The Lets Read Podcast - 254: MY GRANDPA'S DARK SECRET | 21 True Scary Stories | EP 242

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about break-ins, secrets from grandparents & one insane late night stranger HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [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 IQbar and Heart Starts Pounding, Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries

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Like Toyo's open country family of tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca I I've been working in the film industry now for about 10 years. What I do specifically isn't what you would call glamorous, but it's still awesome to be part of the industry. In a nutshell, I basically scout locations for films and make sure the location is suitable for specific scenes. A lot of my peers in this industry got their start by falling in love with movies at an early age. For me, it was a very early age. My grandfather was a producer back in the 1960s. He worked with legendary talents such as Audrey Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne, and even

Elvis Presley. When I was really young, he would entertain my brother and me as well as all of our cousins with wild and engaging stories about this myth-like Hollywood world from this time period. When I got a little older, I would notice that my grandma would almost sigh and look uncomfortable when my grandpa talked about his time in the business. When my grandpa died years later when we were adults, me and my brother had talked about some of the stories he told us and we recalled my grandma's weird behavior.

We threw around some ideas, but sadly, we arrived at the idea that during that period, my grandpa must have had an affair in Hollywood or something. It just made sense. The way my grandma would basically transform into another person every time grandpa brought up Hollywood screamed unpleasant memories. And though it's not fair to assume it was an affair or something, we just think back to that time period in Hollywood and let's be honest, it was like the wild west of

partying. Beautiful actresses everywhere. My grandfather being this hot shot producer, it unfortunately just made sense, as horrible as it is to think about. So why am I writing this story though? Last month, me and my brother finally asked my grandma what happened while he was in Hollywood. We didn't want to hear fairy tale stories that my grandpa would share anymore. We wanted to know the truth, especially since I started working in the industry myself. Just in case it had been an affair, we approached the subject very delicately with my grandma. We didn't want to upset her or bring up horrible memories. After all, until the day he died, my grandmother always showed so much love and admiration for my grandpa,

so it just seemed weird that he would ever do something like that. My brother, being the smooth talker of the two of us, asked her point blank why did grandpa leave Hollywood and why do you always go quiet and leave the room every time grandpa would tell us stories? My grandma took this long deep breath and she responds I suppose you're old enough to hear the story now. My grandma took this long, deep breath and she responds, I suppose you're old enough to hear the story now. And as she began telling us this long story, like only old folks can, we could not have been more wrong. And I'm going to do my best to tell the story without leaving anything out.

My grandma couldn't remember the exact year, but at some point during his run as a producer, he decided to move my grandma to Hollywood, a detail that I never knew. When she was in her early 20s, she was an aspiring actress, and she was beautiful. Grandpa used his connections to get her some auditions and a chance to meet some of the big players in town. Grandma didn't want anything handed to her, though, so she used a different last name and never used my grandpa's name in an audition. She wanted to get a part based solely on her talent and not because she was married to the producer of the film, and something I greatly appreciated. After several failed auditions, she was almost ready to move on

from her dream and try her hand at modeling since she had some offers. She went on one last audition for a supposedly big film opportunity, and she told us that Grandpa was skeptical of this audition because he had never heard of the director or the film. But my grandma was being stubborn and told him to trust her and that she knew what she was doing. On the way to the audition, she got lost and found a run-down building way on the outskirts of town, I guess. She was so new to the area that she didn't question the location at all. She thought that maybe this location was a creative choice by the director and maybe he had an office in the building. She walked in the door and inside were four individuals Three women and one man

All four of them were wearing masks and as soon as my grandma tried to make a run for it Two of the women grabbed my grandmother and started to beat her After a few minutes they tied her up in a chair One of the women told her that if she wanted to survive she was going to have to do something for them If she refused things weren't going to end well. So, grandma agreed, hoping that she could find a way out of the situation somehow. The woman continued to explain to my grandma that she was going to rob an apartment for them. The four monsters in the room told her that they would be outside the building and if she tried to call for help or run, they would know.

They would find her and catch her. The woman explained all the details of the robbery to my grandma and she played along for a moment, realizing that this may be her only chance to survive. She assumed that once she was inside the apartment that she could find a phone or even better, the person would be home and she could explain what was happening. They arrived at the apartment building and my grandma's plan went out the window. The man in the group accompanied my grandma into the building and followed her down the hall. He was carrying some type of pipe in his hand and she had this sick feeling that the pipe was for her. The door was unlocked and they went inside. They gave my grandma a cloth sack and told her to fill it with cash.

They assured her that there would be cash on a table inside the room and sure enough, they were correct. My grandma started to slowly put the cash into the bag as she tried to think of a way out. The man shoved her and told her to hurry up. While she was filling up the bag, she noticed a vase on the table with some flowers in it. She grabbed the glazed vase, smashed it on the man's face, and ran out the apartment while the man fell on the ground. She noticed it was a back entrance to the building and sprinted out that back door. She ran several blocks and then found a cop car parked in the lot and she

frantically approached the police and told them everything. Cops had a little less sense of urgency towards women back then and it took them a minute to actually believe my grandma and take her statement. They eventually called my grandpa and he decided to raise hell. Thankfully my grandmother was able to give a very detailed description of her captors, which led to the arrest of one of the women, but the other three people were never caught. She never found out whose apartment it was, but she assumed it belonged to someone in the dark underworld of Hollywood at the time. The woman they arrested admitted the plan was to knock out my grandmother inside the apartment after she filled the bag and basically pin the entire thing on her.

They didn't plan on her escaping or having a powerful husband though. They assumed that she was some young actress in Hollywood and getting caught at the scene of the crime would just make her another poor soul getting lost in the dark world of show business. This nightmare scarred my grandma so much that she didn't want to spend another second in that town. She moved back to her parents' house and my grandpa followed several months later and that's when they started their family. He would tell us fun and happy stories to entertain us kids, but whenever he mentioned his time in Hollywood, grandma couldn't help but think about the nightmares she'd endured. I can't imagine what my grandma was thinking during that ordeal, and I'm just so happy that she was able to get out of it and find a little

bit of justice. As for the three other monsters from that night, I just hope they got caught for something else, and that justice was eventually served. Last month I visited my grandparents for the first time in a couple of years. I know how horrible that sounds, but my grandparents live on the other side of the country, so it's hard, you know. It was actually a family reunion, and it was amazing just seeing my entire extended family. I saw cousins, aunts, uncles that I hadn't seen in a very long time. My grandparents live on a massive farm. When we were younger, we only lived about 30 minutes away, so once in a while we went over and stayed overnight. In all the years that I stayed there, I always had a fantastic time and felt safe.

Well, little did I know just how unsafe I actually was. At the family reunion, when everybody was sitting around and sharing stories, my grandfather told us one of the most unsettling and unnerving things I had ever heard. One night when me and my cousin James were staying overnight at the farm, my grandparents had an unwanted visitor. As my grandpa started telling the story, I remember exactly what night it was because it was the only time in my entire life that my grandpa yelled at me. The night started like most sleepovers. James and I were playing outside, ate some pot pie with extra gravy and drank root beers pretending that they were actual beers. The farmhouse had this

little creepy loft that had a pull-out bed and a small TV that we had the PlayStation hooked up to. We would usually stay up all night playing games like Spyro the Dragon or Crash Bandicoot. It wasn't uncommon for my grandma to knock on the loft door and tell us to keep it down. She would do this often throughout the evening. On this specific night, we thought that we were being smart by turning off all the lights and keeping the volume turned down low. Around midnight, we heard an extremely loud bang downstairs. We paused the game and we just stared at each other. We both had that sickening feeling in our stomachs.

I remember thinking to myself that one of my grandparents just fell or something and I didn't know if I was mentally strong enough at that time to help pick them up. We both stayed quiet for a minute and felt a combination of relief and panic when we heard nothing but silence. We didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing and we started playing the game again but something didn't feel right. James paused the game again and told me to go check on them just in case something happened and they needed our help. I opened the loft door, just for the sake of the visual, it was one of those loft doors on the ceiling. When the door opened, a small ladder-like staircase would come down. I slowly descended the stairs trying to listen intently. I could hear the murmuring of voices, but I couldn't make anything out specifically.

As I slowly crept down the hallway, I heard another loud bang that just about made me jump out of my skin. It was like the sound of a door slamming. As I kept walking, I saw my grandpa turn the corner with an intense look in his eye, and he pointed to the loft and yelled, Now! at the top of his lungs. I was terrified. I'd never heard my grandpa yell and I never saw that look on his face which was infinitely worse than the yelling. I turned around, sprinted up the loft and shut off the TV. James kept asking what happened and I just kept telling him to shut up and that Grandpa was mad at us.

We heard some more loud banging and shuffling throughout the night, but we both eventually fell asleep. That morning, both my grandparents looked exhausted. They were both drinking coffee in the living room. My grandpa had his hunting rifle out, which we thought was kind of weird, but ultimately we just let it go and forgot about it. My grandparents were really weird that morning though, but after that morning, they were the same old grandparents the next time we saw them. Well, at the family reunion, my grandfather finally told us what actually happened that night. That loud bang we heard initially that caused James and me to worry

was the sound of an intruder trying to break down the front door. At first my grandpa scared them away. By the time I was in the hallway and heard the second loud noise that was the sound of the intruder successfully breaking down the door. My grandma was able to hide in the coat closet. When my grandpa turned the corner and saw me in the hallway, he only yelled the word now because he didn't want to alert the intruder that someone else was in the house. He just hoped that pointing to the loft would communicate to me that I better get up there. Luckily it was, but it was only

because I was scared of getting yelled at. After I went back into the loft and shut the door, my grandpa went and grabbed his hunting rifle. My grandma successfully forced the intruders to leave, but he wasn't going to take any chances, so he stayed awake all night in the living room. He did call the sheriff, who was a good friend of my grandpa, and he told him that there was no reason to send anybody. He explained what happened and basically made an unofficial report over the phone. All of this happened while me and James were upstairs and we had no idea that our lives might have been in danger. When I was in the hallway I was only several feet away from that intruder and I had no

idea. When he told us this I was angry that he didn't tell us before, but honestly, I really don't blame him. They were just trying to keep us young kids safe and it worked. I never had to experience the nightmare of a home invasion while trying to protect my family. My grandpa is a legend for defending his home, wife, and grandkids. He admitted to us that he never quite slept right ever since that night, and I can totally understand why. It just makes you think. I wonder what else happens when you think you're truly safe. I never realized how many interesting stories my grandpa had.

I never had a great relationship with my grandparents. Not for any bad reasons, but mainly just because our lives didn't intersect a lot. A few years back, my grandma died and I noticed how alone and sad my grandfather was. I decided to start spending more time with him. I don't know if it was the guilt of not spending a lot of time with my grandma or if just truly feeling bad for grandpa but for whatever the reason I started going over to his house once a week just for coffee and a chat. I knew my grandpa served in the war but I never heard any stories growing up. I believed he served in the Korean war but I don't actually know. All I do know is that he was stationed in Germany for sure

and a few other European countries during that time. One afternoon, he and I started talking and we started talking about his time in the military. He told me that he didn't meet my grandma until he got home from the war, so being a single man in Europe, he was spending a lot of time with women. He told me when he was in Germany, a few of the guys he was stationed with went to one of the local pubs. And forgive me if you're from Germany, I don't know what the proper term is for a bar or a pub in that culture. While he was drinking with his buddies, he met a woman named Irma. And from the way he described Irma, I could tell that he was in love with this woman, or at least very infatuated.

He told me she was beautiful. Curly blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a smile that could light up an entire room. Those were his words, obviously, and not mine. He spoke a little German, and she spoke a little English. They hit it off right away, and before he knew it, he was heading back to Irma's place. I didn't think bar encounters like that happened in the 50s, so I was surprised to hear that little detail. He started to tell me details about the walk back to her place as well. He said that he should have seen the warning signs, but he was hypnotized by her beauty and not to mention that he had been drinking quite a bit, so he wasn't in the perfect state of mind.

It didn't take long for them to start walking down dark and secluded alleyways and before he knew it, they were surrounded by nothing but trees. He could hear the sounds of twigs snapping around him but he just figured it was maybe animals in the forest. They arrived at a small cottage roughly a hundred yards or so into the woods. She invited him and he said it looked like something from an old fairy tale. It was an all wooden cottage with a fireplace, two small chairs in front of the fireplace. There was a small loft and a ladder that led to a small bed. There was a table and a small kitchen and that was about it.

Irma started a fire and poured my grandpa some beer. He was a romancer so right away he asked her to come back to America with him when his time was over. It's hard for me to wrap my head around something like that, but it was a different time. She seemed flattered by the offer, but dodged the question several times. Then his tone started to shift as he continued telling me the story. She started to unbutton his military uniform. He turned his head in a moment of pleasure and only caught a quick glimpse, but he was immediately startled by what he saw outside the window. He jumped up out of the chair and started to tell Irma what he saw.

He said a man was in the window spying on them and as soon as he noticed, the man ducked down. Irma seemed dismissive and kept trying to distract my grandpa. As much as he wanted to give in to Irma, he felt a duty to protect her in case it was some kind of threat. He started to remember all the noises he heard on the way to the cottage and started to fear the worst. What if they were followed by someone from the pub, he thought. He finally was able to break away from Irma and demanded that he needed to take a look outside, and she seemed upset but didn't say anything. Grandpa went to the table near the door where he had set his weapon and it wasn't there anymore.

