The Lets Read Podcast - 268: HIS FAMILY TOOK REVENGE | 17 True Scary Stories | EP 256

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about motels, grandparents secrets & tales from Japan. 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 & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by: - Betterhelp - Bilt - joinbilt.com/READ

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wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumho RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumho TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca My granny grew up in Ireland during the 1930s and moved over to the United States just after WWII. She was quintessentially Irish and although she'd never cared to make a return visit to her small hometown in Shenangarry, she often spoke of it fondly. She said it was a wonderful place to grow up,

with lots of open green fields for children to play in and the village seemed to be filled with all kinds of whimsical characters. There was the priest, who once spent half a mass talking about how Jesus would have loved tea cakes, the pub landlord who once tried to ride a horse into his pub after winning it in a hurling bet, and then the village drunk, whose singing voice was so beautiful that he managed to make a living by singing dirges down at the village pub until closing time. The way she talked about Shannon Gary, it was baffling to think anyone wanted to leave in the first place. But upon asking her why she and her family decided to depart, Granny told me that she was only too glad to see the back of the place, as there was always,

as she put it, an awful lot of bother going on. Considering the Irish Civil War was just fought a few years before she was born, you might assume that the bother my granny was referring to might involve some very sad and very violent stories. But you'd be mistaken, because each and every one had this tinge of morbid humor to them. There was the story of a man who fought a pig and lost. There was the story of the hurling champion who dropped dead with a smile on his face after scoring a winning goal. And then there was the oh-so-tragic story of the farmhand who was found drowned in a rain puddle. It seemed like even the deaths in Ireland had a humorous streak to them,

even if it was a very dark variety of humor. But I think deep down, I was only tickled by Granny's stories because I didn't really believe that they were true. I mean, how the hell does a man drown in a puddle? I guess it's possible, but to me, it always sounded like a kind of joke, or a pithy one-liner that sounded better in old Gaelic, something like that. Little did I know, all of Granny's stories were true. The story of the man who fought a pig and lost involved a prized breeding boar that escaped from a nearby farm and ran all the way into Shannongary.

One of the village's braver denizens attempted to corner, wrestle, and subdue the brawny old hog, but cracked a skull on a stone step after the beast got the better of him and he died a few days later. When you put it like that, it's a lot less humorous than it first sounds, and the same applied to the hurling champion. But by far the scariest story my granny ever told me was actually the one that I initially thought was the funniest the man who drowned in a puddle As you can imagine there's a whole lot more to the story than a guy tripping falling and drowning in a few inches of water Maybe there's a whole lot more if it's the scariest story I've ever heard and I promise you there is The first you need a little background on everything that ran up to the man drowning, so

without further ado, I'll get on with Granny's story. So back in the mid-1930s, when my Granny was just a teenager, Shanagiri was a very small, very close-knit community. Things haven't changed much in the last hundred years or so. It's still a very small village of just a few hundred people. But back when Granny was a kid, it was even smaller. And I'm sorry to have to say it, but they didn't care much for outsiders. Maybe it was just a sign of the times and that anyone in their right mind would be suspicious of strangers following a period of civil conflict. But in Chanagary, this was especially true. And unless you could prove yourself a person of good standing, the villagers weren't too keen on strange faces just hanging around.

And once again, I'm sorry to say this, but that especially applied to a family of travelers who rolled into town one day. In those days, Irish travelers were referred to by the same word my granny used for them, which is gypsies. However, that's not the word I'm going to use for them, not because it's the quote-unquote woke thing to do, but because it's simply quite not accurate. The term gypsy is a corruption of the descriptor Egyptian, and the Roma peoples were given that name due to the belief that they originated from Egypt. While the Roma might well have picked up some Ottoman culture or customs as they made their way through the old Turkic Empire, they actually originated from the Indian subcontinent and have a mysterious but very ancient history as a distinct subculture. Irish travelers, on the other hand, they're not from Egypt, obviously, or from India. They're from Ireland. Many historians believe that Irish travelers first adopted their nomadic lifestyles as a result of English oppression, and there's historical

basis for that. Yet despite being ethnically distinct from the Roma, Irish travelers adopted a very similar kind of lifestyle. I'm talking horses and covered wagons, moving from place to place looking for work and then moving on when the money dries up. Then I suppose just because of how people were back then, every place they went they were treated like outsiders, and sadly, that was the case in Shenagiri too. When the travelers arrived in town, they took a look around and set up in a field about a mile down the road. Immediately there was grumbling in the village pub, with many wondering what the traveler's business was. But within a few days, they discovered that all the traveler father and his two grown sons wanted

was a little paying work to see them through the coming weeks. There wasn't much to ask, but the villagers of Shanagiri were already averse to outsiders, so coupled with the bad reputation the travelers had, their pleas fell on deaf ears. The villagers wouldn't even trade with them, refusing to sell the travelers so much as a loaf of bread, and it was all with the intention of sending a message, loud and clear, your kind aren't welcome here. It's shameful to think that people held such beliefs but I suppose that's just the way things were back then. Yet instead of just moving on and trying their luck someplace

else, the travelers stayed and as the days went by, things started to go missing around the village. None of the traveler children were ever caught stealing and according to Granny, they didn't hang around town long enough to steal in the first place. But the more things went missing, the more people blamed the travelers for their misplaced belongings. Maybe the travelers did help themselves to a loaf of bread or two. Poverty does breed desperation, after all. But unless you're to the right of Genghis Khan, I think we can all agree that the punishment that followed most certainly didn't fit the crime.

One night, roughly an hour before the village pub was due to close, the traveler's father walked through the door, walked right up to the bar, and asked the landlord for a pint of his best ale. The landlord refused, saying that he didn't think the father had the money. But when the father slammed the right change down on the bar top to show that he did indeed have the coin, the landlord continued to refuse him. Is that the money you got from selling our stolen things? Someone called out.

The father denied any such thievery, and a small scuffle broke out before the traveler father was forced to leave the pub. No one followed him, at least no one did overtly. They just finished up their pints, the landlord kicked them out, and he locked up the place for the night without any more trouble. As far as he knew, the traveler man had slouched off back to his covered wagon to lick his wounds. But as he'd come to find out, that wasn't the case. Early the next morning, a dairy farmer was carting a load of milk and cream into town when he came to a bridge that crossed a small stream. As he crossed, and from his elevated position on the top of his cart, he looked over the side of the bridge in the water and felt his blood run cold.

There, lying face down in the water, was the body of a man. A man who turned out to be the traveler father, who'd been thrown out of the village pub the night before. Granny said she never saw any of it, but it must have made for a terrible scene. The local constable had to enlist the help of some villagers to pull the man's body from the water, and after hauling it onto a wheeled pallet, they delivered his corpse to his wife, sons, and his trio of small daughters. People in the village said that they could hear the man's widow wailing all the way down the lane, and even though they treated the family with contempt at first, there was a

terrible sense that someone, or perhaps a group of people, had gone way too far and done something unforgivable. The constable and his volunteers then left the traveler family to grieve and the next morning they were gone. The village constable issued a plea for information and said that anyone found guilty of the traveler's murder would be hanged for the offense. But no one came forward and from what Granny said this was for a couple of reasons. The first and most insidious was the idea that if someone had killed the traveler father, then he probably deserved it. It was common knowledge that there had been a scuffle at the village pub on the previous night, and someone suggested that

he set upon a father who was stumbling home, drunk, in order to even the score. Then somehow, in the course of the fight that followed, the traveler was bested and thrown over the bridge where he bashed his head and drowned in the water The second reason, and perhaps the most obvious, was that no one wanted to see anyone hanged because they'd gone telling tales to the police Especially not for the sake of an outsider who shouldn't have been in Shen and Gary in the first place There had already been one death, why be the cause of another? But the third reason no one came forward, and the reason which had the most sway, was the fear that if the man's possible accidental killer was named, the traveler's two sons would come seeking revenge.

A revenge that would not nearly be so merciful as the hangman's rope. Weeks went by, and none of the travelers were ever seen around the village. Then as weeks turned into months, people started to forget. A dark cloud had hung over the village for a short time, with some fearing that the travelers' retribution would be visited on them in due course. But as more and more time went by, folks started to relax and that dark cloud seemed to disperse. But then one morning, some terribly bad news swept through Shanagiri and that same dark cloud returned. The village farrier was found dead in a bathtub full of cold

water. He had been drowned. Granny said that back then, they didn't have running water in their homes, let alone hot water. So if you wanted to have anything resembling a good soak, you had to buy your own big wooden bathtub, then fill it up with hot water yourself. The farrier's wife said that after coming home from the pub, her husband had decided to take a nice warm bath. He told her that he'd come straight to bed once he was finished, but when she woke up the next morning, she found herself alone in their bed. to take a nice warm bath. He told her that he'd come straight to bed once he was finished, but when she woke up the next morning, she found herself alone in their bed.

The farrier was a popular man, and seeing as it was his job to shoe all the horses in the village and surrounding area, he was quite a wealthy man too. His death was a big hit to the village, so he was deeply mourned by his friends and neighbors, but it was the circumstances of his death that truly terrified people. Seeing as the farrier was found slumped in his bathtub, head beneath the water, many concluded that his drowning was the result of a traveler's curse that had been put on the village by the father's grieving family. But it was only a handful of villagers who put stock in this while the rest dismissed it as nonsense. A doctor from Cologne had ridden into town to

examine the man's body and had departed after declaring that there was no foul play. The farrier had died of causes that, while tragic, were completely natural. It made sense, since the farrier was no spring chicken and often spent his evenings drinking away vast sums of his daily earnings. The people of Shanagiri might have been poor Irish village folk, but they weren't stupid, and when it came to things of an otherworldly nature, they put their faith in God and very little else. More time went by, the farrier's son stepped into the shoes of his father and life went on as normal for a while. At least until a farmhand was found, lying on a road leading into the village, drowned in a puddle.

This time the signs of foul play were evident for all to see. The farmhand had been set upon while walking home from the village pub. His attackers beat him, forced him down, then held his face under the water of quite a large rain puddle before he finally drowned. Those who'd seen the boy's body dragged from the water said that there were cuts and grazes all over his face, from where his killer had forced his head down so hard that it had scraped some of the flesh from the skull bone of his forehead. Now even the doubters were certain that a terrible but inevitable revenge was being visited upon the village and the culprits were obviously the traveler man's two sons.

Once again, the village constable made a request for volunteers and they rode the surrounding countryside looking for any sign of the travelers or anyone who might have seen them. They found neither hide nor hair of the two sons anyone who might have seen them. They found neither hide nor hair of the two sons and returned empty-handed and without answers. This, however, did not satisfy the villagers who felt that any one of them could be the next victims of a random and deadly attack. They organized volunteer police patrols to reinforce the already heavily burdened constable. Those that took to the streets would at least have a fighting chance, whereas those confined to their homes were almost completely

paralyzed with fear. But one of them seemed much more frightened than the others. In the days after the farmhand's body was discovered, the Chandler's apprentice almost completely disappeared. Confined to his lodgings by some inexplicable terror, he paid a local waif to ferry all of his work to him, along with his meals and any other essentials. The only time he ever vacated his lodgings was to go to Sunday Mass. Villagers noticed that he prayed considerably harder and longer than before. Then once he was done, he made a generous donation to the collection plate, then his way straight home again. But always via the long route and never via the bridge that crossed the stream where the traveler man had been found.

Then, one day, the Chandler's apprentice failed to open his door when the waif came knocking with his morning's work. After banging on his door for a few minutes, the young waif got scared then ran off to the village constable to get some help. A few minutes later, the constable arrived and after kicking the door in and walking inside, he found the Chandler's apprentice. The apprentice was lying in bed, having been beaten so badly that he was barely recognizable with his night clothes, his bed sheets, and the floor beneath him having been completely soaked through with water. Men had been patrolling the streets all night long, and not one of them had seen any strangers coming or going. But still, the shadowy Avengers had managed to creep into the

village and act a watery revenge against the now-deceased Chandler's apprentice, then sneak all the way out again without being spotted. As you can imagine, the villagers of Shenigary were as shocked as they were scared. In the beginning, the general consensus was that the murderous revenge had been committed by the traveler's man's two adult sons, but by that time, many people including the village constable believed a much larger group was responsible. Travelers have large families and even larger clan networks that divide and unite them in equal measure. Their petty squabbles are fought publicly and brutally even today, but when one of them is wronged by an outsider, every traveler feels aggrieved.

And that's because they knew all too well that it could have just easily been them drowned in the stream that night. It took a long time afterward, but there had also been a change of opinion on another issue too. At first, the villagers believed that the killings had been random and opportune, but after the death of the Chandler's apprentice, when the supposedly random slaying stopped, they realized that they were the opposite. It hadn't been a case of you'll kill one of us and we'll take three of you. The murders had been planned, targeted, and they had meaning to them. Out on the lanes, no one knew who killed the traveler man that night, but behind closed doors,

everyone did. It was the farrier, the farmhand, and the Chandler's apprentice. Granny said that not much long after that, her mother and father announced that they were to be travelers themselves, only instead of roaming the Irish countryside, they were to board a ship and to sail to America, where she met my grandfather and the rest is history. All of her stories are as incredible as this one, it's just that this one happens to be the creepiest by far. I guess in the age of oil lamps and weak wind-up flashlights, it was much easier to sneak around at night. There was no CCTV, no infrared ring doorbell cameras, and nothing even resembling modern

street lighting. But even so, the ability of whoever took revenge against the Traveler Man's killers, it verges on the supernatural, in my opinion. The ambush and drowning of the farmhand makes total sense to me. They just caught him in the wrong place at the wrong time and it just so happened to have rained that evening. But when it comes to the farrier and the Chandler's apprentice, it's like they're ninjas, or spookier yet, ghosts. They somehow killed a man in his bathtub so quietly that it didn't wake his wife, then got into the home of a man who'd turned his small dwelling into a veritable fortress of security, and honestly, they made it kinda look easy. But the thing that I find even spookier than those shadowy Avengers

who terrorized a small Irish village for weeks without ever once being spotted is the fact that they somehow worked out who had killed the Traveler Man. I suppose you could say that they killed at random until they forced the guilty party into hiding or on the run. But that's not what I believe. I believe they knew. I don't know how, but they did. Maybe it's because they're just damn good investigators. Maybe one of them witnessed the traveler man's murder and was too scared and too outnumbered to do anything at the time. Or maybe it's because, on the Emerald Isle, there are much older gods

than the Christian one. And while I'm not saying it's also something I believe, it sure does frighten me to think about it. To be continued... My grandpa had never talked about the war, so once the service was over, we got to swapping stories. They wanted to know what he'd been like in his civilian life, and we wanted to know what his time in Vietnam had been like. Things started pretty tame at first. My cousins and I told them stories about the times that grandpa took us fishing, as well as telling them about all the little eccentricities that he had such as using rainwater to flush his toilet. They all thought stuff like that was hilarious and insisted on us telling them as many details like that as we could recall.

