The Lets Read Podcast - 262: HE WAS THE LAST PERSON I EXPECTED | 27 True Scary Stories | EP 250

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

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

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Let's hurry then! To my count. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. Visit Specsavers.ca for details. And In the year 2009, Gilberto Vallier was a 25-year-old police officer living with his elderly father in the New York City borough of Queens. As you can imagine, law enforcement is an extremely demanding profession, and it gave Gilberto very little time to do anything else. After grueling 14-hour shifts, all he wanted to do when he clocked off was collapse into bed and sleep like the dead. Then on his off days, he found himself far too exhausted to socialize, and this left Gilberto in something of a predicament. He longed for a romantic partner, but simply didn't have the time to look for one in person, so instead, he put his faith into the online dating

website OkCupid. This is how Gilberto met Kathleen Mangan, an elementary school teacher who'd recently settled in East Harlem. They hit it off fairly quickly, and after just a few months of dating, they moved into a small one-bedroom apartment together near 88th Street and 3rd Avenue. It was nice at first, Kathleen later recalled. We laughed a lot, he was a gentleman, but things changed after I got pregnant. After breaking the news to him, Kathleen expected Gilberto to be happy. Instead, he seemed horrified. He kept saying, I can't do this, I can't do this, Kathleen later explained. But after he calmed down, he called my parents and assured them that he'd do the right thing.

The apparent change of heart was a huge relief, but Gilberto's newfound fatherly enthusiasm was disappointingly short-lived. He drifted away from me, so slowly I almost didn't notice, Kathleen said. Then one day, he just didn't seem interested anymore. Many blamed Gilberto's behavior on the stresses of being a new parent, and he seemed to prove his detractors wrong when, after moving his nascent family into a larger two-bedroom apartment in Forest Hills, he asked Kathleen to marry him. Their wedding was held on June 19th of 2012, with their nine-month-old daughter, Josephine, being the unofficial guest of honor.

Making things official seemed to renew Gilberto's fatherly instincts, at least temporarily, but he soon sank back into the same patterns of disinterest and sorely neglected his wife and daughter. He rarely helped with the baby, Kathleen recalled. Then, when he came home from the precinct after midnight, he'd stay up till four, five, sometimes six in the morning, playing video games or browsing the internet. As far as she knew, Gilberto spent most of his time online browsing sports and policing forums, but one day, during the summer of 2012, Kathleen walked in on him doing something else. Having worked as a teacher for the better part

of a decade, Kathleen possessed an impressive level of computer literacy. This meant that when she walked into Gilberto's office that day, she recognized what he was doing. And what he was doing was a mass erasure of his internet browser's search history. Upon hearing her enter the room, Gilberto quickly minimized the browser window and pretended to have been doing something else. But Kathleen had noticed and she found herself gripped by a nail-biting curiosity. A few days later, and following Gilberto's morning departure, Kathleen crept into his office then logged onto his computer.

I noticed that there were two little image files at the bottom of the screen, she said, so I opened them. The images depicted an extremely disturbing variety of adult content, yet they also struck Kathleen as horrifyingly different from anything she had a cursory knowledge of. I've read Fifty Shades of Grey, I know what that stuff is, Kathleen said, but this was different, because the girl in the pictures, she was dead. There was a time when a more insecure Kathleen had believed that Gilberto's dispassion stemmed from her lack of attractiveness. Yet following the disturbing discovery on his desktop computer, she realized something was very wrong with her husband. She sent him a text message, one that simply read, we need to talk.

Then when Gilberto returned from his shift that evening, he seemed visibly nervous. During the confrontation, Gilberto broke down into tears and claimed that his interest in such deeply disturbing adult content stemmed from his inability to deal with stress. He promised to visit a therapist and swore he'd never visit any such websites ever again. I thought maybe we'd had a breakthrough, Kathleen later said. We were communicating, he was being honest, he was talking to me. But for the rest of that summer, I couldn't stop thinking about what I saw.

Finally, on September 9th of 2012, Kathleen once again crept into Gilberto's office while he was at work. Only this time, and on the advice of some online cybersecurity experts, it was to install a discrete form of spyware on his computer. I had no choice, she said. I was scared. And she was right to be. The following day, Kathleen used the spyware to find out which websites her husband had recently visited. What she found was nothing short of horrifying. The names of the websites were chilling, but what truly turned Kathleen's stomach was seeing what her husband had been getting up to. I started going through his instant messages, she said. Then all of a sudden, I'm staring at pictures of myself, pictures of my friends, pictures of other people we knew. Gilberto and his anonymous online friends had

been fantasizing about tying Kathleen up, hanging her upside down, then cutting her throat with a razor-sharp knife. They said it would be fun watching the blood gush out of me, she later said. Another person said, if she cries, don't listen to her, don't give her mercy. And all my husband had to say in response was, don't worry, we'll gag her. But that wasn't all, and as Kathleen continued to scroll through Gilberto's messages, she uncovered an appalling escalation of their fantasy. They didn't just want to kill me, she said. They wanted to cook me, and eat me too. Upon realizing that her life might be in danger, Kathleen immediately booked a flight to her parents' place in their home state of Nevada

and took baby Josephine with her. Gilberto remained blissfully ignorant of her discovery and continued to browse violent imagery online. He googled things like how to kidnap a woman and best human meat recipes. He also kept a secret folder hidden away among a veneer of innocent-sounding directories in which he kept photographs of the women he'd like to murder and cannibalize. Many were athletes and actresses, but many included his wife's family members, friends, and co-workers. One picture was captioned, I'll be eyeing her from head to toe and licking my lips, longing for the day I cram a chloroform-soaked rag in her face. It was now impossible for Kathleen to discern her husband's sick fantasies from palpable threats to the safety of her loved ones.

So, with a heavy heart, she reported Gilberto's activities to the police. Just a few days later, during the early afternoon of October 24th, Gilberto was enjoying a day off in his Forest Hills apartment when suddenly his phone began to ring. Gilberto didn't recognize the number, nor did he recognize the voice on the other end. Uh, is this Gilberto? The stranger asked. It is, the man himself replied. I'm sorry to tell you this, buddy, but I got this number from your insurance company, the stranger explained. Someone's hit your car pretty bad by the looks of things. You're home right now by any chance, are you? Gilberto didn't bother to answer the question.

He simply ended the call, then walked outside with a furious urgency about him. Yet when he arrived in the apartment complex's parking lot, he saw that his car hadn't so much as a scratch on it. Confused, Gilberto turned around to walk back inside, but found his path blocked by three sturdy-looking men in suits. Gilberto Vallier, one of them called out. It was not a question, they knew it was him. We're from the FBI and would like to ask you a few questions. Following a brief interrogation, Gilberto was placed under arrest. Then shortly afterward, he was charged with conspiracy to kidnap his own wife, Kathleen Mangan. Investigators soon discovered that there was no shortage of evidence and began collating emails which laid out Gilberto's strategies. In many of

these emails, Gilberto made it abundantly clear that he was ready and willing to abuse his authority as a police officer to lull potential victims into a false sense of security. This is what made the case all the more disturbing, said one U.S. attorney following Gilberto's arrest. When you consider Vallier's position as a New York City police officer and his sworn duty to serve and protect, it makes what he did unforgivable. By the time Gilberto's trial commenced, he had gained worldwide infamy as the cannibal cop of New York City. Yet as the judiciary set about determining his guilt, the court of public opinion was concerned with something else

entirely. To the public, it wasn't what Gilberto was being accused of. It was what he might do in the future, should he either beat the charge or receive a lenient sentence. Never in my career have I ever hesitated to tell the marshals to take the handcuffs off the client when I'm interviewing them one-on-one, said the federal attorney who defended Gilberto. And this was the first time in my career I'd ever, for just a second, thought about keeping the handcuffs on. Yet to some, this could be interpreted as a shockingly prejudicial statement. After all, Gilberto wasn't on trial for anything he'd actually done. He was on trial because of something he'd thought about doing.

The prosecution sought to paint Gilberto Vallez someone fully committed to living out the fantasies he'd fostered online. But where exactly did he go to indulge such lurid and bloodthirsty thoughts? One of the websites Gilberto visited the most was named The Dark Fetish Network. The FBI estimated that the network was comprised of over 50,000 unique users, and although its homepage bore a disclaimer stating, fantasies only, it was clear that many users practiced their proclivities on and off the internet.

Gilberto began visiting the DFN in late 2011 and under the username GirlMeetHunter, where he garnered sadistic admiration from fellow users on account of his frighteningly vivid fantasies. He partook in explicit exchanges with many of them, but maintained closely and constantly in touch with just three. The first was a 22-year-old mechanic from South Jersey named Mike Vanheese. The second was a British man named Dale Bollinger, who went by the username Moody Blues. And the third was a man named Ali Khan, who split his time between the US, the UK, and his native Pakistan. In January of 2012, Gilberto sent Mike Van Hees a photograph of Alicia Frisca, an elementary school teacher and close friend of Kathleen's. The caption simply read, Van Hees attempted to haggle Gilberto down to 4,000, to which he replied,

I'm putting my neck on the line here. If something goes wrong somehow, I'm done for. 5,000 and you need to make sure that she's not found. She would definitely make the news. During exchanges with Ali Khan, Gilberto suggested taking his wife on a surprise trip to India. There, she would be ambushed, murdered, and then cannibalized by the two men. We'll take turns with her, Gilberto wrote, after sending Ali a photo of Kathleen in a bikini. During his conversation with Ali, Gilberto exhibited a shocking amount of hatred for a woman named Andrea Noble, who was later determined to have been one of his old college friends. It's personal with Andrea, Gilberto wrote. She will absolutely suffer. I'm in the middle of constructing a pulley apparatus in my basement to string her up by her feet. It was never confirmed

why Gilberto felt such amnest towards an old friend, but whatever it was, it inspired a murderous grudge in him that lasted more than a decade. By the summer of 2012, Gilberto was heavily engaged with conversations with Dale Bollinger, the British man who went by the username Moody Blues. Bollinger boasted of his ownership of a large industrial oven that had been installed in an isolated cabin nestled among the desolate highlands of northern Scotland. Gilberto showed him numerous pictures of female friends and co-workers before Bollinger settled on a woman named Kimberly Sauer. She's perfect, he said. It must be her. Once she's dead, I'll take her out and properly butcher her body, then cook the meat right away. We could even mount her on a spit like a rotisserie chicken.

Gilberto later emailed Bollinger in a word document entitled, A Blueprint for Abducting and Cooking Kimberly, and listed the materials they needed to murder and cannibalize her without attracting attention to themselves. Gil listed assets and materials such as chloroform, a fully functioning vehicle that would not break down or otherwise cause them trouble, a length of strong rope and a roll of duct tape, a tarp or plastic sheet to contain forensic evidence, and cheap sneakers that they could wear before burning to minimize the amount of forensic evidence available to law enforcement. During the course of their investigation, the FBI discovered that Gilberto had utilized the NYPD's database in order to peruse the files of potential victims. Records showed that from the summer of 2011 to the summer of 2012, Gilberto gained access

to the files of three women, Andrea Noble, Kimberly Sauer, and Maureen Hartigan, who was an old high school friend. The files were mostly basic information such as date of birth, eye color, as well as previous convictions. However, they also contained information Gil would have found very useful, their home addresses. On July 22nd of 2012, Gilberto told one of his online companions that he'd made up with Kimberly Sauer during a college reunion down in Maryland. She looked absolutely mouthwatering, he said. I could hardly contain myself. Just over a month later, Gilberto and Bollinger discussed methods by which they could abduct a woman named Christine Ponticelli. Gil and Christine had never met,

but since she was a recent graduate from his former high school, he most likely happened across her picture or profile via some kind of social media group for alumni. However, it's worth noting that Gill's attention seemed to have erratically shifted from day to day. Not long after he fantasized over Ponticelli's kidnap and murder, he became almost entirely consumed with the previously mentioned Andrea Noble. I swear, he wrote, if she lived near me, she'd be gone by now. Even if I got caught, it'd be so worth it. Gil seemed primed to act on his psychotic urges, but when the FBI raided his home in October of 2012, there wasn't a single scrap of physical evidence which suggested that he was about to

kidnap, kill, or cook someone. And despite frequently boasting of his efforts to brew a batch of homemade chloroform, there were no traces of the chemical storage or its manufacturer at the Forest Hills apartment. At his trial, one of Gilberto's defense attorneys, Edward Zoss, laid out the crux of his legal argument. According to the client's direct messages, three different women were due to be kidnapped on President's Day, he said. That day comes and goes, but nothing happens. Then my client changes the proposed date to Labor Day, but once again, that day comes and goes and nothing happens. Nothing happened because

it's all just fantasy. Violent and disturbing disturbing fantasies of course, but fantasies nevertheless. Befitting his profession, Edward Zoss spoke calmly and confidently in the courtroom setting, but he later admitted the difficulties of such a case. The only way you can defend this case practically was to take on the burden of convincing this jury somehow, really to a certainty, that he could never do this, said Zoss. But then, how do you do that in a case where the guy is admittedly interested in this stuff? Eventually, on New Year's Eve of 2012, renowned New York forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz interviewed Gilberto in his holding cell. Dietz rose to fame through his assertion that Jeffrey Dahmer was of sound mind when he committed his string of horrifying murders, and it was his job to determine whether Gilberto was willing or capable of acting on his lurid fantasies.

Following a lengthy question and answer session, Dietz determined that Gilberto had no desire to actually live out the things he discussed online. Dietz already knew from Vonnier's NYPD psychology file that the officer had been administered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a standard test meant to identify personality structure and detect signs of psychopathy. The test showed no clinical psychopathology, Dietz said, and that's not something I run into very much. Even the most unassuming of people can display psychopathic traits, which means Officer Vallier is either the most skilled manipulator Dietz has ever encountered,

or he truly was of sound mental health. During the interviews, Gilberto openly discussed intimate details of his upbringing with Dr. Dietz and explained the origin of his bizarre and violent fantasies. As a child, he'd been taken to a screening of Jim Carrey's The Mask. The movie itself was amusing enough, but afterwards, Gilberto remembered fixating on an image of Cameron Diaz, who at one point had her wrists bound before being tied to a tree. The Mask would quickly become a younger Gilberto's favorite movie,

though he never told anyone why he enjoyed it so much or why he'd play the same scene over and over again. By the end of high school, Gilberto was a frequent visitor of a website known as Mookie's Kitchen, infamous for its depictions of terrified young women being killed, butchered, and then cooked in cruel and creative ways. However, in his real life, Gilberto was never anything but quietly respectful towards women and remained a virgin until he met his wife, Kathleen. In fact, there are no available testimonies of him acting in a violent or

threatening manner towards just about anyone. I saw the kinds of things Officer Vallier was saying online, Dr. Dietz said, and there's no denying how disturbing they are. I also understand how the evidence could be construed in that way that suggests that he might act on such fantasies, but I see him as many steps removed from the kind of person that might start to take action. To class someone as a potential offender, you need to be more than just whatever sick thoughts are floating around their head, Dietz went on to explain. You need all the aggressive actions and character flaws that indicate they might be, that one in a thousand monster we're all afraid of. But in Officer Vallier's case, I couldn't find them. During his trial summations on March 7th of 2013, Gilberto openly wept as he listened to his attorney describe his wife's decision to divorce

him. His foolishness on the internet, his insensitive ugly thoughts have cost him everything, one of them said. The conversations are preposterous. They are disturbing. They're disgusting. We should be upset that people are thinkingosterous, they are disturbing, they're disgusting. We should be upset that people are thinking these thoughts, but they do not constitute a criminal offense. In response, the state's prosecutor painted Gilberto as a reckless, impulsive man who was just days away from acting on his perverse urges. There is something incredibly wrong just in the fact that with a New York City police officer talking about killing a high school student and then googling to try to get information about her address, U.S. Attorney Randall Jackson said, that is a man who was trying to move a plan into action.

Think about your favorite restaurant, Jackson continued, if you were to find out that the chef at that restaurant had a deep-seated fantasy of poisoning all of the people in the restaurant, and that night after night he was engaging in conversations with other people about how he could poison the restaurant goers, would you continue to eat at that restaurant? Of course you wouldn't. Five days following summations, and after many hours of deliberation, the jury convened for their final court appearance. The foreman appeared visibly exhausted as he stood back up, took a breath, and read the verdict. We find the defendant guilty, he said, on the charge of conspiracy to kidnap. Gilberto shook his head in disbelief as he was led away by bailiffs,

and many claimed the verdict was a clear miscarriage of justice. Were the jury even watching the same trials as us? Gilberto's mother asked one journalist. But in the days that followed, a member of the jury publicly defended their decision. We did what we did in good conscience, said Victor Pinerro, because we believed his fantasy was going to step into reality. In the same way an addict needs a larger and larger dose, he was needing things that were more and more real. He was bringing it into real life. At his sentencing, Gilberto received life in prison for the conspiracy charge and a maximum of five years for accessing the Federal National Crime Information Center database without authorization.