He turned around and asked Irma where the weapon was and she just stood in front of the fire. At that moment a large man speaking German broke through the door and clocked my grandpa right in the face. He described the pain as if though he were getting struck in the face by iron. The woman started speaking German as well and because my grandpa wasn't an expert in the language, he couldn't follow what was being said. That and the fact that his head was ringing from the sucker punch that he just received. The man then continued to beat my grandfather up.

He told me it was the worst pain that he'd ever been in and he truly couldn't move. The man threw my grandpa on the table in the cottage, pulled out a hunting knife, and actually stabbed my grandfather in the side. He said Irma began freaking out and they both fled into the woods, leaving the door wide open. And he said the pain was indescribable. It hurt so bad that he almost was numb to it. He laid on the table, trying to apply pressure to the wound, hoping to somehow see the sun again.

He ended up passing out and waking up in a military-run medical center. He was lucky to be alive, and he thanked his lucky stars every day that someone found him. When one of his military buddies was leaving the pub that night, he saw Irma and the large man who wasn't my grandpa running down the road. He immediately became suspicious and had a bad feeling in his gut. He decided to walk in the direction that Irma had just come from. He saw muddy footprints that came from the forest and he decided to continue investigating. Before long, he wandered to the cottage and since the door was still open, he was able to see my unconscious grandfather on the table. He carried him all the way back to base

and thankfully they were able to save my grandpa, otherwise I wouldn't be here to tell this story. My grandpa stayed in touch with this man until he passed away five years ago. He would constantly tell this man that he was a hero and that he owed him his life. I wish I could thank him as well. My grandpa showed me the scar and even after all these years, he said that he can still feel it and every time he sees the scar, he's reminded of the horrible night. He never saw Irma again.

They never found her or the large man that she was with. He was more heartbroken about Irma rather than the fact that he was nearly murdered. I can't imagine the fear my father felt that night. I found this story to be fascinating and scary and I asked him if I could share it and he agreed. He told me to end it by saying, be careful who you give your heart to because they may just try to cut it out when you least expect it. To be continued... This is a weird story I just found out for the first time about a year ago from my grandma. She just passed away a few weeks ago, rest her soul, and I thought that I would share this wild story that she told me and see if it entertains you like it entertained me and my husband.

For starters, I found out that my grandma was married once before my papa. That blew my mind because I'm 30 years old and I never knew that. I was even more blown away when she told me that papa never knew either. She never wanted to hurt him and then so much time had passed that she didn't think it was important to even bring it up since she never had any kids with him or anything like that. He was a dangerous man, she said. She was only 19 and she was attracted to the bad boy. She was even more attracted to him because he was interested in her. He made her feel important.

He was feared and respected among his peers and the fact that he liked her just made her go head over heels. She started hitting the road with him. His name was Davey. He would roll his cigarettes in his short-sleeved shirt. His hair was always slicked back and if he wanted something, he got it. She knew that he would use force sometimes to get what he wanted, but he would always make her wait outside or in another room so she didn't have to witness anything. She was scared most of the time, she admitted, but she was addicted to the fear.

And your first love will always have that vice grip on your heart, for better or for worse. They were living in a small boarding house, essentially paying weekly to rent a room. They were on the move a lot so they needed places like this where they pretty much could leave at a moment's notice. One night, Davey came bursting through the door. He was wild and angry and yelled at my grandma to grab what they needed and that they needed to leave right now. She couldn't be sure, but she thought that she could see what looked like blood on his shirt and jeans. She was upset and tried to get Davy to relax and explain what happened, but he was just being angry and yelling. She learned over time that when Davy was like this, it was better to

just do what he said. They hit the road and he didn't say anything for hours. Finally, my grandma asked what happened and all Davey said to her was that they were never going to speak about tonight and that he wanted my grandma to forget about it. After all the horrible things she knew that he did, for some reason, this felt worse to her. She knew that he was bad news, but that's what she liked about him. But whatever happened that night she knew was over the line and she never forgot that feeling. Eventually, they moved on and had a small wedding ceremony. She wanted kids and Davy would just tell her that someday they will. Well, that day never came and my grandma started to get impatient and not to mention the bad boy routine was starting

to finally affect my grandma. She was always worried that she'd see him come home covered in blood or worse, you know, not come home at all. One night, her worst dreams nearly became a reality. They were home having an evening together and there was a knock on the door. It was an older gentleman that she didn't recognize. Davy yelled at her to stay in the bedroom so she listened with her ear at the door. She couldn't make out all the words but the conversations seemed hostile. A few minutes later, Davy came into the room and said that he needed to leave and that he would be back later. She tried to pry out from him where he was going, but he wouldn't say anything. He seemed different this time. Instead of anger, he appeared to be more scared than

anything. She waited all night and Davy never came home. She didn't call the police because he always told her no matter what, don't call the cops. She decided to take action into her own hands and play detective. She looked around their small apartment for any clues. She found some notes with a street address on them and that morning she walked to that address. She didn't find Davy and instead found something that haunted her for decades. It was a warehouse and inside, she found a very gruesome scene. I don't want to go into details my grandma went into, but let's just say that there was a lot of blood and a body. She ran to a nearby store and had the clerks call the cops. My grandma claimed to the cops that she had just stumbled upon the site by accident.

She never knew to throw Davey under the bus. He always made that abundantly clear to her. They never identified the body and as far as she knows, he always remained a John Doe. And if you're wondering how she knew that, well, one of the officers who comforted my grandma that afternoon was my eventual papa. Hence why she never wanted to admit to him that she knew the potential culprit since it gave her crippling guilt. She erased all traces of Davy. Not that there was much because he forced them to live a very minimalistic lifestyle. It wasn't right after, but she slowly started to develop feelings for my papa and eventually they started seeing each other.

A few weeks after the incident, she came to peace with the fact that Davey was never coming back and for a long time she always wondered what happened to him. She wanted closure. Was he dead? Did he move out of the country? Or did he just want to separate from my grandma? When I asked for his last name so I could try and find him for her, she just smiled and said that she had given up wanting to know what happened years ago and she knew that she made the right choice ending up with my papa. She said once my aunt was born, she was terrified that Davy would find her one day And for a long time, she said that she lived in constant fear that Davy was watching her

And that when she least expected it, he would strike Now that she's passed away, I'll never know Davy's real name or where he ended up And that's probably for the best It's wild to me to know that my grandma was married to a criminal Even if it was an unofficial marriage. She dug out an old box from storage and showed me her wedding ring and picture of Davy back then, and it was surreal. Watching her stare at that picture, I could see the fear and love in her eyes. My poor grandma. The fear that she must have felt on a daily basis for a

long time. It truly must have been a nightmare. Cash eruption. UFC gold blitz. Make instant deposits or same-day withdrawals. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I'm so thankful I took the time to teach my grandma how to use a cell phone.

A few months ago, my grandparents were in a situation, and if they didn't know how to work a phone, there was a chance that they wouldn't be here anymore today. I asked my grandma to tell me the story again so I could write it down and share it with y'all. And please let this story be a reminder to everyone that some people are just monsters and enjoy being evil. My grandparents live in the middle of nowhere. My hometown is small and we don't have a bumping nightlife like a lot of the cities. Within my small hometown, which is already desolate, my grandparents live even further into nothingness. If they come over to see my family or my parents' house, it takes them about an hour or so. But even in their 80s, they love to get out and see all their loved ones.

My brother was celebrating the birth of his first child, and we had a small get-together at my parents' house. My husband, me, and my grandparents ended up staying for a while playing the card game pitch. We didn't leave my parents until about after midnight, which would mean my grandparents wouldn't get home until around one in the morning. I hated that, so I insisted on them staying at my parents' or even my house, but they insisted on driving home. So my grandparents left and made the hourish drive back to their home. While driving, my grandpa ran over something in the road and was forced to pull over. They didn't have a spare tire in the car so he couldn't change the flat tire. They thought about what to do and decided to just wait there until morning.

Knowing the town is small and gets very little traffic, they thought that they would be alone on the road until sunrise. They didn't want to call anybody in the family and wake them up. And I understand the logic, but I would have much rather helped my grandparents out rather than just let them sit on the side of the road for the entire night. About 20 minutes after the flat tire, two cars emerged from the darkness, one pulled in behind their car and the other in front of their car. They made sure the doors were locked in the car and they both watched the two cars intently. The car behind them started to inch closer to his car until it was practically touching their bumper. Not being super cell phone savvy, she didn't think to call the police right away, and instead, they both just watched, wondering what was happening.

Someone then got out of the car behind them and slowly started to make their way to my grandpa's driver's side door. The man didn't say anything, and just grabbed my grandpa's door and started to try and open it. While this was happening, someone got out of the passenger side of the car and made their way to my grandma's door It was another man who just kept telling my grandma to open the door That person then walked around the driver's side door and started to slam on the window and door Finally, my grandma came to her senses and pulled out the cell phone that she had just recently learned how to use and dialed the police. The freaks on the outside didn't seem to care and started to smash my grandparents' car with baseball bats. They knew it was only a matter of time before they started to smash the windows in. The man with the bat finally started to demand for their wallets and

said that if they didn't get out of the car and give up their money, this would be the end. My grandparents stayed strong and stayed in the car, holding each other's hands and hoping the police would arrive soon. These people jumped on the hood of the car and started to smash the windows and windshield, and the glass started to crack and shatter everywhere. My grandma said that this was the first time that she felt like the end may actually be upon them. But just like a cliche movie, as the glass was starting to shatter inward, lights from a police car could be seen on the horizon. The one man reached into the cracked windshield and actually tried to grab at my grandma's purse, but she pulled back and the

man stumbled and fell off the hood of the car where he was standing. The car in front sped off as soon as he saw the lights. The two men from the car behind my grandparents who were just attacking them ran back to the car after he failed to grab my grandma's purse. They sped off as well and instead of chasing them, the one cop car stopped and made sure both my grandparents were okay. They gave a description of the men they saw and the two cars and the police officers radioed someone and told them what to look out for. It was morning when my grandparents finally called my parents and told them what happened. We all rushed over immediately to make sure that they were okay and of course, classic grandparents, they were actually laughing and joking. I knew this was hurting them on the inside, but my grandparents always liked to make light of every situation.

Maybe that's why they're in their 80s and still going strong. Unfortunately, the two cars and monsters inside the vehicle were never caught, so justice was never served. We'll never know why they targeted my grandparents and where they came from and what their end goal was. Did they just want to rob them, or did they have much worse intentions? These idiots are still out there and potentially preying on the old and weak. Thankfully, my stubborn grandma finally caved in and got a phone and learned how to use it when she did. Because who knows what would have happened if she didn't call the police. I'm just happy they're still okay and at the end of the day, they're still my same old grandparents. To be continued... This story is a little personal and I'm not going to use any names or locations just to protect my family's privacy.

Every family has dark secrets or, at the very least, things that they're not proud of. My family has a very dark secret and I just found out about it at 32 years old. I mean, it makes sense that I was never told about it. Why would any family brag about the story I'm about to tell you right now? So you're probably asking yourself, how did I find out about it. Why would any family brag about the story I'm about to tell you right now? So you're probably asking yourself, how did I find out about it now? Well, the simple answer is that my grandma accidentally slipped the information. She's starting to lose her mind a little bit and it's quite sad and difficult to talk about. The deterioration of her mind is another horrifying story for another day, but due to my grandma's condition,

she needs to be watched all the time and she also just rambles a lot. She says things she doesn't understand and most of the time we just respond and talk with her. It's weird and sort of sad because sometimes she is as sharp as she can be and other times it's like talking to a small child. Me and my sister started noticing a lot that my grandma kept mentioning her brother. Just for the record, my grandma has three sisters and no brothers, at least to our knowledge. At first, we just thought it was just normal grandma rambling, but she would constantly bring him up and sometimes she would even get really sad. We asked my mom about it and since she was the oldest, we figured if grandma had some brother that we didn't know about, she would even get really sad. We asked my mom about it and since she was the oldest,

we figured if grandma had some brother that we didn't know about, she would know. Mom just shrugged it off, saying things like, your poor grandmother lost her mind. She's never had any brothers, only had sisters. As time went on, grandma started becoming more and more upset about her brother. We would try and calm her down the best we could, but it was becoming harder and harder. Finally, we started engaging with Grandma, asking her questions about her brother. And according to her, they were best friends.

