The Lets Read Podcast - 259: MY WORST TRICK OR TREATING EXPERIENCE | 28 True Scary Stories | EP 247

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about road rage encounters, Halloween events & and how someone almost lost their life while dog sitting. 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

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will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Have you ever had a memory from your childhood that you just couldn't place? By that I mean a memory from your childhood that feels more like a dream or something you saw on TV that kind of worked its way into your memory banks until you thought it happened for real. I know that might sound confusing, so here's a better

example. One of my friends used to swear that one time, when they were a kid, they quite literally flew up the stairs. Me and a mutual just about died laughing when she told us, and we poked and prodded the story until we figured out a much more believable version of the truth. She didn't fly up the stairs. She was just super tired one night and her mom or dad carried her to bed. But because she was half asleep, it felt like she just floated up the stairs. Maybe being carried while unconscious somehow worked its way into an actual dream that she was having. My point is, it was like a false memory. A better example might be my cousin who swore her mom's hair salon used

to be in a different spot but it just felt that way because her perception of the world around her changed as she got older. Hopefully I just didn't spend the past while sounding like a crazy person and that you or your people here might have their own examples of these sort of false or glitchy memories. That way I won't sound like I'm fresh out of the psych ward when I tell my own false memory story, or at least the story of what I thought was a false memory. Okay, so for the longest time, I had this weird obscure memory tucked away that I was pretty sure was just a dream or nightmare that I had when I was a kid. I went to a birthday party and at the

birthday party there was a cow taking a nap in the kid's front lawn. This cow wasn't just any old cow either. It was so stinky that it made me cry and I had to go home. My mom was mad that her neighbors had been keeping a stinky cow and I was so upset that I missed the party that I cried myself to sleep. I'd like to think that people can understand why I figured so upset that I missed the party that I cried myself to sleep. I'd like to think that people can understand why I figured none of that had actually happened but if you can't, let's just say that it seemed way too ridiculous a memory to be real and that although I turned out to be wrong to have assumed so, I thought it was something I dreamed or imagined or whatever. But then as the years went by and my teens turned to my mid-twenties,

and then to my early thirties, it was this bizarrely prevalent memory that never seemed to feel any less vivid. So one day, on a total whim, I asked my mom if she remembered taking me to a party where the family kept a cow. I expected her to just give me this look as if to say, are you crazy? But instead, she gave me another one. This kind of look someone gives you when you stir up a memory that hasn't been thought about in years. Mom didn't laugh though. She didn't even smile when she recalled it. She just shook her head, sighed, and made some comment about how awful the whole thing was. As you can probably guess, my mind was completely blown by the news that this weird fake but not fake memory had been real the entire time.

And as you can probably also guess, I hounded her to tell me exactly what had happened from start to finish. So first things first, it wasn't a birthday party. It was a Halloween party. But according to my mom, there really had been a cow. I was like six years old at the time, so I was walking hand in hand with my mom up this long driveway which led to my friend's house. We live in the suburbs, so there were a lot of big houses like that, but the more we walked up the driveway, the more we started to smell this rotten stink from somewhere. Then when the driveway finally curved round before opening up into the home's front yard, there it was. It was still daylight and some kind of tarp or covering had sort of blown back revealing the cow's back and top of its head. The way it was lying was kind of mercy I guess because

it stopped me from seeing all the damage that had been done. But my mom saw it right away. She saw all the marks of blood, all the flies that were crawling all over this big old dead cow that was just lying there on their front lawn. She takes me up and away pretty much the moment she saw it so only I caught a glimpse of a super stinky cow but apparently the smell was so bad and I was so disappointed not being able to go to the party that I sort of burst out into tears the moment she loaded me into the passenger seat of her car. It turns out that the birthday kid's parents had tried calling everyone to let them know that the

party was cancelled but had apparently forgotten to let one set of parents know. For me personally, that was the last I heard of it. I don't remember it coming up at school or anything and the party got rescheduled so that made up for the disappointment, and I spent the rest of my life kind of half forgetting it all, but my mom remembered the weird aftermath of the whole thing. The family whose lawn the dead cow showed up on had no idea how it had gotten there, or at least they said they didn't know anything about it. They just woke up one day, and there it was, this big mutilated cow corpse on their front lawn. They said that it must have been dumped there overnight, and they are so freaked out that they called the cops. And the cops then told them the area was a potential crime scene,

in which case the cow couldn't be moved and the party would have to be cancelled. But get this, the main reason why the cops treated it so seriously was that the cow obviously belonged to someone, and since they were expecting someone to make a criminal complaint, they started looking for evidence on who would do such a thing. From what my mom says, it was real fortunate that the cow was lying there the way it was, or I'd have seen that almost all of its body had been ripped up. Mom said it was like someone had lowered it into a shredder or something and then pulled it back out before its whole body could be torn apart. There were some

livestock farms about 10 to 15 miles away, so it wasn't out of the question that a cow had escaped, wandered all the way towards Stapleton, and then gotten attacked by coyotes or something. But then the complaint came in. The farmer was out near Kimball, which was over 150 miles to the west. Cops confirmed when they matched up the serial numbers on the cow's tag but but how the hell did a cow make it 150 plus miles overnight there were rumors that there was some sort of cattle beef no pun intended and by that i mean a disagreement between owners of cattle that had escalated to violence and by then the family whose lawn the cow had got dumped on had nothing to do with the livestock

industry and neither did they have any relatives in the industry either. To everyone's knowledge no one in the neighborhood had any connection to the industry either so people started to wonder if it was a case of mistaken address or something of that nature. Guy abducts a cow, hacks it up and then dumps it on a lawn as a sort of warning. Only they got the wrong lawn, and it caused a truckload of confusion. I guess because it happened on Halloween, that led to a bunch of dumb rumors about it being some kind of supernatural occurrence. You can pretty much guess the kind of things people blamed it on. UFOs, Wendigos, Skinwalkers, you name it. But everyone figured that there had to be a logical explanation to it and that the truth was probably just as gruesome and frightening as any kind of ghost

or goblin. No one figured out exactly what happened, I'd be guessed because they didn't need to. The farmer could just make an insurance claim, the cops didn't have much to investigate, and everyone just moved on after a while, I guess. It's just kind of crazy that all that became so remote to me that I didn't think it was actually real, especially when it's something that many people would never, ever forget. The last time I ever went trick-or-treating was when I was 13 years old. Me and my friends from middle school kind of knew it was the final time, as we talked about not being able to go once we got it to high school. We didn't want to do anything that might get the crap bullied out of us, so

we figured that we better make the most of what was probably our last hurrah. And that's how we came up with what I believed was a galaxy brain plan to get sacks full of leftover candy from all the houses in our neighborhood. All the smaller kids used to go out before dark and would be off the streets by 5.30 at the latest. Then came the kids around our age who were old enough to walk around unsupervised. They'd make their rounds, grab a few handfuls here and there, then they'd generally be off the streets by like 8 to 8.30pm. And that's when we'd strike. In that sweet, sweet window between 8.30 and 9, we could swoop in and scoop up as much leftover candy as possible. We totally convinced ourselves that since it was approaching the end of acceptable trick-or-treating hours, folks would just toss us whatever they had left over instead of trying to find space in their kitchen for 50 plus minibars. This wasn't the

case at all, and if anything, we got less candy than the average trick-or-treater because we made homeowners get off of their butts again when they believed that they were all done for the night. We struck it lucky here and there, so we definitely walked away with a good haul at the end of the night. But then, the night didn't exactly end with us walking away. More like, running away, as fast as our legs could carry us. Because that Halloween night, on my very final trick-or-treat session before retirement, I had the single scariest event of my childhood happen to me. Like I said, we did okay in terms of Candy Hall, but on the way back home, we spotted one odd standing house that we hadn't been to. I won't try to describe all the geography of the neighborhood in detail, but the house was

slightly out of the way from the main residential streets, meaning that there was a chance that they hadn't had as many trick-or-treaters as the other houses and therefore more leftover candy. We walked up the path hoping someone was home only to see that all the lights are on and that the front porch is decorated much like all the other houses we'd stopped at. But unlike all the others, the decorations here were on another level. We'd already seen one place that had this super realistic grave right there on the lawn. Whoever owned the home had cut up a section of the lawn, roughed up the soil a little, then put down a fake headstone before mocking up a skeleton crawling out of the dirt. It was probably one of the coolest pieces of Halloween decorations

I'd ever seen, but like I said, this next house upped the ante considerably. The whole front porch of the house was decked out in fake cobwebs. There was fake police tape over the door, and there must have been four or five different pumpkins dotted around the place. From one spot on the porch, there was a fake skeleton hanging from a rope, and then there was also this mannequin- looking thing that had been propped up against the low wall near where the stairs to the front porch were. It was impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the two big bowls of candy that sandwiched the front door. Each had a sign taped above it that said, help yourselves, and even from halfway up the driveway we could see that they still had a ton of candy in them. I guess that makes it sound like we had sort of eagle eyes or something but they were in colored semi-clear plastic and since the porch was all lit up we could all see that they still had stuff in

them. As you can imagine we just about hit the roof. It was exactly the kind of thing that we were hoping for when we came up with our big galaxy brain plan to nab all the leftover candy. So we then walked up the rest of the driveway rubbing our greasy little palms like rats who got the cheese. But then the closer we got to the porch, the more clearly we were able to see the mannequin looking thing, and the more able to see it we were, the more realistic it looked. The one thing that kept me personally from thinking it was real was the amount of fake blood on the ground next to it. There was no way anyone could have bled that much and still be alive.

We all kind of slowed down as we got close to it and I remember staring as I got closer and closer to the stairs and to it. As I got right up to them, I heard my two friends saying, nah, that's not real, I can tell, it's like movie magic or something. Being the total fool that I am, that lulled me into a false sense of comfort. Because as soon as my foot hit the porch steps, the mannequin raised its head, reached an arm out towards me, and then sort of rasped this ghostly voice. Please, help me. We just ran, as far and fast as we could.

But when we stopped, there was actually a moment of disagreement before we worked out what to do next. I remember being convinced that it was real. I'd seen the guy's face, looked into his eyes, and something just screamed authenticity to me. Either this guy was some expert horror movie extra who decided to play an exceptionally cruel Halloween prank, maybe even for the benefit of some hidden camera, or it was real, and someone desperately needed our help.

My buddy, who thought it was real and someone desperately needed our help. My buddy who thought it was fake kept on saying how it was just some dumb prank that we'd fallen for where Isaiah kept saying that we needed to call 911. This was back before every kid had a cell phone with him at all times so it wasn't like I could just override my buddy and call the cops right there. Instead, I had to override him and run to the nearest house to hammer on the door until someone appeared. I was actually kind of worried that they'd think that it was a prank, but I guess I got across the seriousness of the situation because they went and called the fire department right away. The lady called then asked us to take her to where we'd seen the injured guy and she'd followed us with a bunch of kitchen towels. As soon as we got there and the lady saw that the guy still popped up near

the stairs, she yelled at us to run home to our parents right away. She yelled like we were in trouble but looking back on it, I guess she was just scared and didn't want kids around to see a guy potentially die. We ended up being declared heroes for saving this guy's life. He was all alone at home when he slipped and fell in the kitchen while holding a knife, and the poor guy ended up sort of skewering himself in the process, I guess. I don't know if he just couldn't get to the phone, but he ended up trying to walk out into the street for help, thinking that he could get some trick-or-treaters to call 911, but he couldn't get to the phone but he ended up trying to walk out into the street for help thinking that he could get some trick-or-treaters to call 9-1-1 but he couldn't and he collapsed and then a few minutes later we find him. It was a complete accident but I guess any excuse to celebrate

is a good one and we ended up receiving little hero medals at the Thanksgiving fair that year. Kind of a wholesome end to what should be a scary story I know, but I kind of like that the scariest thing to happen to me as a kid also happens to have a happy ending and not one that haunted me or even traumatized me for years afterwards. To be continued... My name is Martin. I'm from over in the UK and I finally decided to sit down and write up a story of mine that I originally meant to write last Halloween. I ended up procrastinating terribly and didn't get it started in time but this year I'm committed to getting this written up. I've been a fan for a while and I always thought it'd be cool to contribute and hopefully hear my story read out even if it is the story of such a terrible memory. I suppose it'll be a good thought exercise in a way, revisiting something from my

childhood, and it's also given me a reason to reach out to some of my old friends to get their recollections of the event. So without any further blathering, this is the tale of my own personal Halloween horror. Back when me and my old secondary school era group of friends were still knocking around together, we decided to do something for Halloween. We were all 16 going on 17, still very naive, but with tons of misplaced confidence. There were tons of house parties or pub nights and things to go to, but for one reason or another, we couldn't get into any of them. Then as the afternoon bled into the early evening and the sun started to go down, it was looking more and more like if we wanted to have fun, we'd have to make our own.

We managed to pool what little money we could get a hold of and then sent the oldest looking amongst us into an off-license to get some booze. I didn't think it'd work. We tried roughly the same tactics before and our oldest looking mate had been instantly ID'd. So when my old mate walked out of that off-license with a full plastic bag in each hand, we celebrated like we'd just won the lottery. The only drawback was that our mate had come back with three bottles of wine, not beer that we'd asked him to buy It said he'd panicked at the last second and then asked for the red wine because he felt like it made him seem older He'd managed to pick up a few packets of cigarettes too, so as much as the red wine wasn't exactly what we'd been hoping for Our night was basically secured. We could have easily blagged our way

into the house party at this point too as the booze gave us a massive leverage. No one wanted four or five lads turning up to a party empty handed but with wine in tow and with the potential to get more, we'd easily secure an invite or two. But then, as we walked and talked, discussing all of our potential options, we came to a sort of joint conclusion. All the parties that had dodged or danced around inviting us could just bugger off. We had all the makings of a good night, and it made no sense to spread the wine thin when we could just neck it all ourselves.