Gilberto's mother was horrified and was a central figure in coordinating his eventual appeal, which shocked everyone when it was met with success during June of 2014. A judge from the Federal District Court announced that Gilberto's conviction was set to be overturned, saying the evidence supported his contention that he was engaged in only fantasy roleplay. And by that time, Gil had already served 21 months in prison, and the lesser conviction regarding unauthorized access to the NYPD database was commuted to time served, and he was released. Since his exoneration, Gill has been incredibly open about his past and present, and authored the book Raw Deal, the untold story of NYPD's cannibal cop. Amazon describes the book as a controversial saga of a man who was imprisoned for thought crimes

and look into an online world of dark fantasy and violence that most people don't know exists, except maybe in their nightmares. Gilberto Vallieri might have escaped a jail sentence, but the FBI hadn't finished with the dark fetish network. In January of 2013, they raided the Hamilton, New Jersey home of 22-year-old Mike Van Heese and found evidence of fantasies involving children on his personal computer. Shockingly, his wife defended these fantasies, telling reporters, I was cool with it. It's disturbing, yeah, but you have to accept your partner's flaws in a marriage. No one's perfect. Following his arrest, Mike began cooperating with the FBI and aiding them in the apprehension of two other suspected child abusers, a 65-year-old police chief in Bedford, Massachusetts, and a 61-year-old former high school librarian

who in 2009 had faced accusations of inappropriate contact with four male students. The FBI intercepted Mike's communications with the two men, assumed his identity, then made an ambiguous request from the man from Massachusetts. Essentially, the FBI asked him nothing more than to show up at a certain place with stuff for a thing, and when he did, he brought along a taser, a claw hammer, some meat skewers, and a dental instrument used in the removal of human teeth. Dale Bollinger, aka the Moody Blues, was arrested in the UK following a joint operation between British and American police. After a four-day trial at Can female friend's mouth in July of 2010. After giving him a nine-year jail sentence, the presiding judge said his behavior was abhorrent, shocking, and dangerous, while a psychiatrist ruled that Bollinger was not

suffering from mental illness. None of this is real, he said during an attempt to defend himself. I'm an idiot because I went and put stupid things online, thinking that it was funny. But what's perfectly clear in Bollinger's case is that his posts were intended to be anything but comical. He had already committed a serious predatory offense by the time he came into contact with Gilberto Vallier, one that he undoubtedly deserved to be punished for. Whereas in Gilberto's case, he was convicted of a thought crime, not a violent or predatory one. Perhaps Dr. Park Dietz has best summed it up when he said, What troubles me is that the whole world fails to recognize that just because someone has a desire to do something doesn't mean they'll do it.

The only problem is, very few people find themselves gripped by violent fantasies. And among those that do, an even smaller percentage spend hours and hours at a time writing about them with strangers on the dark web. Serial killers have been known to spend years at a time preparing for their killing sprees, and much of it includes lurid ideations that are shockingly similar to Gilberto Vallier's. So where exactly is the line between ideation and intention? Perhaps it's not Dr. Dietz who said it best, but rather an old folk singer who once sang, and if my thought dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine. But it's all right, Ma, it's life, and life only.

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

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Valid email address required. Terms apply. See pennzoil.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. In August of 2014, a 58-year-old man from southern Florida sat down at his computer and opened a very special kind of web browser. Using a software known as Tor, the man was not only able to browse what's known as the surface net completely anonymously, but it also granted him access to the secret labyrinthine substructure commonly referred to as the dark web. Once cloaked in his digital shroud, the man began the lengthy process of uploading all the necessary files to create his very own website. But unlike many others who sought to exploit the anonymity of the dark web to profit from cybercrime or illicit marketplaces, the 58

year old Floridian had something very different in mind. His website would be named The Playpen, and his goal was to catalog the largest collection of child exploitation material in history. And just a few months later, the playpen came to the attention of the FBI as a result of Operation Pacifier, one of the largest global anti-child exploitation efforts in law enforcement history. The Bureau claimed that they were aware of the site's existence from the day of its creation, but were unable to act until they'd accurately tracked the location of the site's servers, and thus its owner and operator. The discovery came following a tip from Interpol, the international law enforcement entity that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control. Agents from over in Europe had

themselves received a tip from a member of the public who claimed to have made a chilling discovery whilst casually surfing the internet. After attempting to directly enter the IP address of another computer, the tipster must have entered a wrong number because, a split second after pressing the computer's enter key, they were faced with a truly harrowing sight. There, in full view of any average Joe's SurfaceNet user, was a huge collection of child exploitation material, all under the banner of a website called The Playpen. Finally, in February of 2015, FBI agents managed to track the servers to a home in Naples, Florida, and following a decisive dawn raid, the 58-year-old Floridian was identified as Stephen W. Chase. Upon realizing that he faced life in a federal prison's protective custody unit, Stephen promised to fully cooperate with his FBI captors, and when prompted, he gave them full and unfettered access to his devices and hard drives.

The FBI spent weeks mining data from the drive containing the website's backup data, and Stephen Chase's computer was a goldmine of information concerning the identity and whereabouts of his fellow degenerates. But once they were done, the FBI didn't close the playpen down as one might expect them to. Instead, they kept it running. Between February 19th and March 4th of 2015, the sole operators of one of the most active dark web child exploitation forums was none other than the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Unnamed agents did their best to maintain the ruse that Chase was still in charge of the site, striving to mimic his typing style and vocabulary so that the website's users believed

it was business as usual. During those two weeks, the website's user base was said to have grown by more than 30%, as people from all over the dark web flocked to yet another burgeoning collection of stomach-churning depravity. But all the while, FBI cybercrime specialists employed a malware-based network investigative technique to hack into the computers of those who visited the site, which in turn revealed sensitive personal information that could be used to track and arrest them. By the time they finally closed the website down, and in tandem with a plethora of international policing agencies, the FBI had secured the arrests of almost a thousand individuals from around the globe. Five of those arrests led to almost instantaneous convictions for a number of high-ranking site users, putting a huge dent in the trade of child exploitation content worldwide.

When the news broke that such a huge number of child abusers had been apprehended as a result of Operation Pacifier, it was met with celebration by the wider general public. However, as more and more details began to emerge, and journalists leaked the fact that the FBI had continued the website's operation following the arrest of its owner, there was widespread public outrage. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, who promote online civil liberties, heavily criticized the FBI for committing the very crime it was charged with putting a stop to. Others claimed that there was evidence that the FBI not only operated the site,

but significantly improved its speed, navigation, and accessibility. The FBI defended this decision, claiming that everything they did was in aid of their overall mission, and reminded critics that the operation had bagged almost a thousand dangerous individuals, as well as promoting the rescue of hundreds of abused children from all four corners of the globe. However, in one case, their brazen technique meant that one of the very same predators they sought to apprehend got to walk free with no charges whatsoever. The initial search warrants secured by FBI agents restricted them to gather information from only the Eastern District of Virginia. But little did the agents know their malware-based data mining application was designed with the sole purpose of indiscriminately

siphoning data from every single user who visited the site. That meant that when it became evident that this was the case, at least one suspected individual was released without charge after the search warrant was declared invalid in this particular case. To some, this might seem like an easy mistake to make. A cut corner here, a miscommunication there. Things just naturally go wrong sometimes. But skirting the restrictions of a federal warrant is an extremely serious breach of judicial procedure, something a small towntown sheriff's deputy knows damned well not to do. Therefore, it really does beg the question, why would an experienced FBI agent do something that would obviously undermine such an important investigation? Assistant Federal Defender Peter Adolph claimed that he had evidence that the playpen distributed 200 videos, 9,000 images, and 13,000 links to illicit images of children while the FBI oversaw the site.

Adolf backed up his bold claims with archived messages from playpen users who frequently commented on how well the site was running during the FBI's secretive tenure. In 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit weighed in on whether the FBI should have operated the Playpen website in its United States v. Anzalone opinion. It argued that operating such a despicable website for two weeks amounted to outrageous government conduct that violated due process. The court also argued, in operating the Playpen, the FBI had distributed this material to hundreds of thousands of individuals, and in doing so, had absolutely no control over how these images would be used forthwith. While the court said the government's conduct borders on outrageous, it refused to dismiss the charges. Ideally, they said the FBI should not have run a child exploitation

website for any length of time, but at the same time, and I'm using their words here, we do not live in an ideal world. Recognizing that another website would just pop up in 24 hours, the FBI decided to run the website, deciding that the rewards far outweighed any risk. It's entirely true that running the playpen led to the arrest and conviction, as well as the rescue of hundreds of exploited children from around the globe. But the question remains, at what point do the ends stop justifying the means. In late August of 2015, a spine-chilling rumor began circulating around the internet. Among the deepest reaches of fringe forums such as 4chan, as well as certain sections of more mainstream sites such as Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, a mysterious group of self-declared militants claimed to have captured several Islamic State fighters. Not only that, but they announced their intentions to beat, torture, and then murder them,

all via a dark web live streaming site. On a monochrome, hastily constructed website, the group posted a chilling statement of intent. We are working around the clock. We're operating in a war zone and got more urgent things to worry about but we will deliver and we will hit the deadline. Expect fun games and torture as promised. All interactive and completely free of charge. We will make at least the first hour family friendly, the statement continued, and explicitly warn you before things get violent. but we won't stop under any circumstances.

Torture must become death. Red rooms are a hard business and few can stomach it. It also means a lot of attention and extra hassle for us, but we promise one thing. We will make them movie stars. The rumors spread like wildfire and before long, secondary sources of information such as the subreddits r slash darkweb and r slash tor began counting down the hours until the murderous stream was set to commence. The subscriber numbers of both subreddits ballooned, yet most users weren't there out of any real thirst for blood. They were simply curious. They wanted undeniable, irrefutable proof that the darkest legends of the deep web were actually true. At its core, the dark web, or deep web as it's sometimes referred to, is in reality a relatively small collection of websites that are unsearchable and almost untraceable. As you can imagine,

this makes the dark web an attractive concept to those interested in illicit marketplaces. But according to some, the anonymity that Tor browsers and Onion routers bring has drawn in a very different kind of predator. There are rumors of videotaped gladiatorial fights to the death, or deranged World War II era experiments being replicated for the benefit of paying observers. Others promise to turn a grown adult woman into a so-called living doll, whereby she is encased in a restrictive latex suit before being subjected to horrendous methods of physical torture. But of all the pervasive legends spawned by the dark web, the so-called red rooms are perhaps the most disturbing of all.

Legend has it that somewhere among the deepest reaches of the dark web, people are broadcasting live and fully interactive executions of innocent, often hand-picked individuals. But do these red rooms actually exist? It's a tediously common question, said Eileen Ormsby, an Australian journalist who spent years studying the dark web and all of its related phenomena. How can I go deeper in the deep web? Where's the really dark stuff? Well, the answer is pretty simple. That darker side that people talk of, it simply doesn't exist. Eileen is quick to point out that in some cases, crimes against humanity have indeed been broadcast live on the dark web, but not the kind associated with Red Rooms. It's been said that notorious Australian child abuser Peter Scully first broadcast the infamous Daisy's Destruction live on the dark web to a select audience of paying customers,

and only later uploaded it behind a paywall amounting to 10,000 US dollars. But in terms of actual red rooms existing for the purpose of live executions, Eileen Ormsby says the idea is ludicrous. The FBI has dealt with dark web cases relating to child exploitation, kidnapping, narcotics trafficking, and even contract killing. But as Eileen argues, if they're real, why haven't Red Rooms found their way onto the list? And if Red Rooms truly are real, how has not a single, confirmable screenshot made its way onto the surface web? It's worth noting that around the early 2010s, which is round about the same time that the first rumors of Red Rooms began to circulate,

the internet witnessed the meteoric rise of a novel form of short horror story. Named in parody of another popular online trend known as copypasta, creepypastas followed a very similar concept. However, instead of whimsical or thought-provoking paragraphs, users copied and pasted short-form horror stories onto each other's pages and profiles instead. The likes of Jeff the Killer, Candle Cove, Smile Dog, and the now notorious Slender Man were being circulated around almost every single forum and social media site on the internet, with the latter being so popular that it spawned several spin-offs, including movies, documentaries, and video games. In response to the demand for such content, Reddit users created a forum known as NoSleep, with its sole purpose being to collate the ever mounting numbers of creepypastas being churned out by amateur writers. But as the collection of short, sometimes ambiguous short horror stories began to

swell, a decidingly bizarre phenomenon began to emerge. It began when one NoSleep subscriber posed the innocent question of, is this story real? The vast majority of respondents gave the perfectly logical answer of, probably not, this reads like a fictional story. Other users asserted the contrary, that the story could quite easily be real, but once it had been established that No Sleep was indeed a creative writing forum, interest in what was posted there dropped off dramatically. However, instead of allowing interest to die off organically, the forum's moderators took the incredible step of removing any posts or comments that made any reference to fiction, creative writing, or even the word story itself. One might expect such rampant interference to be poison for a place built on free expression, but instead, something incredible happened.

The forum's subscribership ballooned to 1 million, then 5, then 10 million, and to date, NoSleep's subscriber numbers stand at over 17 million individual users. Visitors and contributors alike found they actually appreciated the moderator's efforts to curate an online space where the lies and truth were indistinguishably blurred. NoSleep is so popular because its users enjoy actively suspending their disbelief. It thrills them to think that such fantastical stories might be true. In fact, many actively wish that they were. Just in the same way that those who propagate rumors of Red Rooms are overtly or covertly thrilled that they might just exist somewhere, down in the darkest recesses of the dark web. Interestingly, a British hacker nicknamed Cthulhu has claimed that he's come across several different red rooms while going

across the dark web. But rather than the macabre spectacle they advertised themselves to be, Cthulhu explained that they were nothing but scams. I decided to take a look at their servers, he said, just to see where they were located, but found they had less security than your average company-issued laptop. I thought it was strange that such an illicit network didn't seem to have any major security concerns, so I carried on digging. Then shortly afterwards, I determined it was a scam. Users would be charged exorbitant amounts of money to gain access to the red room and once they did they were greeted by an ominous looking countdown clock which informed them of when the

show would be starting but then when the timer ran out the page began to load then was nothing maybe an error message maybe a blank screen but certainly not any kind of live execution or snuff film remember the isis red room we discussed at the beginning of this? Well, exactly the same thing happened there. The trolls who put the site together had promised that a variety of grisly punishments would be inflicted on their terrorist captors. But when the feed went live, 21 minutes of nothing ended with a suspiciously clean and well-groomed prisoner

being force-fed cooked bacon. They promised a snuff film. Instead, they fed a guy lunch. The site was later replaced by a notice stating it had been seized as part of a joint law enforcement operation. The notice appeared to be made by an amateur. A similar website popped up just days later, but once again, it proved to be a complete farce. The lack of solid evidence of red rooms has led some to believe that they're nothing but an urban legend. However, during the summer of 2020, two 17-year-old Italian boys were arrested on suspicion of having paid entry to an online execution room. After 10 months,

the investigation by the Carabinieri of Siena, with the cooperation of the prosecutor of minors of Florence, claimed the website the boys had attempted to access was called the Hell of Horrors, and contained thousands of rooms, chats, blogs, and shop windows containing every kind of abomination conceivable. The boys were apparently released without charge, but their arrest shows that at least some government agencies are taking the threat of Red Rooms very seriously. But in all honesty, that should come as no surprise.

At this point, the concept of Red Rooms has existed for more than a hundred years. Back in 1894, H.G. wells released a short story with the same title one which tells the tale of a haunted bedroom within an old gothic castle the term red room was also used to describe an area of the haunted house in the 1977 book the amityville horror and was used as a term to describe the protagonist bdsm room in the novel 50 shades of gray then in 1999 japanese film director daisuki yamanuchi released his seminal horror classic also named red room this incarnation was much more in line with the contemporary idea of red rooms and involve prisoners who are forced to pick cards to decide which kind of torture will be inflicted, who will

apply it, and who will be the next victim. The chosen tortures start off relatively mild, but gradually escalate into extreme sadism and abuse. As you can see, Red Rooms are not a new concept, and by the time they became an internet legend, the term had been a byword for places in which acts of evil occur for more than a century. But perhaps the truly frightening thing about red rooms is that they might actually be real. And it's that we can't seem to discern what actually occurs on the dark web and what doesn't. Some sections of society have cultivated online spaces that are so far removed from reality that truth itself has become a fluid concept. If we all believe that red rooms exist, then by some philosophical standards they do exist, albeit in a rather abstract manner. Red rooms have well and truly

entered the collective consciousness and humanity's very history as a tale of dragging the imaginary into reality. That means it might only be a matter of time before someone takes such a frightening but mythical concept and turns it into a terrifying reality. Checking off your to-do list? Here's an easy one from Pennzoil. Get up to a $30 MasterCard prepaid virtual card with the purchase of 10 liters of Pennzoil Ultra Platinum at Canadian Tire. Maximizing engine protection and getting a reward for it? That's two checks on your list.

Pennzoil. Long may we drive. Offer ends 8-31-25. Valid at participating locations only. Valid email address required. Terms apply. See pennzoil.ca slash offer for details. MasterCard is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. So, just to kind of give you a picture, I'm not a small woman. I'm over 6 feet tall and I weigh around 200 pounds. That, paired with the fact that a lot of that weight is muscle, doesn't make me the most obvious target.