He would always help my grandma with bullies, but he started to enjoy inflicting pain himself. And he became a bully. My grandma became upset, so we stopped talking to her that afternoon, and we waited a few more days until grandma brought him up again, and we started to ask questions again, mainly asking the one main question, where is he now? She looked upset and told us a story. For a while it felt like our old normal grandma again. She seemed sharp and knowledgeable. Her brother got into a bar fight and accidentally seriously injured someone. He spent a few nights in jail and then got released. When he got released, he found the man

and we'll just say that he finished the job. He went on the run from the cops. My grandma finally told us her brother's name and our jaws hit the floor. My great uncle has a name that I'm sure you've heard of before. After he left town, he went on a spree, doing some of the most disturbing and heinous things imaginable. It took years, but the police finally caught him and his life ended that day. He never stood trial for his crimes. After everything was said and done, my great-grandparents moved far away and changed their name, trying to erase the memory of the horrible things their son did. My grandma was so affected by the stress and anxiety,

and she dropped out of school and spent a long time coming to peace with the fact that her brother was a murderer and he was now gone. Eventually she moved on and started her life and never mentioned her brother again until now. That night we told our mom about it and she was convinced grandma was making things up. After all, she watches TV most of the day and in those situations it's not impossible to plant an idea into your head. My mom called her sisters and asked if they had ever heard anything like that and they all said the same thing, which was that they had never heard that story before, ever. My grandma's sisters had all passed away, so there was really nobody else to ask. My mom came over to my grandma's house with us a few days later and she wanted to talk to grandma. As soon as she mentioned his name, my grandma's eyes

lit up and started to talk about him as a child and how amazing of a mentor he was to her. My mom tried to find out if there was a way that my grandma could prove it without just calling her out for being a liar. My mom asked if she had any pictures from when they were kids that my grandma could prove it without just calling her out for being a liar. My mom asked if she had any pictures from when they were kids, and my grandma paused for a while. It was like the lights were shutting off inside her mind. Her eyes started to well up, and then she said that she didn't have any childhood pictures. She only had one picture to remember him with, and it's under the bed. We ran to the bedroom, and nothing was under the bed except for dust and just boxes of junk. My mom was convinced that grandma did, in fact,

make the entire thing up and that I admit that I was leaning that way myself until my sister shouted for us to come back into the room. In between the old mattress and box spring was a folder with a newspaper clipping inside. It was an article about her brother and all the old mattress and box spring was a folder with a newspaper clipping inside. It was an article about her brother and all the horrible things he had done. Behind the article, written on a piece of paper, was a note that said, I love you sis, don't let them beat you up, love always, and my great uncle's name. We all looked at each other, and my mom started to cry since she was nearly 60 years old and never knew this about our family. We agreed to tell our entire family so they knew, but we made sure everyone was in agreement not to share the information.

I know I slightly broke the promise by writing this, but I needed to get it off my chest. I hope by not sharing names and locations I'll be able to protect the privacy of myself and my family. As much as the world has changed, it really hasn't. There are good people and horrible people. When my grandpa came over to America from Italy, he endured one of the hardest times of his life. He saved up for years to make the trip a reality and he wasn't going to stop until he made it to America. The boat ride back then was tough on its own without any help from life or horrible people. My grandfather was a very young man, but he was strong. He was helping on the boat any way that he could to make the trip go by faster. His brother Gino was already in America and he knew once he arrived that he would have a job lined up

He just needed to get through the long trek across the ocean At some point during the trip, the boat lost all power and completely stalled in the ocean Panic ensued on the giant ship And that alone is enough to haunt your nightmares, but unfortunately, the nightmare was just beginning for my grandpa. My grandfather did his best to try and calm everyone down and keep the people in the highest spirits possible. It didn't take long for some of the folks on the boat to lose their mind and sense of logic. Most of the passengers had dreams of America and starting a new life, but little did they know,

those dreams were almost about to be lost at sea forever. A few of the men on the ship decided to commandeer the entire steamship. My grandfather would always compare it to what he would imagine pirates used to do. The rogue men separated everyone in the boat and started to beat people who spoke their minds. He never knew what the endgame was for those men. They never made it clear. Grandpa assumed that it was just some type of power plan that these men were just scared and didn't know what to do. Maybe they didn't want to die at sea as poor men.

He wanted to help, but he knew if he spoke up the men would give him an extra hard beating since he was so large. Because they were at the bottom of the ship, my grandfather had no idea where the captain was during all of this, and he always assumed that he was just hiding somewhere, but he didn't know for sure. The next few hours, my grandfather always said, was the worst time of his entire life. Dozens of people all surrounded together in a nearly pitch black room. They could hear crying and coughing and most of the people were sure that they were going to die. It was almost impossible to have a high spirit at this point and he didn't know what was worse, the boat drifting in the middle of the ocean with no direction or not knowing how much

danger they were in with these insane men holding up the ship. To make matters worse, they didn't know how rescue worked, and since nobody knew where the captain was, they didn't know if they had a way to contact a rescue ship or if they were to float until they all starved to death. Finally, my grandpa decided to be a hero, which was a mistake. He got up, tackling one of the men, but three others jumped on my grandpa and they decided to beat him up. They found a dark closet of some kind and locked my grandfather in the closet, and for hours he could hear the most unsettling commotion he had ever heard. He always said horror movies aren't scary. According to him, nothing compares to hearing the real screams of people you know for hours and being trapped and unable to help anyone. And that was what real

horror is, according to Grandpa, and I believe him. It always gave me nightmares listening to my Grandpa tell the story. It was always the little details that got to me. The near-freezing conditions, the cry of people he knew, and having to deal with this without even a sliver of light is just unimaginable to me. The next few hours were a blur according to him. He doesn't remember much. He spent a long time trying to break the solid door, but it wouldn't budge. He eventually heard screams he didn't recognize and he started to pound on the door again. Someone opened the door and freed my grandfather. It was another passenger of the ship and he explained to my grandfather that a rescue

ship had come and they essentially arrested the men who took over the ship. The screams he had heard last were from the men who took over the ship and they were screaming as they were being apprehended. I don't know how they did it, but they fixed the ship and they were screaming as they were being apprehended. I don't know how they did it, but they fixed the ship and they finished the journey to America. He had heard that each of the men that had commandeered the ship stood trial, but he unfortunately didn't know for sure. When they arrived on shore, he told them about the horrible and unfortunate aftermath of the trip. Several people he knew tragically lost their lives and nothing was done for these poor people and their families. Several of the Italian passengers held a service for those who were lost,

but the tragic memory still remains. My grandpa was angry and insulted for years because there was almost no mention of the tragedy. He became disillusioned and his American dream became kind of foggy. He couldn't understand why nothing was being done. He dedicated most of his life to helping with immigration conditions, making arrangements as comfortable as can be and trying to set them up with shelter and a job upon arriving in the country. It's beyond scary to go somewhere new and start over and my grandfather learned this first hand. He always said that he endured enough pain, but he doesn't want anyone else to ever have to feel a fraction

of what he felt. Until a few days ago, I had no idea that this had actually happened to me. I'm not going to talk about the gruesome, indirect circumstances that triggered this to start haunting me in flashbacks, but I will rather focus on the story itself, how I remember it, and how my cousin, who was with me when it happened, remembers it. Now for some context, my cousin and I are the same age. We are both women and currently 25 years old. She's only 5 days younger than me and her family rented a floor in my parents' house when we were toddlers, so we basically did everything together and spent all our days together until we turned five, when her family bought an apartment in another city, some 30 kilometers away from the city I lived in. Since we had a very strong connection,

almost codependent, it was very difficult for us to get used to not living together and two years later, we have made an agreement with our parents that we will visit each other each weekend and during the summer break, she'll spend one week at our place and I'll spend the other week at their place and we will basically exchange like that until the end of the summer break and this went on for years. Since we were spending all our free time together, by the time we turned 10 or 11, we have already exhausted all of our adventure ideas in the backyard. Tree climbing, building a tree house, setting up tents, camping in the backyard, all that kind of stuff. And we really needed something new, so we decided to go

fishing together every Friday on the river near my house. It's about a 20 minute walk. Now of course we had no tools needed for a true fishing experience. We had a butterfly net that we would place in the water and on a good day we would catch a dozen tiny fish or so with it and that was enough for our little restaurant game that we would play at home. We would come back, bake the fish under the sunlight, and then serve it and decorate it in plastic plates that we would later serve to our imaginary customers. We've done this for weeks, and always made sure that we were safe while doing it. We never actually got into the river, and that wasn't that difficult since it's a very peaceful neighborhood. We called it the Yellow Bridge, and there was usually no one else at the river at the time we were there. But one day, it was different. Very different. Now how I remember it, a couple

of days ago the memory of this encounter suddenly spilled out in my mind. We were either 10 or 11 years old and it was Friday. She was at her place that week so we took the butterfly net and went fishing on the river. We were alone, sitting under a large willow tree right next to the river and suddenly a man showed up from nowhere. He was standing a couple of meters away from us. He had a blackish hair with plenty of shades of gray, so I'm guessing that he was in his late 40s or early 50s. He had a dark blue t-shirt, a little smudged on the collar. He asked us what we were doing, and we said that we were fishing. He continued walking back and forth on that part of the shore. Now, under the yellow bridge, the shore itself is at least 500 meters along,

and he could have gone anywhere, but he stayed where we were at. Then he came a little closer and we got up. He told us that he was having issues with his wife and we just sort of nodded our heads, trying to avoid the conversation and follow the don't talk to strangers rule. We didn't ask him anything. He took a flip phone out of his pocket and opened it in front of us. I have to show you my wife, he said. Okay, we replied. When he found what he was looking for, he came even closer and turned the phone towards us. It was a picture of a completely naked woman sitting in a chair with her legs spread. We just nodded.

He then proceeded to show us more pictures and it was quite clear that it wasn't his wife because the pictures weren't of the same woman, but all of them were naked from head to toe with their legs spread or in other very suggestive positions. Now that I think of it, the quality of the images, the fashion, and the aesthetics could be best described as, you know, adult content from the 70s. It could be that he took pictures from some old magazine and had them sent by someone. I remember I looked at my cousin and mouth, it's not his wife, and she nodded. Isn't she beautiful? He asked. She is, I replied, and my cousin nodded. We then remembered that we have left our net in the river, so we went back

to the willow tree and reached for the net. He was standing there, in the same spot as before, looking at his phone. He then showed us a very low quality picture of two naked men and another naked woman. This picture actually looked like pictures taken with an actual flip phone camera. This is me, he said and pointed at one of the men in the picture. We just nodded and said that we had to go home. He then said the words that have been haunting me for days now. You think my wife is beautiful. She thinks you're beautiful too. She would love to meet you. Come with me to meet her and we can all play together. No, we have to go home, I replied. You little party breaker. Maybe your friend doesn't want to go home.

Come on, I want to play with you. He said and turned to my cousin. No, I really want to go home. My cousin replied. And this is where the details of the memory stop. What I remember next is him giving up just not being there anymore and us leaving, giggling and laughing as we walked away and mocking his voice and his tone on our way back home. I found it weird that only after so many years have I remembered the situation and I brushed it off as a potential dream or maybe even a false memory, but since his words kept echoing in my head, I called my cousin and described my memory word for word as I described it here, and she said that it did happen, just slightly different

from how I've remembered it. And here's how my cousin remembers it. It happened. All the details are correct, but once she told him that she really wants to go home, he was way too close, and we were scared to start running or turn our backs since we thought that he could maybe run and catch us. So we stayed there for a while and kept pretending like he wasn't there and we played with our catch, the tiny fish in a bucket filled with water and talked about our fathers who work in the police. Obviously it was a lie. Her father is a forest ranger and mine works in IT and how they're so strong in that they could kill a man with one punch.

The man didn't believe our exaggerated story and he kept walking in circles around us, not too close but he did keep an eye on us the entire time. As we waited and waited and waited, at one point he went to the bushes behind us to take a pee and this is when we got up and started running. We ran across the bridge and kept running until we got to the part of the neighborhood where there are lots of houses. When we were already close to our house, I stopped in the middle of the road and said that my legs won't move, so she helped me get down on the side of the road and we sat there until I felt better. Today, I know that what I experienced was a state of shock. Once I felt better,

we went back home, threw away the fish and decided to never go fishing again. We never told this to our parents because we knew what happened had something to do with what adults do with each other and at the time we thought that everything related to that is shameful and shouldn't be talked about. She said she is surprised that I thought it was a dream and that I didn't remember it until now since I've had such an extreme reaction and she has PTSD from that event. Even today she's not going alone anywhere and is terrified when someone mentions the Yellow Bridge. So this happened about seven months ago. I was visiting San Diego for job interviews and staying at my favorite hotel in Sorrento Mesa. For background, I'm a 40-year-old man and a pretty

big guy. I'm 6'1 and a former strip club bouncer and now on with the weirdness. On my third night, I was up pretty late after hanging out with some old friends after my interviews. I got back to the hotel at around 2am with some Sonny's Donuts and after eating a few, drinking a few more and watching South Park post-COVID, I decided to have a smoke before going to bed and this made it now around 3am. So I go downstairs, walk out front to the smoking area by the fountain but there's another couple who were also staying at the hotel already there. I didn't want to impose so I decided to walk around the outside parts of the

hotel while I smoked. I walked around the pool, the barbecue area, the basketball courts, then started back for the side door. As I did, a black sedan drove up alongside me and stopped. The window rolled down, and a tiny Asian woman asked if I knew how to get out of the parking lot and back to the street. Now from where we were when she asked me, this was literally in a straight line about 150 feet in front of her so I thought maybe she was drunk or blind or something. So I just politely said yes, just keep going straight and turn left at the tree. She then asked if I could get in the car and show her. Now again, I'm a former strip club bouncer and this woman looked very much like Walmart Allie Wong. There was absolutely no

intimidation factor but for some reason, I instantly felt uneasy. Again, it was literally right in front of her and she could see the road. Also, the windows were all tinted far more than they should have been, and I honestly couldn't tell if anyone else was in the car. I used the smoking as an excuse to not get in the car, but she said she didn't mind and gave me a very creepy smile. I politely declined and again pointed out that the road was literally right there, so I'd just be walking back in five seconds anyway. She again asked if I would get in and show her. This was feeling like a weird kid-slash-ice cream truck situation. I mean, guys, how often do decently good-looking women just drive up and ask you to get in their car at 3am in a hotel parking lot? How often does anyone ask a big bearded guy to just hop on in the car under

