The Lets Read Podcast - 261: I FOUND EVIDENCE IN MY CLOSET | 23 True Scary Stories | EP 249

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about park rangers, staying home alone & how one redditor discovered something sinister in their closet 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

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of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay, well, you know what? With 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.

Let's hurry then! To my count. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. Visit Specsavers.ca for details. I I was in my senior year of high school about 10 years ago. I grew up as sort of an outcast in high school. I wasn't bullied or anything, but I also didn't really have any friends. I didn't mind that solitary lifestyle though. I went through school and then would come home and play video games. And losing myself in those digital worlds was my escape. lifestyle though. I went through school and then would come home and play video games.

And losing myself in those digital worlds was my escape. My home life wasn't what I would call bad either. It was just my dad and me. I loved my dad and he worked so much to provide for me. And when I was young, maybe 10 or 11 years old, my mom got involved with some bad people and their hobbies, if you know what I mean. My dad didn't want to expose me to that world anymore and we eventually moved away. It was messy, but it was for the best. He tried getting her help throughout the years, but she always turned it down. Until one day, she was just off the grid, completely. It was sad, but we both moved on.

And when I got older, he would have to leave for the weekend once a month for his job. I didn't mind though. It may seem crazy to some people to leave someone at that age home alone for a weekend but my dad trusted me. One specific weekend during senior year when my dad left for the night I started my normal routine. My pops would leave me some money to order a pizza and some soda. We never had soda in the house, so getting this two liter with a pizza was like a double treat for me.

My night was beginning to play out just like every other night that I was home alone. I demolished the pizza and drank most of the soda, and after a little breather on the couch, I went to my room and started playing some PlayStation. And this is how I would spend most of my weekends, even if dad was home. I would usually play Call of Duty, but Grand Theft Auto Online had just come out, so I had been spending some time playing that. And after a few hours of that, I decided to play the single player story mode. And the older I got, I seemed to play the story and games less, but for some reason on this night, I wanted to play something with some substance, even if it was gta and since i wasn't playing online anymore i took my headphones off as much as i game i hate wearing headphones for long periods of time i've been playing the

story for a little while and i thought that i could hear something coming from downstairs there weren't any loud or jarring noises, it was just these sort of small little vibrations and little bumps. Now I've been home alone a ton of times and I didn't remember ever feeling any of those vibrations or hearing any noises like that, but at the same time the noises weren't alarming enough that I was actually freaked out. It was a little after one in the morning and I think it's just subconscious to be a little on edge when you're home alone at that hour. In every few moments I would hear a little scoffing noise. I'd pause the game and try to listen intently.

When I listened I would mostly just hear silence and maybe an occasional little bump. Just because I was home alone of of course, the quick thought of an intruder crossed my mind. I'm even embarrassed to say that at one point I even thought to myself, are ghosts real? But then I would immediately shoot that idea down. This little internal debate would continue for about 30 minutes. I finally paused the game and went over and sat in my computer chair to just straight up listen for a few minutes without trying to listen over the sound of gameplay. And the sounds started to happen more regularly. The sounds of the little bumps that I initially blamed on cracking pipes or house noises started to happen more often.

The little vibrations I could feel were now happening almost every second. It was like my dad might be downstairs. The only thing missing was hearing his voice though. And the thought of my dad coming home early even crossed my mind but he would have called me or at least poked his head in the room to see if I was awake. I decided that I was just kind of being paranoid and that I was getting myself all worked up for nothing. I decided I was going to go downstairs and check it out to prove to myself that nobody was in the house and that I was clearly just letting my imagination run away from me as the night ran on. I crept slowly down the upstairs hall and made my way to the top of the staircase. While I was slowly heading in the direction, the muffled

sounds were much louder and I started fearing the worst. The thought of calling the police crossed my mind right away, but I was actually too anxious in that moment. In my mind, I was thinking to myself, what if nobody's here and I just waste the police time? And when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw a light illuminating the dark walls coming from the other side of the house. It was the kitchen light. It's possible I left it on, but I'm fairly compulsive and I was nearly 100% certain that I had shut the light off before heading upstairs. I was practically crawling to the kitchen, I was moving so slowly. When I was only a few feet away from the kitchen doorway, I could hear the sounds of rummaging, like someone was going through my cabinets in the kitchen, and that was accompanied by a soft humming voice. And that hum,

it was so eerie. I was half expecting to see some big scary burglar, but the voice indicated something else. I peeked my head into the kitchen, and the corner next to the sink was a very small woman. Her hair was wild, kind of flowing in every direction and I had my phone in my hand ready to call the police but I think that situation just had me frozen in terror but also incredible curiosity. Then I realized the melody the woman was singing. She was humming, I got no strings to hold me down, from the Disney Pinocchio movie. And I almost fainted right there because I knew who this person was. It was my mom. She would always sing that to me when I was very young, and it was one of the only memories of my mother that I actually had left.

I couldn't move, and I must have been trembling because she had heard me turning around. A big smile lit up her face, and even though it was my mom, this was not the mother that I remembered. Her teeth looked rotten, and her eyes looked like they were sunken into her face. In a voice that should have been soothing but was somehow unnerving, she says, There's my baby. What are you doing awake at this hour? I didn't respond. I just stood there, like some statue. She came over to me and put her dirty hand on my shoulder saying, what am I going to

do with your father? He's always changing out cabinets around. I swear that man doesn't listen. And then she started to laugh, but it wasn't charming. It was like some disgusting cartoon character laughing. And she turned back around and started humming and going through the cabinets again. I broke out of my trance and went to my room and locked the door. I then called the police and my dad right away. My dad made sure that I was in the bedroom with the door locked. He didn't go into details, but he said that there was a chance my mother might be dangerous and I needed to be safe just in case. The cops showed up and I heard a minor altercation. I could hear my mom yelling

at the police to get out of her house. The police knew the situation from myself and my dad who called after me, and I heard a brief struggle and then silence for a few moments. I heard a cop shout my name and told me it was alright for me to come downstairs. I spoke with the police for a few moments. I heard a cop shout my name and told me it was alright for me to come downstairs. I spoke with the police for a little while as another officer drove my mother away. One officer stayed parked outside of my house all night until my dad came home just to help me feel safer which I do really appreciate. My dad came home early the next morning and he spoke with one of the officers. I could tell by reading my dad's body language that he was uncomfortable and that we were

potentially fortunate to avoid something horrible happening. My mother actually had two knives on her when she was apprehended. One knife she must have had when she broke in and the other knife was a sharp kitchen knife that belonged to my dad that she must have stuck in her pocket when she was in the kitchen. She never used them or even threatened to use them but the fact that she had them was enough to freak me out. But maybe the most terrifying part of this horrible nightmare was that my mother had no idea where we lived. Well she wasn't supposed to have any idea. When we moved away, we moved far away,

and my dad never told my mom where we moved to protect me. She broke into the house by breaking one of the downstairs windows and crawling in. I didn't hear it at all, so it must have been when I had my headphones on or something. And I thought of my mom just humming and walking around downstairs, potentially waiting for my dad while I was upstairs and still freaks me out to this day. It's been about 10 years now and I've only seen my mother twice since that night. She's been in some type of institution for years now. She has no memory of that night, but in all fairness, she doesn't have much memory of anything at all. It's sad, but it's true.

Every time I hear that stupid song from Pinocchio now, I sort of freeze up. And I just hope one day, I can forget about the fear that I felt that night and find a way to remember my mom in a positive light. My name is Roger, I'm from Minnesota, and I came across your YouTube channel at the beginning of this year. I'm a retired forest ranger, having spent the better part of three decades working for the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations Division. Since my retirement, I've had plenty of time on my hands and over the past few months, I spent a lot of that time listening to various anthologies that you've published. I think it's awesome that you publish the stories of regular folks like me, so

with that in mind, I think I have a story that you might be interested in. It seems a little strange that I'm so excited to tell you about this, as it's not exactly the kind of thing most people want to hear. I used to wonder how you get so many people wanting to share their bad memories with you, but after having thought about it for a while, I think I've figured it out. These aren't the kind of things that we can talk about around the dinner table in polite company, and I've never had a single person ask me in the flesh, what was the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? People don't want to know, at least not the kind of people I've ever associated with, but at the same time, these are things that, for whatever reason, we want to share with people. And much like your channel's viewers, I'm pretty apt to lend my ear to a story that's a little darker. And so, without further rambling on, this is the story of one of the truly terrifying moments of my time as a forest ranger.

For the vast majority of my career, I was posted in the Voyageurs National Park, up near the Canadian border. Since the park is split in two by a series of lakes, it's popular with fishermen and kayakers. But these lakes are also populated by many small islands, many of which are popular camping spots. People come up to the VNP to get away from the city and get some privacy, and it doesn't get much more private than your own personal island, really, does it? Well, one afternoon I got a call from a chief ranger asking me to do him a little favor. He'd gotten a call from the International Falls Police Department, IF being a small border city about 20 miles to the west, after an officer over there had received a missing persons report.

Some lady's husband had gone on a camping trip with an old friend and had failed to return after being due back that morning. My husband was to head over to their regular camping spot on a camping trip with an old friend and had failed to return after being due back that morning. My husband was to head over to their regular camping spot on a place called Wolf Island to see if they'd moved on or not. The ranger team at VNP is probably one of the most amphibious in the country, definitely the most waterborne in the region. Half of our job consists of policing the waterways and making sure all fishing and boating is within regulation, so not only do we have ready access to kayaks and motorboats, but we're very comfortable operating them. So when I got the call, I headed to the Ash River Visitor Center, which was where we docked our boats, but then just as I'm prepping the boat to sail over to Wolf Island, I get a second call from the chief. The IFPD had reached out with an update, one I needed to be informed of immediately. According to the chief, this wasn't just a case of two fishermen having overslept after too many Miller Lights. The missing man's

son had been in touch, and this time, it was to warn law enforcement that not only was his father most likely armed, but had been acting extremely erratically prior to the departing for the camping trip. This is not what I had been hoping to hear when I'd heard that there was an update, but I was more than equipped to deal with the situation. Seeing as I was on the law enforcement side of things, as opposed to working solely at the visitor center, I had pretty much all the same options as your average police officer. But that didn't mean that I wasn't feeling a sense of apprehension regarding what I might run up against. Nine times out of ten, incidents in the park are resolved

quickly and peacefully, but as you can probably guess, it's one in ten that keep you up at night. So after prepping the boat, I sailed west for around 20 to 25 minutes until I spotted Wolf Island. After using my binoculars to observe the island from a safe distance, I can make out a slight plume of smoke coming from its eastern side. I could have really done with some kind of bullhorn to call out to the missing camper, but I didn't have the good sense to bring one. So I was forced to bring my boat right up to within about 20 or 30 feet of the shore before calling out using nothing but my lung power. I called out once and then twice and after the third call received no response,

I decided to make landfall in order to get a visual on the campfire which presumably had been started by our missing camper. I brought the boat up a little closer, hopped overboard, then waded my way ashore, calling out to our missing camper all the while. I could smell the campfire by that point, along with whatever was cooking on it, so I was doubtless within earshot of whoever had been tending to it. But since no one called back, and since I didn't see anyone as I walked up the beach, I figured whoever had made camp had moved on. Yet as I walked further onto the island in search of the source of the smoke, something caught my eye. For as long as I live, I'll remember this in photographic detail.

It runs in my head on its own sometimes, like someone pressed play on a remote control in my brain. I saw something falling out of the corner of my eye, and when I looked, I saw it was a raven, landing to join some of its brothers and sisters. But then I saw what it was landing on. There was a man sitting in a camping chair, not quite upright, but not all the way slouched either either with a big old hole in the upper rear portion of his skull. One of the ravens was pushing its beak into the hole while a few others fought over whatever had leaked onto the ground. The body accounted for one of our missing campers, but I didn't have to wait long to find the second. Lying motionless next to the campfire was what remained of the second missing camper

someone had made the effort to cut off his legs i'm guessing after he was deceased and had worked on cutting them into small sections before placing them onto the fire what had been smelling on the way in hadn't been the camper's late lunch it had been a section of the second camper's leg sizzling away on the dying embers. I guess the guy in the chair hadn't the heart to finish disposing of his camping buddy and had decided to let nature take its course on both of them. We never did find out why it happened, but we did figure out how. The killer had invited his quote-unquote friend on a camping trip to their regular spot. He hadn't hidden

anything from his wife or anyone else for that matter, which led us to believe that his decision to kill his camping buddy was either a spontaneous one, or that he had planned to simply kill him before taking his own life as a way of avoiding any consequences. He obviously wanted to conceal what he'd done, at least at one point we believe he had. But then, this is where another argument for the spontaneous murder theory comes into play. Personally, I don't believe that he'd taken the time to research just how arduous the disposal of a dead body can be. There was no accelerant at the scene, so I don't think he'd planned to burn his friend's body, and when it became obvious that it was going to take way longer than he'd thought, and that law enforcement might well come looking

for him, or his dead friend, before the disposal could be completed, I think he decided to just check out there and then. There was a somber mood among the park staff for a while after that. As far as I knew, nothing like that had ever happened before, and nothing like that happened again for the remainder of my career. As you can probably guess, national parks aren't exactly high crime areas, and at the VNP, the most intense things generally get is catching up to a speeding boating party so you can tell them to slow down. So to have something so terrible happen right under our noses, it had a real strong effect on our mood during the weeks that followed.