But even though that's what I always told myself, it didn't make it true. I guess in the eyes of an evil man, a woman is a woman, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had something he wanted and I think we all know what I'm talking about without me having to say it. I usually work from home, but every so often I have to take a refresher course with my company so they can make sure that I still know what I'm doing and track my progress. I think it's a little unnecessary for someone who's been doing the job for 10 years like I have, but I understand it's part of making sure the company runs smoothly and if I have to sacrifice one weekend every six months, I try not to complain. They always set me up in a relatively nice hotel and give me vouchers for food so it's not too bad. Only this time when I got the email about having to take the course, I wasn't too pleased to find out that I'd have to

drive into the city during a storm. The course was around three hours away and the drive kind of sucked already but it had to be done. I took my time getting to my hotel. It may have taken me double the time to get there and I drove way slower than I probably needed to, but I wanted to get there in one piece and was happy when I finally pulled up to my destination. Exhausted, but happy. The rain was still coming down like crazy. It almost felt like it was following me. I was actually pretty upset when I got out of the car and found myself standing in front of a gross sleazy motel. There were some seedy characters standing out front and there was not one single bit of me that wanted to spend the night there.

But seeing as it was already 10pm and I didn't have the means to stay anywhere else, I really had no choice. I walked into the small room that would usually be called a lobby. But calling that would be an insult to lobbies everywhere. It was just a room with a guy sitting in a recliner with a laptop and a TV tray. I told him I was checking in and gave him my name. He asked if I was traveling alone and I instinctually said yes. My first mistake. He asked for payment and I quickly explained to him that my company was paying for it. I did notice a brief moment where he looked a little confused but he wiped that look off his face within seconds and apologized and said that he had forgotten. He typed something into the

computer and told me that I was good to go. I was given the key to my room and a small paper map on how to get there. I opened the door to my room and was immediately met with this stench of cigarettes. My mom smoked when I was a kid so the smell didn't bring back any happy memories, I'll just say that. I closed and locked the door behind me and everything in me told me to turn around and get back in my car and just go home. But I liked my job and didn't want to risk losing it. I inspected the gross comforter and just go home, but I liked my job and didn't want to risk losing it. I inspected the gross comforter and just ended up taking it off the bed altogether. I sat down on the sheets and decided to call my boss to ask why they put me in such a disgusting place. I knew it was late, but she and

I had become pretty good friends, which made me feel like calling at that hour wasn't completely unprofessional. The phone rang over and over but she never answered. I left her a message and hung up the phone. I just sat there in silence for a while. I didn't want to lay down in that bed or even take my shoes off in this place. I was pretty sure that there was a blood stain on the pillowcase and I knew that there was a 99% chance that if I looked to see if there were any bed bugs, I'd probably find them. And after around 30 minutes of contemplating what I should

do, I decided to sleep in my car would probably be better than spending any more time in that room, so that was exactly what I did. I grabbed my bag and exited the room as quietly as possible. I was grossed out beyond belief but I still wanted to be courteous to the people in the rooms around me and not wake them. When I closed the door behind me I was relieved to see the men that were standing a few doors down when I had pulled up were no longer there. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but being cautious isn't a crime. I loaded my bag into my car and hopped in the backseat to try and get some sleep before the refresher course the next day. I don't know how long I

was asleep before I was woken up by the sound of men talking not far from where I was laying in my car. I peeked out from behind the driver's seat and noticed the man who checked me in earlier standing outside the room that I had abandoned not long before. He was talking to the other two men that I had seen when I pulled up. I watched them and was horrified when he pulled out a key and began unlocking the door to my room. I could have tried to make excuses for what they were doing, but in that moment, my heart was going so fast that it was obvious. They turned the knob slowly and crept in without turning on the light. I realized quickly that the second they figured out I wasn't in there, my car would be the first place that they'd

looked and I'd be in danger. I tried my hardest to be as quiet as I climbed back into the front seat of the car. I turned the key in the ignition and heard shouting and saw the lights go on in the room. The three men came running out, shouting something at me in a language that I didn't understand in that moment. The car wouldn't start. It was completely dead. I tried over and over, but nothing was happening. The man approached my window and told me to get out. I obviously wasn't planning on doing that. I took out my phone and I began dialing 911. Thankfully, the operator answered and I frantically told her what was going on and where I was. She told me that the earliest an officer could get to me was about 20 minutes.

Apparently, services were delayed because of the storm. She told me that she'd stay on the line with me and I appreciated her for doing that. I just want to say that. I look back on the situation and honestly believe that she's the reason that I made it through this whole ordeal alive and I'm not more traumatized than I already was. And these men, they were relentless. They tried everything to get access to the car. They tried breaking the windows and even got a crowbar to try and pry the door open. After ten minutes of failing to get into the car, one of the men got frustrated and jumped on the hood and started to smash the

windshield in with his foot. I guess that's the moment that my fight or flight kicked in, and my reaction wasn't flight. The operator reassured me that I could do what I needed to do since my life was in danger. I remember even telling her that I might kill these men, and I meant that in that moment. And at that moment, I was fully prepared to end a life. I opened the door. I stepped out. I don't think they were expecting that, but they leapt at me immediately nonetheless. Thankfully, all three of the men probably were weighing 100 pounds soaking

wet. They were incredibly skinny, and I like to assume that they had the mentality that because they were men, they could just overpower me, but they were wrong. The first man who came at me, I threw him to the ground. His head smacked against the pavement and it did enough damage to ensure that I don't think he was trying to get back up. The second man tried taking me to the ground, but he was also unsuccessful. I grabbed him by his hair, pulled him off of me as best I could. His other friend had a knife and I felt it cut into my back. The pain wasn't too bad, but the shock of it led me to let go of the man that I had previously gotten a hold of and before

I knew it, I was on the ground being kicked. I was trying to protect my head, mostly out of instinct. At that moment, from my periphery, I could see the blue and red flashing lights in the distance, and I felt a relief wash over me even as I was being beaten. I reached my arm out and grabbed one of the men by the ankle. I pulled on his leg as hard as I could, and he eventually fell to the ground. The other man ran when he saw the police, and out of pure adrenaline and anger, I got up and just started pounding down on this now defenseless man in the face over and over and over. We were just both soaking wet from the rain, and his blood was starting to come off of his face into the asphalt, and I didn't even hear the officer telling me to

stop in that moment. I just felt a hand on my shoulder and turned and saw their face. The man that I had beat was now unconscious and they eventually took him away in an ambulance. I was also taken to the hospital. The beating I took caused some serious bruises and the cut, but thankfully there were no major injuries. I got around 10 stitches on the wound on my back. It wasn't pleasant, but I was just happy to be alive. My manager ended up calling me back not long after I had gotten to the hospital. She was completely frantic and had no idea what I was talking about in my voicemail. She said that she had booked me at a really nice hotel in the same city and she had no idea why that I had ended up where I did.

She sent me the info to the correct hotel and I realized immediately what happened. Both places had the same name but just a kind of different spelling and I ended up at the wrong place. The guy in the lobby had a confused look on his face because he actually didn't have any idea what I was talking about. He just pretended to so he could check me into a room that he would have access to. Single female, traveling alone, the perfect target. The drive home in a rental car later that day after being discharged from the hospital and I decided to take some time off from work. My car was towed back into town and repaired at the expense of the company that I

worked for. I guess there was some serious damage done to the engine, presumably done to get me from getting away. The company I worked for was actually very supportive after everything that had happened. I was also pleased to find out that they caught the other attacker who had run away that night. Apparently he was hiding out at his mother's house. I was asked to come in to ID him, which wasn't the easiest thing I've ever had to do, but I did it. Anything to make sure that those men couldn't hurt me again. I guess this wasn't the first time something similar has happened in that motel, only they could never really prove it before my incident, and many of these men were just some strung out drug

addicts, hence why they were so small. The trial had been delayed due to the lockdowns, but they were all charged with attempted kidnapping and aggravated assault and are actually currently awaiting trial in jail. I'm hoping for justice, and for all three of those men to spend a good amount of time behind bars. I also know I'm just one of the lucky ones. I don't know what I would have done or what would have happened if I was a smaller woman or if no one had ever come to help me. Would I even be here today? Would I even be able to tell this story?

I don't know, but I'm grateful I am. And I'm grateful I survived. Some time in 2014, an Australian police officer named Stephen Hegarty was reviewing constituted some of the most maddeningly disturbing things he'd ever seen. Each picture showed a child below the age of ten, being abused by someone considerably older, and they weren't simply a handful of photographs, there were thousands of them. Sometimes the abuser was female, most of the time they were male, but all had gone to considerable lengths to obscure their faces, along with any distinguishable tattoos, scars, or marks. At least, so they thought. As Hegarty continued to study the horrifying photographs, he suddenly noticed something small and seemingly insignificant. On one of the abuser's fingers, just below where flesh met fingernail, was a small, dark freckle. The same freckle was present on the finger of almost all the masked abusers depicted in the photographs, leading Hegarty to the realization that they were all the same person, all the same man. The freckle constituted a minuscule detail, but it was one that would become a key piece of physical evidence

in a global policing operation designed to combat the exploitation of children. Christened Operation Prism, the operation sought to bring down the single largest child exploitation site on the dark web, whose estimated 45,000 members accessed via sophisticated Tor encryption software. The Australian division of the investigation team, headed by Hagerty and dubbed Task Force Argos, had discovered that the man running the site was actually a fellow Australian, and was most likely living in the southernmost area of the country. Yet despite having a rough idea of his location, the man's identity remained a mystery.

The only thing police had to go on was the four-letter username he used when communicating on the site, SURF. A few weeks later, South Australian Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Dixon received a call from an officer at Task Force Argos. All they said was we had a potential target in our jurisdiction, Dixon later said. But at that stage, we didn't know his name, who he was. We didn't even know he existed. All we knew was the username Surf. The global investigation into the website, the name of which has been kept a

closely guarded secret, went public in 2011 when a German man was arrested on charges of exploiting children. This is how police first learned that the website's owner was operating out of South Australia. Having shifted their attention to the region, police managed to arrest a high-ranked member of the site who was living in Queensland. Police had hoped that the man was the mysterious Cerf, but to their dismay, he was not. However, the man revealed that Cerf was indeed Australian and confirmed that he was operating from the south of the country. Another break in the case came in early 2014, when Dutch police raided the apartment of a suspected child abuser and seized his electronic devices. Then, after analyzing his computer's hard drive, investigators discovered that the man had ready access to the notorious website and demanded he hand over his credentials. Using the man's login details, police managed to access the site, then began analyzing

the metadata from a number of different photographs. Almost all of them had been taken by the exact same make and model of camera, a compact variety of Panasonic. Wherever Cerf was acquiring his illegal content, more than 90% of it appeared to be coming from the exact same source. Officers from Task Force Argos began trawling the internet for any other mentions of a user named Surf. It took weeks, but they found one. On a forum dedicated to discussion between owners of four-wheel drive vehicles, officers discovered that several posts had been written by a user named Surf. Surf claimed to be an experienced off-roader

and appeared highly opinionated regarding the best kinds of tires and suspension to use to ensure a vehicle was truly suitable for all terrains. But what officers noticed almost immediately was the near-identical style of typing. It was undoubtedly the same Surf from the infamous unnamed website. They just had to find proof. Two days later, after trawling through thousands of surf posts and comments, police made a breakthrough. Many of the links surf had posted were broken and brought back nothing but 404 pages. But one worked, and that one was all they needed. Officers found themselves staring at a Volkswagen Amarok, a crew cab pickup truck produced by VW since 2010. But most importantly, the truck's registration

plate was visible, and after plugging it into the national database, a single name came back. Shannon McCool. Following a preliminary background check, police made a truly harrowing discovery. Shannon McCool, one of the biggest purveyors of child exploitation material on the planet, had been working with children and young people through various volunteer programs for the better part of a decade. But what's worse, is at the time of the background check, Shannon was a full-time employee of South Australia's Department for Child Protection, meaning he had direct access to dozens of highly vulnerable children. Officers from Task Force Argos leapt into action, gathering as much data and evidence on McCool as possible. If they wanted to guarantee a conviction, they needed as strong a case as

possible, but that meant biding their time and allowing McCool to continue operating the site, causing irreparable harm to an untold number of innocent children. As the investigation progressed, police made yet another disturbing discovery. During the summer of 2013, an anonymous tipster contacted Shannon's employer, the Department for Child Protection, claiming he'd made an inappropriate comment regarding one of the children in his case. Shannon was suspended for three months pending an official investigation, but incredibly, was permitted to return to work following vehement denials and a general lack of evidence.

Investigating police officers were understandably nauseated by these new details, and it was clear that McCool posed a clear and present threat to the safety of children everywhere. But it was also through their careful analysis of McCool and his likeness that they made their biggest breakthrough yet. One of the officers from Task Force Argos had been given a very unusual task. He was charged with identifying which of McCool's social media photos showed his hands in any kind of detail. Since the abusers present in the photographic evidence went to great lengths to conceal their faces, the only thing that truly set them apart were their hands, or more specifically, their fingers. This meant the officer in question

spent hours upon hours cropping images of McCool's hands, along with the appendages of many others suspected in the trafficking or exploitation of children. These images were then painstakingly digitally enhanced until ready to be used as possible identifiers for the abusers in the photographs. Then one day, Senior Constable Stephen Hegarty came to visit the officer at his station to see how he was progressing. The officer was in the process of enhancing images of McCool's hands, and as Hegarty reviewed them, his jaw quietly dropped. On Shannon's middle finger, just below where flesh met fingernail, was a small, dark freckle. It was him, the man from the photographs. It was Shannon. He wasn't just one of the largest purveyors of child exploitation material on the face of the earth. He was directly involved in its creation, all whilst having direct access to some of the

most vulnerable young people in Australia. As we've already mentioned, the decision was made not to apprehend Shannon immediately. Police wished to covertly collate evidence on Shannon without alerting him to the investigation, as doing so might give him a chance to warn others or destroy key evidence. But after it was discovered that he was not only an employee of South Australia's Department of Child Protection, but was active in the sickening exploitation of children, police realized that they had no choice but to arrest him as soon as possible. Yet to do so successfully, without Shannon destroying any evidence, police had to

plan a delicate but decisive operation. There are certain programs and techniques a person can use to render their devices completely useless to us, one officer explained. It doesn't matter who you are, you're not getting in. And if that had happened in our case, there's no way we'd have obtained the same kind of result we achieved. Our timing and subtlety were beyond crucial to the overall success of this operation. Finally, on the evening of June 10th, 2014, Shannon McCool was sitting at home, presumably overseeing his evil empire, when he heard a gentle knocking on his front door. He got up from his chair, neglecting to close his laptop, then walked to the front door to see who was knocking. From the sound of the knock, it could have been a neighbor, a cold caller, maybe even a friend or a relative.

But when he opened the door and found no one to be seen, he stepped outside to take a look around. The moment his shoe touched the concrete, Senior Constable Hegarty ambushed him, shoved him up against a wall before forcibly sitting him down. McCool was then informed that he was under arrest and reminded of his right to remain silent, but he didn't say a thing. Haggerty later said that McCool appeared shell-shocked, almost as if he hadn't expected any kind of legal repercussions whatsoever. Yet as law enforcement's reasons for raiding his address became obvious, McCool turned pale, then stared into space as if drifting off into Catatonia. He was finished. Life as he knew it was about to change forever.

Within minutes of McCool's apprehension, officers from a vast array of Australian policing agencies were swarming around his apartment. Senior Constable Hegarty had been the first into the lounge. There, on a small brown coffee table sat McCool's Toshiba laptop, still connected to an external hard drive that no doubt contained a trove of sickening material. Hegarty found that McCool was running a sophisticated variety of encryption software, but it was one that cybercrime detectives were quite easily able to bypass, and once they did, it was simply a case of clicking a few links before officers gained full access to one of the largest caches of child exploitation material ever uncovered. Police even recovered the same Panasonic digital camera used to produce the vast majority of

McCool's collection, meaning the case against him would be even easier to prosecute. It took Task Force Argos almost two weeks to identify just seven victims from the thousands upon thousands of obscene photographs. It was a slow, painstaking process, and much of it involved contacting the children's charities that McCool had been involved in. Most kept detailed files on the children that had been in their care, and after hundreds were delivered to their offices, Constable Hegarty and Task Force Argos set about physically comparing the children with those found in McCool's content. Seven of them were physically identical to those in the Department of Child Protection's files.

I was satisfied that there were seven victims, Constable Hegarty later said. We examined everything, cross-referenced times and dates the children were under his care. It all matched. The worst thing is, we don't even know if that was all of them. There could have been more. We can never be 100% sure. Another piece of evidence Task Force Argos had to fall back on was an exact handwriting match between McCool's and certain pieces of writing displayed in the photographs. It's common practice among those who manufacture these indecent images of children to create so-called proof pictures. Creators use several different techniques, but one involves a handwritten message from the abuser, detailing the date, time, or their username. This was the

technique McCool used and it provided evidence that Task Force Argos were only too happy to add to their already burgeoning arsenal. I think I identified 14 photographs where he had handwritten something on a post-it or a piece of paper, Constable Hegarty explained. He would actually place these notes on the child just prior to or during the abuse taking place. From examples of handwriting taken from his house, we managed to compare it to that in the images. Again, it was a dead match. Once McCool realized just how much evidence was stacked against him, he offered his complete cooperation with the ongoing investigation.