these circumstances? Nothing about this was right. Again, I politely declined as I finished my smoke and was luckily already standing right at the hotel side door when all this started so I just went in. The woman just drove off as she rolled up the window. Right exactly to the exit she just asked me to show her to. So I told the front desk about it and they said that they keep an eye out but I'm quite sure nothing has ever come of it. Just one of those things that really makes me wonder. What the hell did she want me in that car so badly for? A pretty man I am not so it had to be some kind of scam. I just wonder exactly how much danger I truly was in. I used to be employed as a child protection worker. A report came through about a stepfather who was being abusive to his children,

and I was given the investigation by my team leader. When I interviewed the oldest child with the police, she had very visible physical injuries and told me exactly what had happened. I'll spare the details, but it was horrific. As the children were in his sole care, we knew that they needed to be removed immediately. We sent out a team of two workers out to the children's school while myself and a colleague called the stepfather into the office. I led the interview and it was horrible. He didn't even try to deny that he had hurt his stepchild,

basically saying, that's my kid, I'll do what I want and you can't stop me. When I served him with the paperwork, he absolutely lost his mind. He was swearing and screaming and said, if we were outside this building right now, I would effing kill you. We ended up running out of the interview room, pressing our emergency alarm and I even had to make a police report about the whole thing and it got really messy. The next day, we had court for the children and my manager decided that I shouldn't attend due to everything that had happened the previous day. My colleague who attended told me that this man was at court and yelled several times something to the effect of, where's that beast of a worker who took my kids? I remember feeling a little freaked out, but it's not uncommon to hear things like this when you have to remove a child. It's understandable that emotions are very high. You build a bit of resilience working in this field and overall I mainly felt relieved that those children had been placed with an aunt

and were safe. About two weeks later, I had to stay back late at the office on an unrelated job. It was about 9pm when I finished and I was the only person there. I walked out the back of the building to my car. It was really dark but when I got close, I. I walked out the back of the building to my car. It was really dark, but when I got close, I thought I saw a shadow moving at the front of my car, just for a second, and then it was gone. I was about 20 meters away at this point, but it startled me. I stood there for a second, just looking at my car, wondering if I was just being paranoid. While staring into the darkness, I started hearing tiny rustling noises and whether imagined or not, all of the true crime stories that I've heard flashed into my mind. Safe to say I freaked myself out and sprinted back to the building. I called my

boyfriend to come and pick me up explaining what had happened. By the time he drove up to the front doors, I had convinced myself that I was being silly and asked him to drive me around in my car. He circled around and with the headlights shining on my car, I could very clearly see that all four of my tires had been slashed. I was an absolute mess that night and called the police immediately. I was pretty sure that this man was responsible, but as I hadn't seen him, I couldn't say for sure. I took a few days off and came back to the meeting with my manager who had just put together a safety plan for me and the other staff. She'd organized to have a security guard escort us to our cars and said very clearly that no one was to stay in the building after hours alone. Then, about a week later, a letter was delivered to the office addressed to me.

Any mail that comes into the office goes through our reception staff. Our lovely receptionist opened it, and it was a note that said, You're as good as dead. The words were typed and printed. She was an older woman and burst into tears when she read it. It didn't say who had sent it, but I am convinced that it was the same man. Over the next few years, letters kept coming, each one getting longer. They addressed me as all sorts of terrible names, including things like homewrecker,

saying that I kidnapped and abused children. It was just horrible, horrible stuff. The threats in the letters were the worst. including things like homewrecker, saying that I kidnapped and abused children. It was just horrible, horrible stuff. The threats in the letters were the worst. The person writing them threatened to do terrible things to me, torture, kill, find out where I live, and to burn down the entire building. To be honest, the police were less than helpful. They basically said that given the nature of our work, they couldn't conclusively say it was this man, although they had questioned him. To me, it all seemed like a pretty massive coincidence.

I'd never had anything like this happen before. They did say that they were taking the letters very seriously and tracking down where they'd been posted from, but I never heard anything back about it. My workplace took the threats very seriously too. All of the security was bumped up across the building and all staff completed refresher training on emergency management. One day, on the way home from work, I noticed that a car was following me. At first, I thought that I was being paranoid, so I drove down a bunch of little streets, double-backed onto the same route in a way that would make absolutely no sense.

Even after all that, a dark green Camry was still paced a little way behind me. I freaked out, but had already planned in my head what I was going to do in this situation. I headed straight to the police station, planning to pull right up to the front of the building and beat my horn until I had someone's attention. The second I pulled into the police station, the green Camry drove straight past and disappeared down a nearby side street. I sat there for a good 20 minutes, too scared to get out of the car in case they came back around the corner. It dawned on me that in my panic I'd forgotten to get the license plate, and that upsets me to this day. I told the police what I knew, but they told me that the man didn't have any car registered in his name, and this was the final straw for me.

I was a nervous wreck. I was looking around constantly at work and at home. I knew that he lived relatively close to me, so I even stopped going grocery shopping in case I ran into him. I stayed on stress leave for a month and I heard from colleagues that letters kept arriving. I was very honestly ready to quit but then COVID happened and it really changed everything. Everyone went into lockdown and all access to the office was restricted. I started back working from home, driving a work car to and from appointments. I didn't go into the office regularly anymore, only allowed in small working groups when absolutely necessary. Over the next year, the letters slowed and eventually stopped. By the time we were allowed back in the office, there hadn't been any sign of this man for almost seven months. About a year later, I left child protection services. I don't know what happened with those children, but my hope is that they are happy and safe with their family.

And as for the man who I believe stalked and threatened me for doing my job, I hope I never see him again. I'm a woman in my 30s who lives alone in a small house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the UK. The street is a maze of roads away from the main road, which means that other than delivery guys and the occasional salesperson, you very rarely see anyone that you don't recognize. I don't exactly know all my neighbors, but I know what they look like and I know where they live. I can recognize their cars and all that kind of stuff. This weirdness happened over the space of a few months several years back. I work from home, so I'm usually in and sometimes I don't have a lot to do.

The first day was one of those lazy days. It was about 4pm and I'm sitting on the sofa watching some daft stuff about alien cover-ups or something. Someone knocked on the door. I have a surveillance camera hidden in the wooden canopy above the front door so I checked to see who it was because I wasn't expecting any deliveries and I couldn't be bothered to deal with a salesperson. It was a woman who looked late 40s to early 50s, very smartly dressed, like really expensive clothes and jewelry, stuff I could never afford. Most people around here generally couldn't afford it either. We're not an affluent area and this lady stuck out like a sore thumb. She looked flustered and agitated, glancing towards the back garden

before trying to look through the tiny frosted glass window on the front door. I noticed that she was carrying a dog's lead, but I didn't see a dog on it. As it happens, at the far side of my back garden, there are two hedges. There's the hedge that I own with my property boundaries, and there's a second hedge outside my boundary that's council-owned along a small grassland where people walk dogs. I know for a fact that there is a hole in the council-owned hedge, which I've reported to the council at least a dozen times over the past decade, and they've done the square root of sod all about it. Because of my hedge, I can't reach it to do anything about it myself. Consequently, when I saw the dog's lead, I thought, huh, a better dog has gone through the hole. If it's a big dog, it's not getting into my garden, but if it's a small dog,

it might be able to work its way through, and I've always got some cooked meat, so I figured that I might be able to lure it out. I am a dog lover so of course I want to help this woman if I can. When I was a kid my own dog went missing for a few weeks and I thought that I was never going to get him back. I was heartbroken for those weeks but fortunately we did get him back and ever since I've been extremely sensitive to pets in need. I open the door and this woman gives me the weirdest look, like she was expecting someone completely different to answer the door and that I shouldn't be there. To be fair to her, my mom used to live here too so I didn't think too much of that weird look to begin with,

maybe she was expecting my mom. I say hello and she just stares at me for the longest 30 seconds before she tries to look past me and asks to see Margaret. I don't know what it is about other people's mistakes, but whenever someone has the wrong number, I always end up apologizing as if though it's my fault. So, that's what I did. Apologized and told her that there was no Margaret at this address. Again, she gives me that look, only this time there's anger behind it. Yes, there is, she insists. It occurs to me at this point that I have a relative called Margaret,

but she lives about 60 miles away and I haven't seen her in years. Nonetheless, just in case she's got her address muddled, I ask, are you looking for Margaret? And I say their surname. But she just hisses at me. You know exactly who I'm looking for. What have you done with her? I'm absolutely lost at this point. I've lived here 20 years and I know the name of the previous owners, so I know she's not asking for them. I also know the names of the neighbors and the names of the people who have lived on the street in the time that I've been here and since moved. None of them are called Margaret. So all I do is tell her that she's got the wrong address. No, this is, and then she says my address. You're lying. That was a tad alarming. She's at the right address. She's not knocked on the wrong door, however, she's clearly thinking that I've done something to somebody who, to the best of my knowledge, has never lived here.

I don't know how long the previous owner had this house, but we must be talking about at least 30 years since anyone called Margaret might have lived here. It's at this point that I notice that she subtly wrapped that dog lead around her now clenched fist like she's planning to use it as a weapon. In my youth, I did plenty of self-defense training so I'm not exactly scared of her as such, but I'm obviously getting a bit concerned about the situation that's seriously brewing. I don't particularly wish to get involved in a brawl on my doorstep with a complete stranger. I'm torn between shutting the door in her face or trying to de-escalate the situation. In the end, I close the door a little so she's got less to aim at and tell her, look, I don't know who you're looking for, but if you think something's happened to your friend,

maybe you should call the police and let them sort it out. Sure enough, the woman slams her fist with the lead wrapped around it into my door. I later discovered that she'd struck the door hard enough to crack the frosted glass window in the middle of it. She's bleeding from doing this. It must have hurt, but she doesn't flinch or show any sign of pain. What the hell? Any confidence I had in my self-defense classes started to waver here because I'm not used to people who don't feel pain. All I can think now is that she's on something and having a really bad trip,

so at this point I put on my scariest voice and tell her to get the F back. I let her know that I'm calling the police and if she's still here when they get here, she can deal with them because I'm not dealing with her anymore. She tries to stop me from closing the door but I shove her back and manage to get it closed and locked. I make a point to stand next to the door while I'm calling 999 so she can hear me. While I'm waiting for the police to turn up, I watch her on the surveillance feed. She moves out of shot multiple times, presumably to check the back of the house, and I hear her calling out for this Margaret. A few minutes before the police finally turn up, I see her kick over my wheelie bins in a rage, but then the most chilling thing happens.

She walks back to the front door and literally stares directly into my camera. That camera is pretty well hidden. I'm not saying that nobody could spot it, but most people would only know it was there if they'd been looking for it. Most people aren't looking for cameras, right? And she knew it was there. She must have eyeballed it previously. When? I don't know. I later reviewed all the footage I had from that day and she never made eye contact with it once. She never even looked in that direction. I only had about a week's worth of footage before the oldest footage is overwritten and I checked everything I had and she was only on camera that day. All I can think is that she'd been here more than a

week prior. While she's staring right into it, she flips me the finger and then makes a throat cutting gesture before walking off. I head to the window to watch her leave and she's walking like she doesn't have a care in the world and she doesn't look back, just wanders away. Police finally show up, Good job, I wasn't being murdered or anything, and they take a statement, I give them a copy of the surveillance footage, and that's that. I called a couple of times to follow up, but nothing. Nobody ever called me about it. I won't lie, this had me up for a few weeks. I moved the knife block closer to the door, though out of sight of any of the windows. I started staying up really late and not getting much sleep, which really didn't help.

On some nights I was so tired that I started experiencing auditory hallucinations. I'd hear people who weren't there talking, and because this woman was the cause of all my stress, I heard her voice and the name Margaret most of all. Every time I heard the gate open it put me on edge. I'd review the surveillance footage every day and eventually as the weeks passed and I hadn't heard anything else, I started to regain some type of comfort and just put it down to a very weird experience. It didn't last though. About four, maybe five weeks after the first encounter, she came back.

It was just after midnight. I was in the living room, mucking about on my phone with the TV on low volume for some background noise. I heard a car door slam and peeked out the front window. A dark colored car was parked at the end of the driveway. I couldn't see what maker model it was, but it looked like some sort of estate car. I think Americans call them station wagons, right? I didn't see anyone moving about, but a minute or two later, the front gate swung open with its metallic groaning and

there was a knock on the door. Even when I'm not involved in a blood feud over imaginary margarets, I'm not going to answer the door at that time. I check the surveillance camera. Its night vision mode is pretty terrible, but I'm positive that it's that woman again. I can even see what I think is the dog lead. And of course, she knows I'm watching her because she looks at the camera again and I tell you, when someone is already giving you the heebie-jeebies, the way night vision makes people's eyes look like soulless black voids doesn't do much to make you feel better. And suddenly, she yells out, Shut that racket off and come out here now!

