The Lets Read Podcast - 246: THE HORRIFYING RACE TO SAVE HER LIFE | 22 True Scary Stories | EP 234

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about driving at night, Facebook marketplace encounters & being stranded in the middle of nowhere 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 Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp

I've been a powerline technician in Nova Scotia for over 30 years. There's a lot to love about being a PLT here. It's given me stability and helped me build a great life for my family. Every day I come to work, I feel camaraderie with my team. We look out for each other and put safety first. Working as a powerline technician at Nova Scotia Power isn't just a job, it's a career. There's no better team or place to work if you're a power line technician. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out

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We like to go out of the house as much as possible doing literally whatever outdoor activity we can do. This time, we decided late in the day that we wanted to go camping for around a week. Neither of us have the typical job where your hours are set. And the best way I can explain it is that we basically work for ourselves when it comes to our scheduling, but in the grand scheme of things, we work for a larger company. We packed our bags and headed towards the campsite. It's a state park where you can camp for free for up to 14 days without permits or approval needed. We were driving along a dirt road for a while and I made the horrible mistake of not turning on my high beams.

I don't know why it was something I hadn't thought of doing and it would prove to be something that I'd regret for the rest of my life. It didn't help that I was also going way too fast for the terrain and time of night. Within a split second my girlfriend screamed and only feet in time of night. Within a split second, my girlfriend screamed and, only feet in front of the truck, we both saw a large downed tree in the middle of the road. There was little I could do other than slam on the brakes and hope that we could stop before hitting the tree. Of course, we weren't that lucky. We crashed into the tree and I was out for a couple of seconds. I remember waking up really groggy and the ringing in my ears was very intense,

but my main priority was making sure that my girlfriend was okay. For purposes of streamlining the story, I'll just call her Jessica. I looked over at Jessica and she was completely out. It was dark, but the moon was lighting up her face enough for me to see that her eyes were closed. I yelled her name to try to wake her up, but she wasn't responding to it at all. I took my phone out of my pocket and turned

on the flashlight and pointed it at her. I didn't really know what to expect, but what I saw was something I definitely would not be able to predict at all. I saw the blood first. She was wearing a white shirt, so it was pretty apparent. And then, of course, I noticed the tree branch puncturing through her chest. It wasn't a huge branch. It was probably the same circumference of maybe like a finger or something. I know that's kind of a strange comparison, but I literally can't think of anything else to compare it to. It had come through the windshield, and it was still attached to the tree. I didn't want to shake her because I didn't want to cause any more trauma to her body in the process of trying

to wake her up, so I just didn't touch her at all. I tried calling 911, but there was no service. I started trying to think of what I could do to help her, but there were so few options. The truck wouldn't even start, so even if driving away was the right idea, it wasn't an option. I had a knife in my pocket, so the next logical solution in my mind was to cut the branch from the tree and try to get her out of the truck and lay her down on the side of the road so I could get help knowing someone wasn't going to crash into our truck and only make things worse. I hopped onto the hood of the car and tried so hard to cut that branch, but the knife was small and I was getting nowhere with it.

I started to panic. It had already been over 30 minutes and she still hadn't woken up. I got back into the truck and I just started to pray. And that was weird for me since I hadn't prayed since I was a kid, but at this point I was willing to try anything. It felt like I was praying for hours, but only another 30 minutes had passed. I was only holding on to this glimmer of hope because she wasn't actively bleeding during that one hour. The branch wasn't in the center of her chest, so I was hoping that it missed her heart. I felt her pulse, and it wasn wasn't strong but it was still there. All I could do was wait for someone to hopefully come along and help us.

I don't know if it was God or luck but I started to see light coming from behind us. It filled the inside of the truck and I got out as fast as possible and started screaming and waving at the driver. He stopped right behind her truck and rolled down his window and asked what was wrong. I started explaining to him fast and he told me to slow down since he couldn't understand me. I explained slower and the expression on his face changed instantly when he realized what I was saying. He got out of his truck and went over to the passenger side door with his flashlight and shined it on Jessica. I heard him curse under his breath and told me that the only hope that she had would be to cut the branch and try to

drive her down the mountain to the EMT station since he also had no service. He had a chainsaw on the back of his truck and I was terrified the shaking of the branch would hurt her even more, but there really was no other choice. He started sawing about a foot in front of her chest. I covered her with a blanket to try to minimize any sawdust from getting in the wound. It did vibrate her body a little bit, but she wasn't conscious, so at least she wasn't in pain, so I thought. Finally, she was free from the tree. The man helped me pick her up as gently as possible possible and we placed her in the back seat of his truck laying down. I got into the passenger side and the man turned around and

began driving down the mountain. Jessica stayed unconscious the whole time. It took us 20 minutes to get to the EMT station that I didn't even know was there. They were surprised to see us since usually they get called to emergencies. They loaded her into an ambulance and I got in with her. And the nearest hospital wasn't too far away, thank God. But it wasn't a trauma center so she had to be airlifted to the bigger city that was around an hour away by helicopter. She had a punctured lung, but thankfully she hadn't lost much blood and her heart wasn't damaged at all. The doctors said that if it had been only an inch to the left, it would have pierced her heart and she probably would have died within minutes after the accident. She stayed in a coma for almost two weeks and when she eventually woke up,

she could barely speak because of the pain that she felt in her chest. She stayed in the hospital for over two months. She had intensive surgery to try to repair all of the damage, but it's possible that she might even need a transplant for her lung in the future. I'm just grateful Jessica survived and have stayed in touch with the man who saved her life. Jessica is currently still on oxygen and has trouble breathing from time to time. I take her to monthly appointments and we're doing everything we can to hopefully someday see her fully recover, although we have come to terms with the fact that that may never happen. I asked her to marry me while she

was still in the hospital and she said yes and no matter what happens, I'm looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together. I'll never forget that night, and oftentimes I struggle to forgive myself for what happened, but I'm also glad it's something that she doesn't have to remember. So I've come to find that dating online can be crazy. Let me just say that before I say anything else. You see pictures of someone online, talk for a while and then meet them, not even knowing for sure that they're the person in the picture. It's really absolutely insane. I only wish that I knew that before downloading Tinder myself.

I had gone on a few dates with guys that I met on Tinder, but nothing ever worked out. Most guys just wanted hookups or aren't ready for commitment. Of course, there are also some creeps, but I didn't come across those types too often. After having Tinder for a few months, I met a guy on the app who seemed way too good to be true. He was absolutely gorgeous and when he messaged me, I was so excited. I got even more excited the more we talked when I realized that we had so much in common. He was so nice and funny and from what he told me about himself, he really seemed like my dream guy, you know. After around a week of talking, he asked if I wanted to hang out. I suggested a bar near my house, but he wanted to go to dinner instead.

I usually like to get drinks on a first date so I could leave quickly if it went bad. But I liked this guy so much and he first date so I could leave quickly if it went bad, but I liked this guy so much and he seemed different so I agreed to dinner. For purposes of anonymity we'll just call him Oliver. Now I was just going to drive to the restaurant myself but he insisted on picking me up, saying it was the gentleman's thing to do and so on and so forth. It wasn't the best idea to say yes, but I guess I'm not as smart as I think I am because I agreed and I gave him my address. He said he'd pick me up around 7pm

the next day and man, I was really happy. I told all of my friends where we were going and they told me that I was an idiot for giving a guy I'd never met my address. I thought that they were all just being jealous so I didn't take their comments to heart. I started getting ready around 6 and at exactly 7, my doorbell rang. I opened the door and immediately was disappointed by what I saw. He looked nothing like his pictures. Well, not nothing like them. It was obviously the same person but at least 10 or 15 years older. I didn't say anything and I figured that I'd go on the date and see how it went because I did still like his personality. Over text at least. He opened the door for me and walked around to the other side and got in.

We started driving in the direction of the restaurant and that was around 30 minutes away. He told me how gorgeous he thought I was and that I was even prettier than my pictures, and then very awkwardly he said, What about me? Am I even more handsome than my pictures? At first, I thought he was joking. He had to be right. There was no way that he didn't know that he was much more unattractive than whenever he took those pictures. I really didn't know what to say, but my mom has always told me to be honest so I decided a half-truth was better than nothing. I said he looked good, but that I was curious how long ago he had taken those pictures.

It was immediately obvious he took offense to the question so I quickly apologized and told him to forget I ever asked. I was hoping we could move on from that, but he clearly took it very personally and proceeded to give me the silent treatment for the next five minutes, like some big baby. I had really begun to regret the decision to go out with him and definitely regretted giving him my address. I knew the way to the restaurant, so I was keeping track of where we were going as he drove.

I noticed that he missed the turn on the street where it was located and I told him to just do a U-turn at the next intersection but he didn't respond. He passed the next intersection and I started to get a little freaked out. I told him again that he needed to turn around and again I got no response. He drove along the road and I asked him over and over what he was doing and where we were going, but he refused to even look at me. We stopped at a red light and I knew that I just had to get out of that car. I went to open the door, but I saw that it was locked. There was no button to unlock it and it was one of those locks that retracted inside the door so I couldn't even manually do it myself.

I was trapped. I took my phone out and as discreetly as possible, I texted my friend my location. After driving for some time, Oliver pulled into an empty parking lot outside a grocery store. He parked in a spot on the far end of the lot. I didn't know exactly what he planned to do, but I had an idea that I was not at all about to let that happen. He took off his seatbelt and I reached in my purse. He grabbed my arms and tried pinning me down. I fought back against him and tried as hard as I could to keep him off of me. Finally he let go of my arm and I pulled out my pepper spray and I sprayed him directly in the

face. The only problem was with using pepper spray in such a confined space is you end up getting it on yourself as well. My eyes immediately began to burn and water as he screamed in the seat beside me. He started calling me every name in the book as he tried wiping his face with his shirt and during the struggle I was able to reach over to him and unlock the doors. I shoved it open. I fell out into the ground, scraping my knees in the process. By that point, I was having trouble seeing clearly and my chest had begun to burn from breathing in the fumes from the pepper spray. I tried standing but was so dizzy. I kept falling

back to the ground. I stumbled as I slowly made my way across the lot. I heard his door open and him yelling at me to come back over. I looked back and through all the blurriness and tears I saw him tripping over himself as he followed me. I screamed for help but no one was around to hear my cries. Oliver started to say that he was just joking and that he didn't mean to freak me out. He said if I just came back to the car with him we'd go to the restaurant as planned and that he was sorry and he says this in between screams of pain from his eyes burning. It was terrifying and I genuinely wondered if he thought that I was actually going to

believe him and go back to the car with him. Is he really that stupid? He was close behind me within no time and just as I reached the doors of the grocery store, he grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me back. But the doors had already opened and I screamed for my life. I saw a man came running out and told Oliver to get off of me, which he then did immediately. And the man helped me up and tried to keep Oliver there but there was no stopping him from getting back in his car and driving away. The police were called in that moment and they told me that they'd opened an

investigation but nothing ever came of it. And believe it or not, this guy was never found. I moved out of that house that I was living in at the time and just moved back in with my parents. I started to get really paranoid for a while that he would find me, but it still hasn't happened. I use my story now as a cautionary tale for other women going down the same path that I once was. Even you men out there, you never know who wants to hurt you. But it can and does happen. So please, be careful. I really wasn't planning on telling this story, but it's been a few years and I'm not as freaked out by what happened as I used to be, so why not? I was only 19 at the time. I moved across the country the year before college and

had never had any issues driving home for the different breaks that we had over the school year. It was winter break and my mom really wanted me to come home that year to celebrate the holidays with my family since I hadn't the year before. I agreed but I really didn't want to leave my car for weeks. There had been a lot of car break-ins in the city that I lived in and leaving my car to be vandalized, broken into, or stolen just was not an option to me. I told my mom that I'd be driving home and she wasn't too happy about it but understood. She offered to have my dad fly out and drive with me but I didn't want them to go through all that trouble and I thought a few days on the road by myself would be a good thing.

I've been having issues in my personal life and having the time to think about it without any distractions seemed like a good thing to me. I packed up a few bags that would last me the next few weeks and said bye to my roommate who was pretty bummed out about me leaving and headed out the door. Thinking back on it now, my car probably wasn't worth what I went through during that drive home. It was a 20-year-old Honda Civic that had the propensity to break down a lot, and by a lot I mean at least once a month. I just didn't have the money to replace it. I hopped in the car and was on the highway within a few minutes. I got some coffee before heading out of the city so I could stay awake as long as possible. It was still around 8 in the morning so I figured I'd drive for around 10 hours before hopefully finding a hotel and settling in for the night. I had no definite

plans and was following the fastest route home which probably wasn't the best decision. I know now that I should have taken the route that didn't involve long stretches of highway with nothing but fields for miles and miles. I stopped a few times for a bathroom and snack breaks and by at around 7pm I was done. I had been driving for almost 11 hours and didn't want to be a hazard to myself or others on the road if I kept driving while being that exhausted. I found a relatively nice hotel and got a room for the night and continued my drive the next morning. That day I'd be driving through parts of the Midwest and it wasn't necessarily something I was looking forward to. The last time I drove through it, it was a lot of just flat land and cornfields. Both things I thought were boring to look at on a long road trip. It was winter

though so there was no corn. The weather could have been better but I had no issues the day before so I hoped that it would stay that way. The day went by faster than the previous one and the sun was down before I knew it. By 6pm I was feeling pretty good to keep going so I passed through the next city and drove on. Around 7 I started hearing a knocking sound and wanted to cry when I realized that it was coming from my engine. It had started to snow and my car began to creep along the road until I pulled to the side of the road where it completely gave out. It was getting cold without the heater on and I knew that I had to get help very soon. I checked Google Maps to see if I was close to another city, but the next town, albeit a very small one, was still almost an hour away. I tried calling my parents to tell them what happened, but my service was

completely out. I decided to use the emergency calls only button on my phone to call for help and thank god it worked. The only problem was the closest officer that could respond was at least an hour away in the town that I mentioned earlier. I told the dispatcher that obviously I'd wait and she instructed me to lock the doors and try to hide myself inside the car enough to where it looked as though no one was inside. Apparently, right where my car decided to die on me also happened to be a very sketchy section of the highway that wasn't very safe for stranded drivers, especially young women. I'm not going to lie, having the dispatcher tell me that made me feel physically ill. I felt like I was going to have a along the sides and back windshield as well so no one could see it and it would look like almost black from the outside.