Hegarty accepted the offer, but it wasn't a confession he was interested in. Task Force Argos had more than enough to put him away for life, so the one thing McCool had to offer them were the identities of the remaining children he was documented as abusing. He agreed to interview with Constable Hegarty. with the several other officers gathered in the adjacent room, a lengthy question and answer session commenced. The priority was identifying the remaining kids, Hegarty said, and at that stage, I was confident that we were going to get the right result. He told us four names, then claimed that he couldn't remember any of the others, of which there were dozens. McCool also answered questions regarding the dark web hell trove that he owned and operated, and although he tried to minimize his involvement in the actual abuse, some of his responses shook even veteran officers to

their core. When asked how involved he was with the day-to-day running of the website, McCool stunned those in attendance by explaining the sense of pride his sickening collection gave him. It was bizarre, one of the witnesses explained. After the first interview, we just sat in the car park for a while, unable to speak. I think we were just a bit blown away by the magnitude of what McCool had said. After two more hour-long interviews, Hegarty realized just how manipulative and malevolently intelligent McCool really was. His methods were shrewd to say the least, he explained. I think this is one reason why his victim range was so young. As soon as he thought a child would be capable of reporting anything, he would shy away from them. He would be very selective of

who he targeted as victims. Constable Hagerty had no doubts that McCool would have continued abusing children if he hadn't been apprehended. He was waiting for his next opportunity, that's my honest belief. It might have taken another six months, it might have taken another two years, but given the opportunity, he would have offended again. Following his sentencing hearing on August 7th of 2015, McCool was sentenced to 35 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 28 years. However, in April of 2018, his 35-year sentence was reportedly reduced by two to three years after he assisted in the identification and capture of a prolific Danish criminal.

After learning of the sentence reduction, the father of one of McCool's victims spoke to a journalist from Australia's ABC News. I don't like that he is getting a re-sentence because he has got no remorse at all, the man said. He didn't even say thank you. He was sitting there with a smug smile on his face the whole time. I suggest to McCool and any other person who has ever hurt a child to stand up and start thinking about the children and stop thinking about themselves. These children are living with a lifetime of hurt, while their abusers get three meals a day and a roof over their head. Usually, prisoners who help police capture their fellow criminals are greatly rewarded for their efforts. The presiding judge could have given Shannon McCool a much greater discount

on his sentence. Instead, he defended his decision to grant just two to three years. Your cooperation has not been complete, particularly relating to a serious matter in this jurisdiction, he said. That does not reduce your discount, but shows that there are matters that you still keep secret. Your contrition and remorse remain equivocal and uncertain. Perhaps, in this case, the judge is on to something. Shannon McCool has since claimed to be repentant of his actions, and has professed a desire to continue his cooperation with the authorities. But on likelihood, his motivations amount to little professed a desire to continue his cooperation with the authorities. But on likelihood, his motivations amount to little more than a desire for self-preservation.

Perhaps the best insight into how Shannon truly feels regarding his crimes against humanity is a five-word comment that he left on his website's message board. The comment reads, Abusing children should be acceptable. I remember it being a kind of cold night in October. The day had been long and I was exhausted from a work trip that had me driving for hours. Now for context, I was a somewhat smaller man and always considered myself a sort of pessimist. I decided to pull over at what looked to be just a run-of-the-mill hotel that was right off the freeway. It was one of those places that people on road trips could stay without having to drive into a big city to get a

few hours of sleep. The hotel looked like it had seen better days. The sign outside read vacant and I didn't have to wonder why. The parking lot was practically empty, save for a few rusted out beaters. I parked my own car and made my way to the lobby. Inside I was greeted by a sort of disinterested clerk who was too busy paying attention to his phone to even look up at me. I paid for a room and was handed a key, barely receiving a word during the whole interaction. It was kind of weird. As I made my way to the room, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was really off about this place. But I was too exhausted to care though. My room was no better than the rest of the place and the curtains were torn and stained in multiple places and the air smelled like mildew.

I decided to take a quick shower and just practically collapsed on the bed. My plan was to catch a few hours of sleep, wake up, and get out of there before sunrise. I must have slept for no more than an hour when I was jolted awake by a loud argument coming from the room next door. It sounded like a couple people arguing over something I couldn't quite make out. I got out of bed and pressed my ear against the really thin wall that separated our rooms and I could hear this sort of muffled, Where's my money, Dirk? It was a very gruff voice demanding this.

And I remember specifically someone saying back, I swear, Joey, I'll get it to you by tomorrow. And the other guy, who I'm guessing was probably that Derek person, sounded incredibly scared. It was kind of surreal in the moment, and I could hear the conversation escalating, and it became clear that someone was going to get hurt. I knew I had to do something, but fear pretty much had me frozen there.

I contemplated calling the police, but didn't have any concrete information to really provide them and not to get political either but I also know police can also just make situations worse. And just as I was considering my options, the argument turned violent. I heard a loud crash echoing through the walls followed by what I can only assume were punches being thrown. Again, the walls were almost paper thin and I could hear everything. Am I completely sure I heard punches? No, but one can assume considering that they were both just yelling at each other. Derek clearly didn't have the upper hand.

I exited my room and sort of just tiptoed to the door, peeking through the peephole in the neighboring room. The hotel was old and obviously didn't bother changing to one-way peepholes and what I saw at that moment gave me chills. Derek was being held down by two men, both much larger and a lot scarier than he was. He was bruised and there was blood dripping from his nose and out of his mouth. His eyes were swollen shut and tears were running down his face as I could now hear him begging for his life. The men had their backs to the door and I knew that I had no choice but at that moment to contact somebody. It would have been wrong for me to not set my own personal opinions aside when someone else's life was in danger. I went back to my room, immediately grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911,

and I whispered to the dispatcher about the situation. I explained my location as best I could. It was hard considering I didn't know the area at all. My heart was pounding in my chest as I crept back to that peephole, trying to just keep tabs on the nightmare that was happening right next door. Just as I looked, I saw one of the men draw a gun from his waistband. Panic surged through me, and I sank to the floor. I was scared, and couldn't risk them seeing me or hearing me through the door. The sound of those gunshots pierced the air, and I could hear Derek's screams of agony. Tears started to well up in my eyes as I felt completely helpless, and the minutes dragged on as I huddled on the floor just inside my room.

The sound of Derek suffering was one of the worst things I'd ever heard. He was moaning and crying out in pain. I listened as the other men made fun of him. They found him weak for showing that he was in that type of pain, and I found that incredibly disgusting considering that they just shot him multiple times, and I heard more shuffling in the room next door and was relieved to hear what sounded like the men leaving. After what felt like a small eternity, I actually heard the sirens approaching the hotel. Relief washed over me as I looked through my own peephole and saw the police arrive,

followed by paramedics. The officers pounded on the door of the room next to me, demanding that whoever was inside surrender. I guess they hadn't realized the men had already left. The only response they got was Derek now pleading for them to help him. I heard them break down the door and call for paramedics. I was full of fear and anxiety as I waited for the officers to clear the scene and hopefully get this guy the help that he needed. Finally, an officer knocked on my door, identifying himself.

I opened the door and was eager to tell them everything that I had heard and seen. They told me that they'd have to take me down to the station to make a formal statement, and I found that odd, but I did what I had to do. I packed up my stuff from my room and headed down to the police station. And as I sat there in that police station that night providing my statement to a detective for what seemed like the hundredth time, I couldn't help but think about whether or not that Derek guy was okay. I'd never met him or even interacted with him once, but somehow I just felt a connection

with him in those split moments. And in my eyes, no one deserves to die in such a violent way just because they probably owed someone money. I wish that there was more I could have done. But being how small I am, not trained in really anything, if I would have intervened, I probably would have been severely injured, probably even killed. And no matter how many people like to say that they would, I just couldn't risk my own life for someone I didn't even know.

I was informed later that night that that guy Derek had passed away not long after arriving at the hospital. His gunshot wounds were pretty severe and there was nothing they could do. The detective assured me that I had done the right thing by calling the police and that my testimony would be important in bringing the men responsible to justice if and when they were found. Unfortunately as I'm writing this it's been almost nine years and there's been no news on this case. I'm sad Derek's family hasn't received justice for his murder. The events of that night have left me completely traumatized but I have to remember how lucky I am to still have my

own life. That's something that that guy will never have, and the only thing separating the two of us that night was a wall. Different life decisions lead us to the same place at the same time, but still somehow worlds away from one another. So long story short, I was kidnapped. It wasn't something I'd ever expected to happen to me, but it did, and it was the most horrific thing I'd ever been through, and the memories of that day have stayed with me even years later. Now, I feel like I should give some background. I was 25 and I had just quit my job. It was a boring cubicle job that made me feel like part of me was just dying inside. No offense to anyone with a similar job, it's just that mine was so boring and so monotonous that I had actually started to

just hate my life more and more every time I went in there. So I quit without even giving two weeks notice, booked a plane out of the country that left the next week, packed a small bag of essentials, and set off to do a solo backpacking trip. I don't want to mention the country that I went to because I don't believe it's an unsafe place to visit, and I don't want this story to hurt its reputation in any way. I got off the plane and headed to the hostel that I had booked the day before. I walked in, and it was gross, like all the reviews it actually said, but I couldn't afford anything else in that particular country.

I got into my bed and fell asleep. I was really hoping that one good sleep would get rid of the jet lag that I would be able to function properly the next day. I woke up at around 5am, which wasn't too bad. I wanted to sleep a little later but my brain wouldn't let me. I got out of bed and grabbed my backpack and headed out for the day. The goal was to try the local street food. I watched a lot of videos about how great it was in that country and figured it was probably one of the safer things that I could do as a solo traveler. I spent most of the morning trying that I could do as a solo traveler.

I spent most of the morning trying to find somewhere that was serving food early but didn't have much luck. Throughout the day I noticed a lot of the locals staring at me as I walked the streets of their country completely alone. At around 2pm I found a vendor along a busy street that was selling a type of fruit that I'd never tried before. I bought some and sat on the curb a few feet away, and the fruit tasted amazing. After a couple of minutes, something seemed really off though. I started to feel nauseous and had this feeling of being intensely tired. I tried to stand up. I thought maybe walking around would help, but when I lifted myself off the curb, my legs felt like jello beneath me. I fell back down and started to call out for help. I was going to black out and I knew it.

I knew that would be pretty bad considering that I was completely alone and no one was ever going to come help me and just before my eyes closed, I saw people pull up in front of me. The door opened, and a couple of men got out and stood beside me, and it was at that point that I lost all memory. I woke up in what looked to be a relatively nice hotel room. There were two beds, a large flat screen TV, and a large bay window that looked out onto the city. I could tell that we were in a room high up in the building so there wouldn't be an option to escape through that window. I looked around the room to try to see if there was anyone else in there but I was sitting next to a dresser and couldn't see the door that led out onto what I'm guessing was the hallway. I spoke out. Is anyone there?

Be quiet, he'll hear you. It's better if he thinks you're asleep. I could hear the voice that had answered me, but couldn't see the person. I knew it was a woman, and she seemed to have a slight accent. Who's he? Now, I was desperate to know more, but she just shushed me immediately. Please be quiet. We'll both get in trouble for you talking. So I stopped. I was confused and scared but I knew well enough to listen to someone when they say that I'll get hurt for making noise. My hands were tied behind my back and I shifted side to

side while I tried to get free. I made a couple of thumping sounds and I stopped the second I started to hear footsteps. They were coming from the bathroom. Just before the door opened, the girl offered me one more warning. Pretend you're still asleep. He only likes to play when you're awake. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my breath sounds, but what she had just said to me had made my heart beat faster than it ever had. Sitting there on that hotel floor,

I wished so badly that I had never quit my job, that I had just stayed and worked in that depressing cubicle because then at least I wouldn't be there, wondering what if I was about to be tortured or even die in the next few minutes. I heard the bathroom door open. The footsteps vibrated the floor and I felt the person get closer to me with each step they took. I wanted to scream when I felt a hand being placed on my shoulder. They shook me hard. I kept my eyes closed and continued to pretend to be unconscious. They shook me harder and harder to the point where it began to hurt but I was determined to live, determined to never find out what the woman meant by play if I opened my eyes. Their hand left my shoulder when they realized that I wasn't going to wake up and I knew that whoever this was was going to her next.

He moved further away from me and I listened as he began to shake her violently. She wasn't able to keep up the act and she yelled out in pain and I couldn't help but open one of my eyes to see what was going on. This man was large, tall and heavy and I was scared when I watched him carry her away. She was just some petite woman, dirty and disheveled and she looked like she had been there for quite some time. And the man's back was turned towards me as he brought her into the bathroom. She looked me in the eyes and mouthed two words at me. Get out.

The door closed behind them and hearing her beg him not to hurt her made me want to cry. Loud music started to play behind the door and I knew that if I was ever going to get a chance to escape, it was going to be that moment. I was able to stand up by leaning my back against the wall and sliding myself up. Once I was on my feet, I quietly made my way over to the door. There was one lock and I had one chance to open it and run for my life. I wasn't sure if the man was going to be able to hear the door open but if he could I had to act fast. I held the lock between my teeth and turned it until I heard a click.

I turned around and grabbed the handle with my hand still tied behind my back. The handle turned and the door opened. The music in the bathroom suddenly stopped and I knew at that moment that I needed to run. The bathroom door opened and the man began yelling. I sprinted down the hallway and managed to slip into an elevator. There were people inside looking at me with wide eyes. I was begging them to get help, to call police, but not a single one of them could understand what I was saying. The elevator stopped at the lobby and I just rushed to the front desk. Thankfully, there was someone there who understood what I was saying. They were able to cut me loose that

were tied around my wrists and put me in one of the offices in the back where I waited 20 minutes for local authorities to arrive. I was questioned by a few officers who had a hard time understanding me. I led them to the room that I was being kept in, and when they opened the door and searched the room, the man and that woman were gone. In that moment I felt heartbroken, but not for me. I wanted so desperately to help her. She was so scared and looked so broken.

I really thought that she'd still be in there and that maybe I could help her. They found my backpack in one of the drawers and basically told me that I could just leave. No investigation was going to be done considering that I guess there was no evidence. The hotel had no security cameras and they couldn't just go off of my word. I headed straight from my hotel to the airport and got on the next flight that I could home. I didn't want to spend one more night in that country. I arrived home and decided to stay with my parents for quite some time. I gave up my apartment and spent well over a year too terrified to even leave the house.

I couldn't even sleep because every time I closed my eyes I thought of that woman. I tried going to the authorities in my country but they also said that there was really nothing they could do. And I felt helpless. I wish I could say in the end that my life got better and that I learned something from this experience but that would be a lie. I had crippling anxiety and can barely function outside of the house. I only started to grocery shop for myself again just this past year. I'm 28 now and I still live with my parents. I work from home doing a job that requires no human interaction. I should have kept that job, had a boring life. Anything would be better than the hell that I'm now living through. So I was staying at a hotel with my mom when I was around 16.

We were in town for a concert and I really wanted to go swimming at the indoor pool, but my mom was adamant that she didn't want to go with me. I told her that she didn't have to and that I could go alone, but she was hesitantant that she didn't want to go with me. I told her that she didn't have to and that I could go alone but she was hesitant about that. She thought that I was going to get kidnapped or something but I thought that she was just being overprotective and ridiculous. I got my swimsuit on and told my mom that I was going to the pool whether she liked it or not and she yelled at me that I was being some brat and I slammed the door behind me. I made my way downstairs and through the hall that led to the pool. I needed a room key to get in and was glad that I had one on

me. I entered the pool room and was kind of disappointed to see so many other people in there. There were at least 10 kids in the pool and even more adults in the hot tub. I didn't want to go back to my room though because I knew my mom would make some snotty comment and I just really didn't want to hear it at that moment. I sat my stuff down on a nearby chair and decided to go in the pool. I went in the deep end to keep away from the smaller children and it was nice. It was a heated pool so I wasn't freezing like I usually would be in other places and I was hanging out in the pool for around 10 minutes when I noticed a man walk in alone. He was probably in his 60s I would say and I remember feeling kind of creeped

out by him just on the initial glance. He hadn't done anything or he didn't even really look at me, it was just sort of a feeling that I immediately got from him. A feeling that you get when you know someone had bad intentions without really having to do anything. He got into the pool and made his way over to the deep end near me. He was only five feet away when he started making some small talk with me. He was asking me questions about school and just different things that I was interested in. I tried ignoring him but he was adamant on getting me to talk to him. I tried politely telling him that I don't talk to strangers.

But he did the thing that creeps always do and introduces himself saying that we weren't strangers anymore. Almost like Pennywise and he starts to laugh. I was getting weirded out to the extreme and told this guy to just please leave me alone. And I got out of the pool and actually decided to jump in the hot tub. I thought maybe that I'd be safer around some adults. I was horrified to see the man get out of the pool and slip his gross body into the hot tub. He sat right next to me and made this moaning sound and mentioned how great the water felt. I knew that that was just an excuse for the sound that he made because he did it only when his leg touched mine. I moved to the other end of the hot tub and he made a face at me like he was sad or something. I sat there trying not to look at him and just enjoy being in

the warm water, but he had to ruin it by being a creep again. I felt someone's foot touch mine. It was like a caressing feeling, not just an accidental touch. I couldn't see through the water because of the jets creating the bubbles, but it was obvious who it was. I looked up at the man and he had this almost smirk on his face, and he actually mouthed something at me that I didn't pick up at first, but when he did it a second time, I understood him perfectly. You like that? I stood up out of the water at that moment and yelled at him calling him a pervert. He seemed offended and I told the adults in the hot tub what he had just said to me and how he was trying to

play footsie with me and thankfully a few of the other men got the man and actually took him out of the pool room. I thanked them and they assured me that I would be safe in there with them. Their wives comforted me and asked if I wanted them to walk me back to my room but I was still being stubborn and didn't want to prove my mother right so I just stayed. I was there for another hour before they had to leave. There were a couple of other families in there with me still, so I still felt safe. I had my eyes closed as I leaned back against the wall of the hot tub when I felt the water shift in a way that meant someone else had just gotten in.

