The Lets Read Podcast - 26: Episode 026 | Craigslist & Animal Encounter Stories | 27 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: March 10, 2019

Welcome to the twenty-sixth episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Basement Dwellers, Scary Animals & Craigslist Creeps. HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON- ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music: Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFvrqVSJE8E PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I go to a school in a big city that is one of the least safe cities in the US. I chose this school for nursing and definitely not for the location. I live in a row house, that's what we call it, off campus with four other girls. Cheaper and nicer than dorms or so we thought. I guess you get what you pay for. We are all girls and sophomores in college. As you would guess, we go out and drink, come back, do things we don't remember. We had just started our rent in August, three floors plus a basement which was padlocked by the owners. Understandable, we would definitely have parties down there to avoid immediate cleanup. The house was great, amazing location to the school and work.

I am a CNA who works odd hours. I had never lived with that many people before, just one roommate so before we definitely knew if one of us had misplaced or changed something. I started to notice my snacks were either half gone or completely gone. I was getting annoyed but a house of that many people it's too much work to go figure out who ate what so I ignored it. Slowly as girls do we started making comments about someone eating our food but passive aggressively you know. College girls. We all just let it go, cause who wants a whole house fight? I work until about 11 in the NICU, get home at about 11.30, mostly on weeknights. I started to notice pans left out or snack wrappers around. I thought it was odd,

cause none of my roommates had done that before, but just thought that, oh, they probably drank a bottle of wine then went to bed and forgot about all this. Again my roommate started making comments. This time we started to ask because it was getting annoying all our food being gone and things being left. I knew it was one of them but who wants to admit they ate someone else's snacks in college? Snacks are a high commodity. We chalked it up to the girl who always smokes and eats her weight in food. She swore it wasn't her. This went on for about two months. It got more obvious someone was clearly taking everyone's food. Definitely the girl that always smokes. I

see her eat an entire snack pantry in a night. I wish it was her. One night at work I was about to get off but a situation happened and I didn't end up leaving until about 12 30. I took the bus home. I carry pepper spray, taser and a pocket knife so don't worry there. I got home and was about to collapse. I wanted to go to bed ASAP. I walked in the front door and the stairs are directly in front of you. You can also see down the side into the kitchen. I walked in and saw someone in the kitchen but was way too tired to say hi, thinking it could end up into a 30 minute conversation about nothing so I just went upstairs. When I got to the second floor I noticed all my roommates doors were closed,

which always means they are either in their room for the night or asleep. I got a weird feeling, just something that made it click. They were all asleep, right? I texted our house group chat asking if anyone was in the kitchen. I felt stupid for even asking. Two responded no and they said the other two had been asleep. I knew it wasn't any of my roommates down there at the moment, so I dialed 911, but didn't press call. I crept into my roommate's room across the hall. Thankfully, or maybe not thankfully, she didn't have her door locked. I whispered telling her I think someone is in the house. She gave the wildest eyes ever and almost looked like she was going to cry. She didn't suspect anything like I had but for reference a very bad area as in there was a shooting in the house two doors down only weeks earlier by an intruder. She mouthed to make the call.

The whole time we were dead silent, we didn't hear really anything at all. I was starting to think I was seeing things after such a long day at work and was regretting that I dialed think I'm going to look like an idiot when they show up and I was just overtired and dreaming. We explained what's going on and they said they will send someone ASAP and that actually does mean right away since it is a big and dangerous city. The police showed up and I didn't even want to go downstairs but the operator confirmed it was them so I did. But the whole time I could swear the operator could hear my heart beating. The police come in and look around. I'm thinking oh god I look so dumb. They ask if there are any other floors. We tell them technically the basement but it's padlocked so really no. They check the basement just in case.

Well yeah, they were right. A man had been living in the padlocked basement. The lock was pulled off the hinges and just kind of propped against the wall. We never looked at that though. We rarely went out back. The guy had taken a comforter of one of my roommates out of the hall closet, had a mattress from God knows where and his clothes. Well, he was the one moving and eating all of our stuff. He would come out in the middle of the night and do it. He started getting

more comfortable. I don't know if he was drugged out and forgot to clean his tracks or if he didn't really care. My roommates and I have pretty consistent schedules during the week, probably letting him think that any time after 12 was a good time to come out. We never slept with our individual doors locked and that's what freaks me out most. He had access to any one of us at any moment and we had no idea. When he was getting arrested I was the only one to go down and look. I don't know why, I wish I didn't. I took a picture in the process of him being arrested to show my roommates who were too afraid to go down. This is him. I work at a higher-end woman's clothing store in my state's largest mall.

We're also seriously understaffed and generally only have one manager and one associate on at all times. This incident happened two weeks after I was promoted to manager. I was in my first night closing the store as manager on duty and I was already a little nervous, even though I had weeks of training. A few hours into my shift, my store manager asked me to hang a banner in the front window promoting a sale. I asked my associate, Allie, to help me because the sign is heavy and hard to put up. It takes about 20 minutes of struggling to get the thing up, but we did it. As I'm cleaning up the supplies I needed for it, I lock eyes with a man outside the store. The man is sitting on the bench in the middle of the corridor my store is in, talking on his phone.

No big deal, people are always out there, he's probably waiting for someone. Our store is between a popular bra store and a well-known coffee chain, easy landmarks for people unfamiliar with our mall. I give him a quick smile and continue on my way. An hour later, Allie comes up to me and tells me the same man was still sitting on the bench outside on his phone. That raises a bit of a red flag to me. The manager on duty is always supposed to be near the front of the store but being so understaffed, managers are often running back and forth from the front to the back where the registers are. I happened to be helping ring someone out when she told me about this. In the last few months we've had a few people grab piles of clothes off the tables at the front of the store and just run out.

So I casually walk to the front to fold some sweaters and keep an eye on this man. That's when things took a turn for the strange. As I was getting close to the door I hear the man say to his phone, I'm sure I can get one but I might be able to get two. Okay one's coming out now, bye. My mind is still thinking this guy is going to grab and run once I have my back turned. Instead, he jumps up, walks just outside the doors and gives me the biggest, sweetest smile. Excuse me, miss. Come here for a second. I want to show you something. Come out here with me, just for a minute. Now I'm getting super creepy vibes from this guy. Um, I'm sorry sir, I'm the

manager on duty and can't leave the store at all. And I back up a few feet. Oh, shoot, I just wanted to show you how wonderful your sign looks. I saw you ladies struggling to put it up earlier. I wanted to offer my help, but I knew it was probably against the rules. Now, I understand being friendly, but this guy was being overly friendly, as if trying to charm me. Oh, thank you. Those signs are heavy and can be a pain to put up. Oh, I bet. And he walks into the store. I give him a weak smile and back up towards the middle of the store

to straighten things up, while also keeping an eye on him. I look for my co-worker and she's now disappeared into the back room, so much for power and numbers. He starts wandering around looking at different items, checking the tags, clearly pretending to be browsing. As he gets towards the back of the store, my store manager, a gruff woman much bigger than my 5 foot 420 pound self, comes out of the back room. She starts talking about schedules and meetings so she's clearly the one in charge of the whole store. He sees her and makes his way towards the exit. I'm still at the front but have wedged myself between a table and two mannequins.

You're doing a great job here. You lovely ladies have a wonderful evening. Tips his hat and leaves. My store manager is on her way to the doors when I jump in front of her and explain everything. I've seen just about every side of her but I've never seen her look as concerned and startled as she looked when I told her. But being the no nonsense type of person she is, she tells me she'll go ask him why he's trying to get her employees out of the store. She walks out the door, looks towards the direction he walked away and comes back to tell me he's now standing in a spot I wouldn't be able to see unless I walked out of the store. Unfortunately she could not stay with us because she had an appointment but told us to call security if we saw him again.

As luck would have it, 30 seconds later two guards are about to pass my store. I flag them down and explain everything. They're clearly concerned too, especially since there's been reports of people trying to lure women out of the mall. They start walking towards the direction he was in to have a chat with him. Five minutes later, one guard comes back and asks me if the man sitting further down the corridor is the same man. It was. He wasn't too close, but still close enough to come back when he had the chance. At this point, I'm about to have a panic attack and almost start crying. The guard says he'll stay a close distance from the store for the rest of the night.

Luckily the man didn't come back. I think security made him leave but I'm not totally sure. I called my husband and had him walk Allie and me to our cars. As I recounted the story to my husband, I realized something. The man was wearing a zip-up sweatshirt with large pockets, which he had his hands in the whole time this transpired. I firmly believe if I walked out of the store, he would have pulled a concealed weapon or something to get me to leave the mall quietly. Deep down, I know if I was stupid enough to walk out, I never would have walked back in, again.

I'm a black girl, about 5'5", standard athletic build. I was a soccer and volleyball player, and I'm often told I'm very pretty. I say more decent than pretty. Also, I've got anxiety that makes me freeze up in uncomfortable situations, so that's been amazing. When I was 19, I worked at a craft store. The majority of our guests were either young kids working on a school project or elderly women looking for sewing supplies. When I first started, I worked 4 a.m I worked 4am to 12pm stocking shelves. I've been there about two days at this point. That morning I was stocking sewing notions, yes I know, riveting. I overheard a very boisterous man talking to my co-worker a few aisles away. He said her name almost every other word. Okay Samantha. Well Samantha, tell me

Samantha. That kind of deal. I assumed this guy was a regular or something that knew everyone by name. I kept stalking the shelves. I heard him say his goodbyes as his voice got closer. I saw a man about 5 foot 8, round bellied and white with shoulder length white hair, probably in his 50s to 60s. He glanced down the aisle and kept walking. I saw him walk back and forth past the aisle a couple of times thinking he was looking for something. As I was stalking I found a broken set of buttons. Whenever something is broken we had to take it to the register to put it in a specific bin.

As I made it up front, I realized he was at the register I had to go behind for the bin. As he was checking out, he turns to me and goes, Excuse me, are you a model or do you work here? I smile and say, I just work here. The cashier at the time gave him the sassiest eye roll. I began to walk away and he asked, does your husband tell you how beautiful you are every morning before you leave? I kind of rolled my eyes because I'm quite clearly not married seeing as I was 19. Not only that, but because my shift was so early, I never wore makeup so I looked even younger. I said,

no sir, I'm not married. This as usual was a mistake. Sometimes honesty isn't the best policy. He perked up and said, really? Do you want to be? He kind of chuckled. I began walking down the aisle, smiled and waved back at him, telling him to have a good day. He then began to shout his phone number down the aisle. I walked a little faster and got back to my spot in the back of the store. That was weird, but it was over. Well, about ten minutes later, I've now moved to Zippers in the middle of the store. As I'm stalking I feel somebody's body heat on my back. It's him. I jump because I'm a coward and ask if he needed something. He said, of course, you. Insert the biggest sigh of my life. I smile and ask him again if there's something I can help him

with. He sees my name tag and begins doing the same thing he was doing earlier with my co-worker, constantly repeating my name. He wanted conversation so I talked but kept my back to him. My shirt was long enough to cover my butt so I wasn't worried about him checking me out or anything and he was about three feet away at this point. You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. No, I'm all for compliments, but that's a reach. I'm serious, you are. Okay. So what do you like to do? Eat? I mean, I was being honest, I wasn't realizing this was a massive invitation to take me out. Really? What do you like to eat? I tried to think of the most uninteresting things I could say

so he would leave me alone on his own without me having to ask him to get out of my face and hurt his pride. Uh, Mexican usually. What do you like to drink? He moved closer. I could now feel his body heat again and smell his musty, not musky, cologne. I don't drink. His voice dropped significantly and he moves closer, now about five to six inches away from my ear. Mmm, so you're a good girl, huh? A good, fresh one. I can feel his breath on my ear.

He's now standing beside me, practically with his whole front side touching me. I ignore the statement and keep working. At this point, my hands are trembling. It was getting hard for me to even put items on the hook. He continued talking softly in a deepened voice. So why don't you let me take you out? We'd have so much fun. I decline.

Oh, please, baby. You would make me such a happy man, you don't even know. I decline. Take my card. He hands me a card. He's a holistic healer, of course. Please call me, baby. You're so beautiful. I can't wait to hear your voice over the phone. I decline.

What can I do to make you mine? Please. Anything. I can hardly hold myself back. His breathing got harder. I ask him if there's anything store related I can help him with. He asks me how to install a zipper on clothes and I explain it as simply and quickly as possible. So, this is the starter you bossed me around, huh? Telling me what to do. You like to be in control? I want you to tell me what to do.

At this point, my heart actually felt like it was going to explode. His body was on me and it was gross. My anxiety had never been that high for that long. I could no longer think of any responses, no more customer service, I couldn't say anything. I just stood there silent. After a few more attempts with no response he says, Don't think I'll forget where you are. I live close. I won't forget. I'm coming back for you. He never did come back but I was terrified, especially because I walked home alone. I've experienced two failed break-ins in my student life, both on separate apartments and with, as far as I can tell, no relation to each other. But these events actually helped me to become more reactive when it comes to protect myself and my relatives. Now before we go into this, you need to know two things.

One, I'm a girl in my early 20s and I've just completed my master's degree. Over five years, I've lived in three different apartments, then gave up the last year and lived with my boyfriend's family. More because I was fed up by roommates and struggling financially than because of the intrusions. Second thing, my dad left us, my mom, my sister and I, years ago to live with his crazy girlfriend. She would threaten us by text and remind us she knew the address of our home. Because of that, I'm very aware of my environment at night and wake up very easily. First event took place in my second apartment. I live on the ground floor. It was one large room with three windows, one next to my bed, the other two 10

meters at the opposite next to the entrance with a view on the street. On the second floor were two rooms, smaller, each occupied by girls I barely knew, Marion and Alma. I did talk to Alma a few times and add her on Facebook, but that was it. Third floor was inoccupied at the time. It had been during a week or two at the beginning of the year, but wasn't anymore as the residents living there would organize parties with friends that would then try to break into other floors' rooms. It had been empty ever since. At the start of the school year October 2015 the street was busy. There were student parties all around town and as a result fights and alcohol were rampant. Fast forward in 2016 the city is way more calm but not dead. A familiar noise woke me up in

the middle of the night. It sounds like the tone of my bell, but weaker, and it comes from above. I check the time on my phone. It's 3am. Weird. I'm thinking it must have been a mistake, but then it rings again, this time closer. And it keeps ringing, like somebody is keeping his finger on the button. I keep listening, but stay in my bed. It stops then all the bells in the building ring at the same time followed by steps on the pavement of the

street going away quickly. I stay awake an hour then go back to sleep. The next morning I sent a message to my mom. As expected she is worried and asked me to talk to my boyfriend who lives closer to the apartment than her. She also wants to know if I'm comfortable calling the police if it happens again. I say yes, but think it was just a dumb joke made by a drunk student and that I would not be bothered again. If only. The second night, I'm awakened by the sound of a bell ringing. By the sound of it, it comes from one

of the girls above me. It lasts about 20 seconds sharp. I wake up and sit on my bed. Suddenly all the buttons are pressed quickly one after the other resulting in a sound wave all over the building. I decide to check what's going on closer but still on a distance. I go to the door of my apartment which is made of wood and opaque glass while the main door is made of hard acrylic and double glass. I take a look and sure enough nobody is there anymore. I stand there ten minutes waiting, then I give up and go back to bed. Nothing else happened that night. When I woke up in the morning I saw a paper on the ground next to my door. It says something like,

Hey, Marion and me are worried about the ringing at night. I'll send a mail to the landlord. Tell me on Facebook if you notice something else. Alma. It is now Thursday, the 12th of April 2016, and usually this is the day when my boyfriend comes to spend time together with me. Only this week he was not feeling well and I was worried he would not be able to come. But he said he would anyway and that's what he did. Unfortunately he began to show signs of fever and thus went to bed early. I read a book until around midnight then joined him. 4.04am. A loud noise wakes me up. I emerge from a very

deep dream and it takes me a few seconds to understand what's going on. I hear my phone on the table. On the screen I see a messenger notification. I want to grab it but before I have the time, the sound comes back louder. It is not the bells, it is somebody trying to force the main door. I touch my boyfriend's face to wake him up and feel that he's very hot. I realize he will not be able to help me. I step over him and grab my phone. Almost sent me a message. There's somebody trying to open the door. What do we do? I'm too afraid. All the bells ring as if someone was sliding his finger across them. I still get a panicked text. He rings at the third floor. I rush to my door and see a dark silhouette through the glass. As I reach him, he begins to shake the door very hard. I freeze for

a minute. I recompose and shout, stop. He stops. I can see him hesitate. Suddenly a car comes into the street. He moves to a building to the left next to my two windows and now I can only see his shadow on the ground. The car stops and a man gets off the back seat and says in a drunk voice, thank you, stay safe. Then he closes the door and waves as the car goes the other way. He sees the creepy guy and asks me, hello, do you need help? I hear him respond in a young but intoxicated voice. No, I wait for friends. The guy from the car tells him, Okay, good night, and goes away. Alma sends me a new message. Is he gone?

