The Lets Read Podcast - 260: THEY ALMOST BROKE IN | 23 True Scary Stories | EP 248

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about halloween, viewer confessions & burglar encounters HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Music & Audio Mix: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by Betterhelp

Mom, Mom, did you see my race? Of course I did, darling. Look, you did your best. You tried. The thing is, it's not about winning. It's about taking part. Next year you might do better. But I did win, Mom.

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Why are you walking so close behind me? Well, you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay. Well, you know what? Specsavers, you can get two pairs of glasses from $149 and, oh you'll like this, one can be a pair of prescription sunglasses. Sounds great! Where's the nearest store?

Not far. Come on. I I grew up on a council estate in the northeast of England during the late 70s and early 80s. It consisted of three tower blocks surrounded by bungalows for the local pensioners and although I didn't realize it until I started secondary school, the estate had a very rough reputation. Having grown up there, I thought it was perfectly normal for someone to bring an actual monkey home from the pub. Then when it escaped, helping hunt it down with dog biscuits and bin bags became this big game of hide and seek. I thought every other kid used to wake up in the middle of the night to hear shouting and screaming coming from outside, and yet another intrafamilial brawl spilled out into the street. I knew that I'd just have to

wait until I could see the flashing lights of the cop cars and then it'd be quiet enough for me to go back to sleep. I also thought every other family struggled to put food on the table and sometimes it was perfectly normal for the electricity to go off for a day or two at a time in the middle of the winter. It wasn't my parents' fault. They tried as best they could, but my dad's disability payments barely lasted a week, let alone a month, and my mom left school with no qualifications, so her options were always going to be limited. I love them both, I still do, but I made my own personal mission to never live like them.

I worked my butt off in school, settled on dentistry as a way of making great money while maintaining a good work-life balance, and ended with a very middle-class lifestyle, with the friend group to match. As you can imagine, whenever I tell my friends or neighbors any stories about my childhood, it provokes a variety of different reactions. Some stories make them cry with laughter and others just make them cry, but I'll agree that I should be very proud of myself for lifting my family out of poverty and I do mean poverty, while making a better life for myself. But there's one story I'll never, ever tell them, because it details something I'm truly and deeply ashamed of.

I know that if I did tell it, some people would actually think that I did the right thing, or that I did it to protect my friends, or any number of other excuses. But even all these years later, the guilt still gnaws away at me. So in a bid to pay homage to my Catholic ancestry, I think I'll try my hand at a little confession. Now growing up, my two best friends were named Margaret and Jillian. Me, Maggie, and Jill, as I used to call them, went everywhere together and we had a kind of mutually beneficial friendship. Maggie was massive, an absolute unit as my nephew might say. She didn't grow up so much as grow out and even then she was the tallest girl in our school. But she was also an absolute sweetheart

so we got on like a house on fire. Maggie was bully repellent and she knew it, which meant that she took a lot of joy in making sure me and Jill didn't get picked on, either at school or on the estate. And this is why Jill loved Maggie so much. She wasn't diagnosed until her mid-thirties, but Jill grew up with celiac disease. For those that don't know, that's where a person is allergic to gluten, meaning they can't eat bread, pasta, or anything else made with gluten-based flour. These days, doctors can diagnose a child's gluten intolerance very easily, meaning they can adjust their diets to grow up strong and healthy.

But if you don't diagnose it, and you keep feeding a celiac child gluten, it basically screws up their digestive system to the point where they have difficulty getting nutrition from really any kind of food. This meant that Jill grew up a total waif. Short, skinny, tired, and anemic. But much like Maggie, her physical opposite, Jill was just about the nicest person you could ever hope to meet, which combined with her stature made her total bully bait. And so you start to understand why we were so close. Together, we were untouchable. We didn't have to worry about a thing, whereas most of the other kids had to worry about Ronnie. You see, Ronnie, which is not his real name, was about the closest

thing our estate had to a boogeyman. Looking back on it, he probably was the product of an extremely abusive household and most likely had some kind of learning difficulty which only compounded his trauma. The result was that Ronnie became the neighborhood bully and he more than excelled in the role. I think maybe these days Ronnie would have been taken into care and his parents given behavior orders to keep them from harassing neighbors. But since this was a good 40 something years ago and Ronnie learned all his bullying tactics from his parents, most of the estate's residents just opted for the quiet life and did their best to avoid them. Ronnie would beat kids up, steal their things, hurt pets,

vandalize the lifts, and think of something to lower people's quality of life and Ronnie would do it. He also had this habit of forcing people to eat things they didn't want to eat. Mostly, this was either mud, grass, or leaves, but over time, Ronnie graduated to less digestible things, like pennies or bits of glass. Luckily, he didn't actually get anyone to swallow any metal or glass, but it didn't stop him from trying. And as the rumors spread that Ronnie was now carrying a pocket full of pennies around, his reputation became more and more frightening. So then, in the summer of 1981, me, Maggie, and Jill were all 11 going on 12 and we were just about to start our first year of secondary school. Maggie was away at a caravan with her parents for the weekend so me and Jillian had to make do without her. And that meant, instead of hanging

around the estate to play outside, we had to go a little bit further afield to make do without her. And that meant, instead of hanging around the estate to play outside, we had to go a little bit further afield to make sure that we avoided Rotten Ronnie as we'd come to christen him. We settled on scrambling through the fence of some private playing fields about five or ten minutes walk from the estate. And thanks to the hedges, it was out of sight from the main road, and the one entrance that wasn't locked, which was nothing but a hole where the earth had been dug and the fence vandalized, was fairly hidden too. We thought we had the place to ourselves, we thought we were safe, but we were wrong. I can't remember what game we were playing, but what I do remember is seeing Jill's face turn even paler than it already was when she looked over my shoulder and gasped.

I turned around, and my eyes catched the bushes near the hole in the fence moving. Something was wriggling their way under the fence, someone big, and that someone was Ronnie. That was another thing about Ronnie that scared people. He was a hulk for his age. He was a good head and shoulders taller than Maggie and he could have easily beaten her up if he wasn't so scared of her claw your eyes out while screeching bloody murder style of fighting. Ronnie was big, he was fast, and he was mean. And as he got up off the grass and dusted himself up, he saw me and Jill all alone staring back at him. We were trapped and we knew it and I'll never forget how scared I was. I was scared for myself obviously but even at such a young age I could see how things

were going to play out. If he came for us, we'd have to run, we had no other option. But I was much faster than Jill and Ronnie only needed to catch one of us. Unfortunately, that's exactly how it happened too. We tried to take him on a bit of a loop-de-loop motion, you know, pull him over one way so our path to the hole in the fence was clear, but that didn't work. We ran, he chased, and he caught Jill before she was anywhere near the hole in the fence. I didn't have any choice but to run back but there was nothing I could do. Ronnie had basically rugby tackled Jill to the ground and when I got close enough to try and drag him off, he threw one solid punch at my stomach and then I was on

the ground too. Jill screamed as I tried to catch my breath and suddenly her scream seemed to go into overdrive for a second before she suddenly went silent. Ronnie was forcing something into her mouth, something I didn't see until I was able to get to my knees. As he got up, Ronnie wiped his hand in Jill's hair and I'll never forget how he had this huge smile on his face. I'd never seen him so happy and as he started to walk off, very smug, I noticed Jill was spitting, gagging and wiping at her tongue with the sleeve of her blouse.

I thought he just tried to make her eat dirt or soil at first, but then I saw how wet it was. Not just from being in Jill's mouth either, it had been soft and mushy beforehand. I don't think my brain wanted to even acknowledge what it was, but when the smell hit my nostrils, there was no guessing anymore. Ronnie had forced dog poo into Jill's mouth in an attempt to get her to eat it, and from what I could tell, he'd almost been able to do it. I honestly think the events of that afternoon was the most traumatic thing to ever happen to me as a child. Worse than breaking my arm, worse than when our cat got ran over. Nothing else compares to the memory of Jill crying, vomiting, and shaking as I helped her get back home again. It was obviously an intensely disgusting

thing to do, but what I didn't know at the time was that you can get really sick from being so closely exposed to dog waste like that. So the next day, when Jill was taken to the doctors and came home with pills that she had to take, I full on thought that she was going to die. Mom had sipped me down to assure me that once Jill had taken all the pills she'd be given by the doctor, that she'd be right as rain again. But in that time, she wasn't allowed to play outside as she had to stay at home and rest. Looking back on it, Jill was probably just too traumatized to even think about going outside for a while, and I don't blame her.

Then, when Maggie got back from the caravan weekend, that was the first thing she asked about. Where's Jill, she asked, and when I told her what happened, she was furious. We'd always hoped someone would get back at Ronnie for being such a bully, but that person would surely be one of the older kids, or a parent, maybe even someone in authority. We never thought it'd be down to us. It was way too terrifying a prospect to even entertain. But after the dog poo incident, we were furious beyond words, and knowing we'd never be able to overpower him if it came to a violent struggle, we began to plan our revenge. After a day or two of discussion, our primary plan of attack was this.

I'd keep watch to make sure no one was looking, and then Maggie would go up to Ronnie and bash him over the head with a rock. I know, that's essentially attempted murder, and it probably wouldn't have worked either, so you'll be thankful to know that we didn't end up trying that in the end. But as it happens, I had a backup plan. So on the day of our revenge, Jill is still housebound, so me and Maggie go off looking for Ronnie on our own. Going from the hunted to the hunter was a thrill all on its own and when we found him, Ronnie was playing on his own in a patch of woods near the river. I say river, it wasn't much more than a stream that snaked its way through the woods near some railway tracks, but since it actually got quite wide and deep in places, we just called it the river.

Anyway, we see Ronnie wandering across the park towards the patch of trees and we knew it was our big chance to ambush him. So we waited until he was well into the trees and out of sight and then followed him across the park. I remember how hard my heart was pounding as we crept through the trees looking for him and then suddenly, there he was, sitting on a tree stump near the edge of the stream. He was facing away from us and looked like he was, sitting on a tree stump near the edge of the stream. He was facing away from us and looked like he was just staring at the stream, presenting Maggie with the perfect opportunity to bash his head in. But obviously, as I covered earlier, Maggie bottled it and then the plant fell through. In all fairness, it's a good job it did or I imagine the aftermath would have been significantly worse and Maggie could be tough but she wasn't a savage like that. And me on the other hand,

the jury's still out on that one if you ask me. Me and Maggie proceeded to have this silent back and forth which ended with her putting the rock down and shaking her head at me. She was definitely surprised by what I did next and I think I was too in a way. But after a minute or so of plucking up the courage, I crept off through the trees towards the still, none the wiser Ronnie. As I got closer to him, I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of those small pop bottles that used to be able to get for 25 pence. I don't think they're any bigger than about 150 to 200 milliliters in size, kid-sized things that they are, but that small amount of liquid was all I needed for what I had in store for Ronnie. I crept closer and closer, realizing that whatever sounds my footsteps were making were being covered by the rushing of the stream, which moved quite fast and loud in certain sections. I kept going forward, heart racing as I closed the distance even more, and then something dawned on me.

Ronnie. Big, scary, bullied-every-kid-in-the-estate Ronnie was crying. I couldn't strictly hear him crying, but he was. His shoulders were bobbing up and down in that telltale way that people do when they're in the middle of a good cry, and at some point, I was sure that I saw him reach up to wipe his eyes or nose, maybe both. I thought about what I had in the bottle, and then I thought about what could have possibly happened to have big scary Ronnie crying like a baby. I think that was the first time that I realized what a horrible life

he had, that it wasn't all fun and games being the neighborhood bully. Part of me thought about just creeping back through the trees and leaving Ronnie to cry it out, but then I realized that if he heard me, he'd most certainly give me a chase. Then that thought bled into Jillian, retching and wailing after he had forced dog poo into her mouth and I knew that there was no walking away. I unscrewed the top of the bottle, took a few final steps towards Ronnie then gave him a loud psst, no words, just the noise. Ronnie heard me and turned his head to look but the moment he did, I'd lunge forward and squirted the contents of

the bottle right in his face. Ronnie was so surprised that he almost fell off the tree stump. Then as I started to run back towards Maggie, who was already running back across the park herself, Ronnie started to scream. That morning when my parents' backs were turned, I took that empty bottle of pop and filled it with a mix of every noxious cleaning fluid I could find. I know that there was some bleach in there, but there was all kinds of other stuff in there too. Smelly stuff, probably ammonia or hydrogen peroxide now that I think about it.

The idea was to have a nuclear option, so to speak, something to fall back on if smacking him in the head didn't work. Obviously we didn't want to kill him, which is mostly why Maggie backed out of braining him with a stone. But hurting him, and hurting him in a way that'd have him out of action for a few days, just like he'd done to Jillian, that was most definitely on the menu. And so, knowing I wouldn't be able to rely on brute strength and knowing that he'd likely catch up to me if I tried to run away, I got creative and came up with a rather wicked form of ad hoc chemical warfare. I knew it'd hurt Ronnie if it got in his eyes or in his mouth and the closer he got to me, the easier it'd be to deploy it. So that's what I did. Made myself a little cocktail as a backup plan. Yet as you just heard, it quickly went from a

backup plan to our primary method of revenge. But it didn't just work. It worked a little too well for my conscience. So I squirted Ronnie in the face with a chemical cocktail, then we legged it back to the estate as fast as we could run. We tried to keep quiet about it and even came up with alibis that centered around visiting Jillian, who was still sick and staying at home. But once we were there, with Jill I mean, we couldn't help but let slip the revenge that had been served. We just couldn't help ourselves. It was worth it though. Jill was cheered up immeasurably and after we swore to her to silence and arrange the alibi, not that we called it that, but you get what I mean, me and Maggie went our separate ways, back to our respective family flats. I remember feeling nothing but elation and my thoughts didn't

extend much further either. I knew I'd hurt Ronnie, I'd heard the screaming, but I had no idea to what extent I'd hurt him, and I had no concept of just how much damage that chemical cocktail would do. In my head, the little that got into his eyes would burn a bit, and then he had that stream right there to wash his face, so in a way, he'd gotten off lucky. There was also the added peace of mind that came from knowing that he hadn't got a proper look at me before I squirted that contents of that pop bottle in his face. It was the perfect crime. At least I thought so anyway. Later that evening I heard Ronnie's mom call out for him around the blocks.