Around 30 minutes into me waiting, I started getting the feeling like somebody was watching me. Now I tried convincing myself that it was just because of the situation that I was in and that all the windows were covered anyway so there was no way that that was possible. I wanted to shake it off but the feeling just wouldn't go away. No matter how much I told myself that I was okay there was something inside of me telling me the situation I was in was about to get very very scary. I turned on the screen on my phone and faced it in the direction of the windows, not knowing what I was about to see would traumatize me for years to come. At first, I felt some ease seeing only the reflection of the sun shield. I turned my phone towards the passenger side windows and in the small crack that wasn't covered, to my horror,

a strip of window was visible and on the other side of the window was the face of a man pressed against the glass with a smile staring directly at me. My first reaction was this blood curdling scream. It was a sound that I didn't know that I even had the ability to make. It was like fear itself was manifesting in sound. It almost actually rang my ears and the second the scream left my mouth, I watched as the man lifted his face from the glass and heard him begin to laugh, the most awful, guttural laugh I'd ever heard. Immediately I heard the car move as the man violently tried the door handle to get access into my car. I was screaming and crying as he hurled himself around the car, howling like he was some animal between his laughing.

It felt like he was taunting me in a way. I called 911 again and was screaming that I needed help now. The woman who answered the second time wasn't as friendly as the first I'd spoken to only 30 minutes prior. She kept yelling at me to stop screaming, otherwise she wasn't going to be able to help me. I was crying, trying my best to calm down as the man outside began to bang on my window with what sounded like a hard object that possibly would make it possible for him to break into my car. The dispatcher began threatening me, telling me that it wasn't okay to prank 911, even though I insisted what was happening was very real. After ten minutes of just pure agony, trying to make her understand as the man just outside my car was putting me through this, she hung up on me, and I felt completely helpless. In the moment, the only relief that I was feeling was the fact that he hadn't been able to break into my car.

I called 911 again, hoping I'd get a dispatcher with more empathy, and thankfully that was the case. A man answered and immediately took my distress into account and helped me calm down enough to get the information he needed. The officer had been sent almost 45 minutes before and now was only around 10 minutes away and I was told that they'd have him get to me as quickly as possible given what I was going through. I was hopeful, but that hope was ripped away when I heard the sound of what was obviously a rock being thrown at my windshield. It shattered just enough to motivate the man to get on top of my hood and start stomping the windshield until it was broken enough for him to reach a hand inside. I screamed and

climbed into the back seat. I was trying my best to get out of reach of this very insane and clearly dangerous person. He started tearing the windshield out of the way and his face was even scarier than it was the first time I saw it. I was paralyzed with fear as I watched him begin to climb between the glass and the car. I had no choice but to get out of the car and hope the officer was close by. I opened the door and turned on my phone's flashlight. I faced it toward the hood and was so relieved to see that he had become stuck. He was trying to climb out but wasn't able to. I then saw the beautiful, flashing red and blue lights in the

distance and heard the sirens as he drove closer. I started frantically waving him down and he pulled up beside me. He was out of his car in seconds and another police car was pulling up behind him only a few minutes later. I was placed in one of the cop cars and watched as they actually drew their guns out, demanding that the man climb out of the car. This crazy guy was screaming and thrashing his body around. One of the officers grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him out of the vehicle. The man tried biting him multiple times before being slammed to the ground and handcuffed. They put him in the back of the other car and told me more officers would be coming down to take pictures of the scene and a tow truck would be down to tow my car. I was driving to the police

station and gave my statement about everything that happened. I called my parents who bought me a plane ticket home from the nearest airport which the officers were nice enough to drive me to. I wish I could tell you the man who did that to me even gave a reason as to why but he didn't. He was so mentally deranged that they said that he wasn't even fit to stand trial eventually and I guess he was taken to some state mental hospital where the last I heard he's still there. I wish that there was some justice for the hell that he put me through and maybe some people would say there was but to me it wasn't justice. He isn't being punished. I am. The memory of what happened punishes me every day. It's gotten easier to

deal with as time goes by, but it'll always be there to torture me anytime I'm reminded of that man in the window. I was driving my truck back home from my girlfriend's apartment. There was a pretty big storm going on that night, but I figured since I only lived ten minutes away, I'd be fine. I would have stayed at her place, but I had to work early the next day and all my work clothes were at my place. It was dark and the power had gone out. Driving in complete darkness with only your headlights to light your way isn't the most comfortable feeling. The rain was pounding down on my windshield so hard, my wipers couldn't even go fast enough for me to be able to see in front of me. It was like driving blind, but I'd lived in that town my whole life so I knew where to go.

It was like muscle memory on where to turn and how long to drive down a street. I turned onto the road that my house was on and almost immediately I could tell something wasn't right. It was like my truck was almost floating. I felt wetness at my feet, and the lights began to flicker inside the truck. There was water seeping in. In my headlights, I could see the water getting higher and higher outside my truck. The water came in faster, and the truck was sinking into it. The current was taking my truck further in, and there was nothing I could do. I took off my seatbelt and tried opening the door on the side and it wouldn't budge. The water was at my knees now and I took

deep breaths. My dad always told me not to panic in a scary situation because panicking won't save your life. I had a waterproof flashlight in my glove box and I took that out. I turned it on and looked around for anything I could break the window with. The car had shut off completely by then, and the power windows were not an option. I just cleaned the truck out the day before, and unfortunately that meant taking out all my tools so I could organize my box. I only had my sweater, the small flashlight, and a pocket knife at my disposal. I called 911 and was greeted by a recorded message telling me every dispatcher was currently handling a call and they'd get to me as soon as possible.

And that's when I started to panic. I needed help and it seemed like I wasn't going to get any. The water was now at my belly button when I decided to squat on my seat and try to keep my head above the water as long as possible. The water seemed to be coming in mostly from the driver's side door so I grabbed my sweater and tried to plug the leak but it didn't work. But I was desperate and willing to try anything. I was on hold for seven minutes before I finally got an answer. I told them what was going on and they were very matter of fact when telling me that I wasn't the only person in that type of flooding situation and that it would be at least 30 minutes

before they could get help to me. I kept telling him that I felt like I didn't have 30 minutes but he told me there was nothing else he could do. I asked if he'd stay on the phone with me but he said because of the demand for emergency services during the storm they needed as many dispatchers as they could get and if the situation got worse I could call back again. I hung up with the dispatcher and already knew that that wouldn't be an option. If the situation did get worse I wouldn't have seven minutes to wait on and hold to tell someone about it. I'd be dead. The water kept rising and my heartbeat quickened. I was scared and confused why I wasn't getting any help and my mom and dad both weren't answering

their phones. I opened the voice recorder app and started recording my goodbyes to my family. I wasn't sure if they'd get them, but it was better than nothing and somehow easing my nerves. It was like I was talking to them without literally talking to them. But something about it was kind of therapeutic in the moment. Only ten minutes after I hung up with 911, the water had begun to reach my chest. I was certain that I was going to die when only one foot of the car had space for air.

I started praying to God to please not let me die, but if I did, to let me go to heaven. I hadn't been very religious in my adult life until that exact moment, but I guess that's how it goes usually. You realize your true belief in God when you really need him. But anyways, another five minutes went by and it was at my neck. I had my cheek pressed against the roof and I couldn't help but cry. I was beginning to lose hope. No one was coming for me. I was only able to breathe through my nose when I heard the sound of an engine nearby. I didn't think that they'd even notice my truck so I started screaming and

flashing my light to get their attention and I felt this sense of relief when I heard this boat pull up next to my truck. I shone my flashlight and saw someone jump into the water next to my driver's side window. He had this window breaker with him and it shattered on the first try. He reached into the truck, grabbed onto my shirt. I took a deep breath as he pulled me out of the truck through the window. They got me on board the boat and I began just thanking them profusely for saving my life as I took deep breaths of the air I thought only minutes before I was about to run out of. They wrapped an emergency blanket around me and we were off. We helped a few more people out of the cars before reaching an area where police and firemen were waiting. I was taken to a hospital, but I didn't have anything medically wrong with me, thank God.

Thankfully, no one did die during that storm, although I know that I came very close to being the one fatality. I felt so failed by my city's emergency services, and I found out that night that the people that saved me weren't even officers. They were just good Samaritans that heard people were in trouble and knew that they had to help. For months after the incident, I had nightmares about drowning. Even now, I get scared to drive during a storm or even go out on a boat. Deep water terrifies me. I've gone to therapy a few times, it never seemed to help so I just stopped. I just hope there's a day, hopefully soon, where I can fully move on from what happened and not let it haunt me like it does right now. I'm glad I survived and I'm glad the people in my community

stepped up when law enforcement wouldn't. I should have never been left there to die and that's exactly what they ended up doing. I only hope no one else gets stuck in the same position and if they do, I hope someone gets to them in time and that their life is spared like mine was that night. I had just gotten off a close to 24 hour shift. I worked in construction and management had no problem overworking us if there was a deadline and we weren't close enough to being done. We were given overtime so a lot of us were fine with it. I was driving home from the job site and because it was close to 3 in the morning, there weren't many other cars on the road. I gotta admit that I was way too tired to actually drive.

I'd been up for almost 40 hours total. And yeah, I was being reckless but wanted so badly to get home and just go to sleep. I was drifting to sleep a few times during my drive home but was immediately woken up by the sight of a young girl sitting by herself on the side of the road. I passed her at first but my gut told me to just turn around and see if she needed help. I pulled up beside her and she looked up at me. She couldn't have been any older than seven or eight years old. I asked her what was wrong or if she needed help but she wouldn't say anything. I felt wrong leaving her there, so I opened my car door and told her to get in and that I wasn't going to hurt her. She was a little hesitant at first, but she got in anyway. I planned to take her to the nearest police station so they could hopefully find out who she was and get her back to her family.

I tried numerous times to get her to tell me anything about herself, but she said nothing and instead just continued to stare at me. Her eyes were on me the whole time. We drove in silence for another ten minutes when I saw another child sitting on the side of the road. I felt like I was going crazy. There was no way this was happening again. I pulled over and this time it was a little boy and he also wouldn't say anything and I figured hey why not jump in the car and they did with zero hesitation. I started asking him the same question I asked the girl but just like her he didn't speak and he also just kind of stared at me. I started getting a little freaked out and

worried that I just gotten myself in the middle of something very, very serious, but I knew that I had to help these children no matter what. I started to think about what it could possibly be. Were they kidnapped and then abandoned on the side of the road? Was it some kind of trafficking situation? Were they lost? I had no idea. Another 15 minutes go by and it happens again, only this time there's a car seat on the side of the road. I pulled over and got out and was horrified and shocked to see a little baby inside. I couldn't tell the age but it looked relatively healthy. It was looking up at me and I knew that I had to take it to the station with me. I put the car seat in the back of the car and called the police the second I got service. They instructed me to go to the hospital that was a

few miles away and that they'd meet me there. We arose shortly after the call and I pulled up to the front. I got the car seat out and instructed the children to follow me inside and they did so without saying a word or making a fuss. I walked inside and only the receptionist was there. I told her what was going on, but the only response that was met with was this very confused look on her face. I motioned the children to go up to her and they just stood next to her. I kept asking her for help, but she just looked around and wouldn't do anything, and I didn't understand why. She kept asking me if I was okay and I didn't know why. I told her I was fine but that the children needed help and the baby looked cold. She asked

me over and over what children I was talking about and no matter how much I pointed at them or told her where they were, she acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. I was getting frustrated and at this point I had no idea what to do. She told me to repeat myself and I just told her again exactly what happened. The whole time I told the story she just looked where I was pointing but something was off. It was like she was looking through the children instead of at them. Just as I was finishing the story, two officers walked in. She had me tell the story again to these officers who were just as confused by it as she was. They looked around for the children that were standing right in front of them and then I was getting confused.

They had me sit down and very calmly told me that there were no children with me and I was carrying a tool bag, not a car seat. I looked down and still saw the car seat in my hand and the children standing nearby and begged them to get them help and reunite them with their families but they were adamant and very serious about what they were telling me.

They told me over and over that there was no one there and that I was having some sort of episode. I've never had any mental health issues and I told them that but it didn't matter. I was admitted under a 72-hour psych hold because they thought I could be a possible danger to myself or others with the hallucinations I was having. They were worried mostly because I was so sure of what I was seeing. I thought that they were all crazy and that only I was the sane one. For the next few days, I was given many tests and evaluations to try to figure out what was going on with me.

At first, they thought it was from sleep deprivation. It's common for people to hallucinate from lack of sleep, but when the hallucinations continued even after hours of sleep, they knew that there was something else wrong. I was scared. I called my mom who came down and went through our family's medical history with the doctors and after the 72 hours were up, I decided to just stay at the hospital. I didn't understand what was happening, but I knew that I needed help. For the next two weeks before my diagnosis, the children followed me everywhere.

They watched me sleep. They kept me company. But still, they wouldn't speak. At first they were comforting, like I wasn't alone, but eventually they became a reminder of the fact that something was wrong with me and I wasn't able to live my life until they figured out what it was. The hallucinations stopped being my only symptom though. I started having speech problems and couldn't think straight, and that's what tipped off the doctors that it might be something else. They'd done scans, but had seen nothing.

