The Lets Read Podcast - 249: MY DERANGED NEIGHBOR | 26 True Scary Stories | EP 237

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about crazy neighbors, paranormal encounters & terrible dining experiences 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

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The story starts in late September when my family went to visit our relatives who invited us to celebrate one of them winning $2,000 in some scratch-off lottery thing. They live in this really run-down part of Shannondale that people from Charleston, Shepherdston, and Ranson, which is basically the least redneck-y part of West Virginia, like to call the Squalor Holler. It's way up on the mountain and exactly like how everyone pictures it when they hear about it. Nothing but ramshackle shacks, rusty rebuilt trailers, everything covered in decades-old Christmas decorations because they're all too busy being smelly rednecks to ever really clean up. Real deliverance stuff, just no rivers or canoes. The relatives we're visiting are actually all cousins, intermarrying. We don't refer to them as aunt, uncle, or whatever, just relatives. They're not

terrible people or anything, just absolute cartoonish, depressing hillbilly stereotypes. So anyway, we're up here in this godforsaken trailer, and it sucks. There are like eight of them, plus me, my dad, my mom, and my sister. About two hours in, my mom takes my cell phone so that I can focus on family time together, which is frustrating. All we did the whole time was eat TV dinners and be forced to watch NASCAR and stuff. And after about six hours of this, about ten minutes before we're supposed to leave, it starts raining. We know now how treacherous the roads can be up on the mountains, so we decide to wait for the rain to die down. Flash forward to two hours later. It's dark, ten o'clock, and there's a flood warning for the area. I have my phone back by this time, but no reception of course.

I'm playing Tetris and Texas Hold'em and stuff when I suddenly hear my dad start losing his mind in the next room. I walk over and it turns out that they let slip that they buried their kid, Thomas, outside. Apparently they were afraid the rain would wash up his body or something. The kid was like six and he was attacked by a dog and they never called the cops. They just buried him like he was some sort of family pet. My dad's flipping out, and rightfully so, because, you know, we live in the 21st century and all. So our relatives say that they'll sort it out in the morning. My parents tell me and my sister to stay in the same room as them during the night, and we do. None of us really suspected that they'd killed Thomas or anything, since they're really peaceful.

They didn't even own any guns aside from the one old timey double barrel shotgun they had on the mantle. Nevertheless, we were creeped out and intended to call the cops in the morning once we got to town. It was like three in the morning. I couldn't sleep and the power had gone out for the fifth time or so. The worst part is I could see Thomas' little grave right outside the window, like a cross on it and everything. I assumed the kid couldn't have been buried deep at all since they were so worried about him just washing out of the grave. So I was just fixated on it, kept being drawn to looking out the window. And then I saw the worst thing in my life.

Something was creeping through the trees towards the house. I stared at it for a while but couldn't get a good look at it since it was raining and the brush was so thick. For a few minutes I assumed it was two really pale horses kind of ambling toward the wood side by side. But then it walked into the moonlight and I saw that it was all one thing, like a kind of human torso but wider. It finally stepped into full view, and I saw that it had something like six legs, kind of somewhere between a beetle's legs and a horse's legs. Two arms right where someone would normally have them, but they were about half a foot longer than a normal man's arms. It had a bald head, but the face looked like some sort of bizarre masquerade ball kind of mask, with a clenched up furrowed forehead and a nose that looked sort of like a crow's or a raven's beak.

It didn't have any eyes either, just depressions where eyes would go. It looked like it had a human mouth underneath its proboscis, and what still strikes me to this day is that it seemed to have a human male part, if you know what I mean, right on the abdomen where a normal person's would be. The thing moved sort of gracefully and made those soft thumping noises when it moved, and it must have been like 7 or 8 feet tall but sounded like it weighed only 150 pounds at most. I started walking towards Thomas' grave and then I finally snapped out of whatever trance I was in and just screamed. My mom was the first to wake up and I told her to look out the window. She rushed over and didn't really seem to understand what she was looking at. After a minute though, the thing bent down and started pawing at the grave with its hands.

My dad and Jasper rushed in and Jasper just lost his mind, screamed like a little girl and ran back out of the room yelling for his father, yelling, it's outside, it came and it's outside. I looked back and saw the thing digging furiously at the ground, kicking up huge mounds of mud. I heard these sounds of feet running around the house, and I think they were looking for that shotgun. The thing reached into the hole and grabbed up what I assumed was Thomas' body by the leg in one hand. The thing kind of galloped back into the woods, snapping all those branches. And that's when I heard it. A kid crying. The sound of a child sobbing and crying from the direction the thing took off in.

We left as soon as the rain let up at like 5am. I don't even think we told anyone at the house, and we drove straight back to Ranson, only stopping for gas. No one said a word to each other, and my family refuses to speak about what happened. I tried to bring it up once just to make sure that it was real, and my dad told me to shut up, so I did. I've always had an overactive imagination. I'm an artist, and I'm diagnosed with ADHD as a child, though I was never medicated. So my mind was constantly everywhere, and I was always drawing and

fooling around as a kid. My imagination would do terrible things to me sometimes, though, probably as a result of watching horror movies at a young age, scary stuff lurking around every corner. But on one occasion, I knew it wasn't just my imagination. I was in 6th grade at the time, probably 12 or so, and I lived in a very small town off a major highway. Seriously small. The only significant thing in this town burnt down about 20 years ago, and then a kid died in high school, so it was condemned. The only things here now are a cemetery, a lake, a post office, and a gas station, all within about four blocks of the town. Another strange thing about this town is that it was

booming in the early 90s, but now it's a dusty, literal ghost town with about 40 people living here, and people who never speak or even really go outside. The only other kids were my best friends and there were only three of us. Every morning we walked together to the bus stop and most mornings none of us spoke really. One morning it was foggier than usual but I remember it was cold and a little misty outside. My uncle, who is now deceased, grew up here and he always told me messed up stories about this town. He told me to watch myself. Strange things were always going on here. But he was kind of loony, so I didn't really worry about it most of the time. However, this morning felt kind of off.

I wasn't too stressed because I knew the others would be waking up soon enough, and when they didn't, I started to freak out. I stood alone at the bus stop and my imagination started going wild. I was in the middle of imagining a set of eyes in the mist about ten feet away from me when I saw something walking. This was absolutely real and I remember every detail. It was a man in shape and stature, but the way he walked seriously made my bones feel numb. Slow and rhythmic, almost like he was floating. My twelve year old eyes bulged out of my skull and I remembered freezing in terror. I can't even stop shaking while I'm currently typing this.

And then he looked at me. Looked directly at me. His eyes, they were so far apart, they were almost on the sides of his head, which were oblong, like a sideways egg, but not that long. And he had a small nose in the center, absolutely hairless, with crooked, jagged yellow teeth underneath a disgusting smile. I've read a ton of creepypasta threads and heard almost exact descriptions of ghouls, and I've wondered if maybe they saw who or what I saw but it's never the same. He didn't leave me until the headlights

of the school bus came over the hill and then without taking his eyes off of me he raised one hand and waved. Not like a goodbye wave, more like a see you around wave. And then he walked slowly away from the spot he stood, which felt almost like a small eternity. When the bus pulled up, I was crying. I don't know why, I don't remember what triggered it, but the driver had to call the school, who called my mom, and she came and picked me up. I tried telling her what I saw, but she didn't believe me. She said it was probably just a guy in a mask messing with me. I knew it wasn't. I know it wasn't because for the next five years of my life, he was there, watching me, and almost enjoying our time together. For the first few months, his appearance sent me into a terrible frenzy of crying and screaming.

My mom, who was single most of my childhood, worked second and third shifts to keep our house so she was never there at night or in the afternoon to watch me. I never had anyone to tell. I was frightened and alone so much but whenever I would see him, I would call my grandma and talk to her on the phone, hoping that he would see this and think that I was talking to the cops or something. I don't know, I was 12 or 13. I would shut the blinds and watch TV and try not to think about it. And he would only make appearances like once a week, so it wasn't an everyday kind of thing. And then at some point I realized that he never came near me or touched me or anything.

He just stood watching me, whether it be outside my windows or in the cornfield just beyond the fence of the school playground. I got used to him and after a while, he was nothing more than scenery. When I would go on trips or vacations, he wasn't there. It was only around this small town. On one instance, when I was 15 or 16, I was on a walk with a friend of mine. We were walking near the edge of town where the paved road turns into gravel and the cemetery sits next to the graveyard. And that's when I saw him again. The being that I had taken to calling a skinwalker. He was about a hundred yards away, leaning casually against a gravestone. I asked my friend while keeping my eye on Skinwalker, want to go into the graveyard? And he was down,

so we went in. It had become obvious to me that Skinwalker wasn't noticed by anyone other than myself, so it wasn't a shock that when I walked almost directly next to him, my body was oblivious. I remember that was the closest I'd ever seen him. He was so much more detailed this close. His skin, I'll never forget it. It was almost translucent. He wasn't just pale, he was old and he was staring directly into my eyes. His eyes, they were green, but dark, not completely black and I remember it was a green with a hint of yellow and brown and I remember he had what I would describe as pretty eyes, but they were so beady and far apart. I had forgotten all about my friend when he said, why are you staring at that gravestone? I looked at him and then the skinwalker, but

he wasn't there anymore, just an old weathered slab of tall concrete. I looked at it for a second, then noticed a name. Blankety blank, 1846-1847. I paid no attention to this for a long time until I noticed that every time I was in the graveyard, there he was, same pose, same stone, watching me. And one day, I was reading a book on the paranormal when I thought about something. Maybe he was just a ghost, and maybe he wanted me to help him, so I came up with a plan. I rode my bike to the graveyard. I don't know why, at the time I thought that it might make a quicker getaway if he tried to get me or something. I don't know. Anyway, I approached

him, standing there as usual, and I said, can you hear me? And he just looked blank-faced and no response. If you need my help, tell me. Then he seemed to get angry. I don't remember exactly what happened. All I remember was that I ran. I ran and didn't look back until I was back on my bike and then when I got on my bike he was standing there still at the gravestone with one arm stretched out towards me like he was reaching for me to come back or like he was sorry or something. I don't know, I didn't stick around much longer to find out and I rode as fast as I could home and that was the last time I saw him for a while. A few months went by and I started to get

really anxious, avoiding being alone, avoiding going outside after dark. I was so scared that I would see him again but at the same time I felt bad, like I shouldn't have upset him. I felt sorry for him, I don't know it was weird but I almost felt like we were friends at this point and I still feel like we're friends. The first time I saw him again was while I was riding the bus to school. I no longer had to walk to the bus stop, I was in high school, but I knew that it was him. He was walking or dancing down the sidewalk, but it was only a quick glance. He watched me go past him, and I knew that he knew that I was on, and that was it.

His appearances became less and less frequent until one night, the last night I'd ever see him. I was 17 years old and my mom announced that we were moving. Things had gotten serious with her boyfriend and we were moving in with him. Our boxes were being packed and the house was on the market. It was about midnight and I was alone in the house as usual. I was drawing in my living room. I had my supplies laid out in front of me and I was going to town on the paper when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. But this was a first. He was now in my house. And my first reaction was to scream and he took a step back.

I remember this as being a very strange moment. It was quiet and he seemed scared. We watched each other for a moment and then I realized that I didn't have anything to fear and I went back to drawing. He moved about for a moment and wound up standing behind me. It was like he wanted to watch me draw. So I remember letting him and he moved in front of me and he stood there looking, not at me, but at my sketches. I'm not sure how long this lasted, but at some point I realized that he must have wanted me to draw him. And so I did. I started slowly, but eventually it was normal. I just sat completely silent, drawing this being, this messed up thing that followed

me for damn near five years. And when I was done, I held my notebook up and he seemed to be happy, ecstatic actually. His smile seemed bigger and his eyes seemed kinder. I'm pretty sure I smiled too and he liked it. I have absolutely no idea how long we stayed that way but eventually he turned away from me and walked into the other room and then he was gone. Forever. My mom and I moved and went on with our lives. I'm 20 now and living on my own. I wish with everything inside of me that I hadn't left that notebook with my mother because

it's probably in storage somewhere now. I'd also like to say this, every year since I moved I go back to the gravestone and leave flowers, and every year I've hoped to see him standing there and I plan on doing this until I die. I'm living in a house with some other guys, basically in the middle of nowhere. Outside the city, there's just pretty much trees. It was an especially harsh winter, however this night wasn't so bad. The power goes out. I look outside my enclosed porch to see if I'm the only one. The entire area is out.

I forgot to mention that I'm a bit of a photography enthusiast and this comes into play here. Well, there's nothing to do around here and I think to myself that I've never seen such a massive power outage like this before and this might be a cool time to do a bit of photography. I step out the door feeling more anxious than usual. Just calm down, I told myself. Don't let this get the best of you. I continue down and take some cool photographs of some car light trails and I can't shake this feeling that something had been following me. I start getting really nervous. It's too windy to listen told myself and I take a pic of the house that I live in, feeling really on edge and also panicky. What the heck is going on? I've never let myself get this bad. I really feel like I'm not the only one out here. And inside I take off my boots and snow gear next to the door and all of a sudden, something slams into the door. I freak out right there, lock the door, and get back to my room. I lock myself in there, calm down enough to sleep, and the next day I go through my pictures. I get to the picture of my house, and this picture is incredibly creepy. I can't believe my house looks like such a nightmare in that picture.

But wait a second, that shadow doesn't look quite right and I look closer and what is that I ask myself. I see what looks like some guy with a pig head staring right at me and I lose it and ever since then I've been hearing banging around my house a couple of times a week at night and whatever that thing is. It wants in, and I'm losing sleep over this. To be continued... old growing up in a small town where exploring the hills was the thing to do. This incident took place at the north end of Ruby Valley in Elko County, Nevada. Someday I'll play around on Google Earth and try to find this place, but it's slightly north of the road off of Highway 93 that goes into Ruby Valley. I always like checking out old mine shafts and ghost towns. That kind of stuff really intrigues me. At the burger bar in Wells, Nevada, where I'm from and grew up, they had these old turn-of-the-century

maps under glass on the tables. On one of them, it showed several ghost towns just north of Ruby Valley, so I figured that I would go check them out. As I hadn't been in the area very often, I gassed up my 72 Dodge W200 pickup. Being a redneck and slash K before 4chan even, I grabbed my HK91 and set out. I found some old foundations in the lower country and started heading into the mountains themselves. I started finding abandoned mine shafts and it was pretty cool so I kept going up. I took this ancient road that was no more than an overgrown cattle path by this point in history and came upon a tree blocking the road. It was an old pinyon pine, also two feet in diameter, that blocked the road. After the tree, the road continued straight for about 200 yards, then hooked right before coming back 180 degrees.

I parked my truck in front of the tree and set out on foot. I grabbed my HK91 with one 20 round magazine and the rifle and put another 20 round mag in my back left pocket. I always had my rifle with me. I've encountered mountain lions and mine shafts before, and just generally I like to shoot stuff, get up on the ridge lines, and shoot boulders from a couple of hundred yards away. And anyways, as soon as I climbed over the fallen tree, I had a creepy feeling as if though I was being watched. I continued on for about 200 yards to the point where the road started carving right and gaining elevation towards the cabin. At this point, I realized not only did I feel like I was being watched, but it was also dead quiet. This was in June, so everywhere else you went, you could hear those cicadas, but not here. It seemed as soon as I crossed the fallen tree, the mountains were silent. No bugs, no birds, nothing. Just deafening silence.

