shocking as they were surprising. Out of Ramon's twelve followers, only two received any prison time. The vast majority were declared innocent by reason of insanity, after a panel of psychologists concluded that they believed with all their heart and soul that Ramon was some kind of living god. Ramon's right-hand man, Pablo Undarraga, received just one year of jail time before being released under house arrest, whereas Natalia, the murdered baby's mother, ended up with two years in prison. A judge ruled that she was culpable in her own son's brutal immolation, despite the fact that she had absolutely no hand

in it, marking a miscarriage of justice that many struggle to understand. Perhaps the most horrifying lesson to be learned from Ramon's case is just how dangerous lost souls can be. Ramon managed to corral a dozen directionless, possibly disheartened young people who wanted nothing more than to find a purpose in life, and through a mix of intoxicating drug use and silver-tongued devilry, Ramon convinced them to assist in an act of pure, unadulterated evil, without question and without reason. When you want to bet on sports, play it on a field or ice or course. BetRivers is the place.

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please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Okay, so back around 2011 to 2015, my old friend and I used to go on little photoshoot expeditions to abandoned places all over the state of Virginia. If you search up a lot of the top upvoted posts from Reddit from around that time, you'll find that many of those pictures are taken by my buddy and me. We don't do it anymore due to having had one too many close calls with cops and security, but we had an amazing portfolio of pictures from those days, along with a lot of cool stories. I would honestly recommend Urbex, or Rorex, or whatever you want to call it, to anyone with a love for the post-apocalyptic, or any budding photographers seeking darker inspiration. However, this recommendation comes with a warning. There are some really fascinating

derelict properties out there. We'll call them dirts, short for derelict properties, but not a single one of them is worth getting heard over. If a place seems too dangerous or out of reach, there's no shame in passing it up. I'm not saying this because I got badly hurt or anything. I'm saying it because of something I witnessed. I didn't come away with any life-changing trauma and this story isn't some John Carpenter fright fest so don't get your hopes up but after all these years I still think about this one place and it still gives me the creeps. It was July of 2013 when my buddy texted me about an abandoned slaughterhouse out in the middle of nowhere. Immediately my interest was

peaked because among all the weird and wonderful shooting locations that he had come up with, a slaughterhouse topped the list. Even the most basic minimalist shots would be made insanely creepy by captioning them old slaughterhouse. And in terms of more visceral shots, I was thinking of lines of meat hooks and perhaps an old bloodstain somewhere. It had a lot of promise to say the least. So one day we drove out there, found that it wasn't guarded at all, parked the car, and entered the compound. At first there was no creepy vibes about the place whatsoever, and two of the buildings appeared to be just animal sheds. However, the more we looked around,

the more we found what we were looking for. We discovered the machinery room, which looked awesome with all its mechanical guts exposed, and then we found the incinerator, so I took a few shots of that. The slaughtering areas didn't have any gnarly bloodstains or anything, but the grates to drain the blood looked super ominous and creepy, even when they were just dirty with age. It's all about the implication, you know. But then there was the cooling room, which is exactly what you can imagine when you think of a slaughterhouse, where all the Texas chainsaw-looking meat hooks are. We took plenty of

pictures there, probably more than anywhere else, and afterward, we decided to head back for some beers and a little Chick-fil-A. However, on our way out, we decided to have one last walk around the building just to see if we had missed anything, and that's when we discovered that the slaughterhouse had a basement. Down a set of stone stairs, there was this big iron door with a little window complete with iron bars, and from the looks of things, the only thing securing it was a big rusted padlock. Now, here's the point where I explain that I was only in this for professional curiosity. If I didn't want to take pictures, I don't think that I would have gone looking for some creepy old derelict to hang out and explore.

But my friend, he was in it for the thrills of exploring creepy places, and the creepier they were, the better, he thought. He takes one look at the padlock, then one look at me, and I can see what he's thinking, but I'm like, hell no. I was just about done for the day, and spending god knows how long finding something to smash the padlock did not beat the idea of a little spicy deluxe at Chick-fil-A, as I said. So, we made a compromise. We would go get fast food, but then come back another day with a sledgehammer or a pair of bolt cutters to check out what we had missed in the basement. I said as long as we headed out in the early morning so I could make use of the morning light, he had himself a deal. It might seem overly obnoxious, but lighting is important, photography, that, and there was no way in

hell that I was going anywhere near that slaughterhouse at night. Not even so much because I was scared of ghost pigs or whatever, but you get some real bad hombres hanging around these derelict buildings at night. Hombres that won't think twice about jacking me up for my expensive looking camera. Anyway, I think it was about a week later, but eventually my buddy gets back to me about that locked basement and asks if I'm down for a little breaking and entering. We weren't exactly in the habit of criminal activity, but I guess if someone wants to press charges or sue me for breaking their stuff, they gotta own up to what was in there first. I told him sure, but as long as we stuck to the plan and