I thought that he'd have out for him around the blocks. I thought that he'd have made it home by that time, sore but otherwise okay. So when I heard his mom calling out his name, obviously getting a bit worried that he hadn't come home, I started to get a bit concerned too. The next morning, Maggie said that when she saw the police knocking on his mom and dad's door, she panicked and thought that I'd killed him. But over the course of the next day, the truth spread around the blocks like wildfire. Ronnie had spent all afternoon, all evening, and most of the night wandering around, almost completely blind. Someone had found him wailing and crying, just like Jillian had been,

unable to find his way home. He'd just been sitting on the ground screaming for help every so often until someone came along to rescue him. Upon realizing what state he was in, this kindly good Samaritan called Ronnie an ambulance who took him to the hospital, which was where he'd been overnight. Apparently, it was still too early to determine the kind of damage that had been done, but doctors were saying the recovery period was going to be months and that there was a chance Ronnie might never recover all of his sight. I'd nearly blinded Ronnie. But do you know what the only thing I was interested in was? Whether he'd named me or Maggie. All I gave a toss about was if we were going to get in trouble. The memory of Jillian's torture was still too fresh in my head for me to

care about anything else. Those next couple of weeks were very scary for me and Maggie. We were convinced that Ronnie would either belatedly named us as his attackers, but as more and more time went by, it became evident that he hadn't had any idea who had blinded him. I remember the day that I saw him out for the first time, wearing an eye patch and looking glum. Kids gave him a wide berth expecting him to be out for blood, but it was a slightly different version of Ronnie that returned to the estate. This Ronnie was a bit more careful with how he talked to people. He was afraid of people making fun of his eye patch.

So as much as Ronnie was still a bit too rough with smaller kids, and still a bit too aware of his size, he wasn't the same bully he used to be, not by a country mile. He never regained all of his sight. At least, he didn't by the time I was 18 and left for uni. He still had a milky patch in one of his eyes from where the tissue hadn't quite recovered and a milky patch I noticed all too often whenever we crossed paths. You might be wondering how I was able to look him in the eye after what I'd done to him,

but I didn't have any trouble. All I had to do was recall Jill being forced to take deworming pills for weeks and how the thought of the little creatures worming their way around her stomach had quite literally given her sleepless nights, and any slim sliver of guilt I felt just melted away. It's only these days that I look back on what happened and genuinely feel terrible about what I did to Ronnie. What he did to Jill was awful, disgusting, and he should have been punished for it. But the punishment I chose for him was not proportionate to the crime. I know Jill could have gotten all kinds of nasty illnesses, serious illnesses too, from having that dog poo forced into her mouth.

But the reality is that she didn't get sick. She got the help she needed and she was fine. What I did to Ronnie was permanent. I took a bit of sight from him and, to my knowledge, he never got it back. I think of that same rotten Ronnie, who acted so bloody tough and who, in truth, was just a sad, lonely little boy. I think about him sitting on a tree stump, crying by the river, and wonder if that was a regular spot that he'd visit whenever he needed to hide that side of him. I think of him sitting there like that, and then I picture me behind him, seeing him crying and just not caring at all.

I think of that vengeful, hateful little version of me who was glad that Ronnie was crying, and who was happy that she stumbled across such a moment of vulnerability so that she could use it against him. I barely recognize that version myself, as I'm 99% sure that Ronnie wouldn't recognize the version of himself from back then either. I'm sure if we met again today, Ronnie wouldn't be able to recognize me at all, but I know that I'd recognize him. I'd know him by that milky patch on his left eye, the one I put there real piece of garbage. I was your typical East Philly trash. Love the flyers,

I love the birds, I love drinking brewskis with my boys and I love fist fighting with just about anyone who wanted some. I had a lot of street fights that way and just like anything, if you practice at it, you get good at it. I wouldn't say that I was a knockout artist or anything, I just learned to take a punch and after a while, I got way too comfortable using violence as my preferred form of conflict resolution. At 23, I got into a fight with someone at a bar. I punched him in the face, he went down, but then instead of just getting back up again, he hit his head on one of the brass fixtures near the base of the bar, then spent the next couple of days in the hospital with a fractured skull. A few weeks later, I'm standing before a judge getting sentenced to two years in prison for assault and battery. It was a wake-up call,

one I needed, and after getting out after just over a year on good behavior, I decided it was time to turn over a new leaf. I caught off contact with all my old friends, who I realized were no friends to themselves, let alone to me. Then after kissing my mom goodbye and telling her that I'd visit every weekend, I packed up my stuff and moved to another city on the east coast. Starting fresh was tough, but I managed it. I got myself a job at a small business, just four guys and a part-time secretary that helped

deal with calls that came in. I didn't meet her until the end of the first week and when I did, I swear I'd never seen anyone so beautiful in all my life. She was taken but that didn't bother me. I felt lucky to even be working with her. Just her smile and her voice seemed to make the day go by easier, so I figured I'd better just enjoy it and not entertain any ideas of getting her number or taking her out. Things went on like that for a while. I settled into the new job, got myself an apartment, even started dating a girl that I met at the grocery store on my new block, and things were going good. And then one day, our secretary didn't show up for work.

Our boss said that she called in to say that she was sick, which made sense I guess, but the way he told me set off my bullcrap detector big time. I wouldn't say that I was a smart person, not in the bookish sense anyway, but I got a sense for when someone is lying to me and although I had no inkling of why, I knew my boss was lying when he said our secretary, who I'll just call Linda to make that easier, was now sick. As time went by, I noticed that Linda used to take a lot of days off like that, and they were always Mondays. That might not have meant anything to the other guys at work, but to me, there was a sort of weird familiarity to it. My father was a drinker and whenever his team lost on a Sunday, my mom and us kids would catch hell and Monday

always had this sad licking our wounds kind of feel to it. And mom wore an extra layer of makeup to hide the bruises and us kids were extra quiet in school and just like with Linda, it was always a Monday when that dark cloud of aftermath followed us around. With that in mind, I had my suspicions over what was going on with Linda at home. I just didn't get any confirmation until the day she showed up with two black eyes and not enough makeup to cover either of them. Still being the new guy, I stayed back while the other guys comforted her. They knew it was her husband that did it. They'd always known, just like our boss had lied to me the time that Linda had called off sick all those times. I remember how our boss wanted to give her the day off, but she wouldn't

accept the offer. Her husband had lost his job and was at home way more than usual, which meant that she didn't want to go back to him and risk catching another beating. She worked out that she could stay at her mom's place for a few days and that her husband would most probably stay drunk until he went looking for her, which bought her a few days to figure out what she was going to do. The guys were saying, you gotta ditch this loser, he's gonna kill you one of these days, and Linda would say, I know I'll leave them, this is the final straw, no more. But I just kept quiet, because I knew better. Battered wives don't just get up and leave their abusive husbands. It'd be nice if things worked like that, but they never do. More often than not, a woman is so mentally beaten down that she'll keep on going back to her

abuser, over and over again again against all the good advice of her friends and family until he kills her. That didn't happen with my parents, but I can guarantee you if my mom hadn't left my dad when she did, I'd be half an orphan writing this right now. Anyway, the working day draws to a close. Linda heads off to her sister's or her mother's and then just as we were closing up shop, I asked my boss if I could take a quick look at the Rolodex in his office just to make sure that I had a customer's details correct. They'd asked me to call them the first thing in the morning before working hours. The last thing I wanted to do was get the wrong number and

potentially mess up a whole series of sales. He said sure, then waited as I jogged around to his office and flicked through his Rolodex. I guess there might be people listening who don't know what that is, but a Rolodex was basically just a bunch of cards attached to a sort of hinge. Most people used them to write addresses on them, usually in alphabetical order so you could just flick through them and find a person's number or address in the same way that you use your contacts list on your phone today. Only the thing was, I wasn't looking for some client's phone number. I was looking for Linda's address. Later that evening, I drove over to her apartment building. I know she wasn't going to be home, but it wasn't her I wanted to see.

I parked my car, walked up to the buzzers and began buzzing her apartment over and over. Her husband kept buzzing me in and unlocking the door for me but I'd just close it, walk back to the buzzer then start all over again. A minute or two I could hear someone walk out of their apartment above me and they sounded angry. The voice went quiet again as the person walked down the stairs and I took a few steps around a corner and out of the light. When Linda's husband walked out the front door, yelling something about how someone's about to get a whoopin', I just stayed put, waiting for him to start walking inside again, and then rushed him.

I wasn't looking for a fair fight. I wanted to give this guy the exact same chance he'd given Linda. So right when he least expected it, I went running around the corner, wearing gloves and a ski mask, and sucker punched him before he even had a chance to react. I had to make it look like something it wasn't. So I went through his pockets, yelling, give me your wallet. He didn't have it on him, but that didn't matter. I just needed his neighbors to think that he was getting mugged, and then I got down to what I really wanted to do. One after the other, I laid the guy's hand out and stamped on them until I could see bone. I made sure that he wasn't going to be doing anything with him for a while,

be that hitting Linda, feeding himself, or wiping himself. And once I was done, he was crying like some baby, and I mean sobbing, bawling, because he understood why. After that, I gave him a good right hook to his jawline to put him to sleep and then got back in my car and drove back home. A lot of people might have felt good about themselves after doing something like that. I know we deserved it and I'm not saying I regretted it, but afterwards I felt disgusted with myself. I'd worked hard on not being that guy anymore, moved to a different city, changed my old lifestyle, but deep down, I was still that guy. Still that person who thought violence was a perfectly okay way of solving problems.

As you can imagine, I didn't say anything to anyone about what I did. I realized that I hadn't done it for Linda. I'd done it for me. And it wasn't her husband I was beating up. It was my own father. And I don't mean that literally, of course, but that's just how it was. I hadn't improved her situation one bit, not in the long run. All I'd done is satisfy my own selfish desire for the only justice I ever really understood. But there was also unintended consequences. The attack put Linda's husband in the hospital for a few days, which gave her time to stop by the apartment and get her stuff. Then, with all her stuff,

I mean all of her financials and things like that, she was able to get a divorce lawyer to draw up some papers. She'd never done it before, on account of her knowing that it'd never be granted, and after what I did to her soon-to-be ex-husband's hands, I didn't think that he'd be able to sign the papers, not for a while anyway. But he did. By God, did he sign those papers. I don't have a single clue how, but he granted her that divorce. And as you can imagine, Linda did much better after leaving her husband. She carried on working with us, moving into a small apartment downtown, and over the next couple of months, we got to know each other more and more.

I think I loved her even back then, but being so emotionally immature, I didn't know what I was feeling, and it took until some guy asked her out for me to step in and take my swing. I asked her out, we went for dinner, then we had a second date, then a third. I gave it my best to act the gentleman that I was, and in the end, it seemed that I proved the better man. We dated for just over a year, then I asked her to marry me. I told her that she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life, that I wanted to be the man that gave her the marriage she deserved, and that I'd do anything to keep her safe and make her happy. And she said yes. And we've been married for almost 20 years now and we share everything with each other.

There's just one thing I've always kept secret from her. It's not that I don't think that she'd appreciate it in some way. Maybe she would. It's that I don't want her to see me like the same kind of man her husband was. The kind of guy who uses his fists instead of using his words. She thinks I'm the softest tub of crap on the face of the earth that I wouldn't hurt a fly. And these days, I think that might be half true. But there's nothing I want less in this world than to ruin that image that she has of me. Because if she believes I'm a different man, then I can believe it, too. Mom, mom, did you see my race? Of course I did, darling. Look, you did your best. You tried.

The thing is, it's not about winning. It's about taking part. Next year you might do better. But I did win, Mom. You did? When it's sunny, make sure you can still see. At Specsavers, get two pairs of glasses from $149 and one can be prescription sunglasses.

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and if it's okay by you, I'd like to remain anonymous for reasons that'll become obvious. I joined the Marine Corps at age 18 and graduated from Paris Island at 19, then was deployed to Afghanistan at 21 as part of a mechanized infantry unit. Our job wasn't so much to go toe-to-toe with the enemy, but more to act in a supporting role, kind of like a strong safety would in football. We'd move from place to place, either laying down fire support, forming a blocking force, or acting as a medevac when it was too dangerous to call in a helicopter. Being in a big armored vehicle was definitely a comfort in some ways, but seeing as the biggest killer at the time were roadside bombs,

we had just about as much to worry about as the grunts in a lot of ways. Roadside bombs are scary for obvious reasons. They're cheap to make, relatively easy to produce, and in the right hands, they can be completely concealed in plain sight. Stand on one, and at best you lose your foot. Drive over one and you'll be lucky if you end up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. But there was one thing I learned to like about roadside bombs and that's how they don't move. Come across some earth that looks a little disturbed or choke point on a dirt road that looks a little too quiet, and you can bet

some Taliban bomb maker was there the night before. But all you gotta do is stop your convoy, wait for EOD, then turn the big.50 cal machine guns on anyone dumb enough to shoot at us. But roadside bombs weren't the only trick the Taliban had up their sleeves. One time we were rolling around the green zone when our platoon commander called us to a halt. He had a sneaking feeling about the section of road up ahead of us and there's no local Afghans to be seen which was always a bad sign. So we stopped, some of us dismounted, then we kept perimeter while one of our guys walked ahead with a metal detector. We weren't expecting anything other than maybe a long wait for the

bomb disposal guys, so me and my team just took a knee, got comfy, and enjoyed the little fresh air that we could before we were forced back into our vehicles. Then out of nowhere, we get a warning over our radios. There's a bomber in the area and he's hunting us down. The Taliban used to use these little shortwave Motorola radios to communicate. They're incredibly reliable. The batteries last forever, but they have a limited range and all we had to do to listen into their chatter was get a hold of our own shortwave radio. Our Afghan interpreter was usually actually sat there listening into the Taliban talking about how they were going to try and kill us than relaying everything they said. They tried to use dumb little codes to throw us off,

but they were easy to decipher. And that day, they started talking about how they had a suicide bomber with them. Their genius plan was to dress this guy in a blue burka with a geobab, as in full body and head covering that has a little screen type thing covering the woman's eyes. He was going to get as close as possible to us, walk up like he's a lady asking for help, then detonate his explosives when he was in kill range. Given we knew their plan, you'd think that'd give us a better handle on the situation, but since we were in the green zone, the place with the most trees, most bushes, and most compounds, there were plenty of ways this bomber could sneak up on us, and if he did,

some of us were going to die. Aside from the IED strike which occurred a few months after, waiting for that bomber made for some of the tensest moments of our tour. Everyone knew that if they messed up, second guessed, or lost situational awareness, it could cost people their lives. So as you can imagine, the levels of fear that we were feeling were astronomical. We all stayed as quiet as possible, the engines of our vehicle switched off as we could better hear anything that might be approaching us, and then suddenly, I heard something. It all happened in maybe a second and a half, and it couldn't have been any more than that. I heard it rustling in a bush. I saw it move.