Sometimes I think about what happened in that guy's head to make him want to murder one of his best friends. Like I said, we didn't hear about any affairs or betrayals or anything else that might cause a man to temporarily go crazy. it's all just one big mystery. And like so many other of life's mysteries, I think I'm a lot more comfortable living in blissful ignorance. To be continued... in the world is being waited on. I don't mean at restaurants or places like that, I just mean in life in general. I've always been pretty independent and when I first met my husband, we didn't click right away because we would literally fight over who was going to pay for the check. Fast forward to now and we have a nice balance of things. One thing that I usually do is take care of the house and even specifically the kitchen. I cannot stand a messy kitchen and

dishes in the sink and he's infamous for leaving dishes in the sink so that's why I take care of the kitchen when I can. A few weeks ago I had to have surgery on my knee. This past summer I destroyed my knee playing softball and still continue to finish the game doing more damage to my knee and I put the surgery off for as long as I could, but the pain was too much. It wasn't even the procedure that I was anxious about. I actually wanted to just get it done and out of the way. I was more anxious that I was going to be practically bedridden for a little while. My husband is amazing, and I knew that he'd take care of me, but I also knew that the kitchen was going to be a mess. I'm sure this

makes me sound pretty controlling but I don't even care. I just love making sure everything's clean. And the day came. The surgery passed and in bed I was stuck and I hated it. For me it felt like I was trapped in a cell. I was told not to move for several days unless it was for the bathroom and even then I should have assistance. Luckily we had a bathroom in our bedroom so it was only a few hops in case I needed to go. The first night I stayed in bed and the next day at home I was already restless. I hopped to the bathroom and when I was done I realized that I was actually getting around pretty well. When my husband left for work he begged me to stay in bed and that he

would take care of the kitchen and dinner when he got home. All I could think about was that the kitchen was a mess. It didn't take me long to convince myself that I was alright to make my way there for a little while and just do the dishes. I took my time on the stairs because, I will admit, it was not an easy task. When I got to the bottom, I smelled something strange. Not trash or old food that I was half expecting to smell coming from the kitchen. What I smelled was what I thought at first was sort of cheap cologne. But I know my husband doesn't even wear cologne. And then it hit me harder as I took a few more steps.

It wasn't cologne. And then it hit me harder as I took a few more steps. It wasn't cologne. What I was smelling was Axe body spray. I knew it right away. When I was in middle school, all the teenage boys would spray themselves with it after gym class to mask the smell of the body odor. I'll never forget that horrible smell. I took a few more hops, I know I should have had my walker at the time, and the smell was so strong that I felt like I could taste it. I knew my husband wasn't wearing that because I could have easily smelled it on him by now in our relationship, and I went to text my husband and said, hey, don't get mad, but I actually hobbled downstairs. Why does it smell like Axe body spray here? After I sent it, I went to the kitchen and I'll have to be honest. I was surprised.

It wasn't a mess. There was a small plate and fork in the sink and other than that, he was doing a good job at keeping the kitchen in line. I went over and washed a couple of the things in the sink and noticed that the back door, which is in the kitchen, was slightly opened. More ajar or cracked than actually opened, but it still wasn't shut. Maybe this isn't that big of a deal for some people, but we rarely, if ever, use that door. When we go out back, we usually go out the side door. We usually just keep that door locked and put the recycling bin in front of that door. And I sort of hobbled over to investigate some more and I noticed that the bin had moved a few inches as well. It was like the door was open from the outside and the bin slid out of the way

just enough to let someone in. I already knew the answer, but I texted my husband again anyway and said, did you open the back door for any reason? He didn't respond right away. I hopped back into the living room and sat on the couch trying to put all the pieces together and put a rational spin on everything. The thought of someone breaking in didn't even remotely cross my mind because we lived in a really nice neighborhood with almost no crime ever. My husband called me back a few minutes later and told me that he had called the police just as a precaution to make sure nobody broke in and that he was heading home from work as well. I got off the phone with him and sat there quietly waiting for the police and my husband to show up and then without noticing,

bang, the closet door in the living room shot open. A tall man dressed in black ran out of the closet and out the back door. As soon as he ran by, that smell of axe was incredibly overwhelming. I tried hopping to the window, but I was only able to get a brief glance of the man as he ran by the side of the house. I noticed a very thick beard and that was pretty much it. but I was only able to get a brief glance of the man as he ran by the side of the house. I noticed a very thick beard and that was pretty much it. He was out of my sight in seconds. Not long after the police showed up and then my husband right after. I gave them all the information I could but like I said, I didn't really have much to give to the police. The most disturbing part of all of this is that the cops are sure that the person didn't really have much to give to the police. The most disturbing part of all of this is that

the cops are sure that the person didn't break into the house. There were no signs that he forced himself in which led the police to believe that whoever this intruder was, he may have had a key to the house. My husband went out right away and bought new locks for all the doors and made sure all the windows were locked as well. No other neighbors reported anything suspicious, which makes it even more likely that this person targeted our house specifically. He also didn't steal anything, which begs this question. What the hell did he want? If he wasn't swimming in Axe body spray and left that door cracked, whatever it is he wanted, he may have gotten. To be continued... part of her birthday present, she asked me to write up a story that I told her last Thanksgiving regarding my days volunteering with the park service. I promise it's not the only present

that she's getting this year and I'll admit to being very taken aback when she first proposed the idea. But while very unusual, it was impossible to refuse so here I am at her request. I grew up in St. Louis, then moved down to Knoxville after I enrolled at the University of Tennessee. Then during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I signed up to a seasonal volunteer ranger program at the nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Although my career aspirations involved sitting behind a desk, I'd always thought it would be cool to be a park ranger. Maybe it's the masculine ideal of working outdoors, rescuing wounded animals and becoming one with nature along the way.

So, when I heard I could basically play the part of one for a month, while wearing my very own campaign hat, my interest was piqued. I got in touch with the right people, arranged the dates, then spent seven long months looking forward to it. But when I got there, I found my work to be anything but exhilarating. In essence, the seasonal volunteer program was little more than a way of securing vacation time for the grossly understaffed ranger teams. And what's more, we were never trusted to do anything that required any real experience or expertise. This meant that around 60% of the time, myself and the other two volunteers were staffing the park's visitor center.

The other 40% of the time, we were only trusted to do things like basic administrative tasks or boundary maintenance. I don't know what I was expecting. National parks have to keep their books in order, just like the rest of us, but I most definitely preferred boundary maintenance over anything that involved being cooped up indoors. Boundary maintenance was a very fancy name the Forest Service gave to fence checking, and as you can probably guess, all that involves walking long sections of boundary fence to make sure they're in a decent state of repair. Walking those boundary fences was probably the closest I got to living my ideal ranger lifestyle, but it was also one of those hikes that I came across someone I still think about, often, even after all these years later.

I was out near a place called Cosby Creek, which is on the eastern boundary of the park. This area is of particular importance during the boundary checks, as there's an old graveyard named Tritt Cemetery out that way, so we obviously don't want the wildlife digging up old bones or otherwise desecrating the place in some way. I made sure all the fences on the cemetery were intact and then continued eastward along the fence line for maybe 10-15 minutes, when suddenly, I saw someone moving through the trees up ahead of me. The second I laid my eyes on them, I had this moment of bizarre doubt where I thought there was no possible way that what I was seeing was real.

I'm not a doctor, so I couldn't tell you how much blood a person can lose and still be functioning, but my god, the girl who softly sobbed as she walked barefoot through the trees must have been running on fumes. She was completely without clothes and with big patches of her skin missing, revealing all this clotted blood and dried gore underneath. Almost every part of her, from her hair down to her toes, was covered in blood, and I was stunned that she was even on her feet. I immediately rushed into action, rushing over to her as she collapsed into the dirt. I took off my shirt, used it to cover her up as best I could, then picked her up and carried her back to my truck. I guess it was a

stroke of good fortune that I found her so close to where I'd parked, but I was still fit to collapse by the time we got there. I knew there was an urgent care up in Newport, which is around 12 miles or so north of Cosby, so I drove as fast as I possibly could after loading the girl into the backseat of my truck. I don't think I said anything to her aside from, don't close your eyes, you gotta stay awake. She kept her eyes wide open the whole way, but she never made a sound either. She just lay there, curled up into a ball with my shirt over her, staring at nothing until we finally made it to the urgent care center. I know they're not

necessarily equipped to deal with emergencies like that, but I didn't know where else to take her. So after administering some initial treatment, I was told the girl would be taken over to Sevierville where there was a general hospital equipped with a dedicated emergency room. And that's where my role in the whole thing ended. I asked if I could be of any more help but was told that the best thing I could do was go back and tell the chief ranger what had happened. This was way back before cell phones and I could have used the hospital's pay phone to let the team know where I was but by that time I figured it was better to just drive back, change out of my bloody clothes and tell

everyone what had happened face to face. When I walked into Ranger HQ and the chief and my co-workers saw the blood on my clothes, they knew something terrible had happened. They thought it was me that was hurt at first, and I had to tell them something I've only heard said in movies before. It's not my blood, I told them, and then I launched into the explanation where I'd been and what had happened. The chief took notes the whole time. Seeing as we had full jurisdiction, the only other group that could legally push us out of the way would be the FBI or something.

Unless we called in their help or they stepped in without us asking, it would be up to us to investigate what had happened to the girl. And that's where things got really weird. Obviously, we needed to talk to the girl that I'd found in order to establish what had happened to her. But when the chief contacted the hospital and spoke to the relevant doctors, we found out that she hadn't said a word. Not just about what had happened to her either. She wouldn't say a word to anyone. This didn't strike any of us as particularly unusual. The poor girl had no doubt gone through an extremely traumatic event, meaning she most likely wouldn't want to talk about it until she'd sufficiently calmed down.

The doctors told us to check back the next day, but also that they'd be in touch if there were any changes. So, that's what we did. We waited until the early afternoon the following day then called the hospital again to see if the girl had started talking. She hadn't. She wouldn't talk to doctors, wouldn't talk to nurses and we sure as hell could try but the doctors didn't think that she talked to us either. The chief handled all the calls, but seeing as I was the one who found her, he asked me to join him on the ride to the hospital in hopes that seeing me again might push her to talk. I got the word on my radio, and when I did, I stopped what I was doing, resource management so it wasn't all that urgent, and then drove back to HQ to join the chief at his truck.

We talked about how the investigation might unfold on the drive over to the hospital, completely unaware of the fact that there wasn't going to be any kind of investigation at all. Because when we got to the hospital and went looking for our nameless victim, we found the nursing staff in a minor panic. It took us a while to work out what was going on, but when we did, shocked, doesn't even begin to cover it. The hospital had lost our victim. A review of their security cameras showed a man dressed in hospital scrubs, pushing a wheelchair through the hospital's main entrance just after 1.15pm. He wore some kind of ID clipped to his chest, somehow talked his way past reception,

and then headed straight for the room where our victim was kept. There he loaded her up onto the wheelchair, then simply pushed her out of the hospital without any attempt to stop him whatsoever. Obviously, it was a huge breach of the hospital's standard of practice, but without any idea who our victim or her apparent abductor was, we had almost no means of recourse except one. Seeing as we had a potential abduction on our hands, we actually did call on the help of the FBI. Obviously, our main concern was that whoever had taken the girl out of the hospital was the same person, or at least part of the same group of people, that had put her in the hospital in the first place. We didn't have the resources to go chasing after the guy, but the FBI did, so after we officially transferred the investigation over to them, it was pretty much

out of our hands. We hoped that that meant the investigation might actually progress, but about a month later, when our chief checked back with the FBI contact, we learned that the case just wasn't a priority for them. We had expected to be contacted regarding the formation of a joint task force, which is standard practice whenever the FBI coordinates with local law enforcement. But after a review of the evidence, some desk jockey somewhere had decided the case wasn't worth pursuing. They weren't keen on allocating resources to a case where, potentially, the only charges would be impersonating a healthcare professional. I'm not a lawyer, so I couldn't tell you the kinds of punishments a

crime like that might get you, but I know it wouldn't be nearly as much as assault or kidnapping, neither of which had any real evidence for. If the girl had talked, if she said anything that was pertinent to the case, we might have something to work with. But we didn't. All we had were theories and assumptions, none of which were comparable to hard evidence. And so, that's where the story ended. If the girl came forward to make a criminal complaint, then our case was back on. But until then, or until our mysterious fake nurse committed another crime someplace, then we were all out of options and it was better to just let it go. I'm not saying I was okay with that. If it were up to me, I'd have chased that case to the ends of the earth

to find out what the hell happened to that poor girl. But it wasn't up to me. I wasn't even a real ranger at the time and when my time was up, I went back to summer vacation, then back to my studies come fall time. But that doesn't mean I forgot. I've never forgotten what that girl looked like, or how it felt to see her limping through the trees, hearing that awful, exhausted sobbing sound that she was making. And when I felt like the time was right, I decided to share this story with my daughter. I know that might seem strange to you and your listeners, telling my teenage daughter something so frightening and strange, but I feel like there's a lesson in there that I needed to teach her. When driving back to HQ after dropping the girl off at the urgent care, I was under the impression that the ranger team, along with whatever other

law enforcement agencies got involved, would fight to bring her attackers to justice. I don't know if I mentioned it already, but at one point, the idea was floated that the girl had been in some kind of accident. Maybe falling down a rocky hillside had torn her clothes off, someone suggested. But all of them? Every scrap of clothing just so happened to be torn to shreds, but somehow, she wasn't killed on the way down. I don't buy that, not for a second. She had to have been attacked, by someone or something. Now that's obviously a very frightening thought, but whether we like it or not, monsters are always going to exist, and they'll exist as they've always done in a variety of different forms. You can always expect bad things to happen in life, but what you don't expect is seeing the

very people that you thought were charged with your very protection acting like they just don't care if you lived or died. There might have been a time in this country where Justice was a man with a fast horse, a shiny badge, a well-oiled pistol, and a warm heart. But nowadays, justice sits behind a desk, justice wears a suit and a tie, and justice has a budget. And whatever heart it once had has grown cold, callous, and uncaring. We've all had traumatic things happen to us in life. Some are much more serious than others, and when I was in high school, something traumatic and horrifying happened to me when I stayed overnight at one of my buddy's houses.

