The Lets Read Podcast - 255: I ESCAPED AN UBER KIDNAPPER | 27 True Scary Stories | EP 243

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about pizza delivery drivers, back to school experiences & one terrifying uber kidnapping encounter 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 Betterhelp and Let's Not Meet

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Terms apply. See pennzoil.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. Back when he was still with us, my dad used to tell the story about growing up in the Bronx in the 70s. His parents were too poor to give him an allowance, too poor to even feed him lunch sometimes, so around about the age of 9 going on to 10, my dad used to go down to this pizza place and just stare at all the pies until someone felt bad enough to give him a free slice. This somehow led to him becoming a part-time delivery boy,

probably as a way of paying off all the sandwiches he ate, but the owner of the pizza place started feeling sorry for him and giving him a few bucks for dropping off slices or whole pizzas all over the neighborhood. I got lots of aunts and uncles, and I guess my grandparents were so busy raising him that they didn't mind the pizza guy keeping an eye on dad, especially if he always came home with a few slices in his hands and a few dollars in his pocket. My dad said that every so often, the pizza place would get a very special kind of visitor. This visitor didn't wait in line, he never had to tell anyone his order, and he never paid for anything either.

He was always the best-dressed guy in the shop. Everyone stepped aside to let him get to the counter, and whenever he visited, two huge goons always stood guard outside after eyeing up everyone inside. I'm sure there's a lot of you that have already put it together already, but for those that haven't, this guy was mobbed up. And not just mobbed up, either. He was, this guy was mobbed up. And not just mobbed up either. He was a made guy, real high up, and although he could get a table at just about any restaurant in the city, he'd like to stop by the old neighborhood and pick up a slice or two at the same pizza place that he used to go to as a kid. It sounds kind of wholesome, and I guess it was in a way.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he had his enemies, people who saw a different side to him, but he never caused any trouble with the shop and having a made guy claiming that he had the best pizza in the Bronx was the best free advertising an old pizzaiolo could ever ask for. Anyways, one winter's evening, dad finishes up with a few deliveries, which by that time he was doing on a bicycle that he bought with his own money. Pretty impressive for a 10-year-old if you ask me. To beat the rush of walking in the front of the shop during one of the busiest periods of the day, my dad used to ride his bike around the back and then walk in the back door of the place

right into the kitchen so he could collect orders. He gets off his bike, walks inside the kitchen, but there's no one there. Then the next thing, he can hear some kind of heated argument in the front of the shop. It should have been loud as hell with how busy it normally got, but instead, my dad just hears two voices, one very angry and one clearly scared. He recognized the scared voices as boss, the pizza place's owner, but he didn't recognize the angry one. Dad's about to just walk back out of the shop again, until he realizes the voices are approaching the kitchen, and out of fear, he ducks down among all the flour sacks and tosses an empty one over himself to cover himself up, and he hides there as the voices get louder and louder.

From what he could gather from listening in on the argument, his boss was having a disagreement with someone, someone who had muscle with them, and they were very angry. He didn't really understand what they were talking about, but they kept using the name of the maid guy who used to stop in for slices. My dad said that he thought that it might have been the cops until the voices got louder and angrier and more afraid. Next thing, people are screaming at each other, then one person is begging, then the next. There's a scream, loud and agonized and blood-curdling enough that my dad says he peed his pants out of fear. Not metaphorically either.

I mean, he literally peed his pants thinking whatever was happening to the shop owner was going to happen to him next. He said that there was a whole bunch more screaming than the sound of equipment being thrown around and glass smashing coming from the front of the shop. After that, all was quiet. All except the groans of the shop. After that, all was quiet, all except the groans of the shop owner. Dad says that he was so scared that he didn't come out of hiding until the groans stopped too. He used to say that he felt guilt about that because he could have gotten the owner some help at some point and I guess he passed out from the pain before my dad thought it was safe to come out. But when he did come out from under the empty sack of flour, he said he gasped when he saw the injuries that had been inflicted. The owner was lying on the floor, with all these burns running right down one side of his face,

all the way down his neck too, and then there were more burns on one of his arms. Just feet away was one of those big old pizza trays that looked like it had come fresh out of an oven. Whoever it was, I'm assuming with the help of their goons, he'd heated up one of those big metal discs and then forced the owner to lie on it, face down. He used to say that more than 40 years later, he could still remember the smell like it was yesterday. That burned cloth, burned flesh stink that crept into his nostrils as he stood there, totally horrified by what he was yesterday. That burned cloth, burned flesh stink that crept into his nostrils as he stood there, totally horrified by what he was seeing. He said that he ran straight to the shop's phone to call 911, too young and naive to consider the implications of what just went down. Then he stayed until the ambulance arrived and the EMTs took his boss away to the hospital.

The shops closed for a few weeks, and in that time, my dad and my grandpa went to visit the shop owner in his hospital bed. I'm pretty sure that he had had a bunch of surgeries, maybe even a skin graft if the burns were as bad as they sounded. He wanted to sell the shop too. He told my dad and grandpa so during their visit. He was getting older and wanted some money to enjoy his retirement with. He didn't admit to being scared or anything, but no one would be able to

blame him if he was, you know. Anyways, my dad says that he walked away really sad. He loved that job and he felt angry at himself for not doing anything during the attack, cause in his mind, if he'd ran and got help or something, his boss would be okay and he'd still have his job. But then as it transpired, the pizza place owner had a bunch more visitors during his stay in the hospital and one of those visitors was none other than that maid guy. They had a little talk and once they were done, the owner decided to keep his place open just a little longer, at least until he could find someone to take the reins, so to speak. My dad says that he was over the moon when he got the news and asked my grandpa if that meant that they'd caught the guy who attacked his boss. Dad says my grandpa gave him this sort of half-sad,

half-angry look and told him, maybe. But he knew. The whole neighborhood knew. Pretty much everyone except my dad, by the sounds of things. The guy who attacked the pizza place that night had been an associate of an associate of the maid guy who stopped by every so often. They'd had some kind of dispute, words were exchanged, and the attackers swore revenge against the maid guy. Only, because he's in the mob, there's next to nothing the aggrieved party can do. He doesn't have the position or the respect that the mob guy has and he can't touch him or anything he owns. So instead, he goes after something the guy loves and after a little research, this aggrieved party comes up with the wise idea of shutting down this guy's favorite pizza place, hopefully with permanent effect.

Only, the pizza place owner is a civilian and a much loved one at that, so when word gets out that this idiot put him in the hospital over a few harsh words at dinner one time, there was hell to pay. This guy gets a green light put on him almost immediately. Maid guy organizes a fake sit down and boom, he and his goons each get one in the back of the head. And rumor has it that to put the shop owner's mind at ease, this mafia guy went to visit him in the hospital and showed him this big old ring his attacker was known to wear. As he swore that the owner would never get any trouble like that again, he takes out a little plastic wallet containing the guy's ring, still attached to the finger he always wore it on. Dad says that he worked there for a year or two afterwards, and after that, the owner finally put the place up for sale owner finally put the place

up for sale and I think the place is some kind of corner store now, but I could be wrong. Anyways, that was a crazy story he always used to tell about how he almost got involved in mafia business and since he's not around to tell it anymore, I figured that I'd just write it up and send it over. All the best with your channel. Me and my kid like to listen on long car drives, so if this story came up sometime, I think she'd get a kick out of hearing it again, especially if it came from you and not from me, for the hundredth time. This is the story of my last ever pizza delivery. Believe it or not, I actually kind of enjoyed the job. 90% of people who open the door to their pizza delivery driver are happy to see them and

all I had to do to get a good big tip was A. be quick and B. just be cool with them and wish them a nice evening or whatever it might be. One of my best tactics was to be like, what pie did you order? Even though I knew damn well what their order had been. No matter what they said, I'd always be like, ah man, that sounds delicious. I might have to try your choice of toppings out when I get my break. Little compliments like that go a long way with some people, but a sunny attitude only let me down maybe half a dozen times out of literally hundreds of deliveries. Every time, before I knocked on a door or buzzed a doorbell, I'd think happy thoughts, fix a genuine smile on

my face, then hey, presto, I'd get the tip. For real though, I could count all my negative interactions on one hand. There were so few of them. But all it took was one big one before I started to question whether I was in the right line of work. So, it's your average Friday night. It's busy as hell and when I walk into the shop, I immediately get hit with three orders. First two orders go nice and smooth and I'm right on time to deliver the third and final order so I pull up, grab my delivery bag then walk up to the door. There's no doorbell that I can make out so I just bang on the door until I hear footsteps coming from the other side. Then when the door opens up, there's a guy standing there, in his 40s or 50s

I think and he doesn't look too happy to see me. But then not only does he not look happy to see me, he asks, who the hell are you? And this struck me as an odd question. I was wearing a hat with a little pizza logo on it as well as a shirt also with a little pizza logo on it. I also happened to be holding two pizza boxes, big ones too, so the fact that this guy was compelled to ask who the hell I was made it very difficult not to give some kind of sarcastic answer. Regardless, I just smiled and gave the guy a slightly awkward, did someone order a pizza? This guy just stares at me for a second and then says, hang on, impatiently. Then he closes

his door a little and then I hear footsteps walking away from the door, presumably from the guy going off to find the person who ordered the pizza. I'm slightly concerned that it was, I don't know, a kid ordering without permission or something. If that was the case and dad was mad, I probably wasn't going to get tipped very much and worst case scenario, he'd send me back to the pizza place after refusing to pay. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, as our boss generally let us eat anything that was going to waste. I also knew the order note said something about extra bacon and who doesn't love extra bacon? Anyway, I hear the guy coming back and I hadn't heard any arguing about any

unexpected delivery or whatever so I just get ready for the handover. But then when he opens the door, I don't see any money in his hand. In fact, he's got one hand firmly behind his back like he's holding something he doesn't want me to see. Now right away, I start getting nervous. The guy doesn't seem any happier to see me and he suddenly starts asking me all kinds of personal questions in a really confrontational way too. He says, what's your name? What's the pizza place called? And I answer him. And then he starts looking over my shoulder asking, is that your car right there? I told him yeah. Then I parked real quick to deliver his pizzas

and that if there had been some kind of misunderstanding I was sorry and that I'd just leave. I had my eyes on where his hand was hidden behind his back the whole time thinking please don't be holding a gun. Please don't be holding a gun. He asked me one more time what my name was and I told him and then he moved his hand from behind his back. He was holding a gun and as he pointed it right at me, I dropped the pizzas then backed up so fast that I fell backwards off of this guy's porch. After I fell, he was directly in my face, putting the muzzle of the gun right to my head saying, Do you think I'm stupid or something bro? Do you really think that I'm that stupid?

It was like survival took over. I just stayed perfectly still, then answered every question that he threw at me, no matter how rhetorical they were. He was beyond furious, like he was ready to pull the trigger at any second, and the whole time he's ranting at me, I'm just responding, no, you're not stupid, I have no idea what's going on right now, I'm just the pizza guy,

I'm just the pizza guy. I remember saying that last part, and how it made him even madder, and he yelled, pizza guy my ass, before pulling the gun back and smashing the muzzle into my forehead just above my eye. It hurt so bad that I could feel the bleeding before I saw it, just sort of a warm tingling feeling around where it hit me.

It made me wonder if it'd hurt to get shot, in the face I mean. Would it feel like getting punched by a freight train? Or would my whole world just go black and there would just be nothing else to feel? It sounds dark, but I remember thinking that it was probably the first one. That I was going to die because some violent schizophrenic was off his meds and that it was going to hurt worse than anything I'd ever felt before in my short, pointless life. But he didn't shoot me. Instead, he asked me a question that confused me even more, while somehow making everything suddenly make sense. He asked me, as I'm trying to keep the blood from completely clogging up my eye,

Are you effing my wife? I'm trying to make it sound nice for the people at home, and I give him another one of those survival sort of driven answers. No, I swear, I'm just the pizza guy. Praying that last part didn't set him off again. Thankfully, it didn't, because he seemed way too fixated on asking a bunch of questions that I didn't have the answers to. He asked me everything from where did you meet her, to what does she call you in her contacts. I mean, this guy was fully convinced that his wife was cheating with me. Me, of all people, a freaking acne-faced delivery boy. I just kept on denying it, over and over, feeling myself tremble and tear up as I kept expecting the guy to just lose it and just blast me. But he didn't. I don't think that it was that he believed me. I don't think he ever really

thought that I was shtupping his wife, and I say that because of the way he smiled when he saw how frightened I was. It was a smile of pure satisfaction. I remember feeling this overwhelming wave of relief as he got up and started walking away from me. I wanted to just get up and run, but for some reason, all I could do was keep perfectly still and watch him. Like if I moved, he might change his mind or something. He grabbed the two pizza boxes, then tossed them off his porch in the direction of my car before saying something like, get your crap and get off my property. I grabbed them both, trying not to let any pizza spill, then as I walked to my car, I heard the guy say,

You coming around here again, I'll kill you. First thing I did when I got back to the pizza place was grab the delivery note, which was always stapled to one of the boxes in no particular order. I wanted to make sure I had the guy's address and phone number handy for when I called the cops, obviously. But as I pulled the note from the cardboard and before I slid it into my pocket, I took another look at the delivery notes that had been scribbled on the bottom. And it says, two times extra bacon, two times extra pork sausage. And it read, need ASAP, emergency. And that's when it hit me.

This guy's wife hadn't ordered a pizza. She ordered the cops. Emergency? Double bacon and extra pork ASAP? Not the most respectful way to refer to the cops, but pretty smart given what I'm assuming were risky circumstances. And once it hit me, I went inside and told my boss that we needed to call 911. And not for me, but for the woman that might end up getting killed if we didn't get someone over as fast as we could. The guy was obviously suffering some kind of manic or frenzied episode and combined with what I suspect was a sadistic streak, whoever was sharing that house with him was not in a safe place.

I had the cops come by my apartment a few days later to ask me a few questions, but other than that, I never heard anything else about it. I don't know what happened to the guy, what happened to the girl. I just know that I didn't want to deliver pizzas anymore after that. And before people go saying, oh boohoo, you quit after one bad experience, it definitely wasn't just one bad experience. Yeah, most interactions were positive, but it only takes one psycho caller to change or end your life if you're that one unlucky delivery driver who just so happens to pick up their order. If that guy was a little angrier, if I had looked like a little older or more like his wife's toy boy, if he'd been drunk or coked up or methed out or any other hundred things that might have pushed him to pull the trigger, I would literally not be around to even think about this, let alone type it up.

So after thinking about it long and hard, I decide that I was never, ever going to be that unlucky delivery driver who ended up getting shot or stabbed or smashed off the road by some speeding DUI. In the years after I quit, I read about them sometimes. Someone getting shot or stabbed because someone was after their tip money. And my heart bled for every single one of them because I knew it could have just as easily been me. Checking off your to-do list? Here's an easy one from Pennzoil. Get up to a $30 MasterCard prepaid virtual card with the purchase of 10 liters of Pennzoil Ultra Platinum at Canadian Tire. Maximizing engine protection and getting a reward for it?