I had the TV on, but as I mentioned, it was on a very low volume. There's no way that she could hear it from outside my door. I couldn't even hear it if I walked into the hallway. I'm convinced at this point that she is mentally unwell, so I call the police again. I want them to stay on the line, but they just tell me that someone will be over soon and to call them back immediately if things escalate. So I'm waiting, watching and just hoping that she doesn't start to try smashing the window or something. She kicks over my wheelie bins again, don't know what she's got against them, and yells something else out which I couldn't quite make out but whatever it was, it was enough for one of the neighbors to come and investigate themselves. I watch the neighbor talking with her for a minute. She's remonstrating

about something, wagging her finger towards my front door, but my neighbor is eventually able to get her to leave. He even sticks around for a bit to make sure that she's gone. Sadly, that also meant that she'd gone before the police turned up again and made me feel like I was a bother to them Another statement, handing over more security footage and more of nothing I caught up with the neighbor the next day and he apologized because it didn't occur to him to make a note of the registration plate But he told me that she said much the same thing as she said to me previously That she wanted to know where Margaret was and what I'd done with her. I'm grasping for answers at this point.

Even if she's mentally unwell, the fact that she's sticking to this Margaret story and has the right address makes me think that there's something more to this than somebody having a breakdown. And then it clicks. Is Margaret her dog? Does she think that I've stolen her dog? Did she have a dog go through the hole in the back? Does she think I've hurt the dog? Is that what this is all about? It'll be another week before she came back. And this time, at 3am, I'm awoken by knocking on the door. A few minutes later, I hear tapping on the bedroom window.

I know it's her. I can hear her saying things, but I can't really make them out because they're too muffled through the windows. It's like she didn't want to get the neighbor out again, so she's trying to keep it quiet. I jump out the bed and put some clothes on as quickly as I can. I try and follow her as best I can as she moves around the outside of the house from room to room, knocking, tapping, and muttering. I think I hear a few coherent words like noise, racket, and I'm pretty sure she called me some other slurs, but maybe I was imagining that. I can't check the surveillance footage this time because

she's spray painted the lens. Not that it'd matter much this time. She's not lingering by the front door. I think about calling the police again but it's proven a waste of time so far and I get the feeling that if I call them out a third time and she's gone that they're just going to start accusing me of wasting their time even if I do have the evidence. They've not exactly been that helpful so far. In the end, I wait by the front door and listen to her. Eventually, she knocks again and I call out, Is Margaret your dog? Dead silence. Nothing. I can't see anything through the frosted glass because it's too dark.

I have no idea where she is and I don't want to turn the outside lights on. I don't even know why. She knows I'm in the house because I've called out to her but I still don't want to draw any more attention to myself and I end up standing there for who knows how long, at least an hour, probably more because the sun starts coming up. My heart is going a mile a minute pretty much the whole time. Once it's bright enough I start checking through the windows to see if I can see her. Nothing. I tentatively open the front door and look outside. Still can't see her.

I grab something to arm myself with just in case, can't remember what now and check all around my house in the back garden. She's not there. As I'm heading back to the front door, I spot the oddest thing. The gate's closed. The gate is physically attached to the side of my house and when it opens and closes, it makes a fair bit of noise. You'd definitely hear it if someone opened or closed it when you were standing next to the front door, but it's closed. So what does that mean? Did she jump it somehow? It's impossible, I guess, but I wouldn't want to try it. Anyway, I open the gate and head out the end of the driveway. I look around and there's no sign

of anyone. I turn back to the house and see that she's spray painted the word liar on the front of my house and left the dog lead on the floor beneath it. That was thankfully the last time I ever heard or saw from this woman, but I think that she still comes by sometimes. Ever since all this happened, I get these creeped out feelings occasionally at night and checked out the window. I don't know whether I'm imagining it or what but now and again I swear I see a dark colored estate car out on the street. Not parked at the end of the driveway these days but I just can't shake the feeling that she's in there watching my house. Perhaps she was looking for her dog and she keeps thinking that she'll see me with it. For some background first, I'm a 29-year-old woman. I lived in an apartment in a sketchier side of my town,

so I'm not unaccustomed to strange people pulling up and strange things happening. I've been through a home break-in before, so I'm very hypervigilant when it comes to keeping myself and my home safe. I also smoke cigarettes. Nasty habit, I know, but having cats and not wanting my house to reek like smoke, I walk out to my balcony to smoke. And that's exactly what I was doing when this happened. I was sitting on my balcony, smoking and just enjoying my night, when I noticed a car I'd never seen before pull into the back parking lot of my apartment right by my balcony. I initially felt a bit off, but I didn't want to come off as being the paranoid neighbor, so

I keep sitting, smoking my cigarette. Then I hear footsteps making a beeline through my backyard. There's a large and burly man that I've never seen before walking br beeline through my backyard. There's a large and burly man that I've never seen before walking briskly through my backyard. Again, I still don't try to make much of it because they might be there for my neighbor or something. My anxiety is definitely on alert but not in panic mode until I realize that he's going straight for my portion of the backyard. He then does something that still freaks me out as I type this. He stops right in my backyard and looks up at me on my balcony, not saying a word. Now I'm in absolute panic mode. I audibly say, oh no. Spring up, slam and lock my balcony door,

run to my upstairs bathroom and dial 911. I listened to every sound from downstairs while I stood panicking in my bathroom and truthfully, it sounded like someone was messing with my back door. I don't know for sure because I was in super vigilant mode. I do know that he was in my backyard for a few minutes because I was in my bathroom for several minutes until I decided to peek out my balcony window. I saw him walking to his car and getting in. That also tells me that I don't think that he was there to rob me but maybe something more sinister. Lucky he was lazy because again I live in the cheaper side of town so you can imagine the quality of my doors and locks. I'm really hoping it was just some guy who was drunk or high and had the wrong house, but

my gut is telling me otherwise. This happened a couple of years ago. I'm a 26-year-old female and I was walking my dog, Indy, in my local field. It was dark, but it wasn't late. It was wintertime in the UK, so it was maybe 6pm. The field is mainly used for rugby and football, but is completely free to walk through whenever. It is also surrounded by houses and streetlights on the road, but the field itself is dark. So I had brought a torch with me, mainly so I didn't trod in any sort of dog feces. I've come in one entrance on the field and I'm brought a torch with me, mainly so I didn't trod in any sort of dog feces. I've come in one entrance on the field and I'm following a path that leads to another exit and entrance.

I use the field to make a loop back around to the road and back to my house, giving my dog some off-lead time whilst in the field. Anyway, as I'm walking up the field, I notice a figure walk in the exit slash entrance that I was going to use to leave. I keep my eye on this figure as they have very dark clothing on and their hood up. I'm shining my torch as I'm walking so I know the person knows I'm there as it's very obvious. At first, I wasn't nervous, more so just being vigilant. Indy is a wonderful German shepherd, so as you can imagine, I feel pretty safe with her. It wasn't until I saw the person duck down behind a bush or tree, there's lots of new tree bushes planted sporadically up the part of the field that isn't used for sports, that I absolutely froze. I was about 200 feet from the exit, but would have to walk past the bush they hid behind to get to it.

I call Indy over to get her back on the lead so she's close. By this point she is also hyper alert due to the person behind the bush, that's pretty obvious. With that, I hear a weird high-pitched voice that sounded like they were saying my dog's name. I assumed they'd heard me call her that and they said it like 3 to four times in this long drawn out high-pitched voice. It's clearly coming from the person hiding. Luckily, Indy wasn't reacting to it as it probably barely sounded like her name to her. I had a moment of, shall I fight or flight? Either I, one, run past the bush and try for the exit, two, turn around and run back into the dark field and make for the other exit a lot further away, or three, confront this monster. Indy at this point has their hackles up, ears up, and very alert in front of me, all while still maintaining a wonderful sense of calm. I went with number three.

I confronted them. I mustered up every bit of courage and confidence I had and shouted at the top of my voice, What are you doing? The hooded man came out from the bush very quickly without saying anything and I said in that same tone again, What the F are you doing trying to scare a young woman? And I'm so glad my voice didn't shake or break when I said it as I really was terrified at this point. And he started to stutter and said, oh, I thought you were someone I knew.

And I answered back, who hides from someone they think they know in a dark field? After that, he apologized a couple more times and continued to skulk down the rest of the field and I made for a swift exit with Indy. God knows what his intentions were. Maybe he thought I had a smaller dog and was trying to attack me. Maybe he saw Indy and realized, no chance. Or maybe he really did think that I was someone he knew. Whatever it was, it was right after dinner.

My parents were laying on the couch as usual, scrolling through their phones while me and my youngest brother were watching TV. I urged him to make some fruit salad, which he agreed to and we both moved to the kitchen. He'd cut the fruit, bananas at the exact point, and do all the hard work while I was looking for strawberries in the fridge. From where it was standing, fridge wide open and box of strawberries in hand, I saw someone exit from the front door and even heard the distinct noise that my old door makes. At first I thought that it was my older brother, going outside to retrieve his clothes that were hanging on a rack on the porch, but since the door closed and you can't access it from the outside without keys, I stepped into the living room, strawberries still in hand, with the intent of letting him back

in. I casually asked my parents on the couch if my brother got locked outside and they both said no. At this point, I finally set down the strawberries and told them I saw someone wearing dark clothes exit through our door. No knocking which meant that it was in fact not my brother. My mother claimed that she heard a noise and thought it was me and my brother in the kitchen while my father said that he also saw a dark figure swiftly getting out. Both my brothers said they only heard the sound of the door. Our dog and our garden started barking too but since my father didn't really feel like getting up and checking, it took a few minutes for him to get up and anyone that could have been there would have already been gone. We started brainstorming all the options. It could have

been the wind but that meant that the door was ajar to begin with and that's unlikely because my indoor cat would have been sitting there sniffing the door the whole time and we would have noticed. Also, our door is very old and it takes a pretty great force to close it. Now, I don't really trust my dad since he was distracted leaving me as the only witness, and I don't really trust myself given that I'm really, really paranoid. Maybe I was just hallucinating. Who knows? I want to tell this story to warn others. I, an 18-year-old female, live in Maryland, United States. I worked at a very popular burger restaurant. I work at the payment window, which is where I stand all night. I'm very friendly.

I know sometimes a smile and a compliment can make someone's day a little bit better. Just the same night, before the creeper came, I had a customer tell me that I was so happy and she loved me for it. That gave me the courage and energy to survive this next interaction. I'm used to the awkward comments and stares from older men. I'm sure it's my friendliness that attracts them. Our uniforms are not very revealing. They think I'm naive. Maybe I am, a lot more than I thought, but I'm fully aware of the dangers of trafficking. This particular old man came through just before six. He pretended not to hear his order and then laughed like it was some sort of joke between two friends.

This is not uncommon. It's an old man thing. No red flags yet. I tell him his total and he hands me all but the change, and when he does this, he waves the money around and makes me chase it. I was able to snatch the cash, but again, it was just some sort of old man thing I thought, not concerned yet. He stared at the company name on my shirt and asked if this was my name. I don't wear a name tag for this reason. I joked that I was going to change my name permanently to that, and he perked up. At this point, I should state that he's some white guy in his mid-60s to 70s

driving a small white SUV with a kayak on top. He had some scruff on his face and was holding a phone to his ear this entire time. When I finally began to engage with him, he moved the phone to be facing me. Looking back, I believe that he was recording me. At no point did he speak into the phone or acknowledge it in any way. He probed with more pressing questions. Here's the thing. I have the same last name as someone from United States history. Most old people like talking about that kind of stuff, so I told him my last name. He didn't reflect or laugh. He just accepted and continued asking questions. And that's when I started to get this

sort of sinking feeling. He still owed me change, and I told him, and he grabbed another dollar, and he handed it to me, but he wouldn't let go. He wanted to know my first name, and I dodged answering because I was getting creeped out. He wouldn't let go of the money and was practically drooling for more data and information about me. I gave him a name that I don't use and he smiled, finally letting go. I got his change and told him to have a nice day. I then immediately left the window and told one of my co-workers about the weird experience. He returned just two hours later.

I didn't recognize his car on the cameras until we got to my window. I hadn't thought too much about our interaction and was busy texting my dad about whether or not a chicken sandwich was a burger. My stomach dropped when I saw his face. I have many regulars, all of whom I'd have been happy to see. I hope he doesn't become one. I'll actually call the police. He smiled and said, hey, the one with the last name. I half smiled and wished for the days when we all wore masks. I tell him his total and he makes me chase the money again. For the entire time, he had his phone against his ear facing me. He starts asking even more intimate questions about me. He starts asking even more intimate questions about me. I lie or dodge them best I can,

giving him zero correct answers, wanting our interaction to be as short as possible. Some of the questions he asked me, how often do you work? What time do you leave? How old are you? And for that one, I knew that he wouldn't leave without a number, and I had a nasty feeling the younger wouldn't be the better. So I said, probably 20s. And he joked about me being legal. I made a face and tried to get his changes even faster. He asked if I had a boyfriend. I was getting more and more nervous so my answers started getting more sarcastic. I told him boys were trouble. He specifically talked about himself and said that he'd treat me right.