hit the place up early in the morning. He agreed, so we arranged a time and date, and then drove back out there with a sledgehammer and a pair of bolt cutters, both of which my buddy had no trouble getting his hand on. He's still like that, the kind of guy who would probably poop out gold bars if he had the right motivation. We parked in the same spot, checked around the compound to make sure that we were alone, and then we grabbed the bolt cutters and the sledgehammer from the car and got to work getting into the basement. It didn't take us long to bust the lock off the door and when we pulled it open, it creaked like it hadn't been open in decades. We were faced with this long, dark corridor that seemed to cut the main slaughterhouse building in half, and leading off of it, there appeared to be a series

of rooms. We had these little headlamps with us, the kind that you strap to your forehead, and we spent a couple of minutes just peering down the corridor and checking for hazards. I think our main concern at the time was just snakes, pretty much, rattlers and things like that, but after tossing in a couple of rocks and not seeing or hearing anything, we decided to head in and see what was in there. The first room we came to had a whole bunch of wooden furniture stacked up in one corner. Most of it was smashed into pieces, but it only took a few seconds of looking it over to see that it was all old wooden desks and chairs. Now, I remember having a plastic desk and chair in school, but I knew enough to realize that it was all old classroom furniture, and this is without us

noticing the chalkboard on the adjacent wall. But then, why the hell would you need a classroom in the basement of a slaughterhouse? We weren't exactly freaked out by the find as it made sense that new employees needed to be trained. Operating a slaughterhouse probably had a whole bunch of occupational hazards which would, in turn, require a lot of training. But then the contents of the next room that we entered made much less sense. Strewn all over the floor was a bunch of half-rotten notebooks and paper. It honestly looked like someone had trashed a library. And then, in one corner of the room, there was a small desk missing its chair, and sitting on top of that desk was what appeared to be a smashed up ham radio. And the microphone was still intact, but the radio's main body had

been completely bashed up beyond repair. As we went on looking around the room, we noticed something about all the books on the floor. If there were any pages left in them, they were blank and some looked like they had whole sections of paper torn out. Again, I get why any business needs books or records, but a radio too? Why not a phone? And why keep it all the way down in the basement, which would probably wreak havoc on the signal, you know? Again, this was pretty weird, but we're not freaking out or anything. Abandoned places contain all kinds of junk and trash, and if I'm honest, I've seen way weirder stuff than old moldy notebooks and a busted radio. But then the next room we entered, that's when we started getting

some seriously bad vibes. We could explain away the classroom, the whole ham radio setup didn't creep us out, but what the hell would a slaughterhouse need underground cages for? At first we had it in our heads that they were just for animals. I mean it was a slaughterhouse, so go figure. But then why would they have three cages taller than they were wide? And if you were going to put an animal in there? I'm not saying that's what they were used for, and I don't know, maybe that's where they isolated sick animals that might pass their diseases onto the rest of the stock before slaughtering or something. That's just one explanation we thought of right off the top of our heads, and it still makes sense thinking about it now.

But in that moment, standing there and looking at those cages, they resembled jail cells more than anything else. I can confidently say at that point that we were starting to feel creeped out. In fact, we were immensely creeped out, as the feeling really started to escalate rapidly. At that very moment, we realized that we should have just left. Despite capturing incredible pictures down there, it came at the cost of feeling increasingly uncomfortable. However, inexplicably, as much as we wanted to escape, we felt compelled to see what that final room held. You know the saying, curiosity killed the cat? I didn't truly grasp its meaning until that moment. It's not about ignorance leading to misfortune while minding your own business. Rather,

it's about the burning desire to witness something potentially harmful, defying all logic and self-preservation instincts. Nothing in that ultimate room harmed us, obviously, or I wouldn't be here writing this, but I'm fairly certain that it would have if we had opened those items up. The final room housed two groups of things, one in each corner. In one corner, there was a pile of old-looking respirators, similar to gas masks but specifically designed to cover the mouth and nose. In the other corner, numerous blue plastic chemical drums were stacked. Until that point, we assumed that whatever had occurred there happened long ago. However, seeing those still bright blue drums, despite being filthy, indicated that someone

had been there, possibly within the past year or so. The abandonment wasn't nearly as extensive as we had initially believed. As soon as we laid eyes on all that equipment, we promptly retreated from the room. Breaking into that place was stupid, I admit it, but we weren't insane. I've seen enough movies to know that chemical drums like those often contain dangerous substances. If it warranted the use of respirators, there was no way that we were going to open those lids. And that was the moment that we obviously decided to leave. I had captured enough genuinely eerie photos to fill a gallery. I didn't need to manipulate shadows or tones or anything of the sort. I simply photographed what I saw and allowed

the subjects to convey the message, just like all great photography does. It wasn't until we were driving back to the city that we started discussing the possibility of maybe contacting the police. While everything we witnessed could be explained rationally to sort of quell our fears, those cages were a different story. We couldn't just brush them off with a simple explanation. The more we talked about it, the more I felt this creeping sensation that we had witnessed something that we weren't supposed to see. We went to this Applebee's for breakfast and just ate in silence, and then abandoned our plan to call 911 the moment we