That's two checks on your list. Pennzoil. Long may we drive. Offer ends 8-31-25. Valid at participating locations only. Valid email address required. Terms apply. See Pennzowell.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. At around 8.30 a.m. on Monday, June 12th of 2006, Tony Sposato began his morning duties at the Southern California pizza place that he owned

and operated. Located in Santa Clarita's Valencia Marketplace shopping mall, Mamma Mia New York style pizza had enjoyed many profitable years, and this was in part thanks to Tony's tireless work ethic, a work ethic that was shared by many of Tony's co-workers, including 72-year-old Eddie Politelli. Even though his shift didn't officially start until 11am, Eddie often showed up at around the same time Tony did and helped him prepare sauces and dough until the lunchtime delivery orders started to trickle in. That morning, Tony arrived to find the doors had already been unlocked and when he walked inside, he could hear Eddie's voice coming from the back of the building. At the moment he heard it, he recognized fear in his old friend's words and as he strained his ears to listen, he heard Eddie distinctly say,

Don't hurt me. I don't have anything. Tony then crept out of the front of the building and made his way around the back to get a better look at the situation from a safe distance And that's when he saw Eddie He had a look of pure terror on his face as he lay face up on the ground Scrambling to get away from a mysterious assailant who towered over him with a razor sharp machete in one hand and a pistol in the other But how did such a sweet, reliable older man come to be in such a horrifying situation? Edward John Politelli was born on August 5th of 1933 in the state of Rhode Island.

Although very little is known of Eddie's early life, we know that he grew up in a small city just outside of Providence and was extremely close with his mother and father. He married a woman named Vilma, had at least one child with her and despite the couple divorcing sometime in the early 1980s, they remained fairly close following the dissolution of their marriage. Eddie came from a law enforcement family, with some of his more distant relatives carrying a badge in New York and Maine. But Eddie's calling wasn't out on the streets, it was in the kitchen. He worked with me for three years, said a former co-worker, and he was a cook or a chef all of his life, a good one too. Records show that Eddie once cooked at the Aurora Civic Association,

a members-only club established by Italian immigrants where he became well-regarded for the quality of his dishes. He would later go on to own and operate his own restaurant for a time called Ed Pauly's in Providence, Rhode Island. It was a popular venue, with Eddie becoming a much-loved member of the local community. He was selfless. He did anything for anybody, said family friend Stephanie Capriccio. He was like a second father to me. Yet tragically, in the year 2000, Eddie's firstborn son was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and passed away shortly afterwards. His passing devastated Eddie and, it appeared the untimely nature inspired him to make an abrupt change in

his life. He suddenly decided to move from his native Rhode Island all the way out to the sunny, sandy beaches of Southern California and moved into a senior living complex just off Sierra Highway. There, he lived alone with his pet beagle, Lolly, and occupied himself by learning the drums, watching crime dramas, and above all, indulging his passion for cooking. Eddie soon found work at Mama Mia New York Style Pizza and once again found himself a popular member of the community. He was the greatest, recalls longtime friend and fellow Rhode Islander Tony Pano. He could whip up something out of nothing, and when you taste it, it's incredible.

By the summer of 2006, Eddie had settled into his new life in Santa Clarita, and even though he should have been enjoying his retirement, he regularly volunteered his services in preparing and delivering pizzas. On the morning of June 12th, Eddie met with the produce delivery man at around 8-10am, then after enjoying a few coffees together, the delivery man departed. However, just minutes later, another person entered the pizza place, and armed with that huge machete, later spotted by Tony Sposato, they chased Eddie into the alleyway behind the restaurant. This is when owner and operator Tony Sposato arrived and after creeping around the side of the business, he was spotted by the terrified Eddie who called out, Tony, help me, he's got a gun. Eddie's words were a brief distraction to his attacker,

who peeled around to see who was there. Eddie spotted an opportunity to escape, but his attacker was too quick. He grabbed Eddie by the shirt collar, jerked him backwards until he hit the ground, then began violently slashing at him with a machete. Tony fled, attempting to contact 911 as he did so, but for some reason, he was unable to get a connection. Suddenly, Tony spotted a truck surrounded by a group of landscapers. He ran over to them, grabbed one of their shovels, then rushed back to Eddie's aid after begging the landscapers to call 911. When he returned to the alley, Eddie was a mess of hacked up flesh. Yet still, his attacker plunged the machete into his flesh. Tony later said that he yelled, he's just an old man,

leave him alone, but the assailant didn't stop. It was only when Tony approached that the armed man turned and began swinging the machete at him. Then once Tony had been driven back, the machete-wielding murderer made his escape in a silver Dodge station wagon, which had been parked nearby. Paramedics rushed to the scene, arriving less than 15 minutes after the initial 911 call, but sadly, they arrived far too late to save Eddie's life, and the 72-year-old passed away as a result of his wounds. His autopsy would reveal defensive wounds on his right hand, stabs to his left chest and lower abdomen, vertical stabs to his solar plexus and chest bone, cuts to his left ear and superficial cuts to his lower back. Some reports

stated that Eddie had lost approximately 25% of all the blood in his body, with splatter marks being observed along the entirety of the pizza place's 10-foot rear wall. It had been pure carnage, and Eddie never stood a chance. News of his untimely death sent shockwaves through the entire region. Friends and relatives went into a period of deep mourning, while the wider public was horrified that such a brutal, bloody murder could occur in broad daylight, not to mention in an area people believed was safe. Over the next few days, the level of foot traffic at Valencia Marketplace dropped off significantly, while employees were warned to be on the lookout for suspicious characters. The same level of fear remained for weeks afterwards, with some of the mall's businesses instituting radical but temporary safety measures to maintain the security of their employees.

Jason Moses, manager at a nearby Cost Plus outlet, told reporters, He was such a nice guy. It hurt when I found out. He wasn't out to hurt anybody, and he'd give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. I can't imagine him having any enemies, and if he did, he sure kept quiet about it. Eddie's remains were flown back to Rhode Island, where he was buried alongside his mother and father. His funeral marked a tragic end to a long and fruitful life, but many unanswered questions remained, the primary one being, why would such a sweet older man be singled out for such a brutal, bloody, and barbaric death? As the LA County Sheriff's Department began investigating the murder, they realized

that they were faced with a near impossible task. It doesn't look like robbery. It looks like it was personal, claimed Detective Charles Morales, citing the savagery with which the attacks were carried out. According to him, no failed robbery would have resulted in such flagrant violence, especially since Eddie posed almost no threat to the armed suspect. Yet aside from this rough theory, homicide detectives had no idea who their suspect was, and no idea why Eddie might have been targeted, so they started to dig. According to a handful of witnesses, Tony Sposato had engaged in a heated argument with a customer just a few days prior to Eddie's murder. Yet despite this customer somewhat matching the description of the killer,

the lead proved to be an investigative dead end and no suspect was ever arrested. Without any hard evidence and only one reliable witness, the investigation into Eddie's murder cooled, then eventually turned cold. But in the nearly two decades since his death, there has been intense speculation regarding the nature of it. One of the first details which came into question was Eddie's cry of, help me, he's got a gun. Tony Sposato later claimed that he'd seen a machete in one of the attacker's hands and a pistol in the other. Yet if that was the case, why did the killer choose to butcher his victim

as opposed to execute them with the pistol? One seemingly satisfactory answer to that question is that it wasn't a pistol at all, but rather a stun gun, and if this was the case, it might provide a chilling insight into the killer's motives. The restaurant next to the pizza place was a kind of Mexicali fusion joint named Cabo Cabana Fresh Baja Grill, and when police obtained their security camera footage, it showed a person walking by the restaurant in the minutes prior to the attack. This person seemed to be aware that the camera inside of the closed restaurant pointed out in the direction of the parking lot, as he seemed to turn his head away at the last second so that a significant glimpse of his face would

not be captured by the camera. The suspect appeared to be wearing a dark colored shirt or jacket along with pale blue jeans. In the days that followed the acquisition of this security camera footage, the LA County Sheriff released a description of their suspect. He was either Caucasian or pale Latino, anywhere between the ages of 25 to 30 years old, and stood of 5'7 and 160 pounds. He was also believed to be clean-shaven, with short, dark hair that Tony Sposato described as spiky. Police also sought to trace the silver Dodge Magnum their suspect used as a getaway vehicle, extending their search as far as Arizona in order to single out their culprit. Yet without a definitive license plate number, the search proved fruitless,

even following the offer of a $10,000 reward. Many believe that Eddie's murderer was someone with a grudge against them, or possibly someone hired to kill Eddie so brutally that it would send some kind of message. Yet as we previously discussed, Eddie seemed to be a very popular man with certainly no moral enemies to speak of. However, some have noted that in the aftermath of his death, only a single granddaughter spoke regarding her grief. It's understandable that the rest of Eddie's family wished for privacy at such a difficult time, but some have theorized that this veil of anonymity was sought out of fear

rather than grief, and that they too feared reprisals for some mysterious indiscretion. If that was the case, then there's a chance that Eddie was involved in organized crime to some capacity, and if we follow that particular avenue of investigation, we come across a curious but compelling little detail. Many of Eddie's friends recall that he enjoyed betting on horse races. He would go to Santa Anita Park for the horse racing, one said. He would always tell me about them too, if he won or lost, and he mostly lost. It might make for little more than conjecture, but if Eddie happened to owe money to people, violent people, then this might explain such a sudden and savage attack. Just three months after Eddie's murder, the LA County Sheriff's Department began diverting resources away from the investigation.

Almost every single lead they'd followed in those three short months had come to nothing, and despite being a very outgoing person, Eddie Politelli most definitely led a very private personal life. Almost every attempt to probe it had proven fruitless, leaving huge gaps in law enforcement's characterization of him. People thought Eddie just sat at home, watched TV, or walked his dog. But as we dig deeper, some less wholesome aspects of his character seem to emerge. We know that he had a penchant for gambling, but perhaps his interest in TV crime dramas has a greater significance than previously anticipated. Perhaps at some point in his life, Eddie was indeed involved in organized crime, and although people assume that his son's death prompted his migration from New England, perhaps there are other reasons

why he chose to start a new life on the opposite side of the country. Detective Charles Morales, who previously worked on the case, disagrees with this theory saying it was merely a crime of opportunity committed by some kind of transient offender. Yet it seems highly unlikely that some kind of transient offender. Yet it seems highly unlikely that some kind of homicidal maniac would stake out the pizza place, single out Eddie, and then escape without even trying to hurt anyone else. What's more, his apparent knowledge of the angles covered by security cameras leads us to believe that he had extensive prior knowledge of his surroundings. Not only did he manage to conceal his face to a degree, but he also ensured his getaway car's license plate didn't make it onto the footage either.

For all intent and purpose, it was like he drove out of the Valencia Marketplace's parking lot, then dropped off the face of the earth. But as much as this might account for some inexplicably good fortune on the killer's part, it equally suggests that the killer employed expert tradecraft to minimize any kind of physical or digital trail. Something else which suggests the involvement of a contract killer is the fact that the killer appears to have purchased the murder weapon for the sole purpose of crime itself,

suggesting that they were working with a budget, along with a desire to completely conceal their identity. Taking a knife from their own home, or the home of another, could quite easily end up being used as evidence against them. But using cash to purchase a brand new item, made by a popular brand, is textbook tradecraft for contract killers. Yet even if we could categorically prove that Eddie was a victim of targeted assassination, there's still the question of why. And as the years go by, the prospect of getting any definitive answers seems less and less

likely. Mamma Mia's New York-style pizza closed its doors some time ago, and its owner, Tony Sposato, had sadly passed away. His killer remains unidentified, and if they were indeed some kind of contract killer, they could quite easily still be operating in Southern California. In which case, how many more seemingly random murders can be traced back to this person. In a case characterized by dozens of unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries, only one thing remains truly clear. Until his killer is apprehended, the truth behind Eddie Politelli's life and death will forever remain shrouded in the deepest of darknesses. I deliver pizzas for about 18 months, and no ill will to anyone who's done it or still does it, but it was the single worst job I ever had in my life. First of all, you're in traffic all the time, which might not be so terrible in another city,

but in DC, the traffic is the literal worst. Secondly, you're basically working for tips, or at least I was when I worked deliveries, so unless you're a real outgoing, people-pleasing type, you're in for a rough ride. But thirdly, and the biggest reason I grew to hate delivering pizzas, was the people. Again, maybe that's different for people in other cities. Maybe I should move somewhere where people smile or tip or bother to look you in the eye while they snatch the box out of your hand. I guess that sounds a little bitter of me, but I just had too many rude, no-tipping, side-eye-giving door-slammers to walk away from that job with a favorable view of humanity. But then, there were the deliveries that made all those rude folks seem

positively angelic. I'd heard stories of nightmare deliveries, drivers getting robbed, drivers getting shot at after cruising through the wrong neighborhood, drivers delivering pizzas to sketchy parties where their idea of a tip was offering them a hit from a crack pipe, and those are honestly some of the less frightening stories. I heard way worse ones too, but luckily for me, they all just stayed stories for the longest time, right up until I rolled up on my own nightmare delivery. I don't think I was in any real danger, at least nothing I couldn't handle if things got physical. I'm certainly not about to pretend that this was any scarier or more life-threatening than the driver who had a bullet grazed their scalp after some kids tried to rob them of their tip

money, but still, if there was ever a delivery that made me want to quit on the spot, this was the one. So I ended up working what was a quiet Thursday night, just hanging out at the shop and getting maybe two deliveries an hour. Then I get this one delivery which takes me all the way over to DuPont Circle and I end up pulling up outside this big nice looking townhouse. I guess that's another big thing with pizza delivery. Since everyone loves a good pie, or almost everyone anyways, you never really know what kind of place or what kind of people to expect. I didn't grow up in DC and as much as I knew the city pretty well, it wasn't like I had the vibe of every address on lock just by reading it, unlike some of the other drivers. Anyway, I pull

up, grab the pizza, walk up to the door, then hit the buzzer. Seconds later, this huge guy answers the door. A real wholesome looking guy, wearing glasses and a sweater, but I swear he looked like he could have crushed my whole skull in one hand. Like if the big show from WWE was like a homeroom teacher or something. He sees me, smiles, and then says something to the effect of, Hi, thanks so much. I'm a little busy right now and the pizza's for mother who's feeling a little under the weather, so if you head up and place it next to her bed, there'll be a big tip in it for you. I was always told never to go inside a person's home or apartment. Something about a

liability issue, but I was also never one to turn down a few extra bucks by doing a little favor or going the extra mile. Or as long as it didn't cost me any time or money anyway. So instead of turning the guy down I just asked which way to his mom's room and then headed upstairs with the pizza box in my hand. I get to the second floor, find the bedroom the guy was talking about then I knocked on the doors not to startle or surprise anyone. I said something like, hey pizza guy here, am I good to come in? But there was no response. I figured the guy's mom was older, maybe even a little deaf but most probably sleeping if

she was under the weather as he put it. So instead of just leaving the pizza by the door and possibly losing a tip, I took a hold of the door handle and really slowly started opening the door. Obviously, the plan was to just slip inside, put the pizza somewhere sturdy, then slip out again without ever waking the dude's mom. But that's not what happened at all and little did I know, I was walking into my very own nightmare delivery. The first thing that hit me when I opened up the door was the overwhelming pungent smell of air freshener. I had an aunt that used to smoke cigarettes in her car and she used to hang a bunch of pine scented ones from her rear view. All it did was make the car

smell worse, like you could still smell the cigarette smoke, but your eyes were almost watering from all the pine-scented chemicals permeating the air. That's almost exactly what the bedroom smelled like, only instead of pine, it smelled really strongly of lavender. And as I pushed open the door and slipped inside, I realized why. I was more focused on not dropping the pizza, to be honest, so I was basically fully inside the room before I realized where the smell was coming from, and when I did, it stopped me dead in my tracks. All these little air fresheners, just like the kind my aunt had in her car,

were hanging from the ceiling by their little loops. There had to be at least fifty of them, maybe more, all just gently bobbing back and forth like some giant crib mobile. I had no idea what the mom was sick with, but whatever it was must have been pretty bad to necessitate all these air fresheners. As I approached the dresser at the side of the room and sort of shot a look over at the bed, I saw this guy's mom wasn't sick at all. She was dead. This wasn't the first dead body I'd ever seen, but the other two have been at wakes or funerals, you know, where the body is all dressed up with a ton of makeup on and all that. They make the dead look like they're sleeping,

like it's peaceful. But death isn't peaceful or dignified at all. This lady looked like she died in pain, with her eyes wide open and her jaw slightly open like she was gasping for breath when the end finally came. The weird thing was, I reacted almost like I was still trying not to wake her, or at least that's what it feels like looking back on it. I didn't make any noise. I didn't drop the pizza box or run out of the room. I was too horrified by the look on this woman's face and also by the realization that all those air fresheners weren't for her benefit, rather the benefit of her son. He must have known that she was dead. That much is clear to me by now.