But unfortunately the creep is already coming back to the front door to slam the buttons, and worse again, to try to break in. Alma sends me, Tell him to call the police. I answer to her, I see him. call them, I'll try to stop him. She says that she doesn't remember what the number is. I give it to her and shout at the man, hoping it would make him stop shaking the door. I shouted like three or four times without success.

I look at my boyfriend, still in the bed, but awake and sitting, with the pale face of someone who's about to pass out or vomit. I take my keys, open my door, get close to the main door and shout at the man, What are you doing? Now, I can see him, and he can see me. He's not tall, maybe about 1.6 meters like me. He has mid-length brown hair and looks as sick as my boyfriend is at the moment. He wears dark pants and a white shirt under a blue and red sweater. Probably a student.

He responds to me by shouting incomprehensible gibberish. He heads back to the door, hands first. I take a step forward and tell him to go away with the most angry face I can make. I realize I still have my phone so I raise my hand and take a picture of him. He doesn't notice as he reaches for his own phone. He freezes for a minute looking at his screen then, without even looking at me, goes to the left of the street and disappears. The police arrive five minutes later but was not really helpful. Nor Alma or Marion came downstairs. I was alone, telling them which way he went, describing what the picture didn't show. The first police officer

who talked to me, a woman, was apparently not convinced, even when I told her about the other attempts. She told me to get back in my room, lock the doors, and they would come back after looking around for the guy. They were gone and while I was sitting at my table waiting for them I looked at the picture taken around 4.11. The whole intruder thing lasted less than 10 minutes and the police never came back. The wannabe intruder never came back and in July 2016 I left that apartment. I never had so many friends coming for sleepovers than during this three months. After a few days I realized how silly it was to go out in the doorway like this in pajamas at

four in the morning. He could have done something. I didn't even feel like I scared him. A few months ago I was going through my drive and saw that I still had the picture. I don't know why, I don't want to delete it, and I saw something I never noticed before. He was not wearing shoes, only socks on the cobblestone street. So I don't know why you came, weird guy, but high school in a fairly small town. During my high school years, I had a few classes with a girl named Cindy. Cindy was rather awkward and unfortunately was often bullied by many people at school for both her looks and lack of social skills. I tried my best to stand up for her but otherwise rarely had many interactions with her directly. The one class we did have together

however was journalism which comes into play later in this story. We had not made any contact for over 8 years at this point. I have since moved across the country from my hometown but keep in touch with a few high school friends. The other day I got a call from a friend and figured she was just calling to wish me a Merry Christmas. However, she had actually received a letter meant for me. We have the same names and lived a few blocks away from each other in our hometown. The letter was hand-typed, single-spaced letter from none other than Cindy. Below is the content of the letter, where names and places have been taken out. I used an app to get the text and did my best to edit it, so...

This is what it says. Hi there, this is Cindy from high school. I wish you all and the former journalism team a wonderful holiday and a brand new year to 2019. I have written to a couple of people and will not be heard from anymore after this. I will not be attending the reunion for a lot of different reasons. First and foremost, I moved to blank. I'm going to school in January to become a CDL truck driver and then, after a few years, move to blank or blank to work in the oil fields. Depending on how good I make I'm hoping to retire at 40. I have never worked a day in my life and I understand some people like blank and blank who had an issue with my ambition. Even though they

spoke badly of me they also did with a few other people. But my presence happened to anger blank the most. I'm almost 30 years old and I feel like the older I get I need to stop pretending to be nice. I noticed when I pretend to be nice people take me for being gullible or stupid only some people detect when I am fake. I know some of you guys in that class including you and Blank were very sketchy to me. I'm not mad or dislike any of you guys. Heck, I don't even dislike blank. I know some of the things said about me and I was also laughed at for my journalism work. I know it was not fair that I was taking credit for things that I did not deserve because people like blank made it easy for me. Until I took it for granted.

It is like hiring someone unqualified for the job and they make the same amount as someone who has worked there for several years. I spent a lot of my time focusing on having someone be with me and tell me everything is going to be okay. This generation was not going to cut it. If I was in a different generation the right guy would have been there for me all despite of my troubles back then. Deciding to take on a job working in the oil field someday, I had to finally come to the conclusion that having a family and kids was not going to cut it. I'm willing to have all the willpower to focus on a career path that will give me a good and early retirement.

I later realized that people focus on dumb things because they get it from the media. The difference is celebrities make all kinds of money where they do not have to work as hard and can spend all their wasted income focusing on things that are stupid. Regular people have to have ambition and reach a certain goal and separate their emotions otherwise you would end up on the streets poor. The point is, I know you guys pretend to be nice to me, but I'm not mad or dislike you guys. I know even blank was an instigator and blank was a bit of a snake. The only person I respected the most was blank. She was honest, she did not like me, she was an assistant in a psychology class I took and handled things well

between me and blank, and she did not have to play any games to pretend to be nice to me. I respected that a lot. She was real and I learned a lot from being like her in some ways. I am upset though that because of a French course I took she believed these lies Blank said about me because Blank also lied to me about things people said that they did not say. I've never said a bad thing about Blank. I wish you all well but I'm just letting you all know that I'm not an idiot and I know what goes on and I do not think I should be made fun of for ambitions that I had that I was not qualified for at the time. My mom did not meet my needs. She wanted me to take classes or get into programs for her satisfactory reasons. My mom did not meet my needs. She wanted me to take classes or get into programs

for her satisfactory reasons. My mom wanted me to take French class when I was better off taking Spanish and get into journalism because she wanted me to be the next Jackie Kennedy. The difference is Jackie Kennedy came from a high class family and was taught manners at a young age. Recently, I met up with my younger sister and she admitted that our mom did not teach us very much. My sister did better than me because she is younger and had seen my mistakes and she does not have ADHD like I do. But she does get panic attacks once in a while which I only know that if I'm paranoid on the wrong weed that I smoke or if I get a bad trip. I'm tired of people laughing at me and not taking me serious. I'm glad I the wrong weed that I smoke or if I get a bad trip. I'm tired of people laughing

at me and not taking me serious. I'm glad I moved out of blank because people made me feel like I was not enough to society and whenever I ran into people from school they would get hung up on things that I did when I was 16. People tell me to let go of the past yet I had to deal with blank who would ask me dumb questions like if I ever had a boyfriend or in a nasty tone asked me if I'm Jewish or she would talk about my eyebrows like every person did from school. I'm glad I moved. I'm a lot healthier and things are looking up. So what is so unsettling to me is how manic and all over the place it is and why I was chosen to be sent this letter. No one else mentioned in the letter was sent one.

We did some research and reached out to her sister, and she said she was still living in the town over from us and not where she said she had moved. The return address links back to a UPS store. Maybe I'm overreacting, but Cindy, I hope I never have to hear from you again. So this happened on Christmas Eve just a few days ago. For context, I work for a storage rental company that often has employees that live in off-site apartments. I am one of these employees. On this particular day, I was not working, just at home getting ready to drive to my mom's, but I'm good friends with the girl who was working. To set the scene a little further, my home job is towards the end of a dead-end frontage road next to a major interstate. There's a major truck stop at the beginning of the road, then further down a sketchy days-in motel,

then a relatively large boat retailer with an electric fence directly next to our gated property. Our office is on the right-hand side of the property with my apartment directly attached to the office building but my apartment door is behind the gate while the office door is not. Then further down the road were some businesses that were closed for the holidays and finally the road ends. So even on a normal non-holiday we don't get a lot of people or traffic coming down the road and being at the end of the road we easily can see anyone who's headed our way. So now that we've got a setting, my co-work and I, I'll call her V, were just talking casually outside my apartment door when some guy comes jogging over from what looked like to be the direction of the closed and electrical fenced

boat place. I thought that seemed slightly odd but having lived in that area for over a year I've noticed weirder behavior from legitimate people so I ignored it. V asks him how she can help him and walks to unlock the office door for him and I go inside my apartment to continue packing to leave. Last thing I notice is that he was trying the door handle pretty incessantly before she had unlocked it, but even that I kind of brushed off. A few minutes pass and V walks back to my apartment and steps inside to grab her hat that she left and tells me how weird the dude was. Apparently he said he wanted to rent a unit but didn't have his ID or the 25 minimum dollars to rent the unit so he left. V also told me that she could see the same police car now driving up and down the road and how strange it was.

I told her the cops drive down the road all the time and to not worry about it. V goes back to the office, maybe after spending 2-3 minutes in my apartment total. I hear muffled voices through the wall and notice she's calling my cell. I answer and she said, please come in here right now. I honestly should have been much more concerned than I was but still thinking she's overreacting, I casually stroll over to the office, open the door and V is in one corner of the office pointing under the desk. Sure enough, there's the guy from before, just crammed up under that desk. From details I gathered after the fact, V left the office door unlocked during the minutes she was in my apartment. Believe me, she will never do this again.

The guy was apparently hiding from the cops and had seized the opportunity to hide in our office when he noticed her leave the office. He sees me and starts waving a wallet full of cash around. Tells me all he has on him is cash and he just doesn't want to go to jail for possession. He'll pay us if we let him stay. He seemed pretty out of it to be honest and several dude you have to leaves from me later he walked out without much of a fight. I lock the door behind him and we count the money. Notice that V's car keys had been taken off her key ring and are on the floor where he had been sitting. We debate calling the police, but by this point there are three or four cop cars with lights coming down the road. I go back to packing.

V keeps the door locked. At this point, it's time for me to leave leave so I'm not late for my holiday plans but last thing I did was stop and talk to an officer on my way down the road to get the final story and make sure V would be safe by herself. I was told that they caught the guy in the woods behind the property. Apparently he stole a car, took it to the truck stop for some reason and thought he could get it to push start while there. He could not. The cops then found him with drugs on him before he took off running. And well, here we are.

So glad that he was not violent in any way and left my office peacefully. Things definitely could have gone differently. Also hoping he stays locked up for a while and forgets about the girl who kicked him out of his hiding spot. So this happened back at the beginning of 2018. I was still 15. I don't remember exactly when, but it's in the little town of France where I go to high school. It was a cold day with a bit of rain and wind. Me and some friends, all girls, left school at lunchtime to go to the shop. We wanted something to eat, thus we were wandering in the different shops aisles. But something felt wrong. Me and the girls with who I stayed, Aurora, felt a strange feeling, like as if though someone was watching us. We noticed a guy who was always in the same aisle with us or the next one. He looked very strange, like he was not really there. Empty eyes and a tense but still smiling expression. We didn't say anything. After a few minutes, 10-15 minutes to be exact, we joined again with the rest of the girls,

finding out they had the same feeling. Two of them, Klaue and Lowe, said that a strange guy came to talk with them, very weirdly, with a creepy forced smile on his face, the same guy me and Aurora had just noticed earlier. I didn't hear properly his name but I think it was Mac. We decided to get out after buying some things already scared but little did we know it was just the beginning. So now we were outside the shop putting our stuff in our backpack and Mac came out, directly coming towards us. He was literally less than a meter away from me.

He tried to make the conversation, asking some questions like, Oh, you're from the high school of the town. Or our favorite subject and thing, considering we didn't know who he was, it was creepy. But the scariest thing wasn't that. It was the fact that a young man came out from out of his car just next to our spot and walked really quickly towards all of us. He then shouted, bro, let the young ones alone. Stop doing this. And then left the shop very quickly. The way he shouted and how he looked, panicked, scared, was really disturbing. It's like it wasn't the first time he had to intervene like this. It wasn't like he was jokingly saying

that to tease his friend. It was clearly a warning for us and for Mac. Me and my friends decided to go. All of that was so wrong. We didn't want to show him that we were scared because God knows how he would have reacted so we politely said goodbye and then left by walking quickly. We thought it was fine that it was ending but in fact it was far from being finished. When we were like 15 meters away me and another girl heard banging from behind us. We turned around to see this creep putting on a beanie and a scarf just after he ran into some When we were like 15 meters away, me and another girl heard banging from behind us. We turned around to see this creep putting on a beanie and a scarf just after he ran into some trash can. Now he was looking directly at us.

We crossed the road and walked quicker, using different paths to see if he would come after us. And of course, it would have been too easy if he had just left. Mac was behind us every time we looked back. He was clearly following us. Considering it was a cold day with rain and wind, it was practically no one outside, and he was way larger than any of us. Tall, built, but most important, he really looked like he was either on something or mentally ill.

More so mentally ill with his always smiling face and very big empty eyes. My instinct was screaming to me that something was wrong, that we should run and never look back. So we did. We ran and after like five minutes he was no longer behind us so we started to walk again. Big mistake. When I turned my head I saw him staring at me as he was walking behind us. We accelerate almost running again. Forget the idea of not showing him we were afraid. At some point he was less than two meters away from me and my friend. I don't know how he did that. If he had run or if he knew the town well enough to have a secret shortcut or something, he was really close to us so we started to sprint right after a turn.

We ended up at the top of a sloping road. We looked back to see if he was still there and there he was again, but he stayed at the bottom and just stared at us for a solid 15 seconds without moving and then left quickly. I don't know what he wanted, but I sure know that if even his friend had to warn him to stop doing this, he didn't just want to offer us some tea. Plus, my instincts were really telling me that Mac wasn't someone good. I won't ever be able to forget the dementia in his eyes. This happened five years ago today, marking this experience's fifth anniversary. At the time, I was a shy, conservative, religious, sheltered college kid whose social interactions are very dependent on school related activities.