Those old vets also insisted on buying us beers in exchange for our time and stories so we were really scraping the barrel at one point just to keep the suds flowing. I'm joking of course, I'm not going to argue with a dude who wants to buy me a beer, but I would have hung out with those old timers anyhow, purely for the respect factor. I mean, they served with my grandpa in a friggin war zone, I was sure that they had some stories to tell us about it too. I'm not the kind of jerk off who'd go asking if Grandpa Hal had ever killed anyone, but it was only a matter of time before the situation reversed itself, and it was me and my cousin's turn to ask what Grandpa did in NAMM.

It turns out he and his buddies were in a frontline army infantry unit. I can't remember which one, but apparently they saw plenty of action. At first, Grandpa Hal's buddies told us stories of all the mischief they got up to over there while on weekend passes. Sounds weird, but they made it sound kind of fun at first. Just a bunch of dudes hanging out in between long stints marching through the jungle. But then slowly but surely they started telling us other stories, and Vietnam didn't sound so much fun anymore. The things that really stuck to me at first was how young these guys were during the events they were telling us about. When I was like 19 or 20, I could barely tell my own ass from a hole in the ground.

But Grandpa Hal and his buddies were these hardcore, disciplined as hell soldiers, taking care of business in a place that could kill them in so many different ways. Before that day, whenever I heard the words Vietnam War, I used to think of helicopters, napalm, stuff like that. But one of the first stories they told me that really freaked me out had nothing to do with any of that. It had to do with the wildlife. You can't sleep in a hammock on a combat patrol in the jungle. To stay tactical, you have to get what little sleep you can manage on the jungle floor. But this meant that one night, Uncle Hal and his buddies woke up and looked over to find that one of their guys was in the process of being strangled

by this huge python. They had to cut the thing's head off and unravel it from their fellow soldier, all completely silently so as not to be detected by any incoming Vietnamese patrols. It was stuff like that which drove the point home that war truly is hell. But as the night went on, the old vet's stories got more and more intense. They said that one time, the guy next to my grandpa Hao got hit by a rocket. There was hardly any left of him, but an awful lot of what did remain ended up all over my grandpa. His platoon fought off the Vietnamese, marched back to camp, and then later on, grandpa could feel something weird on the inside of his

shirt. He unbuttons, reaches in, and pulls out a blown off finger from the guy who got hit with a rocket next to him. But war is hell, right? And honestly, I didn't think it could get much worse than that. My drunk cousin actually asked them at one point if Grandpa had ever killed anyone, but they weren't mad at him. They just explained that it didn't really work like that. The only time that you were certain if you killed anyone was as if you blew up a bunker, whereas jungle firefights were all just guesswork.

You had drag marks, a few blood trails, but nothing to really confirm that you actually zapped anyone. Whereas blowing up a bunker, sometimes it's such a mess in there that after you didn't know how many guys you'd killed. Plus, you had the two guys throwing grenades and another guy throwing in C4, meaning three or four guys accounted for who knows how many kills. After they explained that, Lee and my dumb cousin started to understand what they meant. But then, something weird happened, and I'll try my best to describe it. The vets started looking at each other and the vibe totally dropped from serious but cheerful to straight up awkward. My cousin and I were in total listener mode by this point, just glued into these dudes stories like it was the most

interesting podcast episode ever. So instead of asking what was up, we just kind of watched as they started talking among themselves. I can't recall what was said, we just kind of watched as they started talking among themselves. I can't recall what was said, not word for word, but this is what little I can remember. One guy was talking, basically making the point that they didn't really know when or even if they'd killed anyone, just that they probably had, when suddenly his words kind of trailed off and he started looking around the circle at his buddies. One guy started shaking his head saying, Nuh-uh, no way, don't do it. Then another told him something like,

It's the only reason we're here. One of the other vets chimed in with something like, Just because he's gone doesn't change anything. We swore. But then the first guy, the one who had been talking at first, he spoke back up as if though he somehow had authority and he says, Well, that's the point. Everyone's dead or will be soon anyway.

We owe it to him to keep our mouth shut. But now that he's gone, we owe it to him to tell someone. And who better than them? When he said him, the old vet nodded at me and my cousin. By that time, my cousin and I were so in suspense that I think I was only a minute away from asking what the hell they were talking about. But sure enough, the first talker sighed and then addressed me and my cousin directly. He told us that there was a reason the four of them had traveled from all four corners of the country to come pay their respects at Grandpa Hal's funeral, and it wasn't just because they served together. Plenty of other platoon mates had passed away before my grandpa did,

and none of them had them hopping on planes and trains and booking hotels. But when they heard Grandpa Hao died, they were making arrangements before they'd even hung up the phone calls that gave them the news. It was all for one very specific reason. As it turns out, my grandpa did kill someone in Vietnam. His buddies saw him do it. But before they told us the story, they told us two things. First off, if my grandpa hadn't have done what he'd done, a lot of soldiers would have lost their lives. And second, there was a reason they hadn't breathed a word of what he did to anyone almost for 50 years.

And it wasn't because they were fans of keeping secrets. They were only telling me because soon, it wouldn't matter who knew. And I guess that's why now I'm telling you too. One day, my grandpa house platoon is walking through the jungle when they come across a clearing with a bunch of huts just sitting there. Thinking it's some kind of Viet Cong HQ, their lieutenant sends a few guys forward to check it out, but they immediately get taken out by snipers. It's not some Viet Cong HQ. It was a well-laid ambush and right away, all the platoon are pinned down by more than one sniper. Their lieutenant tries to organize a retreat under fire, but he gets taken out. Then the platoon sergeant gets taken

out, then the radio guy, and one by one, the snipers are just picking them off as they move or stand up. In the end, the platoon realize that they lay down behind trees, the snipers can't see them anymore, so that's what they do. But some corporal, who's technically in command of the platoon since their lieutenant is unconscious and bleeding out, starts barking out commands and for some reason, some of the platoon are following his orders. They're rushing forward to try and drag the lieutenant back, but no matter how much covering fire they laid down, the snipers were picking their guys off every time they revealed themselves. This happens again, and again, and again, until finally some private

gets an order and tells the corporal to go F himself. The corporal starts mouthing off about court-martials and all this nonsense and then gives the guy the same order, but once again, this dude just tells him to shove it, because if he stands up, he's 100% getting a bullet. Then, unbelievably, the corporal turns his rifle on the private disobeying his orders and then threatens to kill him where he's lying if he doesn't get up and drag the lieutenant to safety. The private responds by pointing his own rifle at the corporal, but before he can pull the trigger, someone takes aim and blows the corporal's head off.

Everyone looked around to where the shot came from and there's Grandpa Howe, leaning out from behind a tree with this wild, terrified look in his eyes. Then before anyone can really process what happened, Grandpa Howe was throwing out a smoke grenade and then telling everyone to start crawling toward the sound of his voice. The surviving members of the platoon did exactly what he told them and they crawled all the way from the village, popping thick red smoke grenades as they went to obscure them from the snipers. When they got back to base and they told everyone what happened, not a single person mentioned what Grandpa Hal had done.

All anyone talked about was the ambush and how Grandpa Hal's quick thinking had saved their lives. Their unit commanders sent another bunch of soldiers out to blow the snipers away and rescue the wounded, but by the time they got there, the snipers had run off and stolen a whole bunch of weapons and equipment. Even though the patrol had been a disaster, Grandpa Howe was given a bronze star for bravery under fire. All the survivors knew he'd shot the corporal that day, and there were no illusions concerning what happened, but no one said a word because no one believed what they'd seen was a murder. If Grandpa Hal hadn't shot the corporal, there wouldn't have been any

survivors. Every single one of them would have been picked off by the Vietnamese snipers. They knew he'd saved their lives, but they also knew that the army would never, ever see things that way. And so they did the only thing they could do, and kept their mouths shut for almost half a century. Once the main vet guy was done telling us the story, my cousin and I were speechless. Not the kind of speechless that involves saying, wow, I'm speechless.

I mean, we stayed quiet until we were asked a yes or no question Something we literally had to respond to One of the other guys asked us Do you understand what we just told you? I said yeah But I didn't, and they knew I didn't So they spelled it out for me Your grandpa was a hero

Not a coward, not a murderer. He was a hero. Then, before things got too emotional, they finished their beers, thanked us for their time, and made for the door. What happened at my Uncle Hal's funeral is something I planned to write about for a long time. I always told myself that if I had an incredible enough story to share, I could maybe turn it into a book or maybe even a screenplay or something, make a creative side hustle out of telling stories. But I'm almost certain that as long as I live, I'll never have a story as incredible or terrifying as the time my uncle Hal saved his

entire platoon by shooting one of his own guys. I'm not sure if the army can actually do anything about this, even after everyone involved is dead, so just to be safe, I've changed a few names and kept a few other things vague, just so this doesn't kick off some viral 4chan investigation that ends in TV cameras outside my parents' house. I want people to know what my grandpa did, but at the same time, I'm okay with just a few people knowing, because they're the people that matter in this story. They're the people he saved. Hey, are you looking for a true crime podcast to binge? Check out True Crime Obsessed, where we recap the true crime documentaries everyone's talking about.

We've been one of the top true crime podcasts for almost nine years. And we have over 400 episodes for you to check out right now. We cover the cases everyone is talking about, and we also highlight the cases that have been underreported, overlooked, or forgotten. With over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, if you've never checked out True Crime Obsessed, now's the time to give us a try. Find True Crime Obsessed wherever you get your podcasts. This happened when I was a newlywed. My husband and I went to visit his mother in his royal family hometown in Kyushu.

He said that he was from a small town, but it was smaller than I imagined. Another reason we headed back to his hometown was because his father was in the hospital. My sister-in-law was a student, so she wasn't home. So that left his mother and my mother-in-law essentially home alone, and she didn't have a driver's license, so it made getting around in the countryside very difficult. She could walk to most places and of course there were buses and taxis but occasionally you just need a car, don't you? She needed a bunch of gardening supplies. We arrived in Kyushu on the Shinkansen.

My husband would drive his mom around in his father's car. I was planning on going with them, but I suffer with anemia and I almost collapsed on the train. When my mother-in-law saw me, she said that I looked pale. She told me that I would be better off staying home, and I didn't mind that idea. My husband's room had been left the way it was since he graduated from high school. Same bed, same desk. And I got into bed and shut my eyes. Now I should say that I'm a pretty deep sleeper. I experienced and slept through the great Hanschen earthquake and I came out unscathed. Also, I have somehow slept through a 5.0 earthquake too. I had no idea it happened. I just turned on the TV in the evening and saw the news and it was truly shocking. So there I was sleeping soundly on my husband's

childhood bed for a while. I guess before I began to feel slightly restless. I put it down to being asleep in some place different. You know like when you miss the comforts of home or you wake up in the middle of the night at a friend's place and you're confused and the initial thought is, where am I? It was something like that. I wasn't used to sleeping alone, so when I thought I sensed some movement on the bed, I immediately thought that, ah, my husband is back home earlier than expected. And dreamily, I thought that he saw me sleeping and he felt like joining me for a while. After a few moments I felt like something was off. He was a little more ambitious shall we say with what he thought that he could get away with at his parents home. I was more than half awake at

this point and I knew something was off. I felt something moving beneath the covers, beneath my skirt. I felt a hand try and part my legs and breathe on bare thighs. I opened my eyes, threw off the covers, and saw that it wasn't my husband. It was an old man, in the bed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He saw that I was awake and immediately tried to overpower me. I want to see what you look like. And that's what this guy said as he tried to grab at my clothing. And at first, I was speechless.

I was in this stunned state that I couldn't believe it was happening. I couldn't scream right away, but then my brain kicked into gear. I leaned over to the bedside table, grabbed my phone and dialed the number for the cops. I kicked at the old man with all my might and he went toppling off of the bed. I took my chance and ran as fast as I could down the stairs. I heard the old man cussing at me and saying something else disgusting up there as he got to his feet. I bolted out the front door and ran across the street where I was immediately spotted by another old guy who was washing his car. I was screaming and it was all just so horrible.

I screamed at the man for help and then I just began to cry. The wife of the guy who was washing his car came out and ushered me into their home to take refuge where I waited with them until the police arrived. While I was explaining the situation my husband and mother-in-law returned home. As I was telling the police everything through tear-filled eyes and heavy sobs the old man, the guy who got into bed with me, came out of my mother-in-law's house. He came out of the house and just sort of meandered off down the street as if though nothing had happened. That didn't work out too well for him because he was instantly arrested. Now my husband and his mother were back and were able to tell me a few things about that old man.

It turned out that he lived just up the street on the opposite side. He was living with his two 40-something year old sons who didn't work. He didn't work either and apparently he had a young wife but she didn't live with him and you wonder why, huh? It turned out that he was jealous of my husband and the life that he had with me outside of the small town. He told the police that because I was from the city and wearing different clothes and was quote glamorous, I looked easy to him. So he told the police when he broke in that he had committed no crime. He was simply trying to ascertain if I was an escort or not. Naturally, he was taken away in a police car. We were planning on staying that night, but I didn't want to after that. I don't think I was

being difficult by wanting to go home. Before leaving, my husband and his mother informed me that the old man was a very important person in their town, and I didn't care. What that man tried to do would have been irreversible. I was fully prepared to sue this man, but I was asked multiple times to find a more amicable resolution. They kept telling me that they wanted a peaceful end to the matter, and I was aghast. It wasn't as simple as that. I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't get them to see that. In the end, there was no apology, no settlement, and no punishment for this old man, and I cried myself to sleep that night. Is this just something that just happens in small towns? God, I hope not. I'm from the countryside. In fact, my family home lies just behind the shadow of a very tall mountain, and the land that mountain stands on is actually owned by my grandfather. Our family have always been happy to allow villagers to use the land as long as a small portion of their profits are shared with us, and by that I mean the grounds are free to walk, the fields are free to work, and the grounds are free to walk, the fields are free to work, and the game is free to hunt. And to me that doesn't seem that much of a bad deal.