But back there in the funky smelling bedroom, I think a part of my brain just switched off as soon as I saw the woman's body. And by that I mean I didn't automatically assume this guy knew his mom was dead. After all, who the hell orders a pizza for their dead mom? I remember putting the pizza down, then turning the walk out of the room while thinking to myself, holy crap, I'm going to have to tell this dude that his mom passed away. Then, as I was hit by this pang of guilt because I didn't want to be involved, all I'd wanted to do was deliver the pizza, get my tip, and leave again. I didn't have it in me to be this guy's one source of comfort after getting the worst news it's possible to get. I know, that sucks of me to

think that way, but I guess the situation just went to 1 to 100 in a few seconds, and my gut reaction was to want to just get out of there. I'm sure yours would be too. But anyway, I'm walking out of the room, thoughts going at a thousand miles an hour, when I catch the guy coming up the stairs. I don't know how in the world I'm going to say it, and the guy starts talking before I can even get it out. He thanks me for the delivery, saying something about how he's been busy at work and how his mom is a picky eater so she wouldn't eat whatever he'd brought ingredients for. Then he asked if his mom gave me any trouble when I went in to put the pizza down. I actually stammered out a sort of, no, she didn't give me any trouble, and then fished around until

I found both the words and the balls to tell this guy that his mom was dead. I tried to put it as delicately as possible, sandwiching the whole thing with apologies and commiserations and condolences and all that stuff. But then instead of rushing into her bedroom to check or, I don't know, accepting what had probably been expected for a long time, he gives me this confused look and tells me, uh, mother isn't dead. She's just feeling under the weather. I just kept saying I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry and he walked into his mom's room. I actually started to feel kind of emotional. Again, the guilt came back because I was about to see something private, something sacred even. I wanted to run out of the house and never look

back, forget the tip and just leave this dude with his grief. But then, and I swear to God, the guy starts talking to his mom, in sort of a raised voice like she's just deaf, not dead. He says something like, mother, mother, are you alright? And by that point, I'm still all in with thinking that this guy is just some poor dude who's about to get the worst news ever. He asks her the question and then pauses and then starts replying to her as if though she's actually talking. He says, I've never felt anything like it in my entire life. If I thought I'd wanted to beat feet out of there before, after that realization hit me, I was about ready to throw myself out of a window just to get away from the guy and his dead mom. I'm not trying to say that he was some Norman

Bates style psycho about to start wearing his mom's clothes and murdering people. I mean, having your nearest and dearest pass away like that, I can't even imagine the mind-shattering grief it must trigger. But regardless of what this guy's situation was, I just did not want to be a part of it. I felt bad for him. I felt really bad for him. But in the same time, he was definitely not in the right frame of mind. I don't know whether that made him dangerous or not. I still don't know to this day to be honest but I wasn't about to hang around and take that risk. There was already one dead body in the house. I didn't want to be the second, you know. So as I was saying, the guy talked to his dead mom then apparently heard her talking back to him

like everything was okay. I remember keeping it as polite as possible as I told the guy I was going to leave. I'd completely abandoned the idea of getting any kind of tip. My first and foremost priority was just getting out of there. But then as I edged towards the stairs and the front door at the bottom, the guy says to me, Don't you want to stay and help feed her? I had no idea what to say to that, honestly, but I also didn't want to just walk away and risk angering this guy, so I remember just standing there, looking at him, completely dumbfounded. I guess my expression betrayed what I wanted to say because, as we exchanged glances, the guy's face went from cheerful to, well, not cheerful.

He didn't seem angry so much as he seemed insulted. Like, really insulted. I guess that's probably the same thing, but he didn't snap at me or lash out at me. He just stared at me with his disapproving expression before he finally spoke up. If you don't stay and feed her, there will be no tip for you. When I told him I was sorry for the confusion, but that I had to leave as I had other deliveries to make, I remember stammering out like, I'm so sorry, but I gotta go. And he replied, oh, I think you better. When I arrived back at the pizza place again, my boss and co-workers knew something had happened.

I guess I was still white as a sheet or looked like I'd seen a ghost or something. I guess in a matter of speaking, I actually had. I told them the story, every detail, then told my boss I wasn't going to deliver anything else to that house. He okayed it, then blacklisted the address entirely. He was a good boss like that, never tolerated any threats or aggressive behavior towards his drivers or staff. I suppose what happened didn't really cover threats or aggressive behavior, but he wasn't about to send someone back there no matter how much of a tip that guy offered. We ended up calling the cops obviously not to get the guy in trouble or anything but because we knew he needed help. I don't know what kind of

mental health episode the guy was going through but I sure as hell know what caused it. I don't know how I'm going to react when my mom passes. If it's after a long illness like what happened with a friend of mine, then I guess I'll be prepared for it. Or, I mean, I'll have to be prepared for it. But if she died suddenly, if she was just there one minute, then gone the next, thinking about that gives me a kind of window into that guy's thinking. And the thing that scares me most of all is I can kind of understand why he did it. He loved his mom,

and he just wasn't mentally ready to let go yet. And honestly, I'm not sure we're ever ready to say goodbye to the woman who brought us into the world to begin with. Checking off your to-do list? Here's an easy one from Pennzoil. Get up to a $30 MasterCard prepaid virtual card with the purchase of 10 liters of Pennzoil Ultra Platinum at Canadian Tire. Maximizing engine protection and getting a reward for it?

That's two checks on your list. Pennzoil. Long may we drive. Offer ends 8-31-25. Valid at participating locations only. Valid email address required. Terms apply. See pennzoil.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. This incident happened about four months ago. Maybe even more, but I'm not entirely sure.

I was 19 years old at the time, and I was heading home from university after classes. I usually carried my keys with me but around that time I had lost them and my mom hadn't taken me to get a new copy yet. I remember I kept insisting but she wouldn't listen. So what I did was knock on the door to get my younger brother's attention so that he'd come out and let me in. However, my mom had also taken his keys and left him locked out. I asked my brother to pass me my charger from my room, and I called one of my aunties to see if I could hang out at her workplace in the meantime. She agreed and then told me to call an Uber.

She would cover the cost as soon as I arrived, and I did just that. However, the Uber didn't pick me up right at home. It was at the house across the street for seemingly no reason, and the moment I saw the driver he just gave me a very strange vibe. But I tend to be paranoid whenever I get into a taxi, so I got in, rolled down the window, and kept a tight grip on both of my phones. Everything seemed relatively normal until we reached the area where my aunt's workplace was located, a convenience store at her home in a private housing development. I don't know if that's the correct term, but condominium didn't sound quite right.

He drove right past it and claimed that he was following the GPS when I asked him about it, but he wouldn't let me see the GPS. He seemed to know exactly where he was going but I was in trouble from the beginning because I'm not great with directions and I could only rely on the driver recognizing the area which I did. However, I had no idea where he was taking me. I remember seeing a fountain that I didn't recognize from when my mom drove to my uncle's place but that was much further away from my aunt's place. By now I was trying to figure out what to do because this guy had driven past a lot of empty houses and a few of them even seemed to be under construction. Then he stopped near a place that looked like the end of civilization.

We were literally on a hill and he turned off the car. Looking back, I remember how lucky I was in so many ways. My mom had no credit and as soon as I thought of that, my aunt called me and asked, where are you? My heart dropped because I had no idea and this guy was just staring at me. I said I didn't know and asked him, hey, where did you take me? And he replies with, I'll be honest kid, I had second thoughts about what I was about to do. So why don't you just get going? And that was enough for me. I grabbed my backpack, opened the door quickly and said loudly, I guess I'll see myself out. And then, I ran like I hadn't run in a very long time.

I was even afraid to carry my backpack on my back in case he chased me and pulled on it, so I held in my hand with my hoodie wrapped around my waist as I thought about where to hide. I considered knocking on someone's door, but for some reason that didn't feel safe at the moment. I remember telling my aunt not to hang up because he was still following me in the car. Then I saw an empty area surrounded by concrete walls with a strong barred gate and there was enough space under the gate to crawl in. So I literally threw the backpack and crawled underneath. Inside, there was a large electric control box and I opened it to crouch inside and hide,

all while keeping my aunt on the phone. She and my uncle were all on a call with each other, putting credit on my phone and asking for my live location through WhatsApp because I had no idea where I was, literally in the middle of nowhere. I waited there for maybe two hours, and this guy, he wouldn't leave. I even had to go pee outside the box and immediately ran back inside. There were even tiny spiders and old honeycombs, so I was also dealing with the anxiety of both my arachnophobia and trypophobia. At some point I'm guessing this weirdo left and my uncle arrived in his truck. He didn't know

where I was so he kept honking and telling me to signal when I could hear it getting closer. Finally I did and got out. For a while I thought maybe this had been a misunderstanding and I just jumped out of this guy's car like some maniac without paying him but when I got home after staying in my aunt's pharmacy for a while until my mom who still didn't know much about what had just happened picked me up I checked the uber app. It not only said that I had already paid but it also said that I had reached my destination so I ruled that out. I had told my aunt not to tell my mom about it because she tends to overreact to these types of inconveniences. Telling her this would only have freaked her out and she wouldn't have been any

help. I only let her know when I called her to come get me and on her way home to get a copy of the key because of course something bad had to happen because she actually listened to me. Nowadays, she always puts credit on my phone. Anyways, that's what happened. I handled the situation like Indiana Jones twice and, to this day, my family brags about how I was able to keep myself composed and react quickly, which I'm still shocked about. I remember seeing broken glass and metal bars lying around and telling my aunt, if I'm going down, I'm taking him with me, in a joking manner because her blood sugar levels were acting up. On our way home,

my mom asked me if I thought that I was going to die. I said of course, but I also knew that freaking out would only make me an easier target and not help at all. When I remember it, more than being scared, I feel angry. I could have been one of the many girls who just disappear and are later found dead on a random hill or ditch. I can't say I suffer from survivor's guilt or anything because in all honesty I don't, but I can't help but think that could have been me. Whenever another kid or teenager is on the news as missing or found dead, it really could have gone terribly wrong. My parents like to believe that this guy was a rookie who maybe felt sorry for me and let me go because if he had wanted to, he could have hurt me with some sort of weapon or just tried to kill me right then and there. I don't even know anymore. I sent his profile to all the girls I know so that if they ever happen to get him as their Uber driver, they'll cancel and call the cops.

And since then, I don't take Ubers anymore. I'm of the mindset that everyone should know a little bit about cars. I've always been mechanically inclined and I think that may have saved me. A few years ago I was using dating apps and I met this guy who seemed super nice. We talked for a few weeks before I was willing to actually meet him. His dad owned a local gun store where I used to go get my target shooting supplies. I used to be in a women's league for competition shooting. And so I had seen this guy around and had a decent impression of him,

but I wanted to be safe. He invited me to a concert at a local town site. It was a concert that I really wanted to go to, and I figured that it would be safe since it was at a well-known place with a lot of security. I let him pick me up because he had talked about mechanics and cars and he wanted to show me this Mustang. He bragged about how well he kept it running and how he babied it. At the time, I was into time trial racing so I was interested to see what he had done. He picked me up and we started heading to the event. Right before the exit, he said that his car was acting kind of funny. I was watching the dashboard and if you've been into racing, you know our cars and trucks usually have extra accessories,

whether it's aftermarket racks and gauges or switches. There's usually something aftermarket inside the car. However, there was nothing extra. The car felt like it was shifting correctly. There was no shudder or noise, nothing to indicate any problems. I thought, that's weird. All I said was, we should try to limp it to the concert venue. It's less than a mile away and it's better than being stuck on the I-15. He agreed and drove us very carefully the last mile. The concert went okay-ish. He kept watching me and buying me drinks which I refused to drink so every time he gave me one I would make up some excuse, go to the bathroom and just flush it. He kept making comments about how well I was handling my alcohol, and I was just starting to get super uncomfortable.

The concert ended, and it was time to leave. For context, this concert happened at the local reservation town site, and at the time, the res did not have great cell service. I couldn't get a hold of anyone to come get me. I decided to bite the bullet and talked him into taking the old highway instead of the 15. It may sound silly, but when you take the old highway, even though it's slower, people are more willing to stop and help you than they are on the freeway. I figured if he was having car troubles, it would be safer and we wouldn't have people flying by us at 80 miles per hour. We made it halfway between the town site and our town and he said the car was acting funny again and pulled over.

I was stone cold sober and didn't notice anything wrong so when I got out of the car to check it out with him, he started making comments about how I was drunk and should wait in the car because he can't trust drunk Indians, especially with a little girl like you. That's actually what he said. And this dude had no idea that I'm actually native and I actually have albinism. The hair on the back of my neck stood up at that point, so I checked my phone. I just barely had service and started texting my dad. As I walked away from the engine compartment, I noticed that he was watching me, so I started acting like I was trying to get cell service to get help.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched this man take the spark plug wires off the distributor cap and switch the order. Your spark plug wires connect to the distributor cap based on the order your cylinders fire in, so doing that will either make the car run terribly or not even turn on. I managed to send to dad a picture of what he was doing and my dad told me to start walking. As I went to walk away, this guy got back in the car and opened his glove box, exposing a pistol that he had. He told me not to worry and that we would be safe. I probably broke a world record for how fast I was texting my dad. He said to start walking and tell the guy that he was on his way and that our friends lived up the road. So I did.

I started walking with purpose and took off as quickly as I could. The guy was actually yelling after me and I yelled back that the wind was too loud and I couldn't hear him. I'll be back with our friends. I was scared out of my mind by that point. We were 10 miles out of town with no one around. The closest road actually led to a cemetery so there really was no one there to help me. I got a really bad feeling the further I got from the car, so I turned around and looked. The hood was now closed, his lights were on, so I decided to hide in the farm irrigation next to the road. I kept walking

towards town and texted my dad what was happening. I heard a car slowly coming up behind me and saw a flashlight, so I pressed against the side of the ditch and waited for it to pass. Once I couldn't hear it anymore, I crawled out and just kept walking along the weeds. My dad texted me that he saw me, so when he pulled up, I ran to the weeds. My dad texted me that he saw me so when he pulled up I ran to the truck. As we made it towards town we passed the dude and he had like three cop cars around him. My dad told me not to worry about what happened. I heard through the grapevine later on that he had been charged with violent crimes in the past and that he had been arrested that night for concealed carrying without a permit.

The police never talked to me, but I haven't seen that guy in town since. If I didn't have experience with cars and didn't know what he was doing, I could have been dead in that ditch instead of hiding. Most communities offer basic car care and maintenance courses, and I highly recommend that everyone takes them at least to know the basics. This dude knew I knew cars but his whole goal was to get me so piss ass drunk that I wouldn't realize what was happening. So I was around 17 or 18 years old. I had gone with a friend to a pub that wasn't very strict about checking IDs so we had quite a few drinks. We left when the pub closed and I walked my friend home. She lived about a five minute walk from the pub.