I was told if the last MRI they were going to do during that particular hospital stay showed nothing, that I'd have to leave and come back on a later date for more scans that would hopefully show more. I knew what they meant. If I did have some sort of brain tumor, I didn't want to have to wait for it to grow before they could do something about it. We did the MRI and thankfully, one doctor of what seemed like way too many noticed a shadow. I did have a brain tumor. It was small, but it explained all my symptoms. It was determined to be a malignant frontal lobe tumor that was compressing the optic nerve, and unfortunately it wasn't something they could operate on due to its close proximity to the optic nerve.

But they were hopeful chemo and radiation would kill the cancer cells since it had been caught so early. I started chemo and radiation, and after a few weeks weeks the hallucinations occurred less and less. Part of me misses them when they aren't there, but most of me was happy that it meant that I was getting better. Most people probably wouldn't understand, but maybe some will. I'm still currently undergoing treatment and my doctors are hopeful that I'll be in remission soon. I'm grateful for what happened that night. If I hadn't seen those children in the road, hallucination or not, I never would have gone to the hospital and they never would have caught the cancer that early on. I'm still not positive on my official prognosis, but

I'd like to think it's good. I have to have hope. Otherwise, I have nothing. I was 16 and had just gotten my license. Think of the typical self-absorbed idiot 16-year-old guy. Yeah, that was me. It was Friday night and I was begging my mom to let me take the car to meet up with friends to hang out, and she was adamant about that not happening. She kept saying that I was probably going to go out drinking, and she didn't want me to be an idiot and drive drunk. I kept telling her that I wasn't going to, but she was setting her decision. I told her that I hated her and I went to my room,

setting my own decision to sneak out later and take the car. Around 11pm, my mom was asleep in bed and I didn't have to worry about my dad hearing me because he was out of town. I opened my window and hopped out into the front lawn. I had already taken the keys earlier in the night so as quickly and as quietly as I could, I got in the car and drove away. My mom forced me to install Life 360 on my phone so I just turned it off to prevent her from knowing where I was if she did notice that I was gone. She was the type of mom to call the police to go looking for me if I wasn't home when I was supposed to be. I texted my friends and asked them where they were and

of course they had driven to LA. I was over an hour away from where they were and I hate to say it but I still decided to go. I was on the freeway for a while because of traffic and decided to take some side streets because I hoped it would be faster. It really wasn't, but that's just the joys of living in Southern California. Traffic everywhere, all the time. Well, eventually I got lost and I didn't want to turn my phone on to look at a map, so I tried to get myself to a freeway to hopefully find my way to get back home. Time was going by so fast, and the later it got, the more lost I felt like I was getting. It's not easy for me to admit, but I was scared, and honestly, I wanted my mom. I was going down side roads, alleys, and through some not so safe looking neighborhoods, not really thinking about my own personal welfare.

I turned down another narrow road and was shocked to see a truck blocking the way. It was parked sideways like it was deliberate. I tried reversing, but was met with a man, now pointing a gun at my face, pounding on my window. I started sweating, and I didn't know what to do, so I did as I was told. He told me to open the door and get out, so I did. He pulled me out of the car and shoved me to the ground. Another guy ran up to me and started kicking me so hard I thought my stomach was going to rip open from the force of each blow. I was begging for them to stop and screaming for help. A few other guys stood around, watching as he continued to beat me.

I was lying there, just completely helpless. All I wanted as I laid on that ground was for my dad to come and save me. I knew that wasn't possible, but the thought of seeing my parents again gave me some kind of hope of making it out of there alive. I realized that an end to the beating would not come quickly, so I curled up in a ball and brought my arms up to protect my head and face. Doing that must have given him the idea to start stomping on my face though because the second my arms came up, his foot came down right into my jaw. The pain that I was feeling was

minimal in the moment, something I realized later was from the rush of adrenaline in my body. After what felt like forever, it finally stopped. I think that they thought I had passed out, but I didn't. I was just incapable of moving any part of my body. I saw flashes of light through my eyelids and realized that they were taking pictures of me, like they were proud of what they did. They laughed as they searched my pockets. They took my keys, wallet, and phone, and I heard them drive off with my car and all I could think about was how much I wished that I had listened to my mom and just stayed home. I remember laying there as the pain started to creep in. My jaw hurt the most, it felt like it

was broken. I was able to open my eyes and in the dim light I saw all the blood spread around my body on the asphalt. I tried lifting myself up but the pain was too much. I felt tears stream down my face when I began to realize that there was a large possibility of me dying right there, alone on a random street, knowing the last thing I had said to my mom was that I hated her. I didn't hate her. I wanted to see her more than anything. I wished that she was there with me, getting me help and telling me everything would be okay. I must have passed out because the next thing I remember is the paramedics waking me up and asking me my name and what had happened.

I was still lying in the middle of the road as they began to load me onto a stretcher as the ambulance waited to take me to the nearest hospital. I was barely able to speak, but managed to tell them my name before blacking out again, I guess. I woke up in the hospital a week later with my jaw wired shut. Apparently, I had been broken from the stomp to the face. My mom was sitting by my hospital bed when I woke up, and she cried as I told her and the police all the details of what I'd been through. They said it was probably part of some gang initiation and that I was lucky to be alive. The doctors told me the same thing as they described my injuries. I had multiple

broken ribs as well as a massive internal bleeding from being kicked in the torso so many times. Along with a broken jaw, I had a broken nose, other extremely painful facial fractures, but most horrifying injury of them all was the discovery that my Achilles tendons had been cut. To this day, no one can tell me why they did that and why I didn't feel it when it happened. I had to have surgery on both my ankles and even now face the possibility of even more surgeries and physical therapy before I can even think of walking normally again. I had to stay in the hospital for months before being allowed to go home. I feel so stupid for what I did, but what happened to me was

literally the worst case scenario of what could happen when you take your parents' car as a teen. I'm not telling this story to make you think that this is what happens when you disobey your parents. This is not common. I guess I just want to say that sometimes your parents really do know best, and when they tell you no, or that something isn't a good idea, it really is because they care. They know more than you, and don't take their life experience, wisdom, and unconditional love for granted. When this specific incident occurred, I was 29 years old and driving a relatively short distance with my 5-year-old daughter. My husband and I had made plans to drive to his parents' house outside the city

and stay with them for a couple of weeks. My husband works late into the day, so we agreed that it would be better if I and my daughter left first and my husband would follow a couple of hours after us. It was winter, so it got dark early. We left at around 3 p.m. and by 4.30 it was already completely dark outside. We were still an hour and a half from my in-laws house and I was feeling pretty confident that we'd get there without anything bad happening. It's not like I had a feeling or anything but as a mother it's definitely something I thought about in the back of my mind.

We were driving back down a back road that had no street lights and was otherwise completely desolate. I didn't necessarily love the feeling of being completely alone, but I tried my best to just brush it off and kept telling myself that we'd be there before I knew it. We'd driven this road countless times before and never had anything happen to us. We were 30 minutes from the house when I started seeing some flashing lights in the distance. They were two blinking yellow lights in the middle of the road that I quickly recognized as hazard lights on a car. I started getting this nasty feeling and just didn't like the fact that they weren't pulled over to the side of the road but instead were in the middle of

it. I stopped somewhere between 80 and 100 feet away and started thinking of what I should do. I was sure of one thing, though. There was no way that I was stopping to help these people. I mean, I was a woman in her late 20s alone with her young daughter. I'd have to be a raging lunatic to stop to help anyone. I'd call to get them help later, but that's the best I could really do. I'm sure any other woman in my position would feel the same way. You have to put you and your child's safety first before a stranger, always. I sat there for what felt like 30 minutes and still

had no idea what to do. I had no service, so calling my husband or father-in-law was not an option. I had finally made the decision to just turn around and go home and wait for my husband so we could drive there together. The only problem was that it was a two-lane road and it would take more than a three-point turn for me to turn around and start heading back. I started to hesitate, but when I looked in my rearview mirror, I noticed some shadows running up quickly in the distance behind my car. I could see them slightly in the moonlight, but I couldn't make out what they were. They had gotten around 30-ish feet behind my car when I realized that

they were people, and I think they were carrying something. I couldn't sit there anymore. I couldn't even think. It was like my body reacted before my brain did. I put the car in drive and floored it. It wasn't a crazy fast car or anything, but it did what I needed it to do. I was speeding right towards the stop car and had no choice but to drive onto the side of the road past them as best I could. As I passed, I saw more people started to come out from the side of the road. They started throwing things, pretty much anything they could get me to stop. I sideswiped one of the people and they fell back onto the road. Something hit my windshield and it even shattered a little bit,

and whatever it was went flying into the passenger seat. I screamed from the impact and felt bad because my screaming made my daughter begin to scream and cry and I told her everything was going to be okay but she was five and nothing I could say at the time was going to make her feel any better. I just kept driving forward, not letting up on the gas. I was trying to build as much distance as possible between us and those people and before I knew it we were pulling up into my in-law street. They had a guard gate in the front and I pushed the button to be let in, and they immediately could tell that I was in distress when they answered the gate. We were let in and my father-in-law met me at the driveway with his gun. I was bawling and my daughter was sobbing into her grandma's

shoulder. They brought us inside and I told them everything that had happened. My father-in-law has always been very protective of me and my daughter, and I could tell how angry he was getting. He kept asking me if they had followed us here, and honestly, I had no idea. I hadn't been paying attention to the cars behind me, I just was focused on getting to their house where I knew we'd be safe. My in-laws are the kind of people that are very serious about their security. They have countless firearms and security cameras everywhere around and inside their house and property.

They check the cameras and notice the same car passing by the front gate over and over, like it was driving down the street, turning around and coming back multiple times. We decided it was time to call the police, but when they did, they said that they couldn't do anything for us since it wasn't technically an emergency and it was so far outside their city limits. I guess when you live far enough outside the boundaries of where the local police typically serve, they can only help in life or death situations. My dad very explicitly told them that if anyone entered their property,

they would be shot on sight. They told him it was within his rights and that was it. He armed me and my mother-in-law and told us to wait inside the house. He called my husband who was still an hour away and went outside to check the property. We watched the security cameras and just as he was approaching the gate, the car pulled up again. But this time it stopped, right at the gate. Two people got out of the car and they clearly hadn't spotted my father-in-law walking up to the gate. They tried pushing it open and because we couldn't hear what was going on, all we saw was my father-in-law run up to them and fire a shot in the air.

We could tell he was screaming something at them but we didn't know what. They scrambled back into their car and sped off quickly. We weren't sure if they'd be back but I had a feeling that that was the end of it. My husband got to the house an hour later and kept continuously apologizing to me for having me drive alone but I kept telling him that it wasn't his fault and the outcome would have been the same if he was with us. We were safe and that's what mattered. A couple of days later we heard the news that there had been a few carjackings in the area, but thankfully no one was seriously injured in the process. I still hate to think about what

would have happened if I hadn't seen those people sneaking up on us behind the car. What would they have done? I don't even want to know. I'm grateful single mother. I know a lot of people will roll their eyes when they read that, but it's important to the story, so don't judge too hard. The story I'm about to tell you took place when I was in my late 30s and my two daughters were 14 and 16. I had just gotten out of an intense custody battle with her father, but thankfully was awarded full custody due to his drug addiction and rocky financial status. My girls and I were so excited to be moving to another state, away from all the drama the custody battle had caused.

There was a lot of choosing sides and blame being thrown at even my daughters that we decided getting out of such a toxic environment by moving was the best idea for us. It was early June and the weather had started to warm up. We had just packed up the last boxes in our house and decided to leave a few days before the moving truck because we wanted to get settled in the house before all our stuff arrived. Even if there would be no furniture for a few days we were fine with that. We said bye to our old house which was a very intensely emotional thing for us to do and we set off. We were taking the fast route and according to Google, it was only supposed to take a couple of days to get to the new house.

We had the idea that we'd stay in a hotel for one night along the way and that was super exciting for us. My girls love staying at hotels like most kids do and I love seeing them happy. After hours of driving, it was late afternoon and we were ready to get out of the car and find a room to stay in. I checked every hotel in the area, every app, and there was nothing available. Literally not one room was free in any of the surrounding cities for another three nights. I called around and apparently there was a huge kids soccer tournament in town and it was one of the largest in the country. We decided to keep driving until we found something but instead we were met with a stretch of road that had a lot of rest stops but no hotels. We stopped at a gas station to get some gas and

noticed a few biker guys in the parking lot. As I waited at the pump I noticed one of the men staring into the backseat of my car, clearly looking at my daughters who were both asleep. I felt a sort of chill run down my spine and I instantly had this gut feeling to get them out of there. It just didn't seem like a great position to be in. A young mom alone with her teenage daughters. Not great. I didn't even wait for the gas to finish pumping. I took it out, closed the gas cap, got back in the car as inconspicuous as possible and got back on the highway. I watched to see if they were following

us but they didn't and I thought maybe I had just been a little paranoid so I stopped thinking about it. The girls and I decided to stop at the rest stop. We felt like it was safe enough because at the time we had pulled in, there were plenty of other vehicles and people around. I had my daughters cover the back windows with the blankets that we had brought with us and we all fell asleep at around 8pm. I had the intention of only sleeping for a few hours before heading off again, but I had failed to remember to set an alarm.