To my family's history of being somewhat more than kind with this arrangement, we have been beset by thieves over the years. Since our family wanted to make sure we continued this community spirit, the older men in my family offered to patrol the mountain ranges at night in search of these thieves. My family would often remind me of areas of the mountain range that would be dangerous at night. In other words, it was for adults only, no children allowed. It didn't stop me and my friends exploring though. We found out pretty quickly why the adults didn't want to play in those areas. For one, the wildlife, but more realistically, it was a pretty deep cave and to us kids, that cave was one of our favorite playgrounds. So that leads me to this experience I had when I was a kid, which I'm certain will live with me for the rest of my days. I was playing in the forbidden areas of the mountain range like normal in the cave.

All of a sudden I had the urge to pee, so I decided to head out and do it behind a tree. We were usually nervous about being in places where we were explicitly told not to play in, but being caught peeing out there really gave me the willies. If you will, pardon the expression, I was basically double scared of being caught. I kept looking around to make sure the coast was clear but then as I was midstream, I saw someone. There was a stranger walking up towards the cave and he was down by the river. I shot back behind the tree. I didn't even have a chance to pull my pants up.

It was some middle-aged guy. I didn't know the man. I hadn't ever seen him before. I knew everyone who was permitted to use the mountain range. It was like a big village. My family had been talking about someone who was stealing mushrooms. It made sense that this stranger could be a thief. He was carrying a backpack and was clearly on the lookout for something. If this was the thief that my family had been worried about then I didn't want to be seen by him. I stayed as still as possible out of sight in the trees and bushes. I felt like such an idiot. This was exactly what I had been

warned about. I watched the stranger. It looked like he was looking for something and he was being cautious. I kept an eye on him to make sure that he didn't spot me or come too close. I mean I had no plan if he came close, I was just scared to take my eyes off of him. I watched him for a while and then I noticed someone was approaching from behind him and I knew that guy very well, he was my uncle. He approached the stranger and he was holding a shovel. He told the guy and it looked like those two were having a conversation. I was too far away to make out anything that they were saying. My uncle seemed to be admonishing the guy, giving him a real telling off, you know.

The stranger, or should I say thief, took off his backpack at what looked like the order of my uncle. My uncle then snatched the thief's backpack. He opened it and I saw my uncle get very angry at him and then something happened that I didn't think would ever be a possibility. My uncle smacked the thief across the back of the head with a shovel. The thief went limp and fell flat on his face in the dirt. My uncle then dragged the stranger into the river and watched as his lifeless body bobbed downstream. My uncle then dragged the stranger into the river and watched as his lifeless body bobbed downstream. My uncle then walked off in the opposite direction like nothing had happened. And that scared the hell out of me. My uncle was the younger of the two brothers,

the elder being my dad, and man, my uncle had my sides aching so many times when I was a kid. He was hilarious. But in that moment, he didn't look anything like himself. He looked so cold and expressionless. It gets worse because he came around to our house for dinner that night and I had to sit opposite him knowing what I knew. He was smiling and joking as usual. It was like nothing had happened. At one point he looked me right in the eyes and I thought to myself for a brief second while he and my father spoke about trespassers on the mountain

range. Do you know? The thief didn't ever come back. I'm not sure what happened to him but I can guess based on what I saw. If he did manage to get away, he never went to the police or anything. I learned about that adult world they warned me about with their off-limit areas that day. And I really don't think I could ever look at my uncle the same. This happened to me in my early twenties, and as a direct result of this experience, I have developed a strong fear and mistrust of the opposite gender and for that reason I'll be keeping my identity anonymous. It happened one night when I was on my way home from work. I got off the train at my usual station and I was walking down the street in the direction of home. I had my earbuds in and I was listening to music. It was

just an ordinary night. As I was walking I sensed a presence behind me so I was listening to music. It was just an ordinary night. As I was walking, I sensed a presence behind me so I naturally glanced back. I guessed that I might have been in someone's way or something. I look back to see a man on a bicycle. He was wearing a surgical mask so I couldn't see his face clearly. He looked young and when I heard his voice, I guessed that he was about the same age as me. He said something along the lines of, Hey, when I saw you I knew that I just had to stop and talk to you.

You're so my type. Are you free right now? Realizing that this guy was just trying to hit on me, I pretended that I couldn't hear anything over my music. I just kept walking, hoping that he would just leave me alone. Hey, can't you hear me? Are you busy? What is it? Why don't you just give me your contact information? I won't even contact you. Then why the hell do you want my number, I wondered. I realized that creep wasn't going to get the hint, so I decided to go a little stronger. I made a big gesture of turning my head away from him and up my pace so he wasn't as close. He did freak me out but it only took me about another 3 or 4 minutes to get home so I was just focused on what I wanted to do once I got in. I told myself soon I would be sitting on my sofa watching a movie behind a locked door.

And I didn't look back and I just kept walking. I get to my place and I have to go along some busier streets and some quieter ones. When I turned off to head down a quieter street I noticed something. Suddenly from behind me I heard some kind of clanking sound. It sounded like metal rubbing against metal. I turned around to see what was coming and I saw amidst the darkness of the night, I saw a guy wearing a surgical mask coming right at me on his bicycle. I thought that our brief and horrible exchange was over, but it seemed pretty clear to me now that he'd been following me. My first thought was a really strange one.

Even if I ran home as fast as I could, he would still catch me. It was true. He had a bike and with that thought came a kind of internal avalanche of fear. I was confused and scared and I wanted nothing more than to be off of those dark streets. I remember that there was a coin laundry nearby that I sometimes used and I figured that I could get there and into the light in about 10 seconds and there might still be people there too. If I was lucky enough to find someone in the laundromat then that guy would probably go away. If not I could lock the door from the inside if I have to and then I could call the police. I turned and started sprinting. That metal clanking sound was getting louder which I guess now was probably the pedals of his worn out bike.

I knew without turning around that that meant that he must be pedaling faster in pursuit of me. I threw open the door to the laundromat and got in without the creep catching up to me. Of course no one was in there, there were no other customers. And that was just the kind of luck that I was having that night. I locked the door, I knew how to lock the door because luck that I was having that night. I locked the door. I knew how to lock the door because I had seen the owner do it. I locked the door and I headed right to the back of the room. I was shaking with fear and breathing heavily.

I grabbed my phone and as I was frantically trying to unlock it, I saw a shadow appear in front of the door outside. The guy who was following me had arrived and he dropped his bike to the ground and started trying to open the door, but then he realized that I had locked it and this angered him. Hey, open the door. Come on, just open it. Come on. It's not like I'm going to do anything to you. I won't do anything. Okay, fine. Just give me your number. I won't contact you, but if you give it to me, I'll go away. Just open the door. Come on. Open up. He was saying all sorts of weird stuff like that.

And I remember because he said he wanted my number, but he wouldn't contact me earlier. And now he was saying, open the door. I'm not going to do anything to you. The way he was double speaking really creeped me out. It was like his true intentions were slipping out way he was double speaking really creeped me out. It was like his true intentions were slipping out when he was getting frustrated. I wondered what more would happen to me if he got even more frustrated. He started pounding on the door with his clenched fists and shaking the handle and the door was shaking in its frame. The door was primarily made of glass so I wasn't sure how much of a beating it would be able to take.

I was absolutely terrified of what was going to happen to me if this man was going to get in. It was time to do something. I couldn't just stand there cowering and waiting for him to get in. I yelled at him. I told him that I was going to call the police and that they would be here any minute. And I said, you better stop, you idiot. He stopped banging on the door and calmly dropped his arms down to his side. He looked at me in the eyes and I knew that he hated me and I think I had upset his ego by

calling him an idiot. He then pointed at me and said I'm gonna kill you and then he turned and kept muttering something but I couldn't hear it. And then he picked up his bike and left. I couldn't move for another ten minutes but I had to when an actual customer came to use the laundromat. I unlocked the door with my trembling hands and then I called the police. I made sure someone stayed with me on the phone until I got home. I got home safely that night. But I hated that night at home though. Because that horrible experience happened on a road I regularly used to get home,

it led to a lot of fear and negativity during my commutes to work, and it really ruined my life. In order to get back to being myself again, I had to move. I had to get away. I couldn't live each day wondering if I would run into that crazy man again or not. Thankfully, I never did, but it scares me still to this day, knowing that he could still be somewhere out there. Hey, are you looking for a true crime podcast to binge? Check out True Crime Obsessed, where we recap the true crime documentaries everyone's talking about. We've been one of the top true crime podcasts for almost nine years. And we have over 400 episodes for you to check out right now.

We cover the cases everyone is talking about, and we also highlight the cases that have been underreported, overlooked, or forgotten. With over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, if you've never checked out True Crime Obsessed, now's the time to give us a try. Find True Crime Obsessed wherever you get your podcasts. I've had some horrible experiences in the past, and I want to share these with you. It all happened about two years ago. I got a job and moved out of my family home. One night I was walking home from the station as usual after work.

It wasn't a long walk, it only took about five minutes in total. I was heading home that night and felt like something was out of place. I felt as if though someone was following me. I turned around but I didn't see anyone. I thought that I was just being paranoid or something but this odd feeling lasted for about a week every time I headed home after school from the station. It bothered me so much that I spoke to a work colleague about it and he told me, if you're worried or scared about what's happening then why don't you just go to the police. I didn't think that I had anything to go on. I mean, what would they do about it if I told them that I thought that I was being followed? I tried not to think about it but

then one night something happened and my paranoia was justified. I got a letter at work. It was addressed to me. I opened it and shrieked as it read, I am always watching you. I showed it to my boss and he really didn't seem to care. He wasn't interested at all to be honest and it really scared me and I didn't know if it was a prank because I had told some colleagues about my fears. I thought that would be the worst thing that would happen but I was proven wrong. One time I got a call from a private number and I picked it up and a male voice said, are you just getting in? A little earlier than usual tonight, huh? I was really scared and full of anxiety but somehow I managed to muster up the courage to ask in what I guess was a very shaky voice, Who are you?

And knowing full well that this was likely the person who had been following me and who had sent that creepy letter to my workplace, so I said, You're the guy who's following me. To which he replied something along the lines of, Oh, you noticed. What a sharp sense of intuition you have. I'm surprised. And I replied that I was calling the police. That doesn't matter, he said back instantly. I felt my spirit sinking in my chest like a lead weight, so I just hung up.

And I spent the night awake late thinking that there was nothing I could do about the situation, and I felt so helpless. I barely slept, but I did come out of the situation thinking that it wasn't completely hopeless. I figured that whoever was stalking me knew my work and my train schedule, so I decided to work by car. It was a little more inconvenient, but after that call I didn't feel safe sat opposite a stranger on the train. I was still scared though, and I still talked to my co-workers about what was going on. For a long while there was nothing. I figured that the stalker must have given up and lost interest. My fears returned when I opened a letter one night after work and the letter hadn't been addressed, it was hand delivered. I knew the sender before I read a single word but this is what it said. Yesterday a friend came over and

you and her talked about me. I'm so glad you care about me and that I'm part of your life. Throughout the letter it spoke of the contents of my friend and I's conversation. It was horrible. It was like someone knew my inner thoughts. I thought about it for a long while and the most logical conclusion I came to was where someone had somehow hidden a listening device in my home. If that was true, I felt like it was 1000% true at the time. It must mean that someone had gotten in my apartment Some stranger must have gotten in If you ever suspect that this might have happened to you

You will know how that realization makes you feel so incredibly violated I sat there thinking, whoa I must have had a bunch of friends and co-workers over Not to mention the previous tenant lived here and anyone they had brought in. I have had mostly women over since I myself am a woman, and come to think of it, I've had a mix of guys and girls over for drinking parties once in a while. Some of the guys have been over too, and some other friends as well. I had no idea if any of them were shady or capable of becoming a stalker. I couldn't figure out who the guy harassing me was and I also couldn't really move. I just didn't

have the money and I really didn't want a couple of weird letters and calls giving me a reason to leave an apartment that I really enjoyed. I mean what was the alternative? Go back home and live with mom and dad? They weren't exactly local. Talking about my parents will send me down a whole other rabbit hole and on top of that, I didn't have savings or anything. I couldn't move even if I wanted to. Things quieted down after that, like it did before and I just kind of thought, or maybe hoped, is the operative word here, that the stalker had moved on. I think about three months went by incident-free. I had returned to my usual work-life rhythm and my confidence was back, and I carried on like nothing had happened. Things were all good for a while until I came

to a realization. I was missing something from my bedroom. Underwear. I was missing some underwear. At first I thought of all the usual kind of thoughts like, oh, did I lose it? I can understand me losing one set of underwear like a bra or panties, that just happens to everyone, right? But three items? That's pretty weird, isn't it? I live on the second floor of an apartment block. I never dried my clothes outside on my balcony, and therefore, for them to go missing meant that they must have been removed from my apartment. I thought that something very strange was going on. It was terrifying. I returned one night to find a memo attached to the fridge. It was just your run-of-the-mill

post-it note, actually. Occasionally, my mom would come over and leave me something in the fridge, so I thought that this was just my mom looking out for me. One look at the post-it, without reading its full contents, told me that it wasn't written by my mother. No one in my family, actually. And the post-it read, Have you noticed that your underwear is missing? I guess you wonder where it's gone.

I have it. I was scared, like to the point in which you just don't know what to do. I was being terrorized, and I was scared. It's the easiest way I can say it, and so I called the police. And I must have sounded so weird. I must have sounded so dumb, but I told them everything. They were not the most helpful people to contact in that situation. I mean they listened but they would always try to talk me back around to a message and that message was, just move. It'll be easier for everyone if you just move apartments. That seemed to be the message coming out of my colleagues and friends too but once again, I have to say I couldn't afford it.

I mean, I guess that is great advice for someone who could afford it, but I really couldn't. So I hatched a genius plan. I figured that if I replaced the locks on my doors, then my troubles would end. I mean, replacing locks seemed like a lot cheaper and a lot less hassle than moving. I felt like it worked though. I even left a pile of my underwear freshly laundered on my coffee table for about a week or so and they remained untouched. To be honest, it was only a temporary fix. I mean, I couldn't live there really. I was a little reluctant at the time to admit that and I guess that was down to it being the first place I had ever lived alone. I was unwilling to give it up.