His parents were going out of town on Saturday night to celebrate their anniversary. He invited me over to just kind of kick it and hang out for the night so he wasn't alone. We did invite a few people over, played some games, but ultimately everyone left around 11 or so. He and I hung out for a little while longer but then decided to lie down at around 2 in the morning. We were dozing off watching the office when we heard a loud bang downstairs. I thought that it sounded like it was the door, but my friend said that he thought it was a neighbor and just to ignore it, he was pretty

tired at that moment. And now we were both on the verge of sleeping so we didn't overreact at first. Maybe it was just the neighbor. I mean, it could have been a bird hitting the house or something. And just as we convinced ourselves it was nothing to worry about, the knocks at the door started. Almost in a perfect rhythm, the bangs on the door echoed throughout the house. We had no idea at that moment what to do. This was clearly not a neighbor. This was real life, and there was someone knocking on the door at two in the morning. Every couple of seconds the knocks would come again. Sometimes they were harder and sometimes they were light knocks. It didn't matter what type of knock it was,

just the thought that someone was standing out there at this hour was enough to scare us out of our wits. We both snuck over to one of the windows so we could catch a glimpse of the knocking person. It was just a normal looking man we saw. He didn't look like some addict, a criminal, or even just really sketchy. He literally looked completely normal. He was wearing what seemed to be a nice pair of sneakers, jeans, and had a nice sort of Nike polo shirt on that you might even wear going golfing. His hair was short and parted, but neatly groomed and he was clean shaven.

Not exactly a scary individual, but still just so weird and so unsettling given the time. We both looked at each other in confusion, trying to process what was happening and trying to think of the correct way to handle this. And then he started to bang on the door again. And we jumped down. Remember, this is two in the morning, so this could have been a Girl Scout selling cookies and it would have been unsettling. I was watching out the window while my friend was trying to call his parents.

He was unsuccessful, but he kept trying. He wasn't smart enough to call the hotel or wherever they were staying and the guy finally just walked away. But the relief was short-lived. Maybe 30 seconds later he returned and taped a note on the front door. He didn't knock this time or anything, just left that note. He sat on the front steps for almost five minutes and then walked away. I kept looking outside but I couldn't see him and we both decided that whoever this character was, he had to have been gone now.

My friend went to unlock the door and I yelled at him to stop. He told me the guy was gone and that I had nothing to worry about anymore. He wanted to know what the note said, and I'm not going to lie, I wanted to know what it said as well. My friend opened the door and grabbed the note, and as he was pulling the tape off the door, we heard a loud, bellowing voice from the distance. Hey, you! And we both froze and looked up.

The knocking man came out of the bushes from across the street and started to charge at the door. We both screamed as we were shutting the door, and another large man came out of the bushes and followed the man from earlier. My buddy slammed the door and was fortunate enough to get it locked before they reached the door. Both men started to pound on that door. Not knocking, pounding. I looked out the window and I saw the larger man who wasn't out there originally slamming his shoulder into the door.

The bangs on the door were unrelenting and we started to fear the worst. Finally, my friend called the police and the guys outside must have heard what we were saying because they fled instantly. The police showed up and thankfully were able to get a hold of my friend's parents and they came home immediately. The worst part about all of this was the note that had been taped to the door. It was a very violent and detailed note about being at the house to pick up the money. I remember it saying things like no more running around, no more excuses and a bunch of other things like that. The note was signed with some name like Leroy. His dad denied everything and claimed and swore up and down that he had no idea who this Leroy was and what money he was talking about. I remember it being very weird and very uncomfortable around

this family for a while until it was all sort of forgotten about. My friend and I never forgot about that night though, and we still talk about it to this day. I wondered to myself all the time if his dad was secretly up to something. I mean the note addressed him specifically by name. They knew where he lived, and then after that night nothing ever happened again. It just all seemed so weird. But I guess I don't know enough about the seedy underbelly of society to know if this is normal or not. We never got any more closure on that night and trust me, I tried. One night we pestered his dad for an hour trying to get information, and he just kind of rolled his eyes,

saying that it just must have been some weirdo, playing a prank maybe. Whatever it was, it was a horrible night and a horrible memory that I'll always remember, and to this day, I still don't like being home, alone. Let me first say that this story is a little depressing, and it makes me feel sad writing it, but it doesn't change the fact that this was one of the most frightening nights of my entire life. My father passed away when I was four or five years old. My mom met David when I was ten years old, and he ended up adopting me several years later. Even though David wasn't my real father, he raised me as if though I was his own daughter and I loved him like he was my real dad. Scratch that, I hate the phrase real dad. That man wasn't like a real father. He was my father. He was a great man and he treated

my mother and me like we were the most important things in the world. A few months back, David passed away. He got sick suddenly and he died not long after. It was sad and it hit my mom really hard. He was old, but it didn't hurt any less. My elderly mother was already declining in her health and we were worried that this may be the final straw that broke her back. A few nights after the funeral, mom would call me in the middle of the night. Every time I thought, I'll know, and figured the worst. It was bad, but not the type of bad that I thought. She was terrified. Two nights in a row, she called and claimed that someone was in her house. She could hear them moving around and she was incredibly scared. My husband and I felt horrible. On both days we went over and searched the entire house and found nothing

out of place. It didn't look like anybody broke in. Nothing was stolen and we triple checked that everything was locked up tight. On the third day my mom begged me to stay overnight. This was if the intruder showed up again. I could witness and either stop them or call the police or something. Honestly, I just thought my mom was really tired and was dreaming and thinking her dreams were real or something. And at some point during the night, I thought that I heard someone or something coming from the dining room. It was jarring because it was clearly a voice. For a single second I thought my mom was right and people were breaking into the home. I slowly got off the couch and started to head toward the noise. I rolled out ghost because I'm

not really into any of that and I started to think that maybe it was someone homeless or something and they were squatting inside this elderly person's home. All these ideas were running through my head a million miles per hour as I was drawing closer to the noise. When I was only one room away, I could clearly hear the voice. It was my mom. I stopped sneaking at that point and walked into the dining room. My mom was sitting at the head of the table and having a full-blown conversation with nobody. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. Her eyes were wide open, but they were almost glazed over. She was awake and asleep, and she never looked in my direction, but she knew that I walked in. In a cheerful voice she said,

Hello dear, I'm just enjoying some time with David. I looked over and the chair next to her was slightly pulled out like my mom pulled it out for someone to sit in. I got closer to my mom and her eyes were even more disturbing. It was like I could only see the white parts of her eyes and mix that with her smiling and talking and it was incredibly creepy. I tried to gently tell my mother that David passed away. And she just laughed and waved her hand in my face and said, You're so silly. David's sitting right here. I was at a loss for words. I didn't know the correct way to handle this.

Do I just make my grieving and elderly mother happy and let her think that she's talking to her dead husband? Or do I try and wrangle her way back to reality and her crushing heartbreak? She grabbed my hand and still not looking in my direction or changing her facial features, she says to me, You can leave now, sweetie. I don't know why I was so scared. It was just David cleaning the house that I heard last night. It was just David. It was just David. I remember it word for word. She kept repeating that last part. The sleep talking turned into

gibberish and then every once in a while I would hear the name David slip out of her mouth. I didn't realize until that night just how hard my mother took the loss and how fragile her mind had become. When I tried to move my mother she snapped and growled at me like she was some animal saying don't touch me I'm talking to him. I called my husband and he met me over there. Then we decided to call 911 because we didn't know what else to do. When they tried to take her to the hospital, she became extremely hostile and even violent. Not because we were taking her from her home, but because we were taking her from David. She kept saying that she wasn't allowed to leave because David wanted her there. The mind can truly conjure up anything

when it's hurting. My mother passed away not long after that night, God rest her soul. She never came back to herself after that night either. Her half-opened eyes and sleepwalking appearance never went back to normal. The doctors told me that she had some type of nervous breakdown and due to her age, she couldn't separate reality from her mind. It really is so sad. When my biological father passed away, my mom was a wreck but buried those emotions to raise me. David saved her in so many ways so when she lost him, it was like she lost nearly everything. I'm sorry if the story was a downer, but I'll never forget how my mother was acting that night. I'm a skeptical person, but a part of me almost believes that David was there with her.

It's creepy, but the mind is an insane tool. Even just my mom thinking that the man was sitting with her freaks me out a little bit. And take care of yourself, folks. And tell your loved ones that you love them any chance you get. So people can be very weird. We can even affect people that we never even notice. It just blows my mind some of the thoughts that run through other people's minds. And I'll tell you my story and you'll know what I mean. And at the time, I was working a ton. I was saving money to buy my girlfriend a ring. Spoiler alert, we're married now. We were renting a small house, but still better than the apartment because at least

we weren't sharing walls. I was also saving money so we could buy a house. She was also saving money for the same reason. Since I was working so much she decided to volunteer for a five day retreat with the company she worked for. She would get paid a ton of overtime and this allowed me to work overtime at my job even more than I already was doing. I was going to miss her, but it seemed like a great opportunity to bring home some extra cash, especially with the holidays rapidly approaching at the time. On Wednesday, when I left for work, I noticed a weird smell in my car. Not a bad smell, just a very strange one. It was sort of like a perfume, but one that a younger girl would wear. Some thoughts crossed my mind, but I eventually just threw it up to some weirdness I didn't understand,

and honestly, I didn't care much either. It was just small after all. And that night, I had a horrible time sleeping. I told myself it was most likely because I missed my girlfriend. I was always used to her being there, and now this was the third night in a row that I was sleeping alone. I swore that I could hear noises all night long coming from downstairs but it wasn't loud enough or scary enough to sort of raise any alarm bells so again I ignored the weird signs and told myself that it was probably just house noises or the wind. Thursday morning arrived and I felt like I hadn't slept at

all. I made my coffee and hoped that it would do the trick soon. When I got to the car I found it unlocked. I'm good about locking the car door but I had been working a lot and the thought of forgetting to lock the door was on my mind. Ignoring the unlocked door I got into the car and started to drive to work. Now same story as the previous day, I could smell that perfume again. And now some red flags were raising, but I couldn't even begin to think about what could possibly be going on. Every thought I had ended with me blaming it on myself for being overtired or missing my girlfriend. It was the most logical explanation, at least to me at

the time. I left work that evening and once again the smell in my car was clearly perfume. I even had a co-worker come over and smell my car just to make sure that I wasn't being delusional. He said that he could clearly smell it too. It was probably just my girlfriend's perfume and because I missed her, I'm starting to subconsciously notice certain smells that I may have gone nose blind to. I knew the smell of her perfume and I knew that it wasn't it. But what he said seemed kind of logical and that I just assumed he was correct. Maybe my senses of smell were changing. And when I got home, again all I could smell was that perfume, and now I was really weirded out.

I kept trying to convince myself that my co-worker was correct, but it wasn't working. I decided to take a shower and go grab some food and a drink at the bar just to sort of unwind. My girlfriend was coming home the next afternoon, and it was also my first day off in 13 days, so I was ready to relax. I got home late that Thursday night and maybe at around midnight and got myself ready for bed. That smell hit me as soon as I opened the door to the house. I was more annoyed at this point than anything else. I was never scared, it was just so weird and it bothered me. I got into bed not long after getting home and started to fall asleep.

I knew that she was coming home tomorrow so I was hoping all the weird smells would go away. I must have fallen asleep for a little while because I was awoken by someone getting into the other side of the bed. For a second, I thought it was my girlfriend. I was half asleep and my mind just went right to her. As she was getting into bed, she shushed me and I turned back around. She started to cuddle up to me like she was the big spoon which she had never done before, but I was so tired and so happy that she was home that I didn't even care. Maybe a minute later, my eyes shot open.

I looked down and a woman's forearm was lying across my body, holding me. I smelled the arm, and I instantly recognized the perfume. This was not my girlfriend. Then I started to come to my senses, and I remembered that she wasn't coming home until the afternoon. Why would she have come home in the middle of the night? I jumped out of bed, freaking out. I turned the lights on and just sitting in my bed was some young girl, probably in her mid-twenties. She was smiling and kept brushing her hair away from her face. She kept asking me what was wrong and calling me babe. I was screaming for her to get out of my bed, but she just kept smiling. I called the police, but she didn't even react. She started to shush me again, and she kept trying to rub my arm. The entire time I was freaking out and telling her

that the cops were coming, but she didn't seem to care. She didn't look crazy or anything, she looked like a pretty normal girl. She was also dressed in a very small and low-cut piece of nightwear and when she got out of bed to try and console me, she put on a low-cut fluffy robe. The cops showed up and I immediately went to them pleading my case and the woman just sat there letting me do this. She wasn't armed, she hadn't tried to hurt me, and there had been no issues with the law prior or anything I later heard. She was just some girl. The cops take her out, and she says in some weird calm voice to me that she loves me, saying that she'll be back and that this is just a misunderstanding. My heart is going a hundred beats a second, but after some investigating, it turns out this woman

was our neighbor on the street we lived on. She was a quiet girl, so quiet that I didn't even know that she existed on the same street, and while she lived at this house, she developed some obsession, sort of an infatuation with me. When she noticed my girlfriend hadn't been around for a few days, she started to break in. And the poor girl convinced herself that I was in love with her. Through all of this, she was never dangerous. And thankfully that was the case because who knows what would have happened if she actually meant me harm. But even though the woman meant no harm, it doesn't make the situation any less creepy. I had a borderline stalker living in my

house for almost a week and she got into my bed with me. She never returned to her house and we moved shortly after that anyway. From what I understand, she had family and the family was notified and last I knew she was being treated for some type of illness. I'm not sure what it was so forgive my ignorance but now do you know what I mean when I say people are weird. You just truly never know what could happen. I think the word toxic is actually toxic and we throw the word around like it's some sort of frisbee. One topic that has always got brought up in that toxic conversation is toxic exes. Oh, how exes are terrible. Not all exes are bad, though, but the ones that are, I think, truly encompasses the word toxic. You see, I was engaged a few years ago

and it ended very poorly. My fiance got a job about a hundred miles from our hometown, so I moved with her and started a life here. I didn't have friends or family or anyone to turn to when we broke up and because of the job I started, I decided not to head home just yet. It's not important how things ended, but they did end very poorly. She begged for me back, but I couldn't put myself through that heartache again. Right after the breakup, she kept the house, and I found a small one-bedroom apartment. I just hoped that I would be able to meet some new friends, which I am really bad at, by the way. A few weeks after the breakup, I was just sitting in the apartment sulking, which I am really bad at by the way. A few weeks after the breakup, I was just sitting in the apartment sulking, which was my favorite hobby around that time.