Someone in a blue burqa emerged with an obvious lump on their abdomen, and I fired six shots right at them. The figure in the burqa dropped like a ton of bricks, just hit the dirt right there where I first spotted them. All hell broke loose for a second, with a dozen different voices on the radio all wanting to know who fired their rifle and at what. My team leader had figured out what had happened by that time so he let everyone know over the radio, then our platoon commander came down the line to take a look.

We were all still expecting to get ambushed because the Taliban would most certainly be angry if we shot their bomber without them even detonating their explosives. So while the captain got on the horn to report the shooting and tell the bomb disposal guys that we now had two jobs for them, we went back to watching our sectors again. There was a slight sense of celebration. People were telling me good job and all this other stuff. But we knew that we weren't out of the woods yet, so we just kept on doing our jobs and waiting for EOD.

But meanwhile, our Afghan interpreter is listening to the Taliban's radio chatter and he's incredibly confused. We just smoke the bomber, but minute after minute goes by, and the Taliban aren't mentioning it at all. We had to wait an hour for the bomb guys to arrive, and still the Taliban hadn't mentioned anything about their blue Burqa's bomber. He told our captain, but apparently just told them to keep listening. It wasn't until the bomb guys arrived and they approached what we'd assumed was the bomber

that we found out who they really were. It wasn't until the bomb guys arrived and they approached what we'd assumed was the bomber that we found out who they really were. It wasn't a bomber. It wasn't even a man. It was a young woman, carrying a package of bread in her arms under her burqa. She had no idea that we'd heard the chatter about the bomber who was actually a couple of miles away targeting an Afghan National Army checkpoint, and not us in the green zone like we'd assumed. She'd probably walked past a dozen American patrols before and never had to worry about being considered a combatant. Then one day, she steps out of her compound to take some bread to her neighbors, and there I am, scared, ready to shoot her without a second thought.

I don't even think that I can really describe what I was feeling in the hours that followed. Just numb, I guess. Everyone was really supportive and said stuff like, sorry it had to be you or I would have done the same thing in your situation. But you could tell it wasn't what some of them really wanted to say. It's like they instantly knew what I'd be burdened with. Like I just swallowed a pill right there in front of them that was going to slowly kill me over the years. One guy told me, you did the right thing.

But the way he said it was more like, it was nice knowing you. I knew right then that I was done with the Marine Corps. I wouldn't be able to get out right away but I was totally emotionally checked out after that. I did everything I could to keep me and my buddies safe for the rest of the tour then asked for desk duty the first chance I could. Because almost everyone in my regiment had heard about what had happened. Getting the transfer to 111 was easy and I just wrote out the rest of my contract while taking the free therapy. I don't really know how to end this other than to say that I think about that woman every single day. The guilt never goes away,

it's just something I've learned to live with. Our unit gave the woman's family a bunch of money in compensation but I wasn't allowed to attend, their funeral as they call it, so I could apologize in person. I understand why I wasn't allowed. I wouldn't want to meet the man who killed my wife, or mom, or my daughter, even if he was about to hand me more money than my family could ever imagine. If that was the case, money would just seem like an insult, like someone was making a sick joke trying to put a price on a human life. But that's what we did, and the family took the money. We gave that family taxpayer dollars, not a cent came out of my paycheck. But that's okay by me, because I know there's a day when I'll have to pay for what I did. It's just not this one. What I'm about to tell you is something I've never talked about with anyone.

Every so often I'm reminded that it happened and my skin crawls to think I did something so weird. I didn't hurt anyone and I didn't do anything that might get me on a certain register, if you know what I mean. But still, of all the things I regret doing in my life, I think this tops the list. I was in a long-term relationship with a girl from the ages of 15 to 26. You didn't read that wrong, by the way, and it's not a typo. We met in our last year of secondary school, went to the same city for university, then moved in together once we graduated and were hunting for jobs. 10 years, 7 months, and 18 days we were together. We thought that we were going to get married,

have babies, get a joint account, the works. But then one day, things just stopped working. And after a few months of gradual breakdown, we agreed to mutually end the relationship while we were still young enough to look for other partners. I don't really want to get into it any more than that. It's a really long and convoluted story, and it's not really relevant to what I'm trying to tell you. The point is, we broke up, and as much as I thought that it was what I wanted, I soon found out that life without her was barely worth living. Call it codependency or unhealthy attachment, but when

you've had a literal life partner for more than a decade, not having them around can be a real shock to the system. We'd agreed to go no contact, which was probably for the best, but trying to move on with my life was so difficult that I sank into a bitter and lingering depression. My maid said that I was heartbroken, my doctor said it was clinical depression, but to me it didn't feel like either of those things. All I felt was anger, bitterness and contempt. If I was out and about and I saw some happy couple walking hand in hand,

I found myself with this intense, bile-boiling hatred for them. Jealousy played a part in it, I can't deny that, but I also had this attitude of, why are you getting invested in something that's just going to end up in the toilet? It seems stupid, outrageously stupid. It made me want to run over to them, grab them and shake them and scream, stop wasting your effing time. But I didn't. I just did that traditional Kiwi thing of hanging in a quiet desperation and pretending I was just fine and dandy. But I wasn't. And it took what I'm about to tell you to realize that. So I knew I was depressed, and I knew I had to do something about it, so I took up jogging as a way of blowing off steam.

It worked really well in some ways, and I'd recommend it to anyone, but the sense of chill only comes after a run. During a run, if you're hyping yourself up with hate, breed, and cannibal corpse, you can start to feel very aggressive. If you're in a good place mentally, this is no problem, you can just channel it into your run and all is well. But if you're not in a good place mentally, well, you'll see what I mean shortly. I was on a park run, not my regular route, but a longer, more hilly one that I'd been testing myself with. It wasn't going great, and that aggression was quickly turning into frustration. Then as I turned a corner on the walking track and was presented with a secluded, circular patch of park hemmed in by hedges, I saw a girl, sitting alone on the grass,

reading a book. I'd stopped jogging and was catching my breath just staring at her thinking things along the lines of who's stupid enough to sit in a park alone like that. Anyone could come along and just drag her off into a bush and do whatever they want to her. And then I started thinking about what those things might be. I'm trying to think of a way to say this in as sanitized a way as possible. But during that period of my life, I spent a shameful amount of time visiting a certain kind of website. These websites generally have names that aren't fit for polite discussion and usually ask if you're over the age of 18 or 21 before

you're allowed to enter. Are we on the same page now? Good. Well, these websites I was visiting weren't showing you run-of-the-mill stuff. The content depicted some extremely graphic and violent things, things I'd never suggest doing with my current girlfriend in a million years for fear of getting a smack in the chops. I don't even think about that kind of thing anymore, but back then, I was in way over my head with it, like to an unhealthy extent. So in my head, as I'm thinking about what some crazed maniac could be doing with this girl if they'd only come across her first instead of me, a lot of very unpleasant images began to flash through my mind. They got so

graphic that I felt this sudden flash of raw, stomach-turning guilt, along with a deep shame that those things had never entered my head to begin with. I think I need to emphasize again that I'm doing much better these days and that I'd never condone or repeat this kind of behavior, but back then I just didn't have my head together, so of all the things I could have done in that situation, I somehow landed on one of the worst options possible. I turned off the walking track and started walking across the open field towards the girl. She didn't see me until the last second, and when she did, I could see the fright in her eyes. There was this sweaty, overweight,

unshaven guy, panting and red-faced in front of her, and she had no idea what to expect. She took out her headphones and asked if she could help me. All I said was, you shouldn't be here. Running always fries my brain a bit. Words come out wrong, phrases sound off, so what was actually intended as a sort of warning came out more like a threat. And when she asked why not, in this frightened little voice, I told her, because people might want to hurt you. She was so scared I could see her shaking, and that was the point that I realized what I sounded like. So I launched into some speech

about how it wasn't me that was the danger, but rather anyone else that might come along and see a pretty girl sitting all alone reading, listening to music and not paying attention to her surroundings. Once again, what was intended to be an innocent heads up came across like I was indirectly threatening her, and as she started reaching for her phone, probably in preparation to call 111, which is New Zealand's version of 911 for all you Americans, I apologized, excused myself, then walked back to the track to run back the way I came. As you can imagine, I felt like the biggest creep on the face of the earth. That poor girl was just sitting there, minding her own business, and I'd injected myself into

her day while feeling entitled enough to do so. I know that's not exactly horrifying on its own but coupled with what I was imagining doing before I walked over to her it all just felt so wrong. I felt like I was in the alpha phase of becoming a serial killer or something testing the waters of approaching total strangers to see how they'll react and after getting back to my flat and having a long hot shower, I decided that I had to make a change. I cut out the inappropriate online stuff, invested in some less woohoo self-help books,

then set about clawing myself out from this abyss. It took some time, a long time actually, but accepting I needed that help was the first step on the road to improving my mental health. So, if there's anyone else listening who feels like they might need the help, there's literally zero harm in just getting the ball rolling. You might be very glad you did. And also, if there's a girl listening to this, and the encounter I just described described sounds horribly familiar then please accept my most groveling apologies. I'm a good bloke but I was in a bad place and I think I scared myself almost just as much as I scared you. In October of 1981, 17-year-old Kurt Eugene Sova was a happy-go-lucky high school student in his hometown of Newburgh Heights, Ohio. He was the youngest of four boys, worked hard in school, and aside

from some run-of-the-mill teenage hijinks, he generally kept himself out of trouble. He was also said to be very popular among his peers and often found himself invited to various parties and get-togethers. Yet it was one of these very gatherings that Kurt met a sudden and horrifying end, one that would send shockwaves through his friends and family as well as the wider community. On Friday, October 23rd of 1981, Kurt displayed some very unusual behavior. In the company of some friends, he skipped school, headed to a local liquor store, then convinced someone over the age of 21 to buy him a bottle

of an extremely potent alcohol beverage named Everclear. Upon obtaining the alcohol, Kurt spent the day at a friend's house, where he and several other teenagers became highly intoxicated. The group intended to visit a local Halloween carnival and partook in what might be called pre-gaming today. The idea was to get as drunk as possible before attending the carnival, where alcohol would presumably be expensive. After drinking as much as possible, in as short a time as possible, Kurt and his friends began to make their way to the carnival,

and on their way, they ran into a mutual friend named Sam Carroll. Sam was on his way to a Halloween party at a duplex on Harvard Avenue and invited Kurt to come along. For some reason, Kurt chose to ditch his first group of friends and followed Sam to the Halloween party instead of heading to the carnival. Sam later said that Kurt was extremely intoxicated when they first met and drank even more at the Halloween party. Kurt drank so much that he suddenly and violently became ill and Sam followed him outside while he vomited against a fence. Since the late autumn night was so chilly, Sam claimed that he went back inside to fetch their jackets, but when he stepped outside again, Kurt was gone. Sam also claimed that Kurt's sudden

disappearance didn't alarm him, since he figured his booze-sick friend had simply wandered home to sleep it off. But Kurt hadn't wandered home. In fact, Sam Carroll was the last person to see him alive. The following morning, Kurt's mother noticed that he was missing almost immediately. It wasn't like him to be gone overnight, Dorothy Sova told reporters. He always came home at 10 or 10.30 at the latest, so when I walked into his room and saw an empty bed, I got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Dorothy began calling the homes of Kurt's friends, hoping one of them knew of her son's whereabouts. She then enlisted Kurt's father and a handful of their neighbors, and scouring the surrounding neighborhood in hopes that someone had seen him.

But Kurt was nowhere to be found. And by the early evening of Saturday, October 24th, Kurt's parents still held out a glimmer of hope that their boy would come home, tired, hungover, but safe. Yet the following morning when Kurt remained missing, his parents contacted the Newburgh Heights Police to report him missing. And at first, local law enforcement dismissed the concerns of Kurt's parents. There had been numerous instances of mischief, all stemming from the same booze-filled house party on Harvard Avenue. And since Kurt's parents lived just two miles away from the site

of the party, officers correctly deduced that their son had been present there. It wasn't unusual for a teenager to spend a day or two away from home following a particularly catastrophic experiment with drugs and alcohol. And with this in mind, the police refused to dedicate valuable time and resources to a case that might simply resolve itself over the course of the coming days. Dorothy Silva pleaded with the officers who refused to file her report, assuring them that Kurt was not the type to go missing so suddenly. But her pleas went ignored. It should be noted that one of the police officers who dealt with Dorothy's complaint

was later indicted on charges of dereliction of duty, with some charges relating to allegations of gambling and corruption. The officer pled guilty to the charges and was swiftly removed from his position. And in the meantime, Kurt's parents began to conduct their own investigation into their son's disappearance. Dorothy Sova tracked down the officers of the duplex where the party was held, and although they initially denied having seen him, they later admitted to having spotted a heavily intoxicated Kurt wandering the halls alone. Dorothy pressed him on Kurt's whereabouts, but they assured her

that they'd been as helpful as possible. As progress slowed, Kurt's parents began to put up missing person flyers around the neighborhood, including inside of several local businesses and it was this which led to the next major break in the case. One day a man walked into one of the businesses which had Kurt's flyers pinned to a wall. The clerk on duty noticed that when the man walked past it he suddenly stopped, turned to look at it, and began to stare intensely at Kurt's face. When the clerk approached the man and asked if anything was wrong, he replied that there was no need for them to display such a flyer. Kurt was dead, and that he would be found in the next few days, and with that, the man tore down the flyer then walked out of the store. The clerk immediately contacted local law enforcement

to track the man down for questioning, but after determining that the man was mentally ill and thus unreliable, he was released without charge. A few days later, one of the duplex's residents informed Dorothy that there was someone sleeping on a cot in the basement of the duplex, and that there was a possibility that it might be Kurt. His father promptly investigated these claims, yet although there were indeed signs that someone had been secretly living in the duplex's basement, there was no evidence that it was Kurt. And finally, on October 28th of 1981, three local children were playing near a furniture warehouse when they made a horrifying discovery. Lying in a ravine, just 500 yards from the duplex where the party took place, was a decomposing human corpse.