Instead, I was woken up by the loud roar of a motorcycle pulling up beside the car. I don't know what it is about being a mom, but every sound I hear makes me wide awake in seconds when my daughters are around. I sat up and looked outside the window and was terrified to see the same men from the gas station only a few parking spots away, and they weren't alone. There was at least 25 to 30 of them now. I was fairly positive that they hadn't seen us, so I decided to not wake the girls. I didn't want to scare them. I started the car and turned on the headlights, but no matter how much I tried to pull out of there unnoticed, it just wasn't going to happen. Something in the

universe wanted those bikers to see my car and recognize it quickly. And the second my headlight switched on, every head turned and looked directly at us. I was hoping the men from the gas station wouldn't realize that they had seen us earlier, but of course that wasn't the case. I heard one of them yell out to the buddies that they knew us and that they were a couple of hotties in the back seat. I was immediately terrified, but also rolling my eyes because who even says that? Especially about two teenage girls who were obviously underage. But then again, they didn't seem like the kind of people who would care about that sort of thing.

I honestly thought that if I just drove away that it would be like the last time where they wouldn't follow. But no. They were quick to follow right behind. I woke up the girls and I wish I could have been one of those moms who sugar-coated things to save their kids from being scared, but there was no way to do that with what was going on. I told them that we were being followed by some scary men and to stay down where no one could see them and keep the blankets on the windows. They both started freaking out and crying and I understood. As I sped down the highway, these bikers got more aggressive. They began throwing things at my car and swerving as they tried to run us off the road. I was trying my best to stay calm and on the outside so as to

not scare the girls any more than they already were, but on the inside, I was having a full-blown panic attack. I knew my main priority had to be maintaining control of my car. It was clear that if something happened when they were successful in running us off the road, nothing good would come of that. They started yelling at me to just pull over, and that they only wanted to chat. I continued to stare forward outside the windshield and not even acknowledge them, and they didn't like that. They started calling me names, demanding I roll down my window. I did roll it down about an inch to try and plead with them to just stop and leave us alone, but there was no way they could hear me. We drove like that for at least five miles before entering the next city,

and by that time it was already two in the morning and finally I came to my senses and told my oldest daughter to just call the police. Through tears she told them what was going on. I don't know what they told her, but she said that they were coming. Unfortunately, it just wasn't soon enough. I felt something hit the side of the car and within seconds we were off the side of the road and headed for a tree. I slammed the brakes as hard as I could and the car came to a very violent halt. We were all okay, but I started to wonder for how long though. The bikers surrounded us and started pounding on the windows and pulled on the door handles

while the car shook. The girls were screaming at the top of their lungs and begging me to make them go away, but there was really nothing I could do. I prayed to God that we would make it out of there and thank God he answered my prayers. We heard sirens in the distance and watched as the men all got back on their motorcycles, speeding away. We hugged each other and cried until the officers were standing at the doors of the car. They had us step out and we explained everything. Now they tried to get in contact with the bikers around that area but they weren't able to track them down, specifically at least. But to this day I'm still terrified every time I see a group of motorcyclists. My girls are older now with children of their, and my biggest piece of advice to them is always carry protection.

You just generally never know when you're going to find yourself in a situation as psychotic as that. This is a short story that happened to me several years ago when I was a junior in high school. All of my friends got to travel to Myrtle Beach with the baseball team for spring break, but since I didn't play baseball, I was stuck at home. My one friend, Dave, was home too since we were the skaters of the friend group. We spent most nights of the break hanging out together and not doing really much, except for one night when we stayed at Dave's house. He literally lives in the middle of the woods. The closest neighborhood isn't that far away, but because of where his house is located, it truly feels like the middle of nowhere. Toward the end of the break, we snuck out of the house to see a girl who lived near him.

Since she and a few other girls from school were still in town, we figured that we would hang out with them. And like I said, it wasn't far, just sort of an unnerving walk because there aren't very many lights and most of the walk is in the seclusion of trees and rocks. We had an awesome time hanging out with them. I liked this girl at the time, so it was great to be able to spend so much time with her. When we were walking back to the house that night, Dave noticed some random guy following us but I didn't think anything of it. He was freaked out and I told him to relax. The guy was following us closely but not close enough for us to actually panic. When we made it back to his house, I watched the guy continuing walking up the street and he never seemed to look back. I just looked at my buddy and told him that he was freaking out for no reason.

The next night, we hung out again and his parents were going out of town for the weekend so he was going to have the house to himself. Since he was embarrassed by his house, he didn't want to have anyone over. Trust me when I say, I pushed hard for the girls to stay over but I lost the argument. I told the girls that we couldn't hang out there so instead, Dave and I walked to her house again. This time, we spent a considerable amount of time there. We didn't walk home until after about 3 in the morning. Dave was relieved on the way home that we didn't have anybody following us this time. I helped him close up the house and we got comfortable in the living room before passing out on the couches. At this point in the night, I was having one of the best nights of my life.

I actually kissed the girl that I liked and I legitimately felt invincible. Not long after lying down, we heard a knock on the door and we both froze. What the hell was that? Dave exclaimed. Then the knock came again. It was a low and rhythmic knocking. Each bang on the wood made my hair stand up, and I slowly got up, and standing a few feet from the door, I shouted, Who is it? There was no response right away, and then a young female voice shouted from the other side, Hey, uh, I was wondering, can I please hide inside? I didn't say anything right away.

The absurd nature of the statement and the calm tone of her voice left me speechless. Before I said anything, she spoke again. It's going to be too late if you don't let me in. Can I please hide inside your house? When I said that I was speechless, I mean I was absolutely at a loss for words. I had a million things flying through my head and I just didn't know what to do. My instincts told me that it was the girls playing a joke on us, but I didn't recognize that voice. I decided not to answer and neither did Dave, and we just sat in silence. And then I noticed the doorknob starting to jiggle back and forth.

First slowly, and then more aggressively. And then, the calm voice instantly became more sinister when she said, Open the damn door now! I finally was able to shout, Go away! I'm going to call the police! There were no sounds for a few seconds. This woman spoke again. She started in a soft tone and in the middle of the sentence, I could hear this sinister tone coming out and she says,

Hon, if you don't open the door right now, I'm going to lose my mind. Dave finally jumped up from the couch and shouted for her to go away. And then a second voice could be heard from behind the door. It was a deep voice from a man and he said, Good call, bud. Very, very good call. Right after he said that, I thought I could hear what sounded like footsteps walking away. So I looked out of the window and saw two people walking down the street. One of them looked suspiciously like the person from the previous night.

It just seemed very similar in stature. We were terrified and stayed awake for the rest of the night. Since his parents weren't home, we didn't call the police, even though obviously we should have. Dave was scared that his parents would get mad if the police showed up and they weren't home. On Sunday morning when his parents came home, Dave told them what had happened and they instantly called the police, calling us stupid, which we were. Better late than never, I guess. And since several hours had passed since the woman had been at the door, the police were honest with Dave's parents and told them that

they would probably never catch these two people, but that they would be on the lookout for similar incidents. I have no idea what those two wanted or who they even were. I don't even like being outside at night anymore. That night really messed me up for a long time, and I'm still trying to recover from the mental nightmare I endured. I always had a really hard time focusing when it came to schoolwork. I've had some traumatic experiences in my life and as a result, it just makes me feel off.

I can't focus at all when I'm home. Even when it's quiet, every little thing bothers me and I feel like I just read the same line a million times. In my sophomore year of college, I started driving to a secluded location and doing all my readings for school. I didn't live far from the country, so it would only take me about 20 minutes to drive to a peaceful location. I found the peace and tranquility of nature to be soothing. I know it may sound crazy to some people that I would drive that far just to do homework, but I really had no choice. It ended up being the only way that I could concentrate on my work.

When the end of my senior year was approaching, I started to freak out about one of my big exams. The exam was 40% of my final grade and I needed at least a 75% on the exam to pass the course. I decided that I was going to spend the weekend before the exam studying and that I was going to make my own little adventure out of the experience. Instead of going to my usual spot, I was going to travel to an area a few hours away, hike the beautiful trails and find a nice quiet spot to study. I left first thing Saturday morning and arrived at my destination around 10 in the morning. I spent the early part of the day hiking until roughly 2 in the afternoon. I found this amazing spot near the top of a steep

hill. It was a clearing that overlooked a bunch of trees. There were some rocks on top of the hill and I was able to get comfortable with my books and computer. I started reading my textbook and I thought that I could hear the sound of twigs snapping. Now in my distracted brain, all I could concentrate on was the sound of the twigs. It was driving me crazy. I first thought that there was some sort of deer or chipmunk or something that was prancing around in the woods. I thought that I could go over and maybe scare the animal and whatever it was would just flee further into the woods and away from me so I could focus. I made my way over to the edge of the tree line and shouted some nonsense noises to try to scare whatever it was, but I heard nothing. I made a sound again and clapped my hands together and again I heard nothing.

I stared intently through the thick trees and I swear that I saw a silhouette of a person move but I figured that my mind was playing tricks on me. I kept looking for a little while longer and I realized that the noise had stopped. I thought to myself that whatever I did must have worked. I sat back down and started to read my textbook again, but now I couldn't concentrate because I couldn't help the feeling that something wasn't right. I flipped through the pages several times and once I realized that I wasn't retaining anything, I decided to pack my things up and head back.

I was fairly far away from where I parked anyway, so I figured it was time to walk back and I would just find a spot to study that was closer to where I parked. When I walked over to the tree line, I paused instantly. Standing about 30 feet away, shrouded in the trees, was the backside of somebody. It appeared to be a man since the shoulders were so broad, but because the back was facing me, I couldn't be sure. They were dressed in all black, and it looked like they were wearing something on their face. I didn't move or say anything. I just stood there frozen and tried to calm down since I had a million thoughts flying through my head. It felt like an eternity, but in reality it was probably only seconds later,

and the person turned abruptly, facing me. And I can't accurately express how much fear I felt in this moment. The mask was horrifying. I would guess that it was homemade, since I had never seen a mask like this in my life. It appeared to be white, but also appeared to have a long snout hanging from the mask. It almost looked like a mask from one of those scenes in Beetlejuice if anyone knows what I'm talking about except somehow this was creepier in the moment. As I said the mask was white and not skin colored like in the movie. The eyes on the mask were jet black and wild hair protruded from the mask. I think the hair was attached to the mask and not the person because it was sort of a mustard yellow color. The person started to hum and I didn't notice it at first and I didn't realize that it wasn't some melody.

It was a really drawn out hum, like a sort of groan coming from this person, and they started to step closer to me. I freak out. The clearing that I was on was not big, so in order to walk back to the trail, I would have to walk by this person. I could have slid down the hill, but I probably would have broken my computer and most likely broken my legs since it was extremely steep and very high up. This person started to run full speed at me, still making that horrible groaning noise. I still can't even believe what happened next. The person ran at me, stops, right in front of me. I'm frozen there. And they laugh. And then they just start humming again, but didn't actually lay a single finger on me.

Not wanting to know what was happening or taking any chances, I just ran as fast as I could, around them. The entire time that I was running, I could hear this person seemingly trying to follow close behind me, still humming, but I didn't bother turning around. I finally made it to my car, and that person was no longer following me. I tried calling the police, but of course, my phone service was pretty shoddy out there, and I drove several miles to the closest town. I called the police once I got there and reported what had happened, and I don't think they did anything since technically the person didn't do anything other than just disturb me, and there were no other complaints.

I have no idea what that freak was doing in the woods. I don't know if they were on something, playing some type of prank, or truly messed up enough to actually hurt someone. It seems unlikely that it was a prank since I didn't see anybody else in the woods and it seemed like we were the only two humans in the area. I realize I shouldn't complain since I was unharmed in the incident but the psychological trauma that I felt, it still sticks with me to this day. I'll never forget that terrible afternoon

and the memory of my entire life. My friend Shane decided to have a cookout since a lot of our friends had just graduated from college and were home for the summer. The afternoon started exactly how you would expect a summer cookout to go. We grilled some burgers, drank some beers, and enjoyed a beautiful summer day. One of the great things about Shane's place was that it was seemingly in the middle of nowhere and located right on the lake. If you knew Shane, you would understand just how out of character this was for him. Shane was very much a city man. He grew up in the city, spent all of his time in the city,

and even went to college in the city. Being outside, fishing, and boating are things that I never thought that I would associate with Shane, but here we are. He ended up getting a great job after college, received a massive sign-on bonus, and he works from home 90% of the time. He spent the majority of that bonus on a boat, even though he had never driven a boat in his life. The afternoon of the cookout, everybody was begging Shane to take the boat out and he was refusing. I think the main reason he refused was that a lot of people were at the house and he didn't want to leave them unattended, but honestly, I don't think that he knew how to operate the boat and that's why he didn't want to take it out. As the afternoon progressed and

people started leaving and eventually there were only seven of us left. The girl he liked at the time started to beg him again to take the boat out and before he knew it, all of us were chanting and begging him to take it out as well and finally he gave in to the pressure. I knew right away that this was a bad idea. He was struggling badly to get the boat untied from the dock and once we were untied, it was like a 15 minute struggle to get moving into the lake. It was clear to me that Shane most likely had never done this before, at least on his own. It was around 5 in the afternoon at this point, so it was still light outside, and we probably had a good 3 hours of light. I figured that we would take the boat

around the lake a little bit, not move too far from shore, and be back before it got dark outside. Well, it was apparent that not everyone on the boat shared my concern. Everyone except me was pushing Shane to go further. Turn down this channel, go over here, etc. Before we knew it, we had traveled far from Shane's house. It was starting to get dark out and I could tell that Shane was nervous. I asked if he knew where we were and he just shrugged quietly. Around 8.30 it was nearly dark out and everyone on the boat was getting cranky.