I couldn't afford to move and I didn't want to be home alone at night. I decided to solve both problems by getting a night shift. I did it on the hush-hush. I just wanted cash in hand and if my day job knew that I was moonlighting, I might have been in trouble. I know, I know, their sympathy for me and my situation was truly heartwarming, huh? I didn't care if my new part-time job kept me out of the house at night and helped me to save up, and I decided to use some of the money I saved up to get some security cameras or surveillance cameras, I don't know which is the right terminology. I thought that I found who was stalking me, and if I could show that evidence to the police, then I could stop it all and maybe I wouldn't have to move.

In Japan, honestly, stalking laws are pretty lax. They won't do much until something quote-unquote happens. If they weren't going to help me, I figured that I might as well try and help myself, right? I was really scared, I should say. I hated it. I hated that I had to work two jobs and be stressed all day and night. I was afraid of every guy that passed me on the street and the ones who politely smiled scared me the most. It wasn't their fault though. Scared but working, that's how I would describe that period of my life. Things got a little better

when a friend of mine reached out to me and he met me at work for lunch. We were close friends back at the start of our careers so it was great to see him again and he was really sweet and he listened to my complaints and troubles and tried to offer advice. He was such a nice guy during the tough time that I just ended up relying on him whenever I was down or upset. After changing the locks I felt as if though I was free again. Nothing happened for the longest time and then about half a year after the lock change, something happened. I had to leave my job due to family reasons. I was very disappointed to be quitting. I guess for some, it must have looked as if though I was throwing the towel in or

something. I certainly felt that way at times, but in all honesty, it was out of my control. If I wanted to leave due to pressure or other circumstances, out of my control, like, oh, I don't know, being stalked? Well, anyways, since I had to move back home, I guess I had to break the news to everyone. I had a farewell party at work, and I broke the news to the guy who had helped me through the tough times. And when he messaged me first he said something along the lines of, hey it's been a while, how you doing? And we chatted for a bit and he invited me to meet him somewhere kind of close by and I accepted. The guy who had been good to me got in touch and offered to come and see me. I felt great about it, it was like someone from a life I had before was coming to save me

from my current life. I guess that doesn't make much sense unless you're me. Being back home was rough and I guess that I was feeling nostalgic. I was working for a new company at the time and he got in touch and the place he wanted to meet wasn't that far away from my new job. We walked around the park we agreed to meet at and we caught up, talked about work and life and a couple of memories. I told him how I quit my job, stuff like that, and he seemed to be happy that I was doing well. I wanted to get across that I was in a much better place and genuinely a little happier than I thought I would have been to move back home. But then he said something strange. I guess you didn't care about my feelings then, huh?

That's really insensitive, you know. I didn't really understand what he was talking about and where it was coming from. I wondered if I had accidentally said something rude to him or took his sympathetic ear for granted, so I replied, Oh, I'm sorry, I guess I shouldn't have unloaded all my trauma on you during those rough days. I thought you didn't mind. Do you not want to hear all that stuff? And he replied as quick as a flash, Yeah, I hate stuff like that.

It went super quiet and there was an atmosphere after he said that. I didn't feel like talking to him anymore. He suddenly leaned over towards me and covered my mouth with his hand. I was so scared and shocked by his actions that I literally couldn't breathe. As soon as he did that, I knew that this was the guy who had been stalking me, and I began to tremble. Even though I felt as if though I couldn't speak, I managed to utter a few words out to the effect of, You followed me. You were in my apartment. Oh, good for you, huh? She finally notices.

God, I never knew you were this insensitive. I thought we were friends. I didn't know. I said, We are different people, aren't we? I wanted you to be mine and fast. I tried to show my intentions for months, but oh no, here I am ending up as the goddamn friend. A role I've played before. I mean, God, how stupid are you?

Can't you just read the signs? I was shaking like a leaf. He had one hand over my mouth and one clamped on my shoulder. Why did you quit work, by the way? What the hell was that about? Had you been a little more mindful, a little more aware of your surroundings, you might have noticed me sooner. I stuttered some kind of muffled reply and he cut me off.

If you can't have the foresight to think of others, then why should they care about your troubles? I had only known his gentle and kind side. Before that day, I didn't know he was capable of such a blatant display of anger. I could never have imagined that he would flip out like that. I struggled and tried to break away from him, but he was too strong. He scared the living hell out of me with what he said after that. Listen, relax. I don't want you to be mine in a place like this,

but if you keep behaving like you are resisting, then I'll do it here. The park was positively empty, and he must have known that it wasn't a popular one. It felt as if though we were the only two people there. And just when things looked their bleakest and I thought that I could see a look of dark contemplation dance across his face, I saw something else. Or should I say, someone else. A dog walker entered the park. I believed that this was

highly unexpected for him so he let go of me for a split second to appear normal I guess. I wriggled free from his grasp. I looked toward the dog walker and I wanted to plead with her with my eyes and show her that I wasn't there by choice. When I locked eyes with the dog walker, I realized that I recognized them. I knew her. She was an ex-coworker. She rushed over to me, and her dog was with her, and it wasn't a very small dog. And the creep started fast walking towards the exit of the park, and I was left hyperventilating in her arms. I think that the only word I could muster out was, why? She replied, I thought he was following you. She told me later that he made no secret that he liked me. He told numerous people at work that he had a crush on me and it felt like I was the only one

who didn't know. When all the stuff started happening to me at work, people naturally looked his way. He quit the company right before the locks got changed. I didn't know he quit because I barely knew this guy existed until he came in when I was at my lowest point. And apart from when I met him at the start of working at that company, I didn't ever see him at work, and he was a little older than me. He was told by someone at work that if anything else happened to me or my place then the police would be called And that was when he left I guess That was when things went quiet for me too and it all started to make sense I moved into a new place after all of this happened and I think the company I worked for is still going

And I'm miles and miles away now though It's a horrible time for me I didn't ever go back to that secluded park again and I'm miles and miles away now though. It's a horrible time for me. I didn't ever go back to that secluded park again and to think how close I came to having something so irreversibly horrible being done to me is something that terrifies me on a daily basis. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in social work in 2009. I'd had my heart set on working with vulnerable children and families ever since high school, I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in social work in 2009. I'd had my heart set on working with vulnerable children and families ever since high school, and the origins of that are a whole other story, I guess, so I'll try and stick to this one.

I suppose you could say it all came down to me having something of a savior complex, and for a while, I found it very rewarding. There's just one thing they don't tell you about social work, and that's how you come to hate some of the very same people you're charged with assisting. I'd say around 60-70% of the folks that I've dealt with during the year that I spent on the job were good, kind-hearted people who were simply down on their luck and usually through no fault of their own. But then there was the remaining 30%. About one in three cases, anyway, reminded me of that one line from Dante's Divine Comedy,

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. The worst, by far, were the people who put on a happy family act during my visits, but were clearly neglecting or abusing their children behind closed doors. If I'd been working for Child Protective Services, those visits would have ended very differently, but I wasn't, so I had to bite my tongue, do my job, then hope my reports to CPS would be responded to before it was too late. By the end of year one, I was about ready to crack. I found it deeply ironic that social work bills itself as a sort of profession for people who care, when in reality, it's better suited to those with no

emotions whatsoever. I confided in my boss, confessing my fears that I was developing an adversarial relationship with the people I was supposed to feel compassion for. I thought the admission would result in me filing an unemployment claim, but instead, my boss made a suggestion. Instead of being a social worker, maybe consider being a parole officer. He said he knew a guy who had been a PO for coming up on 20 years and that if he knew me as well as he thought he did, it would be right up my alley. I remember the exact thing he said that convinced me too. You can help the ones you actually want to, and those that you don't, you get paid to make their lives hell. 20 minutes later, I was on the CDCR's website

searching for a vacant position, and that was 12 years ago. I have been a parole officer ever since and it was the single best decision I had ever made. And my boss was exactly right. Not all parolees are like the ones you see in movies. In fact, at least 50% of the guys I have worked with over the years were similar to those I had dealt with in social work. They were good people, some of which had made some very poor decisions in their lives, but they took responsibility for themselves and clearly wanted to make a change for the better. You try to maintain as professional a relationship as possible with your parolees for obvious reasons, but I think one or two of them, in some other life, we could have been friends. And one of them was a guy

in his 60s I'll call Smokey. I don't want to give away Smokey's real name or any other personal details for that matter, but despite his severely checkered past, Smokey was actually a pretty good guy. I know that might bring my moral judgment into question when I tell you that Smokey was a convicted murderer with 35 years in prison under his belt. But it was true. All Smokey did was kill a man that would have inevitably killed him. He just did it preemptively rather than in self-defense. From what I understand, the man Smokey killed was a real scumbag, not what you might call a civilian at all. I'm not saying he deserved to die, but Smokey could have done a lot worse

considering the kind of shenanigans he was up to before he went to prison. I'm not saying he deserved to die, but Smokey could have done a lot worse considering the kind of shenanigans he was up to before he went to prison. I'm not trying to make excuses for what he did. He took a man's life, and he deserved to be punished for it. But the man that left prison was not the same man that went in. During the last couple of assessments we did, all we did was drink root beers and shoot the breeze. Smokey was completely sober, didn't drink. He had a job as a truck mechanic and he was in the process of reconnecting with the grown-up daughter he'd long since drifted apart from. He was clean and serene, as they say, and the day was fast approaching when he'd be discharged from parole.

So one day, Smokey and I were talking and he touched on one of the regular themes in our talks. He often talked about how many close calls he'd had during his criminal career and how lucky he'd been to walk away from each and every one. During previous conversations, I'd considered it redundant to ask about these close calls. There was very little chance an ex-con would share details of his criminal past with me, especially things he'd gotten away with. But on one of these final assessments, Smokey told me a story. Technically speaking, it didn't detail him doing anything illegal, or at least nothing I'd go running to my superiors over, not at that stage. But honestly, it was one of the scariest stories,

at least the scariest true story I think I've ever heard. Many years before, back before Smokey got his murder conviction, he worked for a narco-trafficking operation that operated up and down the west coast. He was just muscle at first, I guess, but just like any other professional organization, his bosses started giving him more and more responsibility as he proved his competency. This might involve overseeing a shipment, meeting with a potential contact, or in this one case, tying up a loose end. At that stage of his career, Smokey had never shot or stabbed anyone, let alone taken a life. If he had a problem with someone, he used his hands, and he was big enough that just the threat of violence was enough to avoid potential conflict. But according to him, the job he was given wasn't as an enforcer. It was to be an executioner.

Smokey gets called into the office of his boss, who operated out of some kind of front business. He gets asked if he knows a kid that we'll just call Babyface, and he does know this so-called Babyface because everyone knows him. Babyface was in his early twenties, but he looked like he could have passed for a high school freshman. Real youthful features, not a scrap of facial hair on him, all coming in at a pint-sized 5'5", but full of this enthusiastic childish energy too. He'd been working for the traffickers for a couple of months at that time when, one day, he suddenly dropped off the face of the earth for 24 hours. Wouldn't pick up his phone, wasn't at any of the places he usually

crashed. He was a ghost for like a whole day. And then, the traffickers' shipments started getting picked up as they passed across state lines in Oregon. To the boss, it was no coincidence. Babyface had been picked up by the cops and had obviously snitched. There was no other way of explaining it. At least, not in the boss' eyes anyway. And so Smokey was given a simple task. Meet up with Babyface at some motel in the middle of nowhere, walk him out into some farmer's field, and then shoot him in the face and cut the word rat into his body. Face, chest, it didn't matter. It just had to say rat.

Like I said, Smokey had never clipped anyone before so the idea of his first being this good-hearted idiot who'd made one little mistake, well let's just say that wasn't ideal. On top of that, and this is according to Smokey, not me, but he felt like clipping this kid was playing right into the hands of the DEA, or the Drug Enforcement Agency. Smokey said it was a pretty common practice for them to snatch some of your shipments and then arrest one or two of your crew on bullcrap charges just before the seizure. The guys they picked up would stonewall the cops for 24 hours, giving them nothing, but then his bosses would think that he was a snitch. Best case scenario for the DEA, the snitch is then killed, and they can open up a murder investigation if their

narcotics case is found wanting. This way, you can chip away at any organization's structure and morale, making them skittish and thus much more prone to mistakes. Smokey thought it could have been the same tactic being used on them, but he also knew that if he refused to clip Babyface, that it'd be him getting a bullet out back of the motel instead. So, he did the only thing he could do in this situation, told them that he'd get the job done, and then awaited further instruction. Then finally the day comes. Smokey gets a call first thing in the morning,

telling him to drive out to a motel that was all the way out near Death Valley, which now that I think about it is such a cartoonishly symbolic place to perform an execution that it's almost laughable. He gets told that the booking is under a certain name, which he uses to get the key to his room, and then he waits for the next three hours until Babyface finally shows up. The bosses had told him that they were impressed that he hadn't cracked under police pressure, and seeing as he'd proved himself to be a good soldier,

they had some super-secret mission for him involving fake-name check-ins out in farmer country. Smokey played along, told him to get into his car, and explained how they were going to drive out in the middle of nowhere to pick up a package. Baby face hops in his car, totally none the wiser and off they go. Smokey found a back road, drove all the way down it and then marched Babyface off into the woods with a shovel. They were about a hundred yards in when Babyface realized what was really happening. Smokey had the good sense to be the one carrying the shovel, but as soon as Babyface started begging for his life, Smokey dropped the shovel, pulled out his gun, and as soon as Babyface started begging for his life, Smokey dropped

the shovel, pulled out his gun, and pointed it at Babyface. He burst into tears, dropping to his knees, doesn't even try to run or fight, and he's wailing something like, I swear I didn't snitch, I swear to god, please don't kill me, I'll do anything, I'm begging you, my mom's sick, I don't know who he'll after her if I'm gone. I know I messed up, but I swear I didn't snitch. You gotta believe me and all this stuff. Smokey said it was the thing about his mom that got him the most, that the begging didn't do a thing. He told him that if he gave him his mom's address, he'd make sure that she got money for meds or a nurse, whatever it was she needed. But then instead of continuing to beg for his life,

he watched as Babyface's shoulders drooped like he was giving up and giving in. Babyface recited some address, zip code and all and then unable to watch what was coming, he just slumped forward and accepted his fate. He didn't switch his story up like, oh no, I gotta get the med myself, you can't kill me. He seemed to legitimately believe that his potential executioner would get some money to his mom. He cared more for her life than he did about his own and, like I said, the thoughts started to eat away at Smokey's already wavering resolve. Smokey said that after a few seconds of feeling the pistol shaking in his palms, he lowered it and told the guy to stand up. He'd never seen anyone so scared before and at first,

this guy was so utterly consumed with terror that he could barely find his feet. Smokey told him to leave the west coast and go someplace far, far away. This was his second chance and if he ever showed his face again, he would kill his mom, and then him, in that order. Babyface burst into tears again, only this time, tears of relief. He thanks Smokey over and over again, just a mess of snot and apologies, then after one final barked command to disappear, he goes off into the woods, never to be seen again. Only just a few months later, somebody did see Babyface again.