So instead of chasing girls like we planned to, we grabbed a portable speaker and some firelighters and then headed for this old hangout that we knew of to get some privacy. So a few hours went by, we got our fire going, got the speaker working and then took turns sort of glugging down the wine and trying not to puke. You have to remember, this was one of our first times drinking and we were on the cheapest, nastiest red wine you can imagine. So needless to say, it was like getting drunk on vinegar. Anyway, picture the scene. We're all sat around the fire and since our old hangout was in a tucked away corner of quite a rough piece of parkland, there was no other lights except the fire and what little light was coming off of our janky early 2000s mobiles.

One of us, a lad called Luke, somehow ended up trying to recreate the moments from The Shining, beat for beat, and we're all just laughing, trying to play Shelley Duvall's part to his Jack Nicholson. We were being loud, and I remember that much, but we were being loud because we felt safe. The park was basically deserted after dark, and that's how it ended up being a chill spot for us, a place that we could get some privacy to do all the things our parents or neighbors wouldn't approve of us doing. No one had ever intruded on us before, not even a sniff, so we didn't expect a single soul other than us to be in the park that night. We had completely let our guard down and we paid for it. I remember the scene like it was yesterday. Luke was still doing his Jack Torrance impression,

standing a little back from the fire so that it was only partially lit by the flame's orange glow. All I saw was a shape moving up behind him and after doing a sort of quick mental head count, I realized that it wasn't any of us playing some kind of prank. I looked back up and all I saw was a mask or at least the mask this complete stranger was wearing and then he swung something at Luke's head. It all happened so fast that Luke was on the floor and we were all still reacting to it. Then as the masked person with what appeared to be a big stick started smashing Luke with it when he was down on the ground, we all started to leap up in defense. It was just a gut reaction really, purely because it looked

like we had him outnumbered, but we didn't have him outnumbered and we soon realized just how much trouble we were in. I just remember one of my mates backing off as the masked man swung for him with the stick and then suddenly there were loads of them, coming out of the darkness throwing punches and kicks. Most had their faces covered either with masks or with drawstrings of their hoods pulled tight. Each of us got a good kicking, both trying to fight back and in the process trying to get away. It was complete chaos for a while, just running and tripping and trying to get some distance between us. At one point, right when I saw my other mates running and decided it was best to join them, someone kicked my legs out from under me and then I was trying to get back

up. They bashed my head into the dirt either with a hand or stamping on the back of my head. If it had been concrete they did it on I think I'd have sustained a serious injury but since it was just damp dirt and leaf litter it didn't have much of an effect and somehow I was able to keep running and get away. Now Luke was okay. He did end up spending the night in the hospital but was discharged late the next day with a nasty concussion and some bad bruising. Honestly, we were lucky that that's the worst it got. To this day, I have no idea why those lads attacked us or who they were. For all I know, they could have been people we went to school with,

people in the neighborhood we actually knew. I know the world can be a cruel place, but that's the night that I learned just how cruel it could really be. To be continued... I took my kid trick-or-treating one time, and then swore that she'd be back by curfew every Halloween until she turned 18 because there was no way in hell that I was letting her go anywhere out on that day of devilment. Granted, things didn't go down like that, and I calmed down enough to be chill about trick-or-treating and later costume parties. I'm just curious to know if by the end of this, you think that that would be an overreaction or if you'd be this same level of freaked out as I was. So I took my kid on one of those supervised trick-or-treating things when she was about five. Her school organized it and asked for volunteers among parents, so I volunteered. I didn't volunteer because I was terrified it'd let my daughter out of my sight.

I volunteered to be helpful. I always loved Halloween growing up so I thought that it'd be awesome to relive some of that seasonal spirit with my daughter. I didn't even mind when her teacher told me that it was in the interest of fairness that I didn't oversee the group that included my daughter. They didn't want me to risk favoring my own kid and making sure that she got more candy than the other kids. Some might say that that's a little overzealous, but I understood where she was coming from, so I let my kid go off with some other mom, trusting her to mind my kid as carefully as I'd mind hers. Thirty minutes couldn't have gone by before someone raised the alarm. A kid was missing, and from the description I very quickly worked out that the

missing kid was my own. I don't even think words can touch how terrifying a moment that was for me, so I'm not even going to try. I'll just tell you what I did instead, which was sprint around the neighborhood calling out for my little daughter and doing anything and everything I could not to strangle the mom who should have been watching my kid. In the end, I found her walking out of a front yard, acting all confused as if though she hadn't done anything wrong. I asked her what the hell she was thinking but then hugged her and told her how scared I was. I was just a mess and I felt even worse as my daughter started to cry. The whole thing put a massive damper on the trick-or-treating as it obviously scared the crap out of all the kids seeing me running around and shouting. I felt bad for upsetting them all, but at the same time,

if that dumb lady hadn't lost my kid, then none of it would have been a problem. I was still kind of mad at my daughter, so I was in full punishment mode until just before her bedtime when we got to talking about why she'd walked away from the group into a house that didn't have a trick or treaters welcome sign on it. We posted them ourselves in the days prior to the event, asking families to display them in their windows or on their porches if they wanted to take part. The kids knew to look out for houses with the signs because that meant candy. So when my daughter told me that someone had invited her to go around the back of their home to get some candy there, my ears pricked up. She definitely went through a lying

phase at one point but I quickly learned how to spot her tall tales. This thing about the man didn't sound like one at all and I swear I felt the chill run through me when she mentioned it trust me if she knew that she'd be able to use it as an excuse my daughter would have come out with it first thing to keep herself from getting into trouble but she didn't and that's what made me think that she was telling the truth I brought it up with my husband almost immediately literally as soon as I'd put my daughter to bed. He knew of a website that you could use to check for child offenders in your area. Just hearing those words made me feel sick, but not as sick as I felt when

he searched our area and found a blip right at the address my daughter had been at. We called the police as soon as we were able and long story short, our call resulted in a man going back to prison for violating parole conditions. I'm not a lawyer or anything and I'm not going to pretend to know the laws or statutes that he broke and I didn't go looking him up like my husband did afterwards for the sake of our own sanity. Besides, what's done is done and I don't have to worry about that man anymore. It did ruin me for a few years though. I mean, I was a nervous wreck when it came to letting our daughter go anywhere with anyone and it took me a long time to be able to unlearn all that fear.

But I got there and it was to everyone's benefit because I have no doubt that that man has ruined people's lives before. And the last thing I ever want to do is become another of his victims without there ever having been a crime committed. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro.

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with iGaming Ontario. On the night of October 31st, 1973, nine-year-old Girl Scout Lisa Ann French was walking to a neighborhood Halloween party in her hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Lisa lived with her mother, stepfather, and her newborn half-brother, and since her parents were so occupied with childcare, and the party was only two blocks away at the aptly named Punkin' Place, that allowed young Lisa to walk alone. She departed her family home at around 5.45pm, almost an hour after sunset, dressed as a hobo in a little black hat, green parka, and jeans, complete with blue masking tape over the knees. She had originally planned to walk to the party with a friend named Ann Parker,

and since Ann had managed to get herself grounded in the days prior, knees. She had originally planned to walk to the party with a friend named Ann Parker, and since Ann had managed to get herself grounded in the days prior, Lisa was forced to walk in solitude. As she walked, Lisa noticed that other groups of children were trick-or-treating, and since she was familiar with her immediate neighbors, she decided to follow suit. She first stopped at the home of a classmate, then at the house of one of her elementary school teachers, but the final house Lisa stopped at that night was owned by Gerald Miles Turner. 24-year-old Turner resided at the property with his girlfriend and infant child, and since they lived in such close proximity, he and Lisa were almost certainly familiar with one another.

After seeing her on his doorstep, Turner invited Lisa inside. He explained that he hadn't prepared any bowls of candy from which trick-or-treaters could take a handful, but if she followed him into his kitchen, Lisa was welcome to help herself. The nine-year-old Girl Scout accepted the invitation and reportedly waited patiently while Turner searched for sweet treats. Seconds later, he walked out of the kitchen, leaving Lisa somewhat confused and then moments later, she heard Turner's voice calling out to her from up the stairs. Sweetie, I just found some candy for you, he said, but it's up here, up in my bedroom. Lisa knew Gerald Turner. He'd been a of the neighborhood for as long as she could remember. So when she heard his voice, Lisa walked out of the kitchen and ascended the stairs. What followed is perhaps the most sickening act of

predatory violence I had ever had the misfortune of researching. Even if describing Lisa's death wouldn't immediately get this video demonetized, I wouldn't be in the least bit comfortable describing the moments preceding it. And somehow, the least obscene aspect of the attack also happens to be its most terrifying. You see, Turner didn't intend to end Lisa's life, at least not at the moment she expired. But the fact remains that Lisa was so completely and utterly overwhelmed with terror that she suffered a heart attack before Turner could finish assaulting her. Turner later claimed that when he noticed that Lisa was no longer

breathing, he made a desperate attempt to resuscitate her, but it was too late. His own vile predations had ended her young life before it ever really began. Turner's girlfriend, Arlene Penn, had actually been attending the same party Lisa had been headed for and returned home at 7pm to find her boyfriend acting very strangely. Turner was wearing a bathrobe and implored her not to enter their bedroom or the en suite bathroom, claiming he'd vomited and defecated all over the bed and carpet. It's possible that Arlene did indeed smell something awful coming from their bedroom, so to give her boyfriend some space to clean up and recuperate, she drove over to her mother's house to pay her a visit. Turner rushed into action, stuffing Lisa's lifeless body and clothes into separate bags before driving her remains out to the lakeside suburb of Teichita. There, he dumped her clothes and body into a field just off of McCabe Road, wearing socks on his hands in an attempt to

prevent the transfer of forensic evidence. Once the disposal process was finished, Turner rushed back home and had resumed the facade of suffering from a sudden but violent illness by the time his girlfriend returned from her mother's. Lisa was due to return home at around 7 that evening, but when the hour came and went, her mother started to worry. By 10pm, her parents had contacted the police and were in the process of gathering up an impromptu search party consisting of friends and family that would patrol the surrounding neighborhoods until dawn the next morning. As the days went by, the ad hoc search team was joined by a jaw-dropping 5,000 additional volunteers from all over the Midwestern United States, along with 700 police officers, National Guardsmen, and Lisa's fellow Girl Scouts. It wasn't until four days into the search that a farmer discovered Lisa's remains, and at 11.30am on November 3rd, the search was finally called off.

Her funeral was held on November 6th of 1973 at Fond du Lac's Emmanuel Trinity Lutheran Church. Thousands of the city's residents turned out to pay their respects while the city's Chamber of Commerce posted a $10,000 reward for any information leading to the capture of Lisa's killer. Gerald Turner watched the unfolding grief and even attended a memorial service for Lisa in the company of his girlfriend and child. Since his home lay in the vicinity of the area Lisa was believed to have been abducted from, Turner was always a suspect. But for nine long months, he feigned the same ignorance and grief as his neighbors and insisted that he was an innocent man. Then during the midsummer of 1974, Fond du Lac police invited Turner to take a polygraph test. Turner seemed more than happy to oblige them,

but when the results came back inconclusive, the police increased their focus. When they asked him to provide samples of his body hair, Turner once again seemed happy to cooperate. He believed he'd adequately cleaned down Lisa's corpse, severing all forensic connections between himself and his victim. He was wrong. When confronted with what he believed was concrete evidence of his guilt, Gerald Turner offered a full and frank admission, and on August 4th of 1974, he officially confessed to the murder of Lisa Ann French.

In his shockingly despicable confession, Turner admitted to being highly aroused by the sight of nine-year-old Lisa on his doorstep and that he'd seized the opportunity to do something unspeakably evil. In his own defense, Gerald claimed he'd attempted to resuscitate Lisa upon realizing that she was no longer breathing, but had been interrupted by the return of his girlfriend and child. Despite making such a complete confession, Turner took his chances at a trial by jury. The fact that a child predator believed that they could win over a public opinion, and thus win a lesser sentence of manslaughter, is as ridiculous as it is horrifying. As you can imagine, the jury not only pronounced him guilty, but recommended that he serve the maximum sentence possible under Wisconsin state law.

The state abolished capital punishment back in 1853, meaning execution was never on the table. So instead, the presiding judge sentenced Turner to 38 years for second-degree murder, enticing a child for immoral purposes. Shockingly, despite beginning a sentence of almost 40 years in 1975, Turner first received parole in October of 1992 on account of so-called good behavior. The news provoked mass outrage from communities all over Wisconsin, as well as the wider United States. When Turner was released from the Wappen Correctional Institute and driven to a halfway house over in Milwaukee, local residents turned out to protest the decision to house him in their backyard. Turner required police protection for the duration of his stay, until the decision was made to move him somewhere more

discreet. As both the public and media clamored for justice, state lawmakers proposed a piece of legislation known as Wisconsin Chapter 980, more colloquially known as Turner's Law. Turner's Law would require high-risk offenders to be remanded in mental institutions upon early parole, and it passed unanimously just 18 months later. Thankfully, by this point, Turner had already been sent back to prison following immense public pressure, but it wouldn't be long until he was up for parole again. On January 28th of 1998, a parole board decided that Turner was no longer a violent predator and that he was permitted to begin the second of his mandatory paroles.