The apartment was on the first floor of the building, which was really like the half basement if that makes sense. My windows were at eye level and it was just my head that was above ground, the rest of the apartment was below the ground. I had a lovely view of nothing to help me cope with my crippling depression at the time. One night while I was just sort of being a bum, the power went out. We were having a pretty bad storm and last time we had a storm like this, the power was out for several hours. I knew I couldn't just sit in silence and since it was getting late, I couldn't really go anywhere anyway, even though I probably wouldn't have if I could. I lit a few candles that I had and sat at my table.

It was a small table that only fit two chairs. I loved to draw and color in high school and I had some talent before I gave it up. This was the perfect chance for me to draw and just sort of get lost in something that I used to love so much. While I was drawing, trying to get my mind off of my ex, I heard something. It was a loud noise and it sounded pretty close. Unfortunately, it was too dark to see anywhere in my apartment other than the little area that I was sitting in with the candles. I slowly walked over to where I heard the noise and lying at my window outside was what looked like some sort of figure. I jumped back because I was scared even though I

knew this had to be crazy. No one would break into this apartment. They would have to get on their stomach and practically crawl into the apartment, not to mention hardly anyone in this town knows even who I am. I went back to the small table and blew the candles out. This way I could use the darkness to my advantage and be able to see out the window better. I didn't know for sure what I saw at this point and it's possible that it could have been nothing. It could have even been a skunk or something trying to get out of the storm. I just didn't know. I went back over to the window and I could see it clearly now. This was no animal and this was not my imagination. Lying on the ground trying to open the window was a person dressed in all dark clothes. I freaked out. I didn't know what to do. The obvious answer was to call the police or the

authorities or whoever but I don't know why in the heat of the moment that just didn't cross my mind. The only person I really knew was my ex-fiance and I decided to give in to my fear and loneliness and call her for help. And right as I pressed call, a light could be seen shining through the window, and a brief melody of a ringtone could be heard. The call went right to voicemail after that, I guess, and knowing what was most likely happening, I decided to call right back to see if it was a coincidence. And sure enough, the light and ringtone went off for a split second before the intruder shut it off. My ex was trying to break into my apartment, but why? At this hour and this weather, her intentions were clearly sinister. I started to yell and she kept trying to break in through the window, but thankfully it remained locked. I called the police and as soon as she heard me on the phone I saw her get up and run off.

I told the cops everything when they arrived. They actually didn't believe me right away and they looked almost annoyed like I was bothering them with this. But when they looked out the window they could see the spot in the dirt where someone was lying and there were clearly signs of forced entry. They finally agreed to follow up and see where my ex was. When the cops went and questioned her, she seemed to deny everything, which didn't surprise me. She said that she had been with her new boyfriend and that I needed to move on. This guy also vouched for her and said that she was at the house the entire night with him. Either this guy was in on it or she was already manipulating him. I called her out for being a liar and I was the

one who was branded a liar and a crazy ex at the end of it. When I brought up that I called her twice and both times the phone lit up, she said that her phone was broken so it couldn't have been her. And this was it for me. I couldn't live in this town anymore and now that I didn't feel safe being here either. I paid an early termination fee for my lease and I moved home to stay with my family until I got back on my feet. I've never heard from her again and I'm so thankful for that. My life is much better without that toxic human ruining my life. Being stalked in the night is horrifying. I've read and heard enough stories over the years that I am almost desensitized to the notion of being stalked.

I say that now, but I'm sure if I was being chased by some crazy man that I would probably jump out of my skin. I will say, though, that I know firsthand what it's like to be potentially staring death in the face, and that, my friends, is the most terrifying thing on the planet. It's not always the knife-wielding maniac you need to be afraid of, trust me. Last year, I decided to rent this little cottage that was practically in the middle of nowhere. I don't love people and I hate the city, so I just wanted to get away and live in nature for a little while. Listen to the trees, the wind, and the wildlife, and this place was adorable, and its wilderness location was perfect. I was in the mountains, but I still had all the afternoon sun. It was as close to heaven as I've

ever been. Up in these parts, it's not uncommon to see wildlife come near your cottage, like deer or even bear in some cases. A few weeks ago, a couple of bears came and actually tried to get some food out of my cottage, but they were unsuccessful. I wasn't scared. I was actually excited. I got some cute videos that I'll be able to enjoy for the rest of my life. However, one night at the cottage, things got bad. I may have accidentally drank a little too much, and as a result, I passed out on the recliner, which was in the main room of the cottage. Just to give you an idea of the size of this place, it was a small kitchen, much like you would find in a typical apartment. Then it was just one main room with a recliner, a small chair

and table, and a bed in the back. On the backside was a little bathroom with a walk-in overhead shower. In other words, two people could not live in this cottage. And because I had drank too much, I forgot to lock the door, which wasn't a huge deal because this place was in the middle of nowhere. It was more so a comfort thing that I like to lock the door. It doesn't matter where I am, I just like the idea of the door being locked while I'm asleep. Well, my nightmare was about to come true because I woke up to the sound of things smashing and breaking coming from the kitchen, which was where the door to the cottage was located. I thought I was being punished for the one time in my life that I didn't lock the door, and just my luck that I would have an intruder in the

middle of nowhere. I grabbed my pocket knife and snuck to the doorway, and let me tell you, I wish it was an intruder, but let me rephrase that, I wish it was a human intruder. In the kitchen, going nuts, digging through the trash and the food that I had in the fridge was a fully grown mountain lion. Its tail whipping back and forth, it was making this horrible, guttural, growling noise. I don't know if it was a good enjoyment sound or if this thing was ready to rip my face off. Either way, I didn't want to take that chance. I jumped back on the other side of the wall and tried to figure out how I was going to escape this situation. In the little bathroom was a small window that I was sure that I could climb out of,

but I was too scared to make any noises for fear that this giant cat would hear me. The more the mountain lion growled, the more scared I became. I finally made a run for the bathroom. The cat heard me. Do you want to hear something scary? You tube the sound of the mountain lion growling. Now imagine that just a few feet away from you. It was one of the worst things I've ever heard. As I ran to the bathroom, I slid the door shut, and I heard the mountain lion jump into the main room. Of course, the bathroom didn't have a real door and just had one of those sliding doors. I was holding it tightly as I could, trying to think of a way out of this predicament.

While I was holding the door, the mountain lion started to ram its head or something into the door. I was screaming, which I'm sure was making the cat even more tense, and for once, the small bathroom came in handy. I was able to hold the door shut with one hand and reach across to open the window. I didn't care about the deposit, so I kicked out the screen and in one foul swoop I dove out the window. As soon as I let go of the door, the mountain lion was able to open the door and all I remember seeing was this vicious looking head, growling as I tried to jump out the window. But it couldn't or didn't. I ran to my car, which was thankfully unlocked, and got in the car and locked the doors. I didn't have my keys so I couldn't drive anywhere,

but at least I could lock the doors. I did actually eventually see the mountain lion come out of the cottage about an hour later and walked around the car for a while. That scary cat continued to make these low guttural sounds and even bared its teeth at times. At around dawn, the mountain lion finally retreated somewhere and was gone for a while before I left the car. I rushed into the cottage and the place was destroyed. I grabbed my keys and my phone and drove into town. I called the property owner and the guy somehow laughed. I just had the worst night of my life with an animal that I thought was going to rip

my throat open, and this guy was laughing, and basically just telling me, yep, that can happen around here. And in case you couldn't tell, I left that day. And yeah, I had to pay for the damages, because you gotta love those contracts. But needless to say, nature is no joke. That was undoubtedly the worst experience of my life, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone except maybe that property owner. I'm just kidding. I've since found a boyfriend, and I gotta be honest, I don't love being alone anymore. Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe this experience rocked me to my core. The only thing I can say for absolute certainty now is that I am most definitely a dog person. The story I'm about to tell you is strange all on its own,

but to understand why it continues to haunt me long after it occurred, I have to fill you in on a little background information. I tied the knot with my now ex-husband in 1987. We were madly in love with one another and had every intention of staying together until we were old and grey. But the truth was, we wouldn't last five years. We had trouble getting pregnant, so we went to a fertility doctor to do some tests, and that is how I found out that I was incapable of bearing children. It didn't seem like the end of the world, not at first anyway, and discussed both the

possibilities of adoption as well as living a child-free lifestyle. I thought our marriage was strong enough to survive something like that, and it turns out that I was wrong. When he filed for divorce, I was heartbroken, and I never really experienced true heartbreak until then. If he'd have said from the get-go, look babe, I can't be with someone who can't have my kids, then at least I'd have more time for it to sink in and for me to get over it. But it was how he raised up my

hopes before dashing them that's what hurt more than anything else. I couldn't bear to be around him after that. He wanted to be an amicable split but I just didn't have it in me to remain friends with him. I guess that must make me seem pretty immature to some people but I just wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with something like that. I left town, moved back in with my parents for a few months, then set about deciding what I wanted to do with my life. It might sound silly, but I'd half expected my role in life to be a mother and homemaker. I know that isn't exactly shooting for the stars to some, but it was all I ever really wanted. I wanted a simple life, a happy life, and it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize that I could be happy being something other than a

housewife. During that time, when I was finally able to go outside without bursting into tears at the first sight of a mother and child, I spent a lot of time hiking woodland trails. The peace and seclusion helped me put my mind back together again, but the more I did, the more I realized something about myself. I could quite happily spend the rest of my working days walking around the woods in relative peace and quiet. Then, when I mentioned that to my dad, he very casually suggested something that changed my life forever. Why don't you apply to the Forest Service? He asked one day. And I remember trying to think of a reason why that wasn't possible. I couldn't picture myself

being a ranger, but back then, I could hardly picture myself doing anything at all except crying myself to sleep every night after hours upon hours of just terrible television. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were no reasons I couldn't be a park ranger. Since I didn't have a bachelor's degree, I'd have to intern for a full two years before being offered a full-time position, but that didn't bother me. I sure didn't have anything else going on for me at the time, so I decided to just go for it. Now, having grown up in Garrett County, Maryland, I sometimes pictured myself walking the Appalachian Trail during the warm

summer months, wearing one of those smoky bear hats. But when it came time to applying for internships, there was only one place accepting applicants, and that was Acadia National Park up in Maine. I'd never pictured myself living that far north, and I wondered how I was going to survive the winters up there, but it also offered a new start in a new place, far from the painful memories I wanted so much to leave behind. And so, in the late summer of 1992, I packed up my things and moved up to the small hamlet of Seal Harbor. I moved into a small rental house on a street called, and this is not a joke, Whoville Way. I never did figure out if it was some sort of nod to Dr. Seuss or not. None of my neighbors had a definitive

answer, but it was nice, a quiet place to live, and it made getting to and from the park every day much easier. I interned for two years, completed all the necessary training. Then by the fall of 1994, I was a fully fledged member of the Acadia Ranger Team, badge and all. There was a presentation ceremony, which my mom and dad traveled up for especially, and I experienced feelings of pride and self-belief that at one point I'd never have thought possible. I considered it a huge achievement and there's no denying how happy it made me but I still felt this sort of baby-sized

hole in my life, one I knew that I'd never be able to fill. Now cut to about a year later, to June of 1995, and I was completing a land inspection near a rocky hill named Connors Nubble. Once I was done, I turned around and started walking the two miles back to Park HQ, but as I got closer to the shores of Eagles Lake, I decided to take a shortcut between two trails to save me some time. It wasn't a well-walked-out section of trail, and I'd never made a shortcut between two trails to save me some time. It wasn't a well walked out section of trail and I'd never made the shortcut before but I knew the park well enough to know that if I worked my way through the undergrowth I'd come out on the opposite trail and have a much easier hike back to HQ. So that's what I did. I turned off the trail and was walking through the trees when, suddenly,

something caught my foot. I didn't see the thing at all, meaning I was so caught off guard that the stumble almost sent me crashing into the dirt. So after calling whatever it was a mother lover, I decided to kick away some shrubs to see exactly what had almost taken me out. I figured it'd be a rock of some description, and if it was possible to do so, I planned on digging it up and tossing it to one side to ensure that no one would be tripping over it again. Some might call this a little extreme, but it becomes second nature to make the park as safe a place as possible for visitors and co-workers alike. One thing you learn as a forest ranger is that a lot of things are completely out of your control, which then teaches you to always act on the stuff you can control. Anyway, after

stamping my foot down to find the thing that had tripped me, and then kicking away the shrubs around it, I was surprised by what I saw. It couldn't have been a rock, the shape was way too unnatural, and after wiping away some of the soil around it, I caught a glimpse of something that looked a lot like a seam. And if it had a seam, then it might just be some kind of box that someone had buried there sometime in the recent or distant past. But no matter what it was, I didn't have the time nor the energy to stop what I was doing and dig it up. So instead, I tried to mark out the spot as best I could, stamping down more of the undergrowth to make the clearing more visible, then made my way back to the HQ. I mentioned the thing in passing to one of my co-workers, and although she wasn't exactly shocked, she did show some interest.