returned to the car. I was somewhat worried that the police would consider it a foolish prank call, but just as I was about to contact them, I realized something pretty important. There was no way to report what we had witnessed without incriminating ourselves in the crime. If we decided to proceed, we would have to do it anonymously, perhaps from a payphone or something, but we would never be able to follow up with the police to inquire about their investigation. It was a pretty tough situation, but ultimately we believed that we made the right decision. We found a phone and dialed 911, informing the dispatcher about what we had seen, and then ended the call after apologizing that we needed to maintain anonymity. I suppose 911 dispatchers encounter such situations more frequently than I imagined

because of the lady on the other end seemingly understanding when I declined to provide my name. It was pretty disheartening to not obtain any closure, but several years ago my mother had her purse stolen at gunpoint and she had the opportunity to periodically contact the detective to inquire about the progress. Although they never apprehended the culprit, she found it immensely helpful in terms of overcoming that trauma. I desperately wanted to uncover the truth about the basement, but instead, I had to settle for waiting and scouring news headlines. I was anticipating stories about people confined in cages or bodies dissolving in these drums, but there was nothing. And to this day, I haven't heard a single story about any of the events that took place in the basement.

I would like to believe that there was an innocent explanation for all of it, but a chilling sensation still lingers inside of me, suggesting that something terrible happened down there. Something we were never meant to witness. So towards the end of last year, one of my old high school buddies invited me to his 31st birthday party. We'd had this large group of friends that had all met in freshman year, but as we got older, we all sort of just naturally drifted apart. But then last year, this guy Danny thought that it would be a good idea to get all of us together again for his 31st. I'm not saying it was a bad idea, and seeing some of the old crew again for a few hours turned out to be just as fun as I imagined. There was just one problem,

though, and that problem was a guy named Dean. We used to be pretty wild when we were teenagers. Not bad kids, but definitely a pain in the butt for any parents or teachers. We were all about three things. Heavy metal, getting completely wasted, and chasing chicks. Absolutely nothing else really mattered. And things stayed like that for ten years, and then one by one we all realized that we were kind of wasting our lives. We sobered up, went to school, got jobs, and most importantly,

started looking for healthy relationships with girls who had it together mentally, not just physically. We did so in different stages, some focusing on family, some on careers, but by the closing years of our 20s, everyone was on their way to being an actual grown-up. Everyone, except for Dean. Basically, Dean still had this idea in his head that he was going to be a rock star, and he cultivated the style to match. Long hair, tattoos, piercings, t-shirts that called Jesus the C-word, and he looked like the lead singer of a black metal band. The only trouble was, he was not prepared to put the work in to actually learn an instrument or form a band, you know. Crazy thing was, I think his strongest talent was drawing and illustration,

and he only ever drew cover art for the records that he was one day going to produce. And he stayed like that for years and years, and a perfect example of how far we drifted apart was when he announced that he was moving to a totally different city on the opposite end of the country to live with a girl that he'd met online. It was hard to be happy for him. I know that sounds incredibly mean, but it's true. We were losing a friend. He could drive you crazy with the way he acted, but Dean was our friend, and we loved him like a brother. So even though he claimed to have found this perfect match for himself and that it might possibly be the thing that he needed to finally mature, it sucked having to see him go.

Sure, we could keep in touch via Facebook or whatever, but it wasn't the same. We all missed him like crazy, but as much as we all wanted him to come home, we didn't want to ruin his new relationship, which was really obviously making him happy and making him grow up a little. He found a job out there, found him and his new girl a place to live and it was actually awesome to see. It was bittersweet but I didn't think he needed us anymore. He didn't need anyone to give him a swift kick in the bottom or call him out on his delusional takes because Heath was finally becoming Dean 2.0 in a way that we all had before him. But then, everything changed. I don't know the exact details of it, but Dean and his girlfriend broke up and it set him off on a downward spiral. He got fired from his job, his drug and alcohol intake skyrocketed, and he went off on the rebound looking to immediately replace the girl he'd lost.

This is around the time that he and I stopped talking and I won't go into too much detail, but the reason I stopped responding to his texts was this. I wanted to help him and I'd offered to do so many times, but until he wanted to help himself, I couldn't just sit on the sort of outside watching him destroy himself. I offered him one last chance to get cleaned up or I couldn't help enable him anymore, and he chose to keep on destroying himself. The last I heard about Dean before our friend's birthday was that he'd gotten with this new girl and they were expecting a baby together. I was surprised but obviously really happy for him, but for some reason, the person who told me didn't seem too enthusiastic. And that's when I first found out how crazy his new girl was supposed to be, right at the same time that I learned that they were pregnant. So as you can imagine, this had me pretty worried about meeting them. If they were just dating, that was one thing, but bringing a child into the mix is something else entirely, I'm sure you'll