As I came up to the turn, there was this big rock about 15 feet in diameter. It used to be on the road, but due to the years of erosion and snow, it had slid down just slightly off the road. It seemed to be red limestone or something like that, which stood out since they are not that common in this area. I looked at the rock and you could tell that there were carvings in it at some point in time and due to weathering whatever was carved on it had been worn off. I kept walking up the road feeling incredibly creeped out but I really wanted to check out that old cabin. It was obvious that no one had been there for quite a while. At this point, I was probably three hours off-road to get to this point, and I got up to the cabin, and as far as abandoned houses and cabins in Nevada go,

this one was in pretty good shape. All the glass in the window was still intact, and there were remnants of curtains behind the windows. In the back of my mind, something told me that I should be leaving. I went inside the cabin and that's when I started to get the feeling that something was off. Most cabins you find out in the middle of nowhere in Nevada are barren, with maybe a bit of broken furniture. This one was different. It was completely furnished. Time had taken its toll, but everything was still there.

What was left of an old mattress and bedding, plates and other cookware throughout the house, along with tattered clothing and personal effects like a chest, faded pictures, and the like. What really creeped me out was the dinner table. It was set for four people. Ten plates, glasses, and silverware. And this was the first cabin I had ever found in this condition. It was as if though whoever resided here had just up and left everything behind. I felt like I shouldn't be in the cabin and went outside to see if I could find

the mine shaft or anything else. And once I was out the door, I decided to chamber a round in my HK-91. The sound of me racking a round echoed throughout the canyon and broke the silence. As little of a thing as it was, this calmed my nerves very slightly. Directly behind the cabin was a well and it was still intact. As I got closer, I heard noises coming from it, like a slight breeze rustling through it. When I got within about 30 feet of it, I started to smell something. It was absolutely putrid. Definitely something had died in that well.

The smell of decay was heavy in the air with an acrid copper scent that tore at my nostrils. I didn't want to get any closer to the well and started walking towards the left where I could see the opening to a mine shaft up on the hill. The closer I got to it, the more I felt a breeze coming out of it. This is not really uncommon if you've explored mine shafts before as the breeze could be coming in from another opening for the mine, but the thing was, it was perfectly calm as far as I could see. There were no trees moving or any signs of wind. As I got closer, another thing struck me as odd. The breeze coming from out of the shaft was hot. Most of the time it was cool as most mine shafts

maintain a constant temperature. The closer I got to the shaft, the slower I moved towards it. Nothing since I crossed the fallen tree seemed right. Closer I got to the opening of the mine shaft, the more of a feeling of dread and being watched that I got. And I got within about 15 feet of the shaft when the smell hit me. It was the smell of decay and copper, but much stronger than the well. Right then, all of my spidey senses started going off. I had to get out of there. I started turning left to run when I saw a dark shadow moving in the opening of the mine shaft. Whatever it was, it appeared to be crouched down to fit in the mine shaft, and most mine shafts I've been in have 8 to 10 foot ceilings. At first I thought it was a mountain lion, and then I remembered how big the shafts were. My mind raced trying to think what it could be.

It was too big to be a black bear, which are rare in northeast Nevada. I nearly froze with panic, and then it slowly kept coming towards the opening of the mine shaft. It was probably within 10 feet of the opening and the light was starting to show whatever it was. It was covered from head to toe in greyish brown fur and then it screamed. It was unlike anything I had ever heard in my life. My ears were ringing from it. I flipped into panic mode and did what any good redneck would do. I shot at it. I pulled up my HK91, placed the front blade on what appeared to be the center mass, and ripped off five rounds as fast as I could accurately shoot. If you've ever shot big game with a large caliber rifle, you know the sound when you connect with something. I had four solid

hits in one round that went high, and this made it scream even louder than it had in pain. At this time, I started hearing more and separate screams coming from over in the well and in the hills above the mine shaft. I started running down the hill as fast as I could. In the tree line above the road, 75 to 125 yards I could see fast movement. Rocks were tumbling down the hill and there were several other screams from the mine shaft. I could hear the wailing of whatever I had shot. Whatever it was, I had definitely connected and it was hurting. Up in the tree line, they were running from tree to tree on all fours,

getting closer to me as I ran towards the rock. I was shooting in the general vicinity of the movement on the top of the hill, and by the time I got to the limestone rock, I had expended the 20-round mag and the rifle. I ripped it out and put in my spare magazine, chambered it around, and started spraying towards the fallen tree approximately 200 yards away. By now, I kept glancing back and whatever they were, they were staying in the trees. I could make out their masses and fur but they wouldn't stay in the open. I got back to the fallen tree and ate dirt trying to jump over it.

I got up, fired between 12 to 15 rounds at the closest movement which was approximately 50 yards away from me. I heard a few rounds connect and it started screaming louder. Between the screaming and gunshots my ears were damn near deaf. I opened the door of my truck, got in and started up as fast as I could. Backing up to turn around, I damn near put my truck down in the canyon and as I started going forward to leave on the road that I came in on, I finally got a look at one of them. It was crouched over with its front feet on the tree. It was covered from head to toe in grayish brown fur with long slender fingers with claws tipping off the fingers.

The back of it was hunched and the face was slender, most closely resembling that of a badger but with sunken in eyes. It was shaking its head back and forth and it sounded like it was attempting to speak but it was so garbled and with the noise of my truck I couldn't make out what it was. I averaged 50-60 miles per hour on this terrible dirt road that I had done 15 on the way in. I didn't slow down or stop until I got back to pavement, and by now I was so shaken that I had to stop and collect myself. I got back to town and was in a bit of shock. My dad had been a guide in the Ruby Mountains for about 20 years. He asked me how my trip went and where I had been. He could tell that I was startled and asked where I had been and I told him that I had been north of Rupee Valley. He got quiet and

asked if I had seen a cabin with a tree falling over the road. I told him yes. He looked me in the eyes and told me that it was somewhere that I should never go again, especially alone. We never spoke about it again after that. I tried researching it a bit, a few years had passed, and I asked some old-timers, and one of them told me a story about the Ruby Mountains, and I'll make it quick. You see, during the 40s and 50s, the Army Air Corps operated out of the Wendover Air Base. Every now and then, during bad weather, a B-25, B-17, or B-29 would crash into the rubies due to poor visibility. Some of the local ranchers got recruited to help the military go up to a crash site during the winter to recover the bodies. A rancher I was talking to told me that it took them about three days to get up to where the

crash was on horseback and recover the bodies. He said that when they got to the wreckage, all of the crew members were laid out side by side next to each other in a clearing in the wreckage. Many of them had severed limbs and it was apparent that they all died on impact. Somehow they ended up laid out next to each other and this was at nearly 10,000 feet elevation as well. I have never been back there. Part of the reason is I live in western Nevada now. But in the back of my mind there is something that's telling me that I should go back.

And one day I do want to go back there. Now this was back in 2001 before camera phones and I was too broke to afford any sort of digital stuff. And I want to go back with a camera. Preferably a GoPro on my helmet and with several friends that are armed. There's just something about there. Even with all the stuff that I experienced that day that's drawing me back. And one day I will go. I guess I just need closure on what happened that day.

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Bet on the sports you love with Bet Rivers Sportsbook. Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. I moved to Kentucky for the fire service, buying 10 square miles of hilly forest with a home at an auction. The old owner had lived there his whole life and died on the land.

His family sold it to make a quick buck and I started planting more trees. The forest was dense but could use more, especially around the house. I put up trail cams because of homeless wanderers coming onto the property. Something was getting angry and ripping down the trail cams from behind and including one high up in the trees. I found piles of them in tree hollows. I grabbed my shotgun and camping supplies and headed out to find the homeless guy and persuade him into leaving my property. And I couldn't find anyone, only tiny four-toed prints in the mud by the streams.

I thought it was a raccoon but the spacing made me think that it was standing up. I made camp and hunkered down, cooking up some tasty rabbit stew and I got into the tent and went to sleep before cleaning the pot because I was too tired. I woke up at around 3 in the morning with the moon shining through the trees. I heard weird grunting noises from outside the tent and they sounded almost small. I opened up the window flap and the stew pot was swinging but I couldn't see anything near it except for a mossy rock about the size of a gallon jug that I hadn't noticed before. I thought nothing of it and went back to sleep.

I woke up and went over to the stew pot to cook some breakfast. It had been licked clean and the mossy rock was gone. I assumed raccoons must have cleaned it in the middle of the night and the rock was the lump that did it. I packed up and searched some but I couldn't find anyone. However, I swore the moss around me was alive. Rocks seemed to move whenever I looked away from them. I didn't have a sense of dread or anything, just sort of a weird feeling. And somewhere in my search I lost my knife, which I'd had for a while. It was cheap, but it had sentimental value to me. I got home, tired and bummed out from not finding anyone and losing my knife and went to sleep immediately. I woke up to a light knocking at my door.

I got up, kind of groggy, and opened the door, eyeing where I kept my gun, just in case. I peeked through the window, and no one was there. I grabbed my shotgun, opened the door, and poked my head through, in case it was someone visiting their new neighbor. Again, no one. Only forest noises and the occasional butterfly. I stepped through the door and felt my foot kick something. and no one, only forest noises and the occasional butterfly. I stepped through the door and felt my foot kick something. I looked down, and my knife was laying there on a small bed of flowers in the grass. I looked around, really confused but happy that someone found my knife,

and then I felt anger that someone was on my property and watching me. I shouted out as loud as I could, a quick thanks, and invited them to come see me so I could talk to them. I noticed about three rocks, all around the size and shape of a jug of milk, in a row just on the border of the forest. I picked up my knife and walked back inside. When I glanced outside, the rocks were gone. A month later, since finding my knife on the porch, I was planting more trees and working the land to make a small garden. A puppy named Hugo was walking around, sniffing things and doing puppy stuff while I tilled. I noticed two rocks on the edge of the forest and I thought nothing of it. They didn't bother me and I didn't bother them. I was getting used to it and expecting them by now. Honestly, I didn't feel afraid and Hugo didn't seem to mind

them. I started to get really into my garden, losing track of time and looked up to find Hugo to take him inside with me for a break. Hugo was gone. I panicked because I loved that little guy and I looked around frantically and saw him by the edge of the forest, sniffing one of the rocks. The rock he was sniffing shifted a little when his nose got too close to it, and I ran over to Hugo to keep him from getting hurt or something in case a rock tipped over on top of him. And that's when I saw the moss on the rock shift

and sprout out a tiny spindly little arm. I stopped walking for a second and blinked to make sure that I wasn't seeing things. It was hot and humid and I hadn't been drinking as much water as I should have. The arm continued to extend slowly and tentatively towards Hugo, recoiling a little whenever Hugo's nose touched it. I stood back up cautiously to not spook the rock thing. It was getting nearer to Hugo, about 50 yards away, and I saw that it was petting Hugo's head.

Hugo was wagging his tail and generally seemed to be enjoying it. I got about 10 yards away when I stepped on a twig and made a loud noise, and the creature's arms shot back into its body and the rock started tumbling frantically away. Hugo ran after them and I ran after Hugo. I lost sight of my dog and searched for him until nightfall. I went back to my house to grab a flashlight and my camping gear to find my pupper, and as I got closer I saw a white and black lump on the porch. I started running towards my house and as I got closer I saw that it was Hugo. He was lying on the porch, not moving. I got upset as I got closer and I saw red and pink

around his head and neck and I started sprinting, thinking my dog was hurt or dead. I got ten feet away, about to bound up onto the porch when Hugo's head jerked up and he looked at me. He stood up and came to greet me with a slobbering mouth, clearly happy to see me. He had a little crown of red and pink flowers around his head and neck and a rope tied to his collar in my door. I hugged him, tears welling up because I'd come to love this pupper so much and I stood up and shouted a thank you to whoever brought him home and then went in and went to sleep. I've been on this property now for about four years and have a lot more stories about them if people are still interested. I've gotten very close to them

and am trying to build up my trust with the little things. About a year later I kept seeing the rocks around my house and they were getting closer and closer and I noticed one was living in my garden now, a little different from the others, greenish gray and very round, almost spherical. And every now and then I would take a peek out the window and caught a glimpse of it moving around very slowly and methodically. The garden has never looked more beautiful since it moved in. I go out to my garden often and see it on the opposite side from me all the time, and I decided one day to go up to it and try to show it that I meant no harm.

I was unsuccessful. It just tucked its arms and legs in whenever it saw me, and it looked like a chubby sloth carved out of stone, but it had no mouth or nose from what I could tell, just two beady little eyes. I decided to leave it alone. It seemed to be helping me with the garden, and I appreciated that. And sometimes some of my veggies would be gone or half-eaten and sitting by the stone. I let it have them and left some veggies near the edge of the forest one day and I noticed that the stone was gone and the veggies were no longer being eaten. The garden was looking a little worse for wear and the stones were gone from the tree line. I was genuinely sad that they were gone. About two weeks later,

I went into the forest looking for them. I came to the middle of my property where a massive tree had fallen. It was some kind of oak, probably around 100 feet tall. When I got closer, I noticed that there were dozens of the stones on and around it, all leaning on it like they were kissing it or resting their heads on it, and I was overwhelmed with a sudden sense of sadness, almost like a family member had died. I walked over to the tree and placed my hand on it, whispering some sweet nothings to the stones. I went back home after spending almost three hours at the tree, feeling bereft of an old friend, and for some reason I remembered that I had a white oak sapling in my yard outside my

house, and I dug it up and took it to the bigger oak in the forest the next day with Hugo. I planted it next to the fallen oak so that it would replace the giant hole the older one had left. Hugo was walking around and I caught a glimpse of a few stones petting him. A few days later, I noticed the stones were back on the edge of the forest. The garden stone was back and everything looked lush and vibrant again. I have one other notable story that was kind of scary I guess, well not really scary but it does involve a crazy homeless guy. I went out to the forest one day with Hugo to look around for bums, say hi to some friends

and just be outdoors. I noticed more and more signs of a homeless person living here. Trash everywhere, broken branches and plants, etc. And finally, I made it to where I thought the guy was camping. I found a shelter and took it down, but I neatly folded it for him so he could get off my property quickly. It was starting to get dark, and I was getting a little worried that I might have made him angry or he was dead somewhere on my property. I saw someone moving deeper into the forest and shouted out to him to stop and talk to me. The guy had a pickaxe so I kept my shotgun ready in case he got violent. I saw that he was smashing something with it and started to freak

out thinking that I had stumbled onto a killing. And that's when I heard the unmistakable sound of rocks being smashed. I fired into the air, getting his attention quickly. He dropped his pickaxe and put his hands up, mumbling something unintelligible. My adrenaline was pumping. I was shaking and Hugo was going mad on his leash. I screamed at him about smashing the rocks. He started saying how they were following him and throwing stuff at him. And I almost shot

him then and there, but instead, I led him at gunpoint to the edge of my property and told him to get out and never come back. And a few days later, I got a call from the sheriff's office about a body they found near my property. A homeless guy beaten to death and stuffed into a tree. They told me a deputy would be coming to talk to me, and the deputy showed up about an hour later and questioned me about it if I had any interactions with the homeless guy. I told him no, and he started to leave, and then turned around on my porch and mentioned my stone fence was a little low but looked good. I looked around and saw the entire edge of the forest around my house

was surrounded by stones. I thanked him and saw him get into his cruiser. He left and I looked back at my house, and all the stones were gone except for two. I had a lot of small ones like gifts and whatnot and they left me flowers sometimes, moral mushrooms and things I've lost. I've been giving them about a third of my veggies and they seem to like that. More and more of them show up in my yard rather than my tree line and they only seem to move when they don't notice me there. The very slow moving and the only time I've ever seen them move to move when they don't notice me there. The very slow moving and the only time I've ever seen them move quickly is when they roll. I have a lot more animals in my area now and the forest and the yard slash garden are much more lush and green. When they're around,

they seem to disappear during storms. I think they either go into tree hollows or patiently wait it out under other kinds of cover. The garden rock likes to go into a small covered trellis that I built for it when the rain comes. I've never heard them speak and I've only seen their faces a few times. It's just an oblong rock with beady black eyes that looks like polished black glass. Very spindly arms and legs. Not bony looking but more vine like that they tuck back onto the body and aren't noticeable. They have four toes and three fingers and a thumb. The bodies are shaped like a bullet and they're about the size of a gallon jug.