Today I'm still pretty shy, conservative, not so religious, currently in N-E-E-T and I barely have social interaction nowadays but I digress. Being the religious person that I was then, I had requested that my family and I attend mass on the last Sunday of the year. Sunday came and mom was the only one willing to accompany me. We attended the last mass of the day which was six or seven in the evening because it was too hot in the afternoon and I could not be bothered to wake up early for the morning mass. When we arrived the mass had already started, all the pews were occupied so we stood by the very back of the church. The mass itself was

pretty average except for a lady in the back of the church who fainted in the middle of the priest's homily. I didn't feel anything was wrong during the whole mass. Usually after the mass when the priest would be standing before the altar, people would regularly approach him to receive his blessing. I had planned to do that, meaning I had to cross the whole length of the church to get to the priest. As I walked on the aisle I suddenly felt like I was being followed. In the years after this incident I have felt what being followed by friends trying to catch up on me feels like, and that did not match what I felt when I was walking down the aisle. I was hoping that my instincts were wrong, but was quickly disproved when a man came up to my left side. He was taller than I was. I'm 5'2 and he

was around 5'7. I couldn't pinpoint his age, but I can guess he was older than I was then, maybe early 20s. I didn't know who this person was and I didn't know what he wanted from me. He then started to ask me personal questions like my name, my age and where I live. I knew that I was lacking in social skills but I know following a person around a church at night and flooding them with personal questions isn't a great way to make friends. At this point I was uncomfortable. I was still far from the priest but too polite to just simply ignore him. I replied to his questions but all were false or vague information, i.e. I gave a fake name,

a different age, etc. When I did approach the priest I tried to get his attention to maybe get the guy to leave me alone but the priest looked like he didn't even care whose forehead his knuckles are touching at that time. Feeling betrayed I turned to look at other people nearby but everyone else had of the church, but as I neared the spot my mom and I stayed earlier, she wasn't there anymore. I panicked and started to frantically look around. The guy was still following me, now asking me where I went to school. I didn't want to talk to him anymore, and I didn't want him near me anymore. In my panic, searching for my mother, I caught a glimpse of her form sitting at one of the pews at the back. I darted straight for her and squeezed my words out with no pause that I was being followed and we needed to book it out of the church. Mom, understandably surprised, looked at me, then at the guy who was still by my side, then back at me. She then stood up, took my hand and walked out of the church with me. By the time we got to the car my heart was racing and I was shaking a little. Being the nice person that I was I tried to rationalize that maybe the guy really had good intentions and mom would tell me the guy was probably just awkward or

socially inept but everyone else who I shared this story with thought otherwise. For a time I wouldn't go near that area without my brother and pretty much lost my dedication to my faith over time because of this experience. My sister and I travel to Florida just about every summer, if not every other. Since our mom passed away, we made it our mission to try and travel as much as possible, even if it's to places that we've been to countless times. Florida and South Carolina are among our favorites to revisit, as we love the atmosphere, warmth, and not to mention the activities there are much cheaper in comparison to traveling along the west coast. We always make sure that we both

have charged phones, should one of them not work or we get separated, and we're very alert when we're outside in an unfamiliar environment that's either not very populated or if it's dark outside. My sister is much more on edge than I am when it comes to this and I always make eye contact and smile at strangers whereas she'll avoid looking at people should it be dark outside, a sketchy environment, etc. I usually haven't gotten in trouble because of this before but nevertheless it's definitely something that I get nagged at more after this incident. This happened in the summer of 2016, possibly 2015. My memory is a bit hazy when it comes to remembering dates.

We had just finished traveling around the Orlando area and we had went out to eat. Our Uber driver, since we live in the Midwest, we flew out to Florida, resulting in us Ubering most of the time, dropped us off a bit farther from our hotel and on a different end than we were used to entering from. Typically, they would pull around to the front of the hotel on this U-shaped drive around area, typically where cars would be left for valet or if you just had to run inside and grab something. However, this time we were dropped off in part of the back lot that was on the opposite end of the hotel than where our room was located. My sister and I didn't think much of it, we were just a little turned around initially. We began to try and find our

way around through the odd shaped building, but with it being dark out it was hard to find the door that led to our room. We finally stumbled over to the pool area which was near a hotel room and began to feel relieved. My sister was beginning to get slightly nervous and anxious with walking outside this late at night and with our hotel not being the nicest one in the area. So we slightly sped up our pace to get into the comfort of our hotel room. Just as we thought we were okay, we were going to be able to call it a night, a young man in his early to mid-twenties stumbled over near us, shouting, hey, hey you guys. As I mentioned earlier, I had, and still do, have the bad habit

of making eye contact with strangers. I turned around and looked at the guy and my sister whipped her head around, giving me a kind of look that yelled, what are you doing? The guy came closer to us and we could tell something was off, but he began rambling away and we were a bit shocked. He kept asking if we were with the group, and when we asked him what group he was talking about, he goes, the business group that's here, the one throwing the big party. We looked at each other, slightly confused, and told him we didn't know what he meant and we began

to walk away. He looked at my sister and said a few more things like, you're pretty, you two should come party with us. We thanked him and declined politely saying we had to go. This is where things got weird. He begins to follow us back and begins talking to my sister. He started to call at her and say things like, hey come here, come back here. She turned around thinking maybe he had something important to say. I'm not entirely sure why she turned around. This is the only somewhat logical reason that I could come up with. When she turned around he kept walking towards her slowly and kept saying come here. Getting quieter each time. He began to get really close to her and looked as if though he was going to try and kiss her or something of the sorts. At this point I had my phone out and

was recording keeping it at my side in case something happened. At this point I had my phone out and was recording, keeping it at my side in case something happened. I held it up to my ear acting like I was getting a call and I started talking on it. Oh hey, yeah yeah I'll be right there. I remember saying into my phone. The guy had looked at me at this point and took a step back from my sister. I grabbed her by the arm and began to walk back to our hotel room really quick and I said something along the lines of how there was an emergency and we had to go help her husband out. The guy stood there and just kept yelling, come back. We ignored him and went into our room and locked it. Probably not the brightest idea looking back as the doors to the hotel rooms faced outward and he now knew where we were staying.

I remember hearing him on the phone or talking to somebody ten minutes later and I looked at the peephole. I couldn't see much as it was pretty late at night but I could hear his voice and make out a tall silhouette near the palm trees outside the door. I called the hotel lobby and let them know at this point and we just called my sister's husband and let him know what was happening After about 10 minutes or so he must have left and nothing eventful happened afterwards We're still not sure if he was on something or just generally a weird dude We also don't know if he was trying to kiss my sister which seems pretty accurate giving the tone of his voice he used and his body language but either way his actions were unwarranted and definitely unwanted. I don't have the phone that I recorded the video on but it might be on my old laptop back home. If this is the case I'll try and upload it here somehow so you guys can all see what I meant by

his tone and see the proof of this situation as well. Be careful out there. I've seen a few stories on here where somebody accidentally took the role of a creeper and I thought I'd share mine. I don't think I traumatized anyone but I did give them a fright. Some information, I'm a small female, mid-twenties, softly spoken. I wear a large black hat, hide my hair and dress like a tomboy so I'm sometimes mistaken for a guy before I speak. It's probably even easier to mistake me for a man if the light isn't very good which will probably become relevant later. I used to live deep in the countryside in the proper middle of nowhere. I hated it. There were perhaps four houses in a two mile radius all separated by acres of fields and trees.

The nearest village was a mile away and my house was a half mile away from the nearest main road. I couldn't drive so I walked everywhere. I would go to town to work via bus, came back late in the evening and hop off the bus on that main road and commence the half mile walk to get to my house. The walk involved going via a winding and abandoned country road that was surrounded by bushes, fields and the odd sheep. There were no street lights, no houses, no signs and whenever I walked home from work during winter times it was pitch black. I'm talking horrifying complete absence of light darkness where you couldn't see your own hand in front of you pitch black. If the moon was full,

it'd be slightly possible to see the road in front of you, but if it was any less than full, there was no hope. During the day, it was so beautiful. During the night, I couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Not once in my stay there did I ever meet another person going the same route as me. I felt safe because there was never any people around, but I also felt unsafe because there were never any people around. Since it was absolute pitch darkness, to get down that road a torch was definitely necessary. I had a trusty wind-up one that needed 5-10 minutes of winding to charge it. I always charged it on my bus ride home. I don't think it was a very good

torch because after a few months it started getting dimmer. As I said before, I hated all of this. I absolutely hated my half mile walk home in the dark with only a torch to guide my way. I was always convinced that some ghost or slender man was going to jump out of the bushes at me any second. One day during the winter months after the sun had gone down and I came home from work, a girl got off at my stop. Weird. I guess she must have been heading to one of those other middle-of-nowhere houses. She was also small, a blonde, perhaps late teens or early twenties. I didn't know her.

I hopped off after her and saw that she was also headed for the horrible road, a torch in hand. I took out my torch and followed suit, walking about twenty meters behind the girl. All I could see of her was the outline of her light on the ground as she made her way along. About halfway along the road my piece of crap torch started getting dimmer and dimmer. I wound the dial on it and it made the weird screech sound that it always made when I spun the handle but it kept getting dimmer and dimmer until eventually I was as low as a candle. Then it went out. Not wanting to be left in the dark I sped up my walking pace so I could

hopefully share the girl's light and see where I was going. But when I sped up so did she. I sped up a little more and again so did she. Then she started jogging. I started jogging too. I thought to myself, hey dude, come on, I just want to share your light. Stop being so mean. No, I'm not the sharpest tool in the box. At the time, I did not see how this would have looked from her perspective. For all she knew, a man got off the bus after she did, followed her down an abandoned road, turned off his torch, and then started bearing down on her. But me, being quite dumb, just thought she was being selfish. All I wanted was to be able to see where I was going. Eventually she jogged so fast I gave up trying to get near her.

I let her speed away and instead, I just stumbled my way home by holding my arms out in front of me. Only a few hours later when I was lying in bed did the pieces in my head suddenly click and I Funniest Videos were among some of my favorites. The videos I liked the best were when people would get kicked in the nads by an animal like a goat, or their kids would whack them in the head with a big plastic bat. I spent many an evening in front of the TV doubled over laughing at others' bad luck. I'm aware that not all people find this kind of stuff funny, but I'd wager, judging from the popularity of the Three Stooges, that there's more of us out there

than care to admit it. However, since the following happened, I'm a lot less likely to mock others in their times of misfortune. Since I was about 10, the male members of my family, in the early years this consisted of my dad and his brother, took an annual trip to British Columbia to hunt moose. This usually took place around late September, or the closest time to that all those involved could get the time off. Since the first year of the hunt, I'd begged to go, but was always told I was too

young. This ritual was repeated year after year until I was 14 when it was finally decided that I was mature enough to handle it. Now I'm going to stop here and address something I'm sure will come up in the comments once the story is posted. I am well aware that there are many reading this that hate hunting. I'm not here to field a bunch of angry comments regarding your feelings about the act of hunting animals. Please send those to PETA. I'm here to tell you a story about something scary that happened in the woods. Well, now that I'm off my soapbox, I'll continue with my story. Being allowed to join the hunt in my family was sort of an unspoken rite of passage.

An unofficial stamp that I was now a man and you better believe that's how I felt. In order to prepare for the hunt, we made our trip to Cabela's to get all the stuff I needed for my kit to move forward. The remainder of the stuff was handled by the outfitter. All the way down to the flight inn. At the end of September,

everybody packed up for the long flight and before I knew it, we were standing next to the small river that was the base camp of every hunt since the beginning, four years before. We enjoyed a massive dinner that evening and although I was exhausted, I got very little sleep that night mainly due to excitement. Morning came all too soon but my adrenaline high kept me going. Before we left out that morning the outfitter held a brief safety meeting in order to remind all those attending that we were in a dangerous area. Whether it was a grizzly, wolf or a rutting bull we had to keep our eyes open because there was a lot of things in these woods that could hurt us. After the meeting we headed out. I was in a group with my uncle and one of the guides. After a hike of about 5 miles with a pack on my back I was starting to drag.

The lack of sleep was catching up with me. The guide must have noticed I was tired because he suggested we take a break at a small clearing at the top of the steep hill we had just hiked up. The break came just in time. I threw off my pack and leaned down next to the remnants of an old fire pit. The other two put down their packs and began pulling cooking pots and a small stove out, preparing to, what I assume, was make some coffee or snacks. About the time everything was set up and the stove began blazing, a loud crashing noise came from the tree line, only a matter of feet away from us.

We jumped up in time to see a massive bull moose charging out of the trees. A loud crashing noise came from the tree line, only a matter of feet away from us. We jumped up in time to see a massive bull moose charging out of the trees. We all scattered, trying to anticipate where the bull was headed. We were unable to get our rifles because they were laying against a tree behind the bull. None of us were stupid enough to make a target out of ourselves by circling behind a raging moose. I found a tree large enough for me to shimmy up. From my limb I saw the bull take aim for my uncle, who himself was still running in circles looking for a place of safety. Unfortunately for him, the bull was too close and managed to close the distance too quickly. As he came closer to my uncle, he dropped his head

and drove his antlers into my uncle's chest and arms which he had raised to protect his face from the strike. The bull struck with such force that my uncle was driven off the edge of the cliff that we had climbed up only minutes before and disappeared. The bull stopped at the edge of the cliff and looked around for another target, huffing the whole time. The guy took the opportunity to go for his gun. He took a big breath, aimed, and fired. The moose dropped where it stood. Once we were sure the moose was dead, we ran over to the edge, dreading what we would see. My uncle laying motionless at the bottom of the gravel-strewn hill. While not being a sheer and super tall cliff, it was still high enough to kill a man if he fell off it, and at first, I was sure that was what happened to my uncle.

To my relief, I could hear a quiet but audible moan coming from him. We scrambled to the bottom as fast as we could and when we got there, he was still moaning. The guide, whose name was Roger, swiftly took control and told me what to do to help him. He also told my uncle not to move in case he had a neck injury. Thankfully he had landed on his back so we didn't have to move him much. Roger went through a checklist of questions to find out the extent of his injuries. It was obvious that my uncle had a broken arm. The bone poking out from the skin of his forearm made me kind of queasy but I managed to hold myself together. I helped Roger create a makeshift splint for the break and I did the best I could to keep my uncle conscious.

My biggest fear was he would go into shock. Roger pulled out this weird looking radio thing that I found out later was a satellite phone and called for a helicopter to evacuate my uncle. Luckily the outfitter we were using required his guides to be certified in first aid. His knowledge provided him with the ability to give the rescue team a very good idea of my uncle's injuries and condition. He saved my uncle's life and for this I'll always be thankful and every year when I see him at the hunting camp, I thank him again. The chopper arrived about 30 minutes later and took my uncle to the hospital. The list

of injuries came up to the compound fracture of the ulna, five broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a compression fracture of the thoracic vertebrae. He spent the next couple of weeks there and when he was released, we took the first flight home. The next year or so was quite a battle for him. The ribs and the broken arm healed pretty quickly, but the two surgeries from the fractured vertebrae left him laying up for almost another six months, and the after effects from the concussion has left him with some long-term memory issues. As if it couldn't get any worse, he's been forced to live with constant pain to the extent that he has to wear a morphine pump. I would expect any

man to give up and spend all this time at home, but he's never let this whole mess ruin his life, and he's still been able to keep a smile on his face. He still attends the hunt every year, although he's left the hunting part to the younger men, and he and Roger have become pretty good friends. And by the way, when we got back, we realized we had completely forgotten about the moose. We had written it off as an unfortunate loss, but a week later we received two large parcels from British Columbia. One was 100 plus pounds of moose meat and the other was the mounted head of the bull. He was indeed a fierce looking creature. The note included simply said, here's a reminder of your trip. Get well soon. Roger. I'm a caddy at a Florida country club.