Not alive, but they did. And for Smokey, that proved to be a huge problem. One day, Smokey gets called in for a meeting with his boss. He has no idea what's it about and no reason to believe that he's in trouble or anything, so he goes along to see what his boss wants. He gets to his office and everything seems normal, but then when he walks inside, he detects this heavy tension in the air. His boss has sat there behind his desk with a very serious look on his face, not the usual, hey Smokey, how's the wife treating you? I mean, his boss is livid. It wasn't all that unusual to see him like that, but what really got the hairs on the back of

Smokey's neck standing on end was the presence of two other men sat around the edges of the room behind where Smokey would be sitting in front of his boss. This was a huge warning sign for Smokey as, at one time, it had been him sitting around the edges of the room and the person in the hot seat had not been in an enviable position. And so, nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, Smokey sits down and faces the music. His boss opens by asking him to recount what happened on the day he clipped Babyface. Smokey goes over his story, which was all true, except for one little detail. When he's done, his boss stays quiet for a few seconds, looks over Smokey's shoulders at the guy behind him by this point, but he does as he's told and tells the story all over again, this time with as much detail as possible, especially when it came to the part that wasn't true, i.e. killing Babyface.

When he's done, there's another moment of silence before his boss asks, Did you strip him? Of course, Smokey hadn't even killed the guy, let alone stripped him, so he says no. The boss then kind of holds his face in his hands like that's not the answer he wanted to hear. Smokey then seizes the initiative and starts asking if he was supposed to, saying he would have stripped the guy if he'd only been told to. His boss starts nodding in this understanding way, telling him to calm down but explains that they have a little situation on their hands.

They had very reliable information that Babyface wasn't some half a meth head idiot who'd snitched rather than face another spell in prison. He'd been an undercover cop. Smokey didn't have a fake reaction when he'd heard that. It was all genuine and his his boss slapped it up. Smokey actually said that in that moment he actually wished that he had shot Babyface. He thought that he was doing a good thing in telling him to get lost, but it was looking more and more like it was the biggest mistake of his entire life. Smokey had messed up, big time, but he wasn't expendable,

not in the same way that Babyface had been, or at least the person they'd believe that he was. So instead of getting whacked, Smokey was given a chance to make things right. His boss was scared that when Smokey shot the guy, he'd buried him while wearing some kind of tracking device, and when the cops realized that Babyface was dead, and not just deep cover and unreachable, they'd be able to find him in a matter of hours. So it was up to Smokey, along with the two others in the room, to drive out to where he'd buried the undercover cop, dig him up, and then move him someplace else after removing any bugs or wires that he had attached to him. Easy, right? Well, as we both know by now, Smokey wasn't headed up there to dig up the

undercover. He was going to be headed up there to dig his own grave. But then, what else could he do? If he tried to give them the runaround, his story would fall apart, and if that happened, there wasn't a hope in hell of him getting out of there alive. But if he just bought himself some time and drove those two guys out into farmer's country, there was maybe a chance of him slipping away through the trees while their backs were turned. After all, if they wanted to be in and out in a timely manner, they'd need more than one shovel in the ground to get the job done. Maybe Smokey goes off to pee and doesn't come back, or if force comes to worse, maybe he can use a shovel to get the

better of them before they get the better of him. So off they go, up into farmer country, out to the spot where Smokey killed, or rather didn't kill, the undercover cop. He walks them all the way out to roughly the same spot because he can't remember the exact route they took, and then starts digging with one of the guys helping and the other guy keeping watch. They dig for like an hour, get at least six feet deep, and there's nothing there.

Smokey apologizes, and the two guys are pissed that they wasted a whole hour, but they buy a story that they dug in the wrong spot and they move someplace else to dig another hole. But before they do, one of the enforcers chaperoning Smokey tells him to think really, really hard before they start digging again. The guy is pretty aggressive, is obviously furious at Smokey for putting their lives and freedom at risk and might even have been told to whack him if they can't find the body, with Smokey being just another loose end they needed tying up. Smokey starts digging, with one of the two guys helping out again, then

another hour into the digging, the helper throws his shovel down, climbs out of the hole, and decides to take a break. Smokey keeps reassuring them that he buried the guy too deep for dogs to smell the body, that he's a pro, that there's only a little more digging to do. The hole is now too deep for him to jump out and ambush them. He's trapped in a hole that'll most likely end up being his grave, and not the grave of that undercover cop. Right then, he thinks of another excuse, and starts saying that it was dark when he finally found the place to bury Babyface, how he can't tell where he was, all this other stuff. But the two guys up top weren't interested.

What they were interested in was someone or something that seemed to be approaching through the trees, and seconds later, Smokey hears someone shouting loud and clear, Sheriff's apartment, show me your hands. The guy up top doesn't put his hands up. Instead, he turns to Smokey, pure, white-hot rage in his eyes and points the gun at him. He got off three shots and shouting out something before the deputy shot him dead in turn. One of those bullets made it into Smokey's leg, leaving a scar that I later saw with my own two eyes. As far as the cops were concerned, Smokey was the victim in this situation. He didn't say a word to them about what happened, so they figured that he was in some criminal conspiracy in some way, but since they also didn't have crap to charge him with, he got out of the

hospital a free man. Or at least free in the legal sense. He still had his co-workers to deal with. They have already made up their minds that Smokey was some kind of rat and to be fair, that's exactly what it looked like. They drove out in the middle of nowhere. One guy gets killed, another guy gets pinched, and then the last guy gets released without charges. It was highly suspicious. So instead of trying to plead his case with the bosses, who would never in a million years believe that he wasn't working with the cops, Smokey went on the run. A few weeks later, he's at another motel, someplace far from Northern California, when he notices someone

watching him from the parking lot, someone he recognized. He did a little drive around town just to make sure that he was being followed and then he drove down an alley, got out of his car with the engine still running and hid behind a dumpster. The guy following him blocks him in, then walks up to Smokey's idling car. Smokey jumps out, sees the gun in his would-be assassin's hand, but it's too late for the guy to react. Smokey put all six bullets of a.38 revolver in him, ran off without picking up the casings, and then still had the murder weapon on him when he was pulled over by a motorcycle cop a few days later. And that's how he ended up with his 30 plus years in prison, and also in the company of myself. Smokey said that he'll never know for certain how the cops knew where to find him, but he had his

suspicions. He knows for certain that he himself wasn't wearing a wire or a tracker, and in all probability, the guy who tried to kill him wasn't wearing anything either. But the third guy, who seemed to jump out of the hole for his break a little too close to the time the cops showed up and who ended up in cuffs and not with a bullet in him, that was a little too suspicious to not be considered an option. Then again, there's a chance that in choosing to spare Babyface's life, Smokey won him some powerful friends. Friends who decided to help him out, just like Smokey chose to help Babyface out that day. Smokey was probably the most interesting man

I've ever met in my life. Not a law-abiding one, not a successful one, but a good one, and an interesting one. And Smokey lives and dies in anonymity, although sometimes I think that he might just prefer it that way. Hey, are you looking for a true crime podcast to binge? We'll see you next time. the cases everyone is talking about. And we also highlight the cases that have been underreported, overlooked, or forgotten. With over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, if you've never checked out True Crime Obsessed, now's the time to give us a try. Find True Crime Obsessed wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever had a gun to your head? I have, and I wouldn't recommend it, but I will say this. It's actually a mildly psychedelic experience.

In the moments after I saw my potential killer pull his gun from his waistband, chamber around, and then point the barrel squarely at my face, it was like I could smell air and taste the roof of my mouth. When he spoke, I'd never listened to anyone so intently in my entire life, and when he asked me a question, I took every ounce of physical and mental strength I had to force out a lie. It was like that golden lasso Wonder Woman uses. One look at the gun and I almost had an aneurysm trying not to tell the truth. But now that I've sufficiently teased you with sort of a sneak preview of this oncoming story, I guess a lot of you are probably asking, well how did you end up getting a gun pointed at your face? Well now I gotta tell you.

I'm working the night shift at a crappy motel just outside of Whittington, Illinois. My two best friends managed to get tickets to Lollapalooza the previous year, whereas my broke self couldn't even afford a bus ticket. They had the best weekend of their lives, and I spent the weekend handing out resumes and vowing never to be left out like that again. The long and very tiring job search ended in me getting a night position at the motel, and then for about seven and a half months, I worked 9pm to 6am, five nights a week. It definitely wasn't the worst job I'd ever had, but it had two modes, total boredom, or the weirdest, wildest stuff you've ever seen happen in your life. I once saw a guy walk in the middle of the parking lot, completely naked, in the middle of the night, taking a pee right there as if though it was nothing.

It took me a good minute to realize that he was sleepwalking, or should that be sleep peeing, that he wasn't completely out of his gourd. And then another time I saw these two drag queens squaring off about to fight each other. One of them puts his oversized purse down then hurls himself at his companion while rolling around on the ground. A tiny dog jumped out of the purse and then ran off into the darkness, yapping the whole way. The two drag queens immediately forgot what they were fighting about, got up and then ran off after their dog shouting, pickle, pickle, come back. And I never saw either of them again. Or maybe I did, I just didn't recognize them. Anyways, like I said, this was maybe 10% of the job,

and the other 90% was comprised of incalculable tedium, the likes of which mankind has never experienced. During the fall and winter of 2006-2007, I read more books in those six months than I had during the entirety of my school education. And I was doing just that, reading a book on the night that I got that gun pointed at my head. It was coming up on 30 minutes after midnight when I heard the door of this check-in area open. I put my book down, looked up, and there's this dude walking up to my desk. Totally normal dad looking dude, but he has this really weird looking smile on his face. It looked like he was forcing it, so instead of coming across as friendly, he came across as super menacing, and the fact that he was breathing heavy didn't

really exactly help his case either. He comes up straight to the desk and with that weird sharp grin on his face asks me if a couple checked in just a few hours ago. He then describes the couple in quite vivid detail actually and then loses his smile completely for a second when I tell him that I can't divulge any information like that. That wasn't exactly true. I wasn't barred from giving out info. I just didn't like the vibe that I was getting off the guy so I told him no.

He then starts telling me how it's an emergency, that he has to talk to these people and that he can't get them on their phones for some reason so he's driven all the way here blah blah blah. Again, I gave him some official sounding answer, along with the most genuine apology that I could muster, because the thing is, he was right. A couple had checked in just a few hours before, one matching the exact description he'd given me too. I hadn't done the math yet, but I was still concerned enough to refrain from telling him the truth. He then asked me one more time, saying, I'm asking you nicely. Then when I refused again,

that's when he pulled the gun. So I knew for a fact that if I told him what room the couple were in, he was going to walk over there, get inside somehow, and shoot them both dead. I had to lie to him, but if I gave him the number of an occupied room and he goes and starts shooting through the window indiscriminately, then I'm going to have their blood on my hands for the rest of my freaking life. So while the guy is literally counting down from 10, telling me how he's going to blow my mother effing brains out

if I don't tell which motel room his filthy floozy of a wife is in, I gotta try and remember which rooms are empty. And this is all while filled with this near overwhelming urge to just tell him the truth, so I can save my butt, as well as the butts of anyone not involved in what I'm assuming is an explosive case of marital cheating, obviously. I'm racking my brains, second guessing myself, thinking I'm 99% sure 17 is empty but if I'm wrong, I'm dead. And then right when he gets to 3, on his slow executioner countdown style, I just commit to it. I tell him, room 17, that's where they are, just please don't kill me. His smile returned, genuine this time, and he tells me, attaboy. The second he walks out of the check-in area, I run into the back office, lock the door, and call the cops.

We had some little monitors in there while watching the parking lot and the doors to the rooms, so while I'm on the 911 call, I'm able to watch what the guy is doing. He walks right up to room 17 then starts hammering on the door and shouting. I'm praying the light doesn't come on because the first person who opens the door is probably going to get a bullet but then it doesn't come on and no one opens the door because I somehow managed to actually pick out an empty room and thus buying us all some time. At least I thought it might buy us all some time when in reality it only bought us all about 10 seconds. When the man with the sharp smile realizes no one is in room 17, the guy

starts walking back and forth in the parking lot and I can't hear exactly what he's saying but all the way from the office I can hear him ranting and raving and then boom. He fires off a shot in the air, maybe to make a point or something but that's what woke up my boss. He was the heaviest sleeper I ever knew in my whole life. Remember that drag queen dog fight that I was telling you about? He slept through that whole thing. I thought he'd be out in his underwear, white hair all stood up shouting something at them, but he didn't. He slept right through it. Yet when I heard that gunshot, the response was movement in the room upstairs, the room where my boss slept. I heard his footsteps moving too, moving away from his bed towards the door which overlooked the parking lot, and I was almost 100% certain that he was about to get himself shot.

It also just happened that the guy had started walking back towards the check-in area which naturally scared the ever-living crap out of me because I assumed that he wanted to come back and punish me for lying to him. I'm locked in the office and it's only a thin door. There's just one tiny room I can use to crawl out of if I climb up high enough and that's what I was doing when I heard the second big bang. Only that time, the bang was followed by a different kind of screaming coming from the parking lot. It was definitely the same dude who put his gun to my head but he's not screaming in anger.

He's screaming in what sounded like a lot of agony. My boss had walked out from his room upstairs, saw the guy walking towards the office with that gun in his hand, and pulled the trigger first. Only the thing was, his gun wasn't a pistol, it was a double-barreled 12-gauge and the shells were filled with rock salt. The guy was still screaming in pain when the cops put him in cuffs and by the time the EMT showed up, he was a bloody whimpering mess when they put him in the back of the ambulance. My boss had shot him in the face, almost at point-blank range,

sending dozens of sharp rock salt crystals tearing into his face. I think at a distance, the shots wouldn't have done anything except scare him, but up close, let's just say that I'd be surprised if he regained all of his eyesight after the damage that had been done. Sometime after, I asked my boss, why rock salt? And in the seconds after I asked, I realized what a dumb question it was. Won't kill a man, he said, but it hurts. And boy was he right. The way the guy screamed, the way the agony just broke him down slowly until he was nothing but just a mess. I don't ever want to feel pain like that for as long as I live.