The garden rock is more round though. Their heads sit on the front of the body rather than on top and kind of blend into it. The eyes are wide spaced, almost parallel to each other and about the size of a small marble. They're covered in moss and can range from green to burgundy and I think that might indicate age, but I don't know. When they stand up and walk, they look hunched over and they tend to wobble more than just walk, with arms out like they're carrying something under them. There were a couple of things left in the house before I moved in, like some personal documents, mostly health records. And other than that, I know the guy came from Holland, and he built the house when he was over 50. None of his family wanted the land, they just

seemed to want to make some quick cash. I did let them spread his ashes in the forest though because that's where he spent most of his time with his wife. And her ashes were also spread out there according to their daughter. He seemed like a sweet old man. He liked woodcrafting and I found some of his stuff here and there in the basement in the shop. I left a figure out that he made on the porch and the next day it was gone. I'm not sure if the little stone people took it or if it was some other animal passing through. So this is my first post on 4chan ever. I'm kind of weirded out because sometimes I come here to read stories when I'm bored, but this thread really hit home. I'm not a big believer in the supernatural, but I had one instance in my life that freaked me out.

It is eerily similar to several other stories that I've read here describing skinwalkers. It happened in a place called Miracle Mile, or around there in the state of Wyoming. My family was living in Montana for work and we took a camping trip with another family. I'll tell the whole story in the next post once I know this is how you respond to a post and believe me when I say that this is my first ever post on 4chan and it looks like it worked. Feel free to ask me any questions as this will take some time to type the full story. You see it was summer of 1998 and my dad and two brothers along with my dad's friend and his two kids, they were Canadian but

my dad's friend and his kids were Montana residents and they decided to go to a campground near Casper, Wyoming for a fishing trip. We all traveled together in a van all night and arrived at the site late at night. I'm the oldest in my family and the same age as the oldest son of my dad's friend, so we decided to have our own little dome tent while everyone else stayed in this large family tent. We made camp beside a river and went to bed with no disturbances. Now let me describe the campsite. It looked like the surface of the moon. No trees, only rocks and

desert. A really lousy place for a 14-year-old to camp. The site was chosen by my dad's friend, an avid outdoorsman and hunter, due to supposed great fishing. The next day, we decided to explore. All the kids headed off to see the river and play around, and while hiking, we came to this large rock outcrop. The base was stained black with large blotches the size of dinner plates, and we found animal bones on the ground. Kind of cool, but not anything us young kids thought of as weird. The day was spent in general kid fashion, and as night came, we had a nice meal and sat around the fire. We began hearing weird noises, almost like a baby crying, soft and distant. All the kids were freaked out, but my dad's friend assured us that it was a bobcat and very far away.

I don't know anything about this and would appreciate anyone knowledgeable in this to confirm either way. He had a rifle in the truck and a.38 pistol with snake shot, as he called it, for ammo. So we decided to file it under not an issue and went to bed. My friend and I were in our own tent playing cards when we heard some movement outside. This was about an hour and a half after everyone went to bed, so we slowly zipped the fly down a little and looked outside. My father's friend was blocking the perimeter with his gun drawn, almost searching for something. We kept quiet while we watched him pace around with a concerned look on his face, and before he went to the main tent, he retrieved his rifle

from the truck and loaded it, taking it with him to the big tent. We've never heard anything else and passed out for the night. The next day, we asked my friend's dad why he was outside last night with his gun drawn. He told us not to worry and that he had thought that he had just heard something in the camp that was kind of fishy. For us, it was weird, but I could tell that he was still a little strange about it. I should say that he's not a crazy man. He's actually a very intelligent engineer with no paranormal thoughts or anything like that, and we believe he was just worried about a legitimately dangerous animal causing damage or being a danger to everyone there at the camp.

And that day, we had some weird occurrences. First, we discovered several dead rodents on the rock with black stains. We now think that the other stains were older kills, blood marks. Very weird and we have no idea how they got there. Second, we discovered tracks in the sand around the camp. They almost circled the camp 25 meters around us, well within where darkness would have been. My dad's friend said that they resembled coyote tracks but larger. The number of tracks indicated more than one. I don't know if coyotes are in Wyoming but I assume

they are. And third, our cooler in the truck bed was open and food was rummaged through. This pointed to raccoons as they could climb and could manipulate the cooler easily. However, it didn't explain the tracks as they were definitely not raccoon prints after the discovery of the tracks indicating a rather large animal we decided that we would move camp the next day the fishing had dropped off as well so that was that and it would be our last night here everyone was a little freaked out about getting eaten by a wolf or whatever it was out there and we ate pretty much in silence and I could tell my father and his friend were now

concerned for the kids. We moved our little pup tent closer to the big one and brought our pellet gun to bed. Fruitless I know but it was for protection I guess. The kids all went to bed and my dad and his friend remained up talking around a campfire. My friend and I played cards until we could hear my dad and his friend finally knock off and we fell asleep. Sometime in the middle of the night we were awoken by the sounds of plates and cutlery clanging as if it was something on the table messing with the food. We couldn't find our flashlights so my friend and I yelled to wake our dads to see what

was going on. And once we did, the clanging stopped, as if whatever it was wanted to listen to where the sound came from. We were sitting in our beds, terrified as to what was outside. Then we heard this low, guttural, cooing noise that I had never heard in my life. At this point, my dad's friend called out, asking what we wanted. We started to say something was outside when there was a loud crash. We later discovered it was our wash basin being pushed off the table, followed by another loud guttural call from further away. We were full-blown panicking. It felt like my dad's friend was taking forever to

go and check whatever was happening outside. And finally, we could see illumination from his flashlight as he opened the tent zipper. And this is when all hell broke loose. I will describe the final events in my last post as clearly as I can remember them. The first thing I remember is my dad's friend yelling aloud, maybe to frighten off the animal. Then came the actual scream as he yelled to my father to get the rifle. There was panicked conversation as they assembled in the tent. We were yelling now, asking what was going on when we heard the first gunshot.

It was finally time to open our tent. What I saw has stayed with me to this day 16 years later. My father, in his boxers, had a flashlight illuminating his friend, who was holding the rifle and pointing and screaming at the truck. Upon opening the tent, my dad's friend had startled a creature near our table. Apparently it was drinking the water in our wash basin. After my dad's friend screamed at the animal, it made a call to its mate or some other animal standing near the truck.

Once retrieving the rifle, he fired at the animal by the truck as the other had ran out of sight. When I managed to look outside, they had been approaching the animal, believed to be hiding behind the truck. My dad's friend approached the truck and kicked the back quarter panel, rocking it in an attempt to flush out the creature, and it worked, and the animal bolted 20 meters past our tent into the darkness. Due to the closeness of our tent, my dad's friend decided not to take a second shot. We decided to pack most of our things that night and slept in the van. We talked about what we all saw and tried to make a reasonable conclusion as to what went on that night.

We decided that the animal was about four feet tall and very slender. It appeared grey with short hair, but it could have been white or tan due to only flashlights illuminating it. It had long legs that bent like a kangaroo with short arms and a short tail, and it ran on two legs but when it first appeared behind the truck, it was on four legs for a short while before picking up on two. The animal was roughly three feet high and its mouth and face were very dog-like. This first takes place when I was 14. The second was when I was 22.

When I was in high school, I had a best friend named Andrew and my cousin Joseph. We did everything together and hung out often. They lived near each other on a bad part of town, but I'd often go visit them every week and we'd walk to a park that was nearby to hang out and just talk about life. Next to the old park was a sort of maintenance tunnel that had two entrances leading towards under the ground where the park was. Shallow water ran out from them and into a creek and the tunnels were made of concrete and the entrances on both sides were square. Outside had a concrete ramp sloping down towards them and one day we

decided to sit down on them and look into the tunnels. We noticed graffiti on the left one above a corner that said, this way to hell. Being young and thinking we were brave, we wanted to go see what was down there. The ceiling was low so you had to crouch to walk in there And we got about 10 feet in and realized that we went further and we wouldn't be able to see anything So we planned on getting flashlights and going back later Our moms bought us some cheap ones that could barely shine So we made it just a little further than last time But we could see some of the graffiti inside and one said, Run, boys and girls. As you got further down the corner, going toward the right, and before it did,

there was a final warning that read, You're halfway to hell now, with an arrow pointing in the direction of the turn. At that point, we couldn't see anything around the corner, so we said that we'd save up for some good flashlights and come back way later. And about a week later, I get to class and my cousin, who usually jokes often with me, looks a bit shaken up. He was quiet and didn't say much and I finally asked him what was wrong and he hesitated to tell me, but finally said, me and Andrew went into the tunnel yesterday by ourselves. My mom bought me a powerful flashlight and I ran ahead of Andrew and when I got to the corner I turned and the light shined on something.

It was black and big and when the light hit its back it turned its head towards me and stood up all the way. He had a serious expression on his face and I could tell that he wasn't joking. I wanted to believe him but Andrew had a bad habit of his face and I could tell that he wasn't joking. I wanted to believe him but Andrew had a bad habit of lying and I figured maybe Joseph and him were just trying to prank me. We didn't go into the tunnels for a while. One day I went to stay over at Andrews and he invited a girl over from class to hang out.

We told her about the creepy tunnel and she wanted to see it. So we went there when it was dark and her being braver than both of us kept getting ahead of us and Andrew tried to warn her, practically begging her to slow down. We turned the corner and proceeded to go down it. This part of the tunnel was longer and even with three flashlights it was difficult to see much. There was no graffiti down it, just shallow water. We got to a wall that had a smaller circular hole that led down further and just before that the ceiling arched upwards. We stood up to stretch our backs. Me being 6 feet 4 inches, I was able to stand up

all the way with my head still not hitting the top. As we stretched, it suddenly hit me that Joseph had set about seeing something stand up at the end of the tunnel, a part that neither of us had reached before until now, and I looked at Andrew and said, Joseph wasn't lying. We got out and went back to Andrew's. We told Joseph what had happened, and at this point, although we were scared, it was still something scary to show others, and he called one morning to tell me his cousin stayed over the night before and that after telling him, his cousin wanted to see it but not to go in, just to see where it was. Joseph's mom was a little strict on him leaving past a certain time of night so when she fell asleep, they snuck out in the middle of the night to go see it. When they arrived, Joseph said that they walked down the concrete ramp and heard voices, like multiple people talking from down the tunnel.

He went to get closer and stepped into the water when he heard voices and a commotion saying, someone's here, then splashing from down the tunnel as multiple footsteps began running through, making it echo. He said him and his cousin ran all the way back to his house, afraid that someone might have seen or even followed them. He got his grandpa's rifle and kept it by him, not knowing what to expect, but nothing ever happened. And one night I was at home, and my aunt Priscilla came over. So it was me, my sister Renee, my aunt, and my sister's friend Erica, and a friend of mine named Michael. And we started telling scary stories and I brought up the tunnel. My aunt asked where it was and offered to drive over because she wanted to see it. And this got everyone's interest. I went outside to tell my dad where we were going and he told

me that incidents happened there with kids when he lived in that neighborhood. My dad told tall tales so I didn't really believe a word he said but to my surprise he handed me a pocket knife if I insisted on going in there. We show up and Erica says that she's staying in the car. I called Andrew and Joseph and asked if they would want to go with us in a big group. I guess safety in numbers and since we didn't see anything last time I figured it would be smart. They walked over and we all went in. As we got to the corner and turned my sister started to get ahead of me by a few feet. I was trying to catch up while holding the light ahead to shine with hers when I saw the light reflect off of something dark.

I immediately stopped and started to tell Renee to get back. She either didn't hear me or didn't care and took two more steps and shined light upon what I had mine aimed at. Something crouched down, with its back turned at first, turned its head back to us and stood up. The skin was solid black and the light seemed to shine off it, almost glistening. From what I could tell, it was massive and the head near the ceiling as it was where the roof arched upwards. The thing I could clearly see were its red eyes. Just two embers in the dark staring down at us. I'd never heard my sister scream like that. to move. I panicked and grabbed my leg, forcing it to budge, and then the other, too afraid to look up, but was imagining that this thing was heading my way. As soon as my legs could move, I turned and ran faster than I'd ever ran in my life. I ended up being the first person out of the tunnel, although the rest of the group, including my sister, were ahead of me, and we agreed to never go in again. A couple of months later, me and Andrew planned on going to

the park to hang out and saw a birthday party was happening, so I suggested that we go into the entrance of the tunnel where the light from the sun was still visible, just to have a little bit of privacy and talk and not be near anyone. He was hesitant at first, but agreed as I told him that I wasn't going anywhere near the darkness. We got a little ways in and the uneven ground elevated near a spot, making the water run around it, creating a dry spot. And we sat down and began talking for a bit until we heard some kids from the party come down to the entrance and ask us what we were doing. We tried to encourage them to go back and when they insist on staying to ask questions, I told Andrew let's get out, I don't want them coming down here.

We went to leave and as we came out, we saw a man telling the kids to go back and he turned and looked at us and asked what were y'all doing down there i told him that we were just talking and hanging out and his face turned very serious and he asked did you see anything down there i thought my heart began to pound this is a complete stranger that we had never seen before and i tried to pretend that i didn't know and asked, what thing? In a quiet voice. And I began to raise his voice and said, that thing.