Since I'm still employed by the club, I'm not going to tell you their name because they have gone to extremes to hide what happened there. Considering there was only a few people involved in the incident, I'd surely be discovered as the source and fired on the spot. I hope that as long as I choose not to name the club, they will let my infraction slide. After all, it's in their best interest to do so. At this time in my life, I need this job more than you can imagine, so I'll do my best to hide the location of the attack. In fact, the only reason why I would risk my job at this point is that I feel that there are areas at the club that present a tremendous risk to club members and those working there. If I was to let this story go untold, I wouldn't be able to look at

myself in the mirror anymore. I'm aware that by me writing the story down here, I may be punished anyway, but the guilt of knowing is overwhelming, so I hope that by telling the story here, I may be relieved of at least a small bit of the guilt I'm feeling. In the many years I worked at the club, I've seen my share of animals attacking members and their guests. My favorites have ranged from vicious geese and swans to coyotes and wild dogs. Although some of these may seem like hair-raising events, when an animal goes up against a human wielding a metal club, they usually decide to cut their losses and flee. The extent of an injury may be something as small

as a bruise or small cut. At least that was, until this happened. I'd started this particular day caddying for one of my regulars. This regular was a well-known surgeon in the area and despite having his abusive days, he always compensated me well for putting up with his behavior. He was also one of the many club members who went to bat for the caddies when the club announced that they were considering getting rid of them. These prominent members made it clear that they would take their money elsewhere and since we were located in Florida, the club was well aware that these members had plenty of options. As we all know, money talks, so the club quickly dropped any more discussion on the subject and

we got to keep our jobs. So in order to show my gratitude, I do my best to give he and all my regulars the finest service I can provide, and telling this story here is just another way I can show them how thankful I am to them. Getting back to the point, once the doctor and his buddies finished their game, they retired to the clubhouse bar and I moved on to my next customer. A regular, we'll call him Mr. Smith, had requested I caddied for him. Luckily, I had just finished up with the doc, so I was free. Mr. Smith was another one of those loyal customers I spoke of earlier,

and since we had similar ideas when it came to the game of golf, I was often his caddy. We were only around an hour into our game when he mentioned the plastic grocery bag stuck in the bushes surrounding the pond we were approaching. With putter in hand, Mr. Smith walked up to the pond's edge and removed the bag from the bush and put it in his pocket. No sooner than he had turned around, an alligator burst from the pond and grabbed his leg. The gator wasted no time and started shaking his head and banging Mr. Smith on the shore. It took him a moment, but once the alligator started trying to pull him into the water, he started beating it all about the head. When I saw what had happened, I ran as fast as I could to help him. By the time I reached the pond, the alligator was already attempting to pull Mr. Smith under. We had seen enough Animal Planet to

know that if he did manage to pull Mr. Smith into the pond, it would go into what they call a death roll and drown him. If that happened, well we know what the result would have been. Reaching the pond's edge, I joined Mr. Smith and another golfer that had witnessed the attack and beating the gator all over its head as well. This seemed to do very little to deter it and Mr. Smith continued getting closer to being pulled all the way in. Then the other golfer yelled out to hit it in the eye to try to blind it, and that's exactly what we did. At first, this had no effect, but the hits must have added up, and miraculously, the gator let go of Mr. Smith and slid back under the water.

We didn't hesitate to pull him away from the water a good 20 yards, so the monster wouldn't be able to grab him again. Mr. Smith was understandably shaken but still calm enough to tell me to call 911. We did our best to improvise a bandage to cover the massive gash on his leg and apply pressure to slow the bleeding while we waited for the ambulance. I wasn't able to stop myself from looking back at the pond every few seconds, worrying that the gator would come after us when we had our backs turned. The wound was pretty bad. You could see the leg bone and despite putting on a brave face, you could tell he was in a lot of pain.

The ambulance arrived in roughly 10 minutes and once they were sure he was stable enough, they whisked him away to the hospital. The next step would be to get the gator out of the pond. The police must have called Fish and Wildlife because they arrived with some guys to trap it. It took a couple of hours, but eventually they dragged the 10-foot monster out of the pond. Being a native to Florida, I've seen some big gators, but this thing was a monster. The wildlife guys and their trappers hog hogtied the gator and wrapped a bunch of tape around its mouth. It was thrown in a box and taken away. I'm not sure what became of

the SOB but if it was up to me it'd be shot and made into a pair of boots for Mr. Smith. Some members came along later and said that they had seen a much smaller alligator splashing around in the pond, but after an additional one hour search, no other gator was found. The sightings were considered confused identifications, whatever that means. The club did all they could to push this rhetoric and kindly asked all those involved to keep it quiet for the good of the club. Regardless of what the trappers may think, these members that said this are trustworthy people and shouldn't have been written off. I fear we may have a tragedy before they are taken seriously. Smaller gators become big alligators, it's only a matter of time. As for me, I do my best to stay away from any body of

water on that course. Better safe than sorry, I'd say. That night, I visited Mr. Smith after work. They were going to keep him for a day or two, I guess. The wound in his leg needed 45 stitches, he said, but other than that, he said he'd gotten off lucky. This was the king of understatements as far as I'm concerned. That beast came so close to getting him, and I was realizing that the whole mess had shaken me up. I could only imagine he was going to have PTSD for a while. I still have an alligator dream at least once a week, even all this time after. Mr. Smith was back on the course in less than a month and I was his caddy as always. He tried to thank me for

helping him but I was quick to remind him that it was the other golfer that came up with the idea of attacking the eyes. I guess he had forgotten about the other golfer being there, but I can't really blame him. He had his hands full. Despite talk of lawsuits being passed around by a few members, Mr. Smith was just happy to be back on the course and on his feet. He had expressed a fear in those moments as we sat there attempting to slow the blood flow from his leg

that he may never be able to play golf again. So I imagine money is the last thing on his mind. We pretend on those days that I join him on the course that life is slowly going back to normal. However, every time I pass that pond, I can't help but be reminded of the danger that slowly grows, day after day, in that dark body of water and dread the moment that it finally lashes out and attempts to claim another of the unsuspecting and ill-prepared. I'm a 35 year old male from suburban Texas. Most of my younger life from 8 to about 16 was spent playing and exploring in the large wooded area adjacent to our subdivision.

When you spend that much time in the woods you're going to come across more than your share of snakes. Most of them will be harmless rat snakes but on occasion, you'll bump into a copperhead or the more common timber rattlesnake. You come across the water moccasin or as we call them in the south, the cottonmouth sometimes too, but they're usually around bodies of water and often get confused with the non-venomous diamondback water snake. The highly dangerous coral snake doesn't live in my part of the state, so we'll leave him out.

Anyway, I'll spare you the herpetology lecture and get to my point. Having become relatively experienced at avoiding poisonous snakes, I never had the misfortune of being bit or even struck at by one. Now the non-venomous breeds such as your common grass snake or the variety sold in the pet trade, they have shed a considerable amount of my blood. I've had several pythons and boas as pets and loved them but I was never able to grow out of my fear of the venomous breeds. I guess now that I've gotten older and have become more acidified, the guard I had put up as a kid had went down and I would soon learn how important having that guard up had become. Since I was around 20, I've lived all around the state. Austin, Dallas and several

smaller cities but after a career ending injury, I decided to move back home so I could be closer to my family. When I say family, I mean my parents. Being an only child, I spent nearly all my time growing up with them. The occasional visits to the grandparents fit in there, but once they passed, it became just us three. When I decided to move back, I stayed with my parents for a brief time before I was able to find my own place. Once I did, I still made it a rule to join them for Sunday afternoon supper. I'm not sure what the nomenclature is in your family, but our Sunday suppers usually started around noon, and with or without my attendance. It occurred about the same time

every week, and it was special. I used it as an excuse to catch up, and before I had a washer and dryer, a chance to do my laundry. Regardless of the reason, my folks were always happy to see me. It had been almost five years since I'd moved back at that point when this happened. I would load up my dog into my car and we would take the short five minute drive to my parents' house. After we had our fill of food, the dog included, I'd use the opportunity to take him for a walk around the old neighborhood. I had noticed on a few Sunday walks that there were an unusual amount of run over timber rattlers in the street. The venomous snakes had always stuck to the woods and never

came into the development. Going from never seeing one in twenty years of living there to seeing a handful in a matter of a few weeks was surprising to say the least. On this particular Sunday I discovered that one of our neighbors whose house backed up against the woods had clear cut an area about the size of a football field and created a makeshift neighborhood park. I believe he had mainly done this to have a place to knock around golf balls but it was also a nice place to play catch or have a picnic. You know, regular park type stuff. That day I decided to take my dog for a jaunt around the park and check it out. It was a nice day so we took our time exploring this new place. I even came across the dry creek bed where we used to have BB gun wars. The idea of seeing a

rattler wasn't even on my mind, as it should have been considering I was walking around a semi-wooded area on a warm spring day. As I came to the far corner of the park I caught a quick glance of a coiled snake and heard an almost inaudible rattling. The rattler was coiled and angled at myself and my dog. Luckily he didn't see it because he would have certainly attacked it and been bit. To keep him from being bit I jerked his lead with all my strength and slung him out of the way. I thought I had stopped in time to avoid the snake but I was sorely mistaken. As he struck I leapt back still hoping to get out of his reach.

I threw my hand behind me to break my fall. As I fell I felt what I could only describe as a poke. When I hit the ground, I began scooting backwards on my butt, attempting to avoid a second strike. But when I looked ahead, all I saw was the black tail end of the rattler slithering away into the trees, and that tail was the biggest I've ever seen. The first thing in my mind was to try not to panic. This was going to be hard considering being bit by a venomous snake was one of my biggest fears. I looked down at my leg to where I felt the strike and the only mark I saw was a single puncture. Considering rattlesnakes and all other venomous snakes had two fangs, I was surprised to only see one mark. Despite this,

it did little to calm my fears. I knew it was more than capable to kill me with the one fang. My number one goal was to get to the emergency room, so I hobbled quickly back to my parents' place with my dog who was giving me a confused look as to why I slung him through the air walking behind me. I checked him before we left the park but thankfully he had not been struck. Their house was only about 200 yards from the park so we got there fast. As soon as I walked in I told my parents what had happened in a quick matter and we hopped in my dad's truck and headed

to the ER. We pulled up to the ambulance bay and I jumped out and limped through the emergency room doors. By this time the bite was beginning to tingle and the pain was getting worse by the minute. I made it clear to the admitting nurse that I had been bitten and they wasted no time taking me into the back. Once I had told them the type of snake that had bitten me, they started the anti-venom in my IV. They made the decision to fly me to Dallas to receive further treatment because they were more qualified to treat it. The pain at this point was agonizing and I fought the constant urge to vomit. Once the pain meds had a chance to kick in, the pain abated to a certain amount but the nausea was made worse because of my body's reaction to the drugs. At some point, I was able to get some rest and only remember parts of the helicopter flight.

The hospital in Dallas put me in ICU so they could closely monitor my reaction to the crowfab. Their theory was that the rattler had only caught me with one fang because I was falling away from it during the strike, and as a result, the dirty bugger had not been able to completely envenomate me. In other words, I had gotten amazingly lucky. In the end, I ended up getting five doses of antivenin and fortunately avoiding having any necrotic damage. I was allowed to go home after about the fourth day at the hospital. It had been an expensive lesson and I'm still making payments on the $100,000 plus bill today. My first investment the following spring was a pair of snake boots, and they still get worn on a regular basis during the warmer months, regardless of the heat. After all, I'm not going to let some angry snake ruin my love for the outdoors.

Since then, I have yet to come across another rattlesnake, but if I never see one again, it'll be too soon. That's pretty much the meat and potatoes of the story, and I'll spare you the boring parts. However, before I go, I'll leave you with a little warning. I was recently watching a news report from somewhere up north talking about the timber rattlesnakes being a protected species due to its dwindling numbers. I could only shake my head. They may be rare up north, but there is plenty here, and regardless of their numbers, they're just as dangerous.

No matter where you live, keep your eyes open and be careful. It only takes one bite to change your life forever. My name's Rob. I'm 37 and an avid hiker. The following incident happened 10 years ago. My love for nature had been with me since childhood. It's become so strong I took a job working summers at Yosemite while I attended college. I did consider applying for a permanent job after school but that was not to be. My life pushed me in an entirely different direction but still happy where I ended up. My decision to go into education gave me the opportunity to expand the minds of the young but still have a large amount of time off to explore and enjoy the outdoors. The best of both worlds as they say.

The week in which this story unfolded was just like any other summer week. I had taken a five mile hike the prior month and my family and I had a week-long camping trip scheduled for the last week before the start of the fall semester. The early part of the week had been taken up by the usual errands and small tasks to do around the house but I knew that by Thursday the remaining two days would be free to enjoy in any way I choose. Then Thursday morning came around. I made the kids breakfast and once they finished they scattered around the neighborhood to hang out with their friends. Being at the age that they could take care of themselves, 14 and 16 respectively, I was now free to do what I wanted and what I wanted to do all week was take our dog, Lady, and go for a hike in the hills outside town. My wife worked until at least 5 every day so I called her to let her know what my plans were for the day.

The call went to her voicemail which wasn't an odd thing considering she was a psychologist and more than likely was with a patient when I called. Anytime I went on my long walks or hikes, whatever you choose to call it, I made sure to leave her as much information about where I was going and when I planned to be back so she would know when to expect me home or when to send help if I didn't return when I was expected to. This is something everyone should do when they go into the outdoors. It's a smart thing to do. Anyway, with that taken care of, I grabbed my small pack and lady's leash and we loaded up and headed out of town. We arrived at the park just before 10am and as far as I could tell, we were the only people in the area. I hooked lady up and let her out of the car, threw on my pack and we headed down the trail. Once I was out of sight of the road I stopped to take my.38 out of my pack and placed it into my holster tucked into my waistband. I do have a CCW permit. I started carrying a pistol a few years before this happened when I came across a drug

deal behind a grocery store and had one pulled on me. I was led to believe I was about to die. I'm not sure if the guy was serious but if I'm ever in a spot like that again I'd led to believe I was about to die. I'm not sure if the guy was serious, but if I'm ever in a spot like that again, I'd like to be able to at least even the odds. But that's a story for another time. Lady and I had been hiking for about ten minutes when we came to a blind corner. We were walking uphill and were unable to see what sat at the top of the hill. I'd been out here before, but it had been several years and I couldn't remember which way the trail led. The only reason that this mattered at all was lady's behavior as we neared the top of the hill. She had stopped and raised her head and began intensely

sniffing the air. Since she had never done this before I was unsure of what she was smelling but within a minute she lowered her head and started walking as usual. It was a head scratcher but I wrote it off as a regular dog funniness. At the top of the hill I noticed that the trail split off into two directions, to the right and straight ahead. So I stopped to ponder in which direction we would go. I took the opportunity to take a drink from my bottle and poured some into my hand for Lady. She had three handfuls and I put the opportunity to take a drink from my bottle and poured some into my hand for Lady. She had three handfuls and I put the bottle back in my pack. The plan was to go straight ahead to decrease the chance of getting lost.

Like I said, it had been a while since I had last been out here, so I was erring on the side of safety. In the future, we could take the right fork and explore. We had plenty of time left. If we didn't make it this year, we could take the right fork and explore. We had plenty of time left. If we didn't make it this year, we could check it out some other time. Well, once we had slaked our thirst, Lady and I continued on ahead. We had only managed a few steps before an uproar occurred behind me. Looking back, I saw Lady in full battle mode with a medium-sized dog. I began striking at the other dog with my walking stick trying not to hit Lady. It was obvious she was fighting for her life. Being a cocker spaniel she didn't stand much

of a chance against this larger dog but I was darn sure that I wasn't going to let this mutt kill her. I kept swinging at the dog until one of the swings made a solid hit. It recoiled back for a second and at first I thought it was going to run off. This is when I got my first clear look at it and realized that it was in fact a coyote. Unfortunately rather than running away it began approaching us again but this time in a much more measured way. I could tell it was making the judgment as to whether it should renew the attack. I had had enough of this crap and I wasn't going to give it a chance so I drew my pistol and shot it.