It was lying face up in a shallow pool of water, barefoot, wearing a bright yellow t-shirt that was now stained with mud. They rushed to alert the authorities, and within just a few hours, forensic investigators had confirmed it was the body of the missing Kurt Sova. Kurt's body was transported to the county coroner's office, but following an autopsy, cause of death was unable to be determined. He'd sustained a few minor scrapes and bruises, but there was no obvious signs of trauma that might indicate a homicide, and while his blood alcohol content was a relatively high .11, that alone wouldn't have been enough to kill him. In all likelihood, Kurt's death has been some

kind of accident, but on further analysis, something had been frighteningly overlooked. The ravine where Kurt's body had been found had already been searched by law enforcement just 24 hours before the discovery. It now seemed quite obvious that someone had dragged Kurt's body to a place they knew had already been searched, in a way to slow down the recovery of his corpse. It was a chillingly deliberate move from someone who, for some reason, believed it was in their interest to hide Kurt's body instead of revealing its location. This might not necessarily be someone who killed Kurt, not on purpose anyway, but most certainly someone the police would have been very interested in talking to. As of 2019, the case had

been reopened by the Newburgh Heights Police Department, who've enlisted the students from Tiffin University's Criminology Department to help reconstruct elements of the crime. These efforts were continued the following year when Kurt's case was selected for CrimeCon's CrowdSolve event, an exclusive interactive experience where true crime fans and amateur detectives alike examine case files and explore new theories. While both efforts generated new ideas and some potential leads, the mystery behind Kurt's untimely death remains unsolved. Kurt's death might well have been a tragic accident, the result of overconsumption of alcohol coupled with frigid autumnal temperatures.

But until the police track down the person who attempted to hide his body, we'll never really know what happened to Kurt that night, or how an uncertain chain of events led to his sudden and frightening demise. We'll be right back. the live dealer or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz, make instant deposits or same-day withdrawals. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Oh!

Excuse me. Why are you walking so close behind me? Well, you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay. Well, you know what? Spec Savers, you can get two pairs of glasses

from $149, and oh, you'll like this. One can be a pair of prescription sunglasses. Sounds great! Where's the nearest store? Mmm, not far. Come on. Let's hurry then! To my count. One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two... Visit Specsavers.ca for details. The scariest thing that's ever happened to me, like the single freakiest thing that makes me

think there might just be things we can't see, measure, or explain in this world, happened on Halloween night of 1996. I'm not saying I'm a firm believer in anything like that, I'm still kind of agnostic when it comes to all things supernatural, but let's just say that that night converted me from a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic to someone who's much more comfortable asking who knows than trying to formulate some kind of opinion regarding the nature of the universe. I'd spent the evening at a Halloween party with friends. Nothing major, just a few drinks and some pizza, but unfortunately for me, I'd drawn the short straw when it came to being the designated driver. I had to drive everyone there, drive

everyone home, and drive everyone to Taco Bell if the mood took them, and boy did the mood take them. One by one, I dropped each of my friends off at their apartments, with my girlfriend being the final stop. I was working in the morning, which is also what made for me being the designated driver, so I kissed her goodnight, she got out of my car, and she walked up to her apartment. A few minutes later I'm on my way back home and I started thinking that I should maybe go back to my girlfriend's. Just call it an inclination at first. It had always been standard for me to try and get a good night's sleep before a work day, and we'd only been getting serious about our relationship fairly recently, so just casually staying over at one another's places wasn't something we were in the habit of doing. But then I started thinking to myself how great of a night we had, and how probably the best move would have been to accept her invitation and share a warm bed, instead of going home and shivering in my own crummy place with half busted heat.

But then, I was already like halfway home. Maybe driving back would just wake her up and she'd be annoyed with me. Plus there's a chance that she'd think I was only after one thing, which was totally not what I was about at that time. I pushed the thought out of my head, thinking that was that, but then it comes back fresh just moments later, right when one of her favorite songs comes on the radio. This might sound like the least creepy thing ever, because the song I'm referring to is No Diggity by Blackstreet. It still slaps all

these years later and I don't care what anyone says, but at the time, it was this brand new drop that was about to take the number one spot for a few weeks. And I didn't hear it and think, oh my god, she's sending me a message from not beyond the grave, and I didn't think it was anything but a total coincidence. But when I heard it, it just made me think about driving back to her all over again. In the end, I thought, screw it. The worst thing that'll happen is she'll just tell me to buzz off and call her in the morning, right? So I'll wait until I'm good to make a U-turn and then head right back in the direction of her apartment.

I pull up outside and I'm literally undoing my seatbelt and when I look up to see something that makes me freeze right there in my seat. My girlfriend lived on the second floor of this place but her apartment had an outdoor walk-up access and walking up the stairs was this totally random dude that I've never seen before in my life. Now I know this might sound like me being an idiot but my first thought was cheating. I'd been cheated on before and in that moment, my dumb self figured that I'd caught the second girlfriend in a row, red-handed, sneaking around behind my back. The guy was even looking over his shoulder and stuff, probably had a girlfriend or

wife of his own, I thought. I'd fumbled the ball and not ask him to stay the night, and boom, this other guy had just slid in there in my place. Now I know, I know, it shows my insecurity and immaturity and probably a whole bunch of other urities too, and I'm not proud of it, but me being an insecure jerk really isn't the point, but this next part is. And so like I said, I watch this guy walk up my girlfriend's steps and the first thing he does is sort of peer through her kitchen window. The next thing, he's looking around again like he's making sure that no one's around to see. And then he walks back towards the kitchen window again and starts taking an even closer look. I'm expecting him to tap on the window or something.

I don't know, some shady routine of letting her know that it's a very special guest. But he doesn't. He just takes another look through the window and then walks over to her door. Here's where the knocking is coming, I remember thinking to myself. But instead of knocking, the guy takes a few steps back and then starts trying to kick in my girlfriend's door. They say people do funny things when they experience a stress reaction like I did. Some people rush right at a problem without thinking, which seems like the best thing to do until the person has a gun or a knife or unseen backup or whatever. Other people literally just freeze or run away. The sense of self-preservation takes over and sometimes they even leave loved ones behind in dangerous situations just cause their brain noped out of there. And same as when a

horse bolts, they just go blind and run, sometimes into trees and stuff, it's pretty bad. But me, when I saw that guy smash his foot into her door, I just instinctively slammed on my car horn to make as much noise as possible. It sounds crazy, but in the moment I remember thinking, you idiot coward, you should be running over there to kick this guy in the face, but all you got in your arsenal is what, loud noises? I didn't realize it at the time, and it took a cop laying it out for me for it to actually sink in, but I actually ended up doing the only truly smart thing in that situation. Rushing the dude, like I said, might have ended with me getting shot or something,

but in waking up the entire neighborhood with this magic horn honking, I actually scared the guy off. Obviously, Ho's whole plan was to break in as quickly and violently as possible, just get the hell in there so he could do God knows what and then get out of there. Absolutely anyone seeing him or knowing what he was up to blew a huge hole in that plan, and it also gave him an opportunity to escape. I was kicking myself over that one for a while, thinking the white knight thing to do would be to tackle him, just lay on him and say in a total chad voice, ugh, yeah babe, I just totally took down this intruder, grab me a beer would ya?

But in all likelihood, that would have just gotten me hurt, and possibly really badly too. The cops ended up catching the guy who tried to break in, as he ended up trying the exact same thing on another apartment across town after he bolted. This guy was such a psycho that he almost got caught once and then tried again maybe less than an hour later. That time, he picked the wrong place, and the girl whose apartment it was had her dog literally run this guy up a tree. He had zip ties on him, duct tape, a hunting knife that he was planning to use for Jesus knows what when he finally busted into somebody's place. He must have been determined to make a victim out of someone that night

and it verges on a miracle that he didn't get what he wanted. But it's that little detail that seems to mess with my mind that I think about it too much after a few beers or whatever. So much had to go right for that guy not to hurt or kill someone, including a bunch of things that honestly kind of freak me out to think about, even all these years later. If I think about it objectively, me wanting to stay the night at my girlfriend's place is an obvious motivation to go back, so it's not like I could say I desperately didn't want to go back there, and that some unseen force drove me back there against my will. But I swear on all that is holy, no diggity came on that radio right as I was thinking the 1996 equivalent of

don't be thirsty, right? I was young and dumb and all of that, but I had some degree of game back then, and I knew that hassling a girl for you-know-what would probably only scare her off. I honestly think that if no diggity hadn't come on the radio and taken me out of that train of thought, there's no way that I'd have driven back to my girlfriend's apartment. And then if I don't drive back to my girlfriend's apartment that night, the guy that was completely kitted out might have actually busted in there. All it would take to cause traumatic life-changing injuries would be a couple of minutes, tops, so if I had waited a little longer, turned back a little later,

our lives might have been completely changed that night. I had to have turned back exactly when I did to catch the guy walking up the stairs to our apartment, meaning no diggity had to have been played at the exact moment that it did on the exact radio station that I just so happened to have tuned into on my stereo. No diggity wasn't even a number one single at the time. It was in circulation, but it's not like you heard it 20 times a day like you did around Thanksgiving, so the fact that it randomly came on at like 2am and in turn made me think of going back to my girlfriend's again. Like I said, a lot of stuff

had to go right for that to happen. Now I'm not saying that I have a sixth sense or anything. I'm not saying there was some ghost or guardian angel on the radio making it play that song so I'd have to go back and rescue my girl. I'm just saying that when you look at it from certain angles it starts looking like the universe very subtly influences my behavior because either it knew or on some level I knew that my girlfriend was in danger. Now I don't really want to go down that road because people start throwing the word psychic around at the end of it and start to sound like they're crazy. I guess what I mean is, people claiming they're psychic is like a vain thing. Something weird happens and they assume they're gifted, special, better than everyone else in some way. Only I

don't think like that. I think it was something else which engineered me going back to my girlfriends and if you want to call that god or a guardian angel or some psychic ability, then fine. I don't know what it was. I just know that it happened, and if it hadn't, I might be a very different man writing this. It's also just incredibly surreal to have that song that haunts you be no diggity of all things. In the movies, the scary song is always something creepy or odd sounding, like in The Shining when all the old music takes on a sort of air of sinister, but the song that gives me the chills is probably one of the best of the whole 90s era. I mean, for real, my little nephew calls it a bop and a classic and it doesn't

exactly send me into flashbacks or anything, but still, every time I hear those opening piano notes I think about the night where a song made me drive back to my girlfriend and helped me potentially save her life. I tuned into one of your live shows a while back and heard that you have an email dedicated to receiving stories from everybody. Well, I think I have one for you that you might be interested in hearing, and it's about the worst nights of my entire life. I don't know how long this is going to take me to write, because honestly, I know it's going to bring up a lot of very unhappy memories. But at the same time, I think maybe writing it all up will be like a kind of therapy. I hope so, anyway. Now, in total contrast, this story had to start by telling you about one of the best days of my life,

and that's the day that I landed my first proper graduate job after uni. Getting that graduate job meant everything, as the nice fat payslip at the end of the month was my ticket to getting a nice flat in a decent area. Obviously the wage meant being able to afford all sorts of luxuries and amenities that were off limits as a student, but being able to move somewhere that wasn't party central 24-7 was definitely the thing that I was most excited about. That was sometime in late May of 2012, and I was ready to move out of the shared house that I was living in almost immediately. But then, instead of just moving into the first available flea trap, I decided to bide my time as much as I could possibly stand it and try to shop around for

my dream flat. I was patient, painfully patient, but that patience paid off. I found a terraced rental house for about $7.50 a month, no bills or council tax included which back then was a bloody steal considering the area it was in. The houses weren't massive but the neighborhood was absolutely stunning. They were all little red brick houses with little yards and tiled pathways and the way the streets wormed their way around an old Georgian cemetery made the place feel more like a small countryside village than a city suburb. There was an actual old-fashioned high street with a butcher and a baker.

I was expecting to see a candlestick maker too at one point, but the organic vegetable shop and old ale pub made for very adequate replacements. It was a really exciting time in my life, the beginning of a new chapter, and for a few months, I was the happiest I think I'd ever been. I spent the last few weeks of summer sunning it in the back garden, then welcome all the challenges of the autumn leaf litter with glee. It wasn't strictly my house, I know, but it certainly felt that way, for a while anyway. But then came Halloween. So that year, Halloween fell on a Wednesday, but then a week prior, there had been a load of leaflets posted through everyone's letterbox. All the neighborhood parents were invited to take their kids out trick-or-treating on Sunday, the 28th.

It had started just before sunset, last only an hour or two, and would be heavily supervised, but people were free to opt out and not just answer their doors if they didn't want to. But there was no way that I was opting out. I'd always loved Halloween growing up, especially trick-or-treating for all the obvious reasons, so the idea of getting to pass out some of the seasonal tradition was a very exciting one.