agree. Anyway, the guy who told me had actually met her around the holidays and literally said to me, this girl is bad news. This particular friend of ours usually doesn't have a bad word to say about anybody, so to have him say how toxic she is, that was no small thing. Now I know it might sound cruel, but that's exactly the kind of girl Dean liked. The kind just like himself. Tatted up, beer chugging, and incredibly angry. I think half the reason he and his first girl broke up was because he just got bored of her. I mean, there were rumors that he was cheating at the time of doing so, I don't know, maybe he was. But the point is, it was way too

late for me to try and reach out and talk to him out of this relationship, and even if I had gotten in there early on, he'd probably have just told me to go F myself. Now anyways, that's all the backstory that you need. Now for the night of the party. So like I said earlier, the party was actually pretty good, even after Dean and his girl arrived. She seemed kind of nervous to meet us, but we were nervous too, so it actually made for some good vibes at first. She seemed intense, but she was fairly easy to talk to, and I started to think the warning that I'd gotten might have just been a little overzealous. But then they started drinking. Dean's dad was watching their 18-month-old back at his place, so Dean and his girl were free to party a little. I'm not saying that they were

entitled to, I know from experience now that being a new parent is about the hardest thing in the world, but the effect the alcohol had on them was just depressing to watch. They got mean, and they got mean fast. Not so much to us or the other people, but to each other. Dean got up and walked off at one point, and he did it in this way that just seemed rehearsed. He knew to walk away from experience, you know? Like that same thing happened every time they drank together. With Dean having walked off to cool off, I guess, I started talking to his girl. She actually apologized and said that they were tired from the journey.

Understandable given that they'd flown cross-country with a new baby that very morning, but still, I was starting to understand why our buddy had seen it fit to warn me about her. Sometimes, two perfectly nice people are just terrible for one another. Love is weird like that, I guess. But the more I talked to Dean's girl, the more I realized how awful she really was. The more we talked, the more comfortable she got. And then slowly but surely, she started saying weirdly racist stuff about our town. It's a pretty liberal place, but it's hardly Portland or San Francisco or anything like that.

Yet she talked about the place like she was some good old boy disgusted with the degenerate north. The last person I expected to be talking like that was the tattooed goth girlfriend of a friend I knew thought politics was dumb. I'm not huge into politics either, I think it's all just a big circus, but I do take issue with people talking about stuff about our town. I tried to very politely confront her on what she was saying. After all, it was her boyfriend's hometown, and in all fairness, she did force a compliment before changing the subject. Not long after, Dean returned from wherever he had been in a better mood, so I went off to mingle a little more before going back to check on them. Dean was sitting alone, looking furious, so I asked him what was up.

He told me his girl had said something to him, but that it was okay and they weren't fighting. The look on his face said otherwise though, but I didn't want to press him on it, so I tried a little non-confrontational catch-up to sort of lighten the mood. And it worked like a charm. And before long, we began reminiscing over this and that, swapping stories and just generally laughing our butts off. But then, and I can't remember what we were talking about, Dean kind of zoned out and started looking across the bar that we were in. It took me a second to realize that he had stopped listening

to me, but when I did, I tried to figure out what we were looking at. That's when I saw his girl getting right up in the face of some other female, and before I could even suggest that we go over to help defuse things, the confrontation exploded. Have you seen how girls fight? They get brutal with each other, so by the time we got over there, it was like a whirlwind of hair grabbing, scratching, and just screeching. We got to work trying to untangle the two drunk ladies from each other, and with Dean taking hold of his girl while I got a hold of the other. And just as I thought we were getting somewhere, the girl I was holding started wailing. There's a big difference between a scream for attention, a scream to intimidate, and a scream of absolute pain. Now, the latter is the

blood-curdling kind of scream, the one that goes through you like nails on a chalkboard because you can hear the kind of pain the person's in. That's the kind of scream the girl underneath me let out, and although I didn't know what Dean's girl was doing to her, I knew it was bad from the racket she made. And boy was it bad. I didn't get a great look at the wound because the girl was hysterical and covering up her eye, but from the amount of blood that was coming out between her fingers, I could have sworn that she had a fingernail shoved into her eyeball or something. And by that time, almost everyone in the bar was freaking out, grabbing towels and bandages and calling 911. Since it was just this cozy little local

bar on a weeknight, there was only one security guy who was totally out of his depth. He's trying to make sure no one else is fighting, but Dean basically grabs his girl right out from under the guy's nose, carries her outside, throws her in a cab, and then sends her back to his dad's place. I swear he did it so freaking fast too, again like it was this well-rehearsed move that he'd done many times before. After that, it was settled. This girl was terrible for him. First time I'd ever met her,

and I watched her send another girl to a hospital with what looked like a life-changing injury. And needless to say, it totally killed the mood. The bar ended up closing early because it was now a crime scene. Dean insisted that we go someplace else ASAP because he didn't want anyone talking to the cops and we quickly went from a group of around 12 to a group of 3. Some had already headed home because of how late on a weeknight it was but others just left once they realized what a horrible turn the night had taken. Either way, our numbers started to thin out and as we walked to another bar way down the street,