It let out a short yelp and turned to run but dropped dead before it could take another step. My first priority was to check on Lady. She was very bloody but the only wounds that I could see were two deep puncture holes on the back of her neck and a deep tear to her back leg. We were both really shook up, and I held her while I sat there and stared at the dead coyote. It took a few minutes to get myself together, but once I did, I picked up Lady and ran to my car where I had left my phone. The police and animal control arrived in about 10 minutes. Police had been notified by the dispatcher that I was a CCW permit holder and I left my pistol in my front seat so that they could examine it or whatever they do under these circumstances.

But once they were able to confirm that the coyote had only one wound and I had just the one round in my gun, that was as far as they took things. While I waited for the cops, I raided my first aid kit for bandages to treat Lady's wounds at least in the best way that I could until I could get her to the vet. I quickly led them to the body of the coyote and they released me so I could take her to the emergency vet clinic. Luckily, the clinic found no other wounds on her. Once she was cleaned up, all it took was 20 staples and some bandages. However, they followed this good news up with the bad news that she would have to be kept in quarantine for 10 days to observe her for signs of rabies. I wasn't overly concerned about the rabies since she had received her shot just two months prior.

The worst part would be having to explain to the family that she would be away for all that time. She was a very important part of the family and she'd doubtlessly be upset herself. She'd never spent a single day without us. During ladies 10 days away the investigation took place. The police were satisfied with my description of the attack and closed their part of the case. Apparently it came out in the media soon after that a coyote had been seen chasing and stalking multiple joggers, and one report stated that a local residence dog had been ripped through their chain link fence and killed by a coyote. The animal control department notified me that the coyote did not have rabies, and after the 10 day period, Lady got to come home. She certainly seemed happy

to see us and I can guarantee that we were all overjoyed to see her. After a few follow ups, she was given a clean bill of health and was completely healed up in 3 months. There is one lingering effect from the attack however. When I take her on walks, she spends a lot of time looking behind her to make sure no other animal can sneak up on her. The fact is, if I'm being honest, I'm a little jumpy on walks myself, so I can't really blame her. When all's said and done, I'm glad we both made it through the whole thing, and I imagine my family feels the same way. Since I've enjoyed all the great stories others have written here, I thought it would be only

fair that I share a few of my own. We'll start with one story today and if it goes over well, I'll post a few more in the coming weeks. This first one serves as a lesson to all those out there that believe the big tough looking dogs like pit bulls and rottweilers are the only dogs to attack people. Now, I'll be the first to admit that these breeds are responsible for their share of attacks and do more damage to their victims. However, in my life experience I've witnessed far more aggression coming from those breeds of dogs we like to call lap dogs.

This first story occurred when I was around 11 or 12 years old. My school would have these yearly candy sales to raise money for a class-wide thing called a field trip. A field trip, for those living under a rock, is a trip in which a group of students would load up on a bus and visit a local landmark such as a museum or something of the sort. In my school district, the usual way in which to raise money to pay for each student's cost was to sell candy. The majority of the sales came from selling door to door. The remainder would be bought up by the student's parents at the last minute to ensure him or her would have enough to pay their way. The lucky few of us that reached a certain level of sales would also get to pick a prize of their choice determined by the amount they generated.

Of course, I was never one of those kids. I didn't have parents that worked in an office who could get everyone in their building to buy candy. Anyway, that's in the past. The point of the whole candy paragraph was to explain why my friend and I were walking around the neighborhood knocking on doors. I'm not sure how much we had made that day, probably not much, but I know it was right after school, so we hadn't been out very long. At the time, the middle school started later, therefore they weren't let out until 3.45.

I'm going to be honest with you here and let you know that some aspects of this story aren't as clear to me as they once were. However that being said I can see the attack in my mind just like it happened yesterday. So my friend and I had just been basically told to take a long walk off a short pier by one of our friendly neighbors and we're walking to the next house. That's when I saw Kelly. She was a couple years older than me and had been the apple of my eye for as long as I can remember and she just happened to be my neighbor across the street. We spent many a long summer day playing games like Simon and drawing crappy pictures on her Etch-a-Sketch. She and her brother were even the first kids in my neighborhood to get an Atari 2600. She certainly didn't feel the same way about me, but she was at least still cool enough to be friends with fat, bushy-haired me. When I look back, she was

perhaps the only friend of mine I never had a falling out with, and when you're a whiny little fat kid, that's a hard thing to achieve. Meanwhile, back to the door-to-door selling, as I watched Kelly glide up to the sidewalk. A loud and high-pitched bark yelp blasted from the tall cedar tree located at the corner of the house. I'll do my best to describe the layout of the area. The house we had just left had a short sidewalk connected to the two-car driveway. There were no cars in the drive at the time, so we were cutting across it and into the neighbor's yard, headed to their front door. At each corner of the house we had just left, there was a tall and dense eastern red cedar

tree that blocked most of the space between that house and the one next to it. This was where the shrill bark had come from. Kelly had just gotten off the school bus and was walking uphill and on the sidewalk heading toward her house located two houses down and around the corner. When the bark blasted out behind us, we turned to look for the source. In the blink of an eye, a small mangy looking little dog tore out from the cedar tree and headed straight toward Kelly. The little mutt moved so fast we barely had time to register what was about to happen. Before Kelly knew what hit her, the dog slammed mouth wide open into her beautiful slender leg. We turned to help her get it off of her, but as soon as it hit, it was gone. When we reached her, it was obvious that she had been

bitten. A roughly orange-sized piece of skin had been ripped from her calf. She was understandably upset and in a large amount of pain. Blood had already soaked her bright white keds. I told my friend to beat on the door and tell people at the house that their dog had just attacked someone, and meanwhile I ran to Kelly's house to tell her parents what had happened. Her dad followed me around the corner in his car. By the time we had gotten back to the scene the homeowners were outside, apparently apologizing to Kelly. They kept insisting to her father that she must have done something to antagonize the dog.

But my friend and I made it real clear that we had seen the whole thing and that was positively not the case. She hadn't even seen the dog until it attacked her. None of us had in fact. Kelly's dad was in no mood to argue. He swooped her up into his car and took her to the emergency room. Kelly's mom who had stayed back at the house had called the police and animal control people. We spent around an hour talking to the police officers and animal control guy before they said we could go home. From what I remember, Kelly's parents didn't file charges against the homeowners because they paid her medical bills. However, they didn't get so lucky with animal control. The dog was taken and unfortunately put down because it was not up to date on its vaccines. Therefore, they

had to test for possible rabies infection and the only way to do that is to euthanize the animal. I suspect it also didn't help that it had attacked someone so viciously. As you may have guessed, Kelly had to undergo a painful regimen of four anti-rabies shots over the next 14 days. Her bite eventually healed and fortunately she was rabies free, so that means the dog was clean also. They never determined what caused the dog to attack that day. From my experience working at pet stores and vet offices, I came across a large cross section of dog breeds and the opinion I have formed is that any type of dog can be vicious towards people. Aggressiveness towards other dogs is a different thing in my opinion. But the dogs that

have bit me the most or tried to are the little breeds. I don't believe it's an inherent thing, it just comes from being coddled and treated like a baby. If you don't agree, next time you see a Chihuahua, try to pet it or touch its owner while they're holding it. Kelly completely healed and went on with her life just as I did. Her family moved away once she graduated and went off to college. I haven't seen any of them since then. My friend with me that day moved away soon after the dog attack and last I heard about him he was in prison somewhere. If you're wondering, I didn't sell much candy that year and as a result didn't make the class trip, but I don't remember caring too much about it.

The next year when we had a fundraiser for a band trip and we had to sell those stale candy bars again, I made sure not to go to that house. I didn't think that they would want to buy candy from one of the kids that got their dog killed. Even all these years later, I keep my guard up when I'm around little dogs, despite my unending love for them. This particular mishap occurred when I was 13. Despite being almost 25 now I'm still dealing with the lingering effects of the whole mess. In some ways you could say it was my fault considering I knew the dangers but when you're dealing with a large bird you often get lulled into a false sense of security by their loving

actions and beauty. A combination of the two in addition to just being young is probably the real reason. Before I get into the specifics of the story, I'll give you the brief backstory of my life and how it was I ended up in that predicament. Without disclosing certain specific aspects of me and my family's business, I'll say I ended up living with my grandparents after a rather public incident involving my mother and her employer. Since she had been in trouble with the law before, her punishment this time was somewhat more extreme than it had been in the past. When I was woken up that morning at the age of 10 and told that my mother was going away for a while,

I was upset but because of my already close relationship with my grandparents, I got over it after a while. In case you're wondering, I grew up without a dad. Never met the guy and that's all I really want to say about that. My place in the household was not dissimilar to that of any other grandchild. After a couple of months of spoiling me rotten, life slowly eased into a more normal day-to-day living environment. My belief is that in order to make me more comfortable in their home, they attempted to give me all the awesome things a kid gets from his or her parents, but I had never received because of my mother's repeated joblessness and jail stints. This scheme did manage to create a spoiled

little brat, but my grandfather quickly put me in my place. I'd never really had a strong and positive male presence in my home with my mother so his reasonable and decisive manner was something I desperately needed in order to become the well-rounded woman I've become. Bless you grandpa, I love you and miss you. I can't tell this story without including my grandmother, Brenda. Grammy Brenda had always been a little different. She served in the Navy, then after she left, ran off to live in Thailand. She didn't know anyone there, but fell in love with the country while she was still in the Navy. Most of her years there, she slept on the beach because she had no money. After returning from Thailand, she trained to be and become a pro roller derby girl and even

ended up on television. When she met my grandpa David and they got married, most of her time was spent at home, working out of their garage as a gunsmith. Like I said, she is not your average woman. By the time I was born, she was breeding and keeping various breeds of birds for the pet trade. When I moved in with them in 2003, she was keeping cockatiels, but was also wanting to get back into the larger breeds like macaws and African greys. I'd become excited by her stories of the big parrots she'd had before and was bubbling over with anticipation to see what she would bring home. In early 2006 she sold off all her remaining smaller birds and came home with a citron-crested cockatoo. I fell head over heels for it. I say it because the bird was only a couple of years old and lacked any of the gender differences that appear in older birds. Of course, we could have

had DNA tests done, but the bird's sex wasn't that important to us then. So just to be safe, we named it Dawn. It was a name that could apply to either gender and plus when it flipped up its crest, the yellow looked similar to a rising sun or at least it did to my 13 year old mind. None of this really mattered in the end, the bird loved my grandfather, so we just started referring to it as her and it stuck from then on. Grammy Brenda sat me down the first night and did her best to teach me all I should know about taking care of a large bird. The most important thing was to be calm and kind to the bird. She was well aware that kids have a tendency to get loud and boisterous.

It was important when dealing with cockatoos especially because they tend to be shy and reserved birds. I was also to remember to avoid showing fear to the bird because some parrots will sense this and bite you out of spite. I'd seen this first hand at a pet store when a little boy timidly petted this black parrot and the bird started biting him. As the boy crawled out in pain, the parrot bit harder and harder until a member of the store staff that the parrot must have liked got it to let go of the boy's finger.

The poor kid's finger looked like he had been slammed in a drawer so I made sure to take this particular tip to heart. Grammy let me feed and give fresh water to Dawn every morning. She continued to teach me new things every day. The skills I would learn ranged from the types of fruits I could give hand-raised birds to supplement their diets, to the way to trim their wings so they wouldn't fly away. Grandpa would take her from her cage and set her on the big perch that was made for her in the corner of the dining room. She was happy to sit on the perch as long as she could see Grandpa, but once he entered a room in which she was unable to see him, she'd throw a fit, screeching and flipping up her crest.

Once he re-entered her field of vision, she'd calm down. After lunch, he'd take her from the perch and set her on his shoulder. He'd sit in his chair and watch TV while she walked from shoulder to shoulder across the back of his chair. One afternoon, Grammy asked me to bring Dawn to her, so we could check her beak and nails to see if they needed to be trimmed. I walked over to the chair where she and Grandpa sat watching Matlock. She was on his right shoulder grooming herself and I put my hand on her stomach and directly in front of her legs to get her to step on my finger just like Grammy had taught me. This had worked hundreds of times before with other birds but she wasn't having it she walked

to the other shoulder to get away from me but i just went to the other side and tried again like i expected she refused my hand and walked back to my grandpa's right shoulder i wasn't about to be beaten at a battle of wills by a bird so i offered my hand one more time it finally looked like she had given in when she bent over and bit down on my finger like birds often do to balance themselves as they step onto your index finger. However, something was different this time. When she grabbed my finger with her beak, she closed down on my finger like she was cracking a nut. The pain hit me instantly and I had to stop myself from slapping her. When she heard me yell, she let go and ran had to stop myself from slapping her.

When she heard me yell, she let go and ran back to my grandfather's left shoulder to hide like a child that knew it was in deep trouble. There was no doubt that she had broken my finger. The crunch was so loud grandpa could hear it clearly. Grandpa and I traded shocked looks and I continued to do all I could not to scream. The pain was the worst I'd ever felt. When I tried to bend the knuckle all I could manage was breaking out into tears. By now, Grammy had come into the living room because of my yells and loud crying. She could tell what had happened as soon as I held up my finger.

It had already turned blue and black at the joints and the pressure marks from Don's beak had turned into bruises. Grandpa, being the cool and calm guy he'd always been, offered his hand to Don and she stepped onto it. He walked her to her cage and put her in. When she closed the door, she threw a fit and started screeching. We all turned our backs to the cage and drove to the emergency room. The x-rays confirmed what we already knew. The finger had broken between the second and third joints so it didn't require surgery or pins. The doctor shot my finger full of painkiller stuff and realigned the break. Once that was complete, the splint was added to hold the finger straight while the bone healed. After a script for some

painkillers and a suggestion to schedule a follow up with the doctor we headed home. I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't afraid of Dawn now but I was determined I wasn't going to let her know it. It was a fault after all. She had made it obvious that she did not want me to pick her up but I pushed her until she acted out. We created a few new rules after this when it came to handling Dawn. First off, no one was to touch Dawn when she was with Grandpa except Grandpa. The next was the scary

one. Tomorrow would be just like any other day, meaning I would feed and water Dawn like nothing happened. It was important not to let her know that I was afraid of her even though I was. Next morning went off without a hitch. She acted as if though nothing had happened and we played along. The break healed up in about six weeks and other than hurting like a mother in cold weather, it returned to normal. Of course, this was not the last time Dawn would bite someone, although never as bad as mine. Grammy Brenda caught the occasional love bite here and there but she had become used to that kind of stuff long ago. My aunt also had one of her shiny dangler earrings ripped out of her ear one night when Don was on her shoulder

and decided she wanted the shiny toy dangling in front of her, but other than a torn earlobe and a little blood, it didn't add up to much and she was able to laugh about it today. As far as the rest of it all, I continued to help Grammy Brenda with her birds, which eventually added up to an African Grey, a couple of conures, and of course Don. That continued until I turned 16 and went to work at the same pet store I saw that kid's finger get mashed in. I stayed there until I went off to college. I'm now currently working for a veterinarian part-time while I pursue my doctorate. Unfortunately for her. However, one night during a visit to Grammy's house, she saw me and started throwing a fit until I picked her up. I'm not sure why,

but I was overwhelmed with the urge to sit in Grandpa's chair, so I did. Since that night, Dons lived with me and, although we are far from friends at this point, we have been brought closer together by a mutual love for the great man we had lost. My name's Cody and I've been a paramedic about five years at the point this story takes place. I originally joined the department to be a fireman, but after about a year I'd realized that being a paramedic full-time was more enjoyable to me, and after a discussion with my captain and a buttload of training, he agreed I could stay a paramedic as long as there was no manpower shortages elsewhere. Since then, I've spent every working day on a bus, doing the best job in the world, at least in my opinion. However, you're not reading

this to hear my life story. Instead, you're here to read about one of the most horrific things I've ever seen on my job. The night it happened had been just like any others. There are occasional shifts where everything seems to go haywire, but those are rare and we hadn't experienced one in quite some time. My normal shift was days, but I had been switched to nights after one of the old-timers had retired. Fortunately, I was riding with one of the only two guys I could stand. The rest of our crew was filled with jacked-up jocks and drama queens. That night I was working with Donald, possibly the funniest guy in the department and my favorite guy to work with. Our first call of the night was a GSW in a rougher part of town, gunshot wound.