I was supposed to be staying at my sister's house to babysit for her the next day. I had missed the late bus so I decided to walk. This was a four hour walk that I had done plenty of times during the day and it didn't even occur to me that a girl wandering around on her own in the middle of the night was a risky move. I would never go out alone after dark now and made that decision that night. So I'm walking and most of the route is through residential areas, some petrol stations and closed shops and all that. Around three hours or so into this walk, there is about a 30 minute gap between one housing estate and the next, which is just a country lane with fields on either side. I knew that this country lane was coming up and as I got closer and the alcohol wore off,

I started to think that I had made a stupid decision. The roads had been pretty quiet and by now it was probably around 3.30am. A white car drove past me heading towards the country lane but I didn't really think anything of it. About a minute later, the same car drove back in the opposite direction, slowing down as it passed me. All of the windows were tinted so I couldn't see who was inside. The car turned around further back and pressed me again, heading back into the country lane area and I thought, uh oh. I was coming to the end of the housing estate and closer to the country lane so I darted off to my right into the housing estate

and waited out of sight for what felt like forever. But looking back, it probably wasn't very long. I heard a car pass by a few times and then all went quiet. I thought it was probably safe to continue now. I came out of the housing estate, looked around, and couldn't see anyone, so I continued my journey. About five minutes or so into the quiet lane, the same white car drove past me from behind and parked up a little way ahead in a lay-by on my side of the road. I slowed my pace and started to panic. I didn't want to turn around because then the car would be behind me, and that thought scared me even more. I couldn't cross over because

there was no footpath on the other side of the road, so I'm just slowly walking towards this white car, getting more and more scared. Just then, a taxi pulled up next to me and the driver rolled down his window and asked if I wanted to lift home. I was already panicking and almost screamed at him that I don't get into cars with strangers. He said that he had a daughter about my age and that he wouldn't want her out at this time. I looked at the taxi, looked at the white car, and just ran and jumped into the taxi. As we drove off, I looked back and saw the white car speed off in the other direction, and the taxi driver dropped me off at my sister's house. I always think back and wonder, firstly, how could I be so stupid? And secondly, what would have happened if that taxi driver hadn't stopped? This happened about a year ago, but I still think about it.

I'm a 17-year-old female and my friends are 19-year-olds, and we had the munchies and were craving Taco Bell at 2am, so we took my mom's car and embarked on our journey. On our way home though my friends took a wrong turn and ended up in a cul-de-sac. As we were turning around a resident on the street got into his truck and started pulling out right in front of our car. We thought that he was going somewhere so we waited for him to go. However he just sat there for a moment before getting out of his truck and approaching the driver's side. I was in the back on the driver's side so I had a clear view of him. He walked up to my friend who

was driving and started yelling at her to slow down, saying that she was going too fast down the street and so on. We listened in disbelief because she was only going like maybe 15 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone but we didn't say anything. This is until he began banging on my friend's window and tried to open her door. I could see him doing this so I told my friend to drive because I didn't want to just sit there any longer. She pulled away and he jumped into his car behind us. Halfway down the street I noticed and stuck my entire upper half out the window and started yelling at him. I even spilled my coke for that.

At this point, he was chasing us while I gave my friend's directions back to my house with all of our phones dead or maybe at 1%. He ended up in front of us and cornered us in another cul-de-sac up the street. My friend was driving on people's lawns to get away at this point. Eventually, he followed us all the way home. My friends ran inside to tell my mom while I ran straight for the car, yelling directly at him. He asked what I had yelled from the car and I told him straight to his face the specific expletives that I had said. He got upset and almost got out of the car but when he saw my mom coming out of the home, he started to leave. So I stood behind his truck, yelling the license plate numbers to my mom.

My mom approached him and his entire demeanor seemed to change as he acted innocent like he was the one who was scared. I was told to go inside and my mom obviously gave him some words of wisdom. She told me that he had followed us home because someone had run over his dog a while back due to speeding through a street, which I didn't believe. However, that's still no excuse for following teenage girls home. I moved back home about a year ago. My mom lives in a trailer park somewhere in BFE. I never had any problems with the neighbors. I mind my business, they mind their own.

My mom's fiance, on the other hand, being the social butterfly that he is, has to get to know everyone coming and going around the block. So earlier this year, we started seeing a new guy next door living with what we thought was just a single mom and her child. I thought maybe it's a new boyfriend or something. Of course, my mom's fiance immediately starts getting to know the newbie of the neighborhood, but in the months to come, things start to get weird. Whenever my sister would go outside, she'd notice the new neighbor, Chris, would fly out the back door to do random mundane things. She would notice him watching out the window quite often too but we didn't pay any mind to her because sometimes my sister can be

very dramatic. My mom's fiance used to let him use our water hose to water his garden. I never understood why but when we got the water bill back and was over $200, he told him that he couldn't continue to let him use it because things are just so expensive anymore. And he immediately got aggressive and tried to tell him that we're the ones who are using too much water, not him, which we've never gotten a bill that high before since living here. Last week, I received a random friend request from the neighbor. Not thinking much of it at the time, I approved it. My mom's fiance let me know that Chris had talked about how pretty I was and asked him for my Facebook information, and he acted like

he didn't know if I had a Facebook or not. The realization kicks in that he went through hundreds of my mom's fiance's friends on Facebook to find my profile. By this point, we've already been talking over Facebook, but it's been a friendly chat, so I thought no harm. Plus, I figured that he'd seen where I had a boyfriend because my profile clearly states in a relationship. I mentioned to Chris what my mom's fiance said, and he said that he wasn't going to sugarcoat anything. He actually called me sexy as heck. I let it be known that I have a boyfriend, and he apologizes. If you think that's the last time he's made a comment or a pass, you're wrong.

It's like he completely disregards that I'm with someone. He's even asked me to go into the woods with him, meet him outside at night, and just in general, it made me so uncomfortable. At this point, I'm over talking to him, but one crucial piece of information my mom's fiancé left out was that he just got out of prison months ago for some really bad stuff. Breaking and entering, arson to name a few, and the worst one, manslaughter, for shanking a man while he was serving his time. He claims it was self-defense. I have no idea how he's even walking freely right now, but

I digress. So usually, once a guy doesn't take the hint of I have a boyfriend, I'd usually tell them to back off, block them, and just be done with it. But my mother doesn't think that that's the best course of action. I even brought up ghosting him, but she thinks that he could just walk right over if he sees me out and confront me about leaving him on read. He's actually been caught walking through our yard trying to find me one day so her theory is not that far fetched. My family and boyfriend are terrified for me. My mom tells me that I'm no longer allowed to go outside by myself and I'm just trying to save up enough money to move away from here. So, update. Thank you all

for taking the time and reading and replying and last night, my family, boyfriend and I were outside talking on the front porch just kind of hanging out. We started hearing yelling next door and the creepy neighbor sped off in the truck. Then a few moments later, he came back and we heard a woman screaming, keep your hands off of me. The police were called and more people showed up at the home. My mom, boyfriend, and I left to go to town and it was dark but when we pulled up to the end of the street to get onto the main road, our headlights lit up a person on the side of the road. It was creepy neighbor, clutching his phone, looking up the road. Today I found out that he lied about

being single and was cheating on the mother of his children. This poor woman had done everything for him, only for him to try and cheat on her with what I found out to be 16 other women. You can say his dirty ways caught up to him though, and now she's kicked him out to the curb. He's no longer living next door and as for the commotion we heard I know she owns all the cars that they have there so I'm guessing he tried to take off in one of them once she confronted him about the dirty messages and she must have made him come back with it since it's hers so he brought it back and tried fighting her. He must have known someone was going to call the cops so he ran on foot, given his record,

and didn't want to go back to jail. Which is why we saw him at the end of the street looking scared in the dark. I'm not sure if that's exactly what transpired but based on everything I've heard from last night and from his ex herself today, this is my best guess. To the woman next door, I'm so sorry you and your family had to deal with all of this. You didn't deserve any of it. This happened to me when I was nine years old, 28 years ago, but I still remember it so vividly. I lived at the time in a seaside resort called Blackpool in England in a modest four-bedroomed house. The area itself was good with very little crime or concern until that night. I shared a bedroom with my brother. We had bunk beds and I

was on the top bunk. The bedroom was on the first floor at the rear of the property. My bedroom overlooked the back garden. One night I was awoken by the sound of a window lock being tried. I opened my eyes and looked towards the bottom of the bed, which faced the four large windows, and to my horror, someone was outside, perched on the window ledge, attempting to get in through my window. I froze in horror, not daring to allow them to see I was awake. I remember sliding back down into my bed, keeping as still as possible. I lied there for no more than a minute but it felt like an eternity.

My heart was beating that loudly that I was sure that it would give me away. With my eyes closed, I stayed still listening to them shuffle across to the next window. Unlike before, I could now hear a screwdriver or something in his hand which was being used a little more forcefully to get in. Without moving, I opened one eye ever so slightly to see whether I could make out who this person was. A security light at the back of the property suddenly triggered mid-look. I panicked. Surely now he'd see me. Now he knew I was there. Staring back at me was a dark figure,

black clothes wearing a matching balaclava. Only his eyes on show, this horrible startled piercing look clearly having been caught off guard by the security light. He froze and just stared. He didn't move an inch. I was now sat up, equally as stunned, staring back, locked by fear. I immediately jumped off the top of my bunk bed. There wasn't time for stares, screaming for my parents as I ran out of the room and into theirs. They immediately tried convincing me that it was a bad dream and told me to just get back into bed. There was absolutely no chance of that happening and after a couple of minutes they agreed to go and investigate which simply entailed looking through my bedroom window. Nobody was there. They had gone.

I got back into bed, still almost frozen with fear. What if he had gotten in? He might be in the room right now. He could comfortably fit in my wardrobe or even under the bed. My brother who was six years my junior had slept through the whole episode and was of no use. Looking down my bed towards the windows again I noticed the latch on the fourth window. It had been left open inside. A simple pull from outside would have easily opened it. I shut my eyes, and I remember silent tears falling down my cheeks. If he was in the room and knew that I was awake, he might harm me to keep me quiet, right?

Pretending to be asleep seemed to be the best option, and eventually I must have nodded off. I was woken up the next day by the sound of my cat outside screeching in the garden. Daylight came through the windows and the bedroom didn't feel anywhere near as scary as the night before and cautiously I walked towards my bedroom window. I noticed marks around the window locks from the outside where the paint had been scraped. It wasn't a bad dream. My cat screeched again and I heard a commotion outside, below me in the garden. Three police sniffer dogs were parading around. A policeman was stood talking to my mom. I rushed outside but was quickly ushered

back into the house and was told to take the cat indoors. The look on my mom's face, I knew she was trying to hide something from me. The ambulance which arrived a short while later gave it all away. Apparently it turned out someone had broken into the house next door, through the back bedroom windows. The motive? Well it appeared to have been a simple theft, but the elderly lady who came across the intruder had been found dead at the bottom of her stairs, and the police never found out who it was. But then again, they never dusted our windows for prints, as my story was never told.

We left the house and moved away within six months. I still think that they feel guilty for not having listened to me and not acting differently. Even to this day, my parents don't wish to talk about it whenever to me and not acting differently. Even to this day, my parents don't wish to talk about it whenever I try and when this happened. My grandma, her best friend, the best friend's two granddaughters, ages 3 and 16, and I went to dinner at the local Mexican restaurant. When we walked in, they sat us down at a larger table, and across from where I was sitting there was a man in his fifties sitting alone at the booth with sunglasses on. He had a long ponytail, a jacket, a t-shirt,

jeans, and a big backpack next to him. The table directly beside me was occupied by a boy, also 12, whom I knew from school, his two foster dads and two foster sisters around ages 2 and 3. The older man across from me noticed that I was wearing a Nirvana shirt and complimented it. I didn't think much of it, I simply smiled and said thank you. The way the shirt was designed, the Nirvana phrase was placed on my chest area, but being 12, I didn't give it much thought. The older man began talking to my friend from school's foster dads, then he asked if he could hold one of the little girls, and this is when I started paying more attention. He held and played with the little girl for a while and I could tell the foster dads were uncomfortable but just trying to be polite. The old man returned to his table and continued to stare at me, even though he wore sunglasses

the entire time. He never took them off, just kept staring. I told my grandma I was uncomfortable and she advised me to ignore it. The older man got up and held the little girl again, this time without asking. He was playing with her and holding her in a way that made everyone really uneasy. The foster dad eventually asked him to put her down and he hesitated before complying. He returned to his table but continued to stare at me saying, I really, really like your shirt. And that's when I was ready to leave. Our food had just arrived but I couldn't eat a single bite. My stomach was in knots and I had never felt this way before. I needed to use the bathroom but it was in a secluded area where no one could see me

and I had a gut feeling that if I got up to go, the older man would follow me. It was a one-person bathroom and I was scared. I told my grandma that I had to pee but was afraid the man would follow me and harm me. One of my grandma's best friend's granddaughters also got upsetting vibes from him throughout the meal. She took a picture of him just in case. We informed the waiter that we were ready to go and asked for the check. When we got up, the man tried to talk to me but the best friend's granddaughter intervened saying, leave her alone. At the counter, my grandma told

the owner that the older man had been incredibly creepy and had made me feel really uncomfortable. The owner apologized and said that he would take care of it. We left and dropped everyone off. It was just me and my grandma driving when I saw him walking on the side of the road. I told my grandma and she said that he'd probably got kicked out. When I got home I told my mom how he made me feel and she said that always trust your gut, you know. I also told my dad and he responded, well what do you want me to do about it? It's over. My father is a whole story for another time. I took the Nirvana shirt off and just never wore it again. I went to school the next day and asked my friend who was at the table next to me what had happened after I

left. He said that the guy tried to hold his little sister again and they kicked him out. I'm so thankful I trusted my gut. I just know that he would have done something and thank god I've never seen that man again. This happened when I was 17 years old. I'm 20 now. I'm from Bosnia and used to go fishing with my friends whenever I could. When the summer break began, we used to explore many rivers. Usually, we would encounter animals or people people but nothing really that special. Keep in mind that the legal driving age in Bosnia is 18 so we would usually take a bus to a location or just walk to it. One night my friends and I sat on a bus and went to a city not too far away. I won't be telling the name of it because it's a small country and I've always had a phobia of someone coming from the internet to find me. Anyway, we arrived, and before exiting the bus, an old creepy drunk guy said something along the lines of,

You boys going fishing? To which I replied, Yeah, in the lake. And I said the lake name. He added, Well, good luck then. I hope you catch some fish. With this really creepy laugh at the end. Well, good luck then. I hope you catch some fish.