I made sure to stock up on all kinds of chocolate variety packs and chewy sweets. Spent a bloody fortune actually and when the evening of the 28th came around I'll admit to having an embarrassing amount of fun. Giving out the sweets was one thing but it also gave me a great opportunity to meet some of my near and distant neighbors. I've always been something of an introvert so I was never about to go knocking from door to door to introduce myself, but having them come to me in a really fun, relaxed environment was just wonderful. I'm sorry to bang on about how superb my life was, but you need to understand that I went from an all-time high to an all-time low in the space of about 72 hours, and my whole life came crumbling down with

one little knock on my door. So, like I said, Halloween in 2007 fell on a Wednesday, and since there had been that big supervised trick-or-treating thing on that Sunday, I thought that I'd only get a handful of trick-or-treaters at most. Between about 5 and 9pm, I only had about four knocks at the door, all from kids a little bit too old for the supervised walk around. I had made sure to keep some sweets left over and I was very generous with them, especially with the last couple of groups. I didn't want a ton of sugary sweets around the house as putting on a load of weight wasn't exactly how I wanted the next new chapter of my life to start. The last group, which called just before nine, got a massive share of sweets and I only kept a few bits of pieces for myself to have after my tea. And then, at about half nine,

I get yet another knock at the door. I remember being just a teensy bit miff that someone was calling so late, but I also felt a tiny bit guilty for not having kept any sweets for them. So when I opened the door, I was really dreading the prospect of disappointing a bunch of excited but late corner kids. But then when I opened the door to see who it was, there was only one teenage looking kid, not in costume, standing in the middle of my path. Before I could get a word out, he said, trick or treat, with a smug little grin etched on his face, and I looked over his shoulder to see a gang of his mates trying to hide behind the hedges which separated the front yard from the street. Having gotten an immediate bad vibe from the kid and his mates, I was almost

pleased to have to tell them that I was out of sweets. You could tell that they were just taking the mickey, like it wasn't just me being a knobhead and trying to be the costume police. If they'd have asked nicely, even without costumes, I'd never have turned them down if I had stuff to spare. But since there was obviously some ulterior motive, I quite sternly told them that they were out of luck. I expected an egg or two to fly my way after that, maybe an open bag of flour or something, but instead of just flinging something and legging it, the boy on my pathway spoke up again. He said something like, well you gotta give us something. Otherwise you're getting the trick, aren't you? At that I remember saying,

Eh, trick away then, lads. You were never getting anything asking like that anyway. I knew that they were going to react badly, and I was more than prepared to give them a good old chase if they decided to throw anything at my new castle. It'd be an inconvenience, yes, but I'm not having some little toe rag talking to me like that on my own freaking doorstep.

And like I said, I expected him to throw something. What I didn't expect was the main offender to walk up my pathway and spit a huge gob of saliva right at me. To the little ratbag's credit, he was impressively accurate with his shot, and then when I jumped off the porch to chase them down, they legged it like the little bell ends that they were. And I stopped chasing them as soon as I got to the end of the path, and I did so for three reasons. Number one, I'm not the type of bloke to smack a kid around so there was no point chasing them. And number two, I'd just been spat on so the primary thought in my mind was get this off of me right now. And number three, I'd bought

and installed a little security camera just a few weeks before. A little security camera that was about to pay for itself. So I go inside and I know this is disgusting so cover your ears if you're squeamish or whatever but I scooped the lad's phlegm off of me with a teaspoon and then put it in a teacup that I swore never to drink from again. The idea was to get his DNA which would be in saliva because again there was no way that I was letting some little gob spit on me and get away with it. I then carefully took off the pants that I'd been wearing, threw them in the wash, and then ran to my laptop to check the camera footage. Back then, the quality wasn't

great and all the footage was stored online, not on an app, so it took an irritating amount of time to lock down the moment the incident actually occurred. It was a real pain in the butt, but I did manage it in the end, and with the footage that I secured, I was quite certain that I was going to have that little bugger in handcuffs by the end of the week. I had to download the portion of the video stream I wanted and then save it as a video file and then once I had that done I could call the police and the experience was a bit of a snakes and ladders if I'm being honest. The woman I spoke to was great and she assured me that the officers would stop by at some point to take a statement and review the footage. The downside was that because it wasn't an ongoing incident, and I basically had the kid banged to rights having put his spit in a mug,

it wasn't going to be a priority incident on a night when there's statistically tons of other crime. That's true by the way. If you live in a city larger than about 100,000 people, crime is said to jump up anywhere between 17-34% depending on where you live. I suppose that's what happens when you dedicated an entire night to all things frightening. But anyway, as I was saying, I got my report filed, and then I was making myself a cup of tea, still in my undies, when there was a loud heavy knocking on my front door. I ran to put on some pants, shouting that I'd be there in a minute, and in my rush to grab something dry from a clothes horse, I picked up a pair of short, silky gym

shorts that covered me up, but definitely made me look a bit odd. Not that it mattered, it would only be the police knocking around a bit earlier than expected. That's what I thought, anyway. And I thought wrong. When I opened the door, there was a complete stranger on the doorstep. He looked to be in his 40s or 50s with this leathery, nana's handbag-looking tan that gave away a decade or two of Spanish summers. He wore a fleece, a baseball cap, and a pair of battered old trainers, and as much as I'm embarrassed to admit, my opening line was a very confused one.

Are you with the police? And he shook his head. No, mate. I'm not with the police. He said those last three words with a sort of weird mocking tone. But they should be around here, shouldn't they? Looking for you. I remember being extremely confused because when he said looking for you, he was right. The police should have been on their way around, so I just couldn't quite work out what he was getting at. I sort of rewound the conversation a bit, then asked him why he was there, and again, he returns with this really cryptic response. You tell me, mate, he says, getting more aggressive.

It's you that's going around nuncing kids. I didn't take that accusation seriously at first. It came that far out of left field. But for any of you American readers, I should probably take the time to explain. A nunce is a British slang term stemming from the acronym given to those who'd committed indecent offenses towards children, for lack of a better words. It stands for not on normal courtyard exercise, because if these blokes were allowed to mix with their fellow prisoners during yard time, they'd end up with their heads caved in. It's a bit like calling someone a predator over in the US,

and quite obviously it's a very serious accusation to level at someone. But like I mentioned, I was so taken aback by the whole suddenness of the encounter that the accusation did very little but confuse me. So when the bloke on my doorstep mentions the whole nuns thing, and I had no idea what he was talking about, but then as he started to get less and less cryptic, I realized that it wasn't just a throwaway insult, it was a very serious accusation.

I asked him what he was talking about, and that's when he mentions, and I quote, four young lads who just called here for trick-or-treating. Obviously I'm still furious at being spat on so I immediately reply with something like, oh yeah, the ones who've been around spitting at me? And the bloke then basically takes this as an omission and starts saying, oh so you admit it then, you tried to touch my lad did you? And I only made the connection in that moment right as the bloke lunged at me. I barely got the front door shut in time and I remember sinking down and leaning up against it to keep it closed as the guy outside kept slamming his fist into the wood. He was shouting all kinds

of horrible things and I wasn't really listening. My brain was just completely focused on the fact that this little monster who spat at me had actually gone home and then told his dad or uncle or whoever that is that I was some predator who's tried to, I don't know, drag his kid into my house or something. And hearing this furious guy screaming and banging on my door was obviously very scary, but I had the spit. I had the camera footage. I had everything to prove that I wasn't lying about the sequence of events. The kid was obviously just trying to get himself out of trouble before it found him first, but since he didn't have a leg to stand on, I honestly wasn't

too worried about the sudden turn of events. Worried for my bloody door frame, yes, but not much else. I stayed there for a while, propped against the door, wondering if I should go and arm myself with something just in case this guy was mental enough to break in. But in the end, he seemed to get bored, then after shouting something about coming back with more people to string me up or whatever he said, I heard the telltale sound of my garden gate opening and closing, meaning he'd walked off and left. First thing I did was call the police again, obviously with a much more urgent incident to report and after that, two officers arrived within the hour. They spent a good 45 minutes talking the whole thing out with

me and obviously I showed them the CCTV footage of me getting spat on to give some context. One of the officers even had a little DNA swab and he took a sample of the lad's spit just as I'd hoped they would. It was a horrible situation but I thought it was pretty much over. My only fear was that the bloke might convince a bunch of his boozed up mates to come round the next night and throw a brick through my window. But if that did happen, the police officers assured me that they'd shoot round if I called 999 in the event of that happening. And after they left, I had a cup of tea to calm my nerves a bit and watched the last hour of whatever scary Channel 4 movie was showing and then went to bed. The next morning, I woke up feeling fresh, but instantly remembered the events of the night before. I ran to the top of the stairs and saw no damage to the door,

and then shuffled in the front room to make sure that the windows were all intact. Everything was just as it should have been, so no one had turned up in the wee small hours to throw a brick through my window, which I have no doubt would have woken me up too. And having done all that, I was able to carry on with my morning routine, get ready for work, and leave the house on time. I finished off my morning tea, walked down the hall, opened the door, then after turning to face it in order to close it on my way out, I froze in place. Spray painted on my door, and massive white letters, were the letters PEDO.

And I couldn't just leave it, people would be walking past my house all bloody day and although you couldn't see it clearly from the street, anyone walking right past my gate could see it clear as day. I had to get rid of it, or at least cover it up somehow, so I called into work, told them that I'd be an hour late, then got to work on painting over what I could. And very luckily for me, I'd actually repainted the door just a few weeks prior, so I had some paint left over to cover up the majority of the word. But over the course of half an hour or so it took me to get the job done, more than one person stopped suddenly while walking past my gate, gave me some sort of shocked look, then carried on walking as if

though they hadn't seen anything. And those few moments were some of the most mortifying of my entire life. I couldn't run after them shouting it's not what it looks like because in my head that made it look even more like something it wasn't. All I could do was feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment and hurry up with painting so I could finish up and get going to work. It was throughout the course of that day that I realized the whole incident might not be confined as a sort of one-night thing. I called the police on my lunch break, not 999 but the extension number that I'd been given to talk to one of the officers who dealt with my case, and again he was really helpful, and gave me an email

address that I could forward the CCTV images to. The person who spray painted my door had their face covered, but having time-stamped images was obviously a huge help to the police. I felt a bit better after that, knowing the law was on my side and when I got home after work, there was no additional damage or vandalism. I hoped that that'd be the last of it. That it was just some psycho family who'd grown bored of victimizing me in the end. But it didn't end there. There was still a way to go before the story finally ends. Over the course of the next few months, the harassment was almost incessant. Most mornings, I'd wake up to something pushed through my letterbox or

eggs splattered all over my door. And those kinds of things were just annoying. Half an hour's cleanup or whatever and it was over and done with. What I couldn't deal with was the stuff they drew or painted on the house or on the street outside. Stuff that said things like nuns, beast, or a predator lives here. And I learned very quickly that if I wanted to actually get rid of said graffiti, that I had to clean it off myself. The council was very sympathetic in all fairness, and the one time they did get a bloke with a power washer around, but he was very sympathetic. And I remember showing him the graffiti, which in that case said, kitty toucher, and big letters on my pathway and then instantly getting

incredibly defensive. I offered to show him the CCTV of me getting spat on, show him an email chain where I'd been talking to the police, and I know I got a bit emotional because he looked a bit shell-shocked by the time I finished my little rant, but when he told me, it's alright, mate, I believe you. People can be horrible like that. I had to excuse myself upstairs to have a very brief, but very intense, cry. I know that there were some people who had their suspicions. No smoke without fire, as they say, but that wasn't what broke me in the end. I knew I was innocent, and after a while, the eggings and incidents of vandalism slowly petered out. There was actually a point where I thought that things might get back to normal, but

then came that final, fatal Facebook post. It was a uni friend who told me about it, sent me a screenshot via email one afternoon asking me, isn't this your place? It was some kind of predator hunters group. The first I'd heard of anything like that, whereas they're obviously quite notorious these days. Now don't get me wrong, if you're caught bang to rights soliciting that from a kid, then you deserve everything you get. But back in 2011, it seems that it wasn't down to an exact science yet, and a lot of groups were still trafficking in rumors and false allegations. Seeing my house, the place that I'd once been the happiest I'd ever been, plastered in some Facebook group, was this benchmark moment in

the whole ordeal. I didn't think that it could get any worse, and then it did. There was some caption attached to the photo, and I can't remember the exact wording because I skim-read everything in this white-hot panic, but it basically suggested that it was going to be the target of a firebombing at some point in the next few weeks. One of the comments said something to the effect of, plenty of fireworks still going off this time of year. Be a shame if one landed on his house or flew through his letterbox. There were plenty more like that too, all calling for violence. Harassment was one thing, but this marked an intolerable escalation.

I was no longer safe in my own home, and my dream was over. The same friend who shared the screenshot offered me his couch for as long as I needed it, but if I was going anywhere, I was driving back to my parents. I'd been too afraid and ashamed to mention anything to them. I'd just internalized everything for weeks and weeks on end, and that same tactic had resulted in me hiding that outpouring from the council worker, and it had wreaked havoc on my own mental health. So that's what I did. I did the one thing I'd never wanted to do from the day I

moved away for uni and went running back to my mommy and daddy. I know now that that was the best thing to do. I mean, I was still so young at the time, just about to turn 26, and when I think, what a hell of a thing to go through at such a young age. Now, I won't go into much detail regarding the fallout of telling them what happened, but let's just say that going to live with them again for a bit was exactly what I needed. I was broken. I didn't realize it before I got there, but I was. I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually drained, and by that point, it made sense to just leave and start fresh somewhere else. I won't bore you with everything that came after. The landlord of the house made it impossible to get out of contract, and after a little bit of financial help from my parents and grandparents, for which I am

eternally grateful for, I was able to get myself a completely fresh start. And by that point, it was entirely welcome and as time went on, the trauma subsided and the memories began to fade. Not to say that I've completely forgotten about the whole thing. You never really let stuff like that go and it always comes back strong every Halloween. But now, I'm happy to say that I've 95% made peace with what happened. I tried for a long time to think of a way to end this and I haven't thought of a better way than this. My one big takeaway from what happened in the autumn and winter of 2012 is that no matter how bad things seem, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. I see other people going through terrible things in their lives,

and I just want to grab them and say, it's bad now, but it won't always be like this. Everything gets better with time, and you just need to find a way out. And I read a Churchill quote around that time, and one that said, when you're going through hell, keep going. And sometimes I think there's never been a truer word said than that. Mom, Mom, did you see my race?