I opened my eyes and felt like my heart was falling out of my chest when I saw that man from earlier. He sat down across from me and gave me that same awful creepy smirk like before only this time he whispered a warning to me. He told me my room number and said if I screamed or made any sound that he would go to my room and do something terrible to my mom. I was scared. I wanted to scream and cry but I was also just 16 and didn't realize that I had more control over this situation than I thought. I sat there in silence and watched in horror as he came and sat next to me. He was so close that I felt his leg press firmly against my own. He set his hand on my thigh and tears started coming down my face.

And that's when it finally hit me. I didn't have to put up with that. I didn't have to sit there and let this man do this to me. I stood up as fast as I could and jumped out of that hot tub like my life depended on it, which technically I guess it did. He was still seated when I pulled my leg back and kicked him in the back of the head as hard as I could. The other families began yelling. One of the women there came rushing over and asked what just happened. When I explained everything, she started yelling at the now almost concussed man. He was grabbing the back of his head and was clearly furious. He started to lunge at us and I was thankful when the woman who came over

leaned down and grabbed at his hair and started to pull. Another woman, who seemingly came out of nowhere, kicked him directly in the face and this time, and I kid you not, knocked this dude out. It turns out she had been overhearing everything. They were about to get in the hot tub and do god knows what to him when I just decided to run. I ran down the hall and up the stairs. I banged on her hotel room door and my mom answered. I was sobbing and she pulled me inside and was frantically asking me what happened. I was barely able to tell her while choking back tears but when I did, she was furious. She told me to stay in the room and that she'd be back.

Next thing I knew, she came back with blood on her clothes as she told me the stay in the room and that she'd be back. Next thing I knew, she came back with blood on her clothes as she told me the man wouldn't be messing with any girls again. I asked her what happened, but she wouldn't tell me. And the police came knocking on our door later that night and they questioned both of us. My mother had already changed her clothes and they never asked her about her involvement. The man was found floating unconscious, surrounded by his own blood in the hot tub. Unfortunately, he survived. He was arrested and taken to the hospital.

We didn't get any updates on his condition and we were just glad about it because we didn't really want to know and frankly didn't care. He was charged with assault of a minor. This also wasn't his first offense given the state that we were in so I know his sentence was much longer. We were happy to get the justice not just for me but also the other girls that he probably hurt in the past and possibly the countless others that hadn't come forward. I had to go to therapy for this. My mom has lived with extreme guilt for letting me go to that pool that day alone. I've tried telling her that it isn't her fault, but there's nothing I'll ever be able to say to make her feel better about it. I'm sad that there are people in the world that are like that,

and even sadder that most of them never get caught. Ever since I was a little girl, all I ever wanted to do was help people. My mom used to say that even when I was a kid, I'd be playing nurse with my dolls. Then, as I grew into my teens, I was obsessed with General Hospital and would binge watch Scrubs episodes back when DVD box sets were a thing. During my last two years of high school, some of my friends found themselves torn between two or three options for college courses. Not me. My answer was reflexive every time I was asked. Nursing. I want to go into nursing. After getting my SAT results, I obtained all the prerequisite qualifications, chose a handful of schools and programs, and set about applying. Then, once I was in, I just had to keep myself financially afloat. Because I only had access to limited financial aid, I had to find myself a part-time job,

and after a week or two of scouring Craigslist, among other places, I managed to find an almost perfect vacancy. I'd rather not dox the place that I ended up working at so I won't use its actual name, but the place served as a kind of community center for young adults with learning difficulties. We didn't provide intensive or emergency care to people with physical disabilities, and those with more complex cases were referred to full-time care centers. But when it came to people who were too functional to simply sit around at home, but not functional enough to hold down a job, it was up to us to provide them with a place that they could visit that would both nurture and educate them.

Honestly, it was the kind of place that I had been only too happy to volunteer at if I wasn't being paid, but the flexible part-time scheduling made it ideal on so many levels. It would look great on my resume, and it made sense for them to hire someone with nursing aspirations, as I'd no doubt bring the same level of care to the community center. Thankfully, the community center's management team agreed with that assessment, and when they gave me the call to offer me the job, I was nothing less than ecstatic. Obviously, my first couple of days on the job were spent familiarizing myself with both the layout of the community center as well as the center's various members.

Some visited on a daily basis, staying from early in the morning till late in the afternoon, whereas others stopped by every so often, maybe a couple of days a week, basically whenever their parents needed someone to watch them. Some members just hung out, played pool or watched TV or something, but there were others who needed more than just light entertainment to keep them happy and occupied. I was kind of surprised at first when I saw a kid named Todd sweeping the parking lot along with a member of the care team. I was a little concerned that he was being roped into working for free, but I soon realized that Todd just liked helping out. It made him feel useful, like he was part of the

team, and it meant the world to him to see us smile and say things like great job buddy and all that. And once that was understood, well, I thought it was just about the sweetest thing ever and it assuaged any concerns I had about the members helping out with our work. One of the other members who used to help out with day-to-day running of the place was a guy I'll just call Charlie. Charlie was definitely one of the more functional of the guys who stopped by the center and he only did so maybe twice or three times a week, weekends included. Being in his late 20s, he was a little older than some of the other kids who were mostly high school to college age but he used to visit a lot more during his younger years. By the time I got the job, he liked to stop by after lunch to

help out where he could and he often stayed until we closed up before walking or sometimes jogging all the way home again. I was surprised when I first heard that, that he walked or ran like three miles to and from the center every time he wanted to visit, but there was no denying it was good exercise, as Charlie himself would tell you. And that's the thing about Charlie. You could barely tell that he had learning difficulties. You could be having a perfectly normal conversation with them and then out of nowhere, he'd ask you a question, totally out of left field sometimes, and you'd remember how he came to know the center so well in the first place.

For example, we were unloading some egg pallets from a van, just making small talk, when he suddenly asked me, Are all the eggs from chickens? And when I said, sure, he replied, How do you know that? I had to explain to him that I didn't actually know for certain that they were all chicken eggs, but that the store operated on a kind of trust system, which would allow me to get my money back for anything that wasn't a chicken egg.

Charlie looked puzzled for a second then just sort of nodded before carrying on unloading the pallets. I got the impression that Charlie still didn't understand but little misunderstandings like that were things he'd learned to live with. And everyone loved Charlie. They liked him because he was helpful. They liked him because he was thoughtful. And they liked him because he was one of the few members who was actually able to articulate how grateful he was for both the center and its staff. And through no fault of their own, most members would only say things like a simple thank you or I love you guys, which was amazing and I appreciated every kind word I got,

but Charlie was really able to just flesh out how he felt about us. I saw a co-worker dash into the staff break room before bursting into tears because Charlie had said something to her like, I don't know what I'd do without this place. Sometimes you guys feel like part of my family. She wasn't a particularly over-emotional person, but I guess what he said that day hit her right in the feels, and she didn't want him to confuse her happy tears with sad tears. Charlie was popular for other reasons too, in that he often brought things from home. Sometimes it was a fresh tray of cookies, sometimes it was a bag of sub sandwiches, and then other times it was a brand new PlayStation for the playroom, or a portable heater when the office

got real sort of cold in the winter time. Charlie didn't work, not as far as I knew anyway, so I figured that he was either independently wealthy somehow, or that he had rich parents that didn't mind dropping a few hundred dollars on the new gaming system. And I know for a fact that that portable heater wasn't cheap because Charlie didn't think to just take the price tag off the box before he gave it to us. And I can guarantee people would have still liked Charlie had he not been so generous, but we didn't exactly turn his gifts down either. We were very underfunded and without his or his family's help, things would have definitely been much tougher around the center. But then, that's why I felt so conflicted when,

after hearing all these amazing reports of Charlie, I suddenly had a very negative experience with him. You see, one evening, we were in the process of closing up the center, and I was finishing off a count in our food storage that had been interrupted earlier in the day. I knew Charlie was around the center, so I wasn't startled when he suddenly walked into the storage room at the rear of the kitchen, but what I was startled by is the question he asked me. Do you have a boyfriend? I didn't have a boyfriend, not at the time, but the question caught me so off guard that I told Charlie that yes, I did have a boyfriend. I didn't want to give him any ideas if I said no, so I just kind of

instinctively lied. Charlie then asked me what it was like having a boyfriend I mean so I told him it was nice and that I love my boyfriend very much. Charlie then told me that he wished he had a girlfriend and that he never had one and would like to feel that same kind of nice as he puts it. It seemed like it was another one of those moments with Charlie where he said something so sweet that you thought it might break your heart. But then suddenly, the conversation took a drastic and deeply unexpected turn. Charlie paused for a second after saying that same kind of nice thing and then turned to me again before asking something that had my jaw almost hitting the floor. He asked me if my boyfriend performed a very disgusting kind of act on each other. Before you go thinking I'm some ultra

Christian who thinks anything beyond hand-holding is extramarital evilness, the thing he asked about was very extreme, the kind of thing I'd drop a date like a live grenade over if they ever asked me to do it with them. I had to remind myself who would actually ask the question and that even though Charlie had this really creepy grin after asking it I tried to just take a sort of professional tone before responding. I told him his question was not appropriate for nice conversation and explained why it would be considered rude and also explained the thing that he referred to was not something that regular couples would consider normal or romantic. Charlie apologized, kind of in the same way that he did when he got other stuff wrong, but there was something different about this one. He said that he was sorry, but his expression

kind of said otherwise. The whole thing just left a really bad taste in my mouth, so the next day, I just brought it up to my boss. She said she'd have to handle it in the exact same way, and that I was right to report it as soon as I was able. It wasn't the first time that the mostly male visitors to the center had made an inappropriate comment to its mostly female staff, but that each time, education had been the remedy, not shaming or exclusion. And I agreed, wholeheartedly, that most transgressions like that were nothing but innocent mistakes. But like I had already mentioned, there was the issue of Charlie's expression, and how I didn't think that he was all that sorry. I didn't bring that up not because it wasn't relevant but because it didn't feel like it served a purpose. If Charlie

said anything else that crossed a line I could just escalate my complaint knowing my boss had my back and with that in mind I didn't mention it to anyone else. I didn't want to color their opinions of Charlie and since it appeared that he'd learned his lesson regarding asking me about inappropriate topics, I decided to just simply let it go, rather than go around talking all bad about him. And things went on just fine like that for a while, with Charlie being his usual cheerful self. At least until one day, when everything changed suddenly and irreversibly. One night, me and another member of the care team were closing up the center for the night, and Charlie was off helping them with whatever they were dealing with.

I was in the records room, which was this fairly small walk-in closet that was incredibly overstuffed with all kinds of files that had been piled onto old dusty shelves. When? Who should walk in? But Charlie himself. This was a few years before all the records were transferred over to the digital system and seeing as everything inside was sort of deemed sensitive information, we used to keep it locked at all times. To get inside, I had to get my keys out to unlock the door, but when I did, I just left them in the lock and that turned out to be a huge mistake. When Charlie walked into the room, I noticed that he had my keys in his hand.

I asked him to hand them over, but he just ignored me while flashing that creepily familiar grin. Then when I asked him a second time, he turned, slid the key into the door, then locked it with a loud click. You know people sometimes say things like, I felt my blood run cold, or my veins turned to ice whenever something really creepy happens to them. I didn't know what they meant until that moment, but it's true. I got chills seeing Charlie lock that door, not just because he'd locked both of us inside, but because he knew what he was doing.

I asked him a third time to give me my keys, and during that he tossed them up onto the box of files on a top shelf and then took a few steps towards me. I kept saying, This isn't funny, Charlie. Give me my keys and get out. But he didn't listen. He just kept following me around the records room

as I tried and failed to keep away from him. He was much bigger than me, much faster. All I took was one attempt to get my keys and he was on me. I don't even want to say what he tried to do to me, but let's just say that it was the one thing that every woman prays never happens to them. But I didn't just let him do it. I fought back, and when I did, he thankfully stopped trying. But then, instead of just unlocking the door and accepting the rejection, Charlie began to punch me, kick me, and stomp on me while I fell on the ground. I tried to crawl away, but every attempt just made it easier for him to just kick me in the head, or in the ribs, or other more vulnerable places on my body. And then suddenly, it just stopped.

I heard the jingling of the keys, I heard them pushed into the lock, and then by the time I rolled over to look, Charlie was gone and the door was wide open. What happened next feels like it happened to another person, or like it was a dream I had. I think a combination of adrenaline, all the kicks and punches to my head, and just how unexpected the attack had been, put me into a kind of disassociative state. When I think about it, it's like someone else got up and limped their way to the phone at the center's reception area to call 911. I just remember feeling so calm, at a time when I'd have expected myself to be

completely hysterical, and I know now that that was just a way of delaying the trauma. A function now but suffer later kind of thing. I was still on the phone with 911 when my co-worker walked into the reception area and noticed me. Obviously I knew I was hurt pretty bad, but I couldn't see myself, you know. So when my coworker looked at me and literally gasped with horror at all the blood and torn clothing, that's the first time I actually started to really worry how bad things truly were. I didn't need the ambulance in the end because my coworker drove me straight to the hospital. She was like my guardian angel and stayed with me while I was checked over and then gave me a ride back to my dorm after we spoke to two cops who showed up to the hospital.

I was a mess on that ride back to my dorm and I spent maybe five or ten minutes just crying into my co-worker's shoulder after we pulled into the parking lot. The nurses had cleaned me up pretty good, but there was some swelling and I was for sure going to have one or two black eyes, but aside from that nothing was broken. It was probably the worst experience of my life up until that point, but everyone seemed supportive and the cops were promising to investigate. But when I looked back on it, there was one little clue that

everything wasn't going to turn out okay. And that's when my co-worker asked me what happened. She asked me the first time on the way to the hospital and when I told her it was Charlie who attacked me, she was shocked, but not to the point of disbelief. I'll be the first to say that of all the men who visited the center, Charlie was the last person I ever expected to turn violent or lash out, but the fact remained that he had. But then, when I was sitting in her car in the parking lot of my dorm, and my co-worker asked me a second time what had happened back in the records room, I could see her beginning to doubt my version of events. Or rather,

not doubt me in the sense that she thought I was lying. She was just incapable of imagining Charlie being capable of anything so horrifying. I should have known that she wouldn't be the only one, and at that time I totally understood why she'd be so stunned to the point of disbelief. It was an unbelievable story, but like a surprising amount of unbelievable stories, every word was the God honest truth. I had no idea how the doubt would spread and grow until it divided a whole community and forced me out of a job that I'd grown to love. First part came when I got a call from my boss saying that I'd been suspended without pay until the cops' investigation had concluded. Basically, Charlie was flat out denying any wrongdoing,

claiming total ignorance and saying that he wasn't even at the center on the day that I was attacked. Thanks to the center security cameras, that was a claim we could easily prove false, but then Charlie's parents had totally taken his word for it, citing the fact that he'd returned home at the exact time as usual. I suppose this isn't totally relevant in a way, but it's something that really creeped me out at the time, and still creeps me out actually, so I suppose I'll share it. Charlie stayed away after closing that afternoon, maybe 25-30 minutes after he usually started his walk or run home. This meant that to get home at the so-called regular time, Charlie had to have ran the three miles back to his house in a heavy jacket and probably Crocs at an extended pace without stopping.

He wasn't smart enough to cover it up properly, but he sure tried, meaning that he sure as hell knew what he had done was a terrible, terrible thing. The second part came when I heard Charlie had admitted attacking me, but claimed it was after I tried to touch him. He claimed he got scared, lashed out, and then didn't remember anything until he arrived back home in a panic. But I know that's not true, because the cop told me that this conflicted with the initial statement made by Charlie's parents, who said he arrived home at the regular time while displaying no obvious signs of being upset. Basically all the evidence proved my story, and that forced Charlie to admit what he'd done, but everyone completely bought his story after being provoked in some way

than losing control of himself. Don't get me wrong, most people sympathized with me and knew Charlie's behavior was wrong and had to be dealt with in some way, but they also refused to accept that he was really at fault and that he posed a danger to anyone else. And then came the day when one of my co-workers approached me and tried to convince me to just drop the charges. Now the long and short of it is, is that if I went ahead with the charges, Charlie was going to be removed from the care of his parents and

placed into some psychiatric facility for an undetermined period of time. If the psychologist found a serious issue but he didn't respond to the treatment they'd give him, Charlie could end up stuck in the system for years on end. If I dropped the charges, his parents could get him the help he needed, privately, without having to be separated from him for potentially a very long time. In her opinion, and she alluded that many other people felt the same way, the right thing to do would be for me to drop the charges, and when I told her that wasn't going to happen, she called me selfish. I'd like to say that I handled the situation with a little more grace, but I didn't. I was furious, beyond furious, and for the first time in my life I had to remove myself from a situation for

fear of losing my own sense of control. I couldn't believe what had come out of her mouth, that word in particular, selfish, and it made my blood boil in a way that I can barely put into words. Looking back on it, I knew she didn't mean selfish as in thinking of myself over Charlie and his condition. She meant selfish as in me pressing charges would sever Charlie's connection with the community center which in turn meant no more gifts, and as I found out later, no tax write-off, financial contributions from Charlie's very wealthy parents. In the end, Charlie was deemed unfit to stand trial, and since he admitted to assaulting me, he was referred to a psychiatric hospital on the other side of the state. The only caveat was that this was according to that same cop that I told you about. Charlie would probably get out of the mental health system much earlier than I'd ever be comfortable with.