That big black no-name thing. Did you see it? We stayed quiet until I finally asked, how do you know about that? And he responds, let me tell you something, man. When me and my friends were your age, we thought we were brave and cool and went down there too. You ain't got no business going down those tunnels, you hear me? He was getting angry. Although we weren't arguing,

this is until he began to yell. And Andrew began to backtalk and tell him that he didn't need to listen to him. And Andrew was short and stocky and me being a pretty tall teenager, I was really too scared to say anything. The man threatened to take Andrew down to the tunnel and kill him. And something about the way he said it made me feel that he was pretty serious. Suddenly a man from the party, drunk, came down to the area and went to unzip his pants and relieve himself from the water away from us and said, Man, where'd you go? We were looking for you. And the other man replied,

I'm just talking to these kids. And the drunk man asked him to hurry up and went back to the birthday party. The man turned back to us and pointed a finger at us and said, I'm serious. Stay out of those tunnels. Then walked off without waiting for a reply. Andrew finally expressed how scared he was but didn't want to show the man so tried to be brave and talk back. And we went to his house and made his promise that day to never go there again. Years later, in my late 20s, I told some friends and

I agreed to go show them the entrance. The graffiti warning was still there. Trees had overgrown covering the top of the entrance with hanging limbs and leaves, and a gate was installed blocking the entryway to both sides with a sign that said, No Trespassing. I'm not sure why it was installed, as I hadn't seen it in years, but to this day, at age 36, it still gives me the creeps to think about our experience in there, and how foolish we were just because we wanted to be young and dumb. I still have no idea what we saw that day.

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We didn't mind since it wasn't that serious. That night, though, would prove to be different. We got to the restaurant at around 8pm and were looking forward to a nice dinner and drinks. We were seated and given our menus and a little piece of paper with some questions on it. It was one of those things where you sign up for this newsletter from the restaurant and you're entered to win a free meal for two. I wasn't interested but my friend Allison was and she filled out the little paper and gave it to our waiter when she came over to get our drink orders. She had put her phone number and address down in case she won and the second it was handed over we didn't think about

it again. Out of sight, out of mind I guess. We ordered our drinks and were talking for a little while when Allison got a text on her phone. It said something about how gorgeous she looked that night and that this person texting her thought that she looked better in red. I saw the look on her face as she read the text and she handed me the phone immediately so I could see it. I didn't like the thought of someone we didn't know creeping out my friend like that. We looked around to try to figure out if maybe it was one of our friends who was in the restaurant just messing around with us, but no one we knew was there. I was starting to get angry, but Allison told me to calm down and it wasn't such a big deal with the text being harmless. I brushed it off and

we continued with our dinner. We ordered our food and around five minutes after getting it, she got another text. This time, it wasn't so innocent. It detailed how much this person loved watching her eat her food and that it was turning them on. She choked reading it and it was disturbing to see the message myself, even as someone the text wasn't even aimed at. And that's when we started to get really concerned. She tried calling the number because clearly it was from someone in the restaurant, but no phone rang. She just wanted to and I agreed that that would be the best decision. I called the waiter over and asked for the check while also explaining what was going on.

I didn't know if all women in the restaurant were at risk of getting those creepy texts, so warning her was something that I thought was the right thing to do. She thanked me for telling her and apologized profusely that someone was there harassing us and told us that she'd get our checks settled as fast as possible. While we were sitting there waiting, another text came in. This time it was about how Allison deserved someone better than that ugly beta sitting next to her, clearly talking about me. Then another came in saying that she could do so much better and if she texted back, she could be with a real man who could take care of her and protect her. She was starting to get teary eyed and wanted to cry, so I gave her a hug. I wanted to console her, but also wanted to get on this guy's nerves. He was clearly watching us, and I wanted to do something to provoke a reaction

big enough that I could figure out who was sending her those messages. I was going to find that guy and confront him sooner or later, and I really wanted it to be sooner. Unfortunately, no matter how much I made it seem like Alice and I were some couple, nothing I did provoked a reaction from that creep. We had gotten our check back and were about to leave when she got another text. This time, it was pictures of her from behind with a very explicit message to go along with it, and I was beyond mad once I saw that. I took her phone and asked for the manager.

I suddenly remembered the paper that she had filled out and realized the person who was texting her had to be someone who had access to it. Because they were placed behind the bar, it had to be someone who worked there. I told the manager everything and showed him all the texts. I pretty much demanded that he find out who was sending them. He had all of the employees come up front and had them place their phones on the bar. We called the number and one of the phones lit up with a caller ID that read sexy blonde with a picture of Allison sitting at the table. The manager picked up the phone and by process of elimination we figured out who it was. It turned out to be the bartender.

He looked gross and creepy and just like how you'd expect. He had this long, greasy hair tied into a man bun, pimples everywhere and a unibrow and he had this smirk on his face that didn't even go away when he realized that he had been found out. I walked up to him. I pushed him. I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, but he didn't respond. Only seemed to laugh and said that I just wouldn't get it because I'm beta and he's alpha. So I pushed him again, and that time he didn't find it so funny. The manager wasn't liking the scene that was being created, so he suggested that we head into the office and sort things out there. And once we were in the room, I demanded that he delete every picture that he took of her,

but he seemed to refuse. He said that it was a man's right to take what he wanted, and he wanted those pictures, so they were his. And that's when it was obvious that we had to call the police. And the second that was mentioned, he started getting more agreeable. But I thought it was too late. The manager of the restaurant called the police, and they got there probably in about five minutes or so.

I guess that's the perk of living in the city. And unfortunately, there wasn't anything they could really do about the situation. Taking pictures of another person in a public area is creepy, but it is legal. And because nothing he said in those texts was threatening, in the eyes of the law, he didn't do anything necessarily wrong. The officers left, and man, did it make that guy act even worse. He now had this mentality like he was right, and we were wrong, and he was entitled to those pictures and even more. He started telling Allison that he'd get her one way or another and one day she'd be his. And I wanted to beat him up right there, but didn't want to be the one going to jail that night. And I really do wish I could say that

there was a good outcome of what had happened, but not much was done. He was fired, which obviously was a step in the right direction, but I wish the police would have done something. He didn't text Allison again, which we were both relieved about. It's just sad that people have this mentality where violating someone's sense of security is not only okay, but they're right. Let's get one thing straight here though. You're not an alpha, taking what you think is owed to you, you are just a creep. Ask anyone working in fast food if it's something they enjoy, and the answer will always be no. Their reasons might not be as concerning as mine, but the opinion is usually the same. I was 20 years old and had just gotten a job at a local fast food place. It wasn't one of those chain restaurants so that also meant that it wasn't run very well.

Only on my third day I was left alone after 8pm to close the restaurant by myself. I didn't like the feeling of being there alone but it was a pretty small town and there was only three hours left on my shift. I was waiting at the counter for someone to come in and order something, but no one came in for at least an hour after being there alone. I heard the door open and the bell that was hanging on the handle started to ding. I looked up from my phone and my heart dropped just a little. Stanley, only a few feet away from me, was a very large, very disheveled, seemingly homeless man. Now don't judge me for being scared. Most young women are scared at the presence of really any guy,

let alone one who looks like he's been living on the streets for half a decade. I was, of course, still very polite to him. He walked up to the counter and I had to hold off from gagging at the smell radiating off his body. He was very soft spoken which eased my nerves a little but still felt uneasy about the situation. He ordered a burger and fries and I got to making it right away. As I walked a couple of steps back into the kitchen he must have taken notice that I didn't call the order out for anyone else to make it. Are you here alone tonight, sweetie? And my whole body lit up with chills.

I told him of course I wasn't there alone and that my co-workers were just having a smoke break out back. But he didn't buy it though. Really? Because I was just back there and there's nobody back there. Don't lie to me, darling. I started to get extremely uncomfortable and wanted nothing more than for this man to just get out of the restaurant and leave me alone, but I already knew that that wasn't going to be happening anytime soon. Thankfully, just as the homeless man began approaching the counter again,

a woman and her two kids walked in. When he saw them, he stepped back and sat down at a table that had direct line of sight into the kitchen. I guess he wanted to make sure that he could see me at all times and let me tell you, having his eyes constantly on me did not feel good. I was thoroughly terrified and creeped out but he hadn't done anything wrong so I couldn't ask him to leave. The woman ordered food for herself and her children and I was praying the whole time that she'd just get it for dining but I guess I just couldn't be that lucky. She got it as takeout and I know it wasn't

the best thing to do but I spent as long as humanly possible making her food. I finished the man's food first and called his name to pick up from the counter. He rushed over so he could get to it when I was still close and he did something so gross that I really can't tell you the reason. Just as I was setting the tray down on the counter, he leaned over it and breathed heavily in my face. This time I could not suppress the gag. In fact, I started dry heaving. He wasn't even offended

though. He actually kind of smirked like he was happy about what he did and that it was somehow an attractive thing. The woman asked if I was okay and I told her I was fine. I knew I didn't want her to leave, but there was nothing I could really do to get her to stay. I got her food bagged up and with a call of her name and thanking her for her visit, she was out the door and gone. Alone again, aren't we? I backed away from the counter when I noticed the man approaching it yet again. He smiled this wide, creepy smile and I hated every second of it. His teeth were yellow and chipped and I really didn't want to experience that smell

again so I backed away even more. He leaned over the counter and just stared at me and that's when I finally built up the courage to ask him to leave. We're actually going to be closing the restaurant early tonight so if you don't mind just collecting your belongings and exiting, that would be great. I really tried to sound as nice and calm as possible. I didn't want to show any fear and make myself seem vulnerable in any way. He didn't refuse, and to my surprise, he actually did leave. I watched out the windows as he walked down the street and into the dark, out of sight. I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.

I quickly went back into the office and grabbed the keys. I practically ran to the front door and locked it. I was so happy that I was locked in and no one could get to me. I didn't care if I got fired. I was closing and going home where I knew I'd be safe. I was wiping down the cutting boards and singing a song to myself when I heard a crashing sound come from the front lobby, like one of the windows had just shattered. Freaked out, I had an idea of what had just happened, but I wasn't about to go look. I had this horrible feeling in my gut that the man had

come back, and I had to hide. I had this thing where every time I entered the building I would think of an escape plan of somewhere to hide, and the restaurant wasn't any different. I wasn't going out the back exit in case someone was there waiting for me so I went to the one place that I knew that I could hide where no one would find me. I grabbed my puffy jacket and went inside the walk-in freezer and shut the door behind me as quietly as I could. In the back right corner there was a small space next to the roll-away metal shelving that I could barely squeeze into, but I managed. The boxes of burger patties and frozen fries covered most of where I was hiding. I crouched down to the point that I was sitting and holding my legs tight against my body,

and I planned to stay there like that until I knew that it was safe to leave. I heard grunting outside the freezer door and things being moved around. I was in there for about 20 minutes and I hoped that ordeal would be over soon. I was literally shaking from fear and probably the cold but was grateful whoever it was that was out there hadn't found me yet. But that gratitude wouldn't last. I sucked in a deep breath as I heard the walk-in door open. I peeked through the shelves and saw the same boots and pants that homeless man was wearing. I held my breath and did everything not to make any noise at all. My heart raced so fast that I was literally holding back tears, felt like I was going to pass out. Baby girl, are you in here? Daddy just wants to talk. I know you need a cuddle.

And his voice was no longer soft, but loud and desperate. I wish I could explain the horror that I felt in that moment, but no words would be able to describe it. I quietly let out the breath that I was holding in and prayed to God that he wouldn't hear it and thankfully he didn't. He exited the walk-in and left the door open, letting some of the coldness out with it. I heard the sound of glass cracking and figured that meant he was crawling back through the window that he had broken, but it didn't matter. I had no plans to leave that spot until I knew for sure that I wasn't in any more danger.

And before anyone asked why I didn't call the police, this was a time before cell phones and I wasn't about to just get up and use the landline and possibly be seen in that moment. The walk-in stopped being cold and I ended up falling asleep in that position. I woke up to the sound of people talking only feet from where I was still hiding. I looked through the shelves and was so happy to see my manager and a police officer standing there over me. And by that time, my legs had actually gone completely numb from the position that I was sitting in, and all I could do was kind of call out for help. They were shocked to see me back there, and they did help me out. The officer

sat me down in the lobby and I told him everything and he promised me that they'd keep an eye out for the man that I described but he couldn't make any promises on catching him. I quit that job right then and there and hadn't stepped foot in that building since. Thank Christ I never saw that man again which I was grateful for, but I was also disappointed the police never really even seemed to make an attempt to find him. I eventually ended up going to therapy for a while because I stopped sleeping and eating from this kind of trauma. I can easily say now that I have moved on. I don't like thinking about it, but telling others this story has given me some sort of weird sense of closure.

My one piece of advice to others is to always have an exit strategy wherever you go, or at least a really good place to hide. I've worked with some crazy people in the food service industry, but no one can compete with the guy I'm about to tell you about. I've been working at this specific Mexican place for a little over two years, and one of our employees quit out of nowhere, so we hired someone pretty fast. It probably would have been better to get someone with a little more experience, but I was also involved in the hiring process, and he seemed fine. We needed someone quickly, and we only had one applicant. He started his shift the Saturday after his interview and because it was busy during the lunch rush, we had him do dishes. There was no time to train him to cook that day and this may seem weird to

other people who work in a restaurant but at ours, we don't have someone who only does dishes. We all help out with them when anyone has a free moment. The only problem with that was that the new guy, David, absolutely despised doing dishes. I do get it though, it's not fun and no one likes that part of the job, but he made sure to let everyone know just how angry he was. He'd stand in the back doing dishes and then slam them down in the sink and throw them onto the shelf, to the point where the noise had started to actually scare the customers. He was asked to stop and he did for around 30 minutes, and then went back to throwing the dishes around and cussing about how much he hated his life. It was incredibly cringe, but we needed the help so we couldn't afford to fire him

over getting frustrated. This particular day I decided to sit outside to eat my lunch and where I was sitting faced the parking lot. I don't think David realized that I was sitting outside because when he went out to take a smoke break, he opened the front door of the restaurant, slammed it closed behind him, and then made a gun shape with his hand and shoved it in his mouth and acted like he was shooting himself in the head. And then on his way to his car, he started yelling to himself about how much he hated this place. My mouth was just hanging open at the sight of this guy having some tantrum like he was a big baby. And it only got worse though. His car was facing directly where I was sitting, so I got to

watch him as he got inside his car and slammed the door and then proceeded to scream, thrash around and slap himself in the face for around three minutes straight. The worst part is, and I'm not even exaggerating, this guy was nuts and I felt like it was on something. I went inside and told my co-workers about it and one of them said that he wasn't even surprised. I was confused and asked her why and she said that she had worked with him at another restaurant a couple of years earlier and that he had been fired for that kind of behavior and that I should be careful and do what I could to avoid him in the meantime. It was concerning so I went to the owner who basically

said that it is what it is and if he's not hurting anyone, he wasn't just going to fire him. I think his exact words were, we all have bad days. This was worse than a bad day though. It ended up being a horrible and disgusting two months working with this man. He started training to be a line cook around two weeks after he started working with us. I thought that was kind of gross considering that he had some of the worst hygiene I'd ever seen. He reeked of cigarettes, had the longest hair, and horribly disgusting long and dirty fingernails that just seemed to get worse as the days went by. It was so bad, his nails would pop through his gloves constantly and he didn't even care. He would only change them when someone else noticed and actually asked him.