With this really creepy laugh at the end. Anyways, we arrived at the lake, which was really beautiful, and started fishing. At around 1.30, after we had had some beers, we could hear arguing in the distance. One of my friends took a flashlight and shined it in the distance, and as he went over a bush, somebody was clearly crouched down. As there were many of us, we weren't really scared. My friend with the flashlight and I went to investigate it while the others stayed near the campfire. Upon arriving at the bush, we spotted the same old drunk guy crawling in the grass. We asked him what the hell he was doing, to which he replied he was hunting We didn't see any weapon on him whatsoever, so I proceeded to ask him what he was hunting without a weapon He got up and said, look, this is a coincidence, I'm gonna get going While stumbling away

So we returned and tried to enjoy the rest of the night At around 4am, we heard somebody ang to enjoy the rest of the night. At around 4 am, we heard somebody angrily shouting in the distance. We turned around and spotted this buff dude in a black shirt covered in tattoos. Behind him was the old guy. What do you think you're doing on my property? He said to us. Sir, we were fishing and didn't know this property was yours. In the argument,

I could see my friends packing the fishing rods and all the things we brought. My friends made a run for it into the forest, leaving me and another friend. Okay, you're going to call your friends, you're going to tell them to come back, or else you're not leaving, said the buff guy. I, of course, did not want to do that that as I did nothing wrong. We were quiet, just talking, doing nothing to disturb anyone and besides the river was like 300 meters away from the houses. My friend told the man that we were going and started to walk. Now this is where it gets scary. The dude grabbed my friend by the neck and started arguing with him again. I jumped in and hit the guy in the face and started running towards the road.

He let go of my friend and chased after me. After running for about a minute, the dude got tired. I ended up exiting the trees and went onto the street. I waited on the bench for some time and saw my friend coming. He sat next to me and told me that when the dude started chasing me, the old guy jumped on him with a hunting knife. He thankfully missed my friend and my friend ended up pushing the dude and running as well. We called the cops after that. A patrol came and we gave our statement. We called our other friends and ended up meeting up with them. The cops explained to us

that the part where we had been was private property but again, the fact that the guy grabbed my friend by the neck was not how he should have reacted. We ended up going home and nowadays we kind of laugh at the story, how that weird old drunk pervert probably saved our lives. A little over a year ago, my fiancé and I sold our house in the city and moved an hour away to a rural town. We got an amazing deal on our home, which is rare in today's market, and have been enjoying our new quiet life by the ocean. Our home is just off the highway and sits on about an acre of land. We have neighbors on either side of us, but the properties are lined by trees and a river, so it is pretty private. There's nobody directly across from us, and beyond our backyard is the ocean. It's also important to note that our driveway is probably about 100 feet long,

so anyone who actually comes to the door is either invited or an Amazon delivery driver. When we first moved in, we were getting weird vibes from the neighbor on the right. A few times we saw him watching us through his attic window that looks down onto our back deck. He would also emerge from the bushes and stand beside the gate to our fence that leads to the ocean. Overall, he seemed weird, mostly harmless, but we installed a front porch camera just in case. My fiancé doesn't like to leave any lights on at night, not even our front porch light. This never bothered me though. The porch camera we installed has night vision and the picture is pretty clear at night, so if anyone comes up to our door in the middle of the night, we would

actually be able to see them pretty clearly. The camera has an app that sends notifications to our door in the middle of the night, we would actually be able to see them pretty clearly. The camera has an app that sends notifications to our phones when motion is detected, and you can also watch the camera on live view and talk to people outside. One night, we decided to go to bed early because we weren't feeling very well. We did the usual, turned off all the lights and headed to bed with our three dogs. It was only 9pm, it was winter so it was pitch black outside with the only light coming from a few solar lights on our steps and the street light at the end of the driveway. We were just dozing off when I heard a noise. I thought I was hearing things because none of the dogs reacted. Typically one will hear a noise and start barking and then the other two join in.

I asked my fiancee if she heard anything and she said no. Then I heard it again and instantly I knew someone was at her door. Panicked, I told my fiancee to open the porch camera app and check the live view while I flicked the lamp on. She started by telling me that if someone was there, she would have gotten a notification. When she picked up her phone and turned the screen on, there it was, motion detected. We exchanged a confused look and my heart jumped in my throat when she opened the live view. Standing on our porch was a young woman, with no pants on.

She was wearing a puffy jacket and had her shoes slipped on so that the heels of her shoes were crushed under her feet like she had left somewhere in a hurry. She had opened our screen door and was knocking repeatedly on the entry door while staring towards the road. She then shifted her gaze towards our cars and tried to peek through the stained glass on our entry door. My fiancé decided that this woman was maybe trafficked, had escaped her captors and needed our help. I didn't say a word. I just sat there watching this woman knocking on my door. I wasn't getting the same feeling my fiancé was. This didn't look like a woman in distress to me. Her behavior was strange and felt almost sinister. My fiancé threw on a sweater and was making her way to the bedroom door. I asked her where the hell she was going and she frantically replied, she needs our help.

I don't know how I convinced her to stay in the bedroom, but I did. It felt weird to call the police because of someone at your door, but because she appeared to have no pants on and my gut told me to, I called 911. After I got off the phone with dispatch, we checked the cameras again and she was gone. 20 minutes later, an officer called me. She thanked me profusely for calling and let me know that they had found the woman walking along the highway. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me when she proceeded to tell me that the woman now had pants on and was accompanied by a male. The officer further explained that the pair said that they were looking to use a phone. I explained to the officer that we had the whole thing on camera and

that there was no male in the picture, which led us both to conclude that he was likely hiding behind our cars or in the bushes beside the steps. I also explained that we don't leave any lights on, so if someone was looking to use a phone, why would they choose the house that's pitch black? The officer agreed that they were likely up to no good and again thanked me for calling. Nothing like that has happened since. I'll never know the true intent of the pantsless woman and her hidden partner, and my gut tells me that's a good thing. I'm 28 and I'm a woman who lives alone in a town next to the town I grew up in. Anyone who knows this town wouldn't even think twice about it being a dangerous place. Before what I'm about to tell you, I never felt compelled to lock my car or my doors.

I moved into my apartment in October of 2021. Two months later, I hear some seriously strange noises through my wall. These noises only happened after 2am, and they sent shivers down my spine. Bangs, whistles, jumbled words, moaning, yelling, and one time I heard, help me, help me. Long story short, and after many 911 calls, I was informed that I live next to a known meth user in the area. This man is also a lawyer. It's nuts. I move from that unit to a different unit in the furthest apartments from the main entrance. There's like 20 buildings. I've been in this new unit, now on the first floor.

I was on the third for about five-ish months. I never hear my neighbors. I see them and I try not to be judgmental, but as humans, we just are. There's a couple that seem strange, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. It's quiet in this part of the apartments because of it being the last in the string of the buildings and knowing how far back I am it's comforting knowing no one who doesn't live here should be here. Last night a little after 2am I'm half asleep watching TV. I hear three raging bangs on my patio door. I get onto my patio, you have to walk through a grassy, muddy area and open a gate into my patio. The adrenaline rush that I felt was unbelievable.

I went into panic mode. My bed is feet from my patio door and if you're on my patio, you can see inside my apartment through the sliver of blinds. This person saw me but I'll never know how long they were there before they knocked. The bangs sounded like it came from someone in dire help. They sound like they came from a man's fist, someone angry. I jump out of bed. My dog starts barking incessantly. I peep through the blinds, but it's too dark to see this person's face. It was a middle-aged woman. Short, rather frail, I managed to understand the words, do you have a minute? The bangs didn't match the demeanor of her request. That's the eeriest part for me. Incredibly unsettling. I said no, who are you,

get out of here. Between the chaos of my dog and me screaming for her to leave, I couldn't hear anything else she said. She just stood there in the darkness for about 10 minutes and about face turns and jogs away and yells, wrong house. I call the police. They arrive and inform me that the woman I saw is my neighbor and that she has schizophrenia and sometimes she doesn't take her medication. Same with her boyfriend who also lives there with her. How ironic that it's the same people who I thought were strange. I'll always wonder what she would have wanted to talk about. I'll keep this updated because I'm sure I'll probably see them again. I'm a 29 year old female and I matched with a guy who's 27 on Bumble. He seemed like a nice guy and after talking for a bit I found out that he owns and runs a bakery just down the street from my workplace. Since it was the BFF version of Bumble, I wasn't looking for anything and he told me to drop by his bakery sometime so

we could chat and he could feed me brownies. I popped by one evening and he was such a sweetheart, getting me to try a few things that he had baked, get one of his employees to sing for me and we went for a walk to talk about ourselves. He even packed me a few things to take from my mom. I thought it was really sweet. We talked about being friends and just seeing how things panned out. The next day we texted each other all day and he asked me out for lunch. He took me to a five star hotel. Things were going pretty normal and Tilly started feeding me with his hand and asked if he could hold my hand. I agreed because I didn't want to create a scene at a fine dining place and he started talking about being in a relationship and how happy I make him. He said how he'd like

to call me his baby and said that he wants this to go on for a long time and eventually get married. He talked about how he wants to spoil me and build an empire so I don't have to work for money. I couldn't speak up because the restaurant was so quiet and I didn't know how to react. He kept touching my face, kissing my forehead and mouthing I love you to me. I was frozen and the thing that scared me the most was he ordered coffee after the meal and started shouting to call the waiter and said that he'd been waiting for 30 minutes for the coffee when it had only been a few minutes. I was so embarrassed and scared and just tried to calm him down. Now he keeps calling me baby and texting me sweet things, calling me on the phone when I don't reply to his messages.

He says he doesn't know anything about me but he's fallen for me. We've only met twice and spoken for maybe 5-6 days. He said his first love passed away and he had been struggling mentally since then and after having lost a lot of close ones after the incident. He says he's been able to finally get a full night's sleep after he met me. He keeps calling me his and talks about getting married. I'm scared and I don't know how to end things with him and I need some suggestions on how I can handle this, please. I was 19 and living in an apartment with my two roommates Matt and Lisa, who were a couple. One night we go out drinking in a bar slash club type place that was on three floors. Matt ran into some friends and starts chatting so Lisa and I head

to the ground floor to get our second drink and dance a bit, acting kind of silly. Lisa then says that she needs to use the bathroom and heads to the third floor. I linger a little and go find Matt. We're talking a little then one of Matt's friends comes to get him. Lisa's not doing so well, come up and get her. We head up to the third floor and Lisa is passed out on the floor, and Matt freaks out. I kneel next to her and grab her hand. Lisa, I say, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand, and her grip tightens. She's not unconscious, just seriously messed up. An ambulance arrives and checks her over, but by then she comes to enough and insists that she doesn't want to spend a Saturday night at the ER. She insists that she can walk home with us, though heavily leaning on Matt.

We start to head back to our place. Matt is seriously grumpy at this point since we've only been out for about two hours and wondering if she took something on the sly. He's basically carrying her and I start to lag behind. I'm feeling a bit off myself, wondering what the hell kind of night this turned out to be. Suddenly out of nowhere, two guys are power walking up behind me. One of them puts his arm around my shoulders and neck and starts yanking me towards the side of the road towards the bushes, and his friend is right behind him. On instinct, I elbow him as hard as I can in the stomach than in the chin and he was not expecting it at all and lost his grip. He yells

something terrible at me. He wheezes it out and starts towards me again. And now, I'm mad. This absolutely horrible night has gotten on my last nerve, and I'm so ready for a fight. I'm also pretty tall and let's say, stocky, and despite my large build, I'm still much stronger than most give me credit for. This guy is half a head shorter than me and I easily outweigh him by a good 40 pounds I think, so my fight instinct ramps up to a thousand and I'm suddenly right up and sticking my finger in his face yelling, Grab me again and I'm suddenly right up and sticking my finger in his face yelling, grab me again and I'll put you down. He's hesitating right now and he's still looking at me angrily. His friend is flabbergasted and I decided to push my advantage. See that guy off the road? That's my brother. One move and we're both ready to go toe to toe on your butt. Just give us a reason. Now Matt is stuck between a

rock and a hard place because he's got his messed up girlfriend on one hand and me getting into a fight on the other. Scanning the street and seeing no one else around, he decides to deposit her on a lamppost and comes to glower scarily at this guy over my shoulder. Matt is a head taller than I am and quite muscular. Matt's presence finally decides him. His face drops and he raises his hands. Sorry to bother, we didn't mean anything. And they both scurry off. Matt and I are so hyped and angry it's never even occurred to us to be scared. And Lisa noticed nothing. We make it back to the apartment and go to sleep. The next day, both Lisa and I wake up to the worst, most depressive hangover of our lives. From two drinks that normally wasn't even enough to get me buzzed,

Lisa had had one additional shot without us but swore that she took nothing. Though we can't confirm it, we both reached the conclusion that we were probably drugged when we were dancing and out hanging without Matt. We weren't paying as much close attention to our drinks as we normally would and we were acting silly so they probably thought that we were a lot drunker than we were. And suffice to say, we never made that mistake again. And you're going to think I'm stupid but it wasn't just until now, reliving that night, that I connected the possible drugging and the two guys who tried to grab me. Both the druggings and creepers were so insanely common in that city that we felt that it was just one more bump in our crappy night out, and it may as well have been a coincidence, or maybe we were targeted. Either way, dude should have flexed his abs if he didn't want to get the breath snatched from his lungs by a girl. This is an experience I had when I was 16 during the summer of 1995.

I was in junior high school. I was a theater nerd and hung out with my two besties, Stella and Chris, a lot. Chris was short for Chrissy. At night we usually picked up a few friends, bought beer and smokes at the local liquor store with one of our fake IDs and then headed up to the reservoir or a local park to enjoy our illicitly obtained goods. This particular Friday night I was driving my dad's 1976 Mercedes 450 SL. I was buying it from him with payments over time. It was in decent shape and ran strong but was 19 years old so it had a few minor issues. One was that the passenger side

door could only be rarely locked automatically using the lock from the driver's side. This will be relevant later. I picked up Stella, Chrissy, and Ted at around 8. We were feeling good and extra happy because it was Friday. Ted had to go into the front seat because he was like 6'1", and the back seat would barely allow two small people, Stella and Chris, to sit there. We drove to our favorite liquor store just down the road from the reservoir, and Ted and Stella got out to get ciggies and beer while Chris and I stayed in the car chatting. About a minute after our friends walked into the liquor store, an old Chevy van pulled up about six feet behind me, blocking me in.

At first I thought it was just a drunk townie being dumb. Then a thin, pale woman with shoulder-length brown hair came around to my passenger side window and tried to start up a conversation with me and Chris. The woman's eyes were dilated and she said something about how she and her friends were amateur movie makers and she was looking to cast us in their next gig. Chris and I exchanged a look and we were both on the same page of WTF as this woman talking about. I had a bad feeling and a very strong sense that the woman was going to try to get in my car so I suddenly started hitting the lock button

hoping that it would take. The woman was just babbling at this point and she put her hand on my passenger side door handle but literally the second before she tried opening the door my sweet little Mercedes freaking finally obeyed my frantic tapping and locked the door with a loud click. The woman looked confused for a second. She tried to handle again, but my car was locked, and now I was scared and starting to get angry. I knew the curb weight of a 76 450 SL was about 4k. The Chevy van behind me may have been blocking me and had curb weight up on me but he was top heavy. I bet that I could do a lot of damage to it if I slammed into it with my foot on the floor especially if I did so repeatedly. So I said very loudly lady take your hands off my

car and step away. You go tell your friends that they need to move their van because I'm going to floor it in reverse and tear into your van like it's some sort of piece of tinfoil. I turned my key and revved my engine. It purred like the sweet little gas-sucking powerhouse it was, and my car swayed back and forth with each rev. I wasn't bluffing, and I think the woman saw it. The woman's eyes got wide and she ran back into the van, screaming, go, go, move. As she was running back to the van, I saw a thin dude with long stringy hair running out of the liquor store

towards the van too. He jumped in the back and the van peeled out, leaving a shower of gravel and gray exhaust in its wake. About ten seconds later, my friends Ted and Stella came walking out of the liquor store. My adrenaline was super flowing and I was relieved to see them. Chris and I told them what happened and they shared their experience. They said the guy who went into the liquor store had just walked up past them and started rambling about some random weird Jesus and Bible stuff to the clerk. He also said something to my friends about them looking open-minded and gave Stella major creeps when he looked her over. The guy at the counter had just listened for a few minutes while my friends waited patiently to buy smokes. Then the guy heard the revving and screaming and

bolted out of the door. The clerk asked my friends if the man was with them and they said heck no. He said that he thought they were all together or he would have told the guy to leave because he sounded nuts. So my friends bought the beer and smokes and walked out. We all thought that this was pretty weird and to this day I'm so grateful that my door locked. Whatever that woman and her friends wanted, it wasn't good. I worked the late shift to pay for university and came home at midnight. I share a house with my mom and park my car in a garage you can open with a remote control. You can get straight into the house through a door that connects the garage with the basement, which I normally do, except for Thursday, where I go around the house to pull our trash can onto the street and then enter through the main door. Our house is surrounded by tall bushes, so you can't

see much of the street. It's a small rural village, and I know all my neighbors very well. On a Thursday night, I returned from my shift and when I drove into the street, I noticed an unfamiliar car with its headlights on. Since I know my neighborhood so well, I was kind of confused about the car but couldn't see the license plate nor the person sitting in the car clearly since the light was blinding me. You only drive into the street when you live there or visit someone there since it only circles back to the main street when you follow it to the end. I opened the gate and the garage door remotely and drove inside. From that point I can only see the street through the gate since the bushes are so high on both sides.