Attacking me was the first black mark on what had been a very clean record, and with that in mind, judges would look very kindly on him and his oh-so-charitable parents. With the investigation concluded, my suspension was lifted and I was invited back to work at the community center. I turned down the offer. There was no way that I was going back there and maybe that seems spoiled of me because not everyone was either on the fence or on Charlie's side. My boss in particular was as good as she'd ever been. I just couldn't go back to the place that valued the family's money over my safety and the safety of other women working there.

And again, that's not to say that she didn't believe Charlie had lashed out, they just didn't think that he had it in him to do it again, whereas myself and the state saw things differently. God, this seems so long and rambly by now, and I know there will be people out there who listen to this and once again take the side of my attacker, but I don't care. This felt good to get off my chest for the first time in years, and writing it out has actually served as a sort of reminder of how I did the right thing. I completely moved on from the community center and just sort of poured myself into my studies, then applied for nursing jobs in just about every other city and state than the one that I was in

at that time. I guess other people might have kept up with Charlie's treatment just to keep an eye on his release date, but over time I've decided that I just don't want to know. I just want to move on with my life. I don't want to think about these things anymore, but I also have to accept that's just never going to happen. Sometimes I feel like a pair of tectonic plates or something. I don't really know how else to describe it. You see, every so often, enough tension builds up that there needs to be a release, but aside from that, I can go years without paying it more than a glancing thought. I guess that's what I hope this post might achieve and why I sent it in.

And I guess only time will tell. So this was May 2017. My husband Jim and I own a five-floor, hundred-year-old building which has our business in it, an antique mall, our apartment upstairs, and various other tenants. We'd had several back-to-back burglaries in the prior years and had reinforced the front doors of the business pretty intensely. Aggressive steel bars, more cameras, etc. Anyway, at 3am we were sound asleep upstairs, as one is, but then we got a call from Sonitrol, our security company. We had a motion detect in our unusual location, not the main floor where 90% of the jewelry is, but downstairs.

That sort of thing is usually a spider on the camera or a mouse or something, so we ran out less than prepared. I was only wearing a tank top, undies, and flip flops. Jim did not grab his baseball bat, but at least had pants. I went one way to check the front door which was intact and Jim went the other way to check around back. Suddenly he called me and said someone's inside. So I fumbled with my phone trying to call 911. In that situation your monkey brain is in the driver's seat and the phone is the black monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey. Finally, I managed it and rounded the backside of the building, narrating to the 911 operator, broken glass, broken window. I said, as I later heard

during the run-up to the trial, oh my god, they're in, please come now. Then there was an unholy crash. It sounded like everything inside was being smashed to bits. The feeling of listening to someone busy destroying your livelihood is something I can't quite capture. Who was in there? How many? What path of destruction was being wreaked? I could only yell down the phone at a faceless voice, begging for help that I knew was still minutes away. Bear in mind I was freshly awoken into a horrible situation, barely clothed, and it was escalating by the second. As it turned out, the burglar, Troy, had come face to face with Jim trying to exit the building out the broken window before I had arrived. They locked eyes, and Troy said something in reverse direction, back to the depths

of the building. Then he dropped his backpack with the stolen merch, flung himself over a giant iron gate, smashed through the restaurant tenant's door, then subsequently out their main door. At that point, he'd caught a lot of glass to the face and body and was bleeding pretty good. Jim caught him on the exit and just pounced on him. Fully body slammed to the cement, then he pinned Troy. Adrenaline is wild. I was not crying, but urgently begging the operator to hurry. I was terrified I was going to see my husband die before my eyes.

And then I ran right into the fray because again, adrenaline. It gets right up on you and you just do the stupidest stuff. There we were in the middle of the street, dimly orange lit by the streetlights and it was hard to just parse what was going on. Thanks sweet baby Jeebus, Troy did not have a weapon and was wildly unprepared to have a madman tackle him in the dark. As it turned out, he had done hundreds of burglaries and had never been caught. Jim had the upper hand and had him fully pinned down and Troy was wisely playing possum. Suddenly, we heard a roaring engine and someone laying rubber. Apparently, I started screaming.

Yeah, it was Troy's getaway driver, his wife Kelsey. She leaned out her window and yelled, get the F off of him or I'm going to kill you. That was me that she was talking to. Clearly captured on the audio, but I don't remember it and not willing to wait, she then tried to run me over. I vaguely remember realizing things were going horribly wrong, but desperately trying to read the license plate into the phone with an idiotic laser focus. It was out of state and I struggled to read it and that's all. My brain deleted how close she'd come to turning me into a bloody smear within maybe a foot of me, fast while I dodged like a badly clothed matador clutching my phone. We had to listen to the 911 recording a year later and the prosecutor's office synced with a video.

The video was from a nearby business with really good exterior cameras. Jim started crying. He had no idea what a close call it was. The engine revving, overwhelmed by screaming at a certain point. My voice was blown out. I was trying to chant the license plate number like an incantation, but you can't hear it because the engine roar and squealing tires. Jim let Troy go, of course. Troy jumped into the car and they tore off down the street. The police showed up maybe a minute later, but they were gone. Anyway, Troy had bled all over Jim from the door glass and Jim freaked out so hard later. We figured Troy was likely using IV drugs, correctly as it turned out, and I had to inspect Jim for cuts using a flashlight to make sure that I didn't miss anything, and he still got tested.

Unlike a number of other incidents, this one was taken pretty seriously due to the amount of evidence as well as violence and, you know, the attempted murder. Several months later, they arrested Troy and Kelsey. They had Troy's DNA from the bloody clothes Jim was wearing and all over the car they'd been driving, which had been stolen but ditched. It turned out that they were wanted in five counties for hundreds of commercial burglaries over several years to support their oxy habits, back before the age of Fetty. We were the only mess up that they had made, they didn't know we lived on the premises. Kelsey, the wife, flipped on Troy. They accepted a plea for her, much to my displeasure since she was the one that tried to kill me, and at least she ratted him out six

ways to Sunday. He refused a plea, he wanted a trial. I would not wish a trial on my worst enemy. You get interviewed alone by the defense team. Did you know they can lie? Well, they sure can. And they won't in front of the jury, but one by one, they'll eat your soul and pick their teeth with the shards. You don't get a lawyer. You're on team prosecution. And theoretically, I can understand it, but it's still utterly maddening. They took me first. They played the 911 tape, second time I'd heard it. They insisted that because I kept saying, they're inside, that I was lying and there was someone else, not Troy or Kelsey. Sorry, I just use it as non-gendered pronoun, guys. I had yet to see the person, so they were a they, which is what I told them, adamantly.

Then they took Jim. They told Jim that I admitted that I'd lied and there was another person inside the building. He luckily laughed and was like, absolutely not, she didn't. Finally, the day before trial, Troy accepted a plea, thank God. I've been having the stupidest meltdown ever. Do I dye my hair something other than purple? I just spent $700 on it. What shoes do I wear? I don't have conservative shoes. How can I cover my tattoos? Basically the most pointless stuff I could control because that train was rolling

without me. Kelsey got off with probation. Troy was in prison from 2017 to 2020 until he got released early, adjacent to the lockdowns. Kelsey seemed to be clean and living a normal life, remarried with kids and looks happy. I watch her on Facebook. I really hope so. But I do occasionally wish that she had a raging case of hemorrhoids or something though. I'm not a saint. And also, forget the towel. Know where your shoes are at night. This is critical. In the immortal words of Kate McKinnon, who cares if your pink pocket and stink rocket are on full display? You best be able to run. To preface, I live in a college town with six other young girls in our twenties. The city we live in is not that nice and has a huge homeless drug problem where break-ins are not unusual. However, what happened last Saturday was definitely strange.

My roommates and I, as well as some of our boyfriends, were hanging out and drinking in our house while two other girls opted to go out to a bar. By around 1am, the two girls came home from the bar and everyone was tired so we all went to our own respective rooms. Later in the night, I was awoken by someone opening my door and standing in my room staring at me. In my head, I thought it was one of my roommate's boyfriends trying to see if my boyfriend and I were still awake to continue to party. Since I was tired, I pretended to be asleep to avoid being bugged. After a bit, the person closes my door and then proceeds to pace back and forth in the hallway. They then begin to attempt to open my roommate's door whose room is right next to mine. Luckily, her door was locked and she also had her

boyfriend with her. The person then proceeds to go into her utensils drawer and grabs a knife to attempt to pick her lock. After gaining some courage, her boyfriend shouts, who the F is that? Which startles the man, then sprints up the stairs and out the door. The police were called and did a search and obviously didn't find anything. They told us break-ins were normal, which we knew. However, what makes this whole scenario creepier is that he didn't steal anything. My phone, alcohol, and $600 shoes were untouched. We also suspect this person was not on drugs or alcohol as he moved very quietly and deliberately.

He was able to get in because the two girls who came home from the bar did not lock the door behind them. I'm not sure what this man's intent was, but I'm forever grateful that I happen to have my boyfriend with me, which is not often as he lives three hours away and pretended to be asleep. It gives me chills thinking that a strange man was in my room and what could have happened if it was just me alone. I never tell anyone this story, but reading all the stories here I feel like I need to post about it. And because of this, I don't go on walks alone or even with friends unless it's in a very public place. But even then, I'm paranoid. And with that being said, my friend's family had just moved to a new

town 15 minutes from where I lived. It was a complete ghost town with one tiny grocery store, a post office, and a school. This town was so secluded and quiet that I rarely ever saw cars drive by. One night as we were unpacking boxes we heard a knock at the door. It was a big tall man with a shotgun in his hands. And being from Oklahoma this could mean that you're either meeting your hick new neighbor or it's actually someone wanting to harm us. It turns out it was just a hick neighbor coming to introduce himself. He told my friend's mom about the lack of police and how everyone tends to carry their own guns in order to protect themselves because the police were usually no help and about 15 minutes away. They also talked about how these areas can be dangerous and that my friend's mom should keep her gun with her. At this time I was 13 years old and knowing this information you would think

that I would simply stay my butt inside and not wander the streets of this dangerous hillbilly ghost town, but I did. There was no service, no cable, and nothing to do but go outside. We would walk to the store and get snacks, walk to the school and play on the playground. The majority of the time we wouldn't see a single car or person, but the same clerk in the grocery store on every walk we took. There was a day my dad had brought me to a friend's house and right off the bat we walked to the park. That day I was sick to my stomach but was so eager to see my friend that I went anyways. I had a terrible feeling and now that I'm older and have experienced bad anxiety I can now say that that day I was experiencing some pretty bad anxiety and I didn't know why I felt this way.

When we got there, we actually ended up hanging out with an old friend who had transferred to the school a year prior. After he left, we sat on the bench for what felt like ages, taking selfies and talking when all of a sudden, the stereotypical creepy van pulls up to the park. Now my friend was and still is way braver than I was and will ever be and she was always the daredevil one in our friendship. But for some reason around this time I just assumed it was a family coming to play and my anxiety wasn't there. But my friend was scared. She immediately had a bad feeling when the van pulled up and I could tell that she was ready to leave.

But we decided to stay and see who it was before we ran off. Of course, like something out of a movie, came out two big men literally barreling over to where we were. We immediately started to walk away and they tried to follow and grab us. At this point we began to run. They got back into the van and followed us. I had no idea how but they didn't catch up to us but we ran as fast as we would up the road and straight to the grocery store. I was so horrified when we got inside that I couldn't even speak. That sick feeling that I felt on the way to my friend's house made complete sense. My mom was always watching true crime growing up and sometimes she would have me watch with her so I was always really scared to walk around because of that. But even with that fear,

I never thought that it would ever happen to me. The van was parked across the street but eventually drove off. We walked home with no way to call anyone, thinking that they could be waiting for us around every corner with absolutely no one around. It was the scariest day of my life. I didn't tell anyone for years, which was stupid of me, but at 13 years old, I didn't know what to do. I'm turning 21 soon, and this story still keeps me up at night sometimes. I can't help but imagine what would have happened if they captured me and my friend, where we would have gone, and what would have happened to us. This scene happened when I was 21 years old. It's in a smaller town outside of a huge city in the Midwest. This was 1981.

I worked at Fast Food and they stayed open until 3am. My then husband worked for a bowling alley as a manager and he was never off before 2am. I was expecting my first child and business was slow so I was sent home at about 1am. In the town we lived in there was a large private girls college. Women are being warned to lock their doors because two males were still on the loose and they were targeting women around my age. They were sometimes following them home and attacking or forcing a woman alone late at night off the road. The men were doing terrible things, killing the women, and they'd killed three women by that point. Two of the women were found on deserted roads and one

in her apartment, and there was no description of these men or what kind of vehicle they drove. I left work, climbed in my car, locked my doors and started for home. The hair on the back of my head stood up on end and my gut feeling told me something was very wrong. I figured out that I was being followed home. I took several turns around town trying to shake this car but to no avail. The advice given was that if you thought you were being followed to drive to the police station. We had recently moved to this area so I had no idea where the police station was. I was terrified, panicked and couldn't think what to do.

This was in the days when there were no cell phones but the pay phones were made in different areas where you could drive up to them, sit in the driver's seat, put your window down and the pay phones had a longer cord to enable you to stay in your car and talk. You still had to deposit money in order to talk even if you were calling 911. I thought about briefly trying to get one of those phones but I was too scared and didn't think that I could have a coin ready in time before these men could have time to approach me. My parents lived about four streets over from where I lived and decided the safest decision was to try to make it to my parents' house. I was still being followed when I got to my parents' house. There was a short block that you could go around by my parents and I went around this block about three times and every

time I did I honked the horn. You would have thought that laying on the horn would have discouraged these creeps from continuing to follow me, but it had no effect, and if anything, they moved in closer behind me. I pulled into their driveway, and these creepers pulled right behind me, turned off their lights, and I heard their doors open and shut. I was beyond terrified at this point. They were out of their car, one coming up on one side and one on the other. My parents' house was a split level and he pulled up in front of the double car garage. In order to get in the house, he had to go in through the garage door or

front door and the front door was left of the driveway about two car lengths away, plus a set of steps. I laid on the horn again, they still kept coming. My dad, who was retired military, often times stayed up late at night watching TV, and thank god he did this night. All of a sudden he turned the porch light on and burst out the front door. He assessed the situation instantly and started yelling at these creeps to get away from the car, all the while barreling down the steps towards them. At first they didn't retreat very fast but must have thought better. My dad is a very big boned and about 6 foot 4 inches. He had a brother that played in college football and he wore a size 15 shoe. He made it to the front of their car and pounded on the hood of it before they

were able to burn rubber reversing out of the driveway. While he was unable to get a license plate number because they didn't have a front plate, he was able to describe them and give the make and model to the police. Police told me how fortunate I was that my dad had realized what a dire situation I was in. I still get chills thinking back to that night and I remember it as if though it were yesterday. My dad said that he thought that he had heard a car honk more than once and that he heard me in the driveway and he had just shut off the TV and was heading to bed when I pulled in. Thank god my dad acted so quickly or I might not be writing this today. This incident has caused me to be hyper

aware of my surroundings and I never turn into my driveway without making sure that I'm not followed. Always, always be mindful of where you are and don't walk around with your headphones on or phone pressed to your ear. You never know when you may be an opportunistic moment for someone with ill intentions. Know where your local police station is, and if you ever get chills, something is wrong. Drive into the police station, and the police are more than happy to help you out. Better safe than sorry. And the police did capture these creeps about two weeks later, and they didn't get a fourth victim. They were both on probation, serving their time, and decided killing their victims

was better than leaving witnesses. My dad is still my hero today. His quick actions prevented me from being that fourth victim, and the color, model, and make of the car my dad described was the countryside of France. My village is settled at the top of a hill and surrounded by forests and crops with no stores or a bakery. My parents' house is near two farms and behind the garden there are large crops. This is essential to the story. The bathroom's window overlooks the garden, and before my parents built a veranda, there were curtains so every time I closed it when I was going to the bathroom it made my family

laugh. Why are you closing it? No one's watching you. And I would always say, we don't know that, just in case. Then the veranda was built and my dad got rid of the curtains and put strips on the windows. I got worried because I loved to know that I have my privacy when going to the bathroom and I even showed my parents that when we were standing at the end of the garden that you can see into the bathroom and of course they just laughed at me and said

you're just being paranoid. Now weeks passed and then I noticed a tractor parked just at the end of the garden every night. My parents also noticed it and thought it was kind of strange. We lived there for 20 years and it was kind of strange. We lived there for 20 years and it's never happened before. Sometimes we felt like we were being watched, but we shrugged it off, thinking that we were just being paranoid. My dad came to talk to the farmer to get rid of the tractor and then it disappeared for a while. Today, I was smoking outside and my mom came to me and said, I think you're right. We are being watched. Yesterday night, I was smoking outside and my mom came to me and said, I think you're right, we are being watched. Yesterday night I was going to the bathroom and the tractor was parked in front of the garden

with its headlights illuminating the bathroom's window. I turned the light off, went to the veranda and took a picture and then he left. And I'm glad that I was right but worried because I don't know how long he or she has been stalking us in the bathroom. I was 25 and decided to take a trip into the city after my mom's passing. She died unexpectedly and I still lived with her at the time. I needed to get out of the house. Everything inside of it reminded me of her. I chose a hotel that had a relatively good reviews and the price for the room was too good to pass up. I won't reveal the

hotel's name for obvious reasons and the main one being that I'm just trying to forget the experience altogether and even typing out its name is hard for me. The hotel had an old world charm that instantly drew me in. As I checked in I couldn't help but admire how clean everything was. It was the kind of place that you see in postcards and I was looking forward to getting to my room and finally being able to relax after everything I'd been through that month. My room was on the second floor and it was nice to see that it had a view of the garden. The hotel staff was friendly, and everything seemed perfect. It started innocently enough. On the first night, I went down to the hotel's restaurant for dinner.