And now tempers started to rise because Shane had no clue where we were and he had no idea how to get back. Shane started yelling at everyone, telling us it was our fault for making him take the boat. He was half right, of course, but some of the blame is on him also since he gave in to the pressure. Around nine, not only were we just drifting on a pitch black lake, but it also started to rain lightly, which caused the temperature to drop quite a bit. We all huddled up under the little canopy on his boat,

and I said that I was going to call the authorities and they would send someone out to help us. Well, Shane didn't like this idea one bit. Basically, he said that we can't call. And this is when he finally admitted to us that he didn't have a license to drive the boat and the boat wasn't insured either. So if the police came out that he would be getting a nice number of fines. And so instead of getting help, we just kept drifting. And at this point, nothing was scary, it was just annoying. I mean, sure, the darkness of night on the water is eerie, but being cold, wet, and angry trumped any feelings of fear that I may have had. At nearly 10 o'clock, Shane exclaimed

that he knew where we were and he would get us back. He said that we were almost at his place. A few minutes passed and we started making our way close to the shore, and just as we were preparing to dock, Shane said in a sort of depressed voice, oh no. I looked up and realized the reason why he said that was because there was no dock to be found, and no houses in sight. Wherever we were, this was not where Shane lived. Finally, I had the genius idea to check the GPS. I don't know why it didn't dawn on me until now, but I blame it on the drinking and the fact that I've never actually been on boats or used GPS on a boat. It took a second to find service, but when I finally did, I realized

the nightmare situation that we were in. Not only were we nowhere near Shane's house, but we were also truly out in the middle of nowhere. The shoreline next to us was nothing more than a small little island, and the next closest shoreline seemed very far off. After some panicking and yelling, of course, we all calmed down and agreed to work together to get back to the mainland. The idea was that once we got to shore, we could just use the GPS map to follow the shore all the way back to Shane's place. It took a little while, but we eventually got to the shore and started slowly making our way back.

About ten minutes into the trip, we saw a light coming right at us on the horizon of the lake. It was another boat. We figured that we could ask them for help and just make sure that we were on the right track. Shane got the other boat's attention, and that guy was creepy. He was an older man, rough looking, and I could smell the fish from where I was sitting. This guy was clearly some type of fisherman. And he said we weren't far off and that he would guide us back so we don't get lost. We were relieved, and we started following the fisherman.

I started to question him a little since the GPS said that we were going in the opposite direction now. But Shane said not to worry and to trust the fisherman since he probably knows shortcuts or something. At around 11.30, the fisherman docked his boat on this rickety dock somewhere and he asked us how our fuel was and Shane admitted that he was nearly out. The fisherman said that he would fill us up, but he needed help getting the fuel since he hurt his back and couldn't lift the containers. So me, Shane, and the other two guys got out and started walking with the fishermen. The girls stayed in the boat and they seemed kind of freaked out, which I couldn't blame them. Something wasn't really right about this.

I didn't know anything about boats, so I didn't know if this was proper boat etiquette or if this was one big red flag. We walked about a hundred feet from the boat and there was a small shack but no house with it. In fact, there was nothing in the area except trees in the shack. The man said the containers were just inside the door but the door was heavy. He asked if one of us could get the door. Shane started to open the door and when he opened it, there was nothing inside. We turned around and the man was running towards Shane's boat. Without saying anything to the girls, he jumped into Shane's boat and turned it on. We could hear these girls screaming and feared the worst. Thankfully, he didn't get very far.

Shane and I dove into the water and swam to the side of the boat as the man was beginning to leave. Shane slipped getting into the boat, which alerted the man to our presence, and once he saw us, he dove into the water and just swam to shore. We lost him in the darkness seconds later, and we picked up our two friends on the rickety dock and I just called the police. With the little service that I had, I didn't care what Shane said anymore. Thank Christ, they eventually showed up and we realized that we were about an hour away from Shane's house. Believe it or not, they actually found this guy's fisherman boat but I learned quickly that apparently this boat had been stolen.

Shane got into trouble for not having his boat legals and still gave me crap for calling the police to this day, even though some deranged man almost stole his boat with our friends in it. I don't really talk to Shane anymore since that night, since he blames me for everything that happened. And as far as I know, they've never caught this random dude, so I have no idea what his plan was. All I know is that this was one of the worst nights of my life, and it could have been a whole lot worse if we hadn't caught him before he left the dock. I have spent the better part of my adult life as a painter. It can be tedious work, but it's paid me decent over the last 10

plus years. Being a painter has allowed me to open my own business, and to this day, it's been very successful. Over the years, I have painted all sorts of houses, new ones, old ones, and everything in between. I have painted some houses that look like heinous crimes have taken place there, but none of the houses have been more memorable than a house I was contracted to paint that was truly in the middle of Nowhereville, USA. About 40 minutes from where I live was this beautiful estate on many acres of land. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was big. The house was three stories and very old. The guy who bought the house was an investor of some kind from Florida and wanted to buy a house in this area for some reason. I didn't care about any of that since

the guy was paying me well and a job is a job. My crew for this job was myself, my brother, and his wife. Since the house was so big, it was easily going to take several days to paint the entire interior of the house. The guy didn't live here and the house was empty so that made it easy. He was also putting in new floors in a couple of weeks so I wasn't worried about covering the floors which also made painting just a little bit easier. We started the job on Monday and was hoping to finish by the end of the week. Since nobody was at the house I was even planning on staying a few late nights to get in some extra work. Monday was a little slow, but we put in some decent hours, and Tuesday we picked up some steam and got a lot of work done. My brother and his wife left

at around 5.30pm and I decided to stay to finish up one of the rooms. Well, the few hours that I planned on staying turned into about five more hours, which was a major mistake. My back hurt so bad and I was feeling incredibly stiff. It was closing in on 11pm and I still needed to drive home, shower, eat and get ready to be back there at around 9 in the morning. I started cleaning myself up a little bit and getting myself organized for the next day before I left. While I was gathering some brushes and tape, I thought that I heard the sound of whispers coming from one of the other rooms. The house was objectively freaky. It was a giant mansion in the middle of nowhere with no furniture and looked like a recipe from a horror movie.

I'm not going to lie, I half expected a ghost or something to jump out. After a quick and not very thorough investigation, I chalked up all the whispering sound to just my mind or the wind or something, house noises as they say. It was a big empty house after all, so having a draft and a creepy wind sound didn't seem impossible. And the next day came, and I was feeling sore from the night before, but I needed to get a good jump on the day. I told my brother and his wife about the creepy whispers, and they were actually pretty spooked out. She's all about ghosts and creepy things, so she was having a

field day with this story. That evening, they decided to stay late with me and knock out a bunch more of the painting. I think my brother's wife just wanted to potentially hear the ghost, but either way, I was happy for the help. A little after nine, I heard a loud scream come from upstairs. It was my brother's wife. It sounded like one of those life or death type screams too. I remember having the thought, running upstairs, that she was probably playing some joke on us, but the scream sounded so real. When we finally made our way to the room at the end of the hall, she was lying in this fetal position on the ground by the window where she was painting. She had a stand-up light that had knocked over next to her and some of the paint spilled on the ground.

At first, she seemed inconsolable. My brother was trying to ask her what was going on, and she couldn't get any words out. I was freaked out more than I had ever been in my entire life, and I didn't have any idea what was happening, and I started to wonder if she actually did see a ghost, as unplausible as that may seem, but just based on her reaction. She finally started to speak, and with fear in her trembling voice she said, I was painting around the window sill and in the reflection of the window I saw the closet door behind me start to open. I turned around and two people ran out of the closet down the hall somewhere.

And that was somehow scarier to me than anything I was thinking. The idea of ghosts is silly when you think about it, but the fact that two people were in the house, well, that freaked me out more than some hypothetical apparition. We grabbed our phones and went to the car where we barely had any service But we did have enough to call the police and the homeowner Even though the house was out in the middle of nowhere The police showed up pretty quickly and searched the home We were horrified when they escorted three people

Out of the house Two women and a man The look in their eyes as they were being apprehended is still burned into my memory. These sort of dead but angry eyes, just staring daggers right through me. Apparently, these people had been squatting there for months, even before the house was even purchased. They somehow had avoided being seen or found out during that time. It makes my skin crawl thinking that I was in the house alone with them and I had no idea. I don't think they intended on hurting us but all three of them had

knives and various other things on them and I'm happy I didn't have to find out. I'm not sure exactly what happened to them after they were arrested. All I know is that this job made me feel off from the very beginning and apparently my gut was correct. I'll never get the sound of her screaming out of my head and that's a sound that I hope I never have to tell you be a lesson for you. Choose your friends carefully. Because sometimes the people you think are your friends

are the very monsters we're afraid of. I know that sounds kind of cliche, but honestly it's true. This is an absolutely crazy story and I'm still in awe of how certain individuals can act. A little more than a year ago I moved to a new town. I'm a city girl, but was happy to start a new life in this town. I don't want to say that this is a country town, but it's a fraction of the size of the place where I grew up. I spent the first few months just keeping to myself and learning the day-to-day operation and how it works at my new job. On weekends, I would just sort of listen and see what everyone was up to. A couple of weeks into the job, I finally got invited out by one of the girls I worked with.

I'll be honest, this was a lot like high school. This was the girl that I wanted to hang out with. She was the popular girl at our job and all the guys liked her and the girls wanted to hang out with her. Yes, we were adults and this mindset still applies. We went to some local bar that Friday night after work. I wasn't drinking much since I didn't want to make a fool of myself with my potential new friends. It didn't take long for me to realize exactly the kind of person she was. For the purpose of the story, I'll refer to her as Marissa. She was getting that wild level of intoxicated, and it was uncomfortable. I laughed along and just hoped the night would end soon.

I made sure all the girls got an Uber home, and I finally headed and just hoped the night would end soon. I made sure all the girls got an Uber home and I finally headed off myself at around 2 in the morning. I was exhausted that night and clearly underestimated these girls. When I woke up in the morning, I had forgotten about a lot of the nonsense from the night before and just remembered the good times. I was happy to have friends and not be alone and that thought alone blinded me from the reality of who Marissa really was. The next night we all hung out again and the night was a copy of the previous nights. Nothing noteworthy other than Marissa being out of control again. That week at work, all week long, Marissa was constantly saying how she couldn't wait to get out again this weekend

and that she loved hanging out with me. I was actually flattered and was ready to do it again this upcoming Friday. Friday came, and this time she was beyond intoxicated. She had become mean, even to her friends and the other girls we work with. They all left and in so many words basically said, forget this chick. I was paraphrasing there since I don't want to write what the girls actually said and before I knew it, it was just me and Marissa at the bar and she was barely coherent. I got her home and stayed on her couch to make sure that she was alright. When I woke up in the morning, she was already awake and cleaning her kitchen. She thanked me for the previous night and invited me to a party later in the evening.

I knew I didn't have plans, so I of course accepted the invitation. She told me to pick her up at around 10 that night and that she would direct me to the party. She had me excited about the party before we even left the house, and she told me it was going to be an epic party at her friend's barn. Massive bonfire, some food, drinks, dancing, and much better company than we would have at a local bar. I was so excited that I was basically singing in the car. Well, that excitement started to dwindle when I realized how long we'd be driving. It was after 11 and we still weren't there.

If I knew I was going to have to drive an hour to some party, I would have declined, but Marissa was pumped and I really wanted her to like me. She finally had me pull over and sketchy is the only word I can think of to describe the situation. There was nothing in sight at all. No streetlights, no signs, no houses, and most notably, no party. I asked her what was going on and she says, you're going to love this. It was so dark when we pulled up I didn't even realize that there was a small barn on the side of the road. I could see the beam from a small flashlight shining through the doors. Marissa told me that the party was over there and we needed to hurry

up, which made no sense. Why would we need to hurry up? While we were briskly walking over towards this barn, I noticed that Marissa was wearing jeans and the person who was waving the flashlight seemed to be dressed in all black. Yet here I am, wearing some cute dress and I got full makeup on. When I was almost at the barn door, I noticed that Marissa seemed to have fallen back. She was walking about a foot behind me for some reason. The guy with the light opened the door and inside I still can't believe what I saw. It was one of Marissa's friends from the bar, the one that said not so nice things to her. She was sitting unconscious in a chair. I immediately freaked out and demanded to know what was going on,

and Marissa replies, she disrespected me, and now she's paying for it. I was stunned by the completely unhinged nature of her. I knew at this point that she was a wild party girl, but I didn't think that she was capable of whatever this was. I didn't want to know why I was there, and I didn't think that she was capable of whatever this was. I didn't want to know why I was there and I didn't give her the option to tell me. Thinking as quickly as I could, I just kicked some dirt in the guy's face who was holding the light and I just grabbed the

unconscious girl. I wasn't worried about Marissa stopping me because I was nearly double her size. I hoisted her up, running to my car, and basically threw the girl in my back seat and sped off. While I was driving, I was fortunate enough to get some service, and even though, like I said, there was nothing anywhere close to us, I was able to call the police and told them that I had an unconscious woman in my back seat. I told them about Marissa, and that she was with a guy. Thankfully, not long into the drive, the girl started to move and groan, and then she started to talk. I pulled over and explained what had happened, and she started crying. She said that the guy was some guy that she had been seeing for a little bit,

and he was taking her to a party at a barn. When she got there, Marissa was there and hit her with some sort of heavy object across the face, and whatever it was knocked her out at a barn. When she got there, Marissa was there and hit her with some sort of heavy object across the face, and whatever it was knocked her out for a while. We finally linked up with the cops, and Marissa's former friend was taken to the hospital and treated for a minor concussion, and thankfully that was all. Later that evening,

they found Marissa at her house, and she was completely surprised as to why she was getting arrested. She claimed to have done nothing wrong, and the events that just transpired were just a prank. They never did catch the guy, and since he had been using a fake name and a fake cell phone number, Marissa refused to turn him in. From what I understand, she still claims that this was just some sort of prank, and now she's locked up under false pretenses under her word. I can't remember exactly what they did charge her with, but I know she got in trouble for assaulting her with a weapon and

kidnapping, so obviously her future doesn't look too bright. This is truly insane to be a part of, and I hope at least one person can learn from my mistakes. I've always been someone who loved the outdoors, even as a kid growing up in a small city. My parents would have to yell my name from the porch to get me to come in at night, and I grew up when internet was still a relatively new thing and you had to use dial-up to get connected. Now some of you hearing this can probably hear the sound just by me mentioning dial-up. Anyway, the story I'm about to share takes place about 10 to 11 years ago. I was with my girlfriend at the time who I met in college. It was serious, but it was an on-again-off-again relationship.