Of course I did, darling. Look, you did your best. You tried. The thing is, it's not about winning. It's about taking part. Next year you might do better. But I did win, Mom. You did?

When it's sunny, make sure you can still see. At Specsavers, get two pairs of glasses from $149 and one can be prescription sunglasses. Hey, the sun won't wait. Visit specsavers.ca for details. Conditions apply. So it was Halloween, right? And I just finished a shift at a Wendy's here in North Carolina, and I was driving home late when I realized that I needed to get some gas. I took a slight detour to find a gas station that didn't mean doubling back towards work, and then when I found one, I stopped, filled up my tank, and then walked into the store to pay. I walked in, looked toward the counter, and the clerk looks up from the register, right at me, only he's wearing this cheap plastic vampire looking mask, the cheap kind that's just a plastic face with a piece of elastic on it. I remember saying something like, trick or treat bro, 20 bucks on pump number 3, and then just stom stopping in my tracks. The dude didn't take his mask off. He didn't even

close the register. He just kept on staring at me in total silence until the vibes finally hit and I stopped walking towards him. You know how gas stations used to keep their cigarettes behind the counter, kind of like in full view of the customer. Well, I stopped at this place before to buy smoke, so I remembered where they were placed, and every single pack was gone. And that's what really made me think, uh-oh, this isn't just some part-time college kid spicing up his Halloween shift by wearing a mask. I just walked into a robbery. And once I realized that, I started slowly backing up with my hands in the air. I didn't say a word. I didn't move too quick.

I didn't want to do anything that might make the guy think that I was running to call the cops or grab a gun out of my car or something like that. I'd obviously walked into a situation I did not belong in and all I wanted was out again. I kept backing up, hoping that he was going to say leave and don't come back, anything that'd give me an opening to just actually leave and go someplace else, but that was total wishful thinking on my part. The guy looked back down towards the register for a second and that made me think that he was going to grab as much money as he could before bailing, because in his head, seeing me meant that he was going to grab as much money as he could before bailing.

Because in his head, seeing me meant that I was going to call the cops and that meant that he had to get out of there before the deputies arrived. With his eyes off of me, I started backing up a little faster, bumping into stuff, but keeping my eyes glued to the guy to see if he's about to do anything. And it was a good thing I did because he did do something. And that thing was almost shoot me. I saw the mask come up to look at me again, then a split second later I saw the gun. I didn't need to keep my eyes on him then. I needed my eyes on the door and I needed to run as fast as I possibly could. Part of me didn't even think that he'd shoot, that it was just him

trying to scare me off by pointing it at me. But the reality was, the guy chose to scare me off by almost blowing my face off. I was maybe only a foot or two away from the door when he shot and I didn't just hear it. I felt it. I felt it zoom past my head, just behind it, and then shattered something to my left. Up to that point, I'd never been shot at before, and let me tell you, it's as every bit as scary as people say it is. It's totally different being in a fistfight, and although I've only ever had like two or three street fights in my life, it's almost like it's not as scary because your monkey brain can handle the idea of a flying fist. But a flying piece of metal, something that moves faster than you could ever run and do more damage than your fist ever could, it's like your brain just goes not fair, not fair, not fair and

you run. I ran all the way out, all the way past my car and out onto the side of the highway for maybe 20 or 30 feet before I turned around and realized that I left my way past my car and out onto the side of the highway for maybe 20 or 30 feet before I turned around and realized that I left my phone in my car. I had to run the risk of getting flattened by flagging someone down and asking them to call the cops. You gotta remember, this is after sundown. I have all dark shaded clothes on and the section of highway we were on had cars that were traveling pretty fast. I basically had to wait for the slowest driver then just wave my arms as wild as I could until it looked like they were slowing down. I told them what happened, they called the cops, and then we waited at the side of the highway with the driver having turned their hazard lights on

until the cops finally showed up to clear the gas station. The robber was obviously gone by then, probably left just minutes after he'd fired the shot at me, but with the station cleared and safe, I was able to actually get back to my car and drive home once I'd given a statement to the cop who'd showed up. I was still buzzed from the adrenaline like hours and hours later, but when I crashed, I crashed hard, because I didn't see the guy's face.

I wasn't much help to the cops so they didn't get in touch with me after the fact. I guess they were too busy talking to whatever poor clerk had been on duty that night because if that robber had been anywhere near as violent with them as they had with me, I'm guessing they had themselves a very scary Halloween. So this whole thing happened when I was maybe 12, and I'm nearly 17 now. Me and my sister, who was 14 or 15 at the time, were staying home while our parents were at my little brother's hockey game. We lived in a fairly safe neighborhood, hardly anything ever happened and everybody knew everybody, and almost everyone got along and liked each other, so we felt pretty safe as we didn't have a reason not to. Our front door was locked, our back door was locked, but our side door didn't lock as it was broken, but no one ever used it anyway so my dad hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet. Me and my sister were in the living room watching TV and doing homework when we heard the fence outside of our house making

some noise and it sounded like someone had jumped over the fence. So my sister looked through the blinds and sure enough, someone had jumped the fence. Two people actually and they were dressed in mostly black with like a hospital mask over their faces. We freaked out and hid in between the couches in the living room when we heard the front doorknob wiggle. Of course, it was locked, so it didn't open, but we knew whoever it was would go to the other side next and that one would open. And in that moment, I was the most terrified I'd ever been. But once the door handles started jiggling loudly, my dogs woke up. At the time, I had a Tosa and a Rottweiler.

Once one started barking, so did the other one, and eventually it just became pure chaos. And that's when we heard them scream, Yo! They got dogs! Then we heard the fence make the same noise as if though someone had just jumped over it again. Later that night, a local gas station near my house got robbed by two armed men, and the news report showed the same people that we had seen, same outfits and everything, except this time, we got to see their faces. Our dogs truly may have saved our lives that night. And the funny thing is, our dogs are the biggest lovers. They may be loud and

bark, but they wouldn't bite or attack anybody. And this is the one time I'm very glad these dog breeds are associated with being quite scary and aggressive because clearly, they scared off whoever wanted to break in that night. This happened around 2018, right after my sister moved out of our apartment. It's been bothering me since I moved out as well. I was home alone on my day off when someone knocked on my door. And no one ever visits and I have anxiety so that was already terrifying to my brain. I answered and it was a woman who lived in one of the basement apartments. She seemed nice at first, asking if I wanted any clothes that she was giving away

because they weren't her style, but supposedly matched mine perfectly as a young woman. And that was already a red flag in my mind because the only time I ever saw her was when I was walking to work, wearing my uniform of a black shirt, black pants, and a black hat. But I let her talk because I'm super awkward and I hate being rude to total strangers. She then started getting pushy and listing off super expensive name brands to try and get me to go to her apartment. It was an old small building with no cameras and I lived on the second slash top floor which would be down what I called the creepy stairs and next to the door to the back lot that no one used. Then I realized that she was holding

a notebook open with a script of what to say. I continued to reject, but my anxiety wouldn't let me close the door on her face without fear of her lashing out, and she kept insisting until I finally told her my boyfriend was going to be home soon and suggested that she donate the clothes. My boyfriend wasn't going to be home for many hours, but she didn't need to know that, obviously. And she left, and I went back to my room, which has a window facing the back lot and alley. A few moments later, I heard a fight happening in the lot and saw her with the previous, he was already fired at that point, maintenance man. It was a loud screaming fight and they were standing next to his truck, which had tinted windows and a covered truck bed. My paranoia went a little wild so I texted

my family about it to feel a bit safer. Then I believe he left. But a little while later something hit my door hard. I didn't check, I just stared. And then it happened again. And again. All night until my boyfriend came home, and for a few days when I was alone. I found out after looking at the door that they were hitting my deadbolt, and it was off-center. Even after it was replaced, the damage couldn't be fixed. It stopped after a little while, and the woman moved out almost immediately after all of that. Now, I don't want to feed my paranoia but something obviously wasn't right. I know I should have called the police but I have

horrific phone anxiety and I was just kind of losing my mind that night and I even thought that I was overreacting and the police in my town are relatively useless. And also that maintenance man was rehired and was the one who replaced my deadbolt, insisting that he kept the extra key despite never needing the old one. Thankfully, my new house is much safer. This incident occurred about a week ago when I had ridden my bike to school with my best friend. Since we planned to work on a project together after school, it seemed like a convenient arrangement. On our way back home from school, we decided not to head straight home and opted for a short bike ride down a path near the park which would eventually lead us back to my house.

While we were unlocking our bikes from the racks, I noticed a red Dodge Dakota parked across from the school. Just to give you some context, we live in a fairly small town, so we usually know which cars belong to the students and teachers. However, I didn't recognize this one. It was already about an hour and a half past the usual school dismissal time, but I assumed that it might be a relative picking up someone, so I didn't think too much of it. And we began biking towards our chosen path and after about five minutes my friend mentioned that the red truck was driving on the road parallel to the sidewalk that we were biking on a little behind us. I reassured her that it was probably just a coincidence and that the driver

likely lived nearby. We continued on our way. However, when he continued to follow us for another 10 minutes, my concern grew. We decided to ride to a nearby gas station where there would be more people around and less chance of something happening. We parked our bikes and went inside, grabbing drinks and a snack to make it less conspicuous. And while we were in there, I called my brother and explained the situation, asking him to come pick us up. He said that he would be right there and advised us to stay inside. We paid for our snacks and informed the cashier about the situation as well and she allowed us to stay inside until my brother arrived. When my brother pulled into the gas station, we walked out to retrieve our bikes. However, they were nowhere to be found. After looking around, we spotted the red truck

parked behind the gas station with our bikes right next to it. The man who had been driving it was staring directly at us. We immediately told my brother who instructed us to forget about the bikes and just get in the car. So we did and my brother got out of the car and went into the gas station to get the employee and while he was doing that, the man sped off out of the back parking lot of the gas station. When my brother came out, he said that the gas station worker was going to check back on the cameras and see if she can get a license plate to give to the police. And then my brother gave her our mom's information for any updates. We both made it home safe, and I'll keep you all updated when we find out more. I'm just still terrified what we were being set up for. My girlfriend and I were graduate students living together in a six-unit apartment building with an outside stairwell. It was an older Victorian home that had been converted into apartments, and the whole street was lined with similar buildings.

It was off-campus but conveniently located within walking distance of bars, a coffee shop and several restaurants. The neighborhood had a laid back bohemian vibe. The tenants were a mixture of college kids, young professionals and families. The area was generally safe but it wasn't too far from a rougher section of town. It was a Thursday night and being the night owl that I am it was past 3am and I had just finished watching a movie. I turned the TV off and went to the stairwell for a quick smoke before bed. We were in the middle of a snowstorm. The ground was covered in 6 inches of fresh powder and it was freezing.

Scary cold to be honest. I quickly smoked my cigarettes and rushed back inside. My girlfriend always complained about me forgetting to lock the door and, as was my bad habit, I left the door unlocked. I jumped into bed and, just as I was falling asleep, I thought I heard a noise. I brushed it off at first but then I heard a creak. Probably just the wind, I concluded. Moments later, I heard the floorboards creaking, and now I was listening intently. My girlfriend felt me shuffling and asked what was wrong, and I told her I thought I heard something, and then we both heard what sounded like someone stumbling into our couch. We shot up and I yelled, someone there? No answer. The floor creaked again. This time in unison we shouted, who's there?

Another noise. I quietly stood up and scanned the broom for something that could be used as a weapon. Nothing. Growing up, my dad always kept a baseball bat under his bed and I regretted not adopting that practice. We yelled again, but was no response. Again but this time from the darkness we were greeted by a low-pitched incomprehensible growl. I wondered if one of my buddies was playing some sort of prank on me and that seemed out of character for my friends especially at this hour on a weekday night and during a snowstorm. What I really thought was that a crackhead had wandered in, and my girlfriend yelled,

Who's out there? More footsteps. The intruder was still in the family room, but he was getting closer to our bedroom. We heard the growl again, but this time it was followed by a sort of gurgle and this, It's Matt. We didn't know any Matts, at least not any that would enter our apartment uninvited in the middle of the night. I looked at my girlfriend.

I'd never seen someone so scared. And if worse came to worse, I thought to myself, I know I can outrun this situation, and I hope that it didn't come to that. Matt who? Matt who? We shouted repeatedly. After a long pause, he finally said, Matt, I'm friends with Mike and Kelly. Relief washed over both of us. Mike and Kelly... Relief washed over both of us.

Mike and Kelly were our neighbors. We turned on the lights and walked into the family room and they restood. A 6'2", slovenly looking college kid. Matt was blacked out drunk. Our neighbors had hosted a pregame party at their apartment followed by a trip to the nearby bars. They had abandoned Matt and despite the storm, he had found his way back to their apartment. The door was locked and his phone calls had gone unanswered. His evolutionary drive to survive had kicked in and he had sought warmth in the first unlocked apartment he could find. I told him that he

scared the living daylights out of us and that he had to go. He stepped outside and I quickly locked the door behind him. The next day I learned that Matt was fine. He'd been discovered by another neighbor, huddled next to her car under the lean-to garage. I'm just kidding. I have no idea what happened to Matt. I do, however, remember being a little concerned for him after my nerves had finally settled. The encounter happened very recently, and I honestly don't know if I'm overthinking things or not, so I'm turning to you guys. So my boyfriend and I went to Dave and Buster's for a date night the other night, and everything was going well until I passed by this woman standing closely next to a couple. At first I thought she was with them because she was following them around.