We arrived before the PD and since our protocol was to never enter an active shooting situation, we were forced to sit and wait for them to arrive and clear the scene. After a very long 15 minutes, we were finally allowed to enter the apartment where the shooting had taken place, and just as we feared, the victim was already dead. And yes, I am aware I started the paragraph saying this night was like any other. Unfortunately, things such as this are all too common in my city. Despite the rough starts of the night, the calls that took place in the following few hours went far better. We managed to stabilize this poor little boy that took place in the following few hours went far better. We managed

to stabilize this poor little boy that was having an asthma attack. These things are often made worse by stressful situations and the boy's mother was doing the poor kid no favors. Once we were able to get him alone in the bus, he responded much better to treatment. By the time we arrived at the ER, the attack was all but over. The call was probably the highlight of my shift. Patients like that are the main reason I love my job so much. Helping others at times when they need it most gives me a supreme sense of achievement. There aren't many jobs that can do that for you anymore. The remainder of the calls that night went smoothly, mainly trip and falls and minor fender benders.

All of them except the last. Stuff was winding down and we only had about an hour left. I was riding shotgun and going through the run sheets and double checking them. We had just dropped off a drunk college girl that had been hit by a car full of more drunk college girls. The injuries were a big deal. After checking out all those involved in the incident, the driver and her passengers checked out fine and the girl that was hit was left with what appeared to be just a sprained ankle. Of course, the girl driving got to spend the night in the jail. On the way out of the hospital parking lot, we received a call to meet the police department at the address of an elderly person for a wellness check. Generally, we didn't accompany the police on wellness checks,

but since the citizen involved was diabetic and had a heart condition, we had been asked to tag along. Those of you reading this that are unaware of what a wellness check is, the police receive a call from a family member or neighbor requesting the police to check on someone to ascertain their situation. Basically, they ask the cops to make sure their loved one is doing okay, living or not a danger to themselves, that kind of stuff. Anyway, we met the two officers outside the subject's apartment,

who in this case was a 77-year-old widow who lived alone with an army of cats. As we stood outside the door waiting for someone to open it, the faint smell of a decomp hung strong in the air of the cramped hallway. If the fact she didn't answer the door after five solid minutes of knocking wasn't a bad enough sign, the smell of a decomposing body confirmed our darkest suspicions. Once the handyman returned with a key and let us in the apartment, the officers entered to secure the scene and determine the status of the subject of the check. In a matter of seconds, the younger of the two officers stormed back out into the hallway, retching uncontrollably. Donald and I shared a look of bewilderment. It had been quite

a long time since I remember seeing a cop getting sick at a scene. I figured it had to be very bad in there and I wasn't wrong. The second officer came out a few seconds later holding a handkerchief over his face and gave us the okay wave with his head. One step into the door, I was hit with the overbearing stench of cat pee, the universal perfume of the crazy cat lady. The smell came close to overpowering the decomp and the combination of the two even made me a bit queasy. Donald went ahead of me while I put my bag down to dig out my flashlight. At that time, a cat zipped between my legs, not the door. I could only shake my head and hope I never ended up like this poor woman.

I noticed Donald standing ahead of me looking down at something with a horrified look on his face. A couch blocked whatever it was, but I could only assume it was the body of the woman. His look did surprise me considering we had both seen more than our share of corpses, and some of those had been beyond gnarly. I heard him mumble the words, dude, nasty, under his breath and that only managed to make me more curious. He just looked up at me and said, dude, this you gotta see, and turned around and walked out of the room. He was shook in a way I'd never seen him. I wasn't sure I wanted to see it, but that was my job so, with a knot in my stomach, I walked down the hall and into the living area. When I walked past the couch I slowly looked down and saw the most horrible sight I have

ever seen and hope will ever see again. I reluctantly pulled out my flashlight and shone it down on her so I could get a clearer look in the dark room. Her body had the deflated look and almost black color that corpses take once they reach advanced decomp, but that wasn't the bad part. From what I could tell, her face had been chewed up and eaten by what I can only guess were the cats. She must have been dead for at least two or three weeks and I assume when the cats ran out of food, they turned to the next option, her dead body. While I was crouched over

her, I couldn't help but feel like I was being watched. I stood up, stifling the taste of bile seeping into my mouth and turned to look for what was causing it. As I scanned the dark room with my light, what seemed like hundreds of little red eyes peered back at me from dark corners and under furniture. A chill slowly passed through me and I ran from the room and back into the hall to call the coroner and animal control. Donald and I stood in the hallway with the two officers. We all shared a few shocked looks but nothing was said until the coroner showed up. We made sure to warn him and his assistant about the state of her face, but unless you saw it for yourself, no one could really understand how horrid it looked.

The two of them came out of the apartment a few moments later, rolling her body on a gurney, and thank god it was in a bag. I just wasn't ready to see that again. All I can say is I hope that poor lady was dead when those furry little monsters attacked her. Donald and I followed the coroner to his van and once her body was loaded, I asked him point blank what he had thought had happened. He looked me in the face almost nonchalantly. Boy, as I can tell, she had a cardiac event and was probably fed on by those cats. Her body's been in that apartment for at least a month, maybe longer considering it's winter and the heat wasn't on. The poor little things got hungry and she was the only thing left to eat.

The last thing I saw those horrid creatures as were poor little things. He continued by saying this was not his first time to come across something like this and added there had been a big story in the UK when something very similar had happened just recently. We pulled away from the scene about the time animal control showed up. I certainly did not envy those guys. From what I heard later they spent the rest of the night in that cramped little place and ended up coming out of there with 22 full-grown cats and a litter of kittens. I never found out if any of those little monsters were ever adopted, but I know for sure I'll never let my kids bring one home, no matter how much they beg me. I live in a major city, born and raised here, very familiar with my surroundings.

I'm also aware to the fact that my city is one of the worst hubs for human trafficking and living here can be very, very dangerous. Despite all this, I have taken pride in knowing that I do everything I can to remain as safe as possible. I've had close calls before, shady landlord gave a stranger copies of my key and a man tried to enter as soon as I was alone, and other horrifying tales, and considered myself an avid murderino. I'm pretty prepped. At the time, I had two things of pepper spray. One in my favorite jacket pocket,

one velcroed to my desk at work. I also had two trusty pocket knives, one always on me, one in my car door pocket. Oh, my taser never leaves my bag also. I avoid shady situations and despite being a small lady, I know my stuff. Yay for self-defense classes. My point is, I'm a very paranoid small chihuahua and I still got into a scary situation. It is summer and hot out. I've got a date with my

favorite gal pal and I swing by her place to pick her up. She tells me she has a job interview to go to first and I agree to go with her. No big deal. She's a sweet tiny thing from a small town in the Midwest and very new to the city life and the wild things that can happen here. As we drive into a different city I ask her about the job. It's a modeling gig. Oh, for who? I found an ad on Craigslist. It's just sport clothes. The Craigslist thing sets a small distance alarm off in my head, but I push it to the side. Where the heck are we going anyway? When we pull up to a Starbucks a bit outside of the city, the alarm in my head becomes a little less faint. Relax, I tell myself. I've gone to

legit job interviews at coffee shops before. There's always been a good reason. We arrive first, late still, but end up waiting about 15 minutes. Kind of weird, but cats relieved we're not the rude ones when she gets a text saying he's here. I look around the Starbucks and outside at the parking lot trying to figure out who the mystery man can be when I notice a tall, well-dressed man step out of a black SUV. He smiles at us as he approaches and I figured that's our guy. I could have sworn that SUV had been parked there for a while. I ask Kat if she wants me to step in line and grab her a drink

but she practically begs me to stay with her. Okay, I can do that. I didn't think it'd look very professional but I don't protest. The man, named Jack, leads us to an isolated table outside and doesn't say much about my presence other than it was okay for me to be there. I get on my phone and shoot a text to my fiancé explaining where I was and what I was doing. He shoots back a be careful and I sit pretty to watch the show. Jack had this strange accent that I couldn't quite place my finger on. Looking back, I'm not even sure if it was real. He starts asking Kat the usual questions and I notice she's

absolutely bombing the interview. She doesn't have much experience and didn't bother to bring a portfolio but despite this he doesn't seem to care. The alarm in my head isn't much louder than a whisper but it completely blares when he asks if she'd be comfortable doing lingerie shoots as well. Dear sweet Kat says she doesn't have an issue with that but would prefer to mostly do sports clothing like they had discussed earlier. She asks to see some of his work and he pulls up a lingerie Instagram. All lingerie, no clothing at all. He holds it in front of her face and pulls it away immediately, and when she's asked if there would be more she'd be doing, Jack goes, That was it, and hurries the conversation along. He says we need to go right now to his studio at a place he briefly mentioned the name

of to sign papers and get everything squared away. It has to be done today he's not working tomorrow and his co-workers won't do it right. I absolutely hate everything about this and I'm trying to glare some sense into her but nothing is getting through. Kat agrees and he turns his attention to me. Do you want to be a part of this too? I immediately know that nothing about this is professional. I look down at my beat up docks and green cargo pants, a shirt that has flames and a slightly edgy logo on it and can't help but scoff. That's not really my thing, I'm just the ride. He studies me for a second and then says we can all ride with him, directing his attention to Kat. No, I don't want to leave my car, we'll follow you. He looks offended that I butt in but asks where we parked.

Right in front of the store. I got it. I pulled Kat to the jeep and make sure we walk behind him. As soon as we get into the car I lock the doors and try to keep from freaking out. We are not going. This doesn't feel right. What about the lingerie? Everything I say she has an excuse for. We pull out of the parking lot and

I follow Jack's SUV but the whole time I'm trying to figure out how to get out of this. Kat doesn't like the lingerie but this could be a door for her and she desperately needs the money. What if it is legit? He was alone anyways. You have your knife and spray, right? Of course I do, but I'm 5'2 to this man's 6'3 and Jack could very much have friends and I don't want to possibly hurt or end up hurt or worse. I realize at this point that Kat is insane. We drive along as I try to talk to her and we start driving out into the desert, the middle of absolute nowhere. There's a divider in the road that prevents U-turns and I get an eerie feeling that Jack knew to take us this way. I'm absolutely desperate at this point. I pull out my phone and snap a picture of Jack's SUV license plate. I upload it to Snapchat where friends can see it.

Kat starts getting uncomfortable once she realizes how far we've driven. The name of the place he mentions springs back into my head and I know it's familiar from somewhere. A commercial jingle that's distinct but catchy. It's a restaurant or a hotel or something. He wouldn't have a studio there. Just please look it up. So she does it's a casino unless this man has rented out a space he wouldn't have a studio there it's not consistent with the information he gave us at all. Kat is freaked out at this point I tell her that this isn't uncommon and he was trying to confuse us the entire time throughout the entire interview she had a confused and hesitant look on her face like this wasn't what she was promised or expecting at all. Kat finally agrees that we need to get

out of there and I start to breathe easy again. I notice that every five minutes or so there's a break in the medians. It's a rough quick stop and turnaround but it'll have to do. So I do and we absolutely gun it. Kat gets a call from Jack and at first she ignores it. I convince her to call back and she gets nothing at all like the number had blocked her. It didn't go through. I tell her to screenshot the Craigslist ad but she can't find it anywhere. It's like every trace of Jack disappeared. We go back to her apartment. I tell her she needs to report it. She promises she will but later because she doesn't want her husband to know. He didn't even know she had this interview

to begin with and she didn't want him to know what happened. If I hadn't driven her she would have gone alone without telling a soul and who knows what could have happened. I tried not to scold her too badly but I just reminded her that our city was very different and much more dangerous than where she's from. Sweet cat, I hope you're a little more awakened to the world, and I'm sorry for that. It's been a few months since we split ways, and I'm still worried to death over all the oblivious, crazy things you get into. Since the incident I now have three pepper sprays, one for the car and a new pocket knife to carry around. Thanks dad, she's gorgeous. I'm almost four months pregnant and now finally ready to get out of this dangerous city. Please,

please, please my dear friends, be safe out there. It's such a scary world and be incredibly careful with Craigslist. At the time, I was a 16-year-old female working at McDonald's. At the McDonald's I worked at, when you are on headset, where you answer people at the drive-thru, you are normally required to be at the first window to also take payment. My job position was customer care manager at the time, so my job was meant to be on front desk, but 99% of the time they required me behind the tills. So I was having a normal day, working a long shift, but having a normal working day. a long shift but having a normal

working day. I happened to be on headset and first window that day. My headset buzzes letting me know there is someone at my drive-thru lane. I go through to the first window to answer my customer and this is how the conversation ensued. Hello, welcome to McDonald's, what can I get you? Oh wow, you got a beautiful voice. His voice was very grunty and husky sounding. Not off-putting. We have all sorts of customers come through McDonald's every day, so nothing gave me the creeps at this point, but his voice was very recognizable.

Thank you, sir. How flattering. What can I get you? I haven't decided yet. Can I just come around to the first window to decide? I want to see who I'm talking to. Now, we weren't very busy, and at this point, Creeper hadn't actually creeped me out. I mean, all he had done was pay me a compliment, and we quite often had people complain that they like to face to face contact so it definitely was not unusual to get a request like this. Yes sir that's fine. Wow you are just as beautiful as you sound. Thank you sir. Have you decided what you're having? Are you an option? I laughed this off.

It was my first job and I wasn't the rude kind of person when someone was paying a compliment. I must also point out this man must have been in his 60s. I remember he had one lazy eye that looked to the left, painfully awful teeth and patchy dark brown hair. At this point I was a little bit more uncomfortable but was still more than willing to take his order. I'll have a cheeseburger. Okay sir, that's 99 cents, are you paying cash or card? Without answering my question he started asking where I'm from and how old I was etc but it wasn't until his last few questions that I got super weirded out. What time do you finish work? Half seven, why? I didn't finish at half seven but half seven was

the first number to come into my head when I blurted it out. I finished at eight and would probably do some overtime too but I wasn't about to let him know that. I can meet you if you want. I can pick you up outside and we can go somewhere. All the while he was saying this he had this horrendous grin on his face and keeps winking at me. I'm really sorry sir but I'm not allowed to meet customers outside of work. It's against our employee policy. That was utter nonsense, but I needed him to leave me alone. He carries on being insistent, but not getting the picture. I cut the conversation short. Anyway, sir, sorry to be rude, but can I have the 99 cent for your cheeseburger? Oh, yeah, sorry. See you at half seven. Off he drove to the next window. I was gobsmacked. I'd

already said I wasn't going to see him. I was a little bit shocked but was not going to go over there and give him the satisfaction of talking to me again. My co-worker came to me and said, ew, that guy had a major crush on you and wanted your number, but I didn't give it to him. He's old enough to be your dad. Anyway, I explained exactly what had happened and how uncomfortable it made me. Half past seven came and my co-worker is spooked. Creeper is waiting in the car park for me, just like he said he would. He is sat halfway down the car park and you can see him just staring in.