In all honesty, it was full of childish drama, and I was super immature at that point. We made plans to attend a local fair or carnival, whatever you want to call it, with some family and friends. We actually had a decent-sized group, so we decided that we would all drive separately, and that way we would have several cars, and then everyone could leave whenever they wanted. I'm not usually a drinker, even back in my college years. Alcohol has always given me really bad anxiety the following day, so I usually just avoid it. For whatever reason, this particular night I was in a really good mood and actually felt like drinking. I was having a bunch of drinks with my girlfriend's dad.

We were giving each other the old, hey, how long is it going to take you to finish that? Or, this is already my second one and you're on your first? That kind of thing. After, I don't know, a third or fourth drink, my girlfriend comes up in front of everyone and says something along the lines of, are you going to slow down? Or I think you need to relax. And something like that, I honestly don't remember. I do remember acting very poorly and basically pouting because I was annoyed and embarrassed that she had said that. Again, I was super immature at the time. I remember then just completely shutting down.

Not being rude to anyone, but one word answers and being very antisocial. I remember my girlfriend even came up to me with a beer to apologize, which I declined and continued with a cold shoulder. Now looking back on it, I don't know why I was so mad and reacted that way. After walking around for another hour, I said that I was going to take off and head home. Since I didn't drive and had been drinking, my girlfriends asked how I was getting home. I said a friend was coming to get me and I just walked off. I left the fair and walked to the parking lot. Now a ways back from the parking lot was a forest and behind that I believe there are farms. It was still light out so I figured that I would just

walk into the woods and clear my mind and get out of that crappy mood that I seemed to be in. After heading into the woods for what I thought would be a quick walk, I started getting extremely hot. I don't know if it was because I was feeling buzzed from the drinks, or because it was just actually getting hotter out, and the longer I sort of trampled around the woods, the more embarrassed I felt about my actions. I was realizing how childish I had acted.

I figured that I would just head back to the fair, see if everyone was still there and meet back up with the group. But after walking for about 15 minutes I realized that I didn't know where I was. I was lost. I couldn't find the path out of the parking lot. I stayed calm and tried to analyze my surroundings to see if anything would stick out. I started to move towards where I thought I had heard a sound but realized that I really had no idea what I was doing and where I was going. I was stuck in the middle of the woods, with no one around to help. I pulled out my phone and even though I had a bunch of text messages, my texts or calls just wouldn't go through and there didn't seem to be

any service. After sitting on the dirt and thinking for several minutes, I thought the best idea was to just wait until nightfall. I didn't want to sink deeper into the woods not knowing where I was and I thought that I would be able to see the lights from the fair and make my way back. Then I would have cell service and I could call for a ride home. As the sun began to set and dusk started to set in, I became more uneasy. I noticed every little sound, a branch breaking, the wind shaking trees, but as it got darker and darker, I swore that I heard voices. I would twist my neck so fast thinking that I heard something.

It sounded like the voices were getting closer and closer until... silence. Everything was so quiet and then my heart jumped out of my chest as I heard someone yell, there you are, get him! And I started running. I didn't know where I was going, but I just ran. I was bumping into trees, taking branches to the face. I tripped and fell, and on the second fall, I decided to just stay still. I sat as quietly as I could, seeing if I got away from whoever was screaming and seemingly looking for me. And why were they looking for me? Was I just being paranoid? How did anyone know that I was even in the woods, sitting and waiting for dark? After a few minutes of silence, I heard footsteps going over leaves and branches. It sounded like people were talking to each other. The only thing I remember is hearing

is, she expects us to get him, or something like that. And once I heard the voices start to trail off back in another direction, I began slowly walking. It had become very dark and I wasn't able to see any lights as of yet. But after what I assumed might have been five to ten minutes of walking, I started to see a glow in the distance and as I moved closer, I could hear the murmur of life. As soon as I realized that it was the fair and my way out, I just sprinted as fast as I could hear the murmur of life. As soon as I realized that it was the fair,

and my way out, I just sprinted as fast as I could. I don't think I'd ever been that scared in my life, but I always look back on this experience wondering if there was anything to be scared about. Who were the people in the woods? Were they even looking for me, or was it just some big prank or coincidence, or maybe it was someone just being an idiot, I don't know. Whatever it was, now when I'm out hiking or in the woods, I always feel like I see something in my peripherals even though I know nothing's there. I always make sure that I'm back home by dark. So the events of this story still make me think back to that night, and I'm still trying to process what exactly happened. The events that took place on this strange night were about ten years ago from the moment I'm writing the story.

My friends and I were seventeen years old and spent most of our weekends with each other, a habit that started back in elementary school, playing video games and sleeping in each other's houses. All through middle school and high school, this was our weekend routine. At one point during senior year, we decided that we wanted to mix things up a little bit by taking a little night drive. It was myself, who had a license and a car at this point, and my two friends, Robbie and Scott. My parents trusted us because all things considered, we were good kids. The night started out like most nights. Scott and Robbie showed up at the house to sleep over for the night. We ordered some pizza, played some games, and just talked about school for a little bit. Shortly after 11pm, we decided to go for a ride.

For no other reason than to listen to some music and just exchange some good old fashioned conversation. We just drove for a while, turning down roads that we didn't even know existed and before we knew it, we had been driving for several hours and I couldn't remember the last time we saw streetlights. It was extremely dark and desolate wherever we ended up driving. Around 1, maybe a little bit later, we were driving down this really eerie and very poorly lit road when we approached a car that was on the side of the road. But it was not just parked on the side of the road. It was kind of somewhat crooked and the hood was tucked into the shrubs, almost as if though the car had lost control and

got into an accident. The red taillights were still giving off a soft glow on the road, and Robbie suggested that we look in case someone fell asleep at the wheel or something bad really happened. If someone had got into an accident, it would have taken hours for paramedics to find them if we didn't do something right now. We slowly and cautiously approached the vehicle. It was an older red Honda Civic. We got out of our car slowly and began approaching this red car. Robbie said in this really brave voice, Hey, anybody there? You hurt?

And there was no response. And as we got closer, I shouted, wait. While we were walking over, I started to make out some type of figures in the back seat just sitting up and Robbie shouted again and this time with a bit of urgency in his voice, Hey, are you okay? Again there was no response. No noise at all except for the motor of my car running several feet behind us.

After a moment, Robbie finally said whatever and approached the red car, and we followed closely behind him, even though I felt something was wrong in my gut. We all were shaken with immediate fear as we went up to the window. There was, in fact, a person in the back seat, but almost more hauntingly, it was a mannequin, not a real person. And my first thought was, who in God's name would drive around with essentially a lifelike doll in the back seat? Admittedly, we got a good laugh out of this for a moment, but then the paranoia of this situation came back. Robbie continued to scream if anybody needed help or assistance, but there was still no response.

And this is when I noticed that this mannequin had something in its plastic hands. It looked like some sort of tape. A VHS tape. Without thinking, I took the tape and I didn't even tell my friends until later that night. We decided to just call the police, which we should have done in the first place, and we reported this abandoned car. The police asked for the license plate number, and that's when we noticed that there was no license plate on the car. Whoever ditched this car either didn't have plates or took those plates with them, and all they left behind was that creepy mannequin with that old VHS tape.

So we made our statement and told the cops the location of the car and left. Later that night, while we were talking about this incident and just how crazy it was, and that's when I told my friends about that tape that I took from the car. In a sort of shock and perhaps a bit upset that I didn't mention it before, they of course wanted to watch it right away. On the sticker in front of the tape was this plain white sticker that only just said, watch me, written in black marker with very crudely drawn skull and bones. I had some pause but decided that we had to watch it. Curiosity was getting the best out of all of us at this point and I found my parents old VHR in

the crawlspace and hooked it up to the TV. The tape began with about five seconds of a black screen and just the sound of a static tone. Then a man came on the screen with a beard and long hair. The quality of the tape was horrible. He stared into the camera, almost as if though he were staring right at us, and he wore a red flannel and sat at a table next to what appeared to be a workbench of some kind. He stared into the lens for two minutes straight without saying a single word. We watched the time and it was the most unsettling two minutes of my entire life. And after those two minutes, he laughed and then sort of morphed that laugh into a cry, all while staring directly into the lens and finally said in this sort of low,

monotone voice, this tape belongs to me and I know you have it. I'll find it again, and you'll be sorry. He then followed this with another horrible laugh and cry combo. We then fast-forwarded the tape for several minutes, and nothing else was said other than a few laughs and just this strange man staring at the camera. And finally, it just cut to black, and it ended. Now, after a bit of conversation about this situation, being stupid kids, we decided not to give the tape to the police. I just kept it. And after all these years, the tape still sits in my bookcase. I'll never watch it again, and I've never even really spoke about this event until now writing it down. And I'm sure this is just some kind of stupid joke, but to us kids, this was burned into our brains for years, and I'm still kind of scarred by the mental images that I witnessed that night.

Every time I see a man that resembles that man from the tape, even after all these years, I still get that pit-of-the pit of the stomach type feeling, and I'm reminded of that fear and was desperate to move out of my house. Most of my house. Most of my friends were either in college or have moved somewhere else. I was still living at home with my parents and sometimes I wondered if living under a bridge would be better. Obviously, I knew it wouldn't, but that's how badly I needed and wanted my own space. I was checking online for listings and I found a bunch of places in my area to rent on the Facebook marketplace.

I couldn't believe how easy it is to rent a place in this time that we live in. Being young and stupid and probably a little naive, I found a listing on Marketplace that was the definition of too good to be true. It was an entire two-story house with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a garage, and a finished basement. The pictures made this place look incredible. I messaged the guy and since I was so eager, I asked if we could meet when I left work that night at 8pm. He agreed and I was already mentally planning my setup for the house. After work, when I was driving over, it dawned on me that out of all the pictures, there wasn't any outside of the house or the finished basement. I didn't really think too much about it, but the thought did cross my mind.

I pulled into the house at around 8.15, and the outside looked a little rough, and the neighborhood didn't seem ideal, but I was ignoring all that because I kept telling myself that this was an entire house just for me. I knocked on the front door, and the sort of disheveled man answered the door. I walked in, and the pictures didn't really look like the house at all. The inside looked old, and honestly, the more I looked at it, it looked like it was falling apart. I was standing in the living room with this strange man, and also standing in there was a frail-looking woman. She was so skinny that it looked like her shirt was practically falling off of her shoulder. I felt in situations like this,

the person renting the house or trying to sell the house would walk you around or show you the interior. But these two people sort of just stood there. The guy finally mumbled something like, yeah, so this is it. I should have said on the listing, but it's cash only. I asked if I could look around and he looked kind of annoyed, but accepted. I looked into one of the rooms on the main floor and saw that the place was completely dilapidated. I knew I didn't want the place anymore and I didn't need to look at the rest of the house. I walked back into the living room and just said to the guy, hey thanks for meeting me man but unfortunately I'm gonna have to pass.

The woman looked like she was going to cry and the man said, I know it needs a little work but you should see the basement. The woman ran over to the door and opened it. She held her arms out, pointing to the basement as if presenting me with some sort of prize. Since I'd had a really hard time saying no, I walked over and stood on top of the stairs. I was thinking, no way, as soon as I looked into the darkness at the bottom, and I could hear the man say to me, The light switch is downstairs, just go down and we'll be right behind you. The woman put her hand on my shoulder and just sort of lightly started to nudge me.

I guess that was all I needed to push me in the right direction to get out of there. I turned around and started walking toward the door and thanked them for their time. Well, the guy didn't like that. He seemed to run over and stood in front of the door and thanked them for their time. Well, the guy didn't like that. He seemed to run over and stood in front of the door. The already creepy and disheveled man now looked even more unsettling. He was staring at me with these sort of bulbous eyes and started to reach into his back pocket, and as he stared directly into my eyes, he said, You said you wanted a place. Pay up, or you're not leaving. I lied, and I told him I didn't have the money.

He started to walk toward me and seemed to size me up. I could see in my peripheral vision that the woman was moving closer behind me. The man started to struggle to grab whatever he was concealing in his back pocket, and I used this opportunity and reacted instantly. I ran through the guy and towards the door. When I went to open it, I noticed that it was locked. This guy must have locked the door when I wasn't looking. I hurried and unlocked the door and just made a mad dash for my car, and I heard that woman

screaming from the inside and the man seemingly running after me. As I started to drive away, I could see that he was standing at the bottom of the driveway. Thank Christ, I never saw any sort of car pursue me. I don't think these two had a car, if I'm being honest. I was so terrified that I didn't drive home that night, and feeling a sense of urgency and concern for my safety, I immediately went to the nearest police station to report the incident. The officers listened attentively to my account and assured me that they would look into the matter. They decided to visit the house, but apparently upon their arrival, the couple was nowhere to be found. It appeared that they were squatters or had hastily vacated the premises before the police arrived, and although I never discovered their

true intentions, I was relieved that they weren't there anymore, and the police assured me that they would keep an eye on the area and encouraged me to reach out if I encountered any further issues. All I know is that I'm never looking on Facebook marketplace for a place to rent ever again. The events of this story took place just a few days ago, so they're still fresh in my mind. I suppose this story is more creepy and just flout out weird than scary, but the more I sit and reflect on it, the more I think to myself that this could have turned into a real nightmare. Just a little backstory first. I worked as sort of a freelance camera operator. Local artists, students and even just random people hire me to record content for them. I have done everything from documentaries to weddings and I even shot a short film about aliens for some guy. I'm not rich but

I make enough to pay my bills and I get to do what I love. About a week ago I got into a car accident though and my car was completely totaled. Now on a side note, that was horrifying and could be its own story. An old lady fell asleep behind the wheel, crossed over the median, and hit me head on. The fear of seeing a car coming directly at you at full speed was one of the worst things I'd ever witnessed. Fortunately for me, that story ends there, and the old woman and I were left completely unharmed, thank God. However, my camera would not be so lucky. Along with my car being totaled, my camera was destroyed in the accident. When the woman hit me, due to the impact, the camera flew off my passenger seat and went right through the windshield. I ended up crying about my camera and not the car.