She appeared to be in her mid-twenties. I noticed her staring at me from afar which was weird but I shrugged it off since I'm Southeast Asian and hanging out in an area primarily populated by Caucasian and Hispanic individuals. And then, as my boyfriend and I walked past her, I felt her tap my arm. So I did what any normal person would do when someone taps their arm. I looked. When I turned my head to look at her, she didn't say anything and continued to stare with a sort of blank expression in her eyes. I paid no mind to it. I have a heavily tattooed arm, so I thought, you know, maybe she doesn't understand social cues and just wants to touch my tattoo. Yeah, that's it, right?

A few minutes later, we were still looking for another arcade game to play and once again, I saw that same woman, but this time she wasn't with the couple and she was staring again. My boyfriend and I found a game to play and as I focused on watching him take his turn, I felt a few quick taps on my arm once again. It was the same lady. This time I decided not to look despite how uneasy I felt but I did see her pass by. My boyfriend finished his turn on the game and we started looking for another one. As we walked around, I started analyzing the strange woman.

She didn't have an arcade card and was walking around pretending to press buttons on machines every so often. She did not arrive there with anyone. The couple she was by earlier was nowhere to be seen at this point. And the look in her eyes kind of reminded me of the people on some type of heavy drug in the downtown part of where I live and she had a creepy and very stoic look on her face. As we headed to the ticket prize area I was talking to my boyfriend about something and felt her tapping my arm again. This time I was fed up. I quietly told my boyfriend who, mind you, is a pretty big and buff guy with two tattooed arm sleeves and he looks like he's part of the Yakuza.

My boyfriend asked me to point her out so I looked around to find her and I saw her staring again. I pointed right at her and my boyfriend was about to walk towards her but she hid behind the arcade machine. We left after that because I felt pretty uncomfortable especially since I'm already not okay with strangers touching me without my consent. And now that I've had time to process everything, I realize how creepy and strange that encounter with that woman was. I keep getting reminded of the blank look in her eyes and haven't been able to sleep properly because of it. I posted this before, and this too happened in the early to mid 80s. I lived in Kenner, LA and a friend and I would ride our bikes everywhere.

No parents cared or knew where we went as long as we were home by dark. Anyway, there was a large airport a few miles from my house and we would ride our bikes along a levee and get really close to the back runway and sit and watch the airplanes land. It was really cool. There were train tracks that ran behind there too that ran off into the swamp that we would play on, put coins on the tracks and let them get smashed and once or twice we jumped onto and off of a moving train. Anyway, an unsupervised kid's dream. So one day we were back there messing around and this guy shows up. Mid-thirties I would guess, really nice, no bad vibes that we saw anyway, and he befriended us. Would ask when we were coming back and would meet up with us out there. He brought us cigarettes, yeah, we were smoking at 12, soft drinks and all kinds of stuff.

Well, one day he offered us lunch, but we had to go back to his trailer. We were dumb kids, so we agreed and rode our bikes to his house. It was in the woods, no neighbors, and it was two of us, so what could happen, right? Anyway, we go in and he gives us a couple of sandwiches and a coke. I look on the table and there's a hustler's magazine and a couple of other hardcore magazines and actually some gay magazines too. He tells us to go ahead. He doesn't mind if we look at him. And we do. Man, we were 12 and just full of hormones. Well, he proceeds to tell us that he's gay. I didn't know what gay was at the time. It wasn't talked about and I wasn't interested if it was. He went on to say that he

wouldn't ask us to do anything we didn't want to do, but he would if we wanted to, and just really was acting like a salesman for being gay. I really don't know any other way to explain it and I'm not trying to be rude. My friend and I both got the same bad vibe and decided that it was time to go. He asked us when we would be back and we made something up and he said that he would meet us then. I'm sure he was planning something. I don't know why he let us leave. He never touched us or tried anything but this was the one and only time we went to his trailer and the last time we went behind the airport. I'm sure if we would have went back that it would have been a different story though. I'm positive that he was setting

something up to do to us and it seems like there were a lot of predators in the 80s. Ladies. Mom! Mom! Did you see my race? Of course I did, darling. Look, you did your best. You tried. The thing is, it's not, you did your best. You tried. The thing is, it's not about winning. It's about taking part. Next year you might do better.

But I did win, Mom. You did? When it's sunny, make sure you can still see. At Specsavers, get two pairs of glasses from $149. And one can be prescription sunglasses. Hey, the sun won't wait. Visit specsavers.ca for details. Conditions apply. While I was living and studying in the capital of my country, I had a small rented basement and a house built in 1917 next to a nightclub. I was preparing to go to sleep quite early since I had class at 8am

the next day, and right before I fell asleep, I remembered that I had forgotten to lock the door. However, since the city I lived in was generally quite safe and the only way to reach the entrance of my place was past a front gate, all around to the other side of the house and down some stairs, I didn't think much of it and proceeded to fall asleep. Fast forward to the middle of the night, I woke up and felt someone or something slowly pulling my blanket off me. In a confused state, I extended my hand and felt a hairy male arm under my fingers. My first thought was, oh, this is probably my drunk flatmate,

but then I remembered that he was at his girlfriend's place on the other side of town. In pitch blackness, I jumped out of my bed, rushed to the light switch, and as I turned it on, I found a stranger who appeared to be around my age, a student, standing in his underwear by my bed, with his underwear clearly wet from urine. My initial reaction was to stay calm, as I had no idea if this guy was violent or what was even going on in the first place, and I calmly asked him, Man, what the heck are you doing here? He was clearly very confused as well and took a seat on a recliner that I had in my tiny room. There we were, both in our underwear, him covered in urine and me on the verge of panicking.

What does he do? He extends his hand and introduces himself to me. And at this point I said, okay dude, get out of my house. and started escorting him to the hallway where I found all his clothes and shoes on the floor. As I was escorting him out, he went into the bathroom and locked himself inside. I heard him turn on the shower and I proceeded to knock on the door saying, hey man, if you don't leave right now, I'm calling the cops. To which he replied, I'm not afraid of the police. Well, that's just perfect, isn't it? I thought. A few minutes passed and he stepped out of the bathroom,

completely naked, with my flatmate's towel around his waist, looking content and said, Hey, did you see? They got a shower here. And at that point I was fuming. Who's got a shower? This is my house, you're a total stranger. You broke into my house. Suddenly, an expression of complete fear appeared on his face. Oh my god, what have I done? Jesus Christ.

He started exclaiming as he very awkwardly tried to get dressed in the hallway. I managed to get him out of the house and even called one of his friends from my phone to come pick him up at the club. It turns out that he was from a completely different town and came to the capital to party, got kicked out of the club for starting a fight, and somehow managed to find my apartment. To this day, I have no idea what he was on or how the hell he managed to find my apartment, as it is quite hidden from the street. I used to hang out with my cousin a lot. We were both 10-year-old males at the time of this encounter, and I'm now 33 years old, but it's stayed with me ever since. We mostly spent our youth roaming the streets, not causing trouble, but kicking footballs around fields, climbing, and hanging out with kids our age, the typical stuff before iPads and Netflix became commonplace.

One day we decided to explore a part of town that we'd never visited before. This meant going through alleyways and back streets. The trail would actually end approximately two to three minutes from my house, which was in a safe part of the neighborhood. It was a sunny day, albeit not too warm, and my cousin and I had been walking for what seemed like miles. The journey that we had planned was supposed to go on for longer, but we got bored and decided to take a detour home. The detour involved cutting through an alleyway that looked a little bit like the Coronation Street Ginnell, if anyone is familiar with the TV show,

and to the left of us were terraced houses, and to the right were steel fences with sharp points to deter would-be thieves. We continued up there and soon enough one of the kids from our school lived there and his mom shouted, what are you boys doing here? We ran. I don't know why we just didn't like her son and her tone was accusatory and as we ran we bumped into another kid. Don't go that way, he said as his voice trailed off while he ran further and further away from us down the opposite end of the alleyway. We shrugged and continued on. It got darker with the trees and foliage, but we soon emerged from the alley. And that's when we saw the lone boy.

A boy aged 10 to 12 stood there, and his eyes were empty, and he had a sort of vacant look on his face, with half of his face that we could see well enough. Above his mouth was covered with a veil, somewhat like a Halloween mask of some description, except it was June. Halloween was months away. As we got closer, we noticed the boy had a kitchen knife in his hand. A fully real stainless steel kitchen knife with both hands on the handle. The sunlight made the blade glisten, and we sort of cracked a joke. Cooking outside? But he looked at us very blankly, showing no emotion.

We were too freaked out to move. And that's when we realized that he hadn't moved either, not a muscle. We saw him blink, but physically, the knife hadn't been raised up or pointed at us, just held closely to his chest, blade pointing upwards. We figured that we should get away because instinct told us that this was weird and a bit freaky, and going back down the alleyway didn't seem like a safe option. Being stuck in an alleyway with a strange kid with a knife didn't seem smart, and in front of us was a road on a steep hill that was our best bet.

We walked up to the top of the hill, keeping an eye on the kid, and the top of the hill was two to three minutes from my house in terms of distance, and at last we actually felt safe. As we looked back down the hill, the lone kid had put the knife by his leg, now holding it in one hand, but he remained in the exact same spot and stared right back up at us, very expressionless. We told our parents what had happened, and they called a local community enforcement team to sort of scout the area. And apparently the kid was found with the knife, but we never heard why he was there, what he was doing with it. And 23 years after it happened, it's still always on my mind. I thought I knew what a narcissist was up until two days ago. I had studied it and remembered the

traits. I thought I knew about four of them, including my parents. Trust me, there's a whole other level of it and it would be scary to witness if you weren't very secure in yourself. Experiencing it firsthand is mind-boggling. If you even think a person could not have narcissistic personality disorder or NPD, then they probably don't. I was able to detect it extremely clearly in someone to a degree of absolute certainty, and I'm glad I had this encounter because what I had previously thought about certain people was, in fact, completely wrong. I was sitting in a coffee shop at 6am downloading movies on their wifi. A guy in a truck parked and

came up to the car's slightly open window asking about the prices of local homes. He appeared to be around 35-40 years old, well dressed, charming, and didn't stutter or sound unintelligent. I initially thought this guy was normal, asking a pretty basic question so I remained passive. However, he didn't seem to want to leave and stood there in awkward silence after I told him the price range was $320,000 to $500,000 and then he asked me who's the best builder. And I thought to myself, do I look like a realtor? I told him I didn't know and he then said, you have a good long weekend, thanks. And that's when things got weird. He went into the coffee shop for 45 minutes and I started to think that this was somewhat odd.

When he came out, he walked back up to my window and gave me an odd look of disappointment, saying, Okay, you have a nice long weekend. As if we needed to continue our conversation from before his 45 minute absence. He then talked to someone passing by in front of my car and they seemed to know each other from years ago. The person asked him, so you're back in town? I thought, maybe this guy isn't the creepiest person I've ever met. However, the situation quickly turned even stranger. He put on his headphones, walked to the tailgate of his truck, crossed his arms over the back of it and rested his head in his arms, and stared at me for at least five minutes from about 30 feet away,

glancing at him every minute to see if he was still staring at me. I thought, this guy's really creepy. I should probably leave, but my movies weren't finished. I'm not typically afraid of other people, so I stayed. But I had a combat switchblade in my car door for situations like this. I felt pretty safe because of who I am, but this guy seemed to be trying to intimidate me with every lie that came out of his mouth, and there were inconsistencies galore. And then he started walking back up to my car and I thought, what the heck does this guy

want now? We talked for about 30 minutes, although he did most of the talking. Within the first 15 minutes I learned several things about him without saying much myself. He's looking to buy a house, but already owns four. He has a restraining order and can't go within 100 feet of where I suggested he look for a home. He's on the dangerous persons list, almost yelling at me to google it. His father is rich because of an IRA. He claims to be a retired cop though I didn't believe him and he showed me his bank account which said $1,000 per month, but he insisted the police paid him $4,500 per month. He mentioned being in secret operations with the police but couldn't elaborate. He told me he was with the RCMP but couldn't reveal his duties. He claimed to be the

main enforcer for the local Notorious Biker Gang, and he spouted off random names as if I should know them. He informed me that people were afraid of him. He asked if I was afraid of him which gave me a good laugh. People arrived at the coffee shop and he stated, looks like the cowards are coming out of the woodwork. He told me he hadn't been with anybody in two years and that he touches himself all the time. He informed me that he watches out for police. He stated that he is untouchable because the biker gangs and the police don't care. I asked if he had family, hinting that he should go be with them instead of bothering me.

And he apparently has four kids, all hockey champions under the age of 16, trained by the Toronto Maple Leafs coach. He tried to prove this with his phone, but I didn't follow hockey, which disappointed him. He asked me about my occupation and I told him some fabricated story to hint that I knew that he was full of lies and he didn't take it well. He asked me if I knew where the best houses were in a suburb of similar looking $500,000 houses and I asked if he had a realtor and he said no, I don't need one. And he hinted that everything that he does is off the books, except for the pension plan of $1,000 per month.