The things I've mentioned so far don't seem that bad, but it's what he did next that brought it to a whole other level. I got this feeling that he started to feel like he could do anything he wanted and wouldn't be fired since he got away with so much up until that point. We didn't have a large staff, so he was left alone to cook sometimes and that's when we started getting a lot of complaints about the food. A lot of people would find hairs and say their food didn't taste right. We even had one guy tell us that he was 100% positive that there was spit in his beans and let me tell you, it really looked like it. We were lucky enough to talk him out of calling the police and instead gave him a voucher for free food for six months. We decided it would be best not to leave David alone in the kitchen anymore, but that really seemed to upset him. He wasn't a team player at all.

My manager was given the okay by our owner to do whatever it took to make him quit, basically just make his life miserable. We could have him fired, but I guess there's more paperwork involved when you fire someone. So David was told to do dishes all day, spray out the trash cans, clean the grease trap, scrub the floors, basically just all the gross stuff no one else wanted to do. I thought he was creepy and scary enough already, but the second we started giving him the gross jobs, he became almost evil. I'd bring him dishes and he'd just straight up yell at me that I was an idiot and even started making fun of the way I looked. I really didn't understand the hostility towards me, but whatever. I stopped interacting

with him at all at one point. It became obvious when any of my co-workers had just been talking to David because they would come out of the back almost in tears. The guy was ruthless. The last day he ever worked with us, he did something so gross that we ended up having to get the police involved. He had cooked that day because one of our other line cooks called out. I was standing in front of the restaurant when he walked in and I noticed him holding a water bottle behind his back. It was filled with a yellow substance, but I figured maybe he had a drink powder or something in it. He went back and washed his hands, which was a shocker in itself because he usually had to be told to do that. I didn't see his water bottle after that. The day went on and for dinner we had a special that was a broth-based soup.

I was waiting tables and was confused when literally anyone who had ordered the soup complained that it tasted terrible. I told our manager who tried the soup and agreed and only when he said, this tastes like piss, did I put two and two together. And I started screaming, oh my god, over and over again. I didn't even know what to say. Everyone was asking me what I was freaking out about and when I looked over at David, he looked at me with wide eyes and mouthed the word no. They looked over at him when they saw my eyes dart over to him and that's when he decided to try to make a break for it. The only problem was the way out of the kitchen was directly through us so when he lunged forward,

my manager just threw him to the ground. Finally, I was able to tell them what I saw and there was zero hesitation to call the police. They arrived and quickly found the bottle David had brought in, and it was indeed full of his urine. He was arrested, and the soup was tested and unfortunately was tainted with his bodily fluid. The restaurant was closed for a while after that and I just quit before it even reopened. I decided an office job was more suitable for me than that. David was charged with tampering of consumer products and was sentenced to three years in prison. I was actually glad that I got prison time. And honestly, I think he deserves it. Hopefully when he gets out, he's not someone I have to encounter ever again. Checking off your to-do list?

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Valid email address required. Terms apply. See Pennzoil.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. I never thought I'd be someone another person would become obsessed with, but I guess it happens more often than you'd think. I've gone to support groups and they've been full of people that had similar experiences, so I'm sharing my story so hopefully other people can see the warning signs better and faster than I did. It was around 2015 and I was 24 and newly married. My husband had just been laid off and we needed more of an income so I decided to get a job. Not a lot of places

were hiring but I managed to get a position as a hostess at a somewhat upscale restaurant. I had some experience in food service so that helped. I started around mid-June and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. All of my co-workers were very nice and professional which of course I appreciated. It was only after a couple of months when we had a new employee come in that I started having issues. I had just announced to everyone that I was pregnant and because of that my manager got super protective of me and asked if I wanted to take it easy by training the new hire. I of course wasn't going to say no to that. Being a hostess wasn't hard and explaining to someone else how to do it would be even easier. We'll call the new hire Amanda and Amanda was an interesting individual and by interesting I mean her personality was all

over the place. It was like she didn't know who she was. And I mean that in a mental sense. I had this feeling that she maybe had a mental disability, but it was not my place to ask, so of course I never did. Each day she came in, she acted completely different from the day before. She liked to go by different names and was always wearing different colored wigs, too. Everyone thought it was strange but she did her job well so we didn't ask questions. She started taking an interest in my life around a month after she started working with us. I didn't mind her asking questions about me so

I answered them honestly. I loved my life and telling other people about it was, you know, fun. I liked the attention and she asked a lot of questions about what being pregnant was like and I told her about the good and the bad. I guess I should stop here and mention her age. Amanda was pretty young, only somewhere around 18 or maybe 19. She told me over and over how she'd love to get pregnant and didn't even care whose it would be. I thought that was a little strange, but she was pretty young and dumb and it is what it is. I noticed quickly how she stuck around me mostly at the restaurant. She even would go to the bathroom at the same time as me, which was a lot considering I was pregnant. I asked her once why she always went when I did and she got offended and actually yelled at me for thinking that she was following me. It was incredibly awkward so I made a mental note not to confront her again. Something weird happened

though. I had decided to cut my hair short because the dye had grown out so much and I didn't want to put chemicals in my head while I was pregnant. This is relevant to the story because the day after I cut my hair, Amanda showed up for work with the same haircut. Odd, but I wasn't going to say anything about it. It is just a haircut after all. But then the next day came and she showed up with her hair colored the same color as mine. And I'm a natural ginger, so it was very noticeable that she was copying me. Again, whatever, live and let live. Thankfully, there were no more instances of her trying to look like me for the week preceding the hair incident. But, of course, it had to start up again sometime. This time, she showed up with

green eye-colored contacts. And let me tell you, she looked wild. They were the fakest looking things I'd ever seen and I couldn't help but let out a little giggle. She didn't like that. She got mad at me for laughing at her and went to the manager who, to her dismay, also started laughing. She actually ran out crying, but came back an hour later still wearing the contacts, so how much could it really have bothered her? The next month she continued to show up to work like that. People constantly asked about it and all I could say was that she liked my look and that it wasn't a big deal but deep down I did find it a little creepy. It only got serious the day my husband came into the restaurant. He walked in and I was in the back talking to someone and I looked up front and saw Amanda walking towards him. He looked visibly

confused and I started making my way over there. As I got closer I heard Amanda calling him sweetie and was so utterly shocked to see her wrap her arms around him and pull him close to her. He shoved her off and I asked her what she was doing and she said nothing, only scoffed and walked away. My husband was really freaked out and told me I should just quit because people like that could become dangerous. I told him really freaked out and told me I should just quit because people like that could become dangerous. I told him it was fine and that if it escalated I would consider quitting. Amanda avoided me for the next couple of months but continued to make herself look like me. Every one of my co-workers found it weird and creepy but we put up with it.

I finally was over it when she came in one day with a noticeably large baby bump and that wasn't gradual either. One day she had a completely flat stomach and the next day, a bump. I didn't even know what to say. I stood there in silence for a couple of minutes not even believing what I saw. Everyone was standing there with their mouths open. I finally knocked myself out of that trance and rushed over to my manager to let him know that she had taken it too far. He agreed and walked over to Amanda to confront her together. He asked her what she was doing wearing a fake bump and she looked genuinely offended. I couldn't hold it in anymore and I started yelling at her to get her own life and let me have mine.

She yelled back that this was her life and I needed to leave her and her baby alone. I was mad and what can I say? I pulled off her bump, like yanked it off her body. And she went insane. She started yelling at me that I just killed her baby and someone needed to call the police over the murder that had just been committed. And that's when she tried to attack me. In one swift moment, she tackled me and we were both on the ground. I was screaming and she managed to punch me twice in the stomach before my manager was able to pull her off of me. They called the police and an ambulance came to check me out.

I opted to be taken to the hospital after I started having cramps and stomach pains. It was better to be safe than sorry when it came to my baby. Everything ended up being okay and my baby, thank God, was still totally healthy. And Amanda was charged with battery and sentenced to 180 days in jail and a thousand dollar fine. She was also ordered to have zero contact with me or my husband and wasn't allowed within 1200 feet of us at any time. I was okay with the outcome, but I'll say I do feel a little stupid. I should have quit my job the second that obsessed weirdo started. Having a gross and unprofessional manager in the food service industry is probably as bad as it can get. And when I tell you this story, you'll probably understand why.

I was 16, female, and had been working at a restaurant for around 6 months. I got my work permit at 15 and a half and had been working since then. My first manager was great. She was super sweet and understanding and made every day a breeze. She ended up moving and had to quit. I was hoping our assistant manager would take over her position but that would have been too easy. Instead they hired a man that none of us knew and had never worked at the restaurant to begin with. We were confused why he was chosen but whatever. He showed up on his first day in clothes covered in stains and torn in different places.

I thought a homeless man had just come in when I first saw him. He went into his office and thankfully changed, but even changing clothes couldn't hide the stench of someone who clearly hadn't showered in days. He made himself seem normal at first, at least when it came to how he interacted with us. He spent a lot of time in his office and would only come out when there was a complaint from a customer. I was fine with it though. He kind of gave me the creeps, so having him not around much made me feel a lot better. After a few months of him being the manager, he started coming out of the office more,

and that's when he started showing his true colors. He'd hit on every woman who came into the restaurant, and whenever they rejected him, which was always, he'd sort of insult them the second that they left and go on and on about it for the rest of the day. He'd always talk about how he couldn't believe any woman would give up the opportunity to be with a man like him. All of us younger women working there tried to keep our heads down, but it didn't work for long. He eventually switched from hitting on the customers to hitting on us. It didn't even matter that most of us were underage.

He asked us what kind of underwear we were wearing, and when he was called out for being creepy and a pervert, he'd yell at us for thinking that he was serious and saying that we were the ones being creepy for taking it like that. That's how it started at least. Eventually he got very comfortable with it being obvious that he was serious. And unfortunately one of my co-workers didn't help the situation by actually sleeping with him the second she turned 18. Their relationship didn't end well when his wife came in and yelled at her for doing that with her husband, and she quit that day, and I never saw her or heard from her again. She was probably embarrassed by the whole thing, but unfortunately it only made things worse,

and made him think that he was desirable, and that all of us female employees secretly wanted him. He'd consistently stand really close to me and whisper these gross things that he wanted to do to me in my ear. One day he was so bad that I actually thought that I was going to throw up from the things he was saying and when none of us would respond positively to his advances he went back to hitting on any female customer that walked in. He was threatened by one man because he'd made a move on a 12 year old girl, I'm not even joking,

not realizing that her father was standing right behind her. He claimed to have not realized that she looked so young, but I'll say that she 1 billion percent looked like a little chick. It probably is the most disturbing thing I've witnessed from this guy. We got bad reviews from him on Google from women who said that he was gross and creepy. Upper management spoke to him about it, but from what I overheard through his office door, they just told him to be more careful about it, but not to stop. I was disgusted by their inability to be serious about these women's concerns, but that's just how the world works, I guess. I spent weeks watching him touch my female co-worker Leslie. It was very

recognizable as harassment, but he was reported multiple times and of course nothing was done. I always said something when I saw it happening, and there wasn't always someone around to stand up for her. She actually went to the police about it, but there was no proof and as much as they said they wanted to help us, they just didn't. The girl ended up quitting and on her way out, she urged the rest of us to as well. The only reason I hadn't was because I was saving up for a car and was so close to hitting my goal. I really only needed to work another couple of weeks. Unfortunately, he did set his sights on me eventually. Every shift I had with him, I had to put up with him grabbing my butt, slapping it and making disgusting advances on me and it felt awful. It made me feel

so ashamed of myself and I left work every day and cried on the walk home. He continued to do this for the last few weeks that I worked there. I didn't tell my parents because I just wanted to make the money and I knew that they'd make a big deal out of it. Finally the day came for me to quit and I was nervous and excited at the same time. I walked over to his office door and through the window I could see an air mattress. I knocked and he answered only in his underwear. I was grossed out but it wasn't a huge shocker considering the person that he was. I asked about the air mattress

and he said his wife kicked him out so he'd been living there the past month. I told him I was quitting and his only response was that at least now he could be with me because he was no longer my boss. He literally said that and I just laughed in his face and I kid you not, I built up the courage and this was coming for a while. I slapped him in the face as hard as I could. My other co-workers saw it and actually laughed along with me. They said that he was going to call the police but I just told them that they wouldn't do anything. He's got no evidence. He turned to the other employees and said that he had witnesses but they just all denied seeing anything. I turned around and walked out and I never went back there again.

I did hear years later that he was arrested for forcing himself on a woman and she had DNA evidence on her side and I was grateful for her being brave enough to say something. I knew she was saving other women from suffering at the hands of that man. My mom had warned me not to work at a bar, but they were hiring and I had just turned 21, so the thought of working around alcohol a day seemed kind of fun to me. It was also a restaurant at night, so I really didn't think it would be as sketchy as she was saying it would be. My first few months working there were great. We'd have the occasional bar fight but it was nothing that anyone needed to be concerned about, just drunk people doing what they do.

That was before a woman started coming in every night, obviously high on something and constantly just wanted to start trouble. She'd pick fights with other women and try to hit on men who clearly wanted nothing to do with her. She got beat up so severely one night that when I found her outside I actually thought she was dead. I called an ambulance for her and they took her to the hospital. I didn't know what happened to her after that until around three weeks later and she came into the bar again. Only this time she wasn't drunk or high and she thanked me for saving her life.

She said me caring about her enough to get her help made her rethink her life choices and that she was getting better. I was happy for her until she told me that she was so happy that I was in love with her. I didn't even know what to say. I definitely wasn't in love with her and actually have no idea how she had gotten that impression, but she did and I was kind of concerned about it. I didn't know if she was dangerous so I tried to be as nice and sensitive as possible when I told her that I wasn't in love with her and helped her out because she obviously didn't deserve any of that. Her face turned from a happy expression to an extremely angry one.

She started yelling at me that I was lying and just didn't want to profess my love for her in front of everyone else in front of the bar. And I was getting embarrassed since everyone in the place actually started to stare. I asked her to calm down, but she seemed to be having some sort of freak out like she was a little kid. She said she'd only stop if I admitted I loved her so against my better judgment I did just that. I said that I loved her and that she needed to leave before I changed my mind and that seemed to settle her down and she was happy with my quote-unquote confession. She giggled and said that she'd see me later and walked out of the bar. I breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind her and everyone in the bar started to actually laugh. And I eventually joined in because of what had happened was somewhat comical but a part of me was concerned for the future and if she would come back and do the same thing the next day.

I had asked my girlfriend to meet me at the bar that night because she was going to be spending the night at my place. It was just after 2am and my girlfriend walked into the bar and I made my way over to her. I put my arm around her shoulders and she had hers around my waist as we exited the building. Unfortunately, something neither of us would expect had happened. The woman who had made me confess my love earlier had decided to wait for me outside the bar. When she saw me with my girlfriend, she was furious. She started screaming that I was cheating on her and was asking how I could do that to the woman I love. My girlfriend was so confused, but I just told her that that woman was nuts. The woman didn't seem to like that at all.

She screamed that if I thought that she was crazy, she'd show me just how crazy she could actually be. I thought she was going to pull out a knife or something, but instead, she just walked way down the road until we couldn't see her anymore. My girlfriend laughed a little, but I could tell that she was uncomfortable with what had just happened. I told her it would be okay and that she was probably just trying to scare us. Unfortunately, she had. The next week, the woman continued to come into the bar and would sit in my section as she tried to flirt with me all day.