I ended up working at that motel for a few more months and then I found a job that didn't make me feel like a vampire. It was nice to reclaim the daylight, but I'll tell you something, I never felt as safe as I did working at that in my adult life, and only because they were European or Asian vacations, that included what I considered bucket list level locations. And the only reason I was able to manage those flights was because I was hopped up to the gills on Xanax. I also went to college several states away from home, exactly seven actually, which meant that when it came to traveling home for

the holidays, the journeys sometimes turned into Tolkien-esque affairs. I'd set off for Vermont in the early morning and then do ten hours of solid driving, which usually had me somewhere in rural Virginia. Then depending on how tired I was, I'd pick the least crummy looking motel I could find, preferably somewhere with a Hardee's nearby, and then rest up there for the night before getting back on the road in the morning. So, I'm driving home for summer at the end of the sophomore year at UVM, and by that time, I had a preferred motel and Hardee's spot that I'd stopped at twice before. I don't want to give away the name of the place, but I guess knowing it's close to Hardee's, someone, somewhere will figure it out eventually. Anyway, I get to the motel, pay for my room, and then head out to the Hardee's to get a late dinner of biscuits and French toast dip. After that, I headed back to the room, took a shower, and then watched a little TV. I made it till 11.30pm before I finally snapped,

and when I did, I got up from the bed, went over to my bags, and rummaged around a side pocket until I pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. During that second year of college, I'm embarrassed to say that I picked up smoking from one of my roommates. It's a disgusting habit, and looking back on it, I can't believe how stupid I was to get myself hooked. Then since my mom and dad would have lost their minds if they ever found out, I decided to wean myself before the drive home so there'd be no temptation to smoke all summer. Well turns out I wasn't all that good at the weaning process and by the time I checked myself into the motel, I was still getting these nightmarish cravings for nicotine

right around bedtime. I tried resisting the urge, but since I had a long drive up ahead of me in the morning, I decided it was no time for a sweaty, sleepless night. So, I grabbed the crumpled up pack of smokes, fished out my lighter, and then headed out onto the walkway to catch a late night buzz. I remember thinking to myself, as the sweet nicotine washed through my bloodstream, I am severely going to regret not quitting sooner, aren't I? In hindsight, the thought seems almost prophetic. The motel had this classic square bracket shape like a U with right angles instead of curves. My room was on one of the wings,

overlooking the parking lot at a rectangle, and as I'm leaning on the railing, puffing away, I see a car roll into the lot. Some older looking guy gets out of what I think was a light colored Toyota Camry, then starts rummaging in his pocket for his motel room key. Then right as he gets to his room on the ground floor, I see a flash of movement in the darkness of my peripheral vision. And in a flash, these two people, a man and a woman, rush up to the older guy opening up his

door, and after what appeared to be a brief and subdued confrontation, the trio disappear into the motel room. I'm not saying I'm in possession of a sort of Jack Reacher level of a situational intuition, but something about the interaction struck me as extremely off. On one hand, the younger couple could have been waiting for him maybe for hours, and were pissed when the pops or uncle or whoever it was finally showed up to let them into the motel room. But then, on the other hand, there was something highly suspicious about the way the younger couple seemed to rush the older guy, how he jumped in fright when he first turned to look at them, and how they gently pushed him

into the room first, took a look around, and then closed the door behind them. I'd come to the last few drags of my cigarette anyway, so I stubbed it, walked back into the room to flush it down the toilet, and then grabbed my phone and walked back out onto the walkway. I didn't think my first call should be to the cops right away. I mean, I didn't 100% know what I'd seen. I'd feel like a total jerk if the cops showed up and they kicked in the motel room door and it turned out that the female half of the younger couple just needed to pee really bad and that's why they rushed over to the motel room. But still, I was ready to call 911 if I saw anything else so I stayed put on the walkway and just kept watching the motel room that I'd seen the three people walk into. Then a second or two later, an idea popped into my head. I could walk down to the check-in area, roughly explain the situation, then ask very nicely how many people were booked into that room.

But then, even if they did say just one person, I'm pretty sure the motel wasn't operating a no-guest policy, and at that point, I once again got the creeping sensation that I was totally exaggerating what I'd seen, as well as sticking my nose where it didn't belong. And with that in mind, I decided to dish the whole asking the check-in area idea, and then just go back to my room and try to get some sleep. Then literally the moment I turned my back, I heard two loud but muffled bangs, obviously coming from one of the rooms across the parking lot.

I grew up around guns and I instantly knew what I'd heard, so my immediate reaction was to sort of scuffle behind one of the concrete pillars that supported the upper walkway and call 911 to let them know that there had been some shots fired. But then just as I got behind that pillar and poked my head out so I could still see the parking lot, I didn't get a chance to dial 911 before the door of the room of the three people had just burst open. The person that ran out first was the male half of the younger couple, and he looked like he was limping a little, but he still made it all the way across the parking lot before the female half emerged.

She fell on her face on the way out of the same door her man had just bolted out from, but picked herself up and ran a little more before the older guy, the one I'd spotted first, walked out of the motel room and shot her. I ducked down behind the pillar again, making myself as skinny as I could, then spent way too long unlocking my phone on account of how badly my hands were shaking in that moment. Then before I could actually send a call and put the phone to my ear, I heard two things in quick succession. The first was the voice of what I assumed to be the wounded woman. She shouted, please don't kill me, I'm pregnant. She tried to say something else, but was interrupted by the second thing I heard, and that second thing was the shot that killed her.

It was probably the loudest sound I'd ever heard, not even because it was some large caliber pistol being fired 30 or 40 yards away, but because what was said before it. The older guy heard her say this and he didn't even hesitate. Sure, I can see it being a lie one designed to gain sympathy from someone that she believed to be as harmless as an old man but to have him not even hesitate to shoot like that was truly horrifying.

It wasn't even like he didn't even believe her either. He didn't stop to ask, really, or tell her that she didn't look pregnant. I know that some women can well be into their third trimester before they really start to show, but my point stands. It was like he did believe her, but he just didn't care. I was still shaking from what had just happened when I realized that I hadn't even dialed 911 yet. The number was just hovering there on my screen. But I also didn't want the guy to hear me reporting him to the cops just in case he decided to come upstairs and get rid of any witnesses.

So I hit dial, ran back in my room before slamming the door behind me, and slid under the bed just in time to catch the dispatcher saying for a second time, 911, what's your emergency? It's true what they say about time slowing down in those situations. I dealt with the 911 call, stayed on the line with the dispatcher, but watched the minutes literally crawl by while waiting for the cops to actually show up. I was worried some kind of shootout would break out and I didn't see exactly how the guy ended up but he must have just given himself up peacefully because I watched the cops walking him to the car

and he was completely silent and cooperative I then made the mistake of looking over at the body of the woman he'd shot he'd shot her right in the face, right between the eyes probably because there was just this big hole where most of her face should have been and her head was lying at an angle, probably because there was no rear portion of skull left to support it. The thing is, it didn't look real. It looked like a movie prop, and I don't know whether that's because it really did look that way or it was just my brain's way of disassociating me from what I was actually looking at, but it was like I said, it just didn't look real. Not until the EMT showed up and put a white sheet over her.

They don't do that with movie props, not when there aren't any cameras around. It's been almost 15 years since I saw that woman get murdered. And I do mean murder too, because as much as I'm a believer in the second amendment, as well as a person's right to defend themselves, what happened was not self-defense. Maybe the first shot was, the one that scared off the male partner in the younger couple. But chasing that girl into the parking lot while she's running away, no longer a threat to him, that constitutes murder if you ask me. And then completely ignoring the girl's pleas, not even hesitating before executing her. I don't think I'll ever witness anything as cold-blooded as that again for as long as I live, which, ifboyfriend, I ended up at a little motel in Cooper County,

Missouri. I had been working up for quite a while making preparations, squirreling away a few bucks here and a few bucks there. Then one day, when I had enough money and I knew that I was going to be out the entire day, I packed my stuff, got a cab to a car rental place, and then got the hell out of St. Louis. It had gotten past the point where I thought that he might one day kill me, to the point that I believed that he was gearing up to actually do it. I said all kinds of stuff, but I knew that deep down he hated me. Almost everything he did, even some of the things that seemed nice on the surface, were all just ways of putting me down and keeping me down.

But at the same time, I knew that he'd never let me leave, not fully. He was jealous. Almost everything he did, even some of the things that seemed nice on the surface, were all just ways of putting me down and keeping me down. But at the same time, I knew that he'd never let me leave, not fully. He was jealous, about every little thing too. He was without a doubt the most bitter man I've ever had the displeasure of knowing, and after bashing my head into the refrigerator one day, I decided enough was enough. I called my mom, begged her to let me stay at her place, and despite years of me doing everything I could to alienate her, she said yes. And after that, all I had to do was wait for the day and then adios, I was on the road. I cried almost the whole drive, and after being unable to sleep for

the whole of the previous night, I think I was on the road for a total of three to four hours before I started to feel too effed up to drive. The last thing I wanted to do was on the road for a total of three to four hours before I started to feel too effed up to drive. The last thing I wanted to do was total the car and end up in the hospital instead of my mom's, because if I did, it was my ex that would hear about it first. I pulled over at the first motel I saw, parked the car, rented a room, and took a long hot shower to wash away the nervous sweat off of me, which had soaked into the clothes that I had been wearing. I wish I was just joking with that, by the way. It was actually disgusting. So, after my shower, I'm still a little wired, so I unpack a few things like my phone

charger, a pack of aspirin, stuff like that, and as I'm rummaging through one of the little side pouches in my suitcase, I feel something unfamiliar. At first I thought it might have been one of my ex's sobriety chips, an effort he'd abandoned long before my attempt to escape, but when I pulled it out and recognized what it was, I almost dropped it from how afraid I was. It was an air tag, one of those little gadgets that helps you find lost keys or a lost wallet. My ex had slipped it into my luggage. I threw all my stuff into my suitcase, put on some clothes when my hair was still wet, and then ran out to the rental after leaving the air tag on the nightstand. I made it a matter of minutes, and I know that because a very, very short time after getting back on the road, my ex started blowing up my phone with calls and messages.

They're not anything I'd care to repeat, but you can bet that they were some of the vilest things I'd ever heard said or seen written to anyone, let alone myself. They were wild, frantic, but a single thread ran through them all. When he found me, he was going to kill me, and he was certain of it too. He knew where I was, and he was coming to get me. There was just one problem. I wasn't at that motel anymore, was I? You see, one of the more insidious ways my ex exerted control was somehow convincing me that I needed to renew my license. If I needed to go anywhere, he'd give me a ride or I could get an Uber on the rare occasion I went outside without him. For a long time, that was my setup. I had no freedom, no self-respect, and no idea how I was going to get myself out of the deep, deep hole that I'd gotten myself

into. My ex assumed that I must have gotten a ride or an Uber to the motel, but he didn't stop to consider that I'd already implemented a keystone of my escape plan. When it came to renewing my license, my ex thought that there was no way I could without him knowing, since all the paperwork and the license itself would be delivered to the apartment. But since I was pretty much forced to work part-time so we could keep up with expenses, thank god for rising gas prices and food prices I guess, I could get all the documentation forwarded to my place of work. The part-time wages also meant that I could actually pay for the fees myself too, meaning that I wouldn't alert my ex by asking him for cash. The rule was, I could ask for money whenever I wanted, but how much I got depended entirely

on how much my ex thought I needed. When all the prices went up, me having my own money was like a necessary evil to him. He didn't like it, but he couldn't afford to pay for all my stuff anymore, so it had to be done. And before any of you go making out that I was ungrateful, I can assure you that his fake generosity was nothing more than another attempt at exerting control. But then, with the money to afford the fees, as well as other things I'd need along the way, motel money being one of them, I was good to go, so off I went to rent a car. In my ex's head, there was nothing I could do but hope an Uber showed up before he did,

or run off into the surrounding countryside, which was a very bad option considering this is the middle of January. He thought he had me cornered, and he was so gleeful at the thought that you could read it in his texts. I wasn't opening them as I was driving at the time but almost every other message started with LOL or LMAO or HAHAHAHA. I'm actually glad I was occupied at the time because it would have been real hard to resist the temptation to text him something like, I'm not there you effing psycho but your air tag is.

I know it was much better to just say nothing, have him arrive at the motel, then realize his sneaky stalker idea hadn't been nearly as sneaky as he thought. I've been doing much better in the time since I escaped that beyond toxic relationship, but in all this time, I've also never experienced anything as singularly terrifying as pulling out an air tag and realizing that I was being tracked by a man who wanted my blood. And honestly, I hope I never it was weird that my grandpa was a vegetarian. Whenever he came over for Sunday dinner, mom would always make a side of eggplant parm just for him.