I handed him his receipt and told him to have a great night. He threw his hands in the air and was saying, Don't be like that. I'll treat you right. I shut my window and said bye. He made a bit more of a fuss but eventually drove forward. For his question about when I got off work, I believe that he was watching the restaurant. I was shaking by this time and called my mom and she immediately drove up. I talked to my manager and I was a little unsure of the car's color so he checked the camera

for me. Shout out to my manager, he's the best. I continued at my window watching for the old guy but I didn't see him again. I left an hour early and gave my manager specific instructions to not place a girl at my window, and he agreed. These interactions are unfortunately what cause formerly happy and cheerful service workers to become sour and quiet. I think I'll be taking a couple of days off. I'd already had another job lined up, and I'm excited to start there instead. My ex-girlfriend's little cousin used to work for some cleaning company in the city. She'd get assigned to the same house three days a week, some rich old guy who lived alone. And then one day, they have some kind of disagreement. He makes a complaint to the cleaning company and she gets fired. She starts running off at the mouth about what an idiot this

guy was, about how he had all this money but no one to share it with and how he kept this big old safe hidden in the back of one of his closets. That last part caught my attention in a very big way and by the end of the week I had a plan to find out what was in it. See, I used to be, and I'm kind of putting this kindly, a total scumbag. I did my time, so I have no regrets, but for a while there, I made my living as a career criminal. I've gotten away with dozens of violent robberies and home invasions and as much as it only took one case to destroy my life, it wasn't the one I wish I'd been caught for. That probably doesn't make much sense to some of you and by the end of what I'm about to tell you, I can't guarantee it'll become any clearer.

But that's just fine by me, because that'll make two of us that can't make any sense out of it. We cased this house for about a week, making sure that we had an idea of the layout and his routine, but getting inside was hardly some sort of mission impossible situation. We just walked up to the front door on a sunny Sunday morning, stuck a gun in his face, and then forced him back into the house and up to the bedroom with a safe in it.

Nine times out of ten, when someone realizes that you've been casing them and that you're serious criminals who aren't messing around, they just give up the goods. This is especially true if they have kids, but not only was this dude all alone, but he refused to give us the code for his safe. We were more than prepared for that. We dragged him to his bathtub,

shoved his own dirty underwear into his mouth, and then waterboarded him until he was literally shaking. We'd only had to torture someone one time before that, and I can't say that I enjoyed it. Only a real psycho gets a kick out of hurting people, so to me, it's something I want done quick and quiet. Waterboarding is perfect for that. There's no screaming. The person's never really in any danger, and it's so scary that I've never seen anyone last more than a few minutes. But our middle-aged bachelor was taking it like a champ, way longer than any of us expected. We pulled the underwear out of his mouth, asked him for the coat again,

but he just clamped his lips shut to try and stop us from forcing his soaking wet boxers back into his mouth. We did maybe five or six cycles of it, and he didn't say a goddamn word. Then finally, he spoke, and I swear to Jesus Christ that I'll never forget what he said for as long as I live. Just kill me, please. He was broken, or almost broken anyway. His voice sounded like he was about to start bawling any second. I think his response was so unexpected that it didn't really sink in for one of my partners who suddenly tried this good cop approach of, listen, no one has to die, old man. Just give us the effing code. He shook his head. He shoved the boxers back into his mouth and it all started over again. A few more cycles and he decided to talk again. This is what you think it is. Please stop. One of my partners dragged him out of the bathtub, sat on his chest, and then told us to cover his mouth before he shoved a taser in his junk.

After that, he was ready to talk. He told us the code and we plugged it into the keypad, and then hey, presto, the door unlocked and we pulled it open to see that... He was right. There was nothing in there. Nothing of any obvious value anyways. There was just a bunch of what looked like books and then a whole bunch of VHS videotapes. This was the first time we made a serious error of judgement as we were as angry as you can imagine. And in desperation, one of my partners runs off into the other bedrooms looking for watches, jewelry, anything to ensure that we don't walk away completely empty handed. Me and the other partner, we stayed behind to watch our hostage and kind of root through the safe for anything hidden away.

After all, the smart thing to do is disguise things, right? Make us think that we've made a mistake. When in reality, all the diamonds had been sewn into the spine of a book or secretly stashed away into the shell of an old VHS tape. And so like I said, we start gutting the safe, ripping open what turned out to be photo albums and cracked open the VHS tapes. We started with the tapes, but there was nothing in any of the ones we smashed, so we turned to the photo albums and the second one we opened. We kind of froze.

I only saw a couple of pictures before I slammed the album shut, but it was too late. I've never forgotten what I saw in those photographs, and I'll be damned if I give any kind of detailed description. But they were bad. Really bad. And the children in them looked young. Before I could react, my partner dropped his photo album and rushed the hostage. I don't know what was in the pictures he saw, but they just flicked a switch in his head. He just grabbed one of the guy's golf clubs, walked over, and smashed his skull in one hit.

Not completely, but enough. Our other partner comes back with a few things in his pockets, but then freaks the eff out at the sight that greets him when he walks back into the bedroom. We all know that we had to just get out of there, leave town for a while, but maybe the country. The guy was a well-to-do suburbanite, beaten to death in his home with a stash of illicit images of children lying on the floor in front of him. Big scandal or no, the cops would be after us, maybe even the feds if they thought we were involved in the stuff in the photo albums. So that's what we did. Scattered in each direction and kept our feelers out for whatever came next. I drove all the way out of state, way up into some little

town in the middle of nowhere. Nice enough place, but not too nice that I wouldn't mind getting gone once my face started appearing on TV or something. But then one day passed, and then another, and then a third, and there wasn't even so much as a peep from any newspaper, radio, or TV station. We knew the cops might make a public appeal for witnesses. It was just a matter of when and if they announced that they were looking for any one of our description and connection with the guy who got got. If they didn't, then cool, we could take another week or so and then head back home. But if they did, then we had to make moves ASAP.

With that in mind, we were glued to the TV and radio news expecting every piece of breaking news to contain our names or face or something. We stayed there for like days too, thinking any day now we're going to hear about it, but when we finally did, it wasn't anything like we expected. The man my partner killed, or rather, the monster that my partner killed, was declared missing. Not dead, not one in connection with all the crap we'd found, just missing. There was no mention of any break-in, no mention of anything except how a much-loved member of the community had suddenly and inexplicably gone missing. We thought it was some kind of trap, get us to come out of hiding, go back to our regular routine, all so the cops or feds or whoever could swarm us, book us, and then lock us up for life.

But it never happened. I ended up getting picked up for something a few years later, and I figured that's when the hammer was going to fall. But once again, it didn't. I was charged with something totally unconnected to what happened that night and I ended up doing a few years for burglary, grand larceny, and the trafficking of some stolen goods. It's been years now and I've still heard nothing about what happened that night. I even thought about sending the cops an anonymous tip or something like that. I know that it would put me at risk of going to prison, and this time for good, but sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy. I know some people really do just get away with murder, but ours isn't one of those situations. No one even acknowledges that someone died that night, and although I've long considered why that

might be, it's a waste of time to guess or try and make any sense of it. I don't think there is much sense to be made to be honest. Someone made sure that what we found never saw the light of day. Whether or not that was to protect someone or protect a group of people I don't know, but it damn sure wasn't to protect us. Someone knows what happened that night besides us, and it's whether or not they want to handle things in their own special way that keeps me up at night, even all these years later. So I'm currently traveling through Southeast Asia with my two brothers and we just arrived in Saigon this morning.

In the evening after dinner and a few beers, me and my two brothers, older and younger, I'm the middle brother, decided to sit on a bench in Hai Dan Park and have a quick smoke. We were chatting away sat on the bench when I noticed a Vietnamese man repeatedly looking at us and walking in circles very near where we were sitting. At first I wasn't concerned about him, however my spider senses were alerted. Then, a minute or two later, I noticed another Vietnamese man dressed as a grab delivery driver acting suspicious and repeatedly looking at me and my brothers. The stalkers were both on the phone and I believed that they were communicating with each other.

Being in a foreign country, my youngest brother told us to leave, however it was a good 600 meter walk back to the park exit. As we were walking, I noticed both Vietnamese men had gone on mopeds and were following us through the park, stopping behind trees and seemingly watching us. They then overtook us and sat at a bench further down the path, waiting for us to cross their path. Being aware of this, we left the path and started walking on the grass as the crow flies to the nearest exit, avoiding the men. We're a hundred meters from the exit when my younger brother looks behind us to see one of the men sprinting towards us. My younger brother took a fighting stance, standing his ground toward the man and yelled what he wanted.

The man's posture became very small and he began talking very quietly. Both me and my younger brother kept a good distance and told him to leave us alone as we walked backwards towards the exit, noticing the second assailant also approaching us wearing motorcycle gear. However, my oldest brother decided instead of trying to get out of the situation, he got closer to the whispering Vietnamese man to hear what he was saying. Both my younger brother and I were yelling at him to get out of here, but he was acting foolishly. It seemed like he was being coaxed into this. It only took the Vietnamese guy five seconds to gain my brother's trust. Then, out of nowhere, when my brother leaned in very close trying to hear what the man was saying, the Vietnamese guy grabbed my brother's crotch. My brother was shocked. I was ready to fight, expecting to be robbed or something, but the

crotch grab was completely unexpected. After that, we started shouting and the men fled. For context, both my younger brother and I are competitive MMA fighters. I even posted one of my fights on Reddit if you want proof. However, the whole situation was unexpected and we didn't engage in any violence towards the men. We just shouted at them. Still, one of the weirdest nights I ever had. It's 4am as I'm typing this trying to shake off the nerves. I had just fallen asleep after a night out at the bar celebrating my partner's friend's birthday. I woke up very suddenly to what I thought was the sound of my door trying to open. I thought it was crazy but decided to send my drunk boyfriend to look through the peephole.

He told me that there was a man standing right outside our door. At the same time, however, there was a woman taking her dog out to potty so being the drunk that he was my boyfriend couldn't tell if these two were together. The situation didn't sit right with me so I looked through the peephole but the man was gone. I took watch for about five minutes after which I heard some glass or ceramic break and eventually I saw the man walking back in front of the door and around to the other side of the building. We have a corner apartment so I peeped through the blinds on a living room window to try and see him. I saw the man approaching a car right in front of my window. I got scared and

stopped looking. I checked again and he was gone. I then went to look through the bedroom blinds and saw him being handcuffed by a sheriff. We were able to catch the security guard's attention through our bedroom window and he told us that he'd been suspicious of and following the man for quite some time. I really wish my dog was here. He's boarding because of our night out and he would have scared that guy away with just his barks. I'm a big fan of the channel, and I've been meaning to email you for quite a while now, but if I'm being completely honest, this whole process has been pretty difficult for me. I know that might sound a tad melodramatic, but revisiting one of the most dramatic events of my life in order to turn it into a cohesive narrative

has been a deeply unpleasant experience. The scary story in question is something that I never want to think about, let alone spend hours writing about, but I decided to step up and get it done out of a sort of strange sense of duty. I feel like listening to the stories on your channel is an educational experience sometimes. Yes, the stories might be gripping, but they're not really entertaining, not in the traditional sense anyway. They have values because they constitute teachable moments, I always say. Lessons that we can all learn to keep ourselves safer.

And I think the people who write and send them in to you are almost providing a service in a way. But at the same time, I've come to appreciate what a difficult task it can be to turn our own personal horrors into readable stories. I suppose I'm just kind of rambling on now, but my point is that as much as I'm grateful to you, I'm even more thankful for the people who send their stories in. But enough of me going on about that, I'll just get to it. For context, at the time this all took place, I was a 23-year-old female student in my third year of study at the University of Manchester. It was Valentine's weekend of 2016 and just after 6pm on Friday the 12th, I was on my way back home following a long day at uni. And it just started to get dark as I left campus and after catching the tram all the way down to East Didsbury,

it's almost pitch black outside. I made a quick stop at the corner shop to pick up some wine for me and my flatmate, turned off the main road in the direction of my building, then was no more than a few minutes from home when I suddenly spotted someone in front of me. It was just some guy in a waterproof jacket with a hood up which wasn't unusual because it was cold and drizzling at the time so I just kept on walking towards him feeling only the usual amount of awkwardness when you're about to pass a stranger on a narrow stretch of pavement. We passed each other without incident, just as I expected,

but then I couldn't have been more than a few feet down the street when I heard the man say something, something which was clearly directed at me. I didn't catch exactly what was said, but it was loud enough for me to hear that he turned around to say it to me in particular. So out of sheer politeness I turned around and said, sorry? As in sorry I didn't quite catch that. I don't know if he was drunk or something but when he repeated himself I was no closer to understanding him. However what I did understand is the way he was looking at me made me feel very uncomfortable, horrible even. So I gave him a sort of nothing apology then kept on walking at a sort of slightly faster pace. It sounds crazy to type this looking back on it, but when I first heard him walking behind me, following me up the street, I wasn't really scared, I was more angry.

Maybe if I'd just kept on walking and ignored him completely, things would have been different. But I gave in to that anger, turned around, and very sternly told that man to stop following me. In my experience, most men who act out of line like that just need a good telling off. Generally speaking, if you tell a man X or Y behavior isn't attractive, they'll at least make some small effort to correct it, but then some men are different. I'm not trying to be rude here either. I know this goes for all people, whatever they identify as but sometimes you meet a person who just isn't

and by that I mean they look like a person, walk, talk and act like a person but they're not a person. They're something different. When I turned around and very sternly told him, stop following me or I'll call the police, I don't quite know what I expected him to do. Actually, stopping seemed quite high on my list, potentially followed by some sort of throwaway, antagonizing comment, you know, something bad, but what I didn't expect him to do was throw a punch so fast that I barely had time to react.