I refused and ignored her advances, but it didn't seem to deter her at all. Then she'd wait outside for me to leave and she'd follow me to my car. I was finally over it when she grabbed my butt as I was unlocking my car door. In my mind, that justified me pushing her to the ground and so that's what I did. She looked shocked and confused but I didn't care. I just yelled at her to leave me alone and that I'd call the cops if she ever stepped foot on that property ever again. I got in my car and I drove away as she still laid there on the ground. I didn't realize doing that would cause the problems it did but you can't really predict what a druggie will do when you make them mad. A few days after that happened, my girlfriend told

me that she had started seeing that woman around town and was starting to freak her out. She felt like she was following her own purpose and she feared that she was going to do something to physically hurt her. I told her that she was most likely harmless, but if she wanted to, she could stay with me for a while and I'd go out with her wherever she needed to go. She agreed and after work every day she'd meet me at the bar and would drive to my place behind me. We did everything together and I started to notice the woman everywhere we went as well. I didn't like the feeling that I was getting being followed by her but I didn't feel like confrontation would be the right decision.

It only became an actual issue when we were leaving a store around 8pm and it was dark outside and she was waiting for us at my car. My girlfriend was at the passenger side door when I heard her grunt and fall against the car. I saw the woman behind her, smiling this insane smile and as I ran around to the other side and yelled at her to get away, I jumped at this woman who had just stabbed the love of my life and took her to the ground. I started punching her in the face and grabbed the knife from her hand and threw it away from us. The woman was begging for me to stop and saying she loved me over and over, but at that point I didn't care. I got up from the ground and kicked her as hard as I could in the stomach to make sure that she wasn't going to get up and I rushed over to my girlfriend. I saw the blood staining her shirt and she was starting to get weak.

I pulled out my phone and I called 911. Officers arrived before the ambulance but were able to help control the bleeding at least a little bit. They arrested the woman who still continued to say that she loved me as they put her in the back of the patrol car. I asked what was going to happen to her and they said that they were going to take her to the hospital since I had beaten her so badly. An ambulance arrived shortly after just as my girlfriend started to lose consciousness. She had lost a lot of blood and needed help as soon as possible. I met the ambulance at the nearest hospital that had a trauma center and she was taken directly into surgery. You see, the woman had nicked her abdominal aorta, which caused massive internal

and external bleeding. The only reason she survived was because the aorta hadn't burst and the trauma team at the hospital was ready to receive her before she even showed up. The woman was charged with first-degree attempted murder and was given life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. I was happy with the sentencing and even happier that my girlfriend was able to make a full recovery. And all in all, it probably wasn't my smartest idea to work at that bar and was not intentional to make this woman fall in love with me. But honestly, who could have predicted someone would become so obsessed with me? My best friend and I decided to get jobs at the same place. It was this diner that had to look like it was from the 50s even though it had only been open for a few years. We were excited to work together but

it ended up being the worst decision I ever made. The problems really stemmed from the fact that we were both incredibly competitive people. Both of us wanted to be the best employee and it turned into a competition that actually made us hate each other. We were constantly trying to outdo one another and I got tired of it quickly. I started dating one of our co-workers. His name was Jim. He was super sweet to me and I had a crush on him for quite a while. The problem was that I had no idea my ex-best friend, Tina, also had a crush on him. We hadn't spoken on a personal level for months, so there was no way that I would have known about it. But to be honest, in reality, even if I did, it probably wouldn't have changed anything. We hadn't been friends for a while. Jim and I were respectful

when it came to showing our affection at work. We knew a lot of people didn't like PDA, so most of our affection on the job consisted of smiling, maybe winking at each other, that kind of thing. Anytime Tina saw this she'd just kind of scoff and act like she was going to throw up. I thought she was just being childish and tried not to think anything of it but it stopped being childish and turned into her doing everything she could to sabotage me every day at work. I knew she wanted to get me fired, but her obsession with it got way too excessive. Scheduling was handled by our district manager. I had a very specific schedule set up because I was taking some college courses a few days a week. I had showed up for my

Monday shift at 4.30pm and the second I walked in, my manager started yelling at me for being late. I was confused because I always came in at 4.30 on Mondays, but he pointed to the schedule and according to that, I was over 6 hours late. I was given a formal warning and Tina was standing right there, smirking at me. It was obvious she had something to do with it, but I didn't want any more issues that day so I just left it be. It got worse the next week when I had cleaned the bathroom out at the end of the day and I hated cleaning the bathroom but it had to be done. Our manager went around the restaurant

after we had closed to make sure everything was looking good so we could all leave but when he came out of the bathroom his face was pale and he was gagging. He could barely stand upright and when the door opened, the smell was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. He screamed and asked why the bathroom hadn't been cleaned. I was adamant that I had cleaned it only 30 minutes before then, so he told me to go look at the clean bathroom and let him know if I still thought it was clean. I walked in and was met with the horrible stench of, well, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, and it was everywhere. Someone had relieved themselves in that bathroom and hadn't even attempted to make it to the toilet. It was on the walls, the floors, the sinks, everywhere, and I ran out of the bathroom and had tears coming down my face. I was trying

hard not to but I threw up right there on the floor. I was confused and disgusted but also knew for a fact that it was Tina. She was the only one who had gone in there after we had closed and no matter how much I wanted to believe that she wasn't capable of doing something like that, it was clearly her. She started laughing as she watched me get sick over the mess she had made. I accused her of it in front of everyone, but she denied it. She even started crying and said I was awful for saying that she would do something like that and obviously I had noticed it before and just didn't want to clean it up. Of course everyone believed her. Her plan didn't go

as well as she had hoped though because our manager absolutely was not going to allow any of us to clean it up. We had to hire an actual hazmat team to come in and clean that crap up because it was considered too toxic for someone not trained to clean up human waste like that. I'm not even kidding. And I got a text later that night from Tina that was just a bunch of poop emojis followed by laughing emojis. I couldn't believe I was actually friends with her before. The week after that happened, I showed up for work and Jim was furious with me. I asked him why over and over again, but he wouldn't talk to me at all. I opened my locker in the back and inside was a printed out picture of a screenshot apparently of me texting Tina and telling her I had cheated on

Jim. I told him it was photoshopped and even let him look through my phone but it didn't matter. He broke up with me right then and there and Tina decided to rub it the salt in the wound so to speak. And that same week she told our manager that I was interested in him and that I was too scared to tell him. This, of course, wasn't true and all it did was make for the most uncomfortable day of my life any time I walked over to him. He made sure to stand almost five feet away from me at all times. I didn't know why and finally asked him and was shocked to hear that he thought I wanted to start a relationship with him. I told him it wasn't true, but clearly he didn't believe

me. Tina also started rumors with our other co-workers saying I was talking behind their backs and saying awful stuff about them. She made everyone at the restaurant despise me and no matter how much I wished I could tell you that this was a happy ending, it just wasn't. I was fired only two months after putting up with Tina's annex. I had told our manager that it was her who was behind everything and that I was a good employee, but he just told me that I should get help for my obvious mental issues. I turned in all of my work clothes and didn't even bother saying bye to everyone since they all hated me anyway. I ended up getting super depressed after that. No other place in town wanted to hire me because Tina had sent a mass email to most local restaurants telling them about what had happened at the diner.

I guess a bad reputation, false or not, really does follow you. I ended up moving back in with my parents in my hometown a few states away and was able to find a job doing something I actually liked. Last I heard, Tina still worked at the diner, which does make me feel a little bit better knowing she's probably not happy. As for me, I'm relatively happy, but still getting very paranoid when making friends at work. I just really don't want to meet another person like Tina and have to go through that all over again. This happened around the time I was 16 and had just started my first job. It was a breakfast place that was open all hours of the day and was around 20 minutes from where I lived. I had been working there for around a month when I started noticing the same guy coming in every single day and he

always asked me to be the one to take his order. He seemed friendly at first but it started getting creepy when he began asking my co-workers about me. He would sit in the restaurant for hours just staring at me. I told my managers how uncomfortable it made me but they refused to do anything about it because he apparently spent so much money at the restaurant every week. They didn't want to jeopardize getting that income since it was a small local restaurant that didn't make much money to begin with. I tried changing my scheduling around times that I knew he didn't come in, but he seemed to just adapt. He learned my new schedule quickly and fit himself into it. It started making me so severely uncomfortable that I knew I wasn't going to be able to put up with it for much longer.

It reached its peak when he was caught taking pictures under my skirt as I was taking his order. I was looking down at my notepad and saw him reaching his phone under my skirt. I screamed and I kicked his hand, instinctually really, and my manager came out and as I was running towards the back of the restaurant, he stopped me and asked me what was wrong. I told him what happened and finally they were willing to do something about what I'd been telling them was happening for months. He walked up to this perv and yelled at him in his face and that he had to leave. I didn't see what happened exactly because I was hiding in the back room, but I could hear their conversation clear as day. The guy denied taking any pictures and said that he wasn't going

to leave, but the second my manager threatened to call the police and have them search his phone, he agreed to go. My manager came into the back room that I was in and told me how sorry he was that they let it get to that point where the guy felt so emboldened to do what he did because he'd never been confronted for his inappropriate behavior before. I thanked him, but I was still mad that it was something I never had to go through in the first place. Something should have been done the second that man did something to make me uncomfortable, but money meant more than my safety, apparently. They let me leave for the day and my manager

was nice enough to walk me to my car in case this guy was waiting outside for me. He wasn't, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I got in my car and just started sobbing. I felt like the police should have still been called, but when I mentioned that to my manager, he said he didn't want all that unnecessary drama at the restaurant and that it would only make them look bad. But I didn't care. I wasn't going to let it go. I decided it would be best to go straight from the restaurant to the police station that day to file a report, and thank god they took me seriously. It was such a breath of fresh air to see concern in someone else's face when I told them what had been going on. It made me feel validated for the way I felt about the situation.

The officer told me that I needed to quit that job before what was happening turned into a full-blown stalker situation, and believe me, I wanted to, but I just couldn't afford to leave a job that took me way too long to find. There weren't many places to work in town that I lived in and I really needed the money, so I guess you could say that I was putting money before my safety too. I told the officers I wouldn't be able to quit. So being the awesome people they were, they offered to show up at the restaurant after my shifts to make sure that I got home okay. You may be thinking there's no way, but

it was a really small town and they had nothing else to do. One of the officers knew my dad back in the day and wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to me, and the next couple of weeks went by without incident. There was no sign of the guy, but I was still so grateful to the officers who'd made good on their word and escorted me home every day I got off of work. I was finally starting to feel better about going to work since it had been a little while since I'd last seen him, but of course that couldn't last forever. It was a regular Friday night at the restaurant. My manager and other co-workers had left for the night and I just had to clean the bathroom before locking up. I saw the police car pull up outside the front doors and was grateful that I'd be leaving soon. I grabbed my cleaning supplies and made my way

into the bathroom. It had already been swept and mopped so I just had to wipe down the sinks and clean the toilets. I opened the first stall and did what I had to do but as I was wiping I heard a slight cough, almost like someone was clearing their throat. My heart started to race and I wanted nothing more than to just run out of there but if there was someone in there I didn't want them to know that I knew. I stepped out of the stall and slowly made my way towards the bathroom door, and just as I was about to pull it open, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around quickly and there he was.

I didn't know how long he'd been there waiting for me and I really didn't want to find out what he'd planned to do to me in that bathroom. I asked him what he was doing there and that we were closed, but no matter how creepy I found him, there was no way I could have prepared myself for his response. He just started touching himself as he said, I just want you so bad. I'm so into you and you're so sexy. Please, please just let me have you. He paused for a few seconds before saying, Or I can always just take you. Tears were beginning to well up in

my eyes and I was trying to think of an escape plan that could get me out of that restaurant and to the officer before he could get me. But fight or flight kicked in and I turned around, opened the door and just started running as fast as I could towards the front of the restaurant. I heard the guy's footsteps behind me as he was starting to catch up to me and I had begun to panic. I didn't know if my heart was racing because of the running or because I knew that he was so close to reaching me. I was only a few feet from the door when I felt his body press against me as he took me to the floor. I started to scream and kick and fight back as much as possible, but the guy was strong and he was heavy. I felt like there was no way that I was going to be able

to fight him off. I looked around for anything I could find to hit him with, but the only thing I was able to grab onto was a pen that I had dropped earlier in the day. I snatched it off the floor and I went with my first instinct. I stabbed it directly into his eye. He yelled in pain and his body flew backward off of my body giving me the opportunity to get up, open the door and scream for the officer outside. He saw me and immediately got out of his car and drew his gun. He called for backup on his walkie-talkie and was inside the restaurant, holding this man down at gunpoint before I knew it. Several more officers arrived as well as an ambulance to check me out, but I only had minor scrapes and bruises.

The man was arrested, and as of this moment, he's still awaiting trial. I just hope that I can get justice and he can be put away for a long time so no other woman has to experience what I did at the hands of the man who could have easily ruined or ended my life. In the early summer of 2020, right in the middle of lockdown, me and my girlfriend, now wife, decided to pack up and leave New York City. I won't bore you with all the logistical, political, and financial reasons, but since she has family down in Texarkana, we figured that was a good place to stay as any. We got more bang for our buck down there than if we stayed up on the east coast, and we figured if we missed New York after a year or so, we could always just move back once everything had blown over. We ended up finding this nice little rental house, one that was actually cheaper than what we were paying for our Manhattan apartment, and we had all of our stuff moved in by the end of June. Then one day,

as we were coming back from grocery shopping, we happened to spot our neighbors from across the street. Since it was our first time seeing them, we figured that we'd go over and say hi, but as I got closer, I realized why we hadn't seen them around so much. The chick of the half-couple was heavily pregnant, and she greeted us with this big smile as we walked over to introduce ourselves. We made a little small talk. I specifically remember talking about barbecue recommendations with them, smile as we walked over to introduce ourselves. We made a little small talk. I specifically remember talking about barbecue recommendations with them and then we just sort of parted ways. A few weeks later, my girlfriend's mom came over to visit us with this sort of

care package, but when she was leaving, we spotted the neighbors from across the street again. They just pulled into their driveway and the guy was helping his heavily pregnant wife out of their car so we just said hey as we were walking my girl's mom to her car. Before she got into her car and drove off we made plans to meet up for some dinner sometime but while we were talking my future mother-in-law kept shooting glances over at the pregnant couple. Call it your typical male ignorance but I really didn't think anything of it at the time. Only later, my girl mentions how her mom had said something kind of weird. She did it in that sort of, I want to talk about it, but I don't feel comfortable initiating kind

of way, and we'd been dating that long that I knew that it was my job to sort of poke and prod until the whole story came out. I was kind of worried that it was my job to sort of poke and prod until the whole story came out. I was kind of worried that it was something personal, so what came next was weirdly relieving. But I mean heavy emphasis on weird because, well, you'll see. My girl and her mom had been texting back and forth after she arrived back home in Paris. Texas, not French. When almost out of the blue, she'd said something to the effect of, your neighbor is faking her pregnancy. Right away, I'm thinking, how in the world could she possibly tell just from looking at her? But at the time, my future mother-in-law isn't crazy.