Our car park wasn't very big. It only had four rows of parking spaces so he wasn't that far away and would have clocked me at the minute I walked out the door. At this point I'm freaking out and head to the back of the store where hopefully he can't see me. I had to stay at the back of the store for 40 minutes before we knew it was safe to come out. Fast forward a week and Creeper is back on drive-thru and guess who is back on headset and at window one. I heard his voice and recognized it straight away. I was hoping I'd hear your voice again. Why didn't you meet me the other day? Just one second sir. I'll be with you in a second. I immediately handed my headset to my manager and gave him a quick briefing of the situation. He gladly took the headset and dealt with the customer from start to finish. When my

manager came back to let me know he had gone, he said that the creeper had been asking my name, my address, my surname. My manager said he was the most creepiest guy he had ever met and I was never to have anything to do with him again. If he came to work while I was there afterwards my manager would have me head to the back room while he dealt with the creep. He still always asks about me. Every time. I used to live in a townhouse by myself with my dog and two cats near a train station. There were often commuters who parked outside my place and pass by through the day and night. Occasionally I had cigarettes or stuff stolen from my front veranda. I even had my next door neighbor's ex-boyfriend come to my door telling me he had a hitman after him and he had a gun.

But none of this scared me like the night I was watched. My dog lives indoors and I would take him out for a last wee before bed. My backyard light was broken and was up too high to change the bulb so I always took him out the front. That night it was around 11pm and I took him out the front. It was a hot summer night and I was mindlessly standing on the footpath when I saw a movement across the road from me. Out of nowhere a man had appeared and was walking diagonally across the street away from me. I thought it was odd because I hadn't seen him come from the other direction. I continued to think about it. Where he came from was from outside a house that was being renovated. I knew the owners weren't living there and thought maybe

he was going to try to steal stuff. So I kept looking down the road to where he had gone. He had turned the corner down the next street. I kept watching and then suddenly I see his head pop around the corner to see if I'm still outside. This gives me the absolute creep so I grab my dog and go inside. I turn off all my lights and go upstairs to my bedroom which is at the front of the townhouse and faces the street. I thought I would keep watch of my neighbor's house and call the police if he came back. I peer through my blinds which cover sliding doors coming off a small balcony and like clockwork I see a dark figure walk down from the corner and down my street. He's moving towards

the house across the road and then I suddenly lose sight of him. A tree in front of my townhouse obscures my view for a moment and then he is there. He is not just there, he is stopped at the top of my driveway, standing there like Jason Voorhees. I kid you not, his arms were out by his sides and legs apart in an unnatural stance, like he was preparing for something, like he wanted to come for me. My heart is racing so hard I can barely hear, and I'm standing there slack-jawed looking at this would-be assailant when one of my cats comes to see what's happening. My cat slides his body between the blinds and windows further opening it and I see this person, this man looking up towards me. I'm thinking surely he sees me. If he does,

this doesn't stop him. He starts walking down my driveway undeterred and fixated. I lose sight of him under the balcony and awning. By this time my eyes are watering in fear and tears are streaming down my face. I don't know what to do. I go sit on my bed. I pick up my mobile and dial my dad who lives a suburb away. He answers. I whisper to him what was happening and he said he'll be there as soon as he can. I lie down on my bed and lie as still as I can, tears rolling down my cheeks. Pure fear. Not knowing what this man was doing downstairs and if he could get in. What if I hadn't locked the doors?

And then it dawned on me, why am I lying here in the dark crying? Turn a light on, so I did. What seemed like a lifetime was probably just a couple of minutes later and my dad arrived. He had an umbrella with him. I live in Australia so no guns and he could have at least brought a knife. I stayed on the phone with my dad while he searched outside for the man. He was gone. Maybe me turning on the lights scared him off.

We called the police who said I should have called sooner. Of course I should have, I don't know why I didn't. They came out with a sniffer dog and didn't find him either. I don't know what he wanted but for a good year after that I was so scared living there. I'm still a scaredy cat but reading other stories makes me realize I'm not alone and we can all learn from these experiences so that we and I know what to do if something truly scary does happen. I was about 13 to 14 at the time. Let's start with a little bit of backstory. I was adopted by my paternal grandmother. She has a bit of an old school fashioned idea of how young people should

meet and date, usually set up by parents or meeting at church. I call her mom as she has had me my entire life. For what I'm about to describe, I don't blame her, she was bamboozled. Mom and I were close with family that lived a short walk from us in the same apartment complex. In this family living in their home was a grandmother, mother and her two young sons that I sometimes babysat. We became close because mom is a seamstress and she did some sewing for the mother. The boys took an instant liking to me and all of us hit it off. My mom and the grandmother were close in age, both southern and seemed to have similar viewpoints on things such as the aforementioned topic so they spoke

on the phone often. One day when the mother and her sons are out my mom and I are at home cooking and the grandmother calls the house. She asks if I wouldn't mind coming over to cheer up her grandson. He was upset and rattled because his brother recently passed away. Mom asked all the questions you'd expect of a stereotypical old-fashioned matriarch. Will you, the grandmother, be there the whole time? How long will you keep her there? How old is your grandson? Of course all the answers were favorable or else she would have flat out said no but she was told that the grandmother would be watching us, that I didn't have to stay long and that this boy was only a couple of years older

than me. Mom said I should go. It would be nice of me to do something kind for a person with a broken heart. I agreed because we also recently had a death in the family and I wanted to help. I said I would go. While still on the phone, she says, who knows sweetie, I may have just set you up with a nice boyfriend. On the other end of the phone, the grandmother says, I hope so. In the distance between our apartments, mom could watch me walk all the way to their place. She stood in the door watching me, the grandmother stood in her door also watching. I went there and after the two of them waved to one another, the grandmother closed the door behind me,

closed the blinds and fluffed my hair. I always had messy bangs and she seemed determined to fix them. My mom always did the same whenever my hair got messy. I just assumed it was one of their old lady things, thinking that a girl should always be tidy, so I didn't think anything of it. In these apartments, we had furnished basements. In ours, it had been turned to a play area or office, and theirs a TV video game room. She took me down the stairs, I assumed this teenaged boy was playing video games. Imagine my surprise when this boy turned out to be a man who looked like he could have been the

same age as my dad. My dad was about 34 at this point in my life. I kind of froze, not sure what to say or think. When the grandmother introduced us, she kept trying to draw his attention to me. Isn't she pretty? Look at all her freckles. She's got pretty eyes. She pulled me onto the couch and made me sit down. She said she had some phone calls to make so she was leaving us there. The grandmother ascended the stairs, closed the door and I was scared she may have locked it. I realized she lied to my mom. She wasn't going to watch us, nor was this guy only a few years older than me. When she was gone, he became agitated, wringing his hands, pacing and speaking in garbled phrases. He was sweating when he looked at me. I tried not to panic. I wanted to run but was thinking that girls who run in horror movies all

die so I sat still and let him pace. He sat on the couch and started rocking. I tried to talk to him. It didn't take me long to realize he had some sort of developmental disability. I realized he wasn't dangerous just very uncomfortable with a female stranger and it was probably likely he didn't realize my age. I turned a music station on the TV, he calmed down and began singing along. Eventually he fell asleep on the opposite end of the couch. Maybe an hour or so later the grandmother came to check on us. I smiled and said thanks for having me but I had chores to do so I should get home to my mom. The grandmother

agreed and after telling me to come back and visit her grandson again walked me to the door. I walked back to my apartment and hurried inside locking the door behind me. Mom was startled. They usually called before I left their house. She looked at me and asked if the boy and I got along. That was not a boy. I blurted out instantly. She asked what happened and I said, he's old enough to be one of your biological kids. I have never seen such a look in her eyes. I'm sure she would have murdered that woman if she could have. She sat me down and made me relay everything to her. She asked repeatedly if he touched me and looked over me for what I suspect is evidence of assault, even asking to smell my breath. She asked one final time if I was sure he didn't touch me and if I wanted to go to the doctor or police.

I said no, I don't think that young man had anything to do with it from his reaction, I don't think he even knew she invited me over. Mom gave me a big bowl of ice cream, stayed close to me for the rest of the evening as if she was afraid I was going to be taken away from her. The next morning I heard her on the phone yelling. I guess she called the grandmother and gave her an earful. I don't know what she said but I never saw anyone in that family again. I don't know if mom was making sure we avoided them or if they were trying to avoid us. I suspect it's the latter. My mom can be incredibly scary when she's angry. Being a young woman in a nearly exclusive male-dominant industry,

I have plenty of stories about creepers I've encountered over the years. This particular story about this one particular creep is likely the worst yet. At the time, I was working for a steel pipe processing plant as a receiver. Trucks with 40-foot-long pipes would come in in and it was my job to offload them with a giant forklift. First though, I had to collect the BOL from the driver. The BOL stands for Bill of Landing. It's a shipment document that has information about what's on the load, where it's going, where it's from, etc. So I would retrieve the BOL from the trucker and I would compare the sheet to the cargo and

sign off on it, if everything checks out. I would see a lot of the same drivers on a regular basis. I got a lot of joking comments about how I looked too young to be driving a machine like that. A few of them asked me out, but I'm married and most of the guys respected that. So when I encountered a new driver from one of the trucking companies it really didn't surprise me when one of the very first, if not the first thing he said to me was, how old are you? 23? I replied with a half-hearted chuckle. Are you married? I'm engaged so pretty much. I replied starting to get really uneasy about this guy. Not wanting to make small talk or answer any more increasingly personal questions from this guy I had just met, I asked him for the BOL. Anything for you sexy girl. Um excuse me? What did you just call me?

It's really sexy to see a girl like you driving a big truck. Now, I'm a bit of a hothead. I need to stand up for myself in situations like this or else I risk becoming a welcome mat for this kind of attention. He hands me the paperwork with the trademark creepy grin, like he was getting off on the fact that I was within grabbing distance from him. Listen, old man. As I snatch the paperwork out of his hand, I do not come to work to be spoken to like that. I'm here for a paycheck, not a date. What? It was just a compliment. Don't be like that, sexy girl. Don't call me or say anything to me that you wouldn't say to one

of your male co-workers. I have a name, and it's not smart to talk to anyone like that before you know what it is. I bet it's arm candy. I signed off on his crap, dropped his copy in the mud, and went over to the other driver waiting in line, took his paperwork, and made Creeper wait about 30 minutes, offloading two other trucks before I got to his. We have a safety rule that the driver must be inside the truck while it's being offloaded, so I took this opportunity to be even worse, laid in the horn of my truck, and angrily yelled at him to, get in your truck. After I offloaded him, I went to my supervisor and told him what happened. Not a formal complaint, but to make him aware of everything that transpired,

and let him know that the driver might end up complaining to his superiors about how long it took me to see him. My supervisor sided with me. He knows that if I lose my crap on someone they deserve it. He knew about a few other incidents prior so he was supportive. He told me to report anything else that the guy does that's messed up and said he'd be willing to send someone else over to deal with that particular driver if and when he brought another load. Later on that day he made a funny comment about how sexy I looked in my uniform. Oversized overalls, grease stained, high vis hoodie, boots and hard hat. I didn't wear makeup or perfume to work. I looked like and was mistaken for one of the guys on a few other occasions so the creeper must have been thinking, oh my god a girl, must say nasty stuff. Either way I thought I made things pretty clear to the creeper in that he wasn't going to bother me anymore.

Nevertheless I wasn't keen on the idea of having to walk up to his cab to get paperwork from him again. The next day, guess who shows up with a new load? I call over the radio. My favorite driver is here, can someone come grab his paperwork? A couple of minutes go by and one of the co-workers I get along with well drives up in his smaller tow motor to approach the driver for his BOL. I wait off to the side and take the opportunity to smoke next to my machine while I wait for my coworker to come back with the paperwork. He comes back and of course he wants the scoop on everything that happened the day before. I guess the driver asked why I wasn't there to collect the BOL. Coworker told him I was busy. Meanwhile I was having a smoke and clear view. In no hurry to offload the idiot, I told the co-worker what transpired when suddenly my co-worker interrupted me.

Uh, don't look, but I think he's taking pictures of you. Of course, my head whipped around and sure enough, Buddy was holding his phone up, pointing it at me, taking pictures I assume. I scurried up into my machine, got on the radio from my supervisor. Favorite driver's taking pictures of me. 10-4, I'll call security. Do not offload him. Given the nature of what we do and why we do it, there's strict security guidelines at this place. Once a month, we had a bomb sniffer dog inspect the property. It was that big of a deal. So even if he wasn't taking pictures of me he had no business taking pictures on the property.

Security shows up and I watch as the driver hands him his phone. My co-worker was there with him and later told me that the guy said he was trying out his new phone. Whatever. They didn't find photos of me or the property on his phone but he had a few minutes to delete them. Either way, he was barred from the property and my supervisor reported him and what happened the day before to the driver's employer. I never saw him again but the story doesn't end there. A few weeks later another driver from the same company, nice guy that I had a good rapport with, filled me in on my favorite driver. Your buddy got canned, eh?

Oh, that's too bad. Gonna miss him. Yeah, he was on thin ice because the girls in the offices were getting weird vibes from him. Always hanging around the office way more than necessary. Nothing to fire him over though, but his police check came in. Turns out he has prior assaults on his record. Oh, just lovely. So this happened a little over two years ago now. I wanted to post it somewhere just to look back on it one day and never forget the lesson I learned. It was 2016 and I had just started a new job at a motel. It was low pay but I needed an office job.

One of my friends, Michael, got me this job. For a few days I did training with the owner in the mornings. For two nights Michael trained me. Our job was the 11pm to 7am shift. Nothing exciting, checking guests in and doing paperwork. My boss, the owner, went away with his wife on vacation for a week, which is attributed to the swift training I had to endure. So it was my first night alone on the night shift. There was a monitor with security cameras around the motel's property and large glass windows all around the office building with a glass door.

There was no night window like most motels have. It was fairly early in the night at about 1am. I was just doing my normal check and paperwork when a man walks in and asks if we have any rooms available. Usually if someone is sketchy my boss has me lie and say no but he seemed normal at the moment. Without hesitation I said yes of course just for one and he replies yes. So I begin creating the reservation on the computer when I notice he starts swatting the air and making spitting noises as if though he's being surrounded by flies. I try to ignore it as far as I was concerned it wasn't my business so I try to check him into the room as quickly as possible. I give him his key and he's on his way. At this point in time I could be described as very timid. I have a lot going on in my personal life so I

hope you can all understand my reaction to what happens next. The man comes back from his room and slams his hand on the glass door and causes me to jump. Absolutely frightened, I looked up to see him just staring at me. He cracks the door and puts his head through and says, I can't get into my room. Why won't you let me into my room? My only defense is trying to be helpful, so I replied, Maybe there's something wrong with your key. Let me give you another one. The look he had in his eyes was inexplicable. I felt like I was in absolute danger.