I know for a lot of you, the first thing that comes to mind is some kind of buried treasure, and with Northeast Harbor boasting some summer residents such as the Rockefellers no less, it wasn't out of the question that something valuable had been buried there. But even so, no one was rushing to go dig it up. I mean, I didn't even really know what it was. So while the box remained of interest, digging it up wasn't a priority by any stretch of the imagination. A few days went by, then one afternoon I found myself with a few spare hours. But then, rather than finish early for the day, I decided to grab a shovel, head down to the shortcut near Eagle Lake and dig up the box to find out exactly

what it was. It made for hard and sweaty work but after maybe an hour or so of digging I was finally able to see that yes, it was a box, no bigger than the kind that you'd buy shoes in, and it looked like it had been buried there for a long time. I heaved it from the dirt, dusted it off then set about pulling away the rotten twine from the latch where a padlock might have otherwise been. I'll admit to being quite excited at the time, and it didn't once occur to me that it could have been anything sinister. But when I opened the box, and lifted up a rotten piece of cloth away from whatever was inside, I gasped, and slammed the lid shut after catching just a glimpse. It wasn't gold or silver or jewels,

nor was it a murder weapon from some decades-old murder as one ranger had suggested with a chuckle. It was a skeleton. The tiny, newly formed skeleton of a departed newborn baby. I didn't touch anything else. I just ran back to HQ to tell people what I'd found. Soon, almost everyone on duty that day was down near Eagle Lake. Then, not long after, so were several other state troopers and a whole forensics team. But before they all got there and taped the scene off, our chief ranger looked inside the box just to see for himself what was in there. Like I said, I only got a glimpse, but I saw enough to know what I was looking at. Whereas the chief, he took a long hard look at that poor little thing, long enough to see the

things I hadn't. I couldn't bring myself to look at it again for a long time, but when the chief said the skeleton looked all wrong, he was right. I hadn't ever seen a baby skeleton before, so it wasn't like I was an expert. But all who said it agreed that the skull seemed way too large, and that the arm seemed way too long. As one of us put it, the poor little thing barely looked human, but it was because the genetic testing came back positive as being entirely human in origin. In the end, we pieced together a very sad chain of events. Sometime between 1920 and 1930, some unsuspecting mother gave birth to a heartbreaking disabled child. There was a chance that this child died of natural causes because there were no signs of any trauma on

the skeleton, but that didn't rule out the possibility that someone had taken it upon themselves to personally end the child's suffering. Then, after the child was gone, someone placed it in what would have been at the time an expensive felt line box then buried it deep in the woods where no one might ever find it why they might opt to do that in lieu of just giving the child a proper funeral i have no idea but the reason couldn't have been a good one cut to almost 80 years later and some slowly growing tree root has pushed it further and further to the surface over time until just a nub is sticking above ground a little nub that I just so happened to have stumbled over seeing as the child's body was found on federal property we were able to enlist the

help of the FBI's DNA analysis unit down in Quantico like I think I already mentioned and we were hoping that we might get a match on a distant relative that had a file, but nothing came back positive. This little kid had no name, no date of birth, and its only possession was the small improvised coffin we found it in. We also heard from the FBI that the child's large skull, which they called macrocephaly, was probably the result of a genetic disorder such as Weaver's or Soto's syndrome. From what I can understand, conditions like those are relatively easy to treat today, but back then, some poor kid born in bad circumstances,

they wouldn't have nearly the same chances. It all makes for a heartbreaking story. Even our most probable theories were nothing but speculation, but no matter which way you can cut it, whatever happened to that child had been simply awful. And that's not why the whole thing has haunted me for all these years, not the story on its own anyways. Instead, it's been this. Sometimes in my darkest of moments I feel like that poor baby was my own. I feel like it was a strange kind of destiny that brought me to that shortcut and had me stumbling over its makeshift coffin. I know that probably sounds like I'm losing my mind and it's definitely not an idea I've ever discussed out loud really with anyone, but it really is the way I feel sometimes. I'm not able to have

children, but what I was given was the chance to bring peace, in the form of a proper burial, to a child whose real parents were unwilling or unable to give them one. And in doing so, I think I've been able to get just a taste of how boundless and unconditional a mother's love can be, and for that,'s love can be. And for that, I'll always be grateful. So I was listening to your other park ranger stories, and I wanted to send mine in too. I hope you don't mind if I send this to a few of my other favorite channels as well, and hopefully that means you'll get to mine first. I'm medically retired from the United States Forest Service, but I was a ranger at Koniksu National Park for seven years between

1985 and 1992. Koniksu was up in the Idaho Panhandle, less than 50 miles from the Canadian border. Think forests, mountains, and lakes in the summer, then a carpet of snow and ice in the wintertime with the Kootenai River to the north and Lake Penn and Oriel to the south. Everything else is a lot of ridges and valleys and on the last day on the job, I was walking through one of those very same valleys. I was performing my regular duties, minding my own business, when suddenly, I experienced what felt like prime Mike Tyson punching me on the right side of my hip. It spun me, but the force of it

also took my legs out from under me and as I fell, I heard the crack of a rifle coming from up the valley somewhere. My first thought was that it was an accident. It might seem crazy, but you'd be surprised the kind of mistakes hunters make when they're itching for that first bag of the season. It's why we have so many regulations in the first place. I couldn't see the shooter, so I started to call out, don't shoot, I'm a ranger. One hand putting pressure on the bullet wound at my hip and the other waving wildly back and forth as if to say no, no, no, no. I expected someone to emerge from behind the tree or to stand up and reveal themselves before running down the valley in horror, but instead, the shooter fired at me again.

I don't know how they didn't hit me. I was sat right there on the forest floor, but when I saw the dirt explode just inches in front of me, I instinctively rolled behind the only cover I had, which was a rotting log barely long enough to cover my whole body. Believe it or not, I still couldn't believe whoever was out there was deliberately shooting at me. I just couldn't imagine why someone would want to do that. Who in their right minds would be willing to open fire on a forest ranger? I tried calling out again, I'm friendly, stop shooting! A few times and the shooter responded by putting a bullet into the log I was hiding behind. Somehow it didn't penetrate, but depending on how much ammunition they had,

they could just blow the log apart, then blow me apart once they had a clear line of sight. Only then did it really sink in what was happening, and only then did the solution become obvious. Before rolling onto my front, I made sure my legs were still working enough to run, then began to sort of aim my body in the direction I'd parked my truck. The shooter didn't fire, and that seemed to scare me even more. He was just watching, waiting for me to make a move. If I stuck my head up and they were still there, waiting to take a shot, I was dead. I had to do something to make them flinch enough to at least miss if they took a shot, and since all I had at my disposal was my sidearm, that's what I used.

I fired off a few rounds over the log after rolling onto my side, then got up and sprinted off through the trees firing wildly behind me as I ran. I know the shooter took one last shot at me, I heard the crack as the bullet flew just over my head, but I was somehow able to run far and fast enough to break his line of sight and make it back to my truck alive. Since Ranger HQ was way down in Coeur d'Alene, I drove to the emergency room in Sandpoint instead. It's a long story, but I was only able to notify one other ranger regarding my injuries, and it was she that relayed the information back to Ranger HQ while I drove over to Sandpoint. My biggest fear was passing out at the wheel due to blood loss, but as a doctor later told me, I've gotten extremely lucky regarding where the bullet had struck me, as well as the path that it took through my hip. Any further to the left and I

probably wouldn't have been able to run, and any further down and it risked severing my femoral artery. If that had happened, I wouldn't even have made it to my truck, let alone the hospital. With the park being federal land, the FBI actually joined in our ranger team in scouring the park for a potential shooter, but by the time they got there, the person who tried to kill me was long gone. The Bureau took the matter very seriously and interviewed me extensively, mostly as I recovered from surgery in my hospital bed. They had dogs running all over the park for weeks looking for boot prints, bullet casings, you name it, but they didn't find

a thing. The best that they could do was tell me the kind of rifle that had been used to shoot at me, which was a Remington Model 700. But during the final interview, one agent shared one of their prevailing theories with me. They couldn't rule out that my attacker was some kind of crazed hunter who suffered a psychotic episode and took a few shots at me. But that being said, there was one angle the task force was particularly interested in working. Just a few months before I was shot, a team of US Marshals approached a cabin over in Boundary County. They had an arrest warrant for a guy named Randy Weaver, but during their approach,

they ended up shooting the guy's dog, then his son. One of Weaver's friends then opened fire on the marshals, kicking off an 11-day standoff in which a police sniper shot Weaver's wife. This guy was wanted on firearms charges, so the marshals thought that he had a whole arsenal of machine guns stashed away in his cabin, and that's why they went in like it was a war zone, and how they ended up killing two innocent people. Randy Weaver ended up getting millions in compensation from the government, but before that, the whole situation created a media firestorm and pissed off a lot of very violent people. And that's where the FBI agent I talked to figured it tied into my case. It was just speculation, but he and some of his

fellow agents believed that since I was a representative of the federal government, some wacko with a hunting rifle figured I was a legitimate revenge target for what came to be known as Ruby Ridge. A few years later, that psycho who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City said Ruby Ridge was the thing that drove him nuts. And those are my words, by the way, not his. The FBI never caught the guy who shot me, and as far as I know, they're still out there, proud at having hit back at the Fed or whatever crazy bullcrap they've brainwashed themselves with. And who knows, maybe they regret it. Maybe they'd apologize if they knew they could get away with it.

But I can't say it's one I'd ever accept. Not until I can afford that second round of hip surgery, anyway. The Picos de Europa National Park is a mountainous nature reserve in the northern Spanish region of Cantabria. The park attracts around 3 million visitors a year who come seeking its verdant forests, crystal clear lakes, and majestic snow-capped mountains. However, each of these visitors is issued a stark warning, as the Picos de Europa are known to be every bit as brutal as they are beautiful. During the winter months freak snowstorms can send temperatures plummeting into the mid-30s resulting in an extensive list of fatalities and missing persons the park is also home to cantabrian brown bears whose population

exploded following a ban on the hunting of the species in the early 70s. The bears aren't known for their aggression towards humans, but along with the wolves and wild boars the park is also home to, they can prove a deadly threat to those caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet Cantabria isn't just famous for its wild, natural beauty. It's also the place where a decades-long mystery was finally brought to a close. But like so many other similar instances, the revelation raised many more questions than it answered. Back in 1945, 31-year-old Eloy Campilio Perez was employed as a forest ranger at the Picos de Europa National Park. He also happened to be the elected mayor of the small nearby town of Sotres, which

is nationally renowned for its queso de cambrales, a kind of blue cheese which has matured in the many limestone caves present in the surrounding mountains. But Eloy's life was anything but peaceful or happy. Between 1936 and 1939, Spain had been scorched by the fires of civil war, and by its end, fascist dictator General Franco had declared himself the victor and ruler of all of Spain. With the surrender of anti-fascist forces in the face of a unified far right, the civil war may have officially come to a close, but for much of Spain's republican resistance, the fight was far from over. They took refuge in the last of the country's wilderness areas, melting into the forests and

mountains whenever pursued by Franco's forces, and the region of Picos de Europa was no different. Many of the resistance fighters who sheltered in the park were known to Eloy all his life. Some he'd shared a classroom with during his formative years, others were blood relatives, meaning there's no doubt that Eloy had a degree of sympathy for them. However, given he was mayor of Sotres, Eloy had certain obligations to his fascist overlords. Essentially, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He could betray his country, or betray his friends, both of which would result in his death. So instead, it seems Aloy attempted to remain as neutral as possible. He paid just enough lip service to the regime to avoid falling under suspicion,

while remaining tight-lipped regarding the location of anti-fascist guerrillas in the picos de Europa. All that mattered to him was keeping the people of Sotres safe. One of fascist Spain's primary sponsors had been Germany, but following the Red Army's rush of Berlin and the collapse of Germany's narcocratic nightmare, the future of Spanish fascism was brought into doubt. With his stranglehold on Eastern Europe assured, Joseph Stalin declared that global revolution would continue indefinitely, fanning the hopes of Marxist insurgents around the world. The guerrillas of Picos de Europa were no different and, following the German surrender, began immediately stepping up the intensity of their operations. They ambushed units of the Spanish Civil Guard

with ever-increasing frequency and even went so far as to seek out ways of producing explosive material. This was an extremely risky move and in trying to involve the people of Sotres in their pursuit of volatile chemicals, the guerrillas risked bringing the full force of fascist retribution down the small mountain town. This was something that Eloy could not tolerate, and in mid-April of 1945, he sought out a parlay with an old friend. 27-year-old Juan Fernandez Ayala was an old companion of Eloy's and had joined up with the Republicans at the outbreak of hostility some nine years before over the next decade juan rose through the ranks receiving multiple battlefield promotions until he found himself second in command of all regional resistance forces it was under juan's deputy

leadership that cantabria saw a sharp uptick in political violence. So, in an attempt to avert a wider conflict, Aloy reached out to his old friend to arrange a meeting. Then on Sunday, April 15th of 1945, Aloy walked deep into the Pico de Europa wilderness, far from any road or tract, to an old abandoned villa being slowly reclaimed by nature. There, Juan and a cadre of his guerrillas were waiting, and after some brief introductions, Eloy began to make his appeal. Franco's overthrow could not come quick enough, he explained, but an escalation of violence risked destroying the very place they called home. Juan and his comrades listened as Eloy made his case,

until suddenly they heard footsteps coming from outside. Two days before the meeting was due to take place, Aloy had confined a fellow park ranger that he was due to meet with the guerrillas. It's clear that Aloy trusted the man enough to share such sensitive information with him, so there's no doubt to believe that he was a government informant. But at the same time, there's no doubt that he would have been terrified that he too might be implicated in the plot, because the night before the meeting, Aloy's fellow park ranger betrayed him to the Spanish civil guard. The footsteps Swan and Aloy heard that afternoon didn't belong to more of the former's anti-fascist comrades, nor did they belong to some innocent hikers who just so happened to have stumbled upon the place. They belonged to a heavily armed troop

of Spanish civil guard, all of whom were intent on slaughtering those present at the meeting. Yet the guerrillas weren't stupid. There was a reason they'd survived for six long years up in the forests and mountains, and when they chose the abandoned villa as their meeting place, they did so because of how easily defendable it was. This meant that when they realized that they'd been discovered by their sworn enemies, they weren't only capable of mounting a defense, they were practically spoiling for a fight. Despite being aware of their location, the guerrillas were able to rush into position and execute an almost perfect ambush on the approaching civil guard.