I normally would have left the car and walked outside to grab the trash can but that day I got a long voice message from a friend and stayed in my car to listen to it. Seven minutes into the message, I lift my gaze and look into my rearview mirror and see a man standing in my driveway behind my car. He didn't move in any way. He just stood perfectly still and watched me. I panicked and locked the doors. Then grabbed the remote and closed the extremely slow garage gate. I just sat there for a moment and was so scared to leave the car, since I

couldn't be sure that I didn't enter the garage before the door reached the floor. I also had to call my mother because the garage door into the basement was locked since I had planned to use the main door. She later told me that she immediately went to the window. She can overview the streets since she lives on the first floor, but couldn't see the man or the car at that point. I told myself it was probably a neighbor who didn't think about how creepy he acted and that I didn't recognize in the dark, but I asked around and nobody seemed to know this man. I only got the information that that type of car was seen slowly driving around our neighborhood the last few days. My mom thinks that it was probably somebody that wanted to surprise me and force me to let him into the

house to rob us. My grandma had just died and nobody knew that my mom spent the nights over there. She thinks he waited behind the bushes and got impatient or confused when I didn't exit the car. And we never found out who he was. I'm writing this on my mobile just after getting off my shift. For some added context, I'm an 18-year-old girl living in a very small town, and I work at a convenience store directly across the street from my local high school. It's been a slow day, and I've been standing behind my register adjusting some things on the counter. A man walks in, approaches my desk, and immediately says, Why do you look so sad? I'm sure you'd look a lot prettier if you smiled.

I roll worthy, to say the least. My co-worker chimes in, kind of laughs, and says, probably because she's working here. Can't really blame her. To which this recruiter guy leans over the counter and says, ah, well, I'm sure I could take her off your hands if you wanted. I understood what he was going for, being a recruiter and all, but good lord, his tone made it very uncomfortable. He asks my name and begins asking me about my major and how I could apply it to the military if I'd just follow him to their setup. I continually respond with things like I don't think I'm cut out for the military and variations of that. Eventually, I tell him that I'll consider it just to get him to leave me alone, as I'm already getting sick of having to say no over and over,

and I have to tend to customers ready to check out. This man proceeds to lean over my counter again and says in a dead serious tone, It sounds like you're lying to me. I went from annoyed to genuinely unnerved. Eventually after I say, Sir, there are other people in line who need to check out. He walks to the door. Before walking out he says,

Alright, Katie. I'm going to come here every day until you make up your mind. And then exits. I'm sure this isn't nearly as bad as a lot of other people's posts on the subs, but I'll be damned if it didn't give me the creeps. Not sure if he actually intended to be as forward as he came off, or if he was just very pushy about recruiting, but I'm really hoping he doesn't hold himself to that whole visiting every day thing. I used to love my job right after college. I was the typical young and cool teacher and even though I'm still young,

I'm just old enough that I've lost a lot of the respect of the students that I teach. For any young teachers out there, maybe you know what I mean. You seek the approval of your students. You want them to like you because maybe if they like you, they'll pay attention more and enjoy what you're teaching. I felt like that for a few years, but then I noticed my test scores for students slipping and, not to mention, the students were a little too relaxed with me. Two years ago, when I had about ten kids in my class after school for some tutoring, half my students pulled out vape pens in the classroom. Of course, I got angry and yelled at the students, and they were shocked that I was upset, saying things like they thought it was cool and all that kind of stuff.

I had to tell their parents, and that's when I realized that I couldn't be the hip teacher anymore, and I needed to get more stern. So for the rest of the year, I really didn't play around. I still tried to be myself every day, but once I noticed the students fooling around or taking advantage of me, I would lay down the law, and let's just say I didn't make any friends. At the end of the school year two years ago, I had to break up an altercation in the hallway that led to one student's expulsion from the school, and two other students starting the next year on a one-week in-school

suspension. On that last day of school, my car was egged in the parking lot, while a handful of students yelled some very colorful things at me as they drove away. I took a deep breath and just let it be. They would have the rest of the summer to cool off, and the next year would be a return to form, at least that's what I hoped. At the start of the summer to cool off and the next year would be a return to form. At least, that's what I hoped. At the start of the school year last year, I couldn't have been more excited. I was rested and I reformed my class structure a little bit to be more in line with what I thought the students would enjoy more. I had forgotten about the horrible way the year ended the previous year and, for me, it was water under the bridge. Not to mention that a lot of the health restrictions from the previous couple of years have been lifted

allowing the students to have a more conventional high school experience, which makes teaching more rewarding. On the first day of class, I was greeting the students for my first day and I was immediately reminded of the altercation last year when three of the boys and one girl walked into my class right before the bell went off. As I said good morning to the group, the four of them just stared daggers at me. They took their seats and all I could say to myself was wow. The dedication to look that angry and miserable for an entire class takes some skill. Towards the end of class, I called one of the boys to answer a question and he responded in an angry and almost hateful voice saying, you know, I might be in your class, but you don't ever have to say my name again.

Oh, the joys of teaching. Thankfully, I was saved by the bell and I didn't have to respond in front of the entire class. I tried to talk to him after and he just shouted to stay away from him. Unfortunately, I couldn't let that type of attitude stand in the classroom, especially not on the first day. During a free period, I went to the office and explained to the principal what was happening. She was angry and immediately paged the young man to the office. He stormed in there and as soon as he saw me sitting in one of the chairs, he says, Are you kidding me? You ratted me out? Instead of beating the kid down verbally and yelling at him, we tried to use it as a teaching moment. We tried to drive home the fact that he was not in trouble and that we just wanted to talk.

Maybe this was the wrong approach and we should have just given the kid detention but I never like doing that. People have rough days and sometimes you just need to talk things out. After a 30 minute meeting of going nowhere we sent him back to class and the principal said that he wanted to give him detention or suspension to really set the precedent for the year but I talked him out of it. That afternoon, I saw the young man leaving, and I tried to tell him to have a good night and shake his hand, but instead, when he saw me, he gave me another not-so-favorable hand gesture involving one of your fingers, if you know what I mean. I went home, and at the start of last year when the

story took place, I was still living alone. I just cracked open a beer and I decided to relax on the couch and watch some TV for a while. The first day always takes a lot out of me. Before I knew it, it was after two in the morning. I had accidentally fallen asleep on the couch, I still had a beer in my hand and I was still wearing my pants from work. I shut the TV off and started to make my way to the bedroom. As I was walking in the dark house, I heard a loud thud. I paused for a second trying to process what it could have been. My first thought was that I was so groggy and out of it I probably just imagined whatever the sound was, but then I heard it again. I slowly crept down the hall, trying to listen intently. I could feel my heart racing out of my chest. At the end of the hall, right to the right is my bedroom,

which faces the front of the house, and to the left is a guest room I don't use and faces the back of the house. The door to the guest room is usually mostly shut, so I had to open it a little bit to look in there. And the image I saw still scares me when I think about it. Nearly completely in my guest room, hanging from a window, was the student from earlier in the day. He was wearing a health mask and had a Pittsburgh Steelers hat on. Even with all of that on, I could clearly tell it was the young man from school. I screamed instinctively and it caused him to fall back, taking the blinds down with him as he fell. He got to his feet in the room, took a half step in my direction as if to scare me or something and then Superman dove out of the window. I saw him run to the other side after he jumped, so I ran to the front of the house to look out the window. I saw him run to the other side after he jumped, so I ran to the front of the house to look out the window. I saw him jump into what I think was a white Toyota and there were three

other people in the car. Then they peeled off into the night and I immediately called the cops right away. Now, this is where I thought I was being stupid and maybe I was. The cops came and I told them about the break-in and what happened. I failed to mention what type of car it was and I didn't tell them who I thought it was. The next day at school, I saw the young man pull into the parking lot with that same white Toyota and any doubts I had went away as soon as I saw the car. I confronted him in the hallway and he looked like he was going to be sick. I stuck my hand out and I said, truce, and he slapped my hand away quickly like he didn't

want anyone to see and walked away. I then got him removed from class the following Monday and I didn't have another interaction with the boy all year. My hope is that he learned his lesson and never tried anything like that again. A handful of times over the year and during this past summer, I've had some pranks happen on my property but nothing serious like a break-in and I have no evidence to know who it was that pulled these so-called pranks. I finally installed a ring camera in just a week ago. I think I saw that white Toyota parked in front of my house for about an hour, but nothing ever happened. I didn't see anybody I recognized get out of the car and I prayed it was just a coincidence since I live with my fiancé now. She doesn't know about the break-in and we're planning on moving soon anyway.

I guess I'm writing this to see what anybody out there thinks anonymously before I pull out any names or locations. Should I call the police, or do you think I should continue to give him another chance? This story happened almost 10 years ago now and it still bothers me and gives me nightmares. I try to use it as a lesson to myself. Instant karma, if you will. When I was in high school, I was always looking for acceptance from my peers. I was definitely the odd one out whenever there were activities, and I was lucky to get an invite. I was usually the one who would do crazy things just to get people to like me, but I would never do anything illegal. I would do things

more dangerous. For example, one time I rode a bike off of my buddy's 20-foot garage into a pool. I almost broke my neck and the only reason I didn't get seriously hurt was because I was wearing slides and not sneakers. My slide got stuck in one of the pedals and if I was wearing sneakers, the shoe probably would have gotten caught also and I would have missed the pool and hit the ground. Also, I feel the need to say, please do not try that. This pattern of acceptance went all through middle school and high school. And right before the start of our senior year, I was with a couple of my so-called friends having one last get-together for the summer. I was invited because my uncle was a janitor at the high school and they begged me to steal the key to the school, which

I did, even though everything in my gut was telling me not to. Their plan was to break into the school and essentially create chaos before the first day. Our school was smaller and not like some of the bigger schools out there. We only had one CC camera in front of the school by the doors and we were going to use the key to enter through the back door so the cameras wouldn't even pick us up. The plan was airtight, at least that's what I convinced myself. of guys I wanted to hang around but back then when I was just confused and it seemed like if I did this maybe I would be an actual member of the friend group and not just the crazy one. That night we waited until my friend's parents went to bed and we all rode our bikes to the school which was about a mile away. I had the key and I was nominated as the one to unlock the door before they said and I quote, I'm the most badass of the group.

It helped to hear that, even though I felt like throwing up at this point. It was real now. We were pulling into the back parking lot of the school and my friends were chanting and cheering me on. I went to the back door and unlocked it. We went inside and the uneasiness got even worse somehow. Something about being in a school after dark in the middle of the night is just objectively creepy. Especially our school since it was old and not very up to date. All the sounds of the pipes creaking and what not scared me half to death. I thought there was a ghost or other people in there but I think it was just the old building. My friends began tipping desks and ripping things off the wall.

They went into the cafeteria and started knocking over tables and chairs and just creating chaos, as they said. I actually liked the school, and learning, so this was hard to watch, but I wanted to be accepted more than I cared about school at that point, so I just engaged with them. We spent about an hour, maybe a little less, just running around the school. We went into the main stairwell and one of my friends pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started smoking. He wanted it to smell like smoke on the first day and all of us

laughed and went along with his plan. Before finally leaving, one of my friends suggested doing something really bad in the principal's office, specifically on his desk. I don't even want to write it down what it was and let's just say that it would have been over the line for me. We made our way to the office and just as we shut the office door, I told my friends to be quiet. They looked at me like I had three heads, but the reason I said something wasn't for some moral compass I found, it was because I heard something. We all ducked down and looked through the glass windows in the office that overlooked the halls of the school. At first, they all thought that I was being paranoid since I had been a bit off since the start of the adventure, but then one of the other guys heard

it too. It was clearly the sound of voices. We all sunk down under the desk, trying to figure out how to get out of this predicament. Our bikes were in the bushes out back and we couldn't go through the front door which was right outside the office we were in. The voices stopped right outside the office. They were muffled so we couldn't figure out what they were saying. We didn't know if it was the cops, the administration of the school, or maybe even someone else with the same idea. Finally, I peeked up and at that point I was even more scared. It was three men, dressed in full tactical gear, with flashlights. These were not police officers. These guys were much different.

I tried explaining to my friends who was out there and they didn't understand what I was saying. It must have been too loud because one of the men outside kicked open the door and shouted, who's in there? I froze and I thought my friends would do the same but finally their panic kicked in and they all ran out of the door, trampling me down in the process. They caught the other guys off guard. My friends were able to make all ran out of the door, trampling me down in the process. They caught the other guys off guard. My friends were able to make a sprint out of the building. I was left there, alone with these dudes. They started laughing at me.

And at that point I was embarrassed, scared and ultimately defeated all at one time. Then I hear one of the guys yell, the cops are here. And they all ran. I got up and as soon as I ran down the hall by myself, I was intercepted by real police who very quickly and very roughly apprehended me. My parents and the school were notified right away and I was immediately expelled from school. I was heartbroken. After

thinking about it, I finally decided to throw the others under the bus with me and they all denied it. My one friend's parents even vouched for all of them saying that they were staying overnight at the house and that they didn't sneak out. I was thrown to the wolves all by myself and then lost my fake friends from ratting them out. All the destruction to the school was solely blamed on me and I was responsible for paying any of the damages. I was even charged and arrested for this ordeal which took a long time for me to recover from. But there's something I never got closure on. Who were those men in that gear? When I explained that part to the cops, they nearly bust a gut from

laughing so hard. They didn't rob anything, they didn't come from another robbery I guess, they were just there. I guess the easy explanation is that it was other students attempting to do the same thing that we were doing, but my only doubt with that is that the gear they had seemed extremely legit and professional, and it didn't make sense for some high school students to have stuff like that, at least not in my hometown. Does anybody out there have any idea or theories as to what these guys were doing? Someone recently told me that they thought the tactical guys were in on it, and it was all a prank to get me busted by the police. That was an idea I never thought of until it was mentioned to me and I hate to admit that the more I think about it the more

it adds up and if that is the case I hope they all get what's coming to them. I did end up getting my GED and I currently do have a pretty good job so I ended up okay after all of this, but it wasn't easy. And it just goes to show you that acceptance isn't always good. I endured the most traumatic time of my entire life just because I thought that I had to do it in order to fit in. And let my tragedy be a good lesson to any young people out there. If something doesn't feel right, you're probably correct. And ignoring that feeling and giving it to a bad idea could lead to year of college. I couldn't wait to finish this last step and begin my new life in what they have always called the real world.