I don't think he fully knocked me out when his fist smashed into my face but I think I was as close as I ever want to get. One second I remember thinking oh my god he's gonna do something and then the next I was lying half on the pavement and half in the road with the wanker rummaging through my handbag and taking really anything of value. I have a very vivid memory of thinking, you could have just asked mate because as much as I obviously didn't want to give him my bag, I was hardly going to fight him if he pulled out a knife or tried to grab it. Then my next thought was to run down the streets and buzz my flat to get in because like I said, I was only a few minutes walk at the very most. But then I tried to stand. I felt him kick my legs out from under me.

The next time I tried to stand, he took my legs out from under me again, but that time it was because he started trying to drag me along the pavement. I don't know if there was a car waving or something. I don't know what was going through that guy's head, but I just started screaming for dear life, hoping that someone would hear me. And luckily, someone did. Because the next thing I know, I heard a woman's voice shouting, you leave her alone. I looked up to see that a burglar light had switched on and standing in the pathway to her home was a woman holding her phone to her ear, probably just having called 999. I remember looking up to see the panic on the man's face and in his moment of hesitation, I scrambled to my feet, ran down the woman's front path and into her house before she slammed the door closed behind us. I was in complete shock.

My knees felt weak so I just sort of threw myself down on the stairs in the front hallway. I kept alternating between thank yous and sorrys as I realized that I was dripping blood on this nice lady's carpet, and she handed me the phone before running off to grab a wet towel. I was still describing my attacker to the dispatcher, dabbing at my lip with a wet towel, when the nice woman went off to make us both a cup of tea. Seconds later, the door shook with a blow so hard I was amazed that it didn't come crashing off its hinges. I went into a panic and just started shouting,

he's trying to break in, he's trying to break in, sort of half down the phone and half to the woman in the kitchen making tea. She comes running up the hallway and tells me to go upstairs, then directs me into what looked like some sort of office or computer room at the far end of the landing. She slammed the door shut behind us, closed a small sliding lock and then fished a baseball bat out from some side cabinet. Only room with a lock on the door. I remember her saying just as there was another crash from downstairs. Husband installed it to keep me out while he's working. I'm quite glad he did now, just to be honest.

I remember just being in total awe of her. She seemed so calm when I was just beside myself, so when she walked over to the window to look out the front of her house, I followed her. And that's when I saw him. The man was walking all the way to the end of this woman's path, and then running all the way back up at top speed before slamming their foot into the door. From the amount of force that he was putting into it, I couldn't believe the door was still on its hinges. And because I was still on the phone with the police, I kept telling them how determined the man was to get in. I remember the dispatcher saying something like,

since it's an ongoing incident, officers will be with you in just a few minutes. And how utterly musical her words sounded in that moment. She wasn't wrong either, and although it felt much longer, the guy was only able to take a few more run-ups before the sound of sirens had him second-guessing himself. It didn't stop him though. He was still trying to kick the lady's door in when the police showed up and took him down to the ground. I cried with relief seeing him being dragged into their van, and the nice lady, whose name I soon found out was Pauline, was finally able to get those cups of tea finished. She ended up making four

cups, two for us and two for the two police officers who stayed behind to take statements from us, and by the time all that side of things was wrapped up, her husband had arrived home to get the shock of his life. It was him that helped me gather up all my stuff from outside. Everything except the bottle of wine that had smashed after that first fall. Then, once he was kind enough to help me get my things together, he gave me a lift home. My flatmate started calling me during the journey home wondering where I was. I didn't have the heart to tell her over the phone, so I just text her saying, be home soon. No wine though. Luckily for me, she'd bought a second one and she was only too happy to run out to buy a replacement

once she'd heard what an absolute nightmare I'd just been in. The thing that makes me feel quite emotional to think about is just how lucky I was on a number of different levels too. Lucky the punch didn't break my nose or do any permanent damage. Lucky Pauline was there to rescue me. Lucky that her door didn't cave in like I know mine would have. But with that feeling of fortuitousness comes another, much darker kind of feeling. Guilt. I feel guilty that I managed to escape when so

many others don't get that chance. I sometimes think about what might have happened if Pauline hadn't interfered and it sometimes drives me to tears. I donate to a charity called the Survivors Trust and I know it's only a few quid a month but it's doing my part. It's me trying to make a difference for all the women and girls who didn't have someone to help them. I also still keep in touch with Pauline and her husband. We swap Christmas and birthday cards every year, and I send them a little wedding anniversary gift around the date in September too. Just like the donation to the Survivors Trust, I think it's the least I can do for them, because without the kindness, compassion, and bravery they showed that night, I think, no, I know that my life would be very

different. And a few months later, I got a phone call from a detective who said he'd dealt with violent crimes. They caught the guy who attacked me, but by the looks of things, there wasn't going to be any kind of trial and it was unlikely he was going to prison. He was quick to assure me that this didn't mean that he'd be back out on the street anytime soon anyway. There'd be a psychiatric assessment and the results showed that he couldn't be held legally responsible for the assault. In so many words, he was completely off his rocker, was scheduled to be moved to a secure psychiatric unit, and unless he showed signs of improvement, would be kept there indefinitely. As far as I know, he's still there, as I'm legally entitled to be informed of his release should that day ever come, but honestly, I can't see that happening anytime soon. I won't name the detective I spoke with because I think he told me one or two things he shouldn't have regarding my attacker's background, but to me, they were nothing short of jaw-droppingly

shocking, so I think it's only right to share them with you too. The guy who attacked me was rescued from an abusive family at the age of 11, but it was discovered that the abusers weren't his biological parents. They told the truth about where the boy had come from and always insisted he was their child, but social services knew from the DNA test that the kid must have come from another set of parents. They asked if he remembered his parents, but he only had a few scant memories of them and without any legitimate identification papers, there was no way of finding them. The boy then grew up in the foster system and immediately exhibited signs of severe trauma to the families who'd fostered him. He went from place to place, getting more and more violent as the years went by.

He'd been in and out of prison by the time he was 21 and then when he was 22, he ran into me on a rainy Friday evening and just decided to go berserk. He never talked about why and he was impossible to interview due to severe problems with his speech. I think that's why I couldn't make any sense of what he'd send to me and apparently miscommunications like that had been a trigger for previous violent behavior. I only really mention all of that because after I really understood where this guy had come from, it lifted a lot of hatred and fear off my shoulders. It didn't seem so random and senseless anymore. He wasn't some monster, just a severely damaged person who I was unlucky enough to bump

into. I'm not saying that he shouldn't be locked up, but after learning about him, I wasn't burdened with all those whys anymore, which were definitely what were hurting the most. Some people are just broken, very broken. Others say they can't be fixed and that we'll never understand evil, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try, at least to take away the fear. Fear is what was ruining my life after the bruises had gone and my mouth had healed, and I refuse to be afraid any longer. The Summer I Turned 27 The summer I turned 27, my boyfriend of three years invited me to stay over at his parents' place for a week.

They were heading off on some month-long vacation around Europe, so they asked him to house-sit their place while they were gone. A big reason was that they needed someone to take care of Buster, their seven-year-old beagle, so instead of staying there all alone, my boyfriend asked me to come keep him company. It was super fun having all that privacy, and it was kind of emotional too, seeing how things might play out if we stayed together and achieved our career goals. It was also summer, and with us both being teachers, neither of us had any commitments or anything like that, so while Jay's parents were in Europe, we had our own little staycation right there in the house he grew up in. I arrived on Friday evening and stayed all the way until late Thursday night, only occasionally heading home to grab a change of clothes or something out of my fridge.

That Thursday we stayed in bed until late in the morning, then headed out to get some brunch at our favorite spot. I ordered my usual, he ordered his, and it was nice. Little brunch dates like that always put me in a great mood. So walking out of the cafe shop and back towards his car, I was in an awesome mood at that point. I was also distinctly remembering the moment when I lost some of that good feeling, having spotted a guy across the street, sitting in his car, very clearly staring at me. I did a double take just to make

sure that I wasn't imagining things, but no. There he was, staring back at me with this sort of blank expression on his face. I didn't want to say anything to Jason, my boyfriend, just in case something escalated and ruined our day. But once we were safely back in his car, I told him all about the guy who'd stared us down on the walk back to his car. He'd reacted exactly how I expected him to. Kind of mad at first, but then trying to make light of it by telling me how pretty I looked. I didn't mention this, but it wasn't that kind of look. Like I said, it was expressionless, just no emotion whatsoever, and he didn't give a crap if we knew he was staring or not, which was definitely the creepiest part. So we got back to his parents' place, hung out some more, playfully argued about where to order takeout from, and generally had a nice afternoon together.

And dinner was awesome. I won with my suggestion of some Korean food, and once again, a nice time was had by all. With us being teachers, we just were conditioned to having an early bedtime, so after a few glasses of wine and a little bit of Big Bang Theory, I don't care if you hate it, you'll fight me, we took a shower together and then went to sleep. As I mentioned earlier, we were taking care of Buster, the old beagle that I'd come to absolutely adore by that period of my stay. He was just so chilled out and friendly to everyone and I swear I've never seen a dog so hungry for cheese of all things.

Jason said that one time when Buster was a younger dog, he'd ate so much cheese that he puked and then tried to eat his own cheese puke once he got through puking. I don't think I've ever heard anything so disgusting in my life, but for some reason it made me love that dumb dog all the more. And I say dumb, but Buster had apparently gotten pretty smart in his older years. Whenever he needed the bathroom, he'd just walk up to the back patio doors of the house, sit his butt down, and then just stare at you and whine. If he didn't immediately get up to let him out into the yard, he'd start scratching at the door as if to say, open it up, human. It was cute, but also super polite of him not just to poop and then be like, whoops. Anyway, that Thursday night,

I remember waking up and needing to pee really bad, but when I was in the bathroom, I heard Buster whining. There was no scratching, just kind of whining, so after I was in the bathroom, I heard Buster whining. There was no scratching, just kind of whining, so after I finished with my pee, I figured that I'd go let Buster have his. But then right as I get to the top of the stairs, I see him right there in his doggy bed, not by the door, but whining all the same. He's also not lying down in his bed like he'd usually be doing 23 hours a day. He was just sat up in it. There was only a little light going downstairs from the hallway I was on, but I could see him looking up at me, just like he'd do if he needed to go to the bathroom, so I walked downstairs and said,

What's up, buddy? And right when I got to him, he turned his head to look at something in the TV room, and he kept staring until I too looked in the direction he was staring. There, sitting on one of the two couches that faced each other, was a man wearing dark clothing and a ski mask. Before I could react, he had a gun pointed at me and gestured to the couch in front of me and then told me, sit down. It was like I wasn't in control of my own body anymore. I knew I shouldn't do what he was telling me.

I knew I should run or scream or try and hide, anything to avoid getting within arm's reach of the guy. But still I did what he told me and sat down on the couch. I tried to speak, tried to tell him that we'd do anything if he just wouldn't hurt us, but he cut me off and asked, Is Jason here? The fact he knew my boyfriend by name, I can't even describe how much that terrified me. If it was just some random break-in, they might at least be happy with some money or some valuables or something like that, but knowing Jay by name, that meant it was personal. And I did the only thing I could. I lied and shook my head. I remember how dark the guy's eyes looked in the low light and how they never once blinked after I shook my head. He then asked me

in the same whispered voice why Jason wasn't there if his car was parked outside. Again, I felt that same terror. He knew Jason and he knew him well, but what the hell was Jay into that a man with a gun had come breaking into his parents' house in the middle of the night? I think that's what scared me more than anything. Not knowing what had happened to get us into that kind of mess in the first place. I could die never knowing what the hell he'd done. Just one minute I'd be there, wondering in horror, and the next there'd be nothing. Just a void of unanswered questions and unfulfilled potential. The masked man asked me again if Jason was in the house and more specifically, if he was upstairs sleeping.

I knew it was pointless to lie again, so that time I said nothing, did nothing, just waited for whatever came next. I thought he might just shoot me, then go upstairs to do the same to Jason, or maybe he'd just walk right past me and I'd have to listen to the last moments of my boyfriend's life. Instead, the guy seemed to take on a completely different persona. He stopped pointing the gun at me, not completely, but not directly at me, and then he sank back into the couch and sighed. He asked if I knew why he was there, and I shook my head. In response, I remember how he kind of laughed silently to himself and said, of course not. And that was one of the only few times I found the strength to speak, and although I wanted to ask him why

he was there, all that came out was, please don't hurt us. The guy leaned forward again and then told me in words that'll stay with me until I die. I'm not gonna hurt you, either of you. But I was gonna. That's the reason I came here. I was gonna shoot your boyfriend. You know why? I shook my head. And soon as I said, he responds with,

Because he's been cheating with my wife. It was only then that I noticed that he had something in his other hand, a folded up piece of paper, and when he put the gun on the armrest of the couch, unfolded it, then put it down in front of me, I saw it was a kind of collage. Each picture was of some kind of text message exchange from an app called Telegram, except for one, which showed the contact details of one of the participants. It was Jason. His picture, his cell phone. It was 100% him, and I assumed that the other participant was the guy's wife. I'm not sure why he brought it maybe to show Jason so he couldn't deny it all away maybe to show someone like me so they'd know it wasn't some kind of mistake

but either way once he successfully broke in and accidentally bumped into me instead of Jason he decided against the second half of his plan once he successfully broke in and accidentally bumped into me instead of Jason, he decided against the second half of his plan. And that is something I consider to be divine intervention, because I'm almost certain that if it was him that had woken up and gone downstairs to check on Buster, he would have died right there before I even knew what was happening.