Two of the fascists were immediately dispatched and the remaining civil guard were pinned down, picked off, and then forced into a retreat until reinforcements could arrive. The guerrillas used this lull in the fighting to flee the area, but before they did so, they fell upon the bodies of the dead and dying fascists, looting everything they possibly could before making their escape. Aloy ran all the way back to Sotres, where the victorious guerrillas melted back into the mountains, vanishing among a network of hidden encampments. Over the days that followed, Aloy waited anxiously for that fateful knock on his front door. The Spanish government had an extensive network of civilian

informants and seemed only a matter of time before someone would come for him. But when the knock came and Aloy opened his front door, he discovered it was Juan on the doorstep. Come with me, his old friend said. We need to talk. In the aftermath of the firefight at the abandoned villa, the anti-fascist guerrillas carried away a great deal of loot from the slain civil guardsmen. Apparently, one of the fallen guardsmen was an officer, because among that loot was a small, folded piece of paper with the group's orders written on it. The note named

Eloy's fellow park ranger, Alfonso Martinez, as their informant, and it's possible that it mentioned another unnamed park ranger being the primary source of the information. It's reasonable to believe that, in order to preserve the anonymity of a man he was no doubt close to, Alfonso Martinez neglected to name Eloy in his report to the Spanish police. But seeing as the Pico de Europa's ranger team was so small in number, the guerrillas quickly deduced that the primary source was none other than Eloy Campilio Perez. On April 24th of 1945, Eloy was marched up into the mountains to a top-secret guerrilla headquarters and subjected to several rounds of intense interrogation. What happened afterwards is

a subject of much speculation, even today. But a few months later, one captured guerrilla fighter claimed to know the definitive truth. Referring to Juan Fernandez Ayala by his nickname, Juanen, the captured guerrilla explained that he'd spotted Juan walking Aloy into the jungle. The pair had seemed relaxed, with Juan assuring his old friend that everything was going to be okay, and that he'd been forgiven for his accidental transgression. Moments later, a single gunshot was heard and Juan returned alone. After learning of his death, Aloy's relatives contacted the Spanish police and pleaded with them to bring home his body. Joined by dozens of civilian volunteers, officers conducted extensive searches of the Picos de Europas,

but no trace of Aloy could be found. It was hoped that one day Juan Fernandez Ayala might reveal the location of Aloy's body. But it was a secret that he would take to his grave. On April 24th of 1957, 12 years to the day since Aloy's execution, Juan was killed in a shootout with Spanish military police. In the end, Aloy's loved ones grew to accept that, dead or alive, he was never coming home. But in the words of Walt Whitman, nothing is ever really lost. During the summer of 2018, a team of professional cavers was exploring a system of underground passageways on the eastern side of the Picos de Europa. Thanks in part to funding from the European Union, the Spanish government hired the group of highly experienced spelunkers to search for the remains

of those who had gone missing as a result of both the Spanish Civil War as well as its prolonged and painful aftermath. Eloy Campilio Perez wasn't the only man to go missing in the area, so it's not like the search team was specifically looking for him, but there's no doubt that reports of his disappearance factored into the government's decision to dispatch cavers to the national park. Upon reaching the entrance of a subterranean cave known as the Torca de Toponoria, the group unpacked their things and prepared to descend almost 200 meters beneath the earth. The climb down took a great deal of care and precision, no small feat even for such experienced cavers. But once they successfully reached the bottom of the cave, the cavers began a careful search for any trace of human remains.

They soon found some. Among a section of mud and debris, the capers recovered bones later determined to be human. After extracting strands of DNA from the sections of skull and jawbone, police compared them to samples taken from Eloy's living relatives, and they were a perfect match. After having been missing for almost a quarter of a century, Eloy Campilio Perez had finally been found. When news of the match reached Eloy's 75-year-old daughter, Mercedes, she defied her advanced years to hike all the way out to her father's final resting place to pay her last respects. Her loved ones implored her to await further developments at home, but Mercedes insisted on camping near the cave system's

entrance while the subsequent investigations unfolded. She was present when investigators determined that Aloy had been executed by a single shot from a 9mm Astra 400 handgun, the same variety of pistol found in Juan Fernandez Ayala's possession following his sudden and violent death. Throughout the remainder of 2018 summer, Spanish authorities continued to reconstruct Aloy's skeleton, and it was through this process that they made a chilling discovery. Aloy's weren't the only set of human remains that had been left down to rot there in the dark. As investigators began working to reconstruct the second of the two skeletons, several details became evident. The first was that the bones belonged to a female,

aged 10 to 14 years old when she'd expired. The second was that the girl hadn't died on the same night as Aloy, but rather between 5 and 15 years later. After analyzing the girl's bones to determine the date of her death, investigators determined that the girl was most probably the child of local shepherds who had accidentally fallen into the cave while working or playing near its entrance. Yet this claim was quickly dismissed by accomplished forensic anthropologist Dr. Fernando Cerulia. Dr. Cerulia was famous in Argentina for having helped identify almost a hundred nameless Argentine soldiers who died in their disastrous attempted takeover of

the British Falkland Islands. Then, upon hearing of the Cantambrian Jane Doe, she was generous enough to offer her services to the Spanish government. However, upon performing her own analysis of the girl's remains, Dr. Sorolla declared the girl could not have been a rural shepherd. Her bone structure suggested that rather than a diet consisting mostly of corn, which would have marked her out as coming from a low-income rural family, the girl had subsisted on high amounts of low-fat animal protein, meaning she was probably raised on the much more populous Cantabrian coast. Dr. Cerullia further analyzed the girl's DNA to create a physical depiction of what she might have looked like. She was said to have been around 4 foot 8 inches tall, with green eyes

and dark brown hair. This description was then disseminated all over Cantabria, in the hopes that it might jog someone's memory, but sadly, no one came forward with any pertinent information. Perhaps the closest investigators came to a definitive break in the case was after learning of a little-known fact regarding the Picos de Europas. Following General Franco's rise to power, many innocent Spaniards simply disappeared, but not all were victims of the fascist secret police and not all joined the guerrillas in the mountain refuge. Some wished to go off the grid, so to speak, and live out their lives in privacy among Spain's remote, mine-riddled mountains. Some of these people would have been wanted by

Franco's fascists for perceived disloyalties to the regime, while others simply didn't want to live under a dictatorship but couldn't bear to abandon the country of their birth. Most found work as undocumented miners and affiliated mining workers, and built their own ramshackle housing hidden among the pine-blanketed hillsides. Some would marry, others would have children, but all would remain utterly secluded from the world around them. Therefore, it stands to reason that if one of their community went missing, they would do their utmost to avoid the involvement of outside authorities. A police investigation might uncover far more than just

the truth, and for many of Spain's Republican fugitives, such a possibility could not be entertained. Given that less than 20% of the girl's skeleton had been recovered, investigators had been unable to determine the exact cause of her death. In fact, some attempts at analysis have preceded some very strange observations. For example, there's no doubt that the girl fell almost directly down the cave's 180 meter long entrance shaft before smashing into its rocky floor. Yet only a few of the recovered bones show any signs of high energy impact damage. The girl's femur and jaw were completely intact with only small sections of her cranium said to display any

significant damage. This has led some to theorize that the girl was murdered via a blow to the head, then somehow placed down in the cave in a way which precludes any kind of prolonged fall. Essentially, there are two competing primary theories here. Number one, the girl's death was entirely accidental and by some physical anomaly only fractured her skull after a near 200 meter fall into a hard rocky surface. Or number two, the girl was murdered by someone with so much twisted affection for her that he chose to gently lower her body into the cave in a sick parody of a funeral. As of June of the year 2022, the identity of the Toponoria Jane Doe remains a mystery, and while Spanish police have stated that investigation is still open, the chances of further developments is highly improbable. Her DNA has since been

uploaded to the Phoenix Database, a project launched by the Civil Guard in 1999 to help solve cold cases, as well as to identify John and Jane Doe's. Eloy Campilio's remains were eventually returned to his family and he was laid to rest in the ancient cemetery of the very town he'd given his life to protect. His daughter stated that the Toponoria Jane Doe was also buried in that same cemetery right next to her father's grave. After they'd been so many years down there together in the cave, she said, it wouldn't be fair to separate them now. This story took place in 2020 when I was 18 years old. I lived in a relatively safe neighborhood, but my country does have a high crime rate in general, so take that with a pinch of salt. My dad had passed away

earlier in the year and I had no siblings, so my mom and I lived alone in our house. The lockdowns were still in place, but as certain restrictions were lifted, people were starting to return to work. Between my house and the train tracks was a stretch of empty field. It became a safe, quiet space for me to escape to wherever I needed to get out of the house. I would normally sit there once a day for a cigarette or two, sometimes for a little picnic. My home situation was complicated, to the least and due to the lockdowns I really had nowhere else to go. On this particular day I went there for a few minutes to smoke, as always. I was about halfway through my cigarette when I noticed a young man walking along the train tracks on the other side of the field.

He was barefoot and wearing dirty, worn out clothes. He noticed me and made a hand gesture suggesting that he was asking for a smoke. I should have just left but as a teenager I found it difficult to say no to people. I walked across the field and handed him a smoke. He took it from me and I immediately felt uneasy with the way he was looking at me. He asked me, don't you live in that house over there? And pointed at my house. I avoided answering the question and at this point realized that I needed to leave. I had left from my front gate that day. For him to know where I lived, he must have watched me leave from the back gate before. I told him I needed to get going. He started insisting on giving me a hug to say thank you and

I declined several times. At this point I turned around and started walking away quickly. I didn't get very far. He caught up to me and put his arm around my waist. I started to panic, not knowing what to do. All I could think of was that I needed to get away. As I tried to start running, he grabbed me from behind and started dragging me toward the row of houses where the view from the road is completely blocked. The fences were high too so no one could see the field from their backyards and we were completely isolated. I was kicking and struggling, desperate to get out of his grasp.

He ended up throwing me on the ground, with him on top of me, still holding on. In a split second, my life flashed before my eyes. That feeling that something terrible was about to happen came over me. I couldn't escape, he was too strong. My arms were trapped by his and he was holding me down so I couldn't kick him. I did the only thing I had left to do and I started screaming for help. Suddenly I was free. I could move. He had let go and jumped off of me. He ran away. My heart was still pounding. I was shaking in shock from what had just happened.

He disappeared into the industrial area on the other side of the train tracks. I immediately ran towards the road. As I reached it, I noticed it was empty. There were no cars parked in my neighbor's driveways. No one heard me screaming, and had he realized, that day could have had a far worse ending. He knew where I lived, and I was terrified of him returning. For months I had panic attacks and nightmares and I could barely leave my house without breaking down. I moved away from there a year later but I still sometimes get scared when I'm home alone or walking around town. This happened last week, and although she didn't seem malicious, the things she said were creepy. I, a 19-year-old male, was heading home from university, and to get there, I had to take the train. When I boarded, many seats were already occupied.

In my country, the seats are arranged in a way that allows four people to sit facing each other, and they are quite close together, perfect for conversation, even with strangers, unfortunately. I noticed an available seat in front of a girl who appeared to be one or two years younger than me, but it's hard to be certain. I approached her and asked if I could sit there. Of course, she replied, looking at me in a strange and intense manner. To distract myself from her i took out my phone and she also had a chocolate bar in her hand which would become important later

she asked me where do you live and i thought why do you need to know so when she inquired about my destination on the train i told her the stop i would be getting off at. She informed me that she would be getting off at that next stop too. Then she started singing and said, oh sometimes I sing, I'm a silly girl, and repeated it. Every time she said something she gazed at me as if expecting a response. To avoid further conversation I simply replied, It's okay to be silly. Subsequently, she told me, You're pretty. And when I asked, What?

She questioned whether she was pretty. In my language, the second question is an extension of the first, so it seemed like she was correcting herself. She also asked if she had chocolate on her face, and indeed, she did. She even offered me some chocolate, but I declined. She also mentioned a piercing that had come off, and she attempted to put it back on right there on the train. I suggested that she should just go fix it where she originally got it, and she asked, In Germany? Will you go there with me?

However, I promptly declined. As she struggled to put back her piercing, a mouth piercing, she declared that she was in love with me. I told her that I had a girlfriend, even though I didn't, but there are many attractive girls at my university, and I said, uh, the pace is too fast for me. In response, she threatened to beat my girlfriend. Her I love you escalated into I'll kidnap you and strip for me. She asked if I would go with her and if she could accompany me home. Finally, when the train arrived at my destination, she asked, are you leaving my love? I replied in the affirmative and went on my way, thankfully without her following me home. A few years ago, I came to something of a sort of unfortunate realization. I was not great at cleaning. Now, don't get it twisted, I didn't live like a pig or anything.