As I sat alone at the corner table, I noticed a man at the bar. He was tall, with messy hair and a pretty scruffy beard. He seemed to be in his forties and was wearing a faded leather jacket and jeans. I don't know why I remember what he was wearing, but I do. I caught his eye for a moment and he gave me a nod. I'm a pretty awkward person, so I just looked away and pretended like he didn't just catch me staring. The night went on and I tried not to think about it too much. After dinner, I returned to my room and settled in for the night.

I watched some TV, read a book, and eventually fell asleep. But when I woke up the next morning, things just felt a little off. As I stepped out of my room and made my way down the hall towards the elevator, I noticed the same man from the night before. He was leaning against the wall just a few feet from my room and his eyes were locked on to me. It sent a shiver down my spine and it was not the good kind. I tried to shake off the uneasy feeling that I was getting, thinking that it might just be a coincidence, but that voice in my head was telling me something was wrong.

I shouldn't listen to it. I decided to try and go about my day without being too paranoid, but being a woman all by myself, a small bit of paranoia is required. I wanted to see the sights and explore the city but no matter where I went, I had this eerie feeling that someone was following me and I couldn't escape the feeling of just being watched. That night, I got back to the hotel and decided to have dinner in that restaurant again. I really didn't want to run into that dude again, but the convenience of eating and being able to go straight up to your room was just too tempting to pass up. I also hoped that being around people would ease my nerves. As I sat at my table, the same man walked in and once again sat at the bar, only this time he was closer and he was facing me. He had a drink in hand, staring very intently at me. I tried not to look at him, but when someone

is staring at you and won't even stop when you look back at them, you can't help but take a peek every so often to see if they're continuing. After a short while, his face changed into sort of a smile and I was just thoroughly creeped out. I got up to leave and noticed that he got up at the same time. He began walking out after me and was eerily close behind me as he did so. I swear I could feel him breathing on the back of my neck as we walked. I tried asking him nicely to just stay further back, but he started to laugh. He followed me all the way up to my floor and stopped a few doors down from my room. I entered my room quickly, glancing back at him and noticed that he was doing the same thing as before. Just standing there in the hall, clearly waiting for me or waiting to do something to me, all without saying a word.

I knew I probably shouldn't ignore it anymore. I was scared and confused, so I decided to approach the hotel staff about the situation first, before I went so far as to just call the police. The man hadn't actually done anything to physically harm me, so I doubt that there was anything that they would have been able to do anyways. I explained my discomfort and the fact that I had seen the man loitering near my room multiple times and they were actually understanding and assured me that they would keep an eye on things. For the next couple of days, I stayed close to the hotel and inside my room for the most part. I even considered cutting my trip short, but I didn't want to let fear dictate my choices. This was supposed to be my time to heal, and I didn't want to let some freak of a man ruin it.

As a person traveling alone as I was, I was determined to just reclaim my sense of security. Unfortunately, every day I was there, I saw that guy. Sometimes he would be in the lobby, other times in the hallway or near my room, and occasionally he would be at the restaurant. He even managed to come into the gym the few times that I randomly decided to work out. It was as if he was playing a twisted game of cat and mouse with me. I became increasingly paranoid, constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering when and where he'd appear next. One night after I'd been there for about a week, I returned to my room after dinner and I was shocked to find a note had been slipped under my door. The handwriting almost looked like it was hurried and barely legible, and all it said was, watching you.

My heart raced as I read the note over and over again. I had to know that it was from him. I immediately called the front desk and reported the note. The staff told me that they were taking the situation very seriously and advised me to just lock my door, stay in the room, and wait for them to check the security tapes. They assured me that they'd find the man and get the police involved if necessary. I sat in my room, waiting anxiously for someone to tell me that the man was being kicked out or even that he was being arrested and that I'd be okay. Minutes turned into hours and the sense of dread only intensified. What if the staff couldn't find the guy? What if he was waiting for me somewhere in the hotel? What if he was in my room and I just

didn't know? It almost felt like I was being hunted. Finally, a knock at my door broke the silence. It was the hotel manager along with the security guard. They informed me that they had found the man who was in the process of being escorted off the premises. They assured me that he wouldn't be allowed back in the hotel and that they were involving the police to be sure all necessary steps were being taken to resolve the issue and I was relieved but still shaken I thanked the hotel staff for their quick response and for believing me when I told them something was wrong I was later contacted by a detective who informed me that the man was arrested after they found multiple pictures of me in his coat pocket. As it turned out, the man had been stalking me for almost a year

without me ever knowing. His apartment was filled with pictures of me in the town that I lived in doing everyday things. There were even pictures of me at my mom's funeral, pictures of me in my house taken through my windows. I have no idea how I never noticed that someone was constantly following me, but I guess realizing when I did, before he tried anything physical, was better than realizing too late. He was charged with aggravated stalking, and looking back, this experience taught me the importance of trusting my instincts and taking action when I feel unsafe. So I was a manager of a hotel when what I'm about to tell you occurred. It was around 1am and no new guests had arrived for a couple of hours. It seemed like a pretty slow night.

I was talking to one of the employees about how whenever a night is this slow or quiet, something bad usually happens. They said I was just being superstitious, but I've come to realize that that usually is the truth. I've seen a lot during my 10 years as a manager. Plenty of domestic disturbances, fights in the hallways, drug deals gone wrong, and the list really does go on and on. But that night had to have been the worst. At around 1.30am, after my co-workers were finally finished telling me how ridiculous I was being about the quiet night, I got a call from one of the rooms. I answered and was met with the voice of a little boy. He sounded maybe like five

at the most, and he started telling me that he wanted his mommy, and that I had to get her. I asked if he was okay, and he said yes, but just that he wanted his mommy. I started to get concerned, and just as I was going to ask what room number he was in, a man came to the phone, identified himself as the boy's father, and apologized for his son wasting my time. Before I could even get a word in, the line just went dead. We were old school, so we couldn't even tell what room he had called from. I got a little worried, so I started asking around to my employees to see if any of them remembered a man checking into our room with a little boy. I was having no luck until I asked our restaurant manager, and he said a man had come in with a little boy earlier that night and had used the voucher that we gave all of our guests. Thankfully, it was only a voucher used that day, and it had the room number on it. I grabbed one of the larger men that we had on staff and headed for the room.

I had no intentions of confronting the man or even asking any questions. I just wanted to see the boy and make sure that he was okay. So I grabbed a few towels, told my employee to wait at the end of the hall and I knocked on the door. A man answered. He was short and chubby and smelled horribly of just alcohol. Behind him on the bed was the little boy. He was so skinny I could see his ribs and he looked like he was covered in bruises. I tried to act calm and I told the man that I had the towels that he requested.

He of course denied requesting towels and just shut the door in my face. I turned around and speed walked down the hall and to the elevator. Once I was back at the front desk I immediately called the police. I was instructed to act naturally and not make any further contact with the man to avoid him running with the boy. My heart was racing and I was sweating profusely as I waited for the police. They surrounded the building and came in by the dozen. I told them what room they were in and gave them the key. They had me come up with them in case there was a problem gaining access to the room. I really didn't want

to go up there but if there was any chance that they could help that boy I was going to take it. The elevator ride seemed to last forever as I thought out every possible scenario for what was about to go down. The elevator stopped and I and about 8 officers stepped off and into the hallway. We walked down towards the door but they had me wait closer to the end of the hall. I was terrified when I watched them knock on the door and demanded the man to come out. He refused and said that he would hurt the boy if they tried to get in. At that moment, things became very real and I believed him. They tried to negotiate with the man for almost an hour but he was relentless

and determined to stay in that room as long as possible. Finally, they decided to just rush the room. It almost felt like everything was in slow motion. There was a lot of yelling, paired with the sounds of things crashing around the room, and before I knew it, they were walking out with a man in handcuffs. Behind them came another officer running out with the boy in his arms. He could barely hold his head up. He was put in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. He later made a full recovery and was reunited with his mother later that morning. That floor of the hotel had been closed off while they investigated and I learned later on that the man who was with the boy really was his father.

Apparently his wife was leaving him and taking their son because of his abusive tendencies so he took the boy and threatened to hurt him if she left him. They had been on the run for over a month. It also unfortunately turned out the man wasn't opposed to abusing his son and the bruises were caused by him smacking and beating the little boy for what he called acting up. I cried for days for that kid. I wanted so badly to take away his pain and make him forget what his own father had put him through. But I know that is trauma that he'll have to live with forever. I'm just glad that he got help and that his mom doesn't have to spend any more nights without her son So it was the summer of 2012 and I was in my early 20s, living in a small town that seemed maybe a little stuck in the past.

My group of friends and I were always trying to find new and exciting ways to spend our time and unfortunately curiosity got the better of us. You see we heard rumors about an abandoned hotel on the outskirts of town and we decided that it might be interesting or even a little creepy to go exploring it. I guess when you're bored of your mundane life even something terrifying is better than staying in bed all night. Little did we know that this decision would lead to a night that we would never forget. The hotel had been vacant for as long as I could remember. It was a massive, imposing building that stood at the edge of the woods, gradually being consumed back by nature. The plants surrounding it were so overgrown that it was almost hard to even find a

way in. Stories about the hotel varied from person to person, but one thing was consistent. You were never supposed to go there after dark. But we were idiots and figured that we had some kind of strength in numbers, so we packed our flashlights and headed out just as the sun was setting. It was really foggy that night, I remember. My friends and I gathered at the edge of the woods, and I remember my heart was beating really fast at that moment. I started getting second thoughts about being there, but everyone was so excited. I didn't want to be the person to bring everyone else down. As we approached the hotel, our initial impression was that it

was just a really eerie structure and that it probably wasn't as dangerous as everyone made it seem. I even thought that maybe it was just a scary story our parents would tell us to just keep us from actually going there. Its windows were all shattered and the once grand entrance was now just this huge gaping hole. The graffiti covered walls and the overgrown bushes added to the already very creepy vibe that I was getting from just stepping foot inside the building. We cautiously entered, flashlights in hand. Inside the lobby was filled with torn up old furniture and the faded wallpaper peeled away from the walls. We kept talking to each other about how what it must have been like when it was open and how weird it was that it was just left to rot we explored the ground floor first poking our heads into the dark room my friends started telling ghost stories to try to freak the rest of us out every creaking floorboard made us

jump but we laughed it off as we made our way up the steps to the next floor once we were on the second floor we stumbled on some stuff that made it obvious that we steps to the next floor. Once we were on the second floor, we stumbled on some stuff that made it obvious that we weren't the only ones who had ventured into that place. Sleeping bags, empty food cans, and scattered belongings made it clear there were probably people squatting there. It was disconcerting, but not entirely unexpected. After all, an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, where you wouldn't have to worry about police, would be the perfect place to stay if you were homeless. We decided to push forward, moving to the third floor and then to the fourth. We heard the fourth floor was the spookiest, so we wasted no time getting up there.

The higher we ascended, the more damage we noticed. The floorboards were falling apart and the building just seemed more sketchy up there. We were making our way through the different rooms, trying to be careful not to fall through the floor when I started to feel as if though someone was watching us. I dismissed the feeling though. I thought it was probably just my mind playing tricks on me. I'm sure anyone exploring a creepy abandoned location probably would feel the same way. As we reached the top floor, we discovered an open door that led to a rooftop patio. It was a spectacular view, but something was off. We all got very quiet and then, as clear as day, we heard a muffled conversation coming from a nearby room. Our hearts were racing and we cautiously approached the room.

I started to beg my friends to just come with me and we could all leave, but they were determined to find out if there were other people there. The door was slightly ajar and we peeked inside. There were three men, sitting around a small table that was also practically falling apart. It was also fairly obvious that they were getting ready to do something. Substances, I think. I'm not sure exactly what it was. They were startled to see us, and for a moment, we all froze. My friend, Alex, stepped forward and tried to strike up a conversation,

explaining that we had only come to explore the building. He was just met with silence, and I could feel the tension in the room grow thicker. One of the men finally spoke up, and then this gross voice filled with some hostility said, You shouldn't have come here. And his words sent a shiver down my spine. I realized that we had unintentionally found ourselves in a dangerous situation far beyond what I'm sure any of us could handle. This was technically their home, and to them we were the trespassers.

Another one of the men was also visibly agitated. The man pulled out a knife, starting to come towards Alex with it. He managed to back away fast enough to avoid getting stabbed, but the other two men got up quickly to back up their friend. Alex yelled at us to run and we all started sprinting down the steps. The wood crumbled as each of us ran one after another. Alex was in the back and the three men were far behind. Just as we were nearing the bottom floor, Alex tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. I watched in horror as he landed with a thud on the lobby floor. He seemed to be unconscious and we were all screaming.

His girlfriend, Beth, had rushed over to him. We stood between him and the three men, but my mind kept telling me that we were all going to die that night. I looked at the men and wondered what was going to happen next. I hope your friend isn't dead. We weren't trying to hurt you, we just wanted to scare you a little bit. We do it with all these kids who come into our house here. He put his knife away that he had brandished earlier. We just didn't want anyone coming back, that's all. Just get your friend, get out of here and get some help.

We're really sorry. Just don't send anybody back here, alright? I was looking into their eyes in the little bit of light that we had and realized just how scared they were too. I knew that they were telling the truth and really weren't there to hurt us. It was just one of those wrong place, wrong time moments. If anyone was at fault, it was us. We should have just stayed away from that place to begin with. The three men walked back up the stairs and I looked back down at Alex who now had his head in Beth's lap.

She was begging for him to wake up. And none of us had phone service and we quickly realized that we all have to carry him pretty much back to the car. Thankfully it wasn't too far, just at the edge of the woods. But we're still around an hour away from the nearest hospital though. But we really had no other options. The car ride was hard. Alex didn't wake up during the whole ride to the hospital. When we finally made it inside, they immediately took him back.

Apparently, he had a brain bleed. When he woke up about a week later, he realized that he really couldn't feel the lower portion of his body, and he had been permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Beth begged us to go to the police about what had happened. She was furious over the permanent challenges Alex would have to face for the rest of his life, and after talking to the rest of our friends, we decided to leave the decision up to him. And being the incredible, selfless guy he is, he decided against reporting them to the police. He said that the only thing it would do was ruin their lives and that one altered life was enough. They never meant to hurt him and he knew that. Alex was released from the hospital a few weeks later and struggled a lot

with his disability for a long while. He and Beth decided to end their relationship not long after that. She never really understood why he refused to report the men to the police and that decision was the reason I guess they broke up. We were all just happy that even out of the relationship she honored his decision and just kept quiet. It's been a little over 11 years and not all of us are still close friends. Alex and I actually ended up falling in love and getting married. Beth is still friends with us, although not as close as we once were. Alex doesn't let his life be defined by his disability. That night changed our lives forever, but part of me, even if it seems wrong, is grateful it happened. If it hadn't,

who knows if we'd be together. Working in a hotel isn't the most glamorous job in the world. It's actually pretty far from that. But when I needed a job, there was an opening at the local hotel that gave it to me right away. I was 18 and freshly out of high school and I decided against college because I was in my do the opposite of everything your parents want you to do stage of my life. Granted, I know not everyone has to go to college to be successful, but in my case I can't help but wish that I had. Maybe then I wouldn't have to go through all the horrible things my job brought into my life. There were small incidents that happened within the first few months that I found uncomfortable at best.

Gross men hitting on me, asking me how much it would cost for me to join them for the night. Then there was the actual physical disgusting stuff. I worked at the front desk, but we were severely short-staffed constantly, so I did housekeeping for about a month. And let me tell you, it was truly horrifying. I've seen pretty much every bodily fluid on almost every inch of a room at one point or another. I finally had to tell my manager that I was going to quit if I had to clean another room and he assured me that that wouldn't be necessary anymore and my job would be easy from there on out. It was around 2 in the morning during an intense snowstorm. No one had checked in for hours and I figured the rest of

the night would be relatively calm, maybe even quiet. I heard the door open and the bell that hung off of it rang loudly and in stepped two guys. They were wearing large heavy coats and they stomped in their heavy work boots to get the snow off of them. They were laughing about something and immediately stopped when they saw me sitting at the front desk. Their smiles even dropped from their faces. They made a weird face at each other and walked up to the desk slowly. I put on my fake customer service smile and tried my best to seem friendly and helpful, but I was tired and worried it would show. They didn't have a reservation, so I booked them a room. Standard, two queen beds.