I started to wonder if I should try and discuss Dean's relationship with him. It made me very uncomfortable to think that I'd just sent his drunk and violent baby mama home like that. So instead of making a whole thing about it, potentially starting a fight, I just made a very gentle suggestion to him. I told him that maybe, just maybe, he should have gone home with his girl to make sure that she got into bed okay. I was kind of worried that he'd take issue with me even suggesting that, hence why I put it to him delicately. But bringing it up that way turned out to be much more effective than I'd first thought. He didn't say that I was right or anything, but you could tell the thought was eating at him. His dad and his kid were in that house with a girl who had just put another person in the hospital,

and she was still seriously wasted. He stayed quiet for a little while, clearly wrapped up in the whole thing while we tried and failed to move on and enjoy ourselves. The only thing that lifted our spirits was the sudden appearance of an old friend we didn't think could make it. We'll call him Andrew, which wasn't his real name, but the reasons for me withholding that little detail will be very obvious very quickly. He showed up on his motorcycle, which we all found very impressive, and we kept talk of the girl fight to a minimum so we could focus on catching up. Then, a few minutes into the conversation, something insane happened. Dean, who was obviously invisibly wasted, asks Andrew if he can take his bike for a spin. Then, the birthday boy and I watch in absolute horror as Andrew takes out his keys,

hands them to Dean, and says, sure. Personally, I didn't think this was actually going to happen. I thought the birthday boy might have spoken up and been like, what are you doing? He's drunk as a skunk. But he didn't. I think he was waiting for me to say the exact same thing, so as we were gripped by this weird nervous paralysis, Dean walked outside, motorcycle keys in hand. Now the birthday boy and I just sat there, open mouth, looking at Andrew like he'd just grown a second head. And finally, the birthday boy managed to say something like, What are you thinking? Andrew responded with a, What?

Before everything finally dropped. He had been so wrapped up in showing off his freaking bike that he hadn't stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, someone who had been drinking for hours shouldn't have been riding it. What makes even less sense is how proud he was of his bike. He was anxious about getting the paintwork scratched but at the same time had zero problems handing the keys over to some drunk dude. We all rushed outside just in time to see Dean disappearing down the road, no helmet, and way over the limit. To be fair, Dean did lie to Andrew, saying, take it for a spin, not drive five miles back to his dad's place so he can check on his psycho baby mama. When it hit him that a very

drunk and emotional Dean was about to make a 10 mile round trip, he started to freak out. Like, what did I just do? We were mad at him, but we were mostly mad at Dean for doing something so insanely irresponsible. It wasn't even the lying or the law breaking or risking Andrew's expensive bike. It was how he had just put himself at a huge risk without so much as a second thought. The worst part was how helpless we all felt. Someone suggested chasing him down in a cab, but catching or ordering one wouldn't be easy,

and the driver would probably have to speed just to catch up with him. But then we realized that we could call ahead, get Dean's dad on the phone and warn him not to let Dean drive the bike back. That seemed like our only way of actually salvaging the situation and putting the plan into action only scared us even more. Dean's dad wouldn't pick up the phone. We only had his landline number, no cell and there was no response. Now, this could have meant that he was sound asleep and everything was fine, but given how panicked we already were, we took it as a sign of disaster. We were convinced

that Dean was going to get hit by a car, pulled over, and jailed thanks to a DUI plus no license or insurance and all that crap. It was either one or the other. There was no way a disaster wasn't about to happen. So when Dean suddenly reappeared on the bike maybe 40 to 50 minutes later, the collective sigh of relief was a pretty deep one. But that sigh of relief was very quickly replaced by a lot of anger. In Dean's logic, nothing bad had happened, so he hadn't done anything wrong. His girl was passed out in bed, his kid was in its crib in his dad's room, who was also asleep, so he just rode the bike back. Nice and smooth, no harm, no foul.

He couldn't seem to understand why we were so mad at him, and in the end, he just walked off and presumably found his way home somehow. The rest of us stayed for one last drink to try and just shake off that terrible mood and then we all went our separate ways and got ourselves home. Later on, as I was drifting off to sleep, I started to think about just how far Dean had fallen. He has this baby mama who seems destined to go to prison for something. I mean we don't even know if the bar assault is going to catch up to her yet. He regularly drives drunk without a license or insurance and he told the birthday boy that in the same breath as admitting that his baby mama hits him. Birthday boy thinks it's now up to us to do something about it but what are we supposed to do? Time and time again anyone who offers Dean help he pushes them away and acts like they're

just trying to control him. So to me, the choice is clear. I can try to involve myself in his life and be right there when he goes to jail, crashes drunk, or gets killed by his baby mama. But alternatively, I can distance myself and be emotionally insulated for when the inevitable finally happens. It would all be painful enough without a child involved, but that's the part that scares me the most. Some innocent child is mixed up in all of this, and that's infuriating as well as haunting. We'll be a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with BetRiver Sportsbook. Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. A colleague of my mother told her this story and I got instant goosebumps when I heard it. Also, I'm not a native speaker so I apologize if I make mistakes. My mom's colleague lives alone with no partner, parents or children, just a dog to keep her company. However, every year during the summer holidays, she invites her cousins, who are her sister's children, to spend an evening with her. They watch movies, play games,