But because it was me, because it was someone the intruder saw as innocent, it gave him second thoughts. As he got up to leave and I was filled with a wave of relief so strong I could have burst into tears, he said to me, I guess you're gonna call the cops now, right? I shook my head for what seemed like the 20th time in minutes, but he says, Nah, now you're gonna. And I'm dumb as hell for doing this in the first place. I felt a few last pangs of anxiety as he walked towards the patio doors, which were just ever so slightly ajar from where he'd somehow gotten in without waking us up. Or now that I think about

it, maybe it did wake me up, and that's when I realized that I needed to pee, but I guess that's neither here nor there. Last thing I said before he walked out was a really shaky thank you, and I realize now that I was thanking him for three reasons. Firstly, it wasn't a thank you so much as trying to confirm that he wasn't about to change his mind and three reasons. Firstly, it wasn't a thank you so much as trying to confirm that he wasn't about to change his mind and kill us. Secondly, it was a thank you for not hurting us. But thirdly, I was actually thanking him for telling me what Jason was doing. It didn't feel that way at the time. I still felt very protective of Jay and was glad that he wasn't hurt, but I know some of that feeling was in there somewhere, and if not, it certainly planted a bizarre seed of gratitude in my head.

After I thanked him, he stopped, looked back, and said, He should be thanking you right now. And he was right. And I kind of feel a crazy kind of guilt right now typing this, but my first instinct was to call the cops. There was no guarantee that he wasn't going to change his mind and come back. I didn't know if he'd been drinking or was crazy or anything else that might cause him to come back shooting. So that's what I did. I stumbled back upstairs on trembling legs,

grabbed my phone, then called 911, waking Jason up in the process. It took a few minutes of describing what had happened to the operator before I was able to ask Jason who was Mulaney. But the moment I did, I knew it was all true. You spend three years with someone, learning all their little quirks and tells, and you can read their facial expressions like a book. And what Jason's face said to me after I spoke that name was, how do you know? He tried to tell me that he didn't know what I was talking about, that the guy was obviously mentally ill with some sort of paranoid schizophrenic delusions and that the cops better get here quick. Even hearing him call me baby during all that,

that was the moment I stopped loving him, or at least when what love I once had for him started to die. It felt like a sick joke. I wasn't his baby, and if I ever really had been, I sure as hell wasn't anymore. It was the way he used that threat to our lives as the perfect excuse not to talk about Melanie and how he'd been playing his hide the salami with her for the past effing who knows how long. He says stuff like the only thing that matters is that we're safe right now. Everything else can wait, but I promise you, I didn't cheat. I didn't cheat, not I don't know any Melanie or I don't know what you're talking about. It was like he was sort of moving the goalposts, softening me up for some excuse or lie that was going to make

everything okay. I don't think that I'd ever felt that kind of anger before, and when the cops finally arrived to take statements from each of us, I had to struggle to keep myself together. Now I know this might sound sort of Stockholm Syndrome-ish, but I don't really blame the guy for being as angry as he was. If my ex-boyfriend had kept his junk in his pants, there'd have been no reason for anyone to plan any messed up revenge killing. Should the guy have gone about it in a more responsible way? Sure. But we don't live in the perfect world where everyone does everything they're supposed to, and none of the stuff they're not. If we did, my boyfriend at the time might still be my boyfriend now and not just

a terrible memory that I have that forms the basis of why I find it hard to trust men these days. I know that's a prejudice on my part that I gotta deal with, at least my therapist tells me so, but I also know that I have a damn good reason for thinking that way. We broke up just a few days after the break-in. Jason never admitted to cheating, but like I said, I knew him well enough to know when he was lying, or at least when he was trying to hide something. To my knowledge, the cops didn't pick anyone up for breaking and entering with a deadly weapon or whatever kind of charge he would have gotten. I feel like they'd have gotten back in touch with me if they'd caught the guy, but

they never did. No one was ever arrested as far as I know, and the guy with the gun just went on living his life, I guess. I don't know how things played out with him and his wife. I'd like to think that he showed her the same mercy as he showed me. I still think about him from time to time, especially whenever the subject of infidelity comes up. I don't think about Jason, though. Not too much, anyway, but whenever I do, I always think how things might have been much different if I hadn't been sleeping there that night. I owe Jason nothing, but sometimes I think he owes me his entire life. One of my first proper jobs was working as an overnight security guard around Barrie, which is a town just southwest of Cardiff in Wales.

It was an easy graft for the most part, and apart from a few close calls with some kids throwing stones, I was in more danger of getting caught sleeping on the job than being attacked or anything like that. And that's because all the places I guarded were what you might call low-risk guards. I was a young lad, barely out of school, with very little experience of the working world. So my bosses weren't in any rush to give me too much responsibility, and as a result, I got all the sites with training wheels, essentially. Condemned buildings, vacant construction sites, I got all those kinds of jobs, and since there was

next to nothing of value on any of them, there was next to no risk to myself or anything else guarding them. The only true incidents I had during my brief career in security were, one, the knobheads that I found trying to rob copper wire who ran as soon as I appeared, and two, the junkies looking for a place to shoot up who again ran away as soon as I appeared, and two, the junkies looking for a place to shoot up who again ran away as soon as I emerged, and number three, the bloke who tried to burn down the site that I was guarding who made a surprise appearance in my dream I had a few nights after the incident. It's number three that makes up the story that I'm about to tell you today. I was on guard at an old special needs school that had been marked for demolition,

a place called Greenways, and since the interior was deemed unsafe, I was posted in a port-a-cabin situated in what used to be the school car park. It's been another easy guard, nothing remotely eventful happened for weeks, then out of absolutely nowhere one night, I heard a loud smashing sound coming from the school. Someone was either vandalizing the place or was breaking in for some reason, and either explanation required a response on my part, so I got up, walked out of the cabin with my big maglite torch that could have doubled as a melee weapon and prepared to face off against whoever was damaging my guard. Like I might have mentioned, most people just scarper once they see some kind of security guard

so I wasn't all that worried but definitely a bit apprehensive once I saw that whoever it was had smashed their way into the building via the old front doors. That meant that I'd have to go inside an old, dark school and patrol the corridors looking for whoever had broken in. I wasn't one of those guards who took things personally or let stuff raise their blood pressure, but I really didn't appreciate that this person was going to make me creep through the corridors like a freaking horror movie, shining my torch into rooms and waiting for that inevitable jump scare. But the second I walked inside, I knew getting a bit of fright was the least of my worries because all I could smell was petrol. It didn't even take long to find the person either. We crossed paths in a corridor maybe only a minute or so after I walked in and in one hand they were carrying a

jerry can and the other a knife. Obviously I wanted to know what he was doing spilling petrol all over the place but the knife had my complete attention. I started backing off, keeping my torch beam on the knife and saying things like, there's no need for anyone to get hurt mate, I'm no danger, just let me leave. I knew once I was out that I could call the police and what have you, but bloody hell, seeing that blade had me absolutely cacking myself. From what little I saw of him, I could tell the person in front of me was this older bloke, maybe late 30s or early 40s, and aside from the great big bloody knife in in his hands he just looked like your average dude. He looked just as frightened of me as I was of him and all he said as I backed

off was don't try and stop me. I told him I wouldn't dream of such a thing and that he should be very careful throwing flammable liquid around like that especially in an old wooden building. It seems like a daft thing to say in retrospect, but I think I wanted to make it clear to the guy that I was on his side. I wanted to make it look like I had his safety in mind too, even though all I could think about was legging it out of there and calling 999. He didn't respond to my first comment. He just kept on dousing the walls and floor in petrol, then moving along up the corridor. But then, once I was safely at the door, I called out down the corridor again. You're not going to set this place on fire, are you? I barely got the words out

before he turned around and screamed so hard his voice broke a bit. You don't know what they did to me. You don't know what happened here. You don't know. You don't know. You don't know. This was echoing through the halls. And what do you even say to that? I mean honestly, if that were you, what's your response to a guy screeching that at

the top of his lungs? I don't know what you could have come up with, but I couldn't think of a single thing. All my brain power was taken up wondering what happened to him that was so terrible that he had to burn it down. I never came up with anything, not on the spot, but I knew the best thing for me to do was put as much distance between me and this bloke as possible. and the last thing I heard him say as I was on the way out was something like Helena or some girl's name, and because of the implications of what he said, I assumed a girl named Helena had gone through something terrible

and not the guy looking to burn the place down. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but it was an old special needs school and the bloke didn't seem like he had anything wrong with him, at least not on the surface anyway. Not that any of that mattered because I was in no position to start prying into the guy's life. I needed to just get away from him, then ask questions later, maybe even get answers from a newspaper depending on how bad things actually got, who knows. I didn't think the port-a-cabin would be safe, not if he was planning on turning that old school into some blazing inferno, so I ran all the way into the car park, past the main gates, across the dual carriageway, then called the police from a bus shelter on the other side. I was in a well-lit public place, but I could still see the school, or at least I could still see some of its silhouette against the night sky, and there was no way that I was calling the police from anywhere else.

The last thing I wanted was for this guy to be able to use the sound of my voice to hunt me down on a dark street. I'd been frightened enough for one night. I remember the 999 lady asking if I needed police, fire, or ambulance, and me saying I'd think all three. I told her about the guy, about his knife, and how he seemed all frantic and wanting to burn the old school down. So she'd send police first and kept me on the line to keep an eye out for signs of smoke or flame. I don't know if that was all the adrenaline making it seem like time was dragging on, but it got to the point where I thought the bloke might have changed his mind, or I don't know if that was all the adrenaline making it seem like time was dragging on, but it got to the point where I thought the bloke might have changed his mind, or, I don't know, broken his lighter or dropped his matches.

After getting caught in the act, you'd think that he'd have hurried things along, but it took longer than I expected to see the flames, and once they took, they took quick, and the whole place seemed to go up like a great big bloody tinderbox. The police arrived first, and obviously they were going nowhere near that burning building. They just stopped outside the gates with their lights on, and I went over to meet them. They were just like me, really, in total disbelief at what the bloke had just shouted before I finally removed myself from the situation.

I tried to give them as good a description as I could, but I'd been so focused on the knife on the way out that the bloke's face was just sort of a blur in my memory at that point, and it was pretty dark, I guess. After that, there wasn't much left for me to do but leave a message on my boss's answering machine, letting him know about the fire and then go home for the night. Only problem was, I was so full of adrenaline that sleep didn't come easy after I finally arrived back at my mom and dad's house. I got home at about one in the morning and then stayed up till five or coming up on six in the morning because I couldn't get what the fella had said out of my mind. I ended up typing the name of the old special needs school into Google,

and after a fair bit of sifting through the articles, I found something very shocking at first, but which proved to be a bit of a damp squib. I don't know if any of you have heard of the satanic panic that took place during the 80s. I certainly hadn't until that night, but for those that have, bear with me while I break it down for a second for those that haven't. Basically, in the late 80s, there was this sort of mental wave of satanic abuse accusations all across the US and UK, all at the same time and all roughly the same story. As you can imagine, there were all kinds of investigations into it, but from what I read, almost each and every case turned out to be complete bollocks.

Don't get me wrong, there were one or two cases that were real and ended up with child abuse convictions in jail time, but the vast majority were these made-up stories based on witch-hunt style accusations, hence the name Satanic Panic. One such scandal happened in my native Wales in 1990, but again, it turned out to be some nonsense. Out of nearly a hundred accusations, only one kid ended up in the care of social services, and that was down to neglectful parents, not systematic satanic abuse. But then, I found another article about an actual cult which had been practicing the exact kind of satanic child abuse described by people during the satanic panic. Five people went to prison over it in 2011, like it was a real thing that you can look up

yourself and read about, and I did plenty of reading about it that night. Some of the details are horrific, so I don't fancy repeating them here, but the bit that really caught my attention was the bit that said the cult based their practices around the idea called Thelema. Now Wikipedia will definitely do it better than I ever could, so here's what it has to say about Thelema. Thelema is some western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy in a new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley, an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician.

Central to Thelema is the idea of discovering and following one's true will, a unique purpose and calling that goes beyond ordinary desires. Crowley's system begins with the Book of Law, a text that he said was dictated to him by an entity named Iwas. This foundational work lays out key principles including the central axiom, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. This principle emphasizes personal freedom in the pursuit of one's true path, while being guided by love and finding one's authentic purpose.

But then, how is this connected to the burning down of the special needs school, I hear you ask? Well, remember when I thought that bloke said Helena, like he was referring to the daughter or sister that could have suffered abuse at the school? I don't think he was saying Helena. I think he was saying Thelema. I don't know how deep this whole thing goes and frankly I haven't got the wherewithal to go digging it all up. I'm not some journalist. I work in IT these days and I do enough overtime trying to pay the

electricity bills as it is. I don't even know if there's a real connection there either and I can't be certain about the whole Thelema thing if I'm being honest. It could just be an overreaction on my part to a bloke who was completely out of his mind and there's no nonsense to make from any of it. But if I'm wrong about that, and it goes as deep as my darker suspicions lead me to believe, then it might make for a good piece of content for your channel, you know? Anyway, that was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me while I was working security. Definitely the only time I was in any real danger anyways, and I hope it makes for something for YouTube. If not, all the best with your channel. To be continued... I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official,

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