Given my hopeful career path, my advisor told me that I should serve as a mentor for incoming freshmen. Act as essentially a big sister to the incoming students, you know. College can be scary and overwhelming for new students, especially those who have come from smaller schools, so this program would be set up to guide these new students and help them break into the college system with as little anxiety as possible. I loved the idea, and as my advisor said, this would look great on my resume. I wish I had a program like this when I was a freshman. I would have been so lost and nervous my first few months. I arrived at school about a week early and met with my advisor and got all the information needed.

This year, the program will be a little bit different compared to what it was the previous couple of years. In the first two years of the program, the seniors involved would almost serve as student advisors and help the freshmen, but this year we were being assigned individual freshmen. I was excited, I'm not going to lie. I got a handful of students from the advisor and I spent that first week before school emailing them and setting up appointments and meet and greets and whatever else they may need. I offered tours, sitting for coffee, talking about campus activities, you name it. My mindset was to be as loose and flexible as possible and allow the incoming students to ask me whatever they wanted and talk about whatever concerns they had instead of me dictating to them what I thought they wanted

to hear. As the new students poured in, it was great. I met a handful of my assigned students and I can honestly say that I felt good. I truly felt like I was helping them to feel a little less anxious. On the first day of classes, I met someone named Madison. She had cancelled two previous meetup attempts with me and I was beginning to think that Madison was going to be one of those students who didn't really need assistance and I could not have been more wrong. She needed assistance but not for me. We finally met at around noon on that first day. A beautiful young woman met me outside of the student center building and at first it was a lovely conversation. She seemed confident, independent, and not afraid of anything. After a few minutes of talking to Madison, I

asked her why she wanted to be in this program. I emphasized to her that it had nothing to do with her but more to the fact that she seemed so confident. Her answer didn't make me think of anything weird at the moment. All she said was that she just wanted to talk to me, and see what it's like to be a senior in such a great school. I was flattered, and it was honestly kind of nice to talk to such a well-adjusted young lady since I had spent so much time talking to students who were afraid of their own shadows. We talked for probably 15 or 20 minutes and then exchanged numbers. I didn't ask her to meet again because I didn't feel like she needed my assistance and I told her that she could call or text me anytime she wanted and if she ever needed to talk she could reach out to me. And that was the last time I saw Madison for a few

weeks. Almost a month later, I started getting notes left by my car. They were short and sweet notes and they were always left signed by a secret admirer. I mean, they were literally signed with the name Secret Admirer. I thought it was cute, kind of cringe, but dating was the last thing on my mind so I didn't ever wonder who it was. It seemed like it was left by a guy just from the style of the handwriting, you know. Things started getting weird after those notes. I would still be getting them all the time, but I would start getting them left on my car when I was at work, the store, and even the movies. It seemed like no matter where I went, I was being left a love note.

And then the notes started getting weird, saying things like, I just love you so much, and I can't wait until you notice me and we can be together forever. I was convinced at this point it wasn't one of my friends messing with me or something. I was always the butt of the joke among my friends because I had no desire to date, and this type of long-term prank was something I could absolutely see my friends doing. So no matter how many times I called them out and tried to compare the handwriting, there was never a match and nobody ever confessed. My friends were nervous about my well-being at that point and I always kind of dismissed it.

I stubbornly convinced myself that it was a joke and that I was done giving them any satisfaction about it. At the time, I worked a semi-overnight shift at a grocery store. I would go in at 9pm and I would work until 3am in the morning. I would hang price tags throughout the night and fix signs and stupid things like that. They paid a little extra for working overnights, and I needed the money since I was a broke college student. I punched out a little after three and started making my way to my car in the nearby empty parking lot. As I walked around my car, I saw someone squatting next to my driver's side door. It was a smaller person, and they seemed like they had a hood on.

I jumped back at that moment and started to scream. The person ran over to me, tackling me to the ground. But instead of beating me up or something like that, they just kept saying in a soft voice, Shh, relax, it's me, I'm here now. I recognized that voice, but I couldn't put my finger on it in the panic. As I was moving on the ground, the person's hood came off and I instantly was able to put the voice to a face. It was Madison from the first week of school. I tried pleading with her at first in the confusion, and then my pleas turned to anger and panic.

She was sitting on my chest, telling me to relax. Thankfully, the night manager happened to be outside smoking a cigarette and had heard some commotion and started to run over to my car. Madison jumped up and tried telling the man that I was her girlfriend and that he needed to get lost. I could tell the manager thought about it for a second, but I was able to scream at him to could tell the manager thought about it for a second, but I was able to scream at him to just call the police. And that's when Madison started to get angry and started to throw punches down at my face. The manager called the police, shoving Madison off of me so I could get to my feet. I stood behind the manager, waiting for the cops, and Madison didn't leave. She just stood there on

the other side of the car with her arm out in my direction. She seemed like she was crying and I could see that pain in her eyes. I felt bad for a moment and then I realized that she was just beating me up and that empathy vanished pretty quickly when I realized how insane she was. The cops arrived and they took Madison. I didn't press charges, but I did threaten to. Her parents pulled her out of school, and I never heard from her again. It all just happened so quickly. I don't know how true this last part is that I'm about to tell you as I heard it through the grapevine, but I was told by a trusted source that when I gave her my number during that first meeting,

she thought that was a sign of advancement on my part and she was trying to win me over with the secret notes. She thought I might recognize her handwriting, which I never would, so she would write the notes with her off hand so it looked messy. When she finally reached the courage to call me, my number didn't work. Either I wrote it down wrong for her or she put it in her phone wrong, and she took it as an insult and needed to win me over. And that was the night she attacked me at my job. Whether that last part is true or not, the fact that the encounter happened at all is enough to haunt my dreams. I won't forget that feeling of helplessness when she was on top of me for what felt like a very long time. I was always one of those students who hated school.

I was a poor student and I lived for summer vacation. Hanging out with friends all night trying to impress the girls and most importantly, sleeping in. I hated everything about school. One year, on the last day of summer before school, I talked my buddy Will into sneaking out with me. Before heading back to school for another horrible year, I wanted to end summer in some style. We didn't plan on doing anything crazy. We didn't want to commit any crimes or anything like that. We just wanted to end summer in some style. We didn't plan on doing anything crazy. We didn't want to commit any crimes or anything like that. We just wanted to feel free. Something about walking in

the streets at night when you're supposed to be inside felt rebellious and free, you know. And since the next day was back to school, this was our last chance of summer to do so. I snuck out of the house around 10 at night. The plan was to meet in the cemetery beside his house at 10.30. I showed up a little before 10.30 and no will anywhere. I waited for about 15 minutes and then I texted him. He messaged me right away and said that his parents were still awake watching a movie and he had to wait to sneak out. I was annoyed but I understood. I didn't want him to get into trouble, and then by extension,

I would get into trouble if his parents found out that he was meeting me. I waited for a while, messaged him every ten minutes or so, and his responses were always the same. After about an hour, the annoyance of the situation went away and I started to get a little creeped out. I know it's silly, but sitting in the dark and cold cemetery for that long started getting a little unnerving. I felt like I could hear noises all around me, and I knew it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but it still didn't make it any less scary. Around midnight, I was just about to give up hope on Will getting out of the house when I hear a voice whisper, Hey, what are you doing? I turned around and had a sigh of relief thinking that it was Will.

But when I turned around, I didn't see anyone. I loudly whispered his name and I didn't see him. I could hear that distinct sound of sticks and twigs snapping, but it was so dark that no matter how hard I squinted, I couldn't see a single thing. Then, a figure emerged from behind some tree in the graveyard. I jumped because it was jarring to see a person just standing there, and in an annoyed but slightly relieved voice I said, You idiot. That joke isn't funny, man. The figure didn't say anything and didn't move.

I took one step toward the figure and paused. They were probably 30 feet away if I had to guess and while I was staring at them I noticed something strange. They appeared much taller and bigger than Will. He was undoubtedly my smallest friend standing at only about 5 feet 3 inches and maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. The figure was at least 6 feet tall. I whispered Will's name again, and it didn't move. I pulled out my phone to call him, and I received a text message right at this moment from Will saying, sorry man, I'm just leaving the house now, I'll be there in five. I was frozen. If Will was just leaving now, then who was the person who was standing across from me? For a brief second, I thought maybe this was some joke. Maybe he talked to one of our

friends into sneaking out and they were going to try and scare me. I shouted in a whisper to the person, you know it's not working, Will told me about this joke. That was my poor attempt to fish out some response from them but they still didn't move. Then I got another text a second later from Will, sorry dude, mom just saw me in the kitchen, no way I can get out tonight, I'll see you tomorrow in school. I still couldn't tell if this was part of the joke or if he was serious. If he was telling the truth, then this figure standing near me most likely meant harm to me, and I was in real danger. I decided to call Will, while my eyes were locked on this person.

He answered, and I quietly explained what was happening to me, and I asked if he had anything to do with this. I could tell by his voice that he was scared for me. He reiterated that now he was in bed, and he had sent me a picture of him in his room. He told me to run, but I was terrified to even move. My house was in the direction of that person, and I didn't want to run further into the cemetery with a potentially dangerous person on my tail. Being young and stupid, I was more scared of getting in trouble with my parents so I didn't call the cops. And I begged Will not to tell his parents or call the police even though he practically begged me to call. If this happened to me today, I would call the police almost right away,

but back then, the sometimes irrational mind of a teenager could be stupid. I started to take a few small steps backward, with Will still on the phone. After a few steps back, I noticed that the person was taking a few steps forward in my direction. I decided to run as fast as I could. I'm somewhat fast and I figured that I would run the opposite way and then loop around to get back to the main road. Throughout this whole ordeal, I was the most scared I'd ever been in my life. While I was in full sprint, running for my life,

and I turned back and saw the figure running at me like a freight train. This person was fast, extremely fast, and I didn't think that I was going to be able to outrun them. But I'd ran faster than I ever did, and I never turned back. I would hear rushing footfalls behind me every so often, but before I knew it, I couldn't hear anything. When I finally turned around again, I was out of the cemetery and on my street. I ran to my house and snuck in the side door.

I went to my bedroom, shut the lights off, and stared out the window. I looked at every dark corner of the street all night long. I didn't see anybody, but I just had that sick feeling that he somehow followed me. I never snuck out again after that night, and I was terrified of just being outside my house after dark. I was convinced for a long time that I wasn't safe, and I would constantly check the locks in my house to make sure everything was locked up tight. I have no idea who that person was that night. I don't know their intentions. I don't know if they wanted to hurt me or just scare me, but whatever it was, I'm happy that I was able to get out physically unharmed.

It's been a long time since that night, but even to this day, I will not go into a graveyard after dark. I know it's irrational, but I never even want to think about seeing that person ever again. Being in a dark cemetery will cause me to think that every shadow I see is that figure coming to finish what they started. I don't blame anyone who doesn't like sports. I totally understand if playing or watching sports is not your thing. My wife hates sports with a passion, so I don't even try to get her to watch games with me. I never forced on anyone, even though I love football more than anything in the world. I was fortunate enough to be able to play football in college, and it was an amazing experience. Hard and challenging at times, but truly amazing. And as a college athlete, we had to head back to school early and start training. We would have weightlifting sessions, field practice, cardio training, you name it. Before the first day of

school, we were already a well-oiled machine. Waking up early for class was never an issue because we would have mandatory workouts at 4.30 in the morning. This is going to sound horrible, but sometimes playing on a football team gave me a special treatment in class. Not with my grades, but with extra help whether it was from the teacher or other students. I know it sounds kind of vain, but a lot of students loved me and I would take advantage of that love and have them help me with assignments. Interrupt that how you will, but let's just say that I had more than a few fans in school. By the time my junior year came around, I was a well-known name around campus. Now sidebar, I was good, but not good enough to play in the NFL. But at the time, I was one of the better players on the team and everyone wanted to say that they

knew me. I was ready for an amazing season and I couldn't wait to hit the field. We showed up early to campus like every year and we all lived that football life for a few weeks. One day after practice, I met a girl in the training facility and her name was Sarah. She was pretty and she seemed into me. And what I really liked though was that she seemed into what I had to say and not the fact that I was just kind of a jock, I guess. We talked for a while and hung out that night. Nothing crazy, we just watched a movie. For some reason, though, I never questioned why she was there. At this point, it was only athletes and a few others on campus. I guess I just assumed that she played soccer or was on the track team or something. We exchanged numbers and I told her that I would text her the

next day, which I did. She gave me one word answers and kind of gave me the impression that she wasn't interested, so instead of wasting her time, I never messaged her again after that next day. I felt like we vibed and I got a good feeling hanging out with her. I actually felt at one point hanging out with this girl is easily girlfriend material and I'd love to spend time with her. I was a little broken up on the inside when she seemed uninterested but like I said, I didn't want to waste her time and I wanted to move on before my feelings sprouted even more. The next day I was in the locker room after a pretty tough workout. I was the last one in there and I was just cleaning myself up a bit.

I heard some footsteps on the other side of the room and I didn't really give it a lot of thought. The first place my mind went was that it was another player or coach so I didn't really think anything of it. The movement eventually stopped and after a few minutes of not seeing anyone or hearing the door open I started to get a little weirded out. I asked who was there but nobody responded. I started walking toward the door whiched out. I asked who was there, but nobody responded. I started walking toward the door, which was behind a wall since the locker room was a giant L-shaped room. As I was getting closer to the wall, I heard the footsteps sort of scamper away, and the locker room door slammed shut.

Now I was freaked out. There was definitely a person in there, essentially listening to me or watching me and not saying anything, and when I called them out, they ran. I told some of the guys on the team about it, and their sort of tough guy routine kicked in, and they were all about teaching this peeping tom a lesson, which was kind of funny. I figured they'd just make fun of me. And that night that I was in bed bed and I thought I could hear a sort of clicking sound on my window. I got a dark curtain on my window because when I have a day off I hate having the sun wake me up. It's weird to describe but I felt so uncomfortable about the locker room incident that I was a little

freaked out moving the curtain back. I didn't want to see someone standing there. A few of the players I've played with over the years have had some minor run-ins with some weirdos and stalkers and all that kind of stuff, and it's not something that I wanted to deal with. I eventually put that fear in the back of my mind, and I whipped back the curtain to find Sarah actively trying to get into my room. I freaked out, slammed the now quarter open window shut. I locked it and she just stared at me with these sort of dead eyes through the window. I immediately go to my phone calling the police. I told them what happened, and it didn't take long for them to find her. When they found her, she had a pocket knife in her pocket, and she wasn't a student. She was just some obsessed fan, and she wanted to be with me. And I was actually interested in her,

but when we were texting, she had already convinced herself that I didn't want to be with her or something. We had met at a party the previous year and I had no memory of this interaction and according to her it was an emotionally fueled greeting but I guess witnesses to the encounter said that I kind of just said hello with a nice smile on my face and that's probably why I don't remember. I'm usually very good at remembering names and faces and the cops found pictures of me on her phone from weeks prior to us even communicating. I was still at my family home and she had pictures from outside my house. She had pictures of me at practice. She even had pictures from the locker room.