and eat candy, and the children absolutely love it. Since she lives alone, she only has one bedroom. When she has a sleepover with her cousins, she lets the children sleep in that bedroom while she herself sleeps on the couch downstairs. So last summer, she organized a sleepover with her cousins as usual. It was fun and she had just put the children to sleep in her bed. Tired but satisfied, she plopped down on her couch and soon fell asleep. At around 3am, she was woken up by her dog barking restlessly. This was quite abnormal because her dog never barked at night. Still half asleep, she got up from the couch and quite abnormal because her dog never barked at night. Still half asleep, she got up from the couch and walked over to her dog to see what was going on. She bent down to pet her dog and said, hey, what's wrong, buddy? And as she said this,

she heard someone behind her in the darkness respond, I don't know either. She started screaming and immediately ran upstairs to lock herself and the children in the bedroom and called the police. In the end, it turned out to be just a drunk man who had entered the wrong home. But dear God, I would have soiled my head around this because I'm not sure if I'm simply overreacting or if it's something more. I was shopping at an Asian grocery store with my boyfriend and his mother. We were in the meat area when I decided to take a couple of steps to the side to tie my hair up. I didn't want to do it in front of the meat. However, my boyfriend and his mother weren't that far away from me. All of a sudden, when I was almost done fixing my hair, I saw an Asian woman walking towards me,

looking into what seemed like a pocket mirror. I thought that she was simply going to walk past me, but instead, she walked directly up to me. I was a bit startled, but I managed to say, Hi, do I know you? And instead of replying, she proceeded to get close enough to my face that I could feel her breath. She wouldn't get out of my face or say anything until several minutes had passed and my boyfriend and his mother noticed this weird stranger. They asked me if I knew her and I shook my head, and it was only then that she started walking away. I kept seeing her throughout the store and areas where I was, but she never approached me again. At this point I saw her having a conversation with some guy, so I knew that she wasn't one of those people who couldn't communicate.

I still have no idea what she wanted. This happened about 10 years ago. I must have been about 27 years old or so. My partner at the time was in a band and we stayed in this converted garage. Not really converted, it was still very much like a garage. Concrete walls, damp, we made do. It was on a service lane which is like a street that has businesses down it and the back of houses. He had come home very early that morning and gone to bed. His bandmate was living in a bus at the time which was parked out front as they stored the gear next to our flat in another garage. I woke up at around 5am, hearing screams, mainly from a woman, but also very aggressive shouting

from a man saying, I'm going to kill you, and so on. The area we were in is not the nicest, although now it's a very desirable location, close to the beach, boutique shops, etc. However, this was coming from a house that I thought was condemned. It was two stories, dilapidated with torn curtains and rotten wood, and about five broken down cars out front that had been picked apart. It turns out, someone was living in there. I woke up and went straight to the front door where I saw a man stomping around a parked car on the side of the road, chasing a lady in her pajamas around and threatening to kill her. I could see that she was screaming and crying. Out of instinct,

I screamed something like, oi, what's going on, I'm calling the cops. They both stopped and just looked at me. And there I stood, in my pajamas, barefoot, near my door. The man wore a full leather jacket, pants, and boots, and had a half-face tattoo, Tamoko. Even though he was across the street, I could see the white of his eyes. He was obviously on something and furious. I'm going to kill you, he shouted at me, motioning to cut his neck with his thumb. When he turned to me, the woman escaped into the abandoned looking house and locked the door. Being brave or stupid, I replied, well come on then, and grabbed a large plank of two by four that I kept by the door, since I found this area rather sketchy and would often be home alone on weekends. I had never used it, but it made me feel better having it there. I walked outside in my pajamas and leopard print robe, with the wood over my shoulder while talking

to the police on the phone. I'm not the smallest woman in the world, I must have been around 80 kilos or 176 pounds and 5'10 in height. But he could have taken me out if he wanted. I think the idea of the police made him second guess. He got the hint and took off down the street. Another lady across the road also came out and we talked about our men not doing anything. Her husband also stayed in bed too. Anyway, later that week,

a lady came to my house thanking me for helping her niece. She explained that he was some kind of crazy cracked out guy who had fallen in love with her niece and wouldn't take no for an answer. He had come to her house without an invitation, expecting that she would welcome his drunk cracked out self with open arms, only to get rejected, which threw him into a rage and he proceeded to kick and beat her, chasing her around the street. About a week later I was told that he was arrested and taken away on my street. He was led away by the police, handcuffed, with a ciggy hanging out of his mouth. I was glad to hear it, because I had been terrified that he would come back when I was alone. About a year ago, I stopped at a random gas station off the highway in the middle of the desert, somewhere between California and Arizona,

because it was evident that there wouldn't be many opportunities to fill up anytime soon, and I didn't want to risk it. It was an absolute ghost town with nothing around for miles, just desert, mountains and maybe a few trailer homes here and there. There were no other cars in the parking lot other than two semi-trucks parked about 300 feet away. Now anyway, I walked into the gas station to use the restroom and a woman greeted me, which made me feel more at ease. We were the only two there. I went back outside to fill up my car, but my car was parked on the side of the building that wasn't visible from inside the store. A dumb mistake. While my car was filling up, I decided to clean my windows.