I became quiet, my palms got sweaty and I began to think that this guy might be a psychopath. I couldn't even use my phone because my fingers were so wet. I was just vaping, blowing vapor out of the window at him. He wasn't taking the hint, and I considered grabbing my blade and rolling up the window, prepared for a violent reaction, like him damaging my car. An elderly man walked past him toward a dumpster, and he said to his face, look at this chump. The old man looked wide-eyed and confused, and so was I. The old man looked at me and gave me a confirming look as if he had assessed the situation was also thinking what in the world is happening. He

claimed to own the entire town and kept mentioning random names. He told me that there's a serial killer living down the street. He told me he wouldn't leave until 7.30am to avoid being rude to me which left me even more confused and we sat in silence for a minute and then he told me that I should leave because it was going to get loud soon. I wasn't sure why so I just stopped talking. Another silent minute passed and then he looked at me, changed his facial expression to anger and calmly said that if he were me he'd get out of town right now. I ask why should I leave and he says there's a storm coming. I tell him I'm not afraid of thunder and he looks insulted. He's been

speaking in covert wording this entire time so to get a better feel for this guy, I ask where he's from and if he slept in his truck last night and he looks offended like I'm the one who was off his rocker but he doesn't say anything other than no. Silent minutes pass and he then looks at me, changes his facial expression to anger and says very calmly that if he were me he'd get out of town right now. Is he warning me or threatening me? I honestly can't tell. It takes me a few seconds to even process what he's just said. I'm not intimidated in the least, more amused really, and I humor him by saying, why's that? And he starts laughing his head off, walking away now and asks, was it scary? I laugh and tell him an assured no, shaking my head at the absurdity of him thinking that

someone like myself would be scared of someone just a few inches taller than me and roughly the same size. I did martial arts for 15 years, and he's halfway to his truck. Finally, well for God's sakes, he's now walking back to me. I flick my blade open and casually flip it in the air to invert it blade down, and he fist bumps me and says, you're a good guy, laughing and then walks away. Roars away in his truck, windows down, music blaring at 7.35am. That my friends is a true narcissist if I've ever encountered one. I just sat there perplexed at this character, wondering how many mental disorder boxes he'd checked off. It wasn't even a question. This guy was trying to intimidate me in any way possible and was trying to prove his worth to me in any way possible as

well, reacting to each and all of my facial expressions so quickly and in such a way that made me feel like he was sizing me up the entire time. I like to walk in the mornings after the sun comes up and the route that I take is mostly through residential areas. However, there is a section that leads down to the waterfront. It's fairly isolated, especially at that time of day, and is lined with tall grasses and trees. I will occasionally pass a runner or someone biking but that's about it. I don't do this walk as often now because I walk to and from work but I still enjoy it on the weekends when I have a chance. Last Saturday I had the chance so I headed out for a walk. As I was approaching the section that leads down to the water I saw a man cross the road and enter the trail. After a few

moments as I approached the trail, I expected to see him walking down to the water since you can see for a fair distance, but he was nowhere to be seen. It struck me as odd and my instincts told me to take the alternate route along the road which meets up further down at the waterfront. I was wary so I kept looking back and after a minute or so, I saw him come out of the tall grass and go back across the road into a park area between the houses. I just shrugged it off and figured that maybe he went to have a break. Sunday morning was beautiful and I decided to go for another walk and the same thing happened again. This time, I happened to catch a glimpse

of him going into the trail. I was seriously creeped out and didn't even cross the road to go past that section. I continued along the road, and this time I didn't see him come back out, at least not before I went out of sight down to the waterfront. I'd been doing that same walk at about the same time for a couple of years, almost every day except recently, and it crossed my mind that maybe this guy had been watching me. Am I being overly paranoid though? And now I'm hesitant about taking that route, which sucks because that part of my walk is actually my favorite bit, and I often see deer and lots of birds there. I always have my phone

easily accessible, and I have a pouch on my waist with a pocket knife. I also carry three pound weights in my hands and I'm pretty sure that I could defend myself if necessary. What other ways could I be more prepared for a creepy encounter and should I just avoid that route now or do you think maybe I'm just overreacting? I'm a female and I was 13 at the time, but I look more like I was 10. My grandma lived two states away and discovered that she had stage 4 cancer. My mom packed my sisters and me up and drove us there while my dad stayed home for work. We were there for three months. My aunts and uncles lived in the same city as my grandma and my sisters and I would frequently spend the nights at one of our aunts' houses.

One day, I was making lunch for my grandma when my uncle walked into the kitchen. Suddenly, he shouted and rushed out the back door. I caught a glimpse of a man in a red baseball hat running from the kitchen window. He had been watching me, and my uncle claimed that he didn't catch him. We found two piles of cigarette butts in the backyard, one by the kitchen window and one by the bathroom window. And strangely, my grandma didn't have blinds or curtains on any of her windows besides her bedroom window,

and needless to say, we were horrified. Fast forward a few days and my mom was certain who the peeping tom was. My grandma's neighbor who always wore a red baseball hat and had suddenly become smoking buddies with my uncle. We couldn't prove anything because my uncle backed him up and we didn't want to distress my grandma so we let it go. A couple of days later I was spending the night at one of my aunt's houses while my sisters were at another it go. A couple of days later I was spending the night at one of my aunt's houses while my sisters were at another aunt's. It was just my cousin and me there while my aunt was at the store and I heard a car door and peeked out the window to see if it was my aunt

but I saw a man standing at the end of the empty driveway. He wore a red baseball hat and pulled over his eyes and my uncle had told him where I was. I freaked out, locked the doors and told my cousin to call her mom. She was on her way home but the man was already gone. After that I never left my mom's side. I stayed every night at my grandma's house and my dad flew up soon after and that was the end of the incidents with my grandma's neighbor because there was now a man in the house and if my dad left for the store or something he took me with him. It's been 14 years and many disturbing things have come to light. My uncle was a predator and one of my sisters was one of his victims. My aunts knew and covered for him and that sister of mine She's running the streets

Using hard substances to self-medicate And her son was taken away from her My parents are absolutely devastated And the guilt eats away at my mom Every single day My husband and I, both 28 years old, recently relocated to a small town for work. The area is known for its high criminal activity and a significant homeless population, but I'm not usually scared or paranoid while being there. I decided to go thrifting in the hopes of finding a baby safety gate.

When I arrived at the store and parked, there was no one in the parking lot. As I entered, a large, well-dressed man followed closely behind me, persistently eyeing me from head to heels. At first, I didn't think much of it and proceeded to the book section that they had. However, after a while, I began to feel as if though someone was hovering around me. I started to feel anxious because every time I looked behind me, the guy was standing way too close, not browsing any books, just pacing around and avoiding eye contact. I'm not a shy person and I know how to stand up for myself when necessary. I also know a lot better than to let a predator feel like they are intimidating me. So I turned around and gave him a stern look, signaling him to back off and then

I went to the other side of the store to continue shopping. However, the creepy guy followed me. I tried to ignore him and continued looking through clothes, vases, and decorations. Wherever I went, he followed, maintaining an uncomfortably close distance. After 40 minutes, the employee noticed that the guy didn't seem interested in buying anything and they approached him to ask if he was okay or needed any assistance. He brushed them off with some sort of fabricated story. He continued to persistently follow me and even attempted to corner me in an isolated part of the store. I locked eyes with him, giving him a stern, don't mess with me look until he broke eye contact. Then I turned away and walked as fast as I could but he remained

right behind me. I messaged my husband with my location and sent him a description of the guy explaining what was happening. My husband advised me to leave the store safely as quickly as possible and call the police if necessary. I then asked the employees if they had any safety gates in stock. Before they could respond, the guy answered from behind me and the employee took me to show me what they had available. And of course, the creepy guy followed us. Finally, I went to pay for my items and asked the employee working there to walk me to my car because I didn't feel safe. I was certain that the creepy guy might try to harm me or steal from me. My initial thought was that he had seen me park outside and had followed me, possibly hoping to rob me. I drive a 2023 model truck, so I'm thinking maybe he made a connection there. On the other hand, my husband

believed that he just wanted to hit on me but didn't know how. Having lived in three different continents and encountered my fair share of deprived individuals and psychopaths, I'm still unsure what to make of this situation. I'm not sure if I overreacted, as my husband believes I did, but I cannot understand the man's intentions, and I'm hoping to gain closure from this experience. This incident occurred about 14 years ago when I was 18 years old. I used to be friends with the children of some rather shady individuals during my teenage years. At that time, I resided in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. One of the quickest ways to travel from one part of town to another was by walking along the railroad tracks. To paint a better picture, there were old abandoned buildings lining the tracks.

I was wearing a hoodie as I strolled along the tracks when suddenly, from the entrance of one of the buildings, I heard someone exclaim, I think that's him! Startled, I began running and I could hear someone chasing closely behind me. Eventually, they caught up to me, grabbed my hood and spun me around. To my surprise, I found myself face to face with one of my friend's dads. He said, oh, I'm so sorry, buddy, I mistook you for someone else. You were nearly in some serious trouble. And I responded, Well, I appreciate you not harming me, man.

He then invited me to come over later for dinner, promising to feed me and offer me a few beers as a way to make amends for this misunderstanding. He then added, And if you happen to come across him, just let him know I'm looking for him. Sometimes, it's good to know the wrong people. To be continued... But I did win, Mom. You did? When it's sunny, make sure you can still see. At Specsavers, get two pairs of glasses from $149, and one can be prescription sunglasses. Hey, the sun won't wait. Visit Specsavers.ca for details. Conditions apply.

This happened in the early to mid-1980s. I was about 12 years old and had a group of friends that I'd hung out with regularly. I lived in Kenner, Louisiana. And anyway, there was this fad back then to open these teen nightclubs. They didn't serve alcohol, played disco music, and had the same vibe as the cocaine-induced frenzy of adult disco clubs. One of these nightclubs was opening up, and my friends couldn't stop talking about it. I hated crowds, but I was a follower in my group, so I agreed to go with everybody. One of my parents dropped us off, and we paid our two dollars to get in.

As soon as I entered, I realized that it was super crowded, shoulder to shoulder. I stood near the front door, debating whether or not I was going to stay. After 10 or 15 minutes passed, I got this feeling like someone was watching me. An eerie, creepy vibe. I started looking around, and there were so many people, it was like a blur. Then I noticed this middle-aged guy with short brown hair and a striped collared shirt. He was staring at me as if he knew me or something. Well, I knew that I didn't know him and that was my cue to leave.

It was about a five-mile walk down a well-lit, semi-busy two-lane highway, then a right turn and a couple of miles down a four-lane road into the subdivision. It was only about 8pm and I didn't have to be home until midnight so I had time to walk it. So I started walking and about halfway home, a car pulled up on a side road that I was crossing and it was the same guy from the nightclub. My heart started pounding out of my chest. He had creeped me out amidst around 200 people and now I was really creeped out on an isolated side of a street by myself. He yelled at me and asked if I wanted to ride. It was pretty far but I thought, no way Jose.

I said no and kept walking and then he yelled out at me, do you want to make an easy 20 bucks? I stopped and asked, how? And he said, get in the car. I'll tell you. Nope. I just bolded. I took off and I don't think I've ever run that fast in my entire life. I ran the last three and a half miles at full speed without stopping and without looking back.

I made it home, ran inside the house and straight to my mom. I didn't even think to look back to see if he was following me, but if he had come here, at least my dad was in the living room. I never told anybody. I really think I was one dumb move away from being on a milk carton, or worse. I go on long walks near my home most nights. I live in a safe suburban neighborhood. It's a huge grid of residential streets in the middle of which is a big open park type area, larger than two football fields that's next to a school.

Last night at around midnight I was walking on the sidewalk next to the park, listening to a podcast, slowly making my way to the school. The school has a big well lit parking lot in front with two entrances and exits about 25 yards apart. As I neared the school I noticed a car in the parking lot with its headlights pointed towards the street. This is unusual for this time of night especially on a weekday. Maybe it's a cop, I thought. I got closer and saw that it was a beat-up red truck. It had started slowly and aimlessly driving around the lot. As I passed the first entrance, the truck seemed to notice me and stop. I got halfway to the second entrance when the truck rushed toward it.

I assumed that the driver wanted to pull out before he had to wait for me to cross. No, the truck just sat there, idling as I approached. I got to the entrance and saw that the truck was occupied by four men. I motioned to the driver to go ahead, but while looking straight forward, he just motioned with his hands for me to cross. At the same time, I noticed a guy in the backseat staring at me, menacingly. I crossed in front of the truck, expecting the driver to blow the horn or rev the engine, basically to mess with me. He didn't. They just sat there, watching me. I continued down the road, and as I was turning right onto another street, the truck exited the lot, turning in the opposite direction. Just a strange encounter, I thought.

A few minutes passed and I saw the same truck approaching me. Getting to me would have required circling the park and traveling down three additional streets, and to do so quickly would have required serious speeding. The truck slowed as it approached, almost stopping as it got to me. The occupants stared daggers at me as they passed and it felt like they wanted to do something but lost their nerve. Now I'm a little freaked out. Damn my wife for making me watch so much Crime ID, I thought to myself. I'm not a paranoid person so I started rationalizing their behavior. I told myself they're just cruising around, enjoying some weed before going home for the night. That wouldn't

have been out of the ordinary for my friends and me to do in high school. And these guys looked too old for this, though, and my gut insisted something was wrong. Out of abundance of caution, I walked a little down the street and crouched behind a big oak tree surrounded by bushes on some random person's property. I know this is inappropriate and possibly dangerous, and I hoped that the homeowner wasn't watching me from his ring doorbell as I lurked on his property, and for a couple of minutes I crouched there before I saw headlights. It was just the neighbor from across the street arriving home He entered his house and I breathed a sigh of relief I told myself that I was being ridiculous And just as I was about to stand up

I heard the rattling of an engine And saw the headlights slowly moving down the street It's the red truck I'm sure I imagined it But I thought I heard its brakes squeal right before my hiding spot I wondered why this truck was apparently speeding to get to me and slowly when it arrived. It didn't seem like chance and now I'm convinced this truck is seeking me out. I started running as soon as the brake lights

disappeared. I'm a little more than half a mile from home and I'm not taking any chances. As I turned into the street that intersects with mine, I saw headlights and heard a familiar engine rattle. I can't say with certainty that it was the red truck, but I immediately turned around and ran to the side of another random house. Making things more ominous was the spooky music and witch's cackle coming from the Halloween decorations next door, and I waited another minute, making sure that the red truck didn't pass, and ran the rest of the way home. I walked in out of breath, and my wife asked me what happened. She scolded me for walking so late at night after I told her the story.

The middle-aged woman is strong with her, so she immediately pulled up the next door app. Apparently, there have been several reports of car break-ins in our area attributed to men in a red truck. It's probably not connected, and I was almost certainly being dramatic. I doubt anything would have happened if I encountered the red truck again, but I'm still glad I didn't. To be continued... Let's Read Official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below.

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