Just a few months later, a judge heard how Turner had lost his temper with a caseworker and had threatened to stab her to death during a meeting in his halfway house. Unbelievably, the judge refused to accept that Turner was a continued danger to the public and even backed him in a discrimination case wherein a company known as Waste Management of Madison was forced to either hire him or pay him a large out-of-court settlement. The company opted for the settlement. Following Turner's successful litigation against the company, the Wisconsin State Assembly passed a bill allowing employers to legally discriminate against convicted felons

on the basis of their criminal record without further complaints. Five years later, in 2003, the people of Wisconsin celebrated when it was announced that Turner was to be re-imprisoned for an additional 15 years. One of his parole conditions forbid him from owning or perusing any kind of adult content, either in person or online. So when a search of his home computer revealed a huge stash of adult content, Turner's fate was sealed. It was around this time that a journalist managed to obtain a letter taken from Turner's parole application. Penned by Turner time that a journalist managed to obtain a letter taken from Turner's parole application. Penned by Turner himself, it was addressed to Lisa Ann French and sections of

it read as follows, quote, I doubt that I could ever fully realize the terror you experienced at my hands. I can still see you standing in the doorway with that felt hat beaming at having recognized me. Then I see the delight in your eyes turn to fear as I close the door behind you. The rest of my life will have to live with what I did to you. On the night, I became a monster. I do swear to you on the forfeiture of my life that I will never harm another child. This might give the impression that Turner felt remorse for what he'd done, but another section of the letter cast doubt on his apparent regret. If I had killed you on

some other day, like Valentine's Day, nobody would have gave a damn. Only, that's where he's wrong. The horrifying, predatory assault of a nine-year-old girl is never, ever going to be a story deemed unnewsworthy by anyone in their right mind. Whereas Turner, on the other hand, seems to think that it's nothing but anti-Diluvian suspicion that's earned him such ire. Such comments provide the basis for the campaign to ensure that Turner stays in prison for the rest of his life. He should never be released, said Lisa Ann's mother, Marianne Goering. It's the only way to ensure that he'll never hurt another child. In fact, only when my daughter can come back and be reunited with us should that monster ever see the light of day. Born in Santa Clara, California in 1952, Doreen Rae Erbert was raised by two loving parents in a small, close-knit, and deeply wholesome community.

Even from a young age, little Doreen was described as having a generous and compassionate spirit, and for some, it was no surprise when she opted to pursue a career in nursing. After obtaining the appropriate qualifications, Doreen found work as a physical therapist in a suburb of San Francisco. She found an apartment there, relocated in early 1975, and after a few months worth of settling in, she met a guy named Mike. Mike's full name was William Michael Dennis, and he worked a well-paying job as a paint sprayer at a nearby Lockheed Martin factory. He seemed shy, and the anxiety of talking to a girl as pretty as Doreen exacerbated Mike's slight stutter. He believed the stutter was the reason he had such terrible trouble finding dates, but Doreen thought it was the sweetest thing she'd ever seen. There was this handsome brown-eyed man who thought that she was so pretty he could barely speak, so instead of rolling her eyes and walking away, as so many other women have done before, Doreen was patient. She waited for Mike to pluck up the courage to ask her out on a date, and when he did, she accepted.

Mike couldn't believe his luck while Doreen seemed over the moon and over the course of the next few months, they fell in love and got married in the mid-summer of 1975. Nine months later, in April of 1976, Doreen gave birth to a baby boy named Paul. At first, the couple seemed tired but happy, but as the stress of parenting began to take its toll, the couple's relationship began to break down. Doreen filed for divorce in 1977, and despite Mike's bitter protests, their marriage was quickly dissolved. Custody of their child was split between weekdays and weekends, with Mike being heartbroken that he could only see his boy for just 48 hours at a time. He had relished the opportunity to be a father and felt increasingly resentful of his ex-wife. In Mike's eyes, she had watched him embrace parenthood with a passion, only to snatch it away without any attempt at

reconciliation. On the other hand, all Doreen wanted was to be happy and to provide the best life possible for her son. So, while Mike descended into a deep depression, Doreen married a wealthy carpet store owner named Charles Ebert. In 1979, the newly married couple had a daughter, Deanna, but made it clear to little Paul that he would never be sidelined in favor of his little sister. They were a family, regardless of parentage, and although their situation was an unconventional one, there were no signs of neglect, abandonment, or abuse. Then, in February of 1980, when Paul was just four years old, he decided to go exploring in the backyard. He wandered all around the lawns and flowerbeds until he came to the small but sturdy fence that separated the swimming pool from the rest of the backyard. Paul climbed the small fence with ease

then, unbeknownst to his parents, began walking around the edge of the swimming pool, teetering dangerously close to the water. Then suddenly, the unthinkable happened, and the little boy slipped. Doreen was home at the time of the accident, but had been so occupied with her newborn daughter that she didn't notice when little Paul slipped away from her. By the time she noticed he was missing, it was too late, and as she ran into the backyard, she saw his tiny body floating face down on the surface of the swimming pool. To her credit, Doreen reacted so quickly that after pulling him out of the water, she was able to clear her son's airway before successfully reviving him. It seemed like nothing short of a miracle, but once Paul arrived in a nearby hospital, the most terrible of news was soon to follow.

Doreen broke down when the doctors told her that little Paul was clinically brain dead, and that there was very little chance of a complete recovery. Three days later, she made the decision every mother fears facing, and after one final goodbye, Doreen opted to have Paul's life support turned off. Mike was furious, and laid the blame for his son's death squarely at Doreen's feet. He filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her, but although he managed to get the case to trial in March of 1982, the jury ruled in Doreen's favor and declared Paul's death was a tragic, albeit avoidable, accident. Following the suit's dismissal, Doreen cut off all contact with her former husband. She refused to meet with him, she refused to take his calls, and any envelopes that bore his handwriting were immediately thrown in the trash. There's no doubt that, on some level,

Doreen really did feel responsible for her son's death, but she saw Mike's accusations of murder as little more than an attempt to punish her for divorcing him. Over the next two years, Mike's mental health deteriorated dramatically. His hatred for his ex and her new husband consumed him, poisoning almost every aspect of his life. His performance at work became so poor that he was forced to accept a salary reduction in order to retain employment, and he sought an increasing amount of solace through alcohol and prescription drugs. Yet while Mike sank further and further into the abyss, Doreen bounced back from the tragedy of a lifetime, and after suffering two consecutive miscarriages, she finally announced her third

pregnancy in 1984. Her friends and family were elated, especially when the news came that she was expecting a little boy, and when asked when the due date was, they were told early November, just a few days after Halloween. Almost nine months after the announcement, a heavily pregnant Doreen went trick-or-treating with a four-year-old Deanna. Her husband, Charles, stayed at home to hand out handfuls of candy to the costumed tykes that walked up their driveway. Then when his wife and daughter returned at around 8.50pm, he made a brief trip to a local grocery store to pick up some more candy along with a few beers. Charles had been gone for no longer than a few minutes when Doreen heard a loud knock at the front door. Believing it was nothing but tardy trick-or-treaters, she left her daughter in the ground floor TV room and then went to answer the door. When she opened it, Doreen saw not a group of giddy children,

but a solitary man standing on the doorstep. He was dressed in regular clothing and shoes, but covering his face was an eerie cartoonish bear mask and in his hand was a razor sharp 18 inch machete. Four-year-old Deanna later recalled that the man had roared, I'm going to kill you, before her mother screamed for her to hide behind the couch. Little Deanna did as she was told, her fingertips plugging her ears. It did little to drown out the screams, and then suddenly, there was silence. Charles Everett's trip to the store lasted no longer than 15 minutes, but when he returned home and attempted to slide his key into the lock of his front door,

he discovered it was already open. His blood ran cold as he pushed the door ajar, an ominous silence hanging in the air. Then as he stepped inside, the sight that greeted him was like something from his worst nightmares. His wife lay face up on the carpet before him, surrounded by an unfathomably large puddle of blood. It had soaked into the carpet so heavily that its surface appeared as a swamp of uncoagulated plasma, and at its center lay the lifeless, heavily mutilated corpse of his beloved Doreen. Her killer had cut her to ribbons before they sliced open to her stomach and ripped her unborn son from her womb. To Charles, it appeared as if his defenseless baby boy had been torn from his mother and simply tossed into the next room with a sickening irreverence.

His next thought was for Deanna, but when he heard her reply after calling out her name, the relief must have been indescribable. Somehow she remained perfectly still and silent while her mother and baby brother had been butchered and defiled, yet she remained in a deep state of catatonia for many months afterward. Uniformed police preceded the arrival of ambulance crews, but once the scene was secure, it was visited by a lone San Jose homicide detective named Bert Carroll. When I got there, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before in my life, he later said. It was like a horror movie poster. The door was wide open, there was blood all over the hallway, and sat on a stool outside the porch was a Halloween pumpkin, the kind with a scary face carved into it. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Officer Jamie Saldivar echoed the sentiment saying,

It was bizarre, easily the eeriest call I'd have ever responded to. But what neither man mentioned to journalists was the fact that the killer's mask was lying on the doorstep, just feet away from Doreen's dead body. It, too, was streaked with her blood. After briefly questioning Charles Ebert, officers were informed of the family's rocky history, and from that moment on, Mike Dennis was the murder's primary person of interest. Law enforcement rushed over to Mike's home address, and as they advanced up the driveway, an officer used a flashlight to illuminate the interior of his truck. The driver's seat, steering wheel, and door handle were all drenched in blood. After the officers knocked on Mike's door, he answered them wearing a bathrobe and sporting

wet hair. He seemed more than happy to answer any questions they had and, after inviting them inside, explained away a fresh cut to his hand by claiming it was an accident while preparing food. When informed of his ex-wife's violent murder, Mike barely reacted, and when he was unable to account for his whereabouts for the previous few hours, he was placed under arrest. Following Mike's detention, a thorough search of his residence was conducted by local law enforcement. It was then that officers found a receipt from a nearby hardware store, along with the torn-off tag from an 18-inch machete. But it was only when officers walked into Mike's garage that they realized the extent of his guilt. It seems Mike had taken up woodwork over the previous few years

and had worked his way up from larger to larger project until he was capable of constructing large boxes and containers. He had obviously become quite proficient in his work as when officers saw what he'd most recently been working on, they didn't stop to wonder what they were looking at. Propped against one of the garage walls were two coffins, one labeled Charles and the other labeled Doreen. Mike Dennis stunned law enforcement when he denied all involvement in his wife's murder,

and that shock was compounded when it was determined that there was no concrete evidence linking him to the crime. All the signs point to Mike, but without solid witness testimony or irrefutable forensic evidence, law enforcement had no choice but to release him after 48 hours. They were, however, able to obtain a blood sample from him, and when it was discovered that his blood type matched that of the mysterious third party at the scene of Doreen's murder, Mike was re-arrested on November 5th of 1984. Detectives were able to trace the bear mask found at the Erberts' home to one Mike wore at a Halloween party the previous year. A partygoer even took a photograph of Mike wearing it and was able to confirm that it was indeed him behind the garish

black and brown rubber. Detective Bert Caro attested, I talked to this girl and she goes, last year we went to this party and he was dressed like that. Now crossing my fingers I said, did anybody take pictures by chance? And she goes, oh yeah, the guy took a ton of pictures. If he hadn't been so snap happy, we might never have got him. Mike's trial commenced in July of 1988 and after consulting with his attorney, decided to plead guilty to the murder of his ex-wife. Mike also pled guilty to the murder of her unborn son, but claimed that he had no idea that she had been pregnant at the time of the attack. This is hard to believe as Doreen had been heavily invisibly pregnant during Halloween of 1984. It's likely that the first thing Mike noticed about his ex was the rotund abdomen,

and considering the fetus was torn from her lifeless womb, it's reasonable to suggest that the realization only enraged him further. He languished on California's death row until September of 1999, when he was put to death in the state's gas chamber. When news of his death reached their ears, Charles and Deanna Scott say that for their sake of their own mental health, they worked hard to find it in their hearts to forgive Mike Dennis. I want him to know that we survived, Deanna said. I want him to know that we're making it. I want him to know he hasn't conquered us. Friends went to Mexico for a vacation and asked me to house sit and take care of their dogs while they were gone. They pay me $40 a day to just sit around and let the dogs out when they need to go.

I am disabled, so that kind of helps a lot. This was on a semi-rural area and houses are roughly a quarter mile apart. Police have to come from town 15 miles away and response time can be well over an hour and I always take my pistol with me. It's always been quiet when I've stayed there. This time was different though. I was in the shower when the dogs started barking and growling. They are big, large German shepherds and one is actually police trained.

The owners loan him to the county as a drug dog and if you tell them to be quiet, they obey. This time they didn't, so I was on high alert. I shut off the water and looked out the window. I didn't see anything, but when I walked out of the bathroom, I saw a shadow go across the bedroom window. They have lights around the house that stay on all night. I whispered to the dogs to hush and they did. And that's when I heard a man's voice. I couldn't make out everything that he was saying, but I distinctly heard two words, come around. So I am sure that there was more than one person.

I ran into the living room with my pistol and saw that the door handle was turning. I yelled that I have a gun and that I'll use it, and I heard feet begin to run away. I was telling Siri to dial 911 and got the county sheriff fast. She said that there were two cars on another call not far away, but it would take about 20 minutes for them to get there, and that's better than the usual hour I suppose but I was pretty shaken. I explained that I was on a farm and would have to go down to the road and unlock a cattle gate to let them in and to please tell the officers that I would be carrying a pistol and please don't shoot me by mistake because I'm not going outside the house without it. The dispatcher said, oh no, do not go out there without your gun.