He'd never eat any of the meat antipasti that was passed around beforehand, waving the plate away if anyone was forgetful enough to pass it his way, but as I got older, I started to notice some odd inconsistencies with his diet. Grandpa always ate the same Sunday gravy as the rest of us, with mom using all that beef-saturated tomato deliciousness to bathe his fried eggplant before pairing it with pasta and serving it to him. I asked my mom if he knew this, and it turned out that he did. Grandpa didn't mind things flavored with meat. Hell, he'd drink chicken soup all day long if it didn't have any meat pieces in it. The problem wasn't taste, nor the ethics of eating meat. The problem was something else. I remember the evening my mom

called me into the kitchen to help with dinner prep and while I was peeling carrots, I asked why grandpa didn't like to see the meat he was eating. I guess she figured she had two options. Tell me and ensure that I never ever ask my grandpa about it in person. Or don't tell me and risk him telling me the story in much more graphic detail while dredging up some terrible memories in the process. So she took the first option and decided to just tell me. I knew my grandpa had been a sailor at some point during his younger years and I also knew that he'd been in the navy during WW2. But at that age, I was incredibly ignorant of world history so when I heard he sailed in the Pacific transporting marines from place to place, it didn't mean all that much to me. I figured that

since he was a sailor and not a soldier, all he did was sail around hoping, it didn't mean all that much to me. I figured that since he was a sailor and not a soldier, all he did was sail around hoping a submarine didn't catch him while the soldiers did all the shooting and blowing stuff up. Now technically speaking, that's true. Sailors had a very different kind of war out there, but I was always under the impression that Grandpa had been lucky, for want of a better word, and that he'd never seen anything too gruesome or scary during his time in the Navy. And boy, was I wrong about that. My mom told me that during the war, Grandpa had served on what she called an amphibious assault ship. These guys transported the Marines from island to island and from battle to battle, but they also did a whole

bunch of other stuff. They kept them fed, watered, and supplied with what they needed to fight. Then whenever the Marines took a place from the Japanese, sailors from the amphibious assault ships would follow on behind them doing all the stuff that they needed to be done after battle, and that included clean up. The moment my mom said the words clean-up, it suddenly clicked why grandpa didn't like the sight of meat. In my defense, I was only maybe 13 or 14 at the time, and like I said, I knew next to nothing about history aside from like presidents and a little about the Revolutionary War. So when my mom spelled it out to me that grandpa had been on what amounted to a battlefield clean battlefield cleanup crew, it was like this

sickening moment of realization before I suddenly just felt terrible for him. Mom said that when he and his crew came ashore, that they had to gather up the remains of all the dead marines, but also all the dead Japanese too. You can't have dead bodies lying around in places as hot and humid as the South Pacific islands. They start decaying super fast, and they're breeding grounds for flies, and if just one of those disease spreading flies gets onto a ship, sickness could take out an entire crew within days. That meant that cleaning up all the death the marines left in their wake was an extremely important job, but an extremely dirty and unsettling one as well. Sometimes it was used

as a punishment, but for the most part, only the men with the strongest stomachs and the sturdiest minds were consistently chosen for each cleanup crew. And even though it seems like the highest of compliments that my grandpa was one of those picked, as it most definitely wasn't a punishment in his case, it still took a subtle but evident toll on him. It wasn't just carting all the bodies around, all that meat that made grandpa never want to see it on his plate again. It was other stuff that really turned him off of it. For example, he once came across a guy trying to remove gold teeth from the mouth of a dead Japanese soldier. The guy couldn't get one of his back teeth,

so he just started sawing into his jaw with his combat knife to try and remove the chunk that the gold tooth was attached to. He said sawing into a steak or pork chops reminded him too much of that sailor, sawing away with that sick grinding sound, determined to get at that gold tooth. Then the other thing, the thing that gave him nightmares until long after he came back home, was something that he saw at this place called Lete. The landings took place at high tide, so the soldiers could get right up onto the beach, but

that meant that when grandpa and his cleanup crew came in, there were a bunch of bodies floating in the surf and the tide was rapidly retreating. Naturally, they tried to get all the American bodies out of the water, and only then did they try to preserve the Japanese dead. But by the time all the deceased Americans were out of the water, a whole bunch of Japanese ones had been pulled further out, and it attracted a whole bunch of hungry sharks. There was nothing they could do but carry on putting together what they had on the beach, all with the sharks feasting away in the background, ripping off pieces of meat

before swallowing them down in a rush of water. In the next tide, all these chunks of meat and bone and uniform got washed up on the beach, meaning grandpa and the cleanup crew basically had to do their job all over again. And only this time, the stuff that was left of the Japanese soldiers was all chewed up and half eaten. After that, Grandpa lost his appetite for meat and in a way, I don't blame him. I'm just glad it came up before I asked him about it because God knows I'd never want to remind him of something so hellishly traumatic. Mom said that he had nightmares for a long time after the war, but not over what those sharks did with those dead

Japanese soldiers who got drug out to sea. The thing that screwed him up the most, that had him waking up in the middle of the night screaming in a cold sweat, were the things people could do to each other, not with their guns or their bombs, but with their bare hands. Hey, are you looking for a true crime podcast to binge? To be continued... We cover the cases everyone is talking about, and we also highlight the cases that have been underreported, overlooked, or forgotten. With over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, if you've never checked out True Crime Obsessed, now's the time to give us a try. Find True Crime Obsessed wherever you get your podcasts. I live in a pretty small town and I have a pretty quiet life in all honesty. I have an office job and I work some pretty long hours so I don't really go out all that much at night. On the night that this experience took place, I got a call from a friend of mine. To be honest, I almost didn't pick it up, but I am really glad that I did.

She had called to say that she needed a ride. I didn't mind. I didn't have any other plans. She needed to be picked up from a big supermarket. I guessed that she had bought a ton of things and she didn't want to take all of that on the crowded train home with her. I was happy to help, but it seemed to me a little late to be shopping. It was around 11pm when she called. I needed a couple of things so I headed into the store to meet her. And the supermarket was almost empty at that time of night but it usually is really busy during the day. We got our things, paid and headed back out to the parking lot. I think that was about midnight at that point.

A group of men came out of a nearby game center, sort of like an arcade. I think these guys came out because the place was about to close. They headed to their cars while talking to each other and looking over at us. My friend said to me that she wasn't feeling well and we decided to just get going. We pulled out of the parking lot and a couple of other cars followed on behind us. That was normal though. It was closing time and the lights in the retail park were going out. I noticed that my friend was quiet. I guess that was just because she didn't feel well. I looked over at her and she looked pale. And she looked at me and said,

I think I know the guy in the car behind us. I didn't think much of it when she said that. I thought that it was just some coincidence. I went to look in the mirrors to see if I knew him too, and then my friend suddenly said, Don't look back. I realized why she was so uncomfortable, and I tried to pull over to let the guy pass, but then my friend snapped at me and said,

Don't stop the car, whatever you do. I just did as she asked and continued. That's my ex-boyfriend. If you stop, I'm scared that he'll come and try to open the door. Okay, now this was serious, I thought. I made up my mind not to drive down the highway. I wanted to avoid any traffic lights which would mean that we would have to stop and when my car stops the doors automatically unlock while the

car is in drive. So I decided to take the back roads and man that was a terrible idea. Thinking back on it now I should have probably gone to like a late night diner or a convenience store. You know somewhere bright with lots of people around, but I think my friend would have freaked out if I even tried that. So I kept driving down these countryside lanes, the back roads, until my friend calmed down a little. The car behind was following every turn we made. The further we went from the city, the fewer cars were seen on the roads with us. I got to the point where it was literally just us on the road. The car behind was speeding up too, forcing me to go faster and faster. I asked my friend, why is he chasing us?

She said, I think I made him angry. I don't want to stay at my place alone tonight. Then she began to cry and I didn't really get my answer. The situation we were in was getting more and more unnerving. I didn't know how it was going to end and I didn't want to consider all the possibilities. I kept driving. There wasn't much else I could do but then something occurred to me. I had quite a small and light car and the car behind was much bigger.

What if I went down a narrow road? Maybe that would stop the guy from chasing us. He'd be scared to damage his car, I thought. I decided to take that risk and turn down the next narrow road that I found. I kept an eye on my navigation system to try to find a way out of there. I didn't want to be stuck down some dead end road. I needed to keep driving or at least get to some safe place because I didn't want to send my friend home in the state that she was in. I thought about trying the police but I knew the police would do nothing about that guy. It seems like they only help after the fact and never during. My friend was sobbing next to me but she stopped to apologize for getting me into this mess.

I mean, I should have sensed something was up. She hadn't ever called me for a ride from a supermarket before. She said she called me because she didn't have anyone else she could turn to. I told her that it was okay, I just wanted to know where I should be driving her. And she replied, don't take me back to my house. If we did just lose him, that's where he'll be waiting. Can you take me to the train station? I said that she could stay at mine for the night, but she vehemently refused.

She said that she had caused enough trouble. I realized something at that point. The stuff that she had bought at the supermarket looked like she had been planning to run away. She even had some camping equipment. I didn't know it was that bad. I didn't fully understand the situation, but I knew one thing. The man who was chasing us was very dangerous if running away for her life in our town seemed to be her preferred option. She said that she would stay in a hotel that night. She would get off the train far away and lay low. She was going to hotel hop too, make sure that her location changed every now and then. I felt for her, I really did. She said that she felt like he was always watching her and he knew how to find her. And that was so scary to me. I didn't want to ask her about her ex but I was

curious as to why she was so scared of him finding her. I said something like, he sounds like a really horrible guy. And she replies, it's not just him who will be looking for me. It's his group of friends too. And that was even more frightening. Something really bad was going on. I managed to follow the narrow back roads back to the city and I got her to the station like she asked. I was confident that she wasn't following us anymore. I felt for sure that he had given up. She got out at the station and we found that the next available train would come at 6am.

I couldn't leave her there for that long alone in the state that she was in. I asked her to come with me to like a McDonald's or something. I thought that there we could talk things over a little and I was right. She told me a little more about the situation and that ex of hers. She told me that he didn't take being broke up with very well. He attacked her and beat her up. He made threats against her family and friends and tried to use fear to coerce her into getting back with him again. He was also convinced that she had been with his friends. He said all this after she found out that he had been on a bunch of dating and hookup apps.

One of her single friends showed her his profile and she confronted him. She said that his friends are a bunch of stalkers like him too. I was shocked and found it hard to follow her story. Personally, I think they could have been equally guilty of cheating by the sounds of things. Then she turned to me and said, I want you to forget about me, okay? I'm not going to have anything more to do with you. And at that point, it is very sad to lose a friend of course but equally I didn't want to get involved

with these weird guys and be chased by random men at night and I just felt so conflicted. She began to cry again and kept saying it's really my fault this time. After dropping her off at the train station and helping her onto the platform with her bags she turned to me and gave me 10,000 yen and said, thank you, I'll always be grateful for tonight. And that was the last time I ever saw my friend. I had tears in my eyes as I drove home from the station that night, but they felt like they instantly dried up when I noticed a certain car in the lane next to mine. I couldn't believe it, the guy who had followed me earlier was still out here looking for us. I got goosebumps but tried not to make it obvious that I had noticed him.

And by some miracle, he didn't appear to notice me or my car and after four or five pretty frightening minutes, he turned off in a different direction to me. As soon as I got home, I just completely crashed. It was the first time in a long time that I had been awake that late with that much adrenaline. And despite everything that happened that night, I'm glad that I answered her call. I mean, what might have happened to her if I didn't is something I don't want to ask myself. And like I said, I never heard from her again. Now fast forward now, three months later, I got a call from my friend's number. I was really interested to see how she was doing,

so I answered it straight away, and I quickly found out that it wasn't my friend on the other end of the phone. It sounded like someone wasn't even using a phone, and by that I mean that it was some sort of computer talking, and the voice at the other end of the line asked the following, Hi, have you heard from Beep? The man calling from her number seemed polite and friendly, but I knew that he was likely one of the guys who was chasing her. I was a little scared to say anything at first, but then I managed to say, Actually, I haven't heard from her in a long time.

I'm sorry I can't help you. Ah, is that so? Well, I'm so sorry to have bothered you then. And then the call was ended. I was so scared even though it wasn't happening to me. I had a way to contact her through a separate messaging app, but I didn't dare to use it just in case one of those guys or her ex had a way of tracking her messages. I hope she managed to start a new life, and although that call was scary, it told me that they hadn't managed to track her down. And if you're out there, please, stay safe, my friend. This happened in Gifu, Japan. I've had one really scary experience worth sharing. Back when I was a student, I used to go camping by myself regularly,

and at one point I was camping almost every weekend. I used to camp from Friday to Sunday out in the elements, and I really didn't mind where. I camped in fields and in the shade of the mountains. With no real friends at college, I guess I was trying to suppress my loneliness by exploring nature. On the night that this took place, I got on the train and headed out with no real direction in mind. I didn't bring a map and I didn't research where I was going to be camping. I was just kind of winging it. I knew that there would be mountains where I was heading so I figured that I would easily find somewhere to camp. I got off the train and set off into the wilderness and eventually I found a nice area between two mountains. It looked like a pretty safe place

so I set up my camp for the night. I made a campfire dinner and then I retreated into my tent to read a little. Before I knew it, it was almost midnight. It was a quiet night. There was a breeze, but it wasn't that cold despite it being fall. I was comfortable in my tent. Well, that was until I heard the zipper at the front of the tent unzip. I panicked, but I tried to think logically at first. Was I trespassing on private property, or could this be something worse? I was worried that I was in danger. The tent flap was fully unzipped in a matter of moments, and then I saw a figure. A man was out there. He leaned his head into the tent, and I saw his face. It was just some old man. He looked very ordinary, the kind of guy that you would walk past in the street and hardly notice. As he leaned into my tent, he asked,

Are you traveling through here? I couldn't wrap my head around what he was asking. I just shook my head from side to side to indicate no and with that, the old guy zipped up the front flap and left. I was confused and pretty freaked out. I didn't spot a house in the area and I think the closest one I saw was nearly a mile away. What the hell was this old guy doing out in the mountains so late? I started to wonder if I had seen a ghost or something. I knew deep down that I had seen a real person though, but the absurdity of the situation had me questioning everything. Well, I guess that sleep was off the agenda for the night. I mean, there would be no possible way that I could sleep with some weirdo out there.

If he was comfortable enough to open my tent, what else was this guy possibly going to do? I didn't know if he was a psycho or if he was armed or if he was a thief. I mean, he didn't look like any of those options, but I guess that it's possible that he could have been all three, and I couldn't sleep without on my mind. While I was mulling over all that, I heard the sound of the zipper being pulled again. The front flap opened and this time a completely different guy stuck his head through the opening of the tent. He asked me more or less the same question. Are you on a trip or vacation or something?

I shook my head to indicate no again. I didn't know how to answer this guy and I wanted to give a similar answer as the first one that I gave. I didn't know what they were testing. There had to be a point to this weird line of questioning. When he heard my response he zipped up the tent again and seemingly walked off someplace. And the second guy was younger. He was middle-aged and, again, very ordinary looking. I didn't know if I was being targeted or if this was the beginning of some kind of game.

I didn't plan on sticking around to find out, so I decided to pack up my things as fast as I could. I was worried though. I knew that it was dark out there. There was no moon out that night. And you know how dark it can get in the mountains and the woods, right? I didn't see either of those guys carrying flashlights. It just kept getting weirder and weirder. I needed to plan my way out.

I honestly spent close to 20 minutes imagining what kind of scenarios would happen when I set foot out of my tent. I knew that I wouldn't be able to see where those guys were and they could come at me from any angle. I imagined a kitchen knife being plunged into my back. I had no choice though. I mean, I had to get out of the tent. I couldn't just sit there and wait for their first move. So, with my heart racing, I decided to step out. I equipped myself with my mag light for self-defense. I slowly went out, but I couldn't see anyone out there. I thought that this might be my chance to get all my stuff packed up and get the hell out. I was making promises with all the known gods that, if I got out of

there safely that this would be the last time I went on a solo camping trip. I was shoving things in my bag but I stopped in my tracks when I heard the sound of approaching footsteps. I looked up and saw those two men's silhouettes. I just carried on with packing my stuff but then one of the men spoke up. Are you going home? It's the middle of the night. I replied this time and I said something along the lines of, Yeah, I had an urgent call.