I handed him his new key and he went back to his room. I tried texting Michael because he is the one who trained me, though it was the middle of the night and he was asleep. I try texting Michael because he is the one who trained me, though it was the middle of the night and he was asleep. I needed some guidance. With no reply from Michael, I notice the man trudging down the stairs to come back. I go into absolute panic mode. I run into the back office and lock the door and pull out my pocket knife. It's important to keep protection when working at night. I hear the man in the office yelling, Hello? Hello? Why won't you let me into my room?

You, don't you, don't you like me? Me being an absolute idiot and not standing my ground and calling the police when I'm feeling scared, I decided to take this situation on alone. I reply, I'm just on the phone, I'll be right out. I then start calling Michael over and over for help. No answer. I decided to take a few deep breaths and step out of the office. The man was not there, he was in the bathroom. I start to hear him talking to himself, angrily saying, kill her, kill her. My heart sank. Still being an idiot and not calling

the police, he comes out and I say, your key was broken. I'm sorry. Let me escort you to your room. He agrees, thankfully. I was wearing a long-sleeved sweater with my arms down. I was able to hide my knife in my hand while holding it. I began to walk outside and he seemed insistent to walk behind me. We began making our way to the staircase and up towards his room. I was sweating from how nervous I was, continuously looking behind me to make sure he wasn't going to make a move. He stops at a room and I stop at his room a few doors down. I smile and say, Oh, that's the wrong room. This is your room.

As it clearly said on the door. The whole time he was going to someone else's room and trying to open the door. I felt bad for them. I quickly ran back to the office and locked the door. The next guest I checked in was a police officer from a few towns away. I felt bad for confiding in them about the guy but they seemed willing to keep an eye and ear out. The next night the man came back but I had the doors locked and told him we were all booked up. I explained to my boss what happened when he got back from vacation

however he didn't take me very seriously. I continued to work there on the night shift for the next year, where many other strange encounters have happened. Being on servers online can lead to a lot of unwanted attention. I'm a part of a staff team on a lot of servers, weeding out potential trolls or just people who are looking for something we do not provide. One afternoon in October we get a new member in the server. She went by Terrence. That isn't her real name as people make up screen names to go by for privacy reasons. She created her introduction and gave her age as we have channels for adults to talk more freely without worrying that they might say something wrong in front of a minor, only being 15 years old.

I gave her the roles and let her chat in the channels we offered for minors freely. Things started to get weird when I started posting selfies of myself without any cosplay gear on. No wigs, no colored contacts, no fancy outfits, just me. Now, I'm gender fluid so I flip from feeling masculine and back to feminine. I have my hair short on the sides and longer up top and stick up the top of my hair, just so I can have the best of both worlds and feel comfortable. Terrence complimented me, I thanked her, as I would with any other compliment, yet she got more involved with complimenting me. A few weeks later she began to PM me about how she loved how I looked. I again thanked her and kept interactions brief as I felt uncomfortable

with someone 3-4 years younger than me complimenting me all the time. Then she started to message me every day, from 6am in the morning to 10pm at night. She started to save my selfies and make edits of them, fancying up the look on them and then sending them to me. She started to ask for my Snapchat and my other accounts that I only use for really close friends, I of course denied giving it to her. At first I was weirded out. Okay, odd. I kindly asked her to not save my selfies without my permission and pleased to not make edits of them as it was kind of creeping me out. I only knew her for about a month and she's acting like I knew her for five years. She apologized and said that she wouldn't do it

again. There, that was the end of that. However, a few days later more staff members on the server started to message me that Terrence was talking about me to other members who brought it up with them. She had begun to complain to other members about how I wasn't online all the time and began to share my personal private messages and even more selfies of me that she edited with other people. I didn't give her permission to do any of this and so I confronted her, demanding her to stop this nonsense before it goes too far. She again apologizes and started to go on about how she was the worst, basically guilt tripping me into forgiving her. I didn't fall for it and told her bluntly.

There isn't much of an excuse to the actions you had with other members either. Those kinds of actions put a damper on how people see you and when I know you as a person who does that then immediately attaches to me, it freaks me out. Now please stop messaging me, do not have any contact with me anymore. Her response was nothing more than, oh, okay, I'm done with life anyways. Then it went even further. She didn't stop and her messages got more aggressive, saying that I was the reason why she was having an identity crisis and how she wanted to be everything that I was, how she wanted to end her life if I didn't talk with her. I started to get really freaked out and we got rid of her.

We banned her from the server and I demanded that she leave me alone. Friend request after friend request came flooding in over the course of weeks. I blocked her each time to get rid of her. She started to join other servers that I am involved in just to get in contact with me. Many of my friends who were on the staff team ordered her to leave me alone and to never have contact with me again. She said she was sorry and that she'd try again when this whole thing blows over. I sent my last message to her stating clearly what I wanted to happen in this situation. Are you joking? What part of leave me alone don't you understand?

You're practically stalking me now. Let me make this clear, yet again, I don't want anything to do with you. Leave me alone, you creep me out. Don't ever try to contact me again. That doesn't mean in a few months, it doesn't mean tomorrow, it means never contact me, ever ever again. Nothing happened for months. I was on edge but relieved that it was over. I went on with my life and started college. The relaxation came to a sudden stop one day. I got friend requests on my personal accounts on social media. These accounts that I didn't have linked up to any sort of account I use for business or my animations.

She messaged things that I have never told her. She said that she wanted to meet up at Tim Hortons that was on a main street near my house. She even named the street. I always said that I was from Canada but never gave the province or town I lived in. This was when it got worse. She started to harass my real life friends to get her in contact with me. Every day this 15 year old would harass everybody I knew including my own mother. She wanted to be in my life but I wanted her out of my life and then it just stopped. Not too long ago she tried to send me another friend request and I blocked her once more. Hopefully this situation is done.

2017 was a strange time. While working night audit at a motel I experienced the strangest individual on a weekly basis. The motel office was a large detached building with mostly windows and a glass door. I had security cameras of the building along the rooms and along the back side of the building. It was the midst of summer and I was working on some paperwork at about midnight. I peeked up at the furthest window in the room near the breakfast buffet and noticed someone quickly move out of my view. I got a vague glimpse of a white-haired man

but didn't notice anything on the security cameras. I swiftly locked the doors. I didn't usually keep them locked because my boss encouraged me to take as many walk-ins as possible. A few months rolled by and I hadn't experienced anything of that white-haired man again. It was soon August of 2017. Late one night at about 1am an older man comes in. I thought perhaps he was a guest but he begins blabbering. Hello, my name is John,

you probably already know me. I'm so sorry, I can't believe you saw me. I must have scared you so bad the other night. I looked at him puzzled. He was beginning to freak me out, so I asked, What are you talking about? He looked a bit surprised and explained, A few nights ago you were walking up to your car and I ran past you, well, naked. It's hard to explain. I was pretty creeped out at this point, but I humored him and let him ramble on, but didn't say much. He explained that on the weekends he liked to run around town naked as an adrenaline rush.

He then said something that creeped me out even more than ever. I noticed you've been working here six months or so. Sorry I never said hello before. You work quite a lot compared to the other girl. This strange naked man has been watching me every weekend for six months and I never knew. Admittedly I wasn't always the most alert on my phone, on my laptop, taking a swift nap, but six months and I never noticed a naked man running through the parking lot. This began a routine of him coming back every weekend, offering me gifts or, as my friends called them, bribes not to call the cops. He would come in every weekend and talk to me before his nightly streaking and bring me expensive candy or wine.

It was strange how a little too expensive these gifts were but he was a single old man with a good job. Soon October rolled in and just like any weekend he comes in and chats me up, grabs some coffee I usually made and asks about my week. He then explains he's going out for some drinks at a neighbor's house and that he wanted to give me a bottle of champagne he had in his fridge. Being nice like I always tend to be I agreed and thanked him. About two hours passed and I hear a tap on the window. It's him but he's completely naked. I looked on the camera and no doubt about it he's blatantly standing in front of the office naked. He keeps tapping the camera and no doubt about it he's blatantly standing in front of the office

naked. He keeps tapping the window and holds up the champagne for me to come get it but of course I'm very creeped out. He set it by the front door and waved. I thought he had left so I walked out to grab it before a guest saw it laying there but in fact he did not leave. He stood there naked and trying to talk to me. I covered my eyes and said, uh thanks, I'm going inside now. The next night he comes in and apologizes to me profusely saying he had too much to drink. Him being so embarrassed I never saw him again after that. I wasn't sure if he was scared to talk to me because I didn't want to see him naked or if he got arrested for running around naked. Because I worked there for so long, I get free rooms anytime I come to visit. So, next time I come to that motel, I hope to never see my local grocery store at around 9pm last evening.

My dad was at my house fixing a few things and my two children are already in bed. As any single mom would agree, getting to go grocery shopping alone is a rare treat and I jumped on the chance when dad suggested I go while he was helping out. Once I get to the store I quickly realized that I picked a great time to go. Parking lot was near empty and once inside I only saw a handful of store co-workers chatting at one of the registers in front. Not another customer in sight. Glory be. About halfway through my shopping I noticed another customer, first one I'd seen. He was an older dude, grey around the sides and wearing what appeared to be hunting gear. Boots, camouflage pants and a matching jacket. Hat was also camouflage but a different type than his other

clothing. I remember noticing his outfit right away but didn't think anything else of him. As I made my way through the aisles I kept noticing this dude would end up in the same aisle as I was. It seemed as we're the only customers in our smaller local store at the time so I thought how weird that this guy is in the same aisle route as me in an amused manner. But as minutes went on, I began to notice that this guy wasn't actually taking items off the shelves. He didn't have a cart. He had a basket, and that basket was empty. Every time I'd glance in his general direction, he'd snap his head down or to the side, making it blatantly obvious that he was staring at me. I was starting to be a bit weirded out but thought I was being paranoid.

Reminding myself that I have seen a few employees when I entered the store so it wasn't just me and camo guy in the store. I continue my shopping. As I am finishing up I kind of rounded the corner into the very last shopping aisle before the registers. This is where I got thoroughly creeped out. The guy was standing in the center of the registers. This is where I got thoroughly creeped out. The guy was standing in the center of the aisle. He wasn't facing either side where the products lined shelves, but facing up the aisle so when I rounded the corner, he was directly facing me. What really,

really scared me was that he was smiling. Not just any smile though. It was this terrifying, wide grin, and he was frozen in that position. Dead center of the aisle about midway through with a wild smile on his face and not moving a muscle like a statue. I looked at him for what felt like an eternity but was in reality probably only a few seconds. My brain just couldn't comprehend what was going on here. There's no way that I'd be getting past this guy without having to interact or at least say excuse me. Freaked out, I quickly turned my cart around and decided to make a beeline for the cash registers down a different aisle. Forget English muffins and pitas, I wasn't bringing those home tonight. As I get to the

registers and begin unloading my groceries onto the belt, the woman standing at the end of the register in the bagging area looked up from her conversation with the cashier and calmly, sweetly asked, is everything alright? I'm guessing I looked white as a ghost or like I was going to hurl or something. Just as I opened my mouth to describe the man acting strangely in aisle 12, loud footsteps, running footsteps the front area of the store behind where the baggers stand and people leave. Here's the kicker. He stops in his place about four to five feet behind the bagger who is now also staring at this guy along with the cashier. Stops yelling for a moment and just blankly stares. No words, just an abrupt stop to the

scream or yell. Stopped dead in his tracks and just stared in our general direction. He had a weird look in his eyes. I pulled my phone out at this point because, truthfully, I didn't know if this dude was on drugs or what he would do next. The cashier was frozen in confusion herself from the look on her face. Then, just as quickly as he stopped, he started screaming again and started running again. Ran right out the doors of the store. Another cashier got out from behind his register and kind of followed his path, looking out the front window into the parking lot.

He turned around and said, I don't see him anywhere. This would have only been mere seconds after he ran out the doors. That same cashier walked me to my car, helped me unload my groceries and watched as I drove away. It was clear he was just as shaken as I was over the howling and the guy's action in front of the store. I told him about how I had seen that man frozen in a big weird smile just before coming to the registers and he visibly shivered. It's taken me until this morning to truly realize just how strange the whole situation was. I'm a 16 year old female and my family recently adopted a 1 year old dog from the shelter.

We live near a park that has a small enclosed area for dogs. I started taking my new dog to the enclosed area and he enjoyed it a lot so it became an everyday thing. I have been taking him to this park for a few months now. I've never seen anyone weird there. Then again, I've never seen anyone there at all, most likely because I got there right before the sun sets. I know that's probably dumb for me as a young girl to go to a park alone when it's near dark but I live in a relatively safe area and I've always been super cautious, trusting my gut if I see something weird going on. Plus my dog is super big and quite intimidating at first glance. The day this happened I took my

dog to the park like normal. I got into the enclosed area, shut the gates and sat down as my dog started sniffing around doing his own thing. I was scrolling through my phone when I glanced up, noticing my dog was intently staring at something in the distance. I thought he may have seen a rabbit or something dart by and tried to get his attention, but he wouldn't budge. I rolled my eyes and continued looking at my phone again. Seconds later I heard my dog growling, lowly. Even though he's big and sort of intimidating, he's never been a guard dog. He never barks and definitely has never growled.

So we just thought he's not that kind of dog. So when I heard him growl I knew there was definitely something up. I looked to see what he was staring at and it was a man in the distance. As he got closer I noticed how weird he was acting. He was looking up at the sky and was shouting and biting at the air he was also swinging his arms around he sort of acted like one of those crazy zombies from the video games or movies I felt super uncomfortable and started getting extremely nervous I didn't think he noticed me and decided it was time to leave

I approached my dog to put his leash on but he dodged me and started running around, his eye on the man the entire time. I quietly but sternly said his name but he wouldn't stop running around. I started growing more nervous. The man still didn't notice us but I was worried he would with all the noise my dog was making. Then exactly what I didn't want to happen, happened. My dog started barking extremely loudly. The man snapped his head towards us in the creepiest way possible. He was facing away from us but when he heard the barking, his head just moved in the quickest way possible, his body still facing the other way. He stared at us for what seemed like forever and then started

walking towards us. His walk was the creepiest thing I've ever seen. His upper half was extremely stiff and slightly turned away while his feet were hastily dragging on the ground. He was staring at us the whole time. I don't think I ever saw him blink once. I was now yelling at my dog to stop running and to come here. He still wouldn't listen and I knew I couldn't just I ever saw him blink once. I was now yelling at my dog to stop running and to come here. He still wouldn't listen and I knew I couldn't just leave him there. I finally was able to corner my dog. I put on his leash, opened the gate, and ran. My dog was pulling so hard trying to go towards the guy.

The guy was also getting closer and closer to us. I had no idea how. I was full on sprinting and this man didn't even once lift his feet off the ground, just dragging them. He then began shouting again. His eyes were open so wide I thought that they were going to bulge out of his head. He opened his mouth wide. I didn't even think it was humanly possible. I just remember the way his teeth looked.

They were rotted, most of them a disgusting brown shade. I continued running, losing him when I got in my neighborhood. I ran into my house and locked the door. I peeked out all the windows but didn't see him. That night as I was going to sleep I began to hear shouting, the same shouting from the man earlier that day. I ducked down below my window and glanced out onto the street. I saw him. He was in the middle of the street, dragging his feet along. I crawled back into bed, even though I knew I wouldn't sleep that night. from the community, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more,

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