In fact, she's incredibly level-headed and just about the best mother-in-law a guy could ask for. It's not like she'd just throw out an accusation like that out there without a good reason. And then there was the fact that my mother-in-law is a mother of five, with my girl being the youngest, so it made sense that a woman who'd spent half a decade making babies would know a thing or two about the whole process. But if that was the case, how could she have possibly been hiding it from her husband? Well, according to my mother-in-law, either the husband was as dumb as a rock, or he knew his wife was faking it. But still, the question remained,

why would she fake a pregnancy like that? It's not like we could just walk across the street and ask her. And between us, me and my girl were still in two separate perspectives about the whole thing. Then besides all that, we'd have our answers in a matter of months, maybe weeks, because she looked ready to pop at any moment. We don't forget about the whole thing and saying hey to them was definitely a little more awkward, but we were mostly occupied with settling into our new place, so the whole fake pregnancy thing was sort of drifting into the back of our minds. I mean, my girlfriend's mom might just be wrong. It would be slightly out of character for her, but it wasn't out of the question.

It was kind of an insane thing to say. And then one day, we realized that we hadn't seen our neighbors for quite a while. We figured that if she really was pregnant pregnant that we'd see all kinds of activity around the house at the time of the birth. But not only was there none of that whatsoever, but it was like the pregnant couple just sort of disappeared. This is what first clued us into the fact that something might be wrong and that my girlfriend's mom was actually right about such a wild accusation. We didn't hear anything about it though, not from our neighbors and not on the news either. And then eventually, me and my girlfriend decided to stay in Texas

and we moved to Austin and later got married. And then, in September of last year, my wife sends me a link to a news website along with about six super shocked face emojis and the words, look at the picture. I opened up the link and was greeted by the headline, Texas woman allegedly stabbed mom-to-be a hundred times then tried to steal baby from womb. Then when I scrolled down, staring back at me is the mugshot of the heavily pregnant woman that we used to live across the street from. She was wearing that orange jumpsuit and looked like she'd been crying. And at first I thought she was the victim, but when the shoe finally dropped, I realized how the fake pregnancy had tied into what had happened.

And let's just say that I know what it means to feel your blood actually run cold now. Last I heard, she's one of the only women on the Texas death row, and when you read through what she actually did, you realize that she legitimately deserves to be there. Our old neighbor had apparently faked the pregnancy to stop her boyfriend from leaving her, and then went about befriending an actual pregnant woman with the idea of stealing her baby. She got close to the murdered woman, and her partner too. Like I hear that she actually went to the girl's wedding and all that stuff,

and it was all just some long con job with murder being the final step of the plan. That's the part that really stuck with me, and I know that sounds dumb considering how horrific the crime itself was, but it's the slow burn aspect of it that really gives me the chills. Someone being that close to you, faking the whole thing, coming to your wedding and taking pictures and whatnot, and all the while, they're just waiting until the time is right to stab you to death, cut open your womb, and steal your unborn child away. I, a 32-year-old female, used to have a job cleaning movie theaters in my early 20s. Because of how bad I needed the cash, I worked a string of crappy jobs around that time. But that one was the worst, and for a bunch of different reasons, too.

Firstly, people who go to the movie theaters are just disgusting. Okay, maybe not all of y'all and if you're one of the good ones, I thank you from the bottom of my boobs. But oh my god, it's like people were legitimately out there thinking, what is the single most disgusting thing that I can leave in this dark theater? And they went ahead and just did it. I found full diapers, needles, nail clippings and then there's the time someone puked into an empty bag of chips and then somehow partially sealed the bag again meaning one of my co-workers just grabbed it up off the floor and ended up with puke all over their shoes. There was like a ton of other stuff that we found

that would end up with this post getting a not safe for work tag so I'll just get into my next point and leave y'all in suspense. There's a bunch of other stuff that I hated about working that job but without a doubt the worst thing was the lack of security. The shift started at 2am. Yeah, 2 in the morning. So there was that part that made me hate it. But getting to and from whatever theater we were cleaning with no means of transport aside from a bicycle put me in a very vulnerable position. That and the venues we cleaned didn't hire anyone but lazy, overweight, or meek-looking security guards to keep us safe. On a slow weekday night, I decided to go out and pick up the trash in the parking lot.

This was maybe 4.30 to 5 in the morning and the theater was also next to a super busy road so people passing by could see into the well-lit but deserted parking lot clear as day. I had headphones in, along with the grabby stick thing to pick up gross stuff when I suddenly get a call from my boss who was inside the building. I click the little button on my headphones wire to answer the call only to hear my boss on the other end with a kind of concerned tone in her voice. She tells me again with this anxious tint to her voice that some truck just pulled into the parking lot opposite to where I was. She thought the guy was acting a bit suspicious, so I was to finish what I was doing immediately and come back inside. No sooner that she says that,

but what I assumed was the same truck pulls right next to me and stops so quick that the tires actually screech. It all happened so fast that I just kind of panicked and froze up. But when the van's sliding door slid open It all happened so fast that I just kind of panicked and froze up. But when the van sliding door slid open and I saw a guy with a shirt wrapped around his face leap out in my direction, I dropped everything and ran. There was only a few feet between me and the door and I don't want to think about what would have happened if it had been any further away. Every single step that I took felt like it'd be my last before this shirt-faced guy took my legs out from under me and when I got to the door, grabbed the little shutter bar and turned to slam it closed, he was right there in front of me. He couldn't have been any more than a second or two from getting a good firm grip of the door

frame and as it stood, he did manage to get his fingers on it, but it just so happened to be right as I slammed the door shut. The howl that he let out was satisfying on a primal level that I can barely put into words. Hurting a person that was trying to hurt me, it felt like the kind of instant karma that only comes around once in a lifetime. But as much as it felt great, we still weren't clear from danger and later on when the adrenaline high wore off, I was a complete nervous wreck. The cops were called, I gave a statement and at the end of my shift, everyone took cabs home instead of walking or biking or taking early morning buses. It was like we all know that it could have been any one of us out there. Maybe if it had been someone a little slower than me,

things would have been a lot different towards the end of that shift. And I think because of that, it made all my co-workers all the more empathetic, and although I didn't stay in that job for much longer after that, I still have a hell of a lot of affection for all the girls that I used to clean those theaters with. Maybe I'd have stayed a little longer if the theaters that we hopped between decided to beef up their nighttime security a little. But I think the most that we were ever promised was one extra overnight security guard and the placement of a few security cameras. That wasn't good enough for me though, and as I mentioned, I ended up quitting a few weeks after this incident. I felt very guilty for a while though because I was young and free enough to be able to quit if I wanted to, but most

of my co-workers were not in that same position. They needed the money too bad to just up and leave a secure job like that, meaning they had no choice but to put themselves at risk, night after night, to take care of their families. And for that, as well as how well they took care of me following the most frightening incident of my whole life, I'll never ever forget them. I used to play a lot of Call of Duty. I mean, I love the franchise, and I still do, but it was also like the only game my group of friends all played aside from playing FIFA or something. So if we wanted to all play something together, we played Call of Duty. We were all really into Modern Warfare 2, so as you can imagine, we were all very excited for the release of Modern Warfare 3. All of my chums at football were getting it, as we're all old mates from school,

and I remember early November of 2011 being nothing but hype. The game dropped, it was awesome, and I think we all spent the next three days playing here and there before the weekend hit, by which point nothing was stopping us from binging Team Deathmatch. That Friday night, I played from the moment I got home from work to about 1 o'clock in the morning, jumping in between parties as various groups came and went. Then, at about 1ish, I'm still trying to work my way up to a nuke when, in middle of a match I hear this, our UAV is online, and then, help me, in quick succession. But the help me part didn't seem like it was coming from the game at all. I remember grabbing my TV remote and hitting the mute button and then just sitting there in the

dark and quiet of my flat's living room, feeling more and more anxious with each passing second. I didn't know if I was imagining things or if it had come from the game chat or something, but when half a minute or so went by and I didn't hear the voice again, I just went back to playing Call of Duty and assumed it was nothing. But then no more than a few minutes go by when I hear the same weak, help me, and that time, I was 100% sure that it wasn't coming from the game. Now just to clarify, I was talking with my friends via headphones, but all the game noises are coming out of the TV, and that's why I could even hear the voice in the first place, and why it was so confusing at first. Now anyway, I whip my headphones off, mute the TV and walk over to my flat's living

room window to look outside. I can't see anything and a good couple of seconds pass without any more noise but I'm seriously on edge by that point because I can't see who's saying help me but I know for a fact that I heard it without a shadow of a doubt. I'm not saying that I thought it was some ghost or anything but because I can't see them how long is it before someone walks into view with their head just hanging off or something?

But then I hear it a third time slightly different though and clear as crystal. The voice sounded weak and desperate and so, so sad, and I could clearly hear someone just below my window say, can you please help me? And just so you can understand what I'm talking about, you have to understand the layout of where I lived at the time. I lived on the first floor, so although I had a pretty good view of the pathway and the street outside, I couldn't see what was directly below me and that's where the voice was coming from. But the thing is, if there

was someone standing below the window that I looked out of, I could usually see their head and their shoulders at least, like it wasn't a complete blind spot like that. So the fact that I couldn't see anything at all, that's what had me so freaked out to the point that I thought something paranormal might actually be occurring. And the fourth time I heard it, I swear I felt my soul leave my body with fear. It was so creepy, but once I got over myself and got it into my head that it wasn't a ghost, I realized someone needed help, and they needed it fast. So long story short, I run outside, and I see this poor old little old lady lying on the paving slabs under my window with a big bloody crack in her head. It's quite a sad story in the end. She had dementia, and had gotten lost a few hours before, and then after wandering into our backyard, she apparently fell and became delirious with pain.

We called the police and thank God she was taken to the hospital, confused but unharmed. I'm glad to have helped her that day. It felt nice to think that I've actually helped rescue her, but still, for a few minutes there, I honestly was properly touching cloth. To be continued... to share it, and it will be my first big Reddit post. A lot, if not all, of the posts that I have read here are American and Canadian, so for context, it's important that I start that I'm from Aotearoa, New Zealand. We do have the odd missing person case or scary case, but it's otherwise safe here and not much happens. I mean that in a way that as a 19- old girl I feel comfortable to walk the streets at night or go on hikes alone because it is pretty safe and everyone looks out for one

another generally speaking. Now this happened in the summer of 2019. I will link a location so you can better understand and hopefully some photos if I can find them online. My boyfriend and I were headed out on a picnic date to a spot that we had visited before plenty of times. It's at the end of a very long windy rural farm road off of the state highway, so you drive for like 15-20 minutes from the main road down a long farm stretch and at the end is a large cul-de-sac and a surrounding massive farm. The owners of the farm have left the land kind of open to the public as a reserve because there are native trees and other things and because about a 15 minute walk from the cul-de-sac and car park there is a small waterfall that you can swim in. The track is really popular

as it's one of the closest swimming spots to the nearest city, Hamilton, and it's really scenic. You cross foot bridges, you pass by creek beds, and all that good stuff. The farmers still go through every now and then and do their own farm work, and there are fenced off areas that the public can't enter as they still actively work the land. This particular day, my boyfriend and I were super happy because it was empty in the parking lot, and it was a super hot summer day so that was really rare. The farmer was crossing the cows through the gate on a quad as we arrived and he smiled and waved at us. He's an older man and we had spoke before as we were regular visitors. So we set off towards the waterfall. We crossed one footbridge and passed through a big paddock of cows. The track is quite

narrow and the creek is right off the edges so you have to be careful. We saw the waterfall, decided against swimming as we had no towels and headed back towards the car park. Now on our way back we decided to go down a little bit of a steep gravel off ramp on the track that led to a more private tree coveredcovered area right by the creek. And here's where it starts. We were kissing and whatnot. I was lying on my tummy reading a book and my boyfriend was sitting up playing on his phone and he was rubbing my back and playing with my hair. We were there for about ten minutes before I turned and glanced up the gravel path and way up even further on a hill through one of the farmer's gates, I see a man on a quad bike who I didn't recognize as one of the farmers as there was only an old

couple who worked the land. He was just sitting there, staring at my boyfriend and I and I don't even want to think about how long he had been there before we noticed. I told my boyfriend and as soon as the guy saw that we were both looking at him, he opened the gate and started heading down. Now both of us immediately got up to leave as we did not want to have a conversation with a farmer about us getting freaky on his land which is what we both assumed would happen but it was so much worse. The guy came down the gravel track and ran his quad right through the creek. He left it there running in the water and got off.

He seemed to be talking to himself, saying things along the lines of, I've messed up my quad. Destroyed the engine. Over and over before he even got near us. My boyfriend and I were gathering our things to leave at this point and he starts to head towards us. He didn't even make small talk which was really strange cause he just went straight into saying, have you guys seen any fish? I'm looking for some fish to kill. My boyfriend tells the guy that there's no fish in the creek cause it's fresh water and

he's probably best off to catch some eel and this sends him into a fit and he starts saying, I don't want an eel, I want to kill some fish. I admitted a point and not look the guy in the eyes as I didn't want to draw the conversation towards myself because I was already extremely freaked out and I didn't want him to notice that. My boyfriend is much more of the calm and strong one when it comes to stuff like this. But for a second I did look at the guy and thought that he looked like his face was slightly deformed, possible Bell's palsy as I worked in age care and I've seen it a bit and it looked similar. I bent down to tie my shoe up and when I was standing back up, that's when I saw a pistol on this man's waist.

Listen to me close now. This is my first and last time in my entire life I have ever seen a real life gun. It's incredibly hard to get a firearm in New Zealand, especially after the regulations following the shooting in Christchurch. And not only that, he had one pistol on his belt and was waving another one about in his hand while he was talking to my boyfriend about wanting to kill some fish. He was aiming it down the creek every now and then and again and then swinging it around on his finger. My boyfriend gave me the stern look, and stern is the best word for it because the look spoke a million things to me in the moment, and he nodded his head towards the gravel hill leading back to the track. I grabbed the two bags that we had, fake checked my phone and told the man that our family were waiting for us back at the car park. He completely ignored what I had said and instead responded,

That's a cool hat you got, Don. Or something about my hat that was completely irrelevant so I just dismissed it myself and said goodbye and made my way to the hill. In my mind, I did not want to look back and see my boyfriend being shot and then a gun at my head. I knew that our best bet was me getting up this hill on that narrow path that he couldn't ride his quad down and just sprinting to the farmhouses. As I'm walking up the hill, this guy says to my boyfriend, That's a really pretty girl you got there. It was like all the intentions of his I didn't want to believe were confirmed and I felt

like I would die. My boyfriend though said a quick thank you, we'll be off now and headed up the hill with me. The guy kept talking on like the conversation hadn't even ended as we headed away and he stood there, gun in hand, watching us leave. As soon as we were around the corner we sprinted all the way back to the car park where we hadn't noticed before. There were over ten empty gun shells. Bullet shells? I'm not sure. I don't even know, but empty used bullets.