I thought everything seemed pretty normal with them, and till as they were walking away, I heard them start talking about how good looking they thought I was. And with me being freshly 18, I figured that that was something I would have to start getting used to, so I brushed it off and continued on with my night. I was reading my book when I heard someone enter the lobby again. It was one of the men I mentioned before. He walked up to the front desk and leaned over it, getting way closer than I was comfortable with. He reeked of beer and cigarettes and I asked him if there was anything I could help him with. I was hoping it was something simple and that

he'd be leaving back to his room as quickly as possible, but life doesn't work like that. He told me the shower drain wasn't working in their room and that he needed someone to fix it immediately. I tried calling maintenance, but of course they weren't going to answer. I politely told the man the soonest anyone was going to be able to fix it was the next morning. He started getting really mad, saying stuff like he was going to complain to my manager and leave bad reviews. By the time he started actually screaming, I decided it would be more worth it for me to check it out than deal with him waking everyone else up in the hotel. That would mean more complaints and me possibly even getting fired. Granted, it wasn't

the smartest idea for me to enter a room alone with two men, but I wasn't thinking straight. I was exhausted and just wanted his rant to end, something that I would end up regretting for the rest of my life. He led me over to his room and I asked him and his friend to end. Something that I would end up regretting for the rest of my life. He led me over to his room and I asked him and his friend to wait outside while I checked the shower drain. They obliged and everything seemed normal at first. I was leaning over the bathtub and turned on the faucet. The water ran down perfectly fine. I yelled out that it was working normally and just as I started to stand up, I heard the door slam behind me. I turned around quickly and screamed when I was met with the larger of the two men standing in the bathroom with me. He grabbed me by my shoulders and slammed me against the wall.

Be quiet or I'll make this a lot worse than it has to be. He almost started to laugh when he said that. I started to scream as loud as I could, hoping one of the other guests would hear me. He released one of his hands to cover my mouth. With one of my arms free, I did something I'm sure that he didn't expect me to do in that moment. I upholstered my concealed handgun. I held it not far from his side and pulled the trigger. I knew I had no time to hesitate. My ears started to ring like crazy. He released me and fell to the ground.

My adrenaline was pumping and I barely noticed the door open and the other man came in. I pointed the gun at him and told him to leave or I'd shoot him. And he knew that I meant it when he saw his friend bleeding out on the floor in front of me. He didn't even say a word before running out of that hotel room faster than I ever would have thought that he could run. I stepped over the man's body on the floor. I had no idea if he was alive or dead, but I just had to get out of that room. I stepped out into the hallway, leaving bloody footprints behind me,

realizing that I must have stepped in some of his blood as I went over him. Multiple guests were standing out in the hallway, demanding to know why they had just heard what sounded like a gunshot. A woman in the room next door must have seen the look on my face because she immediately came over to make sure I was okay. The police were there not long after, and the room was cordoned off. The man was taken to the hospital, and surprisingly wasn't dead and didn't end up dying. An investigation was done, but thankfully security cameras did show proof that I was lured into the room by the men and they did re-enter after I asked them to stay in the hallway. The audio was very clear and I was

never charged with anything regarding the shooting. The other man was found only a couple of miles away. His truck had gotten stuck in a snowbank. They were both charged with kidnapping. The man who cornered me in the bathroom was also charged with assault, and both were sentenced to three years in prison, as well as given no contact orders upon their release. I quit my job not long after and decided to enroll in college. I'm currently studying English, and I hope to get into writing one day, and that's why I sent this in, and it's truly felt cathartic.

If there's one thing I can advise anyone to do in this scary world that we live in, it's this. Learn how to protect yourself. It could save your life one day. I, a 35-year-old female, used to work at a small startup that had a small warehouse in the city. I enjoyed it because it had great benefits, perks, and a pretty easy commute. I just walked a few blocks to the metro line in our city. Usually I worked the day shift so my walk to the station wasn't too bad. I just encountered normal city life. On the occasional time that I worked into the night, I usually worked with some co-workers that I knew or my then-boyfriend would pick me up. If I had to make the walk by

myself, I'd wear giant headphones to deter catcalls or other annoyances. I had a doctor's appointment that morning and was allowed to make up my shift by staying after the day shift crew left. However, I finished my shift before the rest of the evening crew which meant that I made the walk by myself that day. It was already dark and the street was pretty much deserted, except for this one really tall burly dude walking just ahead of me yelling into his phone. I had my headphones on but nothing playing because I wanted to be aware of my surroundings. Big burly guy sounded angry and didn't turn back to look at me until after he yelled into the phone,

I did my part, now it's up to you to get rid of the body. I don't care what you gotta do, just make it disappear. Then he turned around and stopped walking, looking at me surprised. I quickly stopped to not run into him and give him an awkward grimace or smile, acting like I hadn't just heard him say that because I was listening to music. At the next crosswalk, I quickly crossed the street. He just stared, standing in place until I was a block away and then turned the corner and disappeared. I don't know if this guy actually knew that I was behind him and said that to scare me because he thought that I was listening to his conversation.

I hope. Or it pretty often. My three little sisters, their dad, and I were standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. My younger sister couldn't have been much older than a year, so I was ten and holding her on my hip. A middle-aged woman joined the line behind us. She was trying to get my baby sister's attention over my shoulder, just cooing and baby talking her. So I turned us towards her slightly as a polite gesture only for her to start moving closer and holding out her hands. It was happening so fast I almost couldn't react. I had just enough time to give her a panicked look as she reached out to take her from me and I shouted, excuse me? Don't touch her! Get away from us! At the same

time my dad took a step in between us and this crazy woman, asking her what she thought she was doing. She just got really sheepish and was trying to laugh it off. Instead of backing up, she made her way past us and then proceeded to try to cut us in line. I think my stepdad would have exploded if not for the cashier giving this lady a glare and waving us forward. She left us alone after that and it was super awkward but the whole experience left us all quite shaken. The woman gave me an off vibe from the start and I'm really not sure what her intentions were. I think she probably just thought that I would allow her to hold my sister for some insane reason but who knows, she probably was trying to run off with her This happened in November of 2014.

I went to Walmart to buy groceries while my 16-year-old daughter was attending her homecoming dance. I tried to do my grocery shopping to coincide with her 11 p.m. pickup. All at once I realized it was about 5-11pm and I was still standing in line to get checked out. About that time one of their customer service supervisors walked by me and I motioned to her explaining that I had to pick up my daughter and if she could hold my cart I'd come back and check out as soon as I picked her up. She agreed and had someone take my cart to the cooler and told me to tell them at service desk when I got back. So off I go, pick daughter up, arrive back at

Walmart at 11.15. Daughter came inside with me and as we were coming to the store, a man about 50 something walked over in front just past me and peered down the front of my daughter's strapless pink formal, which from a couple of hours of teenagers bopping around dancing had become looser, and mentioned what he could do with her. And she happens to be well endowed. He had a female companion with him when he walked in, and I could see him and her out of the corner of my eye. I don't know if this was his girlfriend or relation to him, but she watched and heard him and didn't say anything i felt like i was in a stupor like did this just happen split second i was stunned that anyone

would have the audacity to walk up and say this to my daughter right in front of me her mom walking right beside her i became completely enraged and stepped between his leering eyes and my daughter he asked her another inappropriate question. After stepping in front of him and putting myself between him and my daughter, I asked him if today was a good day for him to die. Honestly, I was running on pure rage and adrenaline, which probably gave me more guts than brains in that moment. He glared at me and tried to walk in tighter and intimidate me. I told him to get the F away and he finally walked back over to who he was with but continued

to glare at me as they went on inside Walmart ahead of us. I absolutely couldn't believe this had actually just transpired. My daughter was in tears and scared beyond all reason. I took her straight back to the women's department and had her put on a sweat jacket, zip it up, and paid for it in line with my groceries. If I'd have really thought about it and not been running on adrenaline and still having the shock factor going on in hindsight, I should have left that store, called the police, and gone straight home. At the same time, the thought crossed my mind that he might have followed us to the car,

and then what? I think if she had been alone regardless what she was wearing, he still would have approached her. If someone is this brazen inside a public store, what is he capable of doing in a dark, isolated place? The whole situation chills me to the bone. I think the only reason he walked away was because I stood up to him and didn't flinch. To have walked up to my daughter, passed me on her left, and stood so close to her and looked down the front of her dress and said what he said to her is unbelievable. I never thought I just reacted with pure rage that he would dare to do what he did. I never again went to Walmart that late at night again and have warned my daughters to always be aware of their surroundings, not be carelessly talking on their cell phones, and to always be aware of their surroundings coming and going. As I'm at an intersection not too far from my house, there was a car from the opposite side of the road turning into where I was going and we almost hit each other.

We both stopped on time and it was no biggie, but the guy in the car is noticeably yelling at me from inside his car, giving me the middle finger. Alright, so I let him go ahead and I thought that would be the end of the road rage for tonight. But boy was I wrong. Immediately after I let the guy through, behind him was a car turning very fast, so I accelerated and quickly got in front of him. Not out of ego or anything, I just thought that considering the position of my car and the turning lane, it's likely this idiot would hit me. Right afterwards, this guy is obviously angry and starts flicking his extremely bright lights at me for a minute straight. It was annoying considering something brighter than his extremely bright lights at me for a minute straight. It was annoying considering something brighter than the sun is shining at me for a minute and you can tell it's hard to navigate at night like that. So I said to myself,

two can play this game and I slowed down to 20 miles an hour from 50 for a minute or so, still flicking his lights but not as much at this point, and at this point I was close to home and turned into my subdivision, thinking the whole saga would end then and there. But dear god, this guy follows me into my maze of a neighborhood, and I get near my house and he's still following me. I freak out, and was wondering should I just park in my driveway and he'll go away, or should I go into a random driveway and he'll go away or should I go into a random neighborhood and lose him there. So as soon as I passed my house I decided to go right past it and into another neighborhood a couple of minutes away and he follows me exactly to there.

At this point I left that neighborhood and I'm just jumping on my gas pedal and sped down the road and made a random right turn. At this point he's still following me but it's a red light for him so thankfully he stops and after that I lose him. Honestly this was a scary experience for me considering my suburb isn't too far from a very dangerous hood where there's gunshots and crazy stuff like that. Who knows if I would have stopped my car at home. Maybe this guy would have gotten a gun out and put it to my head. I'm an 18-year-old male from a southern state in the United States. I usually don't feel uneasy and am generally very chill about situations and people in public.

On this day, I was spending time in Washington DC with my friend, a 23 year old male. It was a low energy day and all we really did was spend time looking at monuments. But early afternoon we were thirsty and decided to head to a Starbucks for a drink. While waiting in line someone tapped me on the shoulder. At first I thought it might be someone that I knew or someone trying to get through, but it turned out to be an older white dude, age 25 to 35, with long dirty red hair and a scraggly beard, and he says to me, Jesus is king. I responded, yeah I know, we're Christians. My friend did the right thing and ignored him while I found myself stuck making uncomfortable small talk. He began telling

me how Jesus was always with him and how God would communicate with him. Despite being a Christian myself, I had a hard time believing what he was saying. He mentioned, God told me that you were going to be a drummer. To which I replied, I am already a drummer. I had no idea how he would know that or if it was just a coincidence, but it did make me feel a little uneasy. Then he said, God also told me that you'd be a singer. And my heart dropped. I'm also a singer. And this really started to freak me out. He went on to mention various things about my mom and how he knew that she prayed for me as a kid and how I was destined to let my hair grow out. His breath

smelled like weed and it made me scrunch up my face every time he spoke. Eventually he left the line to sit down. I was really uncomfortable there and ended up staying longer than we should have. As soon as we got our drinks I rushed my friend out as quickly as possible. I had a real uneasy feeling and it took me a while to start feeling better. This happened a couple of years back when I was around 14 or 15 years old. There was a mostly abandoned peninsula in our town that I often visited with my dog when I was younger. I even got lost a couple of times and had to swim across parts of the river to get back home. It was always deserted and you could walk for hours without running into anyone. My mom was always very against me going

there but of course I thought that I knew better and went anyway even though she specifically forbade me. One time I decided to go with one of my girlfriends from school and her two little dogs. It was empty as usual and we went to the shore so that we could play with the dogs in the river. As we started playing, we noticed an older man, maybe in his mid-fifties, that was walking nearby behind the trees. He stopped pretty close and just stared at us for a couple of minutes with an expressionless face without saying anything. At this point, we started to feel a little uncomfortable. Then we noticed that he started slowly taking off his clothes. The whole situation was really

off-putting, since the whole peninsula was fully abandoned and he could have easily chose any other location to bathe. We should probably have left at this point, but we were really having fun with dogs and were not ready to go home. We decided to leave the beach and go a bit further to find another location where we could be alone. As we were leaving, I looked back and saw the man staring at us the same unsettling way. I couldn't see well but at this point he seemed fully naked. He didn't follow us though and I convinced myself that he was probably just an innocent nudist. We walked for maybe 5 or 10 minutes until we found a new area to go into the water. We waited a bit and there was no sign of the man, so we started playing with the dogs in the water.

We spent maybe an hour or so there and to be honest I completely forgot about the guy. Then suddenly my friend walks up to me with a pale face and says, we need to leave right now. Don't turn around. And of course I turned around. And there he was, the same man standing right behind us, fully naked, yanking on himself while watching us with the same creepy expressionless face. We got the dogs and walked as fast as we could. We have no idea how long he was there lurking in the bushes, just pleasuring himself while watching us.

Needless to say, I never went back there alone after that. Many years have passed and I heard multiple stories of creepy encounters from different people on that peninsula. It's scary to think what could have happened one day when I was wandering there alone. The peninsula was mostly covered with dense forest and it could have taken very little effort for a grown man to drag me into the bushes. I went into a local thrift store today to check out some bookcases or TV stands since I'd just moved into a new place and need new furniture. I was checking out a bookcase and looking for a tag. Sometimes they're in strange places so I did a little hop to see if I could see one. A man in the right of me says, what are you looking for up there? At first I didn't pay him any mind and did a courteous chuckle in his direction.

I winded myself through the little maze of bookshelves and random furniture and didn't think anything of it until I happened to be able to see over a piece and he was staring at me. I kept maneuvering through the store and everywhere he appeared. I picked something up and was looking at it and all of a sudden he was right there and was about to say something. I went to the other side of the store. And all of a sudden he's there, asking if I had a restaurant recommendation in the area. I say no. And I turned around and moved my knife from my purse to my back pocket hoping he'd notice. Apparently he didn't because back in another

corner he's there again. I call my partner and this finally seems to get him to move away. He kept going around the same random spots and picking up objects and staring at me. I stayed on the phone and my partner said that I should just leave but I didn't want to. I had a purpose being there and I wasn't going to let him ruin it. Luckily he finally departed without buying anything. I tried keeping an eye out when he left but I didn't see exactly if he drove off or not so I was a little spooked when leaving. Luckily I bought a table so someone escorted me to my truck with it. So this was nearly 13 years ago. Maybe this isn't as creepy as I remember it being as an adult,

but given all the stories about trafficking or kidnapping, I still feel very weird whenever I think of this. I was walking home from my aunt's house after school, and she lives only about a block from my parents' house. It was starting to drizzle a little, so I remembered finding it curious to see a man in a business suit and no coat or umbrella walking seemingly to nowhere that would make sense. There aren't any modeling agencies near the street, so him being on foot at

about 6pm seemed odd. He stopped me while I was walking on the sidewalk past him and abruptly asked me if I ever considered modeling. At this time I was about 12 and very goth, so no, I was obviously not modeling. Something about this whole thing sent off alarm bells for me, because it didn't seem like any viable agent would ever approach any random young girl like this. What still strikes me about this was how he was carrying a portfolio of his models that he showed me to try and legitimize this proposal. But the pictures were either A, not of actual people, but illustrations, watercolor paintings, architecture, or scenery, and B, photo shoots taken from fashion magazines like Vogue that he was passing as his own clients. He tried to get my

information from me and I hurriedly declined and said that I would have to talk to my parents. I don't believe that he had a business card and at the mention of my parents he seemed to back off. Once I walked away from him I remember running the rest of the way home. I told my parents about this and they agreed that it seemed really off. They did call the police to alert them of any suspicious activity just in case, but I never heard anything about it again. My aunt and uncle's house was in a small desert town. They had about four acres of land and a good amount of space between neighbors. On the back of their property, there was a fenced-in area with a large shed and an

old salvaged U-Haul moving truck. I was visiting for a couple of weeks one summer. My little cousin and I were about 10 and 12 at the time. One morning, we were roaming the property by ourselves. The adults were all out running errands and we ended up walking between the fence and the old moving truck. We were on the passenger side of the truck, walking from the back towards the front. All of a sudden, my cousin just froze. The hairs on the back of my neck stood instantly. He didn't make a noise and just pointed at the side mirror. In the reflection, we could see a man sitting in the driver's seat.

His face was caked in dirt and blood. He was moving around quickly and at one point he ducked out of our view. We instantly turned and sprinted back to the house. We locked up the doors and called the cops and family. We were freaking out, running from room to room, looking out the windows, brandishing baseball bats. The police and family showed up about 20 to 25 minutes later and they searched all over, but never found the man. They found the fence was bent down where he must have climbed over it. There was blood and dirt smeared all over the

driver's seat of the truck. He must have been trying to steal it or something because the ignition wires were pulled out like he was trying to hotwire it. No explanation for the blood. Nothing happened after that. My cousin and I had nightmares for the next few nights, but that's about it. To be continued... r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast,

where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. And I'll see you again soon.