I changed my sheets regularly, didn't leave dishes around, and generally kept my apartment clean and tidy. But then as I learned, if you live in an apartment in the northeast and try to skimp on heating bills in the winter, you're going to invite in some very unwanted guests into your apartment. I'm not talking about rats or roaches. I'm talking about mold. Now don't worry, this isn't going to be some story about me taking on a mold outbreak or anything, although it was scary how much it spread and how gross it was to clean. No, this story is about how we all think we know the places we live, right up until we realize that we don't. So without boring you with all of the pointless

details, there was this huge mold outbreak and it took a whole day's worth of dabbing Clorox on the walls to get rid of it all. Like a lot of stuff like that, it's no good to just bleach what you can see. You gotta find the source. So in every room in my apartment, which was four if you count the hallway, I had to bleach all the mold I could see and find the source, which was sometimes hidden somewhere out of sight. So I do the TV room and the kitchen and work my way down the hallway and into the bathroom and finally I start working on my bedroom. As I'm sort of dabbing away, I slowly figure out that the mold is coming from my boiler closet, which figured because damp,

dark, warm place, of course it's going to grow there first. I don't think I'd open this closet in maybe a year, which I know, lucky me, right? Never having any hot water problems? Well, not so lucky actually, because I opened up that closet door and saw the mother load staring me right in the face. The whole outbreak must have come from this one huge patch that I had found growing in the closet, so I got to work wiping the whole place down. Once I thought it was done, I grabbed a flashlight, kind of leaned into the closet and started looking around for any patches that I'd missed. Up near the closet ceiling was this little wooden shelf and on that little shelf was something made of fur or felt or something,

because it was natural enough for the mold to really take a liking to it. Knowing I'd have another outbreak if I just left it there, I grabbed what turned out to be a little felt-lined box and then carried it off into the kitchen to be cleaned. Obviously, I'm way curious to see what's inside, mostly because this thing had been sat in my apartment for coming up on like three years without me knowing it was there. It also dawned on me that whatever was inside, it was precious enough to store in some fancy fur box before hiding it away somewhere. Therefore, there was a good chance that there might be, I don't know, maybe some coins in there or

maybe even some precious stones. So after wiping away some of the mold, grime, and dust that accumulated on what had to have been many years, I unclasped the little brass lock and opened up the box. Inside was nothing but a small envelope and an old audio cassette tape. The tape didn't have any labels on it so there was no telling what it contained and the same applied to the envelope. No name, no address, nothing. I didn't have any means of playing the tape. My laptop doesn't even have a disc tray anymore so I opened up the envelope to find a bunch of photographs inside. The first two or three photos were just of some dirty old basement so I started flipping

through them much faster until I saw one of a girl. Not right away I knew something was off because she didn't seem to be posing in any of the pictures. It looked like whoever had taken them had just shoved a camera at her face, flashed and all and then just snapped away until she looked annoyed and then started to look scared. It was the scared expression that really caught my attention and I recall staring at that one photo for a little too long. Not so much because it was nice to look at, which it wasn't, but because I was dreading whatever came next.

I started flipping through the photos some more, real fast before shoving them back into the envelope and closing it. What I saw didn't seem real. It looked like something out of some horror movie, but there was no way in hell that I was going to look at them all over again to check. I saw that basement again with the girl in it and this time she was tied up with no clothes on and she looked that look on her face. No actor or actress in the world can capture that true terror but it was etched all over that poor girl's face. I had no idea what to do with myself at first, I just knew that I had to get them out of my

apartment. I didn't want to touch them because I was panicking about having my fingerprints all over them, even though they looked like they were taken at a time when I wasn't even alive. I guess I was just so shocked by what I'd seen that I wasn't thinking straight, but I went full forensic files and didn't want to go anywhere near the envelope or tape for fear of contaminating evidence or something like that. I then called the cops, told them the whole story, and then I was told that I'd get a call from the relevant party, either later that day or the following morning. They also told me not to worry about all that contamination stuff as they could just take a sample of my DNA and fingerprints to eliminate

me as a suspect. Essentially, I didn't have to go treating that boiler room closet or kitchen like some crime scene. I could just put it all to one side, maybe even a grocery bag or whatever, and someone would be by to take a look. The next day, some detective guy stopped by my apartment after giving me a call ahead and after putting on some of those plastic gloves, he started to take a look through the photographs. The thing that I still find incredibly creepy about those few moments was how he was able to look through each and every photograph, really take them all in, and he didn't even bat an eye. The few flashes of stuff that I'd seen had me shoving them back into the envelope and panicking from how messed up they were.

But there was this middle-aged gray-haired cop, just cold as ice as he's looking through some of the most messed up stuff I've ever seen in my life. It made me wonder what other stuff he'd seen in his time to make him so stone cold like that. Having determined the pictures were legitimate, the cop started bagging up the evidence and asked me if I'd listened to what was on the tape. When I told him no, he told me, probably for the best. Before he left, he asked me to take a look in my closet real quick, as in the place that I'd found the box in the first place. I told him sure, then after making sure that there was nothing else hidden away, he gave me his contact details and told me to give him a call if I ended up finding anything else. I never did find anything else, nor did I ever hear back from the detective. Part of me wanted to reach out at one point just to see how the investigation was going, but

I didn't, because there was only one thing I really needed to know, and that was something I could find out for myself. I went down into the basement of my apartment building just to take a look around, and I don't think words can sum up how relieved I was when nothing matched any of the scenery that I saw in the photographs. I know that there was nothing I could have done about what happened to that poor girl in the photographs but it helped me sleep a lot better knowing that it hadn't all happened beneath the place that I laid my head at night. Back when I lived in the rural Midwest about 10 years ago, I lived in a house right off of the highway. My house was situated right between two towns, almost on the county line, and it had a large circular driveway. If you drove into the driveway, you would head straight toward our barn. If you turned right, you could access our garage. Continuing past the garage allowed you to circle around in front of the house and return to where you started.

Our house featured two large double doors in the front, which were rarely used. Instead, we usually entered through the doors inside the garage. One night, it was very late and the doorbell rang. My husband, our three-year-old daughter and I were all asleep. The sound woke me up and at first I thought I might be dreaming. Then it rang again and I woke my husband. He initially believed that I was hearing things until it rang again. It was very dark outside but we had a dusk to dawn light that illuminated most of the driveway. Unfortunately,

the front doors couldn't be seen unless you opened one of them and looked outside. You could open just one at a time or both simultaneously using two latches located at the top and bottom of one of the doors. My husband decided to open the door while I wanted to call the police. However, we knew it would take some time for them to arrive since we lived on the county line. He opened the door to find a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties. She appeared normal, except for the fact that she was standing at her door in the middle of the night. I looked beyond her and noticed her car parked in our driveway just off the road, not close to the house or the circular driveway.

She claimed that she needed to use the phone, explaining that her car battery had died or something, but she wasn't sure. I told my husband that there was no way that we should let her in, as this was how horror movies often started. We offered to call the police, the county sheriff, but she kept insisting. We assured her that we would make the call and she eventually walked away. As we watched her return to her car, which was approximately 50 feet away, my judgement of distance might not be too precise, I'm sorry, but I could see both her and the car clearly. I proceeded to call the police and they said they'd arrive in about 15 minutes. At this point, neither my husband nor I were overly concerned.

We assumed it was just a girl with a dead battery. However, as she opened her trunk, no lights illuminated and she began rummaging around inside. Then, the driver's side door opened and a man stepped out, followed by another man exiting the back passenger door. They continued to search the trunk with no lights on and I couldn't hear any of their conversations or determine their actions. They all eventually returned to the car. About five minutes had passed and I was silently praying that the sheriff would hurry and arrive, even though I knew that it would take another ten minutes or so. The three individuals remained in the car, lights off, motionless. I couldn't see them clearly inside the car, but I knew that they hadn't exited and walked past the house, as they would have had to have passed under the dusk to dawn light, which would have been visible to me. I thought I saw the driver light a cigarette, but I wasn't

entirely sure. Then, something unexpected occurred. A man, whom I didn't recognize, emerged from the right side of the property, walking from the direction of the barn. We didn't have neighbors for at least a mile, and he appeared to be coming from the back of my property, which ended at a creek. He walked directly under the dust to dawn light and proceeded straight to the car without looking at the house. He got into the back of the car and the vehicle started up. They slowly backed out of my driveway and headed north. The police arrived approximately 10 minutes later and by that point I was in a state of panic. They conducted a search but couldn't find anything

suspicious. They asked if we had noted a license plate number but the car had been parked too far away. They advised us to call if the individuals returned which didn't instill much confidence. My husband retrieved his shotgun from the workshop on our property and we attempted to go back to sleep. One late night at around 3am, I was sitting at my home on my PC, watching movies, playing games, and so on, when I noticed that I was out of cigarettes. The only place that's open late at night is our local gas station, which isn't too far far from my home but it's still easier to go by car i took my car keys locked my house and headed to the gas station i live in a small european country known as the safest country on the planet however that doesn't mean that bad things don't

happen here and there when you exit the suburban area where i live you need to turn right to reach the main road from there you just go straight for about half a kilometer and then turn left for another half a kilometer to reach the gas station. On the way, I noticed a girl on the sidewalk. I usually drive slower at night because many people tend to speed and run red lights during the nighttime. This girl was walking faster than usual, appearing panicked. I noticed two guys behind her who were about 10 feet away maybe even less and they were pointing at her and making hand gestures towards her this gave me a really bad vibe and as i got closer to the girl i noticed that she had a

frightened expression on her face as if she was about to cry but held back the tears. So I pulled over close to her and asked very quietly, are you in trouble? She just looked at me and nodded her head in response. I told her to get in the car and she did. I explained to her that I was on my way to the gas station to buy cigarettes but that I would take her home as soon as I finished making the purchase. She thanked me profusely. I asked if she wanted to go to the police to report the incident, but she said she just wanted to go home. I went to the gas station and bought cigarettes for myself and a bottle of water for her.

She was clearly in a state of fear, and afterward I took her home. We passed the same street where those two guys had followed her, but there were no signs of them. I'm just imagining if I hadn't run out of cigarettes that night, what would have happened to her? I, a female, 36, wish this wasn't real. Let me start by saying it's crazy how children are so trusting. Maybe it's just me. When I was seven years old, my parents and I were living in a basement apartment in the Bronx. The way the apartment was set up had my mother and father's room at one end of a short hall,

the bathroom in the middle, and my room at the other end. If you don't know anything about a basement apartment, just know that it doesn't take much effort to enter one through a window. One very early morning, possibly around 7 or 8, I was woken up by a very sharp, intense pain on my buttock. I got up, thinking our cat had gotten into my room and had bitten me, as she used to nip hard and attack whatever she felt like, toes included. I jumped up, looking for her, only to see a grown man sitting on my bed. I remember being upset and asking him why he had pinched me, to which he hushed me and said something about being thirsty. I remember pulling down my nightgown to cover my buttock and asking him if he wanted juice or water. I wasn't scared at all, more surprised and mad that this man had pinched my buttock so hard.

He said that he wanted juice, so I left my room and closed my door with him still sitting on my bed. I walked to the kitchen and got him some juice. As I was bringing the cup back to my room, I looked at my parents' door and thought that I should wake them up, but I can't remember why I decided against it. I ended up giving the man the cup and he drank the juice. I remember he asked me if I could help him find his friend and he told me that he was lost. I remember my dad told me that I wasn't allowed to go outside without him or my mother. They were worried as

this was a new neighborhood and we had only moved in maybe two weeks earlier. I remember being scared to go outside because I didn't want my parents to be upset with me so I told him that I had to wake up my parents to ask. I remember he said that it would be real quick because he knew his friend was somewhere in the area and we would find him quickly. I once again said no and told him that I was not allowed to go outside without my parents. So he ended up saying that he didn't need my help anymore and that he would find them. He asked me to lock the door behind him so I walked him out, locked the front door waving goodbye. I tried to go back to sleep but it was too late, I was wide awake. So I started watching cartoons. Well, the volume

happened to be louder than expected because my mother woke up and asked me, very angrily, why I was awake so early. I told her all about the man pinching my butt, to which, at first, she didn't believe me as she thought that I had had a bad dream. But she lifted up my nightgown and I guess I must have had a bruise. I will never forget how she got so calm and started smiling at me with a very sweet voice, asking me what he looked like, what happened, and if I remember what he was wearing. I told her and she left my room for a moment, coming back with my dad. She then told me to tell him, everything using that that same sweet voice and I did. I didn't

think that I was in trouble or anything and I thought that I had made a new friend. After telling them about my new friend they got dressed and started searching. Well it didn't take long because he happened to be the superintendent's family member. When I saw him I immediately shouted at him, hey friend. My parents told me to go inside, which I did. Maybe an hour or so later, my parents came back with McDonald's for me, but they seemed angry. Before the end of that day, my father put a padlock on my door and told me that whenever I go to sleep, I should always lock my door, as our kitchen windows didn't lock, and that's how we got in. Sometime later,

when I was 15, I found out that the guy was mentally ill and was sent away from the Dominican Republic by his family so he wouldn't get arrested for something he did out there with another little girl. But that's it. It still surprises me that I wasn't scared in the moment. And please, if you or anyone you know lives in a basement, ground-level apartment, or flat, please triple-check that all the window locks work and lock your windows up. I'm a woman from China, but I grew up in Sydney, Australia. I was born in Beijing on the outskirts in a large town called Yungang Residential District, where my mom's family is from. When I was five, my family and I immigrated to Australia, but we would still travel back

to China every few years. This incident happened in the snowy winter of 1997, when I was 11 years old. My grandparents still lived in Yungang and introduced me to a brother and sister who lived in the same building as them. I can't remember their exact ages but I think the older girl was around 14 and the younger boy was around 6. I still remember the exact outfit that I was wearing because I've been wearing the same outfit throughout the trip. At that time, flared jeans were in fashion and coming from Australia, I wasn't prepared for the snow and cold of the Chinese winter. So on my first or

second day there, my Chinese cousin had taken me to a shopping mall where she helped me haggle down the price of a bright pink duffel coat with fluffy white trimming. I thought it was the most fashionable thing ever and wore it every day. I have photos of me from the trip wearing that exact outfit. We walked around town and ended up going to a very large park with a lake inside of it. It was a little bit of a distance from the center of town. We were playing by the shore, throwing rocks, joking around, and having a good time. At some point, I looked up and realized that it was getting dusky. Although it probably wasn't very late, considering it was winter, the sun set early.