The accident was on a Wednesday and I needed a camera for Saturday for a job that I was doing. I started to text everyone I knew to see if I could borrow a camera but nobody had a camera that I could use. I thought that maybe I could use my iPhone camera but I knew that that would prove to be more trouble than it was worth. One of the people I texted told me to check Facebook marketplace. I loved the idea and was surprised that I didn't think about it sooner. I couldn't believe all the stuff that I was finding there. I was trying to focus on the one thing that I needed which was the camera and I eventually found a guy named Devin who was selling a camera that was nicer than mine and a microphone to go with it which I didn't own at the moment. He was asking for a hundred bucks for all of it so I felt

like I couldn't resist that offer. I told him I needed it right away, and he agreed to let me come pick it up right after we messaged back and forth. I didn't feel weird and sketchy about any of this. He lived in a fancy building downtown in one of those luxury apartments. Also, it was early afternoon, so I wasn't worried about meeting some strange person at night. I borrowed my mom's car and drove to the apartment. The guy lived on the 12th floor of the apartment all the way at the end of the hall. I remember staring out of the

window at the end of the hall for a minute or two before I knocked on his door. When I knocked, he answered right away, almost creepily fast. It was like he was standing there waiting for a minute. I walked in and he seemed like an alright guy. He was good looking and was dressed in really nice clothes. He was tall and had the whitest teeth I'd ever seen in a person. We made small talk for a little while, talking about cameras and what I did for a living. He then went on to tell me that he did some acting for a while and that he made most of his money as a model. I was interested, so I was genuinely listening to the guy. Finally, he walked over to a room on the far side of the apartment and said in a very calming

voice, okay, well, the camera's in here, let me grab it for you. As he was entering the room, he stopped for a second and turned back to me and said, you know, being a camera geek like me, I think you'd love to see my new camera set up. Come check it out while I pack up the other camera and everything else for you. If you're listening to this, you may be wondering how I could be so stupid to follow a stranger into a small room. Well, the answer, this guy totally disarmed me. He gave me no red flags or any other indication that he might be a sketchy person. So I followed this guy into his room and shut the door behind me. And this was the first indication that something was wrong.

Then I looked at the room. There was nothing in there except a camera and a tripod. In an extremely creepy voice he said, You know, you'd make a great model. I didn't answer him. I just turned around, opened the door, and left the room. Then I ran and left the apartment without the camera he was allegedly selling. He didn't pursue me, and he didn't message me again.

That was the end of that encounter, so I realized that nothing technically happened to me, but once that door shut behind me, and he was standing over me, I knew something wasn't right. As the days continue to roll on past this afternoon, I keep wondering to myself, what if I didn't leave? Was this guy just some creep, or a genuinely weird guy? I had no reason to call the authorities since like I said nothing happened but I worry that some other woman may fall into the same trap. I notice that the posting is now gone obviously and it hasn't been put back on marketplace yet. I went and picked up another camera from an older guy the next day and I made sure that I went with a friend of mine this time, just in case. If I ever see that guy again, I'm running as a new town and I'm still trying to get settled in.

I got a job at this local market basically unloading trucks. It pays decent and it's just a place holding job until I can get another job in my field. More than anything, I like the scenery of the surrounding area of my job. The building is located right on the side of a lake, so when we're outside unloading trucks, I at least get to stare at the beautiful lake. When I moved here, I really didn't take much since I'm only in a small studio apartment. I have recently started picking things up every week to make my little apartment feel more like home. The one thing I don't have, and I severely underestimated the price, was a stand for my TV. Right now, I have my 60-inch inch TV on the ground and it looks sort of

ridiculous. My friend from work told me to check out the Facebook marketplace and I gotta be honest, I was a bit on the fence. I remember growing up and everyone was talking about how sketchy places like Craigslist were and I just assumed marketplace was the new version of that. The friend who told me about Marketplace showed me a whole bunch of pictures on his phone of stuff that he bought on Marketplace for cheap. Basically, he got an entire living room set in perfect condition for a hundred bucks. He explained to me that a lot of people are always looking to get rid of stuff and sometimes they'll basically give it away for next to nothing. We searched for TV stands and I was excited to see all the

stands on Marketplace for way cheaper than I was expecting. The first one I clicked on, I loved. The stand was specifically for a 60-inch TV and the woman listing it said that she needed to get rid of it right away because she's moving at the end of the month. She was only asking for $25 for this beautiful wooden stand. I understand for most this may be a red flag, but because I was listening to everyone tell me how good the deals were out there, I just assumed this was normal. I didn't even bother looking at this woman's profile or any information,

just the contact information in the post. I messaged her and got a response back within a few minutes. We exchanged some messages talking about the stand and I told her that I wanted it and this is where things started to get a little weird. Our schedules didn't line up and she told me that she only had a few more days to get rid of the stand. I told her that I worked Monday through Friday from 6am to 3pm but she worked from 2pm to midnight and I wasn't going to drive 30 minutes away at midnight when I have to wake up at 4.30 in the morning for work. She then suggested to me that she could meet me at the lake next to my job at 5am before I start work. Not far from where I work is a parking lot where you could park if you

wanted to walk the various trails around the lake. We agreed to meet there at 5 the next day and I would purchase the stand. I felt a little bad about making her do this when I wouldn't make the late night trip to see her but she claimed that she didn't mind and was willing to do whatever she needed to do to get rid of this stand. I was just happy to finally get my TV off the ground. The next morning was one of those damp and foggy mornings. If it wasn't for the fact that I was getting my TV stand, I would have probably hit the snooze like two or three times. I pulled into the parking lot of the lake just a few minutes before five. I parked right in the center of the big parking lot and pulled out my phone.

I sent her a message saying that I was here and just to message me whenever she got there, no hurry. A few minutes later I got a message from her. It said something like, sorry I'm just seeing this, I'm already here actually, I'm in the van parked by the big tree in the corner. I looked all around and sure enough, in the back corner of the parking lot was a van. It was so dark at this time of the morning that I didn't even notice the van when I pulled in. I started to drive over and as my headlights were illuminating the van, I realized that there was nobody inside the van. I stopped my car, still quite a bit of a distance between us, and I messaged her saying,

hey, there's no one in the van, are you sure this is you? And she responded right away and said, Yeah, I'm in the back of the van getting it ready. Just pull up next to the van and open the back hatch. Something felt very wrong and off about all of this. I slowly pulled up next to the van, but didn't get out. I kept my doors locked and my car running. She messaged me again. Are you going to get out?

I didn't respond. I started to reverse so that my headlights were hitting the windshield of the van. I clearly noticed that there was no one inside the van. No lights at all were on inside that van and I couldn't understand why she wouldn't just get out. Instead of trying to figure this out more, I decided to drive away. I looked in my rearview mirror and behind the trees next to the van, I saw two people emerge. They had something in their hands, but I couldn't tell what it was since it was so dark. I didn't drive to work just yet and drove to a local gas station to get coffee. I was shaking because the gravity of what had happened just started to set in.

While I was sitting in my car in that gas station parking lot, I got a message from that woman again that said, Good call, bro. I tried to inform the police, but I saw that the listing was gone and so was that profile. They did take all my information, so I'm not sure if there was a way that they can find this seller. I was terrified for days and I'm still pretty freaked out. I swear I thought I saw that van following me about a week ago but I'm sure it was just my paranoia. I realize I'm lucky I made it out unharmed but it did make me realize just how quickly something horrible can happen if you're not paying attention. Be careful meeting anyone online,

because there are some truly evil people out there. I have been dating my boyfriend now for over four years. We'll get married eventually, but we're waiting until we both finish school. The first year we were dating, my boyfriend and his little sister tragically lost their parents. And for their sake, I won't go into details. But ever since then, my boyfriend has assumed responsibility for his sister. Since he's 28 and she's only 16, he's been sort of a father figure and mentor to her for the last couple of years. She's a great kid, but given her age, she had an extremely hard time coping, and I could never blame her for that. Since we've been together for so long now, I try to give his sister guidance when I can and help out to create a loving household. Since we're all students, we often stretch our budget as much as we can.

When she turned 16, all she wanted to do was get her permit so she could get her license. We did everything we could to make that happen and even though she eventually got her license, unfortunately we couldn't afford to get her a car just yet. So I started saving a little money from every check and so did my boyfriend. Eventually we had a couple of thousand dollars on the side and we were planning on buying a car for her for her birthday. I know it wouldn't be a great car but I bet it would be nicer than the car that I got when I was 16. He suggested looking on Facebook marketplace which seemed like a great idea. Tons of garbage vehicles and a few nice ones but

when we inquired about the decent cars they were either sold or we didn't get a response back. Finally, after about a week of trying to get at least a message back, a guy named Howard messaged me about the 2013 Chevy Cruze for $2,100. The pictures made this car look pristine, and Howard told us in the message that the car runs great and that it was his stepmother's car and she moved out of state. He told us that she told him to sell all of her stuff that she didn't need and we'll split the profits 50-50. I didn't care about any of that as long as they sold me a working car for my future sister-in-law. We set up a time to meet and if we liked the car, we told him that we would buy it that day. He told us to come over after 8pm since that's when he'll be out of work. That worked out well for us since we both had class during the day anyway.

Obviously, we didn't tell his sister and she was at a friend's house anyway, so that night we made the drive to go see the car. It was kind of far away, but we really didn't tell his sister and she was at a friend's house anyway so that night we made the drive to go see the car. It was kind of far away but we really didn't care. If the car was as good as the guy said then we would have driven over an hour if we needed to. We got to the address that he gave and it was nearly pitch black. The house was in the middle of nowhere and it looked completely abandoned if I'm being honest. I mean there were boards in the windows. Clearly no one lived there, but my boyfriend can be a complete idiot sometimes. I told him that I didn't think that we were in the right place and he told me that he thought

we were and maybe this guy is just super poor. I messaged Howard and said, hey, we're here I think. It doesn't look like anyone else is here though. About a minute later he responded saying oh hey yeah I'm just finishing up getting the title for the car and everything. Come on inside and I'll take you out back to see the car. I told my boyfriend I didn't like this and it seemed weird. He just always wants to see the good in people and told me not to worry. I begged him not to go inside but he didn't listen. He told me to stay in the car if I didn't feel safe, so that's exactly what I did. When he got up to the door and walked in, I did see a faint light coming from inside which helped me feel a little bit better. I got out of the car and moved to the driver's seat.

I wanted to be able to drive away as fast as possible in case something wasn't actually right, and while I was getting into the car, I heard yelling coming from the house and the sort of loud thud, like the sound of something breaking. I froze, just staring at the dark house, and seconds later, my boyfriend ran outside. He was screaming for me to drive, and that memory of him screaming for his life still cuts me inside and makes me sick. He basically dove into the passenger seat as four men ran out of the house. My boyfriend wasn't saying anything other than screaming the word, drive, drive. And I drove extremely fast in this rural area until we finally got into a more suburban part of town, and he finally started to catch his breath, and

that's when he told me what happened. He said he walked in, and before he could even get any words out, someone hit him over the head with something, and he said he instinctively turned around and pushed someone to the ground, and that was the loud thud that I heard. He said that he instantly ran to the car. He said he didn't even realize that there was more than one guy until he saw all four of them come out of the house as we drove off. Obviously, that post was removed, and we really had no proof of anything. We did have a couple of screenshots of the car, but the license plate wasn't in the screenshot, and most likely the picture was a fake anyway. We still reported this obviously, but nothing ever happened. It gives me nightmares thinking about the possibility of how many times this worked. I always hoped that nobody would fall for this trick, but

I'm not that naive. All I can hope is that somehow, someway, these horrible people were caught, and nobody else has to endure the same nightmare that we did, or even worse. Breakups suck. We all know it. Not long ago I broke up with my ex of nearly 10 years. It was over long before then, but I have a hard time ending things. She's a sensitive person and whenever the subject of ending it came up over the years, well, let's just say that she would go into shutdown mode. I realized prolonging the relationship was making it worse, but I didn't understand that at the time. I also want to mention, to protect everyone's privacy, that I won't be using names or locations in this story.

I'm still close with the family and they've already dealt with enough in their life and I don't want to bring more stress in there. When I finally ended it for good, it went about as well as you can imagine. She took it horribly and it was a few rough weeks of fighting, crying, and even some threats. But eventually, the split was final. She moved in with her aunt who lived about an hour away I think, but I'm not exactly sure. Since I stayed in the house, I ended up giving her a lot of the furniture which was fine with me. I make decent enough money that I could afford new couches and whatnot. I planned on going to one of the big chains to get all of my new furniture, but

in the short term, I needed something in my house to sit on since I was watching TV in a lawn chair. I looked on Marketplace to see if I could find anyone who was just trying to get rid of some furniture. What I found was this super ugly yellow love seat. I know that sounds disgusting, but I have this weird fascination with the color yellow, so I was all about it. But the most exciting thing to me was that the woman was selling it for $40 and it looked like it had never been sat on before. I messaged the woman and set up a time to come see the love seat. She lived about 40 minutes away, but I didn't mind the drive. I drove out to the small house that sat in a sort

of semi-secluded area. I knocked on the door and an elderly woman answered. I told her that I was there for the love seat and she looked scared. She screamed that she didn't know who I was or what I was talking about and she slammed the door in my face. I went back to my car and checked the address in my messages. This was clearly the address so I messaged her and told her that I was there. But a woman closed the door on me. This woman responded several minutes later and said, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, that's my grandmother. I live in the garage out back.