I'll tell them. The one good thing about living in a red state, I suppose, and she asked if I could see the road, and I can, so she said to wait in the house until I saw blue lights. I hung up and called my friends in Mexico. Their camera footage can be downloaded via app, and they said that they would go through it while I waited for the cops. I locked the house and went down to the gate when

the police arrived. They searched the whole place including the barn but didn't find anyone and while they were looking my friends texted me the camera footage. There was a man on the porch. Unfortunately the cameras were not angled to get a shot of his face and it of course was dark out and I still think that there was more than one creep because of what he said, the come around part. The police were very nice and said that they had passed a man on a bike on the way which is strange for this area especially at night and went to look for him but that's all that they could do. They took a full report, but never caught the creep. My husband came and stayed with me the rest of their trip. One of their neighbors said that he found a tent and some gear in the woods

a few weeks before, so somebody was living back there, maybe a homeless person from town. I have house set again since then, and it was quiet. They're going away for Christmas and I'll be there again. A lot of people ask me if I would have shot the creep had he broken in. Yeah, absolutely. I would be sorry that I had hurt somebody but if it's them or me, well you know the rest? 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. I work at a hotel. A middle-aged man has been staying there for weeks, and at least a few days a week I find him at the elevator, but it's around the same time every day and I started finding it strange. He always tries to chat but his charisma is just off. It feels

forced and awkward and alongside this, his eyes are abnormally large and kind of reminding me of Elizabeth Holmes. If not the elevator, I find myself interacting with him when he finds me cleaning the rooms. Once I was going to the grocery store and he was heading in the same direction, except he crossed the street without looking or waiting, forcing the cars to wait for him. So far every encounter I have with him I've found just really strange, but we'll go on. And I suspect that he's abusing drugs, but it's not my business or place. Until conveniently when the hallway was empty and I was the only worker, this is the day that he

chose to buy me food from one of the restaurants nearby. He tells me that I work hard and deserve to eat, but the food was unwrapped and he was already eating some of it. I tell him no, and he insists again and again until I tell him that I already ate and was full, and then finally he gives up and walks away and I didn't see him the rest of my shift. I don't know what to think of any of this besides some major red flags. I was always an extremely small and sickly child. I looked young for my age. My family and I lived out of town about 8 miles. Our little community was next to a highway.

The school bus would drop me off two blocks away from home. And one day I noticed a red truck following slowly behind me. So slow that I figured that they were just looking for a house or something. I ignored it and walked to my house and that was the end of that. Consistently though, this truck would follow slowly behind me and after a couple of days of this, I walked into my house. I was always the first one home and looked out the window. Inside was an older man in a black lab. He was staring at me, idling inside of his truck, and then would pull away. I decided enough was enough, so I told my parents. Of course, my sister was quick to jump in that I was lying. I had a habit of telling stories, but my mom

thankfully believed me. She drove me to the bus stop the next morning. The red truck was there, across the street at the gas station, pointing toward the bus. I got on the bus and my mom decided to drive around the truck and she described the scene. The man was disheveled and dirty, hunched over in his seat just staring at the bus. His license plates were caked in mud, so she couldn't make them out. It freaked her out so much that she called the police and the school. I went to school and was quickly pulled into the office, and the man had been spotted at the school's property, sitting, idling in his truck. That day I rode the bus home, and this time the truck was parked alongside the street. I would have to walk past this man's

driver's side door to get home and I debated, considering running for it. Apparently this man was getting desperate now that he was spotted. A police car showed up and I talked to that policeman. They went to go talk to the man and he quickly pulled away from the curb and took off down the highway and I never saw him again after that. But I don't believe that he was ever caught for anything illegal. But because of this experience, I'm extremely guarded and paranoid with my own daughter and her soon-to-be sibling. The world is a terrifying place these days and children go missing so easily. I don't like to think about if I had been grabbed. I wouldn't be here typing this. My kids wouldn't exist and I was fortunate,

but many children in my major US city. I made the move here during the pandemic, and as there wasn't much going on, I made the habit of having some beers and food at the local lakeside park near me. You see and meet all sorts of different types of people. At the beginning of this year, on a day that wasn't too wet or cold, I made my way down to the lake. Brought a sandwich, a couple of beers and was listening to a true crime podcast. I found a little group of trees pretty dry and pretty out of the way, and was listening to a true crime podcast. I found a little group of trees, pretty dry and pretty out of the way. I was hard to spot. So when I noticed this man

walking toward me, I knew that he was going to ask for a cigarette. Even from a distance, he seemed weird, so I thought, I'll give this idiot a cigarette so he doesn't get all aggro about it and let him be on his way. And sure enough, this MF-er offers me some Doritos from a bag opened sideways in exchange for a cigarette. I say no to the chips, but tell him that he can just have one. Just get him to go away and be done with it. He proceeds to introduce himself and we launch into a meandering conversation. He's weird and I can't shake the feeling that this dude is just off, but the conversation itself is pretty normal. I don't want to make this guy mad or anything when there's not a lot of people around and about two hours later, after talking about all sorts of stuff, I finally excuse myself and leave. Less than a week later, I'm having a post-work beer at a bar,

not too wet to go to the lake when I hear a voice. I look up, and I kid you not, there he is. I tell myself, oh god, if this dude tries to corner me again to talk, I'm going straight to the bartender to get him off my back. I'm here to chill, not chat. It doesn't get to that as he whines about the TV, the music, the price, to the point that the bartender kicks him out before he notices me. When he did get angry, he got really aggressive and was ready to fight. I just knew that he was that kind of guy. A few weeks later, the bartender tells me a story. He had run into an old-time regular who seemed frazzled. He explained that while walking into the park, he saw some guy who recognized him. Hey, you're so-and-so, the regular from the bar back in the day. The regular denied

it and said that he didn't know what this guy was talking about. Why? Because turns out, 30 years ago, this idiot abducted a woman, kept her alive long enough to make sure that she told him the right info to make ATM withdrawals with her bank card, killed her, and dumped her body. He got caught because he was driving her car around with her blood all over the back seat, making maximum daily withdrawals from the same ATM every day. When he got caught, he bragged about how they'd never find the body, and they never have. The bartender and I were able to corroborate this because we found some articles online about the murder, mugshot and all, and the dude looked 30 years younger, sure, but it was definitely him. About three years ago, I was 38 weeks pregnant.

My husband and I lived in what we called our village. It was two dead-end streets off of a highway with forests beyond the ends of the roads and a small local store at the corner of one street. We called it the village because our trailer park neighbors were my aunt, uncle, and cousins trailer and then my husband's brother and nieces. Then my grandma's house was on the next street over. My other aunt, uncle, and cousins lived with her at the time and my husband and I were 21 then. My best friend Ray was visiting from college and had spent the night with me. The next day we decided to walk up my street, down the highway past the store,

then down my grandma's street and back through the woods to my house. This was to try to get labor started as my pregnant belly was huge and my back hurt often. We were talking while I hobbled with her down the highway when a white truck rode by rather slowly. I knew the speed limit was 55 and this dude had to be going like 30 miles per hour. Through the driver window I saw a bald white man maybe in his 50s rubbernecking at us. At this time it looked like there might have been someone else in the passenger seat. The truck was kind of old but I didn't know the year, make, model or see the plate.

Ray was talking and unbothered until I said, Hey, that guy just went by really slow. I don't think that was anyone I know. She replied with something like, Oh, I didn't even notice that. We were halfway to the store less than two minutes later when we saw him coming back from the other direction, and I said, That's him again. Get in the grass. Since we were on what would have been his right side, we went down the slope of grass off the road. We're still in front of people's houses because the section of highway is lined with residences between the dead end streets. He passes us slowly again and when I turn to look behind us, he is slowing down even more, finds his spot and starts to turn the truck around.

I told Ray to run, so we ran. I was doing the best that I could being super pregnant. We thought about going to the store but decided to head for my grandma's up the other street instead. Her house was up the hill at the end but it wasn't a long run. When we got up the hill, I looked back again to see that his truck was pulling into the store parking lot. We continued to run, got to my grandma's where she and my aunt were sitting at the table and told them what had just happened. My aunt made a police report. I was afraid to at first, thinking that maybe I was being paranoid. What if it was someone I knew and they were just trying to say hi and maybe it was just some

huge waste of the police time. Turns out that there have been other reports of a man creeping around the neighborhoods. Someone in another trailer park down the highway reported that her kids were outside playing when a man emerged from the woods trying to lure one of them to him. They hollered for their mom and supposedly she came out and threatened him so he ran off. It continues. A few more times we think that we see his truck but are not sure if it's him since one of the residents also has a white truck. My family had yet to see the truck so they couldn't identify it. At some point when I wasn't home, a few of my cousins were playing outside. Their ages ranged from 10 to 15. This time the truck came rolling down our little street past them and he turned around at the end, came back up,

and stopped next to them. They said that he was trying to lure my 11-year-old cousin to the truck but he said no and they all ran back to my aunt's house. We had talked with the children about what was going on in the neighborhood lately. One more thing happened before the report stopped though. I had my baby at 40 weeks. My husband, his friend, the baby, and I were home. The baby was about a week old. We got a call from my aunt at grandma's house that they had seen the man real close and personal. My two female teen cousins were in their room. It was getting dark out but for some reason my cousin went to open the blinds of the window and there was the man, squatting on the AC unit

staring at them. They screamed and he jumped off and ran into the woods behind the house. My aunt called the police. My husband and his friend later went out with guns and flashlights to search for him, but didn't find him. I believe that he was parking his truck somewhere and then stalking houses from the forest. My husband and I actually used to walk through those woods and never had any issues as it was private land that we had permission to walk on. It also seems that this man did not have a preference for age or gender. He was looking for anyone he could get for whatever

sick reason. There had been police sent to patrol the highway or sit on the side of the road waiting, keeping an eye out for him throughout those weeks, but they never caught him. I still wonder sometimes if he was someone from out of town and hope maybe somewhere he gets busted before something truly bad happens. But we might never know. So at around 12ish AM, after I had gotten off of work, my boyfriend and I were watching TV and had just put out a blunt when there's a knock at the door. We both look at each other in confusion when a second round of knocks goes off. He gets up off the couch, looks out the peephole and recognizes it's a woman who talked his head off when he was checking out these apartments before moving in.

She's as he describes, probably in her 50s and very annoying. He sees her every morning when he's going to work and she always waits for him to leave first before driving off and he reluctantly opens the door as I take the paraphernalia out of sight. I can hear her voice but she's speaking incoherently until he apparently deciphers heat and not working, to which he says, your heat's not working? She says yes and asks him to look at it when our cat walks out the door so he closes to pick her up. The lady begins walking upstairs so he brings the cat back in and follows. He sees the woman standing there as he reaches the top of the steps and from her doorway she says, never mind, it's working. Meanwhile, all the lights in her apartment were off, pitch black. She then says, you can still

come in and take a look if you want. And he says no way and decides not to wait around for anything else weird to happen, so he turns around and descends down the steps, returning to our apartment where he sat in silence for five minutes trying to piece together what just happened before regaling me with the story I just told you. Fast forward to about 1.30 to 2 a.m. My boyfriend is asleep now when I hear steps coming down the stairs and then, you guessed it, knocking, but very faint this time. I know it's not on my door, so I look out the eye hole and there she is again, knocking on my neighbor's door,

yelling more incoherent words for a solid five minutes. Eventually, she just walks away with no answer, but not in the direction of the stairs to her apartment. I hear her walk back upstairs maybe an hour later. Strange. Fast forward to now, she's knocking on our door at 3am, to which of course she gets no answer, but I'm also looking out of the peephole, and I can see her mumbling to herself as she knocks. She walks away like before, the opposite way of the stairs, and I didn't hear her go back upstairs until 10 minutes ago as she stomped her way up there, obviously very mad. Just a very odd experience I wish I didn't have in the middle of the night while stoned. I'm going to guess early dementia or maybe even substance abuse. No update as this happened Friday night. My boyfriend went to his car to go to work Monday morning and noticed a nail driven into the side of his tire.

I'm not saying it was her who did this out of rage due to her unanswered knocks, but it was very convenient as he didn't drive all weekend so there's no telling when it happened. He did however call our complex about the knocking and yelling at all hours of the night. Update 2. It's Thursday now, 1.46am almost a week later. Remember how I said my boyfriend normally sees her every morning on his way to work? He hasn't seen her once this entire week. Her car sat in the same spot as well.