The park, which had never been very busy to start with, was nearly deserted. There were still some people, but they were a fair distance away from us except for two men who suddenly approached us. They were middle to late middle-aged and the uncle type. One of them approached me and said that he was a friend of my father's and that he'd asked him to pick us up. I remember being confused because my dad didn't live in this town and was in another district about two hours away in Beijing, where his family was from, and pretty quickly I realized something was off, and so did the brother and sister that I was with. We all started making excuses and backing off.

I still remember very clearly that as we started backing away, the man who approached us looked over his shoulder at his companion as if asking him what he should do. His companion was standing a little distance away beside a white van with the door already slid open. I completely believed that he was considering snatching one of us and making a run for it. However, perhaps because there were three of us, and perhaps because there were still people around in the peripheries, they didn't do anything. As I walked away rapidly, I looked back over my shoulder and remember seeing the two men just standing there, watching us go. That 15-20 minute walk back was one of the scariest walks of my life as I imagined someone grabbing me from behind every second. The sun set just as we got into the building and I burst in through the door, so happy to be home safe.

I did tell my mom and grandmother about it, but at that time, child kidnappings in China, while already happening, were much less of a massive and widespread news story than it is now. I think my mom, especially, felt that being almost kidnapped was somehow a commentary on her parenting skills, and was very dismissive and even now dislikes it when I bring it up. Now that organized child and or bride kidnappings are such a huge story in China, it often makes me shiver at night to think how different my fate could have been. There have been so many stories about young women and girls kidnapped and forced into becoming brides of villagers in remote countrysides, sometimes tied to beds and having their legs broken to prevent them from

running away. They're forced to bear children one after another. No one in the village will help them because almost all the men in the village have purchased brides from traffickers in this way. There are also children, usually boys, kidnapped into families who have been unable to have kids or adopt legally. They fare a bit better but can also be abused and neglected. Now that I have my own kids and am safe and warm in my bed in Sydney, I sometimes think about how wildly and irrevocably my life may have derailed that we were under. I was 20 back then. At the time, because of the severity of everything going on in Belgium,

the law stated that you should only go out to practice sports or to work, so I took the habit of meeting with a friend, they go by Soli, to go out for runs and to practice all kinds of sports in general. Both of us were quite fond of urban exploration and knew a spot in the outskirts of Brussels consisting of an old sports and wellness center where we took the habit to hang out after our runs. To get into the spot, you must go through a hole in a fence on a street, cross a small portion of woods, and you'll come up on an old football pitch and tennis courts. Up on a hill is the center, which is an old four-story building. The whole center takes up a whole street block, and on that

day, we had just finished a five-kil kilometer run and went to our spot as usual. We were walking to the building since it was about to rain when we saw two teenagers sitting on the roof edge. I remember thinking that it bothered me since we were planning to go to that roof as well. So we went to the hall area to wait for a bit in hopes that people would leave. In the hall area, you could have a clear view into the kitchen, which you must go through if you want to get to the roof. You could also see into another small hall and into the dining room. Sully was rolling himself a cigarette when I was gathering two chairs and an office table for us to sit. The next part gives me chills to this day. As I finish setting everything up,

I remember starting to feel unwell, as if though I was being watched, and not in a good way. And that's when I looked at the kitchen and saw, for a brief moment, a head sticking out of the door frame and staring right at us. It was a man. I couldn't say what age he was since he was all dirty, but the one thing I remember is that he had an exaggerated happy expression on his face, like he had just found exactly what he was looking for. At that moment, I just froze and was unable to react bravely in that situation. I leaned slowly towards Soli, all while keeping eye contact with the man, and told him very calmly that we had to leave immediately. I tend to make lots of jokes to all of my friends and especially to Sully, but when he saw the look that I had on my face when I told him that we had to leave, he didn't say a word, just took his backpack and stood up. We ran to the football pitch and saw that the two teenagers were still on the roof,

so we started yelling at them, asking if the man was with them or if they had seen him, but they just answered that no, they hadn't seen anyone and had come by themselves, so if someone was there, he wasn't with them. We told them that it was probably better for them to leave as well since we didn't know what the man in the lobby was up to. They told us that they would be fine and they would leave a little bit later. We decided to leave since we had already told them what we saw and we had also been out for a very long time so it wasn't very legal with the sort of confinement rules going on. As we were walking towards the woods, I turned back, and I could swear that I saw a silhouette standing in front of the staircase leading to the roof, but my mind didn't quite react, and I just left alongside with my friend. I was so shocked, because nothing like it had

ever happened to me before, that I decided not to talk about it to anyone in fear of them not believing me or possibly even making fun of me. My friend solely is the only one who was there. He didn't take a look at the man, but he is as scared as me just by seeing my own reaction at the time. I don't know what happened to these teenagers. I found local articles and papers dating from that time about teenagers being chased by a crazy man in an abandoned building, but the information given wasn't enough for me to be sure that it was the same people and the same story. I've never forgotten that event, even though it happened over 10 years ago now. Today I'm 26 years old, and I still get goosebumps, and it's even creepier with my now adult eyes. In fact, to be more precise, this event took place over a period of more than six months.

To put into context, it all started when I was about 14 years old. At the time, I was attending a private secondary school in the south of France and I used to go to my grandmother's house every evening to wait for my mother to finish work and pick me up. My mother, who was retired, would wait for me in her car when I got out of school. However, as time passed, I wanted to be more independent. So, I asked her if I could take the bus home and she agreed. I liked to put on my headphones and take advantage of the long journey to listen to my favorite music and be in my own world. The nearest bus stop to her house was about a 10 minute walk away. Unfortunately, the one opposite the dead end street where she lived had been condemned due to lack of use.

But that didn't bother me as I enjoyed walking. So I started taking the same bus every day at roughly the same time, though my schedule could vary. For instance, I didn't have classes on Wednesday afternoons. When I was 14, I was quite childlike. By childlike, I mean that I had always had a youthful appearance. I didn't have a woman's figure and always had cute stuffed animals hanging from my bag. Well, I suppose you can imagine. One day, I first noticed this man on

the bus at around September to October. He must have been in his forties, not very tall and bald. Why did I notice him, you might ask? Because he was staring directly at me, and I had the feeling that he wasn't blinking. He would smile at me, but his smiles didn't inspire confidence. It was completely instinctive. I had never encountered the harsh realities of the world. I was still very naive, but I knew something wasn't right. I didn't say anything. I simply decided to avoid the situation that made me uncomfortable by looking in another direction. However, this was just the beginning of something I would remember forever.

This man took the same bus as me every day at the same time, even when my schedule changed. To this day, I still have no idea how he could have obtained this information. Was he watching me? Did he live near the school? He would always stare at me with those strange smiles, never speaking to me. I would get off the bus at my stop and he would stay on, and then the cycle would start all over again the next day. I was so terrified by the situation that I didn't dare tell anyone. I was afraid that they wouldn't believe me, and I was also afraid that I wouldn't be allowed to leave the house afterwards. Then, one day, around May to June at the end of the school year, I had had enough. I got off at a stop halfway through the journey and hid naively behind a tree to try to lose

him. I was fed up with his persistent stares. However, the man also got off the bus and started looking for me. There was nobody else around and that's when I realized that I wasn't safe. The man was calling out to me saying, Where are you, sweetheart? Come out. Let's have a chat. I was, so to speak, sweating and unable to move from behind my tree. Of course, he eventually found me. You're really pretty, you know that?

I'd love to have a chat, get to know you. Frankly, I didn't want to get to know him at all. He terrified me and I just wanted to go home. I tried to make him understand that he was frightening me and that I wanted him to leave me alone. I asked him what he wanted and he kept repeating the same thing. Just to get to know each other. The next bus arrived and I took the opportunity to run onto it, but he followed me. He sat down, stopped talking and continued to stare at me, smiling. I was in a state of internal panic. My thoughts were racing in all directions and I didn't know what to do. I made the worst decision of all, getting off at my usual stop and going back to my grandmother's house, thinking that he would do the same and stay on

the bus. However, this time, he got off at the same time as me. The stop was in a very lightly trafficked area and was lined with little dirt paths that served as shortcuts to parallel thoroughfares. I told myself that he was going to kidnap me, that he was going to take me down one of those paths and that I would never be able to go home again. But I didn't want him to notice my fear because it seemed to fuel him, give him a sense of dominance. So he continued to ask me to get to know each other while following me.

I picked up the pace and he kept aligning himself with me and he wouldn't let go. Eventually I reached my grandmother's dead end street and finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I ran up to her house and she was standing in the doorway reading a book. She saw me coming, red faced and still shaking with panic, with a bald man staring at us from behind the gate. She saw my face and I didn't need to say anything. She yelled that she was going to call the police if he didn't leave immediately. He turned around and left that dead-end street. After that, my grandmother categorically refused to let me take the bus again. Until my senior year, she wanted me up in front of the school gate every day. I me take the bus again. Until my senior year, she wanted me up

in front of the school gate every day. I never saw that man again. When I think that this guy, this adult, followed a 14-year-old girl home, that he became fixated on me, and that this happened every day, who knows how far it could have gone. Maybe that's what's most worrying about all of this. This story happened a while ago, but it still haunts my mind. I live in a quiet countryside where usually nothing happens. I'm an 18-year-old girl who can easily walk around my hometown alone without feeling scared because it's very safe here. Basically, there's almost no crime. So, as usual, my dog and I went for a walk one evening. The weather was nice, so I decided to go to a nearby field.

I usually let my dog off her leash there, and it's fun for both of us. She's a nice dog and always comes when I call her. We reached the field, and everything was going well, and nothing seemed off. Except for this odd feeling in my gut that I don't usually have. The last time I had this feeling was when I was 8 years old and we were driving at night with my family. I said something like, I feel like something's wrong and you should be careful. They slowed down because I was oddly serious at that moment. A minute after I said that, a deer came out of nowhere and we would have crashed if we had been going at the same speed as a minute before. We were all shocked

and my mom thanked me and I still remember it like it was yesterday. However, in the field, ten years later, I got that same gut feeling. Whatever, I thought and just kept going, completely ignoring it. We rolled around the fields and the nearby forest until the sunset started to go. I put my dog back on her leash and decided to leave from one of the tiny paths that go through a small forest. It's the quickest way to home. It's not a popular route, but it's quick. As I was walking along the path, I suddenly spotted a silhouette at the end of the road just before the forest started. I didn't think much of it at that point and kept

walking but after a while I had a strong gut feeling and I stared at the silhouette for a while. It was then that I noticed that the silhouette was staring back at me without moving. I initially thought that maybe they were waiting for someone as the silhouette looked like a child's. But as I got closer, I realized that it wasn't a child, but a grown man who was struggling to ride a child's bicycle. It was a blue-green boy's bicycle and his legs were way too long for it. His whole body looked like he was forcing himself to ride it, and it was really an unsettling sight. Still, I didn't want to turn around and waste a couple of kilometers of time, even though it was creepy looking, I thought, maybe he's waiting for someone coming from my

direction. But with every step I took, he followed me with an intense expression. I was only about 20 meters away from him when he started doing weird jumps on his bike, smiling the ugliest and most unsettling smile I'd ever seen, just staring at me with wide eyes. He looked like he was expecting something and was so excited about it that he needed to jump. He appeared to be in his 50s or something, with very long and thin legs and arms, bald and that creepy unsettling smile. And that's when my alarm bells went off. I glanced behind me and there was no one there, just me, an 18-year-old girl with her fluffy, definitely not a guard dog. I turned around 180 degrees and started jogging back the way I came, just in case.

I glanced at him and sighed in relief when I noticed that he wasn't following me or anything. I thought maybe he wasn't waiting for me after all and called myself stupid and a scaredy cat, but I was wrong. My adrenaline started to slow down as I was in the middle of the fields and I still saw no sign of him following me. I let my dog off of her leash again and she started to run around. I was nearly at the end of the field. I only had a kilometer or so of forest before I got to my home after the field part. When my dog spotted a rabbit or deer or something interesting and bolted towards it. I panicked because she had never done that before and I

yelled for her. I yelled plenty of times for her pretty loudly and finally she came back. I was relieved that nothing happened to her but as I put her back on her leash, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. The bald man with the long legs was biking toward me. He wasn't looking at the ground when he biked but at me. Freak out wasn't enough to express my feelings at that moment. I had never seen a human who looked so crazy, more than crazy. What surprised me the most was that he was biking through a field and I can tell you, it's not an easy field to navigate sometimes. It has muddy ponds that you need to jump over but that psycho just

biked right through them. He was struggling a lot to bike there, but somehow managed to do it, and I didn't watch for another second behind me because I just started running. I ran so fast, and I have asthma, that I saw black and nearly collapsed. My lungs hurt so bad that I thought I was going to die, but the adrenaline kept my blood running in my legs too. Once I glanced behind me and he was there, struggling badly to keep up his full speed on the field grounds with that ugly white smile and the way too little bike. After that, I just ran like crazy until I found a house, hid in their yard without even minding that I was in someone else's yard. It didn't matter to me at that moment.

I waited a while with my breathing stuck in my throat, but he didn't come. I had been planning to yell as loudly as I could if he found me, but he never did. At some point, the adrenaline started leaving my system and I left my hiding spot. I ran again until I reached an area with multiple people in their yards so I would have help if I saw them again, but I didn't. I typed 911 into my phone but couldn't bring myself to call, mostly because I had no proof and I didn't want my parents to find out since they were overprotective. I still live with them by the way. I've been paranoid since this incident and my dog was frightened too. I guess she noticed something was really off. I swear to

god that I will always, always listen to my gut when it's telling me something from now on. I'm still scared of him and I've expected to randomly spot him in some area and wonder what he could have done to me. I can't forget his awful smile. I feel like he's going to reappear at my window one night and do whatever he wants to me. I feel paranoid and helpless and I'm still thinking about calling the police. To be continued... listening click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations i release new videos every monday wednesday and friday at 7 p.m eastern standard time if you get a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r slash let's read official and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future

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