I gotta go. One of them replied, We didn't hear a phone ring. I naturally turned to face them at this point. They knew that I was lying, and I shone my flashlight at them and saw that they were wearing dark robes. They had masks perched on top of their heads as if though they had just pulled them off of their faces. There was something very disturbing going on out here. They stood there and watched me frantically get my stuff together,

and a thought came to my mind that really scared me. It was like my internal voice said to me, it was a short life. I really thought that this could be the end. I thought that they were about to attack. They didn't do anything though, they just stood and watched. I got my things together and I just bolted. I heard something weird as I was running. I knew that there were more people out in the mountains that night. I could tell there was. I heard footsteps, branches snapping. I swear I heard someone laugh, but most chillingly of all, I heard what sounded like a choir of voices begin to murmur something. I tripped and stumbled and by the time I got to the foot of the mountain, I was covered in unseen cuts and bruises. I spent the rest of the night at the train station and I didn't get any sleep. As soon as the first train arrived, I joined the

morning commuters and got out of there. I must have looked like a wreck. I was getting some strange looks as well. I kept my promise. That was the last time I went camping alone. It was a really terrifying experience. And I don't know what those people wearing robes and masks do out there in the woods, and I don't really want to find out. I have the feeling that I got away with something that night.

Maybe it was down to the way I answered the questions they asked. Maybe they thought that I was a local. I don't know, but if I told them that I was on a trip and I wasn't from that area, maybe I wouldn't be sharing the story with you. I am having some real difficulty sleeping tonight. I've been reading scary stories and that probably doesn't help. I read one that reminded me of an experience I had the last time that I had trouble sleeping and I figured I'd share it with you. I went back home this summer, and I'm writing this in September by the way. My hometown is really far away from where I currently live. During the journey home, I fell asleep on the Shinkansen, the bullet train. I only wanted to sleep for about an hour,

but I slept for like four I think. I got home and greeted my parents and after I had dinner with my parents and they went up to bed, I found myself unable to sleep. I was so restless and I knew that the next morning we were all going to be going on an important trip. I figured that the best thing I could do would be to take a walk. I hoped that that night air would just help me feel a little sleepy and wind down. I went to the local convenience store, I think I got there just after 1am. I went in and wandered over to the magazine rack in the corner. I was looking at the adult entertainment thinking that that might help me get to sleep, and it was at that point that

I sensed something. I felt that horrible feeling you get when you just know that someone is watching you. I looked up to see an old man staring at me through the window of the convenience store. I thought, well, this is kind of awkward. And there I was looking through the specialist gentleman's material and unbeknownst to me, I was being watched. I felt like it would be even more awkward if I looked up at him directly in his eyes. I did however take a quick covert look at the guy while pretending to browse. I remember he had a dirty white t-shirt on and he was overweight. It didn't look like he had washed for a while, he looked very disheveled.

It was obvious that he was staring at me and it wasn't something that I was willing to stand any longer. I moved away and into another aisle. I was looking at the drinks. I picked a relaxing tea and went to the register. The clerk behind the till fixed me with a look between nervousness and the awkward and then I said, hey, that guy over there, he looks a little off, right? He was just staring at me a minute ago. Yeah, I actually noticed that, he replied. Are you the only one working tonight?

I asked. Uh, yeah, that's right. I noticed that he was pretty young, and he looked scared too. I think that he must have been between maybe 18 to 20 years old, and wasn't much older than him by the way. I was only 24. So I said to him, hey I don't like the look of that guy. Do you mind if I just hang out here? I'll pretend to browse and hopefully after a while just go away. He looked at me like he had just been given a birthday present and said yes, yes thank you. I guess he was just as creeped out by him as I was. I think I was there browsing and chatting with the clerk for about

half an hour to an hour and it started to get a little light out. All the while we were hiding out in the store from that weirdo he remained out there staring in at us. At times it looked like he was in deep contemplation and at other times it looked like he was in deep contemplation, and at other times, it looked like there wasn't a single thought in his head. Something was just off. A truck pulled into the convenience store's parking lot, and as soon as it did, we saw that weird guy just sort of saunter off someplace, and the truck driver came in. He looked over at us and said, Did you see that guy out there? He's out there with a goddamn knife behind his back. I was shocked and scared to be honest.

I called a taxi as I didn't want to walk home and the clerk called the cops. I didn't really realize how close I was to a situation that was potentially life-threatening. Stay safe out there and trust your gut. Hey, are you looking for a true crime podcast to binge? Check out True Crime Obsessed, We'll see you next time. also highlight the cases that have been underreported, overlooked, or forgotten. With over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, if you've never checked out True Crime Obsessed, now's the time to give us a try. Find True Crime Obsessed wherever you get your podcasts. My grandma told me this story one time from when she was a student, and I always thought it'd be awesome to hear something read out in your channel. So I got her permission to write this to you, and

I hope you find it as creepy as I do. My grandma grew up in Bolivia, which is where she got her degree, but for her PhD she moved to La Quiaca in Argentina to study there. La Quiaca is a very old town high up in the Andes Plateau, and it's very dry and dusty too, almost like a town in New Mexico or Arizona. It's not very big either, and there's not much for tourists to see or do, so aside from people coming over the border from Bolivia, it's not the kind of place that you saw many foreigners, especially not many Americans. So one day, my grandma is having coffee in her favorite cafe when she spots a man who is quite obviously from North America. She catches his eye on accident, he smiles, then a few moments later, he comes over to talk to her. His Spanish was okay, but her English was better. He told her

that he was a businessman, and that he was in La Quiaja to do some land surveying for his company back in the US. He said he was only going to be in town for a few days, but he was fascinated with the history and culture of the area, and since my grandma had been living in La Quiaja for a while, she told him what she'd learned about the place while she'd been studying there. Grandma said their conversation was very pleasant and that towards the end, the man asked if she'd like to have dinner with him the following night. He was charming and handsome so she agreed to what was basically a date and met up with him at a nice bistro the next evening. They got to talking about the history of the region

again and at one point, my grandma starts telling him about this place on the Bolivian side of the Rio de la Quiaja. Basically, La Quiaja is the southern portion of a much larger town, but the other part is north of the river which chops the town in two in neighboring Bolivia. If you took the river west and stuck to the Bolivian side, you'd come across these incredible indigenous burial sites in the cliffs next to the river. Thousands of years ago, Native South American tribes buried their dead next to the river and over time, the erosion of the rock means that you can see bones and burial artifacts in the side of the wall and in the water. My grandma had been to the site herself

and told the American how incredible it was. He seemed very interested to see the place himself, but although my grandma offered to go with him, he said he much preferred to go alone. To help him get there, grandma drew him a kind of map and then wrote her phone number on the back so he could call her after his visit. But the next day came and went, and the American man didn't call her. Grandma said that she was surprised by how hurt she was. She had enjoyed her talks with the man, and although she never said it, I'm quite certain that she expected some kind of romance to blossom. She even went back to the same cafe they met in, as well as the same bistroro hoping that he might show up to explain that he'd lost her phone number or something but he never showed.

Eventually my grandma decided to forget about the man. If he didn't want to see her anymore she didn't want to see him but forgetting about him wasn't so simple. One night she had a dream that she was sitting in her apartment when the telephone suddenly rang. She picked up the phone and in the dream she knew that it was the American on the other end, even though she hadn't heard him speak yet. But then instead of saying hello, asking how she was, or asking her to meet him for dinner, he started to weep. He sounded like he was very far from the phone and my grandma kept asking in the dream, are you okay? Where are you? But he would not answer. All he would do is cry and cry while

my grandma called out louder and louder, where are you? Where are you? And that's the part that she always woke up at. Eventually the nightmare stopped and grandma just put it down to a few lingering feelings that she'd yet to get out of her system. But then one morning, just as she was leaving her apartment to get her morning coffee, she was met at her door by two policemen who asked her to identify herself. When she did so, they held up a very familiar little drawing. It was the map she'd drawn for the American man. The policeman then asked if she'd told the American to go to the spot depicted on the hand-drawn map. Grandma said that she hadn't told him to go there, but that he'd wanted to go out of his own free will and had refused the offer of her company too.

She barely finished answering their question before they ordered her to follow them. They took her to the police station to question her and some of their questions were extremely upsetting for her. For a long time, they kept asking her different questions but refused to tell her why exactly she was there. However, it didn't take long for my grandma to figure out that if they were treating the situation so seriously, then something serious must have happened to the American. They asked her things like, how long have you known the American for, and are you a part of any political organizations in Bolivia? She gave honest answers to both, and the second answer was a no, by the way, but then the police questions got darker. They asked if she was part of any criminal organizations, if she had a history of drug trafficking back home in Bolivia.

Again, the answers to both questions were no, but even though my grandma was giving honest answers, the police officers got angrier and angrier, almost as if though she was attempting to play dumb. Eventually, one of them exploded with anger and told her she better start taking their questions seriously because if she didn't, there's a chance that she'd be going to prison for murder and probably for the rest of her life. And that's how she found out it was a murder investigation and she didn't have to take any guesses to know who the victim had been. I think her reaction to finding out the American had been killed finally convinced the police officers of her innocence. She had no idea what exactly had happened to him, so she went from scared and intimidated to demanding to know if he was dead. Then, when they confirmed it, she couldn't help but burst into tears, for all sorts of reasons too. First, she felt like if she had been with him,

maybe she could have saved him. But that's assuming that he died by what you might call misadventure. And that wasn't the case at all. The police let my grandma go once she'd answered a few more questions, but this time with a very different tone. They couldn't answer all of the questions she returned to them because it was all part of an ongoing, continuing investigation. But it didn't take long for bribes to land information into the hands of reporters. The American's death hadn't been any kind of accident, it had most definitely been murder, and the police knew that because when someone had found the body, it was found headless, and the man's severed head had a gag

stick in his mouth. Someone had cut his head off and then left him there at the burial site for someone else to discover. There are some good newspapers in Bolivia, but a lot of terrible tabloid style newspapers too, and the regional papers are even worse when it comes to exaggerating stories to sell these newspapers. And one paper said the American was a drug trafficker, another said he was CIA, and another shamelessly tried to claim that it was the ghosts of the indigenous people claiming vengeance for sins against the land. There were all kinds of wild stories like that, and the police never got to the bottom of what happened to this American, only that he'd been bound, tortured, and then decapitated by unknown attackers. The only consolation my grandma took was that because he was an American, it would only be a matter of time before the US forced Bolivia to investigate properly. She also hoped that they might send their FBI or CIA or some

other powerful people to solve the dreadful mystery once and for all. Then it would be international news and accurate news too, not all the shameless guessing like that which appeared in local newspapers. But no one came. Not a soul came looking for the American. And La Quiaca is a small place too, so my grandma says she would have known if any other North Americans were in town. Then as the years went by, the truth of the American's murder was doomed to remain a mystery until the end of days, when all truths are revealed by God. Grandma used to say that she looks forward to that day, not just because she'll finally know

the truth of what happened, but also so she can apologize to that American. She says she used to curse his name in the nights after he didn't call, thinking he was off someplace else, romancing another naive young Latina. But again, he was lying dead by the river, after having died what was certainly a truly terrifying death. Back in the mid-60s, my grandma happened to be working as a teacher in the same school I myself ended up going to. Every morning, she'd walk from her small apartment all the way across an old park called The Heath, where wildflowers grew in the spring. She used this route every single day until she heard the terrible news that a young woman had gone missing, with the heath being her last known location. For the first few days, the police wouldn't allow people to walk down the narrow stone path which led through the heath, but even once they had packed up and left,

people were slow to return. Grandma extended her route for a week or two to avoid the heath, as there was a general sense of morbidity and fear about the place. But as time went by, general sense of morbidity and fear about the place. But as time went by, a sense of normalcy returned and my grandma started walking through it on her way to and from teaching. She said she definitely would have thought twice about it if she had to walk through at night or during the very early morning, but most if not all of her walks were in daylight and when they weren't, she'd organize for someone to come give her a ride.

The girl was still missing and the heath still had that sense of creepiness about it, just not during the daytime when plenty of people were around. Then one day, my grandma set off to work and as usual, she walked into the heath and headed down the path. But then on this one occasion, there weren't the usual dog walkers or people using the park as a shortcut. It was just totally empty. This didn't deter my grandma, who kept on walking, and then moments later, she saw what she assumed was a dog walker, just kind of strolling around the edge of one of the grassy clearings. Grandma said that he looked like a younger version of Santa.

Big dark beard, thin on top, and quite a round pot belly that stuck out in front of him as he walked. He was just going along, minding his own business, almost like he was waiting for his dog to use the bathroom. But then, in almost the same moment, Grandma noticed that he hadn't got a dog with him, and he noticed her. He stared at her for the whole time they crossed paths and when he did, it was like his demeanor changed completely. He went from all relaxed and minding his own business to rigid and unceasingly staring. Grandma said the sudden shift made her extremely uncomfortable and that she walked a little faster once she was out of sight, looking over her shoulder the whole time to make sure that she wasn't being followed. The man didn't follow her, but it didn't make the experience any less unnerving for her.

She decided to avoid the heath altogether and not only that, but she decided to start taking the bus just to ensure that she'd be safer on the route home. She thought that she'd never see the bearded man ever again, and nor did she want to, but just a short while later she did see him again, only this time it was on the news. It wasn't his face exactly, it was one of those sketch drawings the police used to release,

but it looked exactly like him. Everything from the beard, to the thinning hair, to the dark, beady eyes he used to stare at her. She reported the sighting to the police, wondering why she hadn't thought to do it sooner. They sent officers around to her apartment to talk to her, and for a while she hoped that it might be what police needed to catch the guy, what with him returning to the scene of the crime and all, but it turned out not to make any difference. The mysterious bearded suspect was never apprehended and the missing girl remains missing to this day. My grandma thinks she stumbled across him while revisiting the scene of the crime and while he'd looked all relaxed without a care in the world,

he'd been reliving the finer details of a terrible, unforgivable crime. To be continued... Standard Time. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends.

And I'll see you next time. for you to check out right now. We cover the cases everyone is talking about, and we also highlight the cases that have been underreported, overlooked, or forgotten. With over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, if you've never checked out True Crime Obsessed, now's the time to give us a try. Find True Crime Obsessed wherever you get your podcasts.