And also we haven't seen a single light from her apartment, not when he gets home at 8pm, nor when I get home at 11pm. I'm going to see if I'm able to call in a wellness check on her in the morning because I have a feeling something isn't right, and I'll continue updating if anything comes about. A few weeks ago I was watching the news and one of the stories reported that a teacher from a prominent private school had just been convicted on multiple accounts of child abuse and the victims included his children as well as students. The report of his arrest and allegations had been suppressed until the trial was over, however, was now being made public. The reporter also referenced that the defense lawyers argued for a reduced sentence on the basis that the teacher had also been abused by his father when he was a child. When the name and photo of the teacher was shown, I almost choked. It was Cameron, who was one of my best

friends from primary school. I couldn't believe it. In primary school, who was one of my best friends from primary school. I couldn't believe it. In primary school, I was best friends with two other boys, Cameron and Wilson. We finished primary school in 1995, and whilst they were both sent to the same high school, I was sent to a different school and we therefore lost touch after that. We would often sleep over at each other's houses, either the three of us or just two of us, and I started to recall memories I had hitherto completely forgotten, also involving Cameron's father. I really don't remember things clearly, but I remember different incidents at various sleepover nights at Cameron's house. Cameron and I would be changing into our PJs

before bed and his father would come in and talk to us. I know it sounds warped but I still remember thinking that he was doing this because he was treating us like grown-ups. I think this might have been because my family were extremely prudish with all of that and I must have felt that this was kind of an adult thing and he was therefore treating us like grown-ups by having a normal conversation while we did that. Now I know it sounds foolish but I was around 9 or 10 when this happened and just completely innocent. I remember this was the mid-90s and whilst we knew about stranger danger, we didn't consider parents to be strangers, you know, and no one ever talked about abuse. I also remember times when Cameron and I would be taking a shower,

one after the other, and he came into the bathroom to talk to us. I also clearly remember that I saw his father actually nude once and he entered the shower as I was leaving it. This is probably the clearest memory because it was the first time that I had seen a grown-up without any clothing on and that his nakedness was fully visible, and he was just standing close to me. Only now, as an adult thinking back to the experience, did I realize that he was putting himself quite deliberately on display. I just remember him sort of standing there openly before he entered the shower. I did have a vague memory that he asked Cameron and I to go downstairs, and that Cameron's mother

and sister were entering the door downstairs but as I said none of these memories were very clear. I hadn't thought about any of this for years and it dawned on me how innocent I was and that I didn't realize that his behavior was totally inappropriate. I'm not saying that families who are more liberal with all of that kind of stuff are doing anything wrong, but knowing now that Cameron's lawyer said that he was abused by his father, I started to feel sick and overwhelmed by anxiety as I tried to work out whether those experiences were linked, and if there were any more experiences that I perhaps couldn't recall. I really wanted to reach out to Wilson to see if he would be willing to discuss it.

I hadn't spoken to him since we were 12, more than 25 years ago, but I fortunately found his profile on Facebook. I messaged him to let him know who I was and name the school and year that we finished. Hey, this is Ryan and we were best friends in primary school. I'm not sure if you saw this link, but our other friend Cameron was just convicted of child abuse. I know we haven't been in touch since we were kids but I am hoping that you would be open to have a chat with me. I'm just remembering some things from my childhood involving Cameron's father. I left my mobile number and waited for his response. Wilson responded the same day, saying,

Oh my god, I saw this story too and I'm really glad that you reached out. I've been feeling so sick about all of this and this has opened up a lot for me too. Wilson said that he would call that night and when he called, we ended up speaking for two and a half hours. His memory was stronger than mine but that's probably because the poor guy had more to remember. He said that he was abused many times by Cameron's father during those same years. The sequence of events was almost identical to my memories. On the first nights when we slept over, Cameron's father started entering the room when the boys were changing before bed. He then started entering the bathroom whilst he was showering and he eventually entered the shower, which is when the abuse started.

He said that Cameron would often be there when it happened but had no memory of me being there. And this went on for a couple of years and ended in the first year of high school when he turned 13. And it was around this age that he actually started to become aware that what his father had done was wrong, and only then he felt comfortable about it. He stopped talking to Cameron around that time and they fell out of touch. Wilson never reported it or told anyone, however, entered into therapy for some time when he was an adult as he tried to process what he had experienced. I still don't know if I remember that day in the shower accurately, however, if Cameron's mom had unexpectedly arrived home, that probably saved me from

suffering the same abuse. I had no idea how close I came to experiencing things that could have completely turned my life around. It shocks me to remember my innocent child's mind having no awareness that anything was wrong, and it would have been so easy to have taken advantage of that naivety. I'm still wondering if I had suppressed anything more that might have happened and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it so I will book into therapy to try and work through it. I have changed names in this story as Wilson still hasn't told anyone and I don't want anyone reading to sort of piece this together but the entire experience has shaken me so much. I'm glad that there is more awareness about abuse

and people are more open with their children but please, please educate and protect your kids. I only know how easy it is for predators and groomers to take advantage of children. For a bit of context, I work at a gas station in the backwoods of Tennessee and that's where this happened. Last night when I clocked in at 8, the store was completely dead. I figured it was going to be a pretty easy night because the road this station is on is not the main road. Actually, it used to be up until about a decade ago when a new freeway was built. This led basically every business that was here to pack up and leave their old building

abandoned. Thanks to this, there are a lot of abandoned buildings on this stretch of road that local druggies sort of tend to claim as their own. Anyway, at around 11, I only had about an hour left on my shift and so I figured that I should actually get some work done instead of just sitting around and doing nothing. I'm 18, so I work the shift alone, which is nice because it means I can do pretty much whatever I want. This is normally pretty great because I can do whatever I want so long as I get what I need to get done finished. I noticed that we were almost out of barbecue chips so I'd need to go get them from our storage space which was for some reason in the basement of the station. I've always hated going down there just because it gives me the creeps. Why the owner decided to store everything down there is beyond my comprehension.

I got about halfway down the steps before something fell on the other side of the room, and it sounded like footsteps were coming my way. I sprinted up the stairs and locked the doors to the basement, panicking like a madman the entire time. When I got back upstairs, I went behind the counter to the store computers so I could check the security cameras. I flicked over to the one that looked into the basement and there was this guy, just standing there, smiling up into the camera. He had a look of absolute insanity in his eyes, but he didn't look like the average junkie in the area. He was clean shaven and dressed in what looked to be jeans and a button up of some kind. Honestly, if he'd walked into the store, I wouldn't have bat an eye, but because he was down there and because he was just looking into the camera,

it shook me to my core. I called the store owner at first and he was pretty mad that I had called him in the middle of the night but once he had heard how freaked out I was, his tone quickly changed. He told me that he'd be there in 15 minutes and just lock the main door to the store and make sure that the man didn't go anywhere. I asked if I should call the police, but for some reason he didn't want me to do that just yet. I locked up the entrance to the gas station and went back to looking at the man. He was still just staring at the camera. About three or so minutes of him staring at me later and he walked out of

view of the camera. My boss showed up soon after, armed with a shotgun and when I let him in, immediately he went to the basement. I went with him just because I felt safe with there being another person there and all we found was nothing. My boss ultimately clocked this up to me being tired and hallucinating that the man existed, but I know what I saw. And this had me scared beyond comprehension as I had to clock back into work in a few hours and I'm really military brat. My second tour coming to Japan, so I think that I don't really have to worry about my safety. Never had problems here during the first tour. I was 13 at the time. No one is home and I decided to go to the convenience store right around the corner. I do my shopping and notice a guy at the end of the aisle glancing over at me, but over and over. He had baggy worn down black clothes,

very pale, long hair, looked like he hadn't slept for days and was super, super skinny. I quickly look away and just go to the next aisle. And he does the same, but not even in a subtle way. It was like we were playing some type of tag or something cause he was jerking and darting to whatever aisle I had rushed to. Stupidly I just hurry and pay for my stuff and leave and I thought that he didn't follow me because my head is turned to make sure that he doesn't come out of the store too. I relax after I turn the corner. Literally just minutes before I'm able to get to my house, I hear footsteps behind me, and I freaking lock eyes hard with the guy. He's all wide-eyed, and it just scared the life out of me, so my dumb idiot self proceeds to just speedwalk to my house. He did the same. As I close my door, I see him

speedwalk past, still wide-eyed, staring into my face, scared for the rest of that month since he knew where I lived. I'm 18 now and I still am in Japan, different house, and luckily I never saw that weirdo again. 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. Last year I was on vacation in southern Europe with a large group of friends. We have been there a while and always took an Uber from our rented house to the city which had very nice bars and clubs. The thing with Uber is it allows very cheap and flexible transport but it also opened up the door to a lot of creeps. I've had Uber drivers who were super cool but also extremely drugged up road ragers who drive like maniacs and think they're impressive. And it's always the worst once an attractive woman sits in the car. It feels like a lot of total creeps think, now that I have her here in this situation where she can't flee, she is forced to talk and be nice to me. And for that

very reason, the guys of our group always use their phone to call the Uber so no creep picks the ride specifically because a female name popped up. And some of my friends even use male fake names because of that. But the guy we had that day was by far the worst. It's a late evening, an Uber picks us up and drives me, a 27-year-old male, another 27-year-old male, a 25-year-old female, and a 24-year-old female to the desired old town where we plan to go clubbing and drinking. While driving, the driver constantly looks at the two women in the back seat via the mirror They only told me this afterwards He kept starting conversations but basically only addressed the girls who left answering to the guys

Who gave short, non-detailed answers Essentially signaling that we, one, don't want to talk And two, don't think he needs to know our plans. To us, he seemed way too pushy and he wasn't really big on hygiene, giving off the classic, this is exactly the scenario why we don't like booking Ubers vibe. Meanwhile, we wouldn't wait to arrive at our destination and get out of this uncomfortable but not super horrible situation. But that situation did not feel great when this guy didn't stop on the road, but instead pulled into a parking spot. He started fumbling with his phone and we're just like, alright weird, but let's get out and left the car. To our surprise, the guy

then turned the car off and got out as well. We saw that red flag and just started to walk away towards the bar area of the town without saying a word Cars can't enter the old town After 40 feet, once we reached the gates We stopped because this was the meeting spot for the other half of our group Who took a separate Uber And we found out that this guy was following us and stopped as well You know the classic circle people form when talking, where one guy is just

standing next to it because people don't let him in? Well, we did that with him. We started making conversations about how long the others will take to get there, where they are right now, etc. And this guy keeps throwing in comments like he's part of the posse. Oh cool, even more people. This must be a great evening. And this was in really broken English too. And then we texted our friends in a group chat that we were changing the meeting place to this bar because the Uber driver is following us around and we want to lose him. So one of us started leading the group at a quick pace through the streets. They are very small, lots of people, high old town buildings all around them. We made turns at every corner trying to lose this guy but he still followed us. Finally we reached

this big plaza where there were hundreds of people closely together basically queuing to enter the narrow street up ahead. We pushed through like rude douchebags and successfully lost the guy. Finally we could head straight to the bar after our detour and linked up with the other part of our group. Two hours passed, life was all good, and we decided to head to another bar a bit further away because the drinks and prices kind of sucked in this one. We had two drinks at that bar, and guess who walks in through the door and stands next to the table? That guy. And he says, hey guys. At this point, a friend, a 28 year old male who was good at communicating and frankly quite big, tells the guy that we want to keep to ourselves and have no interest in hanging out with him. Please leave us alone, man. Fortunately, the guy says no problem and leaves.

Unfortunately, at 3am, while dancing in the crowd at a club, the same guy announced his presence by tenderly pressing his body against the back of one of the girls, whom he had been staring at through the mirror in the car. The girl's boyfriend recognizes the guy, gets angry as heck, grabs him by the collar, and essentially tells him that if he keeps following us, he'll get the life kicked out of him. A bouncer sees this and approaches them. I start talking to the bouncer, who was super annoyed by anyone intervening at first, but after hearing how this guy stalked us from his car to this club, he just asked the Uber guy a few questions and then proceeds to just throw him out.

We stayed a bit longer than we wanted, in hopes of him not waiting for us, and after that, we reported the guy for being a creep in the app and called another Uber, which thankfully was not him. I'm a woman in my 30s, caring for my elderly parents, so staying in a downstairs room in my childhood home at the moment. The window faces the main street which is an average residential street in a fairly quiet area. The bed faces the window. I often leave the window open at night since I need it to be cool to sleep and I haven't really worried about it since there's a cabinet with an aquarium in front of the window area, not blocking the window from view and I can reach to open it and close it, but it would make it difficult for someone to climb in. My dog, Sable, also always sleeps in the room with me. While she's a sweet-natured, medium-sized dog who doesn't look

the least bit threatening, she's a fantastic guard dog in that she's always alert to any noises and will stand her ground and bark and growl if she senses a threat, so I've never really worried about the open window. After tonight, I won't be able to do it again. It started at maybe 3.30 to 4am sometime. I was awake, since I care for my parents, and I often have disrupted sleep patterns and I'm awake at odd hours. I was reading a book and heard Sable growl, really low and really deep. Then she jumped off the bed and began pacing a bit, looking up at the window before jumping up at the cabinet by the window, barking.