Just walk out back and come on in. I was a little annoyed but I wanted that love seat so I made my way to the garage that was in the backyard, as she said. I knocked on the door, and the sort of muffled voice responded saying, come in. So I walked in and looked around, but I didn't see a love seat. And in fact, the inside was just a normal garage. I shouted hello, but I didn't hear an answer, and just as I was about to leave from an adjacent room, a small person seemed to charge me. This figure had enough of a surprise start on me that she was able to jump on me, knocking me off my feet. She was wearing something

on her head, and it was dark in the garage so I wasn't able to see her face. She was yelling and screaming and finally whatever it was came off and I saw it was my ex-girlfriend. I'm not even joking. I was so flabbergasted and I was able to push her off and instead of running I just got up and started yelling at her. Her tone changed instantly from erratic to crying her eyes out. I went over to try and console her even though I was furious and very very confused. She was uncontrollably crying. I was trying to calm her down and that's when it happened. She pulled out like some box cutter or something like that and just cut my shoulder. In that moment I screamed, wincing in pain and ripped the small blade out of my shoulder and just threw it to the ground.

I started to howl and in the ten years of knowing this woman I'd never seen her act or sound like this. She grabbed the blade off the ground and started to slash the air in front of me. I think she was trying to make contact with me but in between all of her sobs she was just thankfully unsuccessful. I was able to get to my feet, running to my vehicle screaming and I called the police right away and informed them of what had happened. They showed up pretty quickly and thank God she was arrested. Getting attacked was horrifying, but watching someone I care about be taken away by the police was incredibly traumatic. The woman I watched get put in the back of the police car was not the same woman I used to love. I still can't believe her plan actually worked. There was no guarantee that I would ever check Marketplace for furniture,

but I did. She knew I would be attracted to this ugly yellow couch if I did, and she was right. She told me that she was moving in with her aunt, which was true. Her aunt lived several houses down from that poor elderly woman who had to deal with the fallout of all this nonsense, and the last thing I knew was that she was being moved somewhere to get treatment. I decided not to press criminal charges, and I'm even helping with some of her medical bills. Sometimes it's the people closest to us that can cause us the most harm. I don't know what clicked off in her brain that made attacking me seem like some sort of solution. I feel terrible for her, and I truly hope that she gets all the help that she needs. For anonymity, I'm going to leave out some details from my story that I'm sharing with all of you. All my wife wanted for her 31st birthday was to go on her favorite country artist summer tour. The average ticket price for even mediocre seats seemed to be over $200 which was surprising to me. I didn't go to many concerts

but I thought it would be cheaper than that. Anyway, I got lucky and the tour was coming pretty close to our hometown and I knew that it would be the perfect gift. The tickets were going to be on sale on a Tuesday and since I was working I was going to get online and grab them after work. Well again, my ignorance of the concert scene came into play and the show sold out almost immediately and I saw that there was absolutely nothing available when I got home from work. I was texting with one of my buddies and he told me that I could look on the secondary market for seats but I would probably have to pay an upcharge. I was excited that there was still a chance though. I began scrolling through the main sites, StubHub, Vivid Seats and all those others.

After limited success I switched gears and began looking at Craigslist and Facebook groups and markets to see if I could find anything from a local seller. I sent a few messages out but hadn't really received responses and the ones that did respond were increasing the price after every message it seemed like. As the days and weeks rolled on though I was getting ready to give up until I found someone selling two tickets for what seemed to be a reasonable price. Their name was Victor and he had the tickets listed on Facebook Marketplace. I messaged him in a hurry, praying that they were still available. I didn't receive a response in the next half hour or so

and I assumed that they were most likely spoken for. I decided to get some sleep and just went to bed, pretty disappointed. However, when I got up for work the next morning, I had a message from that Victor He sent the message at around 4am and said that the tickets were still available I was ecstatic and asked when I could grab them or meet to pick them up He replied and said that he had a few other inquiries so I would need to send the payment via PayPal And then we could schedule a time to meet up

He was okay with using PayPal goods and services so I knew my money would be protected if he was trying to scam me. I quickly sent the payment and he confirmed that it was received. He said that he could send the tickets virtually or provide the physical copy of the tickets if that was preferred and since it was a gift I asked if he could meet up for the physical copies and he said he had no problem with that. We made a plan to meet at a local grocery store at about 8pm so I could get the tickets. I showed up a little early and parked in the back left of the lot as we agreed to. About 50 minutes later, an old Marin Oldsmobile pulled up and sat a few spaces away from my

car. I wasn't sure if it was Victor or not so I just waited. After about five minutes the door to the other car opened and I asked, hey are you Victor? And they responded yes. Hi, thank you, thank you, I appreciate you buying these for me, here are your tickets. Now we small talked for about a minute or so and I thanked them and said that they were for my wife's birthday and we both went our separate ways. I wrapped them up in a box for my wife and gave them to her for her birthday and she was so excited that we would be going to the concert just a few short weeks later. We get to the concert and everything was amazing. The seats have a really great view,

we've already grabbed some drinks and we're having a fantastic time. About 15 minutes into one of the opening acts, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, great to see you. And I kid you not, it was Victor. I was like, oh, hey, what's going on? He responds, sorry I'm a little late, the traffic was crazy. Victor reached across me and put his hand out to introduce himself to my wife and said, I'm really glad you can make it. My wife, who was polite enough, didn't say anything to me immediately, but after saying hello and introducing herself, she pulled me aside and asked who that was. I told her it was the guy that I bought the tickets from. I didn't know that he was going to be there, I thought he was just selling the tickets. Now listen, Victor seemed like a really nice guy, and I had no problem sitting next to him for the entire show while my wife took the aisle seat, but some of his comments throughout the night were pretty confusing. He was making it seem like we had all

made this plan to go together, and that we were a group of friends just hanging out. I was polite and tried to answer him every time he said something but there was definitely a few times that I just tuned it out and enjoyed the show and made sure my wife was having a good time. Anytime he would say I'm really glad we got together or something weird like that, I would just give him a half smile and sort of nod. Clearly there was something wrong with this Victor guy. My wife was having a blast though and that's what was important to me. As the concert grew to a close, Victor leaned over to both of us and said, what's next? What do we got planned for the rest of the night? My wife looked at me confused and I said, hey, I appreciate you selling us the tickets, but we're going to head home.

Have a great night, all right? I got up and grabbed my jacket as my wife did the same. We started to walk up the aisle and I felt something grab my arm. It was Victor. And before he could say anything, I said, hey, what's wrong with you? I don't even know you, man. Why don't you just leave us alone, alright? At that moment I was pretty angry, and after a night of appeasing a complete stranger's notions, I think my patience had grown a little thin. But as we left, I felt bad and regretted having yelled at him. It was pretty late and my wife and I decided to grab some food on the way home and eat it on the couch before bed. The next few weeks went on as normal. My wife and I were both busy with work and had a ton of things to do around the house with any free time that we had. I remember going to bed really early

one night and trying to read to fall asleep when I got a Facebook alert on my phone. It was a message from Victor saying, hey I had a nice time at the concert with you and your wife. I'm sorry if I overstepped but I'd like to take a chance to, you know, get to know you both better. I deleted that message and I blocked his account instantly. I was now creeped out. I didn't really use social media all that much and this was why. Weird people on the internet. I'm going to be honest, the message creeped me out and it was on my mind a lot over the following days, but eventually as all things do, it began fading slowly from my mind. About six or seven weeks after the concert, my wife and I were sitting on the couch,

messing with our phones and our dog started going absolutely crazy as there was a loud pounding on the door. Outside of the few immediate family members, we never have anyone over as our Akita is old and not the best at meeting new people. I told my wife to stay where she was, and I would go through the garage to see who it was. As I opened the garage and went towards the front door, my heart sank. I saw that it was the weirdo from Facebook Marketplace, Victor, and I was at a loss for words. But I think I finally muttered out something like, what the hell are you doing here? He said something along the lines of, I know, I know, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have showed up unannounced, but I have tickets for next week, the show, you know, and I thought you and your wife might want to go.

He had a huge and uncomfortable looking smile on his face. I asked him how the hell he knew where I lived, and he said he got it from the PayPal transaction. I told him that if he ever came to my house or my family again, I'd call the cops and let him meet my 200 pound dogs that he could hear going crazy inside the house. His smile turned to a frown and he said, we'll see, and walked away. I took a few moments outside to collect myself and went back inside. My wife asked me who that was and I told her it was just UPS and that I got another package. For the next few nights and even weeks I felt like something was off. I noticed the motion lights going on more frequently. I felt like I heard scratching or creaking outside of doors and windows but I chalked it all up to the idea

that I was just hypersensitive and hyper-focused on some psycho showing up in my house. Thankfully we hadn't had any additional incidents or run-ins with Victor, but I know that I will never buy anything from Facebook ever again. Going through a hard breakup can make you do some things you're not proud of. For a lot of people, it's going out and meeting someone to rebound which is never a good thing. For some people, you can meet a rebound without even realizing it and that's what happened to me about a year ago. I was with my ex for six years when we finally broke up. It hit me pretty hard and I was struggling for a little bit.

We bought a house together but she kept the house. I honestly didn't want to stay there since it just depressed me being there. And so, with my now limited funds, I found myself a cheap place to rent until I could get on my feet and afford a nicer spot. I literally let her keep everything when we broke up, so I didn't have really anything to my name. I found a month to month place to rent on Marketplace and that's when I realized that there was a ton of stuff on Marketplace to actually buy. I bought a couch, a recliner, a TV and anything you could really think of and I felt like a king saving all this money. The one thing I didn't have though was tables and chairs which made it sort of hard to have people over to either play games or just even eat food.

I found this girl, we'll call her Leah, who was selling a table and chairs and they looked nice and in great shape so I messaged her. Now long story short, I went and looked at the tables and chairs and they were beautiful. While I was there loading up the chairs in my truck I started talking to her and it turned out she also just went through a horrible breakup and she was just unloading a bunch of stuff. Well, our small talk turned into two hours of laughing and joking in her driveway. We ended up exchanging numbers and set up a little date to go out and grab a drink that weekend. I was excited about this since I felt some sort of connection with her.

Well, the date went well and we went back to her place after the bar. That night led to several more dates and before I knew it, I was seeing this girl on a regular basis. About a month later, I noticed some weird things happening. I would go to the bathroom and my phone would just be in different places or my computer screen, which was idle, was now turned on. I figured that she was trying to snoop, which honestly I had nothing to hide so I really didn't push it and just shrugged it off. I figured she would realize quickly that I wasn't hiding anything and she would just eventually stop going through my stuff. One night we started hanging out after we both got home from work. I could tell that she was upset so I asked her what was going on. She told me that she saw that I had been texting my ex and was worried that I was going to go back to her.

For context, I texted my ex asking her if she received my doctor's bill in the mail since I hadn't received it yet and she responded by saying, no, I'll let you know if it shows up. And that was the end of the conversation. I wasn't mad though. I understand that some people have severe trust issues and how that can be tough. I thought I explained it well to her that I wasn't mad, and that she could always talk to me about this stuff. And the rest of the night was fine.

The next Saturday, she stayed over at my place. We fell asleep at about midnight. I woke up a little after three in the morning, and she was over at my place. We fell asleep at about midnight. I woke up a little after three in the morning and she was standing on my bed, on top of me. Literally standing on the bed, not the ground. She was holding one of my golf clubs above her head, with both hands firmly on the club. I instantly bolted up, put my hands up, and slid into an upright position. I asked her what was going on and if she was alright, and she was practically sobbing. I could barely understand her at first, and then she was able to get the words out as she said, I know you're hiding something. Where is it? And I truly had no idea what she was talking about. I slid out of bed while she was still sobbing and thankfully she caught me just a second too late and she struck the club down and missed me by just a few inches. I ran out into the living room and I couldn't believe my

eyes. She'd torn up my home and I mean ripped the pillows open, knocked over bookshelves and went through all the cabinets in the kitchen. My computer was open and I could see tons of tabs open. I started to get livid because of all the stuff she had ruined. She came out of the bedroom, and no golf club in hand, but she still was bawling. She was begging me to forgive her, and claiming that she didn't mean to destroy everything. And then like the flip of a switch, the tears and sobbing turned into anger and she started to yell, saying, I'm just so hurt about Nicole. And I'm sure I looked confused since I had no idea who Nicole is or who she was talking about. And I tried to defend myself, but she just kept yelling that she knew about Nicole.

She's seen everything. she's seen everything. And then with almost no notice, she charged me and pulled out some sort of knife from her waistband. Thankfully, I am a bigger guy and I was able to hold her back until I could reach the door and once I got to the door, I ran as fast as I could to the local corner store which was open 24 hours. I immediately told them to call the police, which thank god they did, and the police showed up pretty quickly. I explained to them everything, and this whole ordeal ended up just being a bigger nightmare. It turns out that Leah was unfortunately not well, obviously. I'm not exactly sure what she ended up being diagnosed

with, but I was really sad for her. She is a sweet girl, and I hope she ended up getting the help she needed. I hadn't seen or heard from her since that night, and I still think about that night a lot. The memory of her standing over top of me is something I'll never forget, and ever since I bought that table from her, I haven't used Facebook Marketplace, and honestly, I don't think I ever will. Again. To be continued... I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt.

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