It was pretty windy that day, so there was a lot of dust and dirt flying around. But once I finished cleaning the last window, the front passenger's side, I put the squeegee back in its bucket and put the gas nozzle back in its place. Now while doing this, I suddenly had the feeling that someone was looking at me. And I looked up, and through the car windows, I saw a man about 30 feet away walking towards me, just staring at me, and I immediately got a horrible gut feeling. Because it was so windy, I didn't hear his footsteps approaching, and it was like he popped up out of nowhere. Once we made eye contact, I noticed that he picked up his pace a bit, and the next thing I knew, I rushed to open the door, which was on the other side of the car, facing this man. Within seconds, I hopped in, turned the car on, and immediately drove off with the door which was on the other side of the car facing this man. Within seconds I hopped in, turned the car on, immediately drove off with the door still open. He was probably about 5 feet from

me at that point. I had to loop the parking lot to leave and I looked back at him just standing there watching me drive off. I felt like I was having an out of body experience and someone took control of my body but maybe it was just the adrenaline triggering my fight or flight response and my instincts kicking in. After that, I drove in silence for a solid 20 minutes. I think about what would have happened if I had looked up a couple of seconds later. Alright this happened when I was 11 years old. I had a friend, 12 years old, over at my dad's house for the first time, and we were having a lot of fun. My dad went out in front of the yard to make a phone call.

It was around 10.30 at night, and we were hyped up on Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew, feeling hyper. So we went outside with my dad. We mainly stayed in the front yard until we decided that we wanted to go inside. My friend and I jumped over my back fence since we were right next to it. For context, I had a pit bull and a very large German shepherd who were also in the backyard. My friend and I went up to the second floor where we played with makeup. About 30 minutes later, we went back downstairs because I heard my dogs barking and decided to let them in. The dogs had their own fenced off

area in the backyard to not interfere with the garden and my dad hadn't let them in yet. My friend pointed out that my dad was still on the front porch, which was okay. I went to my back door to open it and that's when I saw a man crouching by the back porch, which was okay. I went to my back door to open it, and that's when I saw a man, crouching by the back gate, staring at my back door. He was next to the side of the gate that we had previously jumped. I asked my friend to stay there and make sure that the man stayed put while I went to check if my dad was still on that front porch, and he was. However, for some reason, I didn't tell my dad that the man was in our backyard. Instead, my friend and I watched him out there for about 20 minutes. After those 20 minutes,

he moved across the street and crouched next to a car for five minutes and then came back to the gate. I decided that it was unsafe for my dogs to still be out in the yard, so I turned on the light to help me see clearer and opened the gate for the dogs. Even after I let my dogs in, this guy was still crouched there, just not moving at all. Not ten more minutes, which felt like ten hours to me, passed by and the man was still there but he stood up. Seeing him stand up, I realized that he was holding something that looked like some sort of blunt object, maybe a metal pipe. I quickly locked the door, and my friend and I ran across the house to the front to tell my dad to come inside. I never gave him an explanation as to why, but I'm guessing he saw the urgency in my face or voice, and he listened. I love you. My girlfriend told me about two weeks ago that she was waiting in line at the convenience store with her friend in Chinatown, New York City,

when a large, dapper-looking man approached them. He complimented her coat and commented on how expensive it must be. She said, thank you, and they chatted for a little longer. The man explained that his suit was just a shabby Brooks Brothers suit, but she noticed that he had all sorts of expensive jewelry on. When my girlfriend and her friend mentioned that they were students, he kept making assumptions about how they must be rich and that their parents were paying for everything. My girlfriend started feeling uncomfortable and tried to distance herself from him. He asked them if they had jobs and they told him no, as they were students.

After that, he went on to tell them what he does for a living without being asked. He said, I do all sorts of odd jobs, this and that, but mainly, I have these guys that work for me. I find them off the streets, I feed them, and I give them a place to stay.