I shouted, Hey! We're calling the police! The dog will bite! Just in case there was someone there. Anne went to look out the curtains to the side. I didn't see anything. I pulled the curtains closed and made sure to pull the right curtain over and then drew the left side curtain, the one that covers the open part of the window, all the way over covering the right side curtain too,

tucking it down so any wind wouldn't be able to move it. I wasn't really alarmed then. It's a fairly quiet residential street, but there are foxes around that we sometimes hear, and occasionally someone passing by or the neighbor's gate next door will make Sable growl or bark. But she doesn't usually react the way she did this time. She'll usually growl, but stay in the bed, and her reaction was much stronger than normal, and I thought that even if it was someone scoping out the open window to potentially burgle, they'd see now that the room was occupied by a person, a dog, and would go find an easier target, but mainly I guessed that it was just a random noise that she'd heard outside. I was wrong. It was a good half hour or more, after I'd relaxed and thought that I might doze off soon, that I heard her growl again. A really serious, deep and low growl, and I listened,

again thinking that it might be foxes or something. But I heard what sounded like deep, horror movie breathing noises, like the heavy breathing sounds that a pervert makes down the phone to a stalking victim in a film. I sat up, looked up at the window, and my heart stopped. The curtain had been pulled back and lifted to the bottom like someone was peeking under it and I could still hear the heavy breathing, so I shouted, hey, again, and moved from the bed to the side of the window and I could still hear the heavy breathing so I shouted hey again and moved from the bed to the side of the window so I could see past the curtain and saw the figure of a man moving away from the window to the right towards the front door and the exit of the front

garden. Too dark to make out features or clothing it was just a dark male figure. Shaking, I immediately thought that since I knew he'd move away and wasn't at or under the window, I reached and pulled it shut, grabbed my phone and called the emergency services. One thing that creeps me out in hindsight is that it would have taken a few seconds for me to move from the bed to the side of the window, and that was after I'd shouted and he knew that he'd been seen. But he must have stayed there even knowing that I'd seen him until I moved the curtain and could see out then he moved away. The heavy breathing also had to be deliberate, it was so loud like someone was trying to frighten me. While on the phone with police I went around

the ground floor in the house turning lights on, making sure the rest of the house was still secure, and it was. Very careful to lock doors and all the other windows at night and everything looked undisturbed. Two patrol officers came shortly before 5am and took the report. They suggested asking the neighbors if they have camera footage and to let them know of a potential prowler in the area tomorrow and they went to drive around the area saying that they'd be wanting to know what someone was doing wandering around at 5am, the time the police arrived anyway. Since the dark meant that I only saw the shape of a person, no real description, I doubt they can do much. I couldn't even be 100% certain that it was a man, but the breathing and the figure that I saw instantly made me think male. The outline of his head looked smooth, so either bald or wearing a

tight cap, and height would have been average, 5'8 to 5'10. I'm still shaken, but feeling angry and violated and wishing that we had camera systems now, and I'll be looking into that. I never thought anything like that would happen. I don't have any enemies, no recent exes, no one I know of harboring any grudges. Since I'm caring for my folks full time now, I'm not out socializing or making any enemies, nor are my elderly and disabled parents. I'm at the wrong side of 35 and living in jeans or joggers and t-shirts. No makeup or fussing with hair most of the time, so not a likely target for a peeping Tom pervert. If it wasn't for the fact

that it was my dog who alerted me to something both times, I'd wondered whether I was half asleep and dreamed it, that I'd imagined it. I've had hallucinations once as the result of a bad reaction to an antidepressant but that was more than a decade ago. Hasn't happened before or since and I learned how to test my reality in times that I was worried about whether something really happened or not from a psychologist and when I asked how I could ever trust my own senses again after that reaction to the meds. They said that to be sure something was real, to see if other people can see or hear the thing too, or if it's a noise or voice outside, can I see someone or something

that explains the noise? If so, it's not likely to be a hallucination if both oral and visual perceptions match up. The dog sensed that someone was there first and I heard and then saw someone. I wasn't dreaming or imagining it. I don't use drugs and almost never drink and am scientifically minded and don't believe in ghosts and while I love a good horror film, I'm rarely freaked out by them anymore. I'm just too old and too cynical. It happened last night at around 7.30pm, so it was already dark outside. My friend and I, both 22-year-old females, were about two-thirds of the way through our 16-hour drive back home from Salem, Massachusetts. I really needed a piece, so we stopped at a rest area in eastern Pennsylvania. I usually avoid rest areas, but it looked nice enough and

I didn't have any bad feelings about it. We walked in and the only other person inside was an older man, probably mid to late 60s, standing by the vending machines talking on his phone. We went past him across the room and into the bathroom. We were in there for a good 10 to 15 minutes because she wanted to pop a couple pimples. When we were finished, we walked back out laughing about something one of us had said. The man was still standing there, but he wasn't on the phone anymore. He stared and smiled at us in what we both thought was a creepy way the entire time it took us to get to the door to exit the rest area. We started running back to my car which was about six parking spaces from the door, still laughing but also a little freaked out.

We were about to get in the car when I remembered my boyfriend wanted us to check the oil on the way home since it was such a long drive and my car had been having some slight issues. I considered waiting until the next time that we needed to stop for gas but decided to just get it over with. As I was checking the oil, the man from before along with another slightly younger man we hadn't seen left the rest area. They both started walking towards us with the younger one coming head on on the sidewalk and the older one kind of going diagonally toward the driver's side of the car. This was odd because there were no other cars past mine.

The only cars that I could see were on the other side of the lot closer to the building. My friend and I looked at each other and bolted for the car doors. But then I realized that I was still holding the dipstick so I cursed and we had to run back over and lift the hood back up. Then we hurried into the car and locked the doors just as they were approaching. We watched as the younger man walked slowly past the car, staring in at us with a blank face. It continued walking down the sidewalk for a while before pausing for a second and turning around to come back toward us. The older man, still just sort of smiling, got within a few feet of the driver's side door then turned and walked past us to the other side of the parking lot I backed out and once I straightened the car and started pulling forward to leave the rest area

We saw that he had moved to the middle of the road and was standing there with that same unnerving smile But now he was motioning for us to stop I drove past him because uh no way. We watched in the mirrors as both men got into cars on the other side of the parking lot closer to the building and we spent the next couple of hours shaken up and blabbing about what could have happened. I'm not sure what their intentions were but there can't be any good reason to approach two women like that at a rest area. I tried telling myself that maybe they were going to ask if I needed help with her car troubles, but I was very clearly just checking the oil, and it doesn't make sense why the younger

man would walk the complete opposite direction from his car and go so far down the sidewalk. I'm not really sure. 5 years ago, my friend and I, an 18-year-old male, decided to drive up to Montreal. We ended up staying in an Airbnb in an affluent Jewish neighborhood outside the city. On the first night, we headed to our local train station to get to downtown Montreal and decided to get drunk and look for weed there. We met a nice fellow who sold us some but then realized five minutes later that the weed mysteriously disappeared so we went back to the guy and asked if we could buy some more. He introduced us to his friends and we asked how much for another three grams. His friend said $17 which we thought

was reasonable. He even gave us a brand new Samsung Galaxy as collateral for whatever reason, and when we handed him a $20, however, he took it and explained that he had said $70. We were confused and said, that's way too expensive, no thanks. But then we went to take the $20 back from from him and he started backing up and said, what are you going to do? And we were outnumbered as there were four or five of them and only two of us. With drunken confidence on our side, my friend grabbed his arm and I yanked the 20 out of his hand. I chirped him out explaining that I have a beer bottle in my hand and that he could get his butt kicked playing games like that with people. And this long haired Asian guy from the crew came up behind me and slapped the beer bottle out of my hand saying something like this is Montreal.

We decided not to continue the altercation any further and started walking away while exchanging insults. After walking a few hundred feet away from these thugs I remembered the phone they handed me and pulled it out. It was fully functional, and me and my friends decided to smash it on the sidewalk. About 30 seconds after doing this, we looked back and see the whole gang running full sprint towards us. It was almost as if the guy had just remembered that he'd given us his phone before trying to mess with us. We immediately started running and ducked into the shadows of someone's yard, waiting for an Uber to get to us. The next day, we dropped acid on the train and headed back into the city. When we arrived out of the station, it looked like we arrived onto a post-apocalyptic

wasteland full of tweakers. Drugged out maniacs were screaming in the faces of passerbys as they walked by casually stepping to the side and going about their day. Phone booths were smashed out with groups of vagabonds contorting demonically. This was a terrifying scene to stumble onto while tripping, until walking a few blocks away and entering beautiful downtown Montreal. They were hosting Olympic time trials for cycling at the time which was really cool to see. At one point, I looked into the glass windows of a McDonald's where, directly in front of me, I locked eyes with an old lady with a Hello Kitty purse smoking a crack pipe at one of the tables. After a 10-hour balls-to-the-wall trip it was nighttime and we decided to head back

to our airbnb when we arrived to the train station from the night before we decided to stop into a mcdonald's and grab a burger before ubering home while we were waiting for our order my friend noticed the same crew that we encountered walking in and out of the bathroom of the mcdonald's looking at us and several more figures waiting outside. It was clear that they were planning on jumping us and stealing all our stuff. One of the guys came over to us and tapped us on the shoulder, signaling us to come outside. As I saw it, we had two options. Either call the police and wait inside, or make a run for it. We couldn't afford to have our things stolen as we needed our IDs to get back over the border. We made a run for it, sprinting out of the other exit of the McDonald's and hauling it for dear life.

My friend tripped and rolled his ankle causing him immense agony, but we had to keep running to a nearby parking lot to get cover, and once we made it, we hid out in another restaurant until our Uber came and narrowly avoided an intense seven-person beating while still tripping. Still to this day, I have no idea why this guy randomly decided to hand us a cell phone for collateral 30 seconds before trying to rip us off. It's also as if though he was too stupid to think the plan out fully. I also have no idea why they were stupid enough to leave the other exit of the McDonald's completely open for us to escape and if it weren't for that we most definitely would have had the living crap beaten

out of us and been robbed. I want to start by saying that this isn't the first bad experience I've had dog sitting, but it's definitely the worst. So I started dog sitting back when I was 13 and made good money doing it. I'm currently 19 and this happened when I was 18. I set up an easy way for people to contact me about dog sitting. I put a post on Facebook and Instagram about it often and would get people in the messages asking me to dog sit. I got a notification from Instagram one day saying that someone was trying to message me. I accepted it and the message said something like, me and my wife are looking to find a dog sitter while we go away for a week to Florida. You'll have to work the 4th to the 11th this month. We'll pay you $300

for the week and you're welcome to stay at our house or go back to your own home. I started talking back and forth with this man and we're going to call him Mr. Brown for the sake of privacy, so I agreed to take the gig and told him that I would stay in his house for the week. Once I got to his house house I was introduced to his two dogs, Mina and Letty. Mina was a little Yorkie and Letty was a blue hound. I was shown around his house which was surrounded by 76 acres. I live in a farm town and live on 32 acres myself so staying here didn't really freak me out. The closest neighbors were pretty far away and you would actually have to drive there if you wanted to talk to them.

They told me the rules and when to feed them blah blah blah then Mrs. Brown told me about the nearest neighbor. In her words she was a nice person just a little drugged up and confused. She mentioned how sometimes she would pull into their driveway instead of hers and would end up mistaking Mrs. Brown for her dead daughter. Hearing this made me feel pretty bad for her and I know all too well how hard it is for parents to lose their child because of how my parents were after losing my brother in a car accident. Mrs. Brown said that she shouldn't do anything bad though and if she came up to the house just point her back home and she should leave with no problems. After they left, I was down to watch movies and just chill with the dogs. The first two days were fine with no hiccups.

The third day, however, the old woman, who I'll call Miss Rose, did pull into the driveway. I came outside as she was getting out of the car. She looked up to see me and immediately got back in her car and left. I chalked it up to her realizing it was the wrong house when she saw me and went back inside. Later that night though, I got a call from Mrs. Brown asking if I was okay. I said yes and asked why. She then went on to tell me about how she got a call from Miss Rose and that she said that there was a robber at their house. I explained what happened and she just laughed and said that she must have been confused and forgot that they were out of town. I ended the phone call making a note to go over there tomorrow to clear the air about

me being a robber. Once I went to bed that night though, things got crazy. I woke up at around 2 hearing a light scratching sound that almost sounded like ticking coming from outside the window. At first I thought it might have been a bird or some sort of little creature and left it alone. But as the noise kept me from falling back asleep, I wanted to scare it away so I got up and went to open the blinds but screamed when I lifted the blinds at the sight of Miss Rose trying to pry open the window with a pair of pliers. Once she saw me though she started banging on the window with the pliers. The dogs started barking now and I quickly got up, told the dogs to follow me, grabbed my phone and ran to a room with no windows, which was the bathroom,

locking the door in case she got in. I called 911 and explained the situation, quickly giving them the address of what I could remember. She said that police would be there in 10 minutes, which for the area was pretty good considering their house is pretty rural. I had gotten the dogs to be quiet and put them in the closet connected to the bathroom to make sure she didn't hear them. I was trying to stay calm and could still hear the pounding on the window. As I continued to talk to the operator, I then heard glass shatter. I cursed under my breath trying not to cry. I was really scared and pretty much ready to cry from the fear of being beaten to death by someone who was clearly not in the right state of mind.