We had run into two girls in bikinis just arriving at the spot as we did and informed them about everything. They got in their cars and left immediately. We tried to go to the farmer's house to ask if he knew the guy as we had never seen him on the land before but they weren't home. As for the gun, it's still so freaky to me that I had never seen one before. But these pistols look quite old and rusty and when we discussed the incident on the way home, my boyfriend suggested that they were probably handed down to him from someone else. This incident has stuck with me for the past few years and my boyfriend and I have not been able to return to that spot, which sucks cause that's where we had our first date and

it was a really sentimental place for us. I had to drive past the road leading to the truck for like a year as I commuted between towns and it always made me feel sick. I could have lost my life or my partner that day or so much worse and I'm always extremely grateful that my boyfriend is the man that he is and was able to steer this crazy guy away from us for us to leave and to communicate to me through movement to tell me what to do in my freaked out state. He told me after that that he was ready to die if he had to because knowing the guy had been watching us beforehand and complimented me in a way that he yes, this was stupid of me. I acknowledge that I acted in an unsafe way for my own well-being.

I had posted this somewhere else, but it got removed, but let me get to the story. I met B on a dating app. He's been awkward to talk to, but we have stuck to texting, so I thought maybe it was just nerves. And the form of communication. We have similar interests, so I kept the conversation going. He messaged me the other day asking if I wanted to come watch the new season of The Witcher. I hesitated and asked if he was inviting me to his place, and he said yes. He also quickly added that his female roommate was home or else he would not have asked.

I decided to go. Stupid, I know. I entered the apartment and he's the only person there. I sat down on the other side of the room from him and he got up and came to sit beside me. He turned on the show and the next thing I know, he has his pants down and he's asking me to sit on his lap. I'm not on birth control as I just got divorced and am currently waiting for a doctor's appointment and he was aware of that as we have discussed kids and pregnancy abilities because I have teens and he has no kids and wants one. So not only did this guy think that I was just going to get intimate with him first meet up,

he was cool if we got pregnant apparently. I stood up and just went to leave and he says something like wait. I look back and he actually asked me if maybe I would just use my hand. I was just so shocked that I left and told him good luck. This happened back in early 2015. I was then a 19-year-old guy living in a rather bad area of Portland, Oregon. Even though there was occasionally some belligerent homeless people and drug addicts, violent muggings very rare and most of the city felt very safe even at night. One of my best friends turned 21 and we decided to go bar hopping and then go clubbing. I was in a group of about a dozen other people and three of which were my roommates.

Unfortunately for me, I was the only one in my group who was either under the legal age of drinking or did not have a fake ID card. This meant that I was unable to enter the bar. However, to my luck, there was a nice Mediterranean restaurant across the street from the bar which I ended up going to. I stayed there for more than an hour and then I was ready to leave. I've done that walk many times, even at night, so I was never scared. Until this night, of course, and from my apartment, my roommates took an Uber to the bar. This meant that I would have to walk back since I didn't have an Uber and my phone battery was running low. The distance back to my apartment was about

three miles. The time was already close to midnight and I would be reaching my apartment at around 1am. I decided to walk the distance anyway since I haven't been at the gym and thought that this would be a good exercise for the day. I began my walk and passed by lots of drunks. Even though some of the drunks would shout things at me, I never felt unsafe or threatened by them, so I was okay. However, the last miles to my apartment was through a darkly lit park that can be scary at night, not because of any crime, but because there is only one street light in that stretch of road. I reached this somewhat creepy area at around 1230. As I descend down the dark and narrow street, I notice a black Chevy Silverado speed past me and slow down once he passes me.

The truck almost comes to a stop but then decides to drive ahead. I begin to shrug it off at first. However, this is where things really start to get creepy. After I walk nearly a quarter mile forwards, the Chevy Silverado comes down the opposite direction and does the same thing. When the truck slows down and almost comes to a halt, I begin to panic but not openly show it. I pretend to ignore the vehicle but my instincts tell me something is not right. The truck then starts to proceed but this time I can't keep calm. I was not in the middle of a dark and isolated park with no street lights and there is likely not to be a single person in sight.

After I walk about 500 more feet, I begin to look in horror as the same pickup truck comes flying towards me and puts a sudden brake about a hundred feet behind me. One man, at around twice my age and bald, opens the passenger door and comes out of his truck carrying what looked like a hockey club. I look behind and lock eye contact with him. He gives me the most haunting and sinister look I've ever seen from a real person. He begins to yell, screaming for me to get out of his sight or he'll mess me up. And then he says something I don't quite recognize. Now I'm of Indian origin and I have darker skin, but I'm pretty sure what he said was a racial slur directed towards Muslims. As I was planning my escape, I remember how there was

a wooded area between the park and my apartment. Where I was can cut across the park and go through some woods, then right across the woods was my apartment. This was smart because I was taking that shortcut during the day and the truck will not be able to cut through the woods. Just as I ran towards those woods, I heard another yelling in the truck will not be able to cut through the woods. Just as I ran towards those woods I heard another yelling in the distance, saying F off and I heard this from another large guy walking in the opposite direction of the sidewalk I was on. I then see another large man walking his German Shepherd towards me. After that the truck driver then started running at us with his hockey club and I just booked it. I dart towards the woods. Fortunately the truck driver then started running at us with his hockey club and I just booked it.

I dart towards the woods. Fortunately, the truck driver decides not to chase us and gets back in his truck. I reach my apartment five minutes later. At the parking lot of the apartment, I happen to see the guy walking his dog. He looked like a roughed up bodybuilder type so I was also a little afraid of him too. However, we had a pleasant conversation. I begin to head up to my apartment and look at my apartment window and to my disgust and horror, I see that black Chevy Silverado drive by my apartment and then leave. My friends came home close to 3 in the morning and just after I went to bed that night.

Thankfully, I never saw that creep again and I moved out of that apartment a few months later. After this incident, I avoid walking alone in dark spots and isolated areas at night. It's just not worth it. The events here took place when I was an 11-year-old girl on vacation with my family. My mother, younger brother, and I went down to Port Elizabeth to visit family. Being the only kids present meant that we were more excited to play in the ocean than spend time indoors. My mom picked a sunny day, we packed our boogie boards, and we headed to the nearest beach with my grandma tagging along. My brother and I ran towards a set of stairs leading down to the beach. I stopped.

There were eyes on me. I just sensed it. Growing up in South Africa, you were taught to be vigilant. Notice your surroundings. Notice people especially. I looked around the crowd trying to pinpoint what was setting my radar off, and then I found it. Two men about 20 meters in front of me, about late 20s to early 30s. They were frozen in place,

staring at me with big, toothy smiles on their face. I returned a smile and a nod, acknowledging their presence but also making them aware that I saw them. Be friendly, not naive. Be polite. Don't trust. Observing them, I felt unsettled. The crowd was moving around them. They didn't speak to one another and they only seemed to move as I glanced away. I was alarmed but only made a mental note to keep an eye on them, continued down the stairs and jumped into the soft sand. My brother and I waited for the adults to pick a spot to set up before we took off swimming. Some time went by. I saw the same men from earlier wade into the water quite some distance from us and felt a bit silly for still worrying about them. But I just couldn't shake that uneasiness. I got out and took a rest by my mom. I didn't see the

men anywhere but the feeling of having eyes on me stayed. I chalked it up to paranoia and went back to the water after a few minutes. My brother had gotten out of the water and started digging his magnificent sand pit, so I decided to use him as a landmark to determine my position in the water while riding the waves out. I did this a few times. Suddenly, goosebumps shot up my back. I looked around and the same men were just a few meters away from me, waving and beckoning me towards them. I was having fun until then and hadn't noticed them approaching.

Adrenaline set in as I saw them smiling once more and their eyes seemed blank, insincere and out of place with those huge grins. I nervously grinned back and just shook my head at their invitation to come closer. I'm sure the fear was well written all over my face though. And as if to confirm my fears of their intentions, they started towards me. I knew I wouldn't be strong enough in the water to fight or run or swim and nobody was close enough to hear me call out. As I was panicking the water suddenly pulled me deeper into the sea and a huge wave was coming. I placed my boogie board in position and started paddling. I was now further into the ocean than the creeps. The wave hit when they were about a meter away and it took me right past them. I felt relief for a split second, but then

I felt a hand grabbing and yanking my ankle hard. My heart caught in my throat. I kicked out of instinct. Fortunately, being sunscreen doused, I was slippery and managed to get free instantly. The wave carried me all the way to the beach. I was coughing with a mouth full of seawater but scampered to my feet and ran to fetch my brother. I told him I'd race him back to mom and he was delighted for the challenge. I glanced back from where the sea had just ejected me. The creeps were still standing where they were, still smiling and still beckoning me towards them. I stayed at my mom's side until we finally packed up to head home. As we walked to our car, I looked over my shoulder and there they were.

Two grown men, just staring and waving at a child that they had tried to grab like nothing was weird. And then they just turned around and disappeared into the crowd. So someone was following me home yesterday and now I don't want to leave the house. I'm a 15 year old female and I was walking home from the store yesterday and I saw a black box car drive past me extremely slow and the man in the car was clearly watching me. And when he fully passed me I saw him watching me in his rear view mirror. I thought it was weird and slowed down my pace so that I could tell if he was waiting for me or just a slow driver. He was still driving extremely slow but moved a little when he saw two guys riding past on bikes. He then moved to the edge of the short street that we were on and

waited there. I was still towards the beginning of the street so I acted like I forgot something and I turned around to get out of his sight. I waited and kind of peeked out to see if he had left and when I saw that he was gone I continued walking. I didn't think it would happen but I made a mental note that if I saw the car behind me it meant that he circled back around. After I continued walking, I made three turns and was three turns away from my house. When I was walking up a little hill and almost at the fourth turn, I looked back and saw the man at the corner that I had just turned from, letting me know that he'd circled back around to find me. He sat there watching me continue

walking until I got up the little hill and turned the corner. Then as I had just barely made the last turn and was close to my house, I saw the man's car just turn the corner of the street straight across from the way I was walking, waiting there. I pulled out my phone to call my mom and walked the other way and he left soon after I pulled out my phone. My mom came out and walked with me back to the house and I didn't see the car for the rest of the day. But I kept thinking. He knows what neighborhood I stay in. What if he comes back? What if the next time he comes back I'm out by myself again? What if no one's home to call? What if he sees me leaving and comes back when I'm the only one home? I'm so scared that he's going to come back that I don't want to go

outside. I don't want to show him where I live, especially because I'm home alone very often. I have summer school and I have to go, but I don't want to leave the house in fear that he might be waiting for me. And I'm constantly looking out the windows to see if I can spot him, especially since if he was at the store that I was at, he'd definitely stay somewhere near that neighborhood. In 2017, I had heard news of people dressing up as clowns and running around with knives at night. I typically brush those types of things off because I got my own problems. I, at the time, was a 20-year-old female and was often up at all hours of the night dealing with my screaming newborn. It was January or February so we still had some snow and I wasn't able to get out of the house often. Taking out the trash, which was located right out the back

door, was usually the most I got of fresh air. One morning I took out the trash and happened to glance over to the right and noticed footprints directly under the window to my baby's room. I walked over to inspect and not only were there footprints, but there was also hand indentations on the window screen. Weird, but baby slept in my room so not very concerned at the moment, but the boyfriend was losing his marbles. I'll fast forward a couple of days and I was up at around 3am and heard not exactly what I would call screaming but more of a screeching howl. We have lots of stray cats so I kind of thought that's what it was and ignored it. Once the sun was up I looked out the window and noticed a few sets of footprints that really didn't make sense because it kind of looked like someone had just been passing between the houses. But again, I blow it off because we had a drug house across

the street and we've had people cross through our yard before to get to that house. Maybe four nights later at 3am, I'm breastfeeding and hearing a dragging noise against the house and from where I was sitting on my couch I could see the back door. The back door has a window with blinds on it and doesn't seal well due to wood rot on the frame. I pause the TV and listen just to hear it again now directly at the back door. Looking over I can clearly see a looming figure just standing in the window, holding one of those big kitchen knives, and granted the blinds were shut so I'm seeing the creepy shadow version of this.

He runs the knife across the window panes before softly knocking. Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out what to do with my newborn latched on because my phone is in the bedroom and something in me doesn't want whoever this is out of my vision. So I stand up and readjust because I really didn't want a screaming baby right then and walked into my kitchen and flick on the light and then said, just loud enough for him to hear me, hey man, I already called the police and I'm sure you don't want to deal with them so why don't you just go home. I don't know why I talked to him so calm and normal, like I don't think he was home? I don't know why I talked to him so calm and normal. Like, I don't think he was expecting anyone to say anything because he froze that moment I began talking. He talked it over with himself for a minute and just darted down toward the alleyway.

Never had anything like that happen again, but a boyfriend was incredibly mad that I didn't wake him up to handle the situation or at least actually call the police. Not sure if this counts as a creepy encounter, but I sure was creeped out once my sleep-deprived self realized what had just happened. This is going to be a pretty tame story compared to a lot of the great ones I've read here, but since it happened to me, I think it's pretty spooky. I'm writing this only a few hours after everything had happened, now that I've calmed down and the sun is coming up and I feel somewhat safer. Last night I was lying in bed reading a little before I went to sleep. I think it's important to clarify that I live on the outskirts of my town. Still in town, but definitely on the edge, off the highway that leads out of town and into about a 15 mile long stretch of lots of country. Woods, fields,

a few residences, but mostly open highway. So other than the other tenants in my actual apartment building, it's normally very quiet in my area. My building is a square with four apartments and for each of us our door simply faces out into the open. There's no lobby or a foyer or anything. My door in particular looks out into a large field that goes up a hill. I don't remember the exact time but sometime between 1 and 2 am someone randomly started banging on my door which freaks me out at the best of times in broad daylight but especially in the middle of the night. I nervously went to ask who it was, and this guy with a deep voice claimed that he was a police officer and that I needed to let him in. That's what he said, I needed to let him in, not that I needed to open the door.

Luckily, I watch and listen to a lot of true crime stuff, so I got pretty suspicious really quick. I just got near instant alarm bells because he couldn't tell me why I needed to let him in, what I supposedly did, and he never asked me what my name was. He also didn't really sound like a cop, if you know what I mean. Obviously, I was feeling creeped out so I called 911 to confirm that there was actually an officer at my address and they said there wasn't. At this point I'm freaking out and I kind of call out through the door that I'm on the phone with the police and the guy just kind of bangs on my door one more time and then stops making noise. I presume

because he ran off at this point. They dispatched two cars to my apartment, and the officer took a good look around. Unfortunately, the guy was long gone by the time they got there, and I never saw him, so I don't have a description of him or anything, but the cops said two things to make me feel better. One, they'd post more patrols in my area over the Halloween weekend, and two, it was most likely a Halloween prank because the bar down the street from my apartment had had a party and it had just closed not too long before. Always trust your instincts, and remember that if you have any doubts about someone claiming to be a police officer, call 911 and confirm that they are who they say they are. Dispatch and the officers who came tonight told me that you will not get in trouble for making sure the person talking to you

is actually an officer. This also applies to situations where it's nighttime and dark so you can't really see for sure if it's a real cop car behind you or not. If you see flashing lights behind you on a back road or a dark area at night, put on your hazard lights and call 911 first to make sure that it's actually a police car. You won't get in trouble, and it's better safe than sorry. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. 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.