But thankfully they were nothing bad, I guess. Just a couple of pictures of me with my shirt off, sitting on the bench, reading something on my phone. Obviously, Sarah was arrested and the school sort of swept this under the carpet, and not have any bad publicity before the season opener. Some people are just twisted, and I'm so thankful that I pulled back that curtain that night. I still shiver when I think about what she could have potentially done to me if I was sleeping or didn't hear her. I don't know where Sarah is today, but I hope wherever she is, she's on the path to recovery, but never has the chance to hurt anybody else again. When I was in my late 20s, I had a rough patch in my life. I didn't know where I wanted to go.

I had recently spent some time in prison and I was trying to just get everything in order. A friend of my mom's had some connections to the local university and this person pulled some strings and got me a job as a maintenance clerk for the school. My official title was fancy, but I was a janitor. But I'll say being just a janitor paid pretty well for a big university. It was more money than I had ever made before, and it wasn't bad for someone trying to get on their feet post-prison. I started right at the tail end of one school year, and I spent the entire summer being one of the late-night maintenance men for the school. I worked my way up from cleaning bathrooms and classrooms to being an actual maintenance man. I was fixing things instead of cleaning them,

which was much more my speed. I almost felt like a new student as the school year was coming closer. The thought of all the students filling the school was just exciting for some reason, probably because I never got to do the college thing, so it was rewarding to see all these people trying to make something of their lives. One thing I will say though is that the school was never empty. It's not like high schools where when summer comes the schools are practically empty other than an event here or there. Universities always had students or faculty walking around either taking summer classes, doing some type of tutoring, or even playing sports. Even though it was never empty, it was much more desolate during the summer, hence why I was excited for the beginning of the school year at the end of August.

Once the semester officially started, I was going to be taken off the night shift and become one of the regular maintenance staff members. I was excited and I could see myself turning this into a real career. The first week of classes started and I was busier than I ever could have imagined. I was helping teachers fix projectors, I was helping the school with painting, and I was even responsible for heading to the dorms to help students fix easy issues that nowadays a simple YouTube search could probably fix. I know it sounds like I'm just complaining, but I honestly love this busy work. I was learning a lot, making money and helping folks along the way. I knew it was only a matter

of time before something happened that wasn't so great. And let me first say that I know this wasn't the school's fault and that I had no control over the events that took place. It's just whenever I think back to this day, I'm reminded of one of the most horrifying events of my life. It was only the first week of classes and it was toward the evening. I was exhausted and I couldn't wait to call it a night. Down in the basement, the maintenance department had a makeshift office where we would drink coffee, eat some food, or just kick it for a little while. I was heading to the basement and I heard some commotion going on. The basement of this building is huge and almost maze-like. If you didn't know where you were going, you'd probably just wander around for

a while. So instead of making my way to the office, I followed the noise of the commotion because it sounded like someone moaning in agony. As I turned down one of the corridors that led to an open space with a bunch of storage, I saw three dudes, definitely students given their age, and they were actually beating up another student. I immediately shouted for them to stop and they ran away in the opposite direction. There are several staircases up the main floor so they didn't need to run by me to get upstairs. Instead of chasing them I stopped to make sure that the student on the ground was okay. He was in pain but thankfully he was breathing. As I briefly examined him I noticed that he didn't have any bruises or cuts or anything

like that. I thought at the moment maybe they were just kicking into sides or something because his face looked completely fine. I was trying to grab my phone to call the police and I noticed the kid on the ground began to smile. Before I could even ask what was going on, I felt an intense pain in my head, and I fell to the ground. Everything was a little blurry at this point, but I saw the three other students come back and help the student on the ground. All four of the students were now laughing, and then the next thing I remember was seeing one of the students raise his arms with something in it, swing it in my direction, and then just black. I woke up several hours later in the maintenance office with my hands cuffed by the police. All I could smell was whiskey. And that's when I noticed I was covered in whiskey, like these boys poured an entire bottle on me. Without going into details, my former prison time

was alcohol related and I wasn't supposed to drink anymore, which I didn't, but from the cop's point of view, I smelled like it. To make matters even worse for me was that they found me smelling like this on the job and they probably thought that I was drunk because I was somewhat delirious and was finding it hard to form sentences. This nightmare continued for several hours as I was being detained. I was finally able to get the words out that I wanted my lawyer and thankfully she showed up pretty quickly. The cops did not want to hear my story and just assumed that I had blacked out drunk in the basement of the school. I told my lawyer everything that happened and it was like trying to pull teeth

to get the police to listen. But they finally started to listen and got the security camera from the footage from the school and thankfully the footage proved my innocence. The footage showed the boys following me on my last job of the evening. It showed them going into the basement and the idiots set up their fake mugging in front of one of the cameras in the basement too. The students didn't count on the camera being down there. The camera showed every detail of what happened. As soon as I approached the students on the ground, the other three snuck back and hit me on the head with some large pipe or something like that. They dragged me into the office and poured a whole bunch of whiskey all over me like I said and not only did this footage prove that I didn't touch a drop of

alcohol but it also showed all four students committing this act. They swiftly arrested all of them and the worst part is they didn't have a real motive at all. They heard that I used to drink a lot and they just thought it would be funny if they framed me for being a drunk on the job. It's horrible, and I can't believe people are that terrible and evil. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because it still stings. I know this may not be like other scary stories out there that people tell, but this was a real nightmare that could have potentially ruined my life if there wasn't camera evidence. Being convicted for a crime you didn't commit is horrible, and it's something that I fear every day. To be continued... I chose to go to a school within my home state that was only a few hours away from my house. I remember being both excited and nervous to start this new chapter of my life.

At this school, we were not able to pick our roommates and it was done by random draw. At some point during the summer, we were given our roommates' contact information. I don't remember if it was phone, AIM screen name, or Facebook information. And yes, when I was going into college, texting was relatively new, and AIM, AOL Instant Messenger was still around. Anyway, I remember I never talked to my roommate on the phone, but we chatted online. Everything started out normal, with talking about how excited we were and what each of us could bring. I think I was going to bring the mini fridge and they were going to bring a TV. We exchanged our favorite movies and favorite types of music and other tidbits like that,

just to get to know each other a little better. After the second or third time we talked, my roommate, who I'll refer to as Phil, began to get more comfortable and open up about his high school experiences. He mentioned that he had gotten into some trouble and had to switch schools a couple of times, but wasn't that person anymore and was working on bettering himself. I myself had gone through some issues in high school as well, so I was happy to be supportive of someone who was working on self-improvement. However, the more he shared, the more uncomfortable I started to become. I don't remember the specifics, but I remember Phil sharing instances of violence stemming from

alcohol usage. I think he could sense based on my responses that I was a little uncomfortable with the conversation, so he quickly changed the subject to something positive. We didn't talk much more than that during the summer and before you knew it, move-in day was already here. I don't remember the specifics of moving in other than having to go up to a student to get my room assignment and seeing my dad cry for only like the second time in my life when he was leaving to go back home. Phil didn't arrive until my parents had already left and he didn't have anyone with him when we arrived. I tried to initiate some small talk but he was very upset and didn't say much.

He set up the TV in a gaming system and headed off to go to dinner. I had a few of my close friends from high school also at the same school as me so I knew that I would spend most of my time with them. I brought a few of my friends back to the room to check out my setup and Phil was sitting in his bed playing a game and didn't respond when I introduced friends to him. We decided to leave and go hang out with my friend Dustin in his room, which was across campus. A few days passed without issue. Phil and I hadn't really talked at all, but to be fair, we didn't really see each other that much. We had full class schedules, and I also had a job about two miles down the road from the campus that I was going to try and keep part-time. I had to stop about a month in because it was too

much, even though I did end up working the following three years in college. One night, about two or three weeks into the first semester, I remember being really hot and rolling over to turn up my fan when I saw somebody right by my bed. My heart started racing, and I immediately jumped up, saying, Phil? There was no response, and I just saw that sort of shadowy person walk backward and slide back into bed. I tried to go back to sleep, but found it very hard to do so, obviously. The next day I didn't see Phil until the afternoon and asked him what was going on, and he said that he must have been sleepwalking and just ended the conversation. After about four or five times of inviting Phil to come hang out with my friends, I stopped.

It didn't seem like he had any interest and I didn't want to press it any further. I remember one day I just didn't feel like going to economics class and I skipped and went back to the room to lie down. When I walked in, I saw Phil looking through my desk. I asked him what he was doing and he says, Oh, I'm late for class, I was just looking for a pen and then he bolted out of the room. This wouldn't seem so weird but the next time I decided to skip class and head back to the room he was in my closet. I didn't even wait for an excuse. I just told him to stay out of my stuff. I remember that conversation

distinctly because that night Phil must have had another instance of sleepwalking because I woke up to him again, hovering over my bed, breathing heavily. This time he spoke and said, nighty night. I didn't respond. At this point I started looking into if there were any other rooms I could move into, where people had maybe left school or decided to not come at all. I ended up meeting with the RA on the floor and they said that they would let me know when something opened up as there were other students looking for new roommates and other rooms to move into as well. By this time, it was around Halloween and my friends and I were excited to go to our first college parties. Also, I love Halloween, so it was a nice distraction from school which had been stressful for the first few months.

Phil, who was normally either watching TV or playing video games, came in and was dressed up as Ghostface, brandishing his signature weapon in his hand as well. Ghostface is one of my favorite horror characters, so I remember kind of saying, badass, because the costume looked really good. I asked him what his plan was for the night and he responded with, mischief, I'm sure of it. Little did I know that that would be the last time I saw Phil. After the college party, my friends and I went home for a few days to do laundry and have one of our own parties back in our own hometown. When I returned, one half of my room was completely packed up and gone. Apparently, Phil had an altercation on campus and when they did a search of the room, they found that his prop knife wasn't a prop at all. I also received a write-up from my lamp, as apparently we weren't supposed to have that type of lamp in our dorms.

I was never filled in on the details of Phil's dismissal. As I said, there was some sort of issue on campus, and apparently it warranted a room search, and there were items in his possession that led to expulsion. Phil did try to reach out to me online, but I blocked his accounts and tried to forget the first few months of school. I ended up not having a roommate for the first year, which was nice because my friends would usually just crash there if they didn't feel like walking back to their rooms. Anyway, this was one of the creepiest and scariest encounters of my life. It didn't seem like it at the time, but looking back on it,

I wonder if I was ever in any danger or what really happened that led to Phil's dismissal from school. My parents had this sort of government job, I guess, and it caused me to move around a lot. I feel like when I finally made some friends, we were moving again. It's horrible, and it's no way to be a student growing up. I resented my parents for a long time, but as an adult now, I understand that you have to do what you have to do for money. And to support your family. My parents had a great job that paid well and were able to provide for me and give me a comfortable life.

The only issue was that it was at the cost of getting a healthy social life. When I was in high school, I spent more time in one school than I had in my entire life. I did my freshman through junior year at this one school, so I was furious when we had to move away for my senior year. I begged my parents to let me rent an apartment because I was 18 or let me live with a friend of mine, but my parents insisted on having me move with them. I was so upset and started acting out worse than I already had for the majority of my life. You may think because we moved so much maybe I was the social outcast of the class, but it was the opposite. I was always

in trouble. I would talk back to teachers and authority figures. I would fight all the time just because I enjoyed it. My junior year of high school was in trouble less than every other year combined because I was starting to train in a gym and learning how to fight in an acceptable setting. But now, this setting and my entire life were being ripped away and just like that, I started back on the dark path that I had always been on. We moved to our new home with about a month left of summer. I didn't talk to my parents at all and I rarely left my room in the new place. I started sneaking cigarettes and little bottles of summer. I didn't talk to my parents at all and I rarely left my room in the new place. I started sneaking cigarettes and little bottles of alcohol. I contacted some of my old friends and told them that I was going to steal my parents' car and drive back to my old hometown

before everyone went back to school. My friend Carlos lived on a farm with his family and they had a giant barn in the backyard where he would have huge parties. His parents didn't really care, so we used to party there almost every weekend. After I told them about my plan to return, they put the word out, and we started calling it the back-to-school party, and it was going to be in my honor. Everyone was going to bring a backpack to the party like it was the first day of school, except inside the backpack, each person was going to bring something backpack to the party like it was the first day of school, except inside the backpack, each person was going to bring something for the party. And the supplies in the backpacks were not things people our age should have, but hey, it was a party, what do you expect? And I was pumped, and I had such little regard for life at that point that I didn't care what

happened at the party or if I did anything to get me in trouble. I left my current house around 6 in the evening on a Saturday night. My parents would be at their job all weekend and would be back until Sunday afternoon. We had lived a little over two hours away so I planned on being at Carlos' house a little after 8. While I was driving to the back to school party, I hit something on the road and lost control of the car. I didn't know what I hit and I started freaking out. When I tried to drive, the car started shaking and I figured that I must have run something over and had a flat tire. I pulled over and sure enough, my front left side tire was completely flat.

I was only about 30 minutes from the barn so I started to beg someone to pick me up. I didn't care about leaving the car. I figured that I would party hard tonight and just deal with the ramifications tomorrow. Carlos was ripping on me and making fun of me but eventually said that he was sending his cousin to pick me up. Be on the lookout for a big red pickup truck. Where I was specifically was borderline in the middle of nowhere. Since I got my flat and the entire time I waited I didn't see one car drive by. Close to 30 minutes after getting off the phone I saw a car coming towards me. I figured that it was Carlos' cousin so I got out of the car and started waving him down.

It was not a red pickup truck. It was sort of a beat up green SUV of some kind and they parked across the street. They left the car running and didn't greet me or anything. I didn't give it a second thought that it was a green SUV and not a red pickup truck and Carlos is sometimes kind of a moron and I figured whoever was picking me up was driving something else. I ran over and just got into the passenger seat. The guy looked like he was in his mid-twenties, maybe, and he smelled horrible. I said what's up and got into the car. I started talking to him like it was Carlos' cousin and I said, yo man, your cousin Carlos is a fool. He said you'd have a red pickup truck, I swear he doesn't think.

I continued for several minutes as he went on down the road, and this person just kind of nodded to whatever I was saying. After a couple of minutes, I looked out the window and noticed that we were going in the opposite direction. We were going in the direction that I came from. And in a confused voice, I asked him, Isn't Carlos's farm that way? The man finally turned to me and said, I don't know who Carlos is. And he starts laughing.

I look at my phone to call Carlos and notice that I had several texts from him and a number that I didn't have saved on my phone. The number said, yo, it's Rico, Carlos' cousin, where you at? Then I had messages from Carlos that said almost the same thing. That's when I realized what was going on. I looked over and noticed that we were going super fast and I did the one thing that I could think of and that was jumping out of a moving SUV. I tried to tuck and roll, but it hurt so bad and I couldn't move my arm after hitting the ground. And without thinking of the pain, I started to run back in the direction we came from. I saw the brake lights from the SUV and saw the vehicle turning back around in my direction. I called his cousin, and thankfully within seconds I see his lights were on the horizon. I flagged him down, jumped into his truck. The SUV saw me get into the truck and

he just peeled off down the road, and unfortunately I was never able to see any other details about his car. I made the most mature decision of my life, and instead of going to that party, I called my parents, who picked me up and took me to the hospital. I had broken my arm from jumping out of that car, and the doctor said I was lucky to have only done that. My parents were upset with me, but happy that I was okay and not more hurt than I already was. I was grounded of course but being grounded was much better than being dead I thought and I used this incident to try and get my life in order and it did work. I've had some hiccups but ultimately I made changes after that night for the better. So many things could have happened that night that it could have seriously ruined my life but instead things sort of worked out in the end. We reported the SUV but nothing

ever happened and as far as I know that creep wasn't caught. I'm just happy that I'm here to tell this story. To be continued... for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm Eastern Standard Time. 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.

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