I was whispering what was happening to the operator hiding in the back of the bathroom in the tub. After about four minutes of pretty much silence I heard footsteps and I could see feet under the other side of the door and I curse to myself again. I then see Miss Rose get on her hands looking under the crack and I mistakenly let out a gasp. She gets up quickly pounding at the door and I can tell that she's still using the pliers and I am at this point crying asking the operator where the police are to which she responds three minutes. Those three minutes felt like forever as I screamed at Miss Rose to please go away and she screamed back that I shouldn't be here. Once I heard the sound of police cars and about a minute later them trying to kick the door down,

then I felt a little bit better. I was told to stay on the line until the intruder was caught and that police were now trying to get into the house. Eventually they did get in and I yelled to get their attention, not that they needed it and she was still banging on the door. Once they got into the room she was told to drop her weapon and she obeyed saying that she didn't do anything wrong. They got her in cuffs and a police officer told me it was okay to unlock the door which I slowly got up and did so. After being taken to the police station and giving them the full story for their report, I went to my parents' house as I was just too scared to be alone. The next day I called Mrs. Brown and explained the situation. I got full payment even after telling them that I wasn't

going back to the house. They called me a few days later saying that Miss Rose was under the influence of drugs and in her words she told the police that she decided to take care of the robber, me, herself, and that she did nothing wrong. She was charged with breaking and entering which is kind of ironic and after that I quit dog sitting and I'm a lot more paranoid and always make sure my doors and windows are locked. I'm not sure how old I was, but probably something around 10. Me and my family were out visiting our grandparents in California. My mama has always loved gathering sticks and stones and whatever else she could find to make beautiful crafts. She knew of a beach that wasn't often visited and had lots

of driftwood. Me and two sisters, aunt and dad all went together. We pulled into the parking lot and it was completely empty and we thought that we were lucky to get the beach to ourselves. I'd like to mention here that while my mama does drive a truck, you can very easily tell it's driven by a woman with various stickers and decorations. I think we spent around an hour gathering sticks and stones, and we honestly had a really great time. We were walking back up the path to the parking lot, us girls all in the front and my dad in the back. As we got back, there was this car parked right next to us. The entire parking lot was still empty. There was a man standing a ways away and started to walk towards us. My father quickly picked up what was happening and immediately made his way to the front of us. The man quickly grabbed

his phone and pretended to get a call. He walked across the parking lot in the other direction as if though he was having a conversation. My dad made sure to make it very known to this man that we were on to him. He walked all around his car, scoping it out. It had lots of inappropriate stickers and I can't remember what they were but they did make child me very uncomfortable and the windows were also tinted. After my dad searched around making sure nobody else was around he hurried us into the truck and drove around making sure that we wouldn't be followed until we drove back to our grandparents. 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. that stopped me from driving for two years. This occurred in early 2021. My state was one of the last to lift the restrictions, and on this day, I'd been busy taking care of all the errands that I put off or wasn't able to do during the lockdown. When I left the grocery store, the sun was just starting to go down. It was a Wednesday evening, and there weren't many cars on the road. I was a

few miles away from home and noticed an old truck up ahead of me with its lights off. When I got closer, I could see that it was also swerving very badly. I slowed down and put some distance between the truck and myself and by now it was dark. I was afraid someone wouldn't be able to see it and there'd be an accident. In hindsight, what I did next was not a wise decision. I pulled up behind the truck and gave it three quick flashes with my high beams. The driver reacted instantly by slamming on their brakes. There was no time for me to slow down and I got the full force of the truck smashing into the front of my little car.

The airbag blew up in my face and left me temporarily disoriented. Somehow I managed to keep the car on the road. I was still confused and partially blinded as I swerved over into the right lane and pushed on the gas. In my muddled brain it sounded smart to try and pass the maniac who just tried to kill me. I was too terrified to look over as I came alongside him. My car was floored by this time. My exit was in sight. If I could only make it, I would be safe.

It wasn't meant to be though. My car was almost past the truck when the driver cut the wheel into my lane. The front corner made contact with the rear of my car and sent it spinning into the median next to it. By some stroke of luck, I crossed in front of the truck without being struck a third time. I must have blacked out because I don't remember coming to a stop and when I regained consciousness, I was sitting in my car facing the road sideways. Everything around me was quiet except for this hissing of my radiator. For the next few hours I don't remember much. There were a few brief moments where I can recall people talking to me but I couldn't tell you who they were.

I woke up just after 5 am in a hospital room. My boyfriend was asleep in a chair next to the bed. I fell back to sleep until 6.15 when a nurse came in to check on me. My boyfriend woke up and asked me how I was feeling, and other than a sore arm and a headache, I didn't have any pain. The rest of the morning was consumed by talking to doctors and getting tests, and I was deemed okay to be released just before dinner and let go the same day. The drive home was when I discovered the extent of my psychological damage Every second was like an eternity Anytime a car got anywhere near us I got very anxious The short drive from the hospital to home was a nightmare

Things just grew worse as the days passed And eventually I became too scared to drive myself at all And this was the way of things until I sought out counseling earlier this year. After a lot of hard work, I finally got behind the wheel again a couple of weeks ago. There were a few days there where I thought that I was going to give up, but I'm getting more confident every day. As for the driver of the truck who caused all the damage in the first place, he remains free to this day. Another driver who witnessed the crash did get a plate number, but nothing came of it. The truck had been sold in a private sale many years ago

and never registered. I had a difficult time coming to terms with this at first, but these days I'm just focusing on the present. I have my first road trip coming up soon, and although I'm very nervous, I also feel a large amount of excitement. I think I'm really beginning to take my life back, and wish me luck, and thank you all for listening. I spent nearly 20 years of my life living all around the Dallas area. In that time, I made friends, found love a few times, and even lost a child. When I put my hometown in my rearview mirror, I never dreamed that I'd ever live in the country again. My entire childhood was spent feeling stifled and misunderstood, in school and at home.

I'd sit in class and dream of the day that I'd find a place that I felt I belonged. The day after graduation, I packed my car and went in search of such a place. I was fortunate enough to have a few friends to help me out along the way. They had fled the same type of uninspiring places that I'd come from. I remember sitting with them in the evenings as we drank and talked about the plans we had for the future. It was an exciting time. Anything was possible if you wanted it bad enough and weren't scared to get a bit scuffed up in the process. And as the years passed, I wrote along with them as we attempted to make our dreams real. Some of us made it to the top and a few of us lost our lives. And when my chance came, I grabbed it with both hands and

held on tight. I didn't want much, really. A beautiful girl who loved me and a child or two to carry on my name. It was far from smooth sailing. I was sure that I'd found the one, only to lose her to a more successful friend. And finally the day arrived and I was confident nothing would ever separate us. We had a smart and happy son and he was the key to my soul. That's why his death left me empty. I don't blame her for leaving. No one woman wants to be chained to a zombie. And we parted ways and I entered the darkest time of

my life. Fortunately, I had a few friends left who were there to drag me back into the light. And I was 10 years older now and the glitter of the big city was losing its shine. It would take a terrifying traffic incident one morning to show me the city that I'd fallen in love with no longer loved me back. The day was miserably hot. In hindsight, I should have known something bad was coming. By late August in Texas, people were fed up with the heat. Everyone I'd interacted with that day was uptight and had a short fuse. Maybe the heat was affecting my judgment. I would have never put myself in that situation any other time.

And at this time, I was living in a suburb north of Dallas, but worked near downtown. Five days a week, I'd pass back and forth on the Central Expressway. The entire time that I lived there, and probably to this day, there was always a backup where all the highways split off. These days, it's referred to as the Highway 5. I was heading home as I approached the interchange, and a pileup was already beginning. As I slowed, I noticed the car in front of me rear-end the car in front of it. I approached cautiously and stopped with enough room in case the car ahead needed to back up. When I came to a stop, the driver in front of me burst out of his car,

and I didn't see what I expected. Rather than just run up and scream at the driver, he yanked the driver's door open and pulled the driver from the car. The poor driver fell into the pavement and the man began beating on them. I craned my neck to see what was happening and quickly realized that it was a woman this madman was beating on, and without a second thought I leapt from my car and ran to the poor woman's rescue. I reached the car and tried to pull the guy off. He took a swing at me and I hit him square in the jaw. He folded up and dropped

to the ground. I turned to the woman and asked her if she was okay and all of a sudden I got clobbered on the side of the head. I turned toward the direction of the hit and there was another guy standing there. I had no clue who he was, but I reacted like anyone else would have. I started swinging on him and I got slugged from behind again. That hit was hard. I fell to the ground at which time both men went to town on me, and I curled up into a ball and just prayed that it would stop before I lost consciousness. But my prayers were not answered.

When I woke up, there was a crowd of people staring down at me, and all I remembered is the heat from the pavement. I tried to sit up, but one of the men pushed me back down, and I started struggling with this guy when the EMS showed up and whisked me away to the hospital. After all that, the worst I had was a concussion and some burns from the pavement. As bad as it may sound, this is why I had a rule of never getting involved in someone else's fight. I took an equally bad beating in high school when I did just that. I only got involved that day because it was a man beating on a woman. And hate me all you want, but after my experience that day, I'm not sure if I'd ever run to the

defense of a female again. It's a sad world when you get punished for doing the right thing, and that event would be the last straw for me. My lease ran out a few months later and I found a house in a nice quiet neighborhood not far from where I grew up. Considering all the crime exploding across the country, I got out just in time, I think. I held out little hope that my attackers would ever be caught, and if it wasn't for the kindness of bystanders, I doubt they would have been. And after they finished beating me, the two men ran back to their car and actually fled the scene across the highway. The second attacker had been a passenger of the car in front of me,

but I hadn't noticed him. Fortunately, several of the other drivers copied the attacker's tag number before they got away, and both men were arrested the following day and fled down to a class A misdemeanor assault. They got six months of probation. That's it. The driver didn't get a charge for attacking the woman, and she was fortunate to only have bruises and scratches. And I hate to think what those monsters could have done to her. And all of this just because some idiot wasn't paying attention. For those of you still in the cities who are considering leaving, I suggest getting out now. Most of the places we fell in love with in our youth no longer exist, so save yourself while you still can. I was 11 then, and I lived in a suburb on the outskirts of a relatively peaceful area. At least I don't remember ever hearing any gunshots or seeing any violence in my neighborhood.

But everybody I knew was pretty simple. They were hard-working people just trying to get by. Most would give you the shirt off their backs if you needed it, and this took place on a cool fall day in 2007. I had been playing games at a friend's house most of the day. About 5pm, I went back home to have dinner. After eating, I returned to my friend's house, but had to leave because of some family trouble. Now I found myself alone and pretty bored. As I walked aimlessly around the yard, I caught sight of some kittens playing in the bushes. At this time, I was infatuated with

cats. I loved playing with them and petting them, and this got me clawed up on several occasions, but my love was never lost. I think this was around the first time that I told my mom that I wanted to be a vet. It wouldn't be until I grew older and found out the downside of that profession. But anyway, I ran after the kittens and followed them into the bushes. I was crawling around on my hands and knees looking for them when I heard the squeal of tires off in the distance. Soon after, the squeal was followed by a popping noise. I assumed someone was playing with firecrackers and went back to my search. Maybe a few seconds later I heard the squealing again, and it sounded

much closer now. Another group of pops went off, and I thought that they may be on the next street. Only now did I stop what I was doing and peeked out from the bushes. Our house was second to last from the corner, and I could see everyone and everything that passed by on that cross street. Off in the distance I could see a car speeding in my direction. A second automobile, an SUV of some sort was close behind and the popping noises were really close now. As the car approached our street corner it began swerving around. It took a hard turn and crashed into a neighbor's flower bed next to a stop sign and by now I was fixated on every move and watched with fascination. I waited for someone inside the car to get out but no one was moving. I was beginning to get

concerned. Not even 10 seconds passed before the SUV pulled up and stopped. A tall man with a beanie and a sweater jumped out and ran up to the crashed car. The man had something in his hand, but I couldn't see exactly what. I assumed that he was going to help the guy, but I was wrong. Instead, he ran up to the driver's side door and raised his hand, and I heard a loud series of pops and saw fire roar out. I finally realized that the pops had been gunshots, and I had just witnessed a cold-blooded murder. I didn't dare move for fear that he would hear me, and in hindsight, he was too focused on his terrible act to realize that I was even nearby. As he turned to run away, I heard him say something about cutting people off, and I didn't realize this had to do with driving and this was probably some type of road rage incident.

I didn't realize this until I was much older. After he fired a few shots into the car, the SUV driver ran back to his car and sped off. I waited until he was gone before I crawled out of the bushes. I hurried into my house and blurted out what I had just seen to my mom. I was talking so fast that she couldn't understand me, so I took her by the hand and drug her outside. When we got there, I pointed at the car. By now, some of the neighbors were looking around the car and trying to help. My mom drug me back inside and called 911.

The police and emergency services soon arrived. The cops began asking questions and when they got to us, mom said that she thought that she had seen the crash. At this point, no one but a few people knew the truth. I told the cop what I'd seen and my mom freaked out. She yelled at me about lying but the officer took her aside and told her that it appeared that I was telling the truth. Mom panicked and yelled at me about my safety and things like that and

after I gave a description of the man, the police left. For the next few weeks, my mom would let me out of her sight and I only learned later that there were discussions about me actually testifying in court. Even after the guy was caught, it was a possibility, and I can't imagine that the testimony of an 11-year-old would have much credibility in court, but that's what my mom tells me. Ultimately, the guy took a plea and admitted to the crime. I still didn't have much freedom until I was actually in my late teens, and honestly, I doubt the guy had any clue that anyone had seen him. About five years ago, I looked into the incident and discovered the guy had been killed in a prison fight soon after he was sent up. As for the driver of the car,

he was a mechanic and had been test driving a newly repaired car when he was killed. It's certainly a sad story, but I suppose you could say the murderer got his just desserts in the end. A few weeks ago, I became unexpectedly involved in an automobile incident. You see, a section of my commute during the week passes by the business district of my city. Generously pampered among the area are a large number of small bars and restaurants. Every evening of the week at around 5pm, many lawyers and executives flood these places to just kind of chill, and with all the alcohol being consumed, more than a couple of accidents have occurred in one particular intersection.

In order to leave the city and get to the surrounding suburbs where most of these people live, they must pass through this intersection. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I spend almost a day every month or so stuck in traffic waiting for a wreck to be cleared away. It's a very dangerous area and several members of the community have begged the mayor and city council to do something about it. And nothing ever gets done though. Around the middle of last month, I was on my way home and approached that area just in time to actually witness a crash. I was at the top of the hill and headed toward the intersection when a car t-boned another. It was a very shocking thing to witness. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I pulled off into a nearby parking lot in hopes of providing the victims with some assistance, and I reached the bottom of the hill, I pulled off into a nearby parking lot in hopes of providing the victims with some assistance,

and I reached the car of the man who caused the wreck before anyone else. He seemed very disoriented, but I couldn't see any injuries. I opened the door to ask if he was okay and was overcome by the smell of alcohol, and my heart sank. He was clearly intoxicated and unable to know how severe his injuries may have been. Maybe a moment later, another gentleman arrived and asked me if the driver was injured. I took the man aside a few steps away and whispered to him that he was drunk. The gentleman was clearly angered and began cursing the driver under his breath. While I'd been speaking to the gentleman, we hadn't noticed

that the driver had gotten out of his car and begun pacing around. A couple of other bystanders arrived and pointed this out, and we all turned back toward him and urged him to just return to his car. During the scuffle, one of the bystanders must have caught a whiff of the driver and yelled out, this guy's drunk. When the driver heard this, he became even more irritated. And just then, the driver of the other car walked up and asked about the drunk driver's condition, and without any hesitation, the same man repeated what he'd said to the other driver. The driver's expression changed from one of concern to outright rage. He began screaming about how his son was injured because of this drunk idiot. And suddenly, the driver crashed through all of us and actually pounced on the drunk man. He'd landed a few hits and was kicking the drunk man on the ground before we pulled him off.