I'm waiting to meet up with them now. He referred to them as his minions, which suddenly made something that seemed wholesome at first very unsettling. And then he told them that he'd just had his wallet stolen and needed $400 for something. I don't remember the reason. He told them that he would pay them back later that week, but he needed the money right that night. My girlfriend politely declined and by this point, she was really uncomfortable. She started walking towards the door to leave and said, nice to meet you and good luck. They both walked outside and sat on a bench outside the convenience

store. As they were sitting and discussing the strange interaction, they saw the man exit and stand about ten feet away, waiting for a few minutes, looking at his phone. He then met up with his two other men, and they chatted for a few minutes. The large man in the suit then walked in the opposite direction while the other two men walked into the store and started holding it up with knives. Absolutely shocked and frozen, my girlfriend and her friend

watched as the cashier put her hands up and emptied out the cash register. The two men ran out of the store in the same direction the man in the suit had walked. They were both about to call the police but noticed that the cashier had already done so. They waited at the bench until two police cars showed up and then they walked in to tell the officers what they had just witnessed and tried to help identify the robbers and the man they had just met. I wonder if this is a common occurrence in terms of organized crime, paying homeless people to commit crimes and rob. In the late 1990s, I accompanied my mom to England so she could see where her grandparents had lived. I was basically just there to look after her because my dad didn't want to come and my mom has a hard time doing things for herself.

Our agreement was that after spending a week in England, the second week we could spend in Ireland. But my mom is terrible at planning, so we ended up spending a week sort of in limbo in Liverpool, waiting for the Irish Sea to calm down so we could cross on a ferry. It was September, probably the worst month to try crossing, and we never made it to Ireland. So anyway, for five days I had to try and find places for us to sleep at night because she also made no hotel reservations for an entire two-week stay and I was completely unaware of this until we were already in England. I picked a hotel that seemed okay and my mom paid to sleep in a different room

because she has really bad RLS and shakes violently at night. It keeps everybody up. In the middle of the night, I heard a man yelling in the hallway. He had to have been very intoxicated. He was pounding on the doors all the way down the hallway and hitting the walls. Being the punk kid I was, I made the mistake of acknowledging his rage by telling him to shut up. And this really enraged him. He started beating on my door, screaming that he was going to kill me. He tried the doorknob, and thank god those doors had an automatic lock. I started looking around the room and realized this hotel had no phones in the room.

Like I said, this was the 90s. I went to the window, but I was three floors up and the windows didn't open either, so I just stayed there, listening as he did his best to break the door down while threatening what he was going to do to me once he opened the door, and this went on for at least twenty minutes. Somehow, I finally fell asleep, and when I woke up the next day I saw just how much damage he had done. He smashed in my door with a fire extinguisher that he pulled off the wall. There were dents and marks all down the hall where he had dragged it violently from end to end. The worst part was my mom down the hall never said anything. When I told the clerk as we were checking out, he looked at me like I was crazy and making this up and I told him, go look yourself. Later I asked my mom about it and she said, oh yeah, I thought I heard screaming.

Was that you crying for help? You all were enormously supportive of my last library creeper post, working with the public lens itself to endless strange encounters so I'll keep posting as they roll in. We were five minutes from closing the library tonight. Mondays are very slow in the summer, so at five minutes to close, we were basically just waiting for the clock to tick. All tasks are completed. You may get one or two stragglers to pick up a hold, but not often. It's generally very quiet. Not tonight. This man walks in and I say, hey, we're closing up, can I help you? He hollers from the entryway, I'm looking for a book. Okay, well, if you come to the desk, I can help you.

He rushes over and says, you close at 11, right? I've worked here over six years and we have never closed at 11. I tell him no and ask again if I can assist him. By this time, my two other co-workers are up front with me asking what's going on and who's shouting. He just continues to stare at me like I have multiple heads and I ask again, can I help you? He says he needs to use the phone and reaches for my desk phone. Nope. I move it away and tell him that he can use the public access phone in the lobby. By this point, he only has about three minutes to do so. He again reiterated that he knows that we close at 11, and I tell him absolutely not, we close at 8.

By now, we're all thinking this guy is going to be a hassle to evacuate the building at 8. My co-worker is waiting near the lobby asking what she should do. Since I'm the person in charge, it's up to me to decide how to handle this. No pressure. I told her I'll go with you and let's check the restrooms. Close down the bookstore and start shutting off the entryway and lobby lights. My other co-worker I direct to stay near the phone. This guy is just odd and if things go south, we need help in a hurry.

We're all feeling really edgy at this point. She and I turn off the lights. He, meanwhile, is scrolling through the public phone call log, not making a call at all. It's just a random listing of numbers so I don't know what he expects to find there. I tell him it's time to wrap things up and we need to close. He begins to head back into the library. Oh no, I'm pregnant and exhausted and ready to go home and he's not going back into the library. As loudly and as assertively as I can, I say, we're closed and you need to leave now.

He then tells me that we close at 11. I don't know if this man is on drugs or simply confused, but he needs to exit. My co-worker backs me up and says that he needs to leave or we're going to call the police. He finally relents and heads out the door. We pull everything closed after him and ensure that it's all locked. I look at my co-workers and say, no one leaves until he leaves the parking lot, okay? They both readily agree. The last thing we need is him harassing us off the premises too. We wait, and wait a good ten minutes until he finally drives away. I don't know what this man's deal was, but I hope he won't become a regular library creeper ever again.

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