One of the other bystanders, a big guy, walked with the driver back to his car while we tried to get the drunk man back into his car. And less than 30 seconds later, the cops began to arrive and check everybody out. An officer approached the drunk driver's car with an EMT. The officer walked up to us soon after and asked why the man looked beaten up. We all just glared at one another, unsure of what to say, but one guy spoke up and explained that the man tried to walk away from the crash and fought us when we attempted to stop him. Nobody else dared speak.

The cops stared at us with a skeptical look for a few seconds before saying okay and walking away. And after that, everyone just sort of milled around until the cops said it was okay for us to leave. I did discover that the other driver's son had been injured in the wreck. It had been his side of the car that had been struck by the other car. The airbag had smashed his glasses into his face, and I believe he'd also broken his arm,

and that's all I could see as they loaded him into the ambulance from my viewpoint. I can definitely understand why the father was so mad. Since that evening, I've had a lot of time to think about what happened, and I don't regret what we did. Considering the man chose to drink and drive only to go on and actually hurt a child, I have a difficult time feeling bad for him at all. Don't get me wrong, I definitely don't agree with taking the law into our own hands, but being a father myself, I can understand his anger. I wish I could tell you all what happened after, but there hasn't been anything about it, so unfortunately it's become a very

common thing these days, and honestly the news around here don't find it very important to report on it. The roads can be a dangerous place, and I hope everyone is staying safe. Keep your eyes open so you don't end up in the same situation, or, God forbid, something worse. So back in my 20s, I rode around with a group of guys from work. I was a mechanic at a Honda dealership then, and on most weekends we'd ride together or join with friends to go on long rides across the state. I was single at the time and I had no family waiting for me back home. I'm especially partial to hammock and tent camping, so I'd go along on the lake and hunting trips. None of us at the dealership were what people would consider outlaw bikers or one percenters, but that didn't

mean that we didn't sometimes find ourselves riding or partying with a few once in a while. As a matter of fact, I'll be sharing an incident that I was a part of a little over 10 years back. I'm only telling it now because I know one guy involved has since died, and I'm fairly confident the statute of limitations has passed on it. And no matter what the legal circumstances are, I still won't be saying any names. I'm not here to snitch anyone out. I just know a good story when I see it, and it'd be a downright shame not to share it with others. So it was late summer of 2012. The guys and I were riding with six other dudes that we knew.

These guys could definitely be classed as outlaws. I know that they all had a record, and at least one had done time for assault. These weren't the kind of guys that you'd want to make angry, you know. The group of us had been hopping from state park to state park, camping out and having a good time. When the story happened, we were all making a run for the store for beer and food and such. Everyone was riding in sets of two except for one guy riding up ahead and a guy following the pack in his truck. It was a one-way, two-lane section of road we were on. No one was in any hurry. We were just enjoying the beautiful day and I think we were about two miles from town when some hot shot in

a Mustang came blazing up behind us through traffic. He weaved up to us and we got out of his way. It was an irksome situation, but we had places to go, and no one was looking for trouble. Well, maybe except for him. We let Mr. Hot Rod blow on past and return to our previous riding positions. This guy goes another 20 yards until he has to slow down when he comes up behind our guy riding in the left lane and another random woman driving a car in the right He starts getting antsy and swerving across both lanes

Our guy in the front slows down to let this idiot get past Instead of waiting for enough room to weave through, he guns his car and just barely squeezes between our guy's bike and the back of this lady's car. Our guy assumes that he's going to get hit and takes a plunge into the grassy median. At this point, all the niceties went out the window. The guy must have seen what we'd caused because he'd sped off as fast as he could. We weren't about to let this idiot get away though, and while the rest of the guys stayed back with our friend Me and two others went after him I don't know if he thought he'd escaped or what

But he must have slowed down as he approached town We caught up to him at a red light And he was trapped behind another car in both lanes And at this point he had no escape I'll admit that I had no clue what was going to happen if we caught the guy. I was just so angry that I wanted some form of revenge. I suppose that I should have expected what happened. The two guys that I was with weren't exactly angels, and either way, I was in the back, and I watched as one guy rode up to the passenger's side and smashed the window out with a hammer.

The other guy did the same before grabbing the guy and pulling him out onto the ground. While they roughed the guy up, I used a big crescent wrench from my saddlebag to smash any bits of glass and plastic on the back of the car. It took me at least a minute to do my thing. I figured the cops may be on their way and I ran up to the front to grab the others and what I saw was horrible. They had beat the man within an inch of his life. He was left a whining bloody mess and they'd clearly done this business before. The guy didn't die but I'd imagine that he'd learn to be a more considerate driver after that. We hopped back on our bikes and raced back to where the accident

happened. Fortunately, the guy wasn't hurt very bad, but his bike was really messed up. The other guys had already gotten them both into the truck and were ready to go when we arrived, and that would be the end of that trip. We got back home as fast as we could, and we didn't take that highway again for quite some time. I wouldn't see much of those guys after that trip. Several of them ended up in prison for whatever reason and one of the guys who'd beat that prick half to death died in a crash in 2018. I've moved on to other things since. I got a family now and live a pretty relatively respectable life, and back in those days, I caused my own share of trouble and fought plenty of men. And all that said, I've never seen someone so bad off as I did that day.

Be careful out there, folks, and be respectful of the motorcyclists that you share the road with. They tend to be a different breed of people, and they don't live life by halves. In my 16 or so years as an over-the-road driver, I witnessed more than my share of amazing, odd, and downright bone-chilling happenings. Had it not been for the pandemic, I'd probably still be doing that kind of work, and now that I've been away for it though, I'm kind of glad I'm not. Most people may experience one or two auto accidents in their lifetimes, that kind of work, and now that I've been away for it though, I'm kind of glad I'm not. Most people may experience one or two auto accidents in their lifetimes, and had I not spent so much of my life hauling things back and forth, I may have had a similar life. Unfortunately, in that line of work you see far too much carnage due to cars. The story I'm about to tell you is the most senseless event I've seen on or off the road.

The two men not only endangered their own lives foolishly, but they also came very near to killing others. Only God knows how they didn't. The day was very ordinary in every way. It was a warm late spring morning and the traffic was light. I had just crossed over into Kansas with a load of building materials. There were no signs of what was about to happen. I just happened to notice a guy in an SUV cut off another in a late model Ford truck. The guy in the truck was obviously angry. He was waving his fist out the window and I guess the driver of the SUV didn't see himself being in the wrong. He gave the guy in the truck the middle finger.

And this is usually the point at which things go off the rails and this time was no different. The driver of the SUV sped up until he came alongside the truck and cut his wheel. The driver of the SUV had no other choice but to swerve onto the shoulder or be broadsided. And the driver of the Ford returned the middle finger and raced off ahead. Once the SUV regained control, he pursued the Ford. He caught up, but before he could get too close, the driver tapped his brakes, which very nearly caused the SUV to slam into the back of him. And by now, the drivers around them had started backing off to a pretty safe distance, and we all became bystanders in some weird game of chicken, and none of us knew how it would end. The situation had grown out of anyone's control

now. The driver of the SUV merged into the right lane and attempted to get alongside the truck, but the driver of the Ford repeatedly swerved into the lane to stop him. In spite of his efforts, the SUV did manage to achieve his goal. I couldn't hear what they were saying to each other obviously, but their body language was very clearly aggressive. They continued to curse and flip each other off until the guy in the Ford got fed up and swerved into the right lane. The two large automobiles smashed violently together, dropping pieces of body trim onto the road surface, and the rest of us backed off even further now. And now that first contact had been made, neither driver held back.

It became a game of cat and mouse. Both drivers would inch closer to the other in hopes of driving the other off the road. Repeated little bumps would cause one of the cars to briefly lose control, but they would always regain it. And things finally came to a head when the driver of the truck tried to get away after one of his tires went flat. Rather than let the Ford hobble off injured and accept the victory, the man in the SUV smelled blood and was ready to end this once and for all. He quickly caught up with the truck and brazenly slammed into the side of the Ford harder than ever. They were probably going about 70 to

80 miles per hour now. I watched in horror as both vehicles spun and flipped off into the grass median. Traffic slowed to a crawl now and a few of us pulled off to see if we could actually help the chaos. From where I parked, I saw the body of one of the men laying motionless a few of us pulled off to see if we could actually help the chaos. From where I parked, I saw the body of one of the men laying motionless a few yards away from where the wrecks came to a rest. The man in the SUV was trapped upside down but still alive amazingly. The emergency services arrived and pulled him out of the wreckage, the driver of the truck was pronounced dead on the scene. And from what I read later on, the driver of the SUV was given seven years for manslaughter, and I'd bet if the judge had witnessed that incident firsthand, it would have been a lot more. Be careful and be respectful, people. No one wins in situations like that. Around six years ago, I had a scary road rage incident on my way back home. So back then, I worked 50 miles away from the town we lived in.

My wife and I were in the process of saving money for our first house. We'd been living in a cheap two-bedroom apartment with our young son, Jacob. There weren't any good jobs in the town that we lived in, so I was forced to look farther away. The job I did find paid very well, which made the long drive worth it. We only had one car, which meant Connie, my wife, was stuck at home without transportation. Normally, this wouldn't be much of a problem. Most of her time was consumed with taking care of Jacob and the apartment. However, around lunchtime one morning, I got a concerned call from her regarding our son. Jacob had been fussy most of the night and

he was at that age so neither of us thought much about it. As the morning passed though, he acquired a fever and was clearly miserable in general. Connie called the doctor and they were able to fit us in later that afternoon, and this was when she called me and asked me to come home. I informed my boss of the situation and let him know that I'd be taking the rest of the day off. He was understanding and gave his blessing. Considering Jacob was our first child, I lacked the experience and was probably a bit more nervous than I should have been. It was just a simple cold, but you can never be sure these things aren't worse than they look. So, as you can imagine, I was very distracted

on the drive back. About every 15 minutes, I'd call home to check in on Jacob's condition and make sure that Connie was doing okay. I was on one of these calls when I almost had a wreck with another driver. I was about 10 miles from home and needed to take the exit off the freeway. Like I said, I was distracted and didn't check my mirrors as well as I should have, and just two quick glances and I merged into the right lane. Since I was paying more attention to my phone than the road, I didn't notice the car in my blind spot. All I heard was the long droning of their horn. Luckily, we didn't crash into each other, but the driver of the car was furious. I looked in my rearview mirror and gave him this

sort of meek little sorry gesture right before I exited. I didn't expect it to go beyond that point, but the driver had other ideas. I'd gone about a half mile down the access road when I noticed him still behind me. He looked like he was gritting his teeth and shaking his arms out the window, and when he realized I saw him, he started yelling and becoming even more animated. Of course, I couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was obviously livid. Things started getting serious when he began tailgating me and honking his horn. Every time I'd speed up to get away, he'd do the same. I was terrified that he'd slam into me if I'd slow down even a little bit. And remember, the entire time this is going on, my wife is on

the phone. She could hear his horn and ask what the heck was happening. I tried to avoid telling her, but when the crazy man began pulling up alongside me, I panicked and told her to call the police. In spite of her repeated questions, I finally got her to agree and hang up. Now that I wasn't on the phone, I could fully pay attention to the road. I had no idea what the guy hoped to achieve if he got ahead of me or in front of me, but I knew that it couldn't be good. The traffic around us seemed to be keeping their distance, except for one semi carrying gasoline. I don't think he had a clue as to what was happening.

His presence afforded me enough time to make the turn to my house without him smashing into me. I thought I'd shaken him for a short time but he caught up at the next intersection. Now I was just a few blocks from home and all I could think of was that I hoped the cops were there waiting for us. In retrospect, I shouldn't have led him to where I lived but I was so shaken up in the moment, home was the only place that seemed safe. When I made the turn onto the road outside the complex, my heart sunk. During daylight hours, the apartments left the gates open. He could easily follow me inside. My only hope was that I could make it inside before he caught me. And then, like a gift from God, I noticed two police cars parked next to the manager's office. I raced into the complex and pulled up between the cars and parked. I watched as the crazed

driver also raced in but stopped suddenly for a moment before reversing back out of the open gate and speeding away. I fought back a great rush of tears. Now laugh all you want, but the relief I felt was unmeasurable. Once I was able to compose myself, I talked to the officers and gave them the plate number of the car. I'm not sure if the cops ever actually spoke to the man. I was never contacted, but I hope that he was at least dissuaded from doing something like that again. And despite what had just happened, Connie and I brought Jacob to the doctor for his appointment and he was better within a few days. And for the next few weeks, I made sure to come and go at different times just in case that nut was waiting for me.

It ended up being all for nothing, but in our modern day, there's people out there willing to kill you over the smallest of errors. Play it safe. Keep your eyes and your mind on the road. To be continued... 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. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon.