The Lets Read Podcast - 274: A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR'S WORST NIGHTMARE | 10 True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 262

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about private investigators, the Appalachian trail & stories about getting revenge 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

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wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.ca My name is Andrew. I'm from Widnes in northwestern England, and I'm a huge fan of the channel, particularly the dedicated true crime videos that you upload from time to time.

And I'm really interested in the subject of criminality. And although I've never worked within the police service, I've been involved in private security investigation for the last 22 years. You see, here in England, you don't really need any policing experience to become a PI. All you have to do is obtain a license from the security industry authority, attend the relevant training courses, and boom, you're free to start practicing as a fully licensed private investigator. Now, don't get me wrong, I'd considered becoming a police officer for quite some time, but when push came to shove, the antisocial hours and shockingly low wages had me considering many other options.

I worked odd jobs for a few years, just kind of mulling over what I wanted to do in my life, and in my late 20s, I came up with the idea to get into private investigations. My first job was essentially a low-paid 12-month long apprenticeship, but since my income was supplemented by the Department of Work and Pensions, it wasn't like I was having to pinch every penny in order to get by. I used those 12 months to advance my knowledge of the trade, and my boss was a former member of the criminal investigation department, meaning he had an awful lot of skill and experience to pass on. I mostly shadowed him during that first year, helping out on the clerical side of

things, running small errands and making copious cups of tea. I wasn't massively hands-on at first, but by the end of the 12 months, I was being treated as a capable member of the investigations team, and that led to a formal job offer at the end of the apprenticeship. I wasn't immediately trusted to take cases on of my own. I still operated as part of the team, and mostly under the direct guidance of more senior investigators. But as that learning process continued,

the trust that was placed on me grew and grew until finally the time came for me to start working cases on my own. In the years that followed, I worked a lot of very depressing and very stress-inducing cases. I also worked my fair share that I described as boring too, but out of all of them, there was only one that ever really frightened me, and I'm talking like properly terrified too, not just a little bit anxious. In that case, was this one I'm about to tell you. So one day, the firm I worked for got a call from a woman whose grown-up son had been missing for just under a year.

He'd originally disappeared for around four months, then his mom had gotten a text message from his phone saying that he was okay, but wanted a new start elsewhere. He said he was sorry for upsetting people, but that it was just something that he had to do, and that he'd be in touch whenever he could. The woman said that she knew her son had gone through a difficult patch, but that she was devastated by the news of his sudden and unexpected departure. It wasn't completely out of character either. He'd run away from home as a teenager to

try and live with his biological father, but he'd come straight home when he saw the reality of how he lived. He'd also run away to sleep on a friend's spare mattress back when he was a younger teenager too, so it wasn't like just absconding was completely out of character for him. The trouble came when his mom tried calling him to talk on the phone. At first she said that she understood him not wanting to talk because he said the sound of her voice would make him too emotional. But then as time went by, his refusal to talk on the phone got very suspicious. She'd already been in touch with the police by that time and her son was officially a missing person when he got back in touch.

But then the moment she informs the police that she's been in contact with her son, he gets taken off the missing persons register. But the mom jumped the gun. She was so eager to share the good news that she didn't think to do the legwork in terms of confirming it really was her son. And by the time she realized that something dodgy was going on, she had to get back in touch with the police, who by that time seemed to be convinced that it was all a load of family melodrama. She had to call them half a dozen times just to

get them to refile the missing persons report and even then, they clearly weren't taking her very seriously. It took months for the police to get back to her and when they did, they said that her son's phone had pinged off some mobile towers in the area and had started doing so a few nights a week around four months into his disappearance. His mom was shown on a map where this area was and she was asked what reason she thought that he had to be in that area and she had no idea. The police then went looking around this area and found it to be a small junction with a few shops and a pub. Officers asked the patrons of each if they'd seen the bloke,

and although people in the kebab and bedding shops had no idea who or where he was, some of the patrons of the pub said that they had seen him around the bar a few times in the past. They had no idea when, they just said that he looked familiar and that they'd definitely seen him sitting at the bar, drinking a pint of lager from time to time. This was good news on the surface, but as the police rightly said, the woman's sudden wouldn't be taken off the missing person's register until someone had physical, face-to-face contact with him.

Getting him on the phone would be ideal, but even so, it didn't exclude the possibility of him being in danger somehow. Modern day slavery is still very much a thing in cities across the UK, and it might not be as plain and obvious as you might expect. So even if her son assured her that he was okay, the police told the mom to keep on texting and trying to call him until her son gave up his location. In the meantime, officers from their missing persons team would keep looking for him, but more and more time went by and they didn't seem to have any results. In the end, the woman was told that although her son's case would obviously remain open,

with his picture and profile on their website, the police would be diverting resources away from the search for her son. They weren't abandoning the case, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact was that there were more urgent cases that needed their immediate attention. One of the missing persons team would revisit the case from time to time, but apart from that, there was only so much they could do. And that's where I entered the situation, when my boss assigned me the job of tracking down this woman's son.

Since the last place he seemed to have been sighted was the pub the police had mentioned, I thought I'd better start there so I could chat with some of the patrons. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, to be honest, all I knew was that it was a pub. But let me tell you, there are family pubs, old man pubs, and then there are pubs like the one I had to visit when I was working this case, and they are not the kind of place you'd take your kids for Sunday lunch. I've been to a fair few dodgy pubs in my time, but this one took the biscuit. The police had apparently told the lad's mother that the people drinking in the pub were very cooperative,

but when I visited, I realized that they must have been on their best behavior. First of all, the second I turned into the little courtyard, this group of four lads who were standing outside smoking, stopped talking, turned to look at me, and then studied me silently and carefully as I passed them. I gave them a quick, alright lads, but they didn't return the greeting. They just kept on eyeing me up intimidatingly as I pulled the pub's door open and walked inside. There was almost a repeat performance as I walked up to the bar. Not exactly a record scratch moment where everyone turned around to look at me, but I felt enough eyes to feel a smidge of stage fright as I walked up to the bar and ordered a lemonade.

The first thing the barmaid asked me was, Are you a copper? And in all fairness, I not only ordered like one, but I looked like one too since I was dressed in my work suit. I told her no, that I wasn't a cop, but that I was there to ask a few questions if she had the time to talk. She didn't look best pleased at this answer, but said that she'd help as best she could, if she could.

I showed her the picture of the lad that I was looking for, and after studying it for a second or two, she told me that yes, she recognized him, but she hadn't seen him in a few months. However, she added that she wasn't the only barmaid who worked there, and that the others might have seen him more recently than she. And after that, I started making my way around the pub, talking to individuals or groups and not having much joy at all. Most said that they had no idea who the lad was. Others said he looked familiar,

but they couldn't remember when he'd been in or what his name was. I thanked everyone for their time, even the ones who told me to F off or decided to take the piss, and then eventually, I got around to this big table of five blokes, and thankfully, they actually seemed keen to help. They all looked to be in their 40s and 50s, the kind of salt-of-the-earth, working-class blokes that you'd expect to see in any kind of pub. Only there was something different about this group. This was around six in the morning when I popped in, and almost everyone else in the pub was either wearing their dirty work uniforms, I think builders or painters, or very casual track suits or training gear, which tends to be the uniform of the northern working class. But then these blokes sat around the larger table were almost all wearing luxury designer clothing.

Stone Island, Barbour, Moncler, and Saint Laurent. They were all wearing stuff like that, and how do I put this, suspiciously expensive in light of where they were drinking. It wasn't exactly in your face either and the untrained or unfashionable eye might not have picked it up, but I did and it immediately captured my interest. I didn't say anything about their clothing, I just showed them the picture of the lad that was missing and asked if they'd seen him or knew him. And they knew him alright, but only by reputation. One of the blokes said something to the effect of, look mate, I don't want to grass this kid up, but he was on all kinds of drugs, and he was always getting himself into trouble. If he disappeared, he probably owes someone money, and that person is probably a drug dealer. You find the dealer, and you find the lad.

That's the way I see it anyway. And the rest of the blokes seemed to agree with us, although they didn't talk nearly as much as the shorter bloke in the Stone Island jumper and the salt and pepper hair, whose mates seemed content to let him talk for them. I then asked if the missing lad had been into the pub in the past few weeks, and they said no. But I followed up by asking if anyone had seen him in the pub on the exact dates, one which his mobile carrier had confirmed that he was in the area on, and they said no again. They hadn't seen him on that date, and they'd remember because it was on a Saturday and they'd been in the pub all day. Once they'd answered my questions, I thanked them,

and then I sat down at a free table to finish my drink as I continued to subtly people watch. One of the other things I noticed about the pub was that toilet visits were very frequent, and while that might not be unusual in a place that sells alcohol, seeing lads go off to the toilet in pairs was a dead giveaway that there was drug use occurring. But in contrast to all the people going in and out of the toilets and then walking out looking like they'd just sucked the juice out of a car battery, the group of five well

dressed older blokes didn't move. The only time they interacted with anyone was when this rough looking lad walked up to them, asked them something quietly then got a series of intense stares from the group before he seemed to apologize and walk away. After I spoke to everyone I could, I sat there at the bar, suddenly people watching until I finished my lemonade. And then after that, I walked out of the pub after thanking the barmaid, but on the way out, just as I got into the little smoking area out the front, a woman asked if I had a spare cigarette. I told her I didn't smoke, and then

she asked me if I had any spare change, but instead of turning her down, I asked her to take a walk with me so I could get some money out of a cash machine to give her. As we were walking, she asked if I wanted any business. And for those that are unaware, that's a phrase that the ladies of the night used to ask potential johns if they'd like to buy their services. And this might sound a bit insensitive of me, but the second I heard that, I knew that I was going to be able to get some information out of her. She definitely was a user, and hard drugs, too, like heroin and crack, not a bit of puff like the inside of that pub stunk of. And that meant that she'd tell me anything I bloody well asked her if it meant getting enough money for a fix.

Bearing in mind, you have to make it clear that if they give you accurate info, there'll be more money in it for them down the line, and that you'll be checking everything they tell you to make sure that they're a reliable source. A junkie would say anything to get money for drugs, but the prospect of getting more and more money off of you in the future, that puts a much more honest tongue in their mouths, let me tell you. Anyway, I told her all of that, and said that I'd give her twenty quid then and another twenty if I found out the info was reliable. If she sat in that pub, watched and

listened, and then told me everything significant she'd seen and heard, then I'd give her even more money if that info proved reliable, and so on and so forth. Obviously, she was delighted at the prospect, and answered all my initial questions with this being what she told me. My early suspicions that the five well-dressed blokes were significant players in the local drug scene were correct. Although they never did any of the actual dealing, they left that to some underlings who hung around the pub too. The missing lad used to come in and buy drugs, and the last time the junkie girl had ever seen him, some kind of set-to or argument had taken place between him and one of the mid-level dealers.

I asked her if she'd ever mentioned this to anyone else, and she said no. The only other person that had asked her had been a policeman, and she'd been in the pub at the time, so she kept shtum and claimed that she hadn't seen the missing lad, and as you can imagine, that made for a huge find. No one had ever mentioned the missing lad having any kind of disagreement with anyone before, and as any detective worth a salt will tell you, people like that, as in people they've had arguments with, are exactly the kind of people that you want to talk to after a certain person goes missing. The only trouble was, I'd

already been sniffing around there once, and I could tell people hadn't acted as naturally as they would have been acting if I wasn't around to see them. I'd blown my cover, basically, which in any other situation might have been a big mistake. But I had my mole on the inside, my eyes and ears, and I just had to hope the information that she provided me with was as accurate as I hoped it would be. I took her phone number, told her what to do, then kept in touch with her by text message over the days that followed. She knew what her job was and I passed along one crucial instruction. Don't go asking about the guy who'd gone missing. Don't go asking anything at all for that matter. All she needed to

do was keep her ears open and watch out for any unusual or suspicious behavior. When we parted, I wasn't planning on checking in with her for a couple of days, you know, to hopefully let some info mount up. But just a few hours later, she gave me a call. She told me the well-dressed blokes had been talking about me. They hadn't said a lot, but they had been talking about me. I asked what had been said and she told me exactly what had happened. In the last half hour before the pub closed for the night, another well-dressed person had popped in and joined the others for a quick pint. My mole was at the bar, sitting side-on as to not draw suspicion, but she was listening in to everything they had to say. When the most recent arrival sat down, there was a brief exchange of greetings, and then one of them says in a low voice,

There's a fella been round asking about you-know-who. And the newest arrival asked, stick to the story. Then one of the others just nodded and that was that, and they changed the subject afterwards. I asked if they said anything else the rest of the night and my mole said no, so as much as I was grateful for the information, it wasn't much of use to me besides confirming my suspicions that they were somehow involved in the missing lad's disappearance. The girl asked for more money and I said that I'd give her some, but only in a few days so she had a chance to do some more earwigging. She agreed, but said that she wanted proper compensation for

her time to which I reluctantly agreed. A few days later I gave her a call, hoping that she wanted proper compensation for her time, to which I reluctantly agreed. A few days later, I gave her a call, hoping that she'd have a few more tidbits to give me, but to my deep disappointment, she didn't. She basically told me that she'd been trying her best, had stuck to my rule of not asking questions herself, but she hadn't heard a single thing related to either me or the missing persons case I was investigating. And like I said, I was disappointed, but I told her that if she did manage to hear anything, that she was still welcome to give me a call. But that was not what she wanted to hear.

She started to give me this sob story about how she needed money, how she could have been off earning, but had instead been sitting in the pub acting like a spy for me. And she did raise a point. If I wasn't giving her money for drugs, she'd be off earning the money for them elsewhere, so as much as it wasn't very ethical of me to do so, I arranged to meet with her so I could give her some cash. A few hours later, I'm sitting in an Aldi car park waiting for this girl to turn up and when she does, she's very happy to see me. I gave her 50 quid, told her to keep up the good work, and then said that I'd call her in a couple of days. At the time, I appreciated the fact that she was brutally honest with me.

She could have easily made something up just to get some more money, but she hadn't, and as she was about to get out of my car, I told her as much. I mentioned there'd be a bonus in it for her if she found me anything particularly juicy, and then instead of pushing the car door all the way open and climbing out, she closed it again and turned back towards me. She started to say how there was something that she'd noticed in the past few days, but that it was so small that she didn't think it was worth mentioning. I reminded her not to make anything up, and she swore that she wasn't, so I asked her to continue. She said that the bloke in the Stone Island jumper that had done all the talking, he was shorter than the rest with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair,

always had about two or three phones on him, as drug dealers tend to do. But whichever phone he used, there was always top-of-the-line iPhone or Samsung type things, and he was never shy about using them in public. She said sometimes he'd be talking on one, and then typing messages into the other, bold as brass, but then that previous day, she'd spotted him using an old flip phone and he'd been usually shy about doing so. Now obviously this was crucial information. Someone was acting out of the ordinary and they were trying to be subtle about it too. The girl said she wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't literally paying her to watch people on the sly and that she didn't think a new

phone was worth mentioning until she saw the way the guy acted while using it. I reminded her that this was exactly the kind of information I wanted to know, and then gave her a few extra quid on top of that after she assured me what she was saying was the truth. And on the drive home, I slowly began to piece things together. I realized there was a very good chance that the old flip phone belonged to my missing person, and the dealer had been trying to use it to fool the mom into thinking that her son was alive and well. If I was a police officer, I could get a warrant, walk into the pub, and search him on the spot, but there was absolutely no way of me being able to do that as a PI,

so instead I had to think outside the box. First thing I did was get in touch with the missing lad's mom, and then ask if her son had been in touch with her in the last couple of days. She said that she hadn't heard from him in weeks, and he still refused to answer any phone calls. But from where I was standing, the dealer could have been using the missing lad's low-tech phone to assure other people, for example friends and other family members, that he didn't need to be looked for.

Basically, I still thought that I was on to something, so I stopped shaving for a week, dug out some much more casual clothes, then decided to start visiting the pub every now and then to watch the well-dressed suspected dealers at their table of five. I've had the missing lad's number since way back when I first took the case, and I tried calling it a few times myself, but one of three things tended to happen. Either the phone didn't ring at all, it rang all the way to the answering machine, or someone actively declined it. But this gave me an idea. Every so often I'd stop by the pub sporting my civilian clothes,

baseball cap, and my scruffy facial hair, sit inconspicuously in a corner, and keep my eye on the table of five. I only ever did this during peak hours, so as not to draw too much attention to myself, but every time I did, I'd take out my phone, bring up the missing lad's number, and call it while covertly watching the table of dealers. I must have done this five or six times, with each call going straight to voicemail. But then one night, the phone actually started to ring. I didn't have my phone right up by my ear, I had it out of sight, but I could see it still saying dialing instead of connecting and going to voicemail, so I looked over at the table of dealers. Lo and behold, the little fellow with salt and pepper hair reaches

into his pocket, looks at something tucked away in there out of sight, and when I look back at my mobile, the call had gone to voicemail. The screen had gone from dialing to the little clock that counts how long a phone call had been, and so I hung up the call and then tried again. And once again, the smaller fella reaches into his jacket, but that time, he takes something out of his pocket instead of just looking at it, and then just like I was, he holds the phone just under the table out of sight and then puts it back into his pocket again. Not only had my second call been declined, but the third didn't connect at all.

He turned off the missing lad's phone right there in front of me. A minute later, I was sat in my car trying desperately to get in touch with the detective in charge of the police investigation. I had her work mobile and I knew that she worked weekends but this was half 8 in the evening on a Saturday so all I got was her voicemail too. I left her a message saying I had something very important to talk to her about and that I'd get in contact with her again on Monday morning just so I'd be sure to catch her. She called me back the following afternoon, and when she did, I told her everything that I'd seen in the pub. I then made my theory abundantly clear to her, that something terrible

had happened to our missing lad, and that this one particular dealer was using his phone to convince people that he was alive. The reports of him being seen in the pub following his disappearance were false and had been issued by those responsible for his disappearance and in all probability this poor lad's murder. The detective knew about the missing lad's drug use but somehow the first lot to investigate hadn't put two and two together regarding his disappearance and those that were essentially using the pub as a base of operation. The pub had been treated as a place the police might find the missing lad, when in reality, it was the very place he went missing. I honestly felt like I'd crack the case, and at first, the detective seemed to find what I'd discovered to

be very compelling. But then, cut to about three weeks later, and I called her back to see how things were progressing, and they hadn't moved an inch. The police weren't prepared to swoop in on a bloke just because he owned an old flip phone, especially when the missing lad might have swapped it for drugs prior to his disappearance. She also told me that if the guy was pretending to be this woman's missing or dead son, that was an extremely cruel thing to do, but there was no law on the land against it. It didn't even constitute harassment, since the guy obviously wasn't making sustained attempts to contact the missing lad's mother, and unless he tried to scam her out of money or something in that vein, there was no chance of doing him for fraud either.

The guy was a scumbag, there was no doubt about that. He was profiting from the misery of others, but that didn't put him on the radar of missing persons or CID, not for the time being anyway. It felt like a punch to the gut though. All that work, dismissed like it was some harebrained theory that I just pulled out of my arse. The people involved in this lad's disappearance, whether it was murder, false imprisonment, or just threatening him into vanishing, they were sat right there in that scabby little pub, day after day, and it was a complete injustice. In an ideal world, the police could just turn their homes upside down, find the phone and any other evidence linking them to the lad's disappearance and then throw the bloody book at them.

But sadly, that's not the world we live in. Instead, we live in the world where I had to give a terrified mother my honest assessment, and it was one that left her completely bereft. I didn't tell her that I thought her son was dead, just that I was confident something bad had happened to him and that the well-dressed men in the pub were somehow responsible. She thanked me through tears, then our time working at her behest came to a close. Of all the cases I've worked, that's the one that stuck with me the most, and I'd like to think it's obvious as to why that is. I was so close, so bloody close to finding out what happened to that guy, and the fact that we just had to stop where we did, and walk away hoping the police would do something, it made me so frustrated that, at the time, I wanted to rip my hair out.

It still makes me angry to think about, even all these years later, and I hope that maybe, just maybe, I'll read about it in the paper or hear about it in the news. I know I won't get any credit if the police finally do solve that case, but I'm not asking for any. I just hope that one day, that missing lad's mother gets the answers that she so richly deserves. I grew up in a little place called Kirby, Mississippi, and one of the defining moments of my youth was sneaking into a movie theater in nearby Roxy to see a movie called Sudden Impact. It's one of the Dirty Harry sequels with Clint Eastwood playing the same character who, in the first movie, gives a criminal the whole, do you feel lucky speech. The movie itself is nothing special,

at least it can't hold a candle to the likes of Magnum Force, but it marked the first time that I found myself thinking, I want to be a cop. But not just any cop, I want to be a detective. Some foul-mouthed, rough-riding hammer of justice, just like old, dirty Harry Callahan. Well, real life isn't like the movies, and I had to learn to walk before I could run. But after working hard in school and putting in my time as a uniformed officer, I submitted an application to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. The MBI aren't strictly police. We're state special investigators, which comes with the freedom to run our investigations as we see fit,

all while having the same investigative powers as regular law enforcement. Think of us like safeties on a football field. We can move wherever and however we want, just as long as we make the game-winning tackle. I worked in major crimes for a few years, mainly just making a name for myself within the bureau. And then one day, in early April of 2003, my SSA, or supervisory agent, approaches me with an intriguing offer. The public safety commissioner had recently approached the MBI's chief, or the SAC as we like to call him, and asked him to put together a brand new unit. And this unit would be unlike any that

had come before it and would focus on one and one task alone. Reviewing and potentially reinvestigating what are referred to as cold cases. A lot of other states already had a dedicated cold case unit, but officially speaking, Mississippi didn't have one until the summer of 2004. But 18 months previous, the head of the DPS said that it was high time the Bayou State tasked some of its own officers with investigating unsolved crimes, and he gave the go-ahead for the pilot scheme that I was eventually a part of. I was honored to be considered for the job, but in the MBI, there's only one way to climb the career ladder, and that's to deliver noticeable and consistent results.

Working at Solving Tough, long dead cases would make for a noble pursuit. I just didn't know it was the right choice at such a formative stage of my career. Working cold cases seemed like a job for an old timer, someone who had the patience and the experience to see things others didn't. But for me, I wanted to run with the big dogs. I wanted to be chasing down killers, kicking in doors, and then dragging them off to jail in cuffs. I didn't want to be trapped in the archives for 12 hours a day, getting paler and older with nothing to show for it. But according to my supervisory agent, all my hunger was exactly why he wanted me there. He believed that if I applied that same drive to unsolved crimes,

I could potentially make my career there, and if the pilot scheme was successful and the unit expanded, I could end up getting promoted and running my very own team. Once he'd put my mind at ease like that, I accepted the invitation and put my name forward. Then just a few weeks later, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation's first ever cold case unit held its first official meeting in one of the conference rooms of our district headquarters. Essentially, our job was this. We had to go through stacks of unsolved case files, all pertaining to violent crime, and pick out any we thought had a chance of being solved. And after that, we had to take the case file over to the

district attorney's office and see if they'd be willing to prosecute any suspects that we might identify. I guess that might sound obtuse to some people, who are thinking surely it's the DA's job to prosecute everyone they suspect of being guilty of a violent crime, right? And to that I say, sure, in theory. But that's not always how things work. A district attorney will sometimes tell you they serve justice, but in reality, they don't serve anyone except the people who elect them. I guess that's a good thing if you're looking at the bigger picture. It's still we the people,

you know. But unless it's going to make a DA look good, they won't want to reach into the public purse for it, and I kind of get it. No good solving a 30-year-old double murder when there's an active child predator roaming the state, committing crimes in the here and the now. But this attitude made our job needlessly frustrating. The very purpose of the cold case unit's creation was to cut through all the red tape, but in practice, we ended up having to get our cases rubber-stamped before we could even work them. However, whenever we did get that rubber stamp, if we had the evidence, the case file, and a viable suspect, then it was all systems go. The first case I sent over to the DA involved a Jane Doe that had been found up in Marshall County back in 1993. Her body had been found by a guy that had pulled over to the side of the highway to take a leak. He stopped his truck, walked off into the trees to get a little privacy, and then noticed

two hefty looking trash bags lying near the base of a tree. The guy said that he figured some asshole was dumping trash and planning on tossing the bags into the back of his truck so he could dispose of them once he got back into town. But then as he got closer, he started to smell that very sickening but oddly familiar stench. The guy didn't take a step further towards those trash bags. He knew what was in them, because they smelled almost the exact same way as his old pet cat did after his parents pulled its maggot-infested corpse out of the crawl space below his childhood home. The guy drives back home, calls the cops, and tells them that he's got a real bad feeling about the two trash bags that he'd seen. And not long after, a highway patrol officer was taping off the scene in preparation

for the arrival of the forensics teams. Jane Doe's body had been dismembered, and then placed into two trash bags. Her torso and her arms were in one, her legs in the other, but her head, her hands, and her feet, they were all missing. She was estimated to be anywhere between the ages of 17 to 25 when she was murdered, while abrasions to her knees and lower back suggested that she made a living as a prostitute. There were track marks on her arms and puncture marks around her groin, which suggested a prolonged and habitual use of narcotics. But we had to wait for the toxicology report to find out just how extensive that drug use was. At the time of her death, Jane Doe had high levels of oxycodone and demerol in

her system, but also tested positive for cocaine, methamphetamine, and shockingly high amounts of synthetic psychedelic known as 2C-B. During the investigation that followed, two of my fellow agents from major crimes isolated a trail of boot prints which led from the nearby highway to the disposal site and back again. They didn't belong to the truck driver that had found the trash bags and they didn't belong to any of the MHP officers that had been the first to arrive at the scene. The boot prints from those size 12 Red Wings constitute one of the MHP officers that had been the first to arrive at the scene. The boot prints from those size 12 Red Wings constitute one of the only pieces of workable evidence major crimes had to work with, but at the time, it was seen as a very important one.

Red Wings were the favorite footwear of serial killer George Jones, who was already doing life for the murder of three hookers throughout the 80s and early 90s. Then, with Jane Doe's body being found in 1993, the case's original investigators believed that she was one of Jones' victims and had tried their best to pin it on him at his trial back in 1998, I think. But after reviewing those case files, I noticed that there were two major inconsistencies between the murders in 1992 and 1994, and my Jane Doe from the year between. First off, one of the pieces of evidence used to convict George Jones was his truck's tachometer.

To put it into layman's terms, these measure how hard an engine is working, and Jones was used to prove that he'd lied regarding diversions from his assigned trucking route. But when it came to the Jane Doe murder, Jones' tachometer matched the route that he claimed to have been driving, one which took him far from Marshall County during the period of Jane Doe's body being believed to have been dumped. It was always the possibility that Jones had swapped his tachometer with someone else's in an attempt to cover his tracks. But if that was the case, why did he get smart for just one of the murders instead of all four? The second inconsistency involved the method of disposal. Victims from 92 and 94 had been mutilated extensively, but it was a wild, frenzied kind of mutilation.

No rhyme or reason to it at all. But in the case of Jane Doe, the removal of her head, hands, and feet hadn't exactly been done with surgical precision, but they marked the only manner in which her body had been desecrated, and the dismemberment had only commenced following her murder. Jones, on the other hand, liked to start cutting his victims up while they were still alive, and unlike Jane Doe, his victims still had their fingers, toes, and teeth. At his trial, the prosecution painted the 93 murder as Jones' attempt to switch up his modus operandi, partly as a way of keeping himself entertained and partly as a way of throwing the cops off his scent.

But his defense pointed to the tachometer evidence and made as a way of throwing the cops off his scent. But his defense pointed to the tachometer evidence and made such a strong argument for his innocence that the jury only found Jones guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and not the original four. At that point, the DA was just happy to have gotten a conviction and although Jane Doe's case was tossed in with the cold ones, it was believed that someone, at some point, would conclusively link her murder to George Jones and the case could finally be closed. After all, Jones wore a size 12 red wing,

exactly the same kind that left the boot prints at the scene. It had to be him, right? Same type of victim, same type of location, just a slight variation in the M.O. Even if the jury couldn't see it, major crimes thought that they had their guy, so although Jane Doe's case file remained officially unsolved, no one felt too bad about tossing it into the cold case files, as the man who most probably killed her was set to rot in prison for the rest of his life. Now, here's where I bent the rules, just a little bit. The DA would never have approved my reopening of the case until I had a viable suspect, and I heavily implied that I was going to be the one

to finally bridge the investigative gap between Jones and Jane Doe. The only thing was, I didn't think Jones was our guy. Jones was a man of lukewarm IQ, who struggled with meth, prostitutes, and his own guilt. He could hide the meth use from his wife and kids, and he mistakenly thought that he could hide the infidelity too. But in murdering the prostitutes he craved after his week-long meth binges, Jones took all his self-loathing out on those poor girls. He hacked and slashed and stomped on them, and he wanted to make them suffer for tempting him. But the way in which Jane Doe was dismembered, it was almost clinical. I knew it would be a risk to go out on a limb like that, but something about the way the case was dealt with the first time around, it just kind of irked me. Jane Doe was treated like a pawn in a game of chess, a throwaway piece in an otherwise successful prosecution, and I thought she deserved far better.

So, I worked my ass off to get the case approved, then was finally allowed to start doing my job. My first call was over at the team at Missing Persons, and using their newly digitized record system, they were able to provide me with a list of young women and girls whose cases fit a fairly narrow criteria. The girls needed to be fair-haired, they needed to be between the ages of 17 and 25, and they needed to have been declared missing between the years of 1988

and 1993. From the looks of her body, Jane Doe had been a drug user and a prostitute for quite some time prior to her murder, so I asked the special agents at Missing Persons to factor that into their search. Sadly, prostitutes are rarely reported missing if they do happen to disappear, so all I could do was hope that someone, somewhere, missed Jane Doe enough to have filed a missing persons report. And once I had all my reports, all I had to do was set about contacting as many of the relevant families as possible to ask if their daughters had any distinguishing scars, tattoos, or birthmarks. I could then cross-reference these answers with autopsy photos that I had at my disposal, and hopefully, I'd be able to come up with an ID. It took days upon days of searching up phone numbers, asking for forwarding addresses

and visiting people at home, but eventually, I ended up getting a hold of a mother who'd filed a missing persons report following her stepdaughter's disappearance back in 1991. The stepdaughter had come from her husband's first marriage, but she adored the girl like her own flesh and blood and was devastated when she went missing. The girl was a physical match for Jane Doe, and when I asked if she had any distinguishing marks or features on her body, her mother told me about a small scar just above the elbow on her right arm. The scar was the result of some childhood misadventure, and when I checked the autopsy photos, there it was. Jane

Doe had a tiny scar just above her right elbow. Now, this wasn't some conclusive proof that Jane Doe was the same missing stepdaughter, as a person's arms are one of the most common places that scars will be present. But what would provide concrete proof of her relation, and therefore her identity, would be a DNA test. With it being her stepdaughter, there was no point testing the mother. There was no testing the father either, as he'd walked out in the family some years earlier, possibly due to the stress of his daughter's disappearance. However, the girl's father and her stepmother had their own daughter, meaning we could test her DNA in relation to Jane Doe's,

and if we got anything back around a 25% match, then that'd be enough for Jane Doe to get her name back. I was very confident that test was going to come back positive. I mean, the chances of two different fair-haired young women having the exact same scar just above their elbow were astronomical. I showed the stepmother a cropping of the autopsy photo too, and she claimed to be 99% sure that the scar above her elbow belonged to her stepdaughter. But then, when the DNA results came back, it read, no match. There was a 0% match between the two supposed half-sisters, which on the surface meant Jane Doe could not have been the woman's missing

stepdaughter. If she was, and as I've already covered, the DNA test would have resulted in a match of around 25%. And needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed. I had such a strong hunch that Jane Doe was the missing stepdaughter, and so at first, those test results were a real hit to my confidence. If I had a picture of the stepdaughter's hand, something that I could use to compare those two scars, that would have been a game changer. But I didn't, and no offense to the stepmother, but I wasn't about to trust her very fallible memory over a black and white DNA test that read plain and simple, no match. I was forced to consider other options, so I carried on working and contacting the families of missing young women in the state of Mississippi.

But every so often, I'd come back to the missing stepdaughter, wondering how in the hell such a sure thing had turned out to be a dud. And that's how, after thinking about it for a long time, I began to ask myself some very out there questions. Namely, what if there was no match between the two half-sisters, because the missing one wasn't actually her father's biological daughter from his first marriage? She was supposed to be from his first marriage, right? And her stepmother was given no reason to doubt what her husband was telling her. But then, what if that was a lie? At that stage, I had no idea why the father might lie about something like that, but there was at least one innocent explanation for it, in that our missing girl might have been adopted at an early age.

Perhaps her adopted father didn't want her to know this, so he decided to keep it a secret until a more appropriate time. After all, he and his new partner chose to have a child together pretty quickly, and knowledge of their adoptive background might add strain to an already stressful situation. But then, what if there was some other reason why the father had lied about his first daughter's origins, one that wasn't nearly so wholesome? I asked the woman if she'd ever met her missing husband's first wife, and she said no, that she'd passed not long after giving birth to his daughter, and that her husband had claimed

that the memory was so painful that he'd rather not revisit it. That's what prompted me to dig into the father's background a little, just to see if there was any adoption records in his name, but there wasn't a single document with the supposed father's name on it anywhere in the system. I then went back to the stepmother and asked if she'd held on to any of her husband's old documentation, particularly anything with his social security number on it. She said that there wasn't much in the way of documentation, but that she had his social security number written down somewhere. She thought that she might need it during the process of dividing up her deceased husband's estate, but it turned out that she hadn't needed to and was only too happy to pass it along to me.

Once I had his social security number, I could run it through state adoption databases, and if it came back with a match of him adopting a girl of Jane Doe's age, then my theory was back on track. But frustratingly, it didn't come back a match of him adopting a girl of Jane Doe's age, then my theory was back on track. But frustratingly, it didn't come back a match. But during the process of investigating the social security number, I discovered something which broke the case wide open. The social security number did not match the name of the missing father, and instead, an entirely different name came back when I ran it through the state's computer system. I knew I was on to something

the moment a different name came back, but this name didn't match any in the state's adoption records either. However, the name had a criminal history attached to it, and while it was a very brief one, it was very significant to the investigation. The criminal history included one count of indecent exposure and one count of attempted kidnap on a minor. According to my timeline, this guy does just sixth of an 11-year sentence for attempted kidnapping and then just disappears. Then, about a year later, a man matching his exact physical description shows up on the other side of the country with a little girl telling everyone it's his biological daughter. I made sure to get a look at some photos of the missing father too, and he was an exact

match for the mug shots of our pederast. I spoke to the stepmother extensively regarding the manner in which her stepdaughter disappeared, and she told me it wasn't an overnight thing. Her stepdaughter's relationship with her father had soured dramatically over the final few months before she vanished, so at first it was believed that she'd simply run away from home. She was recently 18 at the time, and seeing as she was a legal adult, she was free to do as she pleased. Her father claimed that he was attempting to bring her back home, but eventually, contact with her began to wane before ceasing altogether. The stepmother mentioned how difficult it was to get her husband to file a missing persons report.

She said that reporting her missing felt like a defeat for him, that acknowledging she was in danger made him feel like he'd failed as a father. It took many months for him to concede, but eventually, they filed a report with the Hattiesburg Police Department. The move seemed to crush him,

and around six months afterwards, he walked out on both his wife and his younger daughter, leaving only a note which read, I'm sorry. I asked when this was, if she could remember the date of her husband's departure. She told me it was on August of 1993, Friday the 13th to be exact. She remembered it like it was yesterday. And in the seconds after she mentioned the date, I felt a thought hit me right between the eyes, like a diamond-tipped bullet of realization.

Jane Doe's body was found on Saturday, August 14th, 1993, the very next day after this woman's husband had mysteriously departed. It was him that had made her disappear, him that had killed her, and him that had dumped her body at the side of the highway. I walked out of that woman's home with a poker face that could have rivaled a million-dollar professional. The hunch that her missing husband had murdered her stepdaughter in a move prompted by the filing of that missing person's report, it gave me one of the strongest hunches I had ever felt in all my career in law enforcement. But in the moment, when she told me the date of his sudden departure, I simply could not bring myself to tell her what I honestly thought. She had this whole tragic narrative build up around her family, one that came with a cross that she had to carry wherever she went, and I couldn't bear to add any more of that to the load.

If she is to find out the truth, it should be via the proper channels, and it should be based on concrete judicial results, not what at the time were still nothing but half-baked theories so convoluted that I felt like I was losing my mind. And how do you even begin to tell someone that her husband married her under an assumed identity, that his so-called daughter might have been a kidnap victim, and that not only was he a potential suspect in her disappearance, but also her eventual murderer too? I think just one of those things would be enough to send a woman like that into shock-induced catatonia, but all four at once, I figured that might kill a person dead if you caught them in the wrong mood with it. Since I had no viable suspects, there was no point in taking any of my findings to the district

attorney, but there was a whole lot of point in taking what I'd found to the MBI's major crimes unit, as well as several other organizations, including the FBI, the U.S. Marshal Service, the National Crime Information Center, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. If we were potentially looking at a nationwide manhunt for a soon-to-be fugitive, then there was only so much state authorities were capable of, and if the father had in fact fled the country, then it was well and truly out of our hands. After that, I simply reclosed the case, placed it back in the stack with all the other cold ones, and then went about trying to find one that'd result in an actual

conviction and not just an entry on the FBI's most wanted website. The cold case unit was set up to close cases and get results, ideally in cases where investigators were just a few short yards from making the touchdown. All I could do was hope that someone up the federal chain took interest enough to find our suspect, extradite him back to Mississippi, and then put him on trial for murder. But to date, that hasn't happened. I worked on a bunch more cases, some good, some bad, but I never heard back about the Marshall County Jane Doe, and I never shared my thoughts or feelings with her stepmother. Like I said, it wouldn't feel right putting that kind of weight on her, especially when it all just amounted to theories. I work in the state's criminal information center now, doing something much slower and much less taxing than working old

cold cases. I miss my time with the unit. They seemed like they were the good old days before I really realized that they truly were the good old days. But I don't miss cases like Jane Doe's, because that's impossible. To miss something, you have to leave it behind. It has to disappear or change in some way. But Jane Doe's life, her death, her story, they'll always be with me. I've accepted that now. And as much as I'd like to see her killer brought to justice before I go back to God, I've also accepted that for some folks, justice is a luxury they'll simply never get to enjoy. To be continued... prairie in Wisconsin, and I've been a subscriber since way back when you did graveyard shift stories. I love your videos, and I've always wanted to contribute in some way. I've just never had anything sufficiently scary happen to me that would warrant writing it down. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for that, but I always felt kind of guilty for listening to so many

stories from other people without ever really offering up one myself. But that's when I got an idea. If I didn't have any of my own experiences to write about, I'd just write about somebody else's. Now, I didn't go knocking on doors and begging people to tell me their most traumatic and terrifying experiences. I just told myself that I would wait for the right opportunity. If I ever heard a story, account, or a little anecdote that was submission worthy, I'd ask the person's permission, write down as many notes as possible, and then send it over to you in the hopes that the story makes it into a video someday. Well, my plan finally came to fruition this past Christmas when a trip to visit some extended

family resulted in a chance meeting with an older cousin I'm related to by marriage. So I have a very large extended family and I won't be so verbose as to give you an entire family tree, but I still occasionally meet relatives for the very first time. A distant aunt and I were talking when she introduced me to a much older second cousin, twice removed. I say cousin, the guy was old enough to be my grandpa, but I guess by the laws of family trees, he was technically my cousin. But for the sake of simplicity and my own personal sanity, I'll just call him my uncle. I said hi, and then as I was making my introductions, my aunt had this light

bulb moment and told my uncle that I was interested in serial killers and the like. I thought that was kind of a weird way to introduce myself, so I gave my aunt a look as if to say, why on earth did you mention that? It's true, I do have interest in true crime, but then so did my uncle, because for 50 years he'd worked as a Wisconsin state patrolman and then a private eye just prior to his retirement. I think I could have exploded with happiness right there. I had no idea that I had any family that were former law enforcement, so I was very excited to talk to him about his time as a patrolman. It didn't occur to me right away that I could maybe coax a story or two out of him, but

by the time we got to talking about some of the most memorable experiences, I knew it was only a matter of time before I plucked up the courage to ask, what was the scariest or creepiest thing you encountered during your time in law enforcement? I had a pretty good feeling that whatever he was going to tell me would be sufficiently intense to write a story about. I mean, you don't put half a century into something like law enforcement and not come across a few severely messed up things in that time. But what he proceeded to tell me scared me more than I ever could have imagined, and it came from just about as far from left field as I could have ever have guessed. So when I first asked, he gave a sigh before this very thoughtful look came over his face like there were so many incidents that he

couldn't possibly just choose one. He started out by telling me about a couple of bad car accidents he'd seen, the kind where the happy-go-lucky family of four get annihilated while the drunk who sent them rolling into a ditch and flames walks away with nothing but a few cuts and bruises. Then he told me about a few murder scenes that he'd been unfortunate enough to have come across, like the guy who had his arms nailed to a wall so the people he stole from could torture him to death. He said it was the worst thing he'd ever seen, turned his stomach. But disgust and, by extension, horror are very different emotions to fear, he explained. My uncle said that when he was a state patrolman, there wasn't much that scared him. Everywhere he went, he was armed, and if he ever got into trouble,

a few words into his radio would have a small army showing up with some shotguns and rifles. He said he was apprehensive of violent criminals, but he was able to defend himself and most importantly, he had a badge and all that backup to deter anyone from messing with him. And that all went away when he became a private investigator. He was able to stay armed, but that's all he had, and if he got into any trouble, his only option was to call 911 just like a private citizen and hope some of his old co-workers got to him in time. He said the closest he probably ever came to losing his life was when some cheating husband figured out that he was being watched after he accidentally honked his horn one night while on surveillance. His target, who seemed to be a naturally paranoid person, became extremely agitated upon hearing that honk.

He came down with his pistol and pointed it right in my uncle's face. He had to swear on his life that he'd been waiting for a friend, had fallen asleep in his car, then had accidentally leaned on his horn when he woke up again, which incidentally was sort of what actually did happen. I guess the truth of it showed in his face because, following a moment of clarity, the man lowered his gun and told my uncle to make himself scarce before he woke up the whole neighborhood. He was quite certain that if the unfaithful husband had suspected him of being some kind of private eye, he'd have been shot right there and then.

People who believe they're being stalked can become very volatile, and I believe they'd been poking that particular bear for weeks before the pistol-pointing incident. But still, that wasn't the incident that had scared my uncle the most. What scared him more than anything was something that happened when he was working as a private investigator. He said that just after his happened when he was working as a private investigator. He said that just after his retirement, he was so bored that he figured that he had a few more years of work in him, and since private investigation companies tend to offer competitive salaries based on previous experience, he figured that he could pad his bank account a little before spending his twilight years fishing off the coast or whatever he wanted to do. But then, as I already mentioned, certain moments in his brief career as a private eye was far scarier than anything he encountered with the state patrol. And so, at one point, the family

of an unsolved murder victim approached the company that he was working for. The victim was murdered in downtown Milwaukee back in 1983, and then her body had been dumped off a bridge. My uncle took the job of reinvestigating the murder around 2013, so it had been a cold case for almost 30 years by that point. The owner of the PI company was an ex-Milwaukee PD, so he told my uncle to drop his name when asking to see the case files, and that would ensure they didn't just tell him to get lost. And so he calls Milwaukee PD, asks them for the files, and after making sure he's not just some crazy person, the police department ensures they'll get back to him once they dug out the files.

A few days go by, and he hears nothing back, then a few days turns into a week, and then two weeks, and he's still not heard back from the PD about the case file. In the end, my uncle gets impatient and calls the department again to ask how the search for the files is going. He manages to get the officer he spoke to first on the line, and then, after a minute or two of talking, but not saying very much, the officer puts him on hold and then goes to get his boss. My uncle is wondering what the holdup is, then some Milwaukee PD captain picks up the phone and explains that they can't find the file that he's referring to. This captain then asks my uncle if he's sure that he's in touch with the correct

department, and that he's happy to put him in touch with the right people if that's what the problem is. My uncle then checks some of his notes and then replies that there's been no mistake, and that the file should most definitely have been with the PD and not some smaller sheriff's department in the surrounding counties. The captain then says they'll check again, and that they'd call him back in a few days time. But again, they seem to totally forget about finding the file, and my uncle is forced to call for a third time over this one little case file that it should have been really easy to find. And anyway, that third time, he gets told something pretty shocking. The department had misplaced this unsolved murder case file, meaning my uncle had no choice but to wait until they were found before he could see the case

file on this one particular murder. He had to go back to his boss, tell him the cops had lost their case file, and his boss relays this to the family in turn. Without their daughter's case file, the company would have to start their own brand new investigation based on a murder that happened 30 plus years ago, which, if it isn't obvious, could be either totally impossible or would cost the family tens of thousands of dollars in investigation fees. As you can imagine, the family were not happy that the cops had lost their kid's case file, and my uncle said that he was pretty sure they started legal proceedings against the department, being a case of find your kid's case file, or we'll sue the pants off of you.

My uncle goes to work other cases, then goes into full retirement a few years later. Then, not long after that, he reads a headline in the Green Bay Gazette that went something a little like this, Milwaukee police destroy DNA murder evidence. He told me that when he saw the headline, he thought to himself, there's no way they destroyed evidence, let alone case files. But they had. Sometime in the 90s, someone up the chain of command in the Milwaukee PD got the bright idea to destroy around 50 evidence files because they needed more room for storage. And here's a link to an article I found to save you some time, and I'll pull some of the relevant quotes so you can see what I mean about their excuse being lack of storage. So basically, sometime in the mid-1990s, the Milwaukee PD ran out of space to store evidence files, so they had to schedule a bunch for destruction.

But then the only files that should have been marked for destruction were files from solved cases, not unsolved ones. But then somehow a bunch of unsolved murder files got in there and were destroyed on accident. And what's worse, they had no idea which files had been destroyed or how many boxes. Since the scandal broke in mid-2018, everyone responsible for the destruction of the evidence had long since retired, but the Milwaukee PD were in touch with all the families of the affected victims to offer their apologies. But then, this is where things start to get really shady.

First off, their excuse for destroying files was that there was no more space. But then, a bunch of those cardboard storage boxes cost just a few dollars, so why did they need to destroy files in the first place? The Milwaukee PD didn't even bother to tell anyone that they were doing it either, and when they gave that excuse of them not having enough room, one guy said that he was flabbergasted by it, and that it was something that always bothered him. And it bothered my uncle too, when he first heard about it, I mean. He'd had law enforcement experience, remember? And he knew that every department destroyed old evidence files. Heck, he'd done it a few times himself too,

but never without a careful process of selecting and reviewing the files that had been marked prior to their disposal. The idea they might destroy evidence from a cold case when such cases would doubtlessly be reopened and reexamined was a very scary prospect. So the idea that the boys over in Milwaukee acted with such complete incompetence that they didn't even bother to check what they were doing was unbelievable, but in the truest sense of the word. I also personally find it extremely suspicious that the Milwaukee PD just didn't seem interested in holding those

responsible to account. I understand all of the top brass from the time the files were destroyed would have all been in their 70s or 80s or whatever, but still, the department just shrugged their shoulders like it was an honest mistake. And to be perfectly frank, a whole lot of people, myself included, think there wasn't an honest damn thing about it. They had to pick out those case files individually, and they had to do it by hand. It's not like they accidentally selected delete all or whatever, like there's a danger of doing when dealing with email inboxes and the like.

They had to pick out each one, take a look at it, and then toss it in the pile marked to be destroyed. The way my uncle put it, either they had guys working for them that were too dumb to be allowed outside, or a bunch of corrupt police officers deliberately marking unsolved cases for destruction. I don't know if it makes me an eternal optimist or a rotten cynic, but I just don't believe that there are people walking around who are really that dumb. And I really hate to sound like some kind of conspiracy theorist, but I can't help but think that the unsolved murder files selected for destruction had something in common, or at least something about them that someone didn't want people to know about. Think about it. DNA evidence becomes a thing. Then what do you know? A whole bunch of case files go missing, almost like someone didn't want their evidence being scrutinized by such a

new, novel, but reliable technique. I thought it was kind of an odd answer at first. After all, my uncle had seen all kinds of crazy, violent, and horrible tragedies. But after having some time to really mull it over, I think I agree with him. The cops are supposed to protect us, and I think for the vast majority of them, that's exactly what they want to do when they wake up in the morning. But the idea that there are cops out there who aren't just ineffective or incompetent, but are actively covering up for dangerous and violent criminals. That's just about the most terrifying thing I can imagine. Back during the summer between my sophomore and junior year in college, my study buddy and I, turned best friend for life, decided that we'd like to hike the Vermont section of the Appalachian Trail.

It started off great. We'd hiked together a few times before, so we knew that we could tough out the rougher portions of the trail together. So by day three, we were still in high spirits, and we were still looking forward to our final two days' hike. But then, during the early afternoon of that first day, we saw something that made us cut our trip short by two whole days. We were walking along, praying to the trail gods to keep the rain away when

my friend suddenly stopped and pointed towards something in the trees off trail. It looked like a bright red piece of cloth of some kind, barely visible, but there it was, hanging from a tree branch about 20 to 30 yards off the trail. The both of us said something like, who the hell does that? As in, who the hell just tosses their dirty clothes over a branch instead of carrying them home again? Because that's honestly what we figured had happened. And so off we went, marching off in the direction of this random shirt, figuring that we could take it down and toss it in the trash once we got back to civilization. But the more visible the red cloth gets, the more we realize that it's not just been thrown there randomly.

It's a marker for what lay underneath. Right there in the dirt, beneath what turned out to be a red shirt, were what looked like two empty graves. My friend and I just about freaked the heck out, mainly because there were two graves and two of us. We didn't bother grabbing the shirt. We just moved as quickly as we could down the rest of the Glastonbury section of the trail, and then turned down the road towards Bennington so we could report what we'd seen to the police. Some people have asked me why we just didn't call 911 from there on the trail, but honestly, there's not much that would have been achieved. Even if I had been able to get a connection, the most important thing to us in

the moment was putting enough distance between us and those graves as possible. I get that we could have relayed our last position or something on the off chance that we were attacked by someone, but if that actually happened, we'd have been just as screwed and calling 911 wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference if we needed to sprint down some section of trail away from some homicidal maniac. After we got to the nearest town, we found a phone and then called 911 to get connected with the local cops. I told them everything, and the cop I spoke to took the whole thing very seriously and then thanked me for calling it in. He also gave me his personal contact number in case I wanted to check in and see how things were progressing. I thought that was a very polite thing of him to do,

trying to give me a little peace of mind and make me feel like I was being taken care of. But then it came to decide if we wanted to actually continue with the rest of our hike, and at first, we were at an impasse. My best friend was adamant that we could just skip ahead of the trail a little and maybe catch a ride into the next town over, then hop back onto the trail for the rest of our journey. I wanted to, I really did, and I wasn't using those graves as an excuse to cut the trip short, but I couldn't go walking back up into those hills in good conscience, knowing something that dark was going on in the area. The way I saw it, and this is what I said to my friend, those might not

be the only two graves set up. There might be others all along this section of the trail, and someone just waits by them, waiting for either one or two hikers that he can murder and bury in less than an hour. And we agreed to stay in a motel that night. Then we'd call the sheriff again the next day. If some innocent explanation had been found for the graves, then we'd move on as planned. But if not, then I couldn't continue. I just couldn't. The next day, what do you know, the sheriff hasn't even gotten around to checking the graves out, but he assures me that he'll get around to it that same day.

I thanked him, in as polite a manner as I could say, but the lack of action on his part just marked the end of our trip. My friend was pretty angry at the time because our hike along the Tennessee section of the Appalachian Trail was something she'd been looking forward to for a hell of a long time, but as I explained to her on the ride back home, over and over again, it was something that I'd been looking forward to as well. I didn't just throw in the towel because I heard a few spooky nighttime noises and wanted an actual shower. I quit because I was scared for my life. Having someone hang a few Blair Witch Stick figures in the trees along the

trail is one thing, an obvious prank or just a tribute to an objectively awesome movie. But two graves, marked out by a bright red shirt like that. Someone put way too much time and effort into them for it to just be a prank. Or at least, it's not something I'm willing to bet my life on. The Appalachian Trail in Tennessee. He had camping gear with us, along with a bunch of other survival stuff, but as much as we tried to pack as light as possible, day after day of almost non-stop hiking really started to take its toll on us. Plus, there was the unexpected factor of not being able to get any real sleep outdoors. We'd each done a little camping in the past, but

we'd each done so way up in the northeast, and we'd done so in a very controlled and safe environment. Sleeping in paper-thin tents out in Appalachia, however, was something else entirely. But then, on the afternoon of the fourth day of our journey, we ran into a solo hiker coming the opposite way up the trail, so we stopped and picked their brain on what the trail ahead of us had in store. And that's when he mentioned a shelter, a two-story one that had camp beds on both the ground and first floor. He says it was only around 10 miles further down the trail, and if we got on the move again, we could be there by nightfall if we really beat feet.

An enclosed shelter like that meant that we might be able to just get a full eight hours of sleep, which at that stage would be a huge boost both physically and mentally. So after thanking the guy a thousand times over, we got back on the trail immediately. Maybe three to four hours later, the shelter comes into view, and although it wasn't quite what we'd been expecting,

it certainly beat setting up camp all over again. The wooden cabin-looking thing wasn't completely closed off, but it had these two raised sleeping platforms, one taller and one shorter. I guess that's what the guy meant by two-story. We pictured a small cottage or something with a door and maybe a fireplace, but beggars most certainly can't be choosers, so we claimed one of the sleeping platforms by tossing our bags up onto it before unpacking our food supplies to make ourselves some dinner. Maybe an hour or two after we'd eaten, my friend and I are just chilling near the shelter when we suddenly see two other

hikers making their way down the trail towards us. It was a guy and girl and I figured they might have been a couple as we greeted them. They asked if both sleeping platforms had been claimed and when we said no, the guy half of the couple asked if they could use it. We said sure, and that we'd try and be good bunkmates so we could all get some well-deserved rest without worrying about stuff crawling or slithering into our tents. No, don't get it twisted, we each knew that we could seal our tents up and keep out the bugs, snakes, and bigger creatures. But just try sleeping in an airless piece of plastic during early Tennessee summers. You'll find you've created less of a sleeping space and more of a sauna. But anyway, we were very happy to find ourselves some shelter,

but the couple, who did turn out to be a couple, were anything but. They got to bickering almost as soon as they put their gear down, meaning the vibe went from, oh cool, we got some company, to, well, this is awkward, faster than you can say trouble in paradise. They didn't have a stand-up fight or anything, but we could hear them whisper arguing up on the sleeping platform for a little while, and then they'd quit quit but then start up again minutes later. The biggest break in the tension was when my buddy says something like, Jesus,

just break it up already, under his breath. I started laughing and then the lady half of the couple confronted us asking, what's so funny? What's so funny, huh? We denied everything, insisted that we're laughing at something else, and the girl's boyfriend or fiancé or whatever, he has to basically pull her away from us while explaining that we weren't laughing at them. I mean, we were. But there was no point turning a two-person argument into a four-person argument, and the atmosphere was bad enough as it was.

So, like I said, the couple next to us are arguing on and off, pretty much all night, but they manage to cool it long enough for everyone to get some sleep. But then at some point in the middle of the night, my buddy and I wake up to the sound of them arguing again, only this time, it's quite a bit louder than it had been before. I couldn't make out exactly what they were arguing over. I just heard the odd word or two, like the girl hissing something like, you never listen to me, or the guy saying something like, it's too far, Sarah. We won't make it in time.

And they kept at it like that, getting louder and louder. And then right when we were on the verge of telling them to keep it down so we could get some sleep, the girl raises her voice all the way up to like a low yell and says to the guy, oh yeah, well maybe that's exactly what I'll do. This is then followed by the sound of someone moving around on the sleeping platform next to and below us. The guy starts saying something like, don't do this, and then says the girl's name, but I don't want to repeat that here. I'd rather not drop the guy's name either, because in this context, it feels like a little too much info to go throwing around online. And anyway, their argument gets a little louder, and we're just trying to figure out what the guy doesn't want

the girl to do, when all of a sudden, she tosses her pack down off the sleeping platform, and then we hear the sound of her climbing down the ladder before she comes into view. The guy and the girl continue their cryptic argument for a minute or so, but one thing becomes obvious. The girl is about to walk off into the dark trail, armed with nothing but a flashlight, because for whatever reason, she wants to continue their hike while I'm assuming her boyfriend wanted to rest the entire night. I get that she was mad at him or whatever, but hiking alone and at night, especially somewhere like the southern AT, is never, ever a good idea. My buddy calls out, Excuse me, miss, I wouldn't do that if I were you.

But she cuts him right off by yelling an expletive back in his direction. And we're both like, okay, suit yourself, lady. And shared a hushed, nervous little chuckle as the guy on the platform next to us called out to his girlfriend one last time. We then watched her walking off into the trees, watching as the beam of her flashlight got fainter and fainter until, finally, when it was just on the verge of disappearing completely, my buddy kind of shimmies over to the edge of the platform and starts talking to the guy half of the couple. You should go after her, I remember he said. But at first, that guy was like, hell no. If she wants to leave, she can leave. Recognizing that he was just mad and would 100% live to regret not going

after her, we start insisting that he follow his girl. And then my buddy, probably trying to sort of galvanize him into action, says to the guy, if you're too scared to go after her, fine, but I will. I figured it was probably the lack of sleep making him talk like that, and I was right about to tell him not to antagonize the guy when I hear from the other bunk, the hell did you just say to me? And my heart sinks, and I'm thinking my buddy is about to get into a fist fight with some complete stranger in the ass end of nowhere. Luckily, the guy doesn't climb down off of his sleeping platform, and he and my buddy just carry on talking trash to each other. I didn't want to really inflame the situation,

but I couldn't help but agree that the guy should probably go after her, even if it was just to convince her to come back to the shelter. The discussion continued down this dumb, immature path for a minute or two, and I remember pulling myself out of my sleeping bag and getting ready to put my boots on. If my buddy and her boyfriend were content to bicker like children, then someone had to go be a grown adult and put their boots on and go tell that girl that a solo night hike sounded like the mother of all bad ideas. I tried once, and failed once, to get the two guys to shut up so I could announce my departure

and request their assistance, and they kept at it for a few more seconds, and that's when we heard it. The scream that echoed through the pitch black woods cut through their bickering like a hot knife through butter, and silenced the pair of them completely. Then, as we all just sat there, frozen in terror, we heard a second scream, and that one launched us into action. I threw up my boots, the other two guys did the same, and then after grabbing our flashlights, we started hustling down the trail in the direction of the screams.

The girl's boyfriend was way ahead of us, and I don't know if he ran track in college or whatever, but he should have. That, or realizing his girl was in danger, gave him superhuman speed because he had us eating his dust to get to his girl in as fast a time as possible. The screams get louder and louder as we got closer and closer to her. Then all of a sudden, there she is, lying just off the trail ahead of us, and right away I can see why she's screaming. One of the girl's legs was sitting at this weird, unnatural angle, clearly broken, but as we get to her and start trying to give her first aid, she starts yelling that he's here. He's still here. He has to be. One of us asks who's here, and then the girl replies, the person who broke my leg. At first, we're obviously all thinking, okay, don't touch her. Don't make the break any worse. But then the moment she said someone had attacked her, me and her boyfriend started scrambling to

get her up, while my buddy starts shining his flashlight into the woods all around us trying to spot whoever the girl was screaming about. Those were legitimately the most terrifying few minutes of my entire life. Someone was out there, someone who wanted to do us physical harm, and we could only move as fast as we could safely transport the girl with the broken leg. Every other second I was asking my buddy, do you see anyone? And the whole time he's calling back, I don't know, I can't tell, because he's having to cover like 360 degrees with just one flashlight. The girl was screaming right in my ear as I was supporting her left side too, so I was having to ask my buddy over and over just to be able to hear his replies, all while I'm expecting some psycho hillbilly to pop out from behind a tree at any moment

before smashing me over the head with whatever he just broke that girl's leg with. Thankfully, we were able to get back to that shelter without running into anybody, and there we armed ourselves with our knives and hatchets and then set about giving the girls some first aid. And this is way back before cell phones, so there was no calling 911 or ranger stations to get some help. We had to literally patrol our wooden shelter, all night with our flashlights in hand, making sure no one was sneaking up on us. And that whole thing made for the second most terrifying thing I'd ever experienced. At least by that point, we were actually armed in some capacity, but like you're already probably thinking, the big fear was that someone with a gun was just going to use the beam of our flashlight as a target. If that happened, we'd be sitting ducks, fish in a barrel, and we

wouldn't stand a chance. But if anyone did follow us back to the shelter that night, they chose not to show themselves, and we held out until dawn before getting the move on again. The other really creepy thing was right after we got the girl back to the shelter and we started to give her first aid, we were obviously all very curious as to who or what attacked her. She kept saying how she didn't see the guy's face, but after the impact on her leg and her falling to the ground, she saw the back of the guy running away through the trees. She was 99% sure that it was a man,

and he'd hit her leg with a stick or something blunt before running off. It was definitely some kind of stick or tool, she said, not a punch or a kick. Someone had waited for her, run up from the side, smash something into the side of her knee so hard that it actually broke the leg. It was terrifying to think. If we hadn't had to run out there when we did, whoever broke the girl's leg would have probably come back for part two. I figured he probably turned back for her, then saw all of her flashlights coming up the trail towards the screaming. And that's also what makes me think that it was just one,

or maybe two guys at the most. Small numbers for us to be able to scare him off like that. Anyway, once dawn hit and we got some decent light, we made ourselves a makeshift little stretcher, rolled the girl onto it, and then carried her all the way into this little town called Hampton, where we were able to get her some medical attention. We were originally going to part ways there and then, but not before we swapped contact info so we could keep in touch to see how things went.

But then, literally as we were walking away, we decided that we'd stay in town, help the guy, half of the couple with all the stressful stuff that he had to deal with, you know, police reports and all that kind of stuff, and also get some decent rest in a hotel room if we could find one. And we also realized it would be very stupid to just walk back up onto the same trails the attack had just taken place on, and to do so on no sleep would just be insanity. And the rest of the story is kind of boring, so I'll keep it short. We kept in touch with the couple to make sure that they were okay, and to find out if the person who attacked the girl got caught.

And no surprises for those who guessed that the cops had no clue where to even begin, and were not very helpful at all. The girl's leg seemed to heal okay though. We ended up finishing the rest of our hike after skipping ahead about 10 miles, just to be certain that we were well away from the site of that attack. Human-on-human encounters like that tend to be as rare as hen's teeth on a place like the Appalachian Trail. 99.9% of folks that you meet are fundamentally good, and I can attest to that myself. But it's not just the bears and snakes you gotta worry about out there.

I learned that the hard way, and you can gather that I kept my survival knife on hand whenever I went to sleep for the whole rest of that Tennessee hiking trip. After a year of college, I decided that that world wasn't meant for me. I didn't know what I wanted or where I was going, but I knew that those classes, where other people seemed so eager to learn, was just not my place. So I dropped out, which my parents hated. I had to move out of the dorms, but they didn't want me back at home. So my brother Luke offered his basement apartment. He and my sister-in-law, Miriam, had used it for a while as an Airbnb,

but he was tired of that service, so he agreed to let me stay for a third of its rent value, which I would start paying as soon as I found a job. I was so grateful, but what I didn't know was that my sister-in-law wasn't totally happy about it. Miriam was a kind of different person. Now let me explain further. I'm, well, well I'm pretty fat. There's really no other way to put it. I've tried a million different diets and I simply just couldn't hack it. A lot of people in my family are pretty overweight, so I know that that plays a factor, but I also just love food. I can't deny it.

I don't know how people just eat for sustenance when good food can be so amazing. Now don't get me wrong, I actually do exercise a decent amount. I watch Zumba videos online and dance as much as I can. It's just I probably eat too much and yeah, snacks are a weakness for me. And Miriam is the complete opposite. She's basically a model from the early 2000s era. You know, I can't comment a lot as I know I'm not healthy, but I know she barely eats to survive. I always felt bad for my future nieces and nephews because she was definitely going to be an almond mom. Now all that wouldn't be a problem. Fat people and skinny people exist together in the world and they seem to do fine, to each their own, right? Well no.

Miriam has detested me from the moment we met. She has been civil, but you know when someone just doesn't like you? Several slips in her attitude have told me that. Like at my brother's wedding, when she wanted pictures of the family and had me placed in the corner. She posted those on social media, cropped without me, and she framed some around her house. On her first Thanksgiving as my brother's wife, I saw her lip curling up whenever I dished more yams onto my plate. She ate some turkey with no gravy and some asparagus. Very sad, but who was I to comment on her habits? The thing is that everything had been subtle with her. She never had to see me much or I her until I moved in, and I got the sense that it wasn't just my chubbiness that

irritated her. She probably hated that my family is close and full of love, despite our appearances. My mom and dad aren't as big as me, but they're not model thin either. They're strictly average, but my dad showers my mom with so much affection. He calls her beautiful whenever he can and buys her gifts. That's something that I don't think I'll ever have, and I don't know if Luke feels that way for Miriam. But more importantly for this tale, it's that everyone seems to like me. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm funny and nice and I help wherever someone needs me. My parents weren't too happy with me about the college issue, but I know they love me unconditionally. And Luke is my best friend in the world. My big brother was always my biggest protector and my confidant,

and I believe that Miriam hated that from the very beginning. But I never actually got any confirmation until I moved into their basement, and I didn't know that it would almost ruin my life. I moved in quickly, I didn't have much in my dorms anyway, and my brother and his wife helped. I saw Miriam's expression, though. When we were done bringing all my boxes, Luke went upstairs to check on something and I started unpacking my clothes into a dresser, and Miriam had lingered. I told her that I could take care of everything else and thanks for her help, but she remained in her spot. I asked if she needed something, and she asked how long I was planning to stay there. I didn't know exactly, but I had already

applied online for some jobs at a pizza place and a coffee shop and this pretty fancy restaurant. I thought, well, I love food, so I could just make it a career. I told her all that smiling, thinking that she was curious about it, but she just crossed her arms. We can't stay forever, she insisted. And I said that I knew that, and I felt like she wanted to say more, but Luke came down again and she went quiet. Okay, I knew I had to save up, figure out what I wanted to do, make things better with my parents, and just get out of there fast. It just wasn't fast enough. That night at dinner, Miriam picked at her food, and that was normal, while I ate with gusto.

My brother cooked well. We were both taught by my grandma, which was another reason why I thought a career in the food industry might actually work out. But after I dished some seconds onto my plate, Miriam spoke. How can you eat so much? She asked me, and her voice barely controlled the disgust. Luke frowned at that, and I know 100% that he had never heard her say something like that. I'm fat. I can eat a lot. I replied and laughed, which made Luke laugh too. Miriam didn't find it funny.

She said that being obese wasn't something to laugh too. Miriam didn't find it funny. She said that being obese wasn't something to laugh about. She said all people had to think about their eating choices and how it would affect their lives later. She also added that as a girl she was taught to be strict and have discipline with food, otherwise she'd have trouble later in life, like she said. Her mother also told her that people would judge her for her looks. It was better to avoid that by always having a nice appearance. I rolled my eyes internally and maybe I shouldn't have said what I did next, but I couldn't help it. It's okay. I may be fat, but everyone I care about loves me the way I am. And everyone else doesn't really matter, you know? Now Luke agreed with me

and we pivoted the conversation to some of our childhood memories and Miriam stayed quiet for the rest of our meal. In the coming days, Miriam was mostly quiet around me. I stayed in the basement and only went up for dinner because Luke insisted. She never commented on my eating again but I did notice a lock on some cabinets in the kitchen. That was odd. I had my own kitchen and food downstairs, and Miriam didn't care about eating, so I had no idea what that was about. But things seemed to escalate.

My car keys went missing one day, and I had to go upstairs to ask if she had seen them. Miriam said she hadn't, which made sense because the basement had its own entrance. I asked her to help me to look and she said no. She was busy with the magazine. Okay, sure. It was not her problem, but then I asked to borrow her car to go to an interview and she said no, straight up, adding that I should just walk because I needed the exercise. I went away.

I didn't have time for that, and I ended up having to walk to the bus and to my interview. I had called my brother to ask if he had seen my keys, but he hadn't, so I would later need to get the second set that was at my parents' house. When they bought me the car, it had seemed safer to leave them the spare keys, but maybe that wasn't a great idea. And so that's what I did. I got a chance to talk to my mom, apologized about some things, and asked her to be patient with me because I needed to figure out my future. And she understood, I think. I got home and Luke called me up for dinner.

He smiled and gave me the keys. Apparently he found them in the flower beds in the backyard. Well, that didn't make any sense. I didn't spend time in his backyard, much less near the flowers, because I was a little sensitive to the pollen. He told me to just let it go, and I did. But I started to grow concerned. Over the next few days, I had a couple more interviews, and although these places seemed swamped, none hired me. I applied to more places, willing to work in anything. Delivery,

cleaning, register, really just anything. When the manager of a little non-franchise pizza place called to reject me, I just broke down and cried right there. I asked him why I wasn't being hired, I just didn't get it. He said that someone called to warn him about me. What? He was told that I tended to steal food from all the places I worked at. I told him that wasn't true. I begged for the job, and he seemed to take pity on me, or perhaps no one else applied. Either way, that phone call changed his mind, and I was hired. Finally. I had to sit down after I hung up. I couldn't believe it.

I had only ever had a summer job at an ice cream shop, and I never stole a single plastic spoon. The only person I could think of who had something against me was my sister-in-law, who just so happened to know everywhere I was applying to because I had talked to Luke about it each night at dinner. But unfortunately, I felt like I was being paranoid. I had no proof, and I didn't want any more trouble, so I just kind of kept my head down. I started my job. I took as many shifts as I could and ate on my own. I barely saw Luke or Miriam for around two weeks, and I hoped that that would be enough.

But my day off proved it wasn't. The only downside of Luke's basement apartment was that it didn't have a laundry machine. Their house had a laundry room upstairs, which I had been using since I moved in, but I had put off cleaning my clothes since the job interview sabotaged and I couldn't any longer. I went upstairs as quietly as possible and started to load. I stayed in there and remained quiet. Anything to avoid her, I thought. But I don't know if something happened to trigger her or what, but she barreled in and screamed in my face that I had to get out of her house immediately. She couldn't stand me anymore and wanted me gone from her life.

She said, if it was up to me, Luke would never have to see your fat ass again. I just stood there, shocked. I still didn't want any trouble, so I nodded and told her that I would leave as soon as my first paycheck arrived. My parents would help me, as they weren't so angry anymore. But it wasn't enough for her. She shouted again and again, get out, get out, get out, and suddenly lunged at me, grabbing at my hair. And that's where I had to draw the line, pushing her away. I must not have measured my strength because she flew back

and hit the wall pretty rough. She started yelling, saying that I had assaulted her and said that she was calling the police. I went after her. She was the one who assaulted me first, but she had already dialed when Luke came in, thankfully. He had to witness this whole insane scenario play out, his wife talking to 911 while I stood next to her, not knowing what to do, but I went to his side and explained everything as quickly as I could before Miriam finished her call. She hung up and told him not to believe me because I had attacked her for no reason. I called my parents then. I knew that I had to leave no matter what happened next.

The police actually ended up arriving a few minutes later, but my parents did too. My dad went straight to the officers. As someone who had never gotten into a speck of trouble in my entire life, I was terrified. And I cried as Miriam kept lying about what happened in that laundry room. I knew Luke wanted to defend me, but he hadn't been around and he really just didn't know what to do. The cops didn't know what to think after hearing both sides of the story, but my dad convinced them to let us fix things amongst ourselves and they seemed to agree. Miriam demanded a restraining order in that moment, but the cops just ignored her and I'm so glad dad was there. I whispered to my mother like a little kid that I wanted to go home with

them and they helped me pack. I don't know what Luke was thinking, but he carried boxes to my car in silence, and I just left without another word. I cried into my mom's shoulder that night because I didn't understand how someone could play with a false accusation like that. I told her that Luke's wife was a menace, and that I never wanted to see her again. I know it put her and my dad in a very difficult position, but I was done with Miriam, and if I had to cut Luke out of my life too to avoid her, so be it.

But after a few days, I realized that it was exactly what my sister-in-law wanted. I wouldn't have been surprised if she had planned that for a while, wanting for me to go upstairs while Luke wasn't home yet. I wasn't going to let her get away with this, I thought. I called my brother and apologized for everything, and we had a real heart to heart. He asked if I wanted to return, but I didn't. I just told him that I didn't want to lose him no matter my relationship with Miriam,

and he seemed to sound relieved and very tired after all of this. And after that, I decided to execute my revenge, which wasn't anything masterful or movie-worthy. I just became a big, fat fixture in my brother's life. I went to his house for dinner every night, and sometimes my parents came. I was loud, talkative, and livelier than ever. I ate even more, praising my brother's cooking. I invited him on outings on the weekend, telling him to bring Miriam, of course. And she seemed to pull away more so every day.

Not like a beautiful flower that matures and dies with time, but like a rat that eats poison and rots from the inside. Meanwhile, I was doing great at work and saving money. I had enough for a small apartment studio, but I hadn't moved from my parents yet. They were a good excuse to invite Luke to more things, and I needed Miriam to snap in a public way. And it didn't take long. On my dad's 55th birthday, my mom organized a barbecue with our closest family and friends. And once again, I was the life of the party. I put myself in every picture, made a little speech, talked to everyone, and tried to bring more attention to me while including Luke. I just knew that she was seething, and I was

kind of just waiting. Now don't get me wrong, I was tired of this too. I was social but not to that extreme. I wanted to move on but I also just deep down needed others to see the type of person she truly was. When the party was winding down, I decided to start picking up a few things and brought them to the kitchen. It was like the scene in the laundry room all over again. Miriam comes in, gets in my face, but she wasn't yelling, not at first. Her eyes were so scary as she told me that she knew what I was doing and how I had gotten away with my assault before. But she was tired of me and how much attention I had from Luke.

I started laughing. I didn't want to, but it was tired of me and how much attention I had from Luke. I started laughing. I didn't want to, but it was hilarious to me. I knew that people willing to make false accusations were not people you wanted to mess with, but I had to goad her. I told her that Luke paid attention to me because I was his little sister and best friend in the world throughout all of our life. And I also added, he could easily leave you for someone else, but I'll always be in his life. And that was it.

She grabbed my hair and started pulling, screaming the craziest things at me. How I was fat, ugly, how I would never do anything with my life. How she would get Luke to stop talking to me if it was the last thing she ever did. And I was in serious pain in that moment. My hair was too thin already, and this madwoman was going to leave me bald, but there was one final pull, and she was away from me. When I finally straightened up, I saw my brother's arms wrapped around her, and my parents were there with shocked but very furious eyes. It also seemed like the rest of the party

wanted to know more, but they couldn't all fit into the house through the blocked back door. Luke pushed Miriam away, and she turned, giving him an excuse. Obviously, she starts blaming me that I deserved it because I had assaulted her before, but I saw my brother's face, and he starts whispering to her to get out. It was so quiet that I don't think anyone else heard it in the moment. Miriam knew him well enough to understand his angry voice, and she left, huffing and puffing the whole way. Luke apologized to me about everything and left too,

and the party got animated again with everyone wanting to know what the hell just happened, and I told them about the false accusation and how the sister in law just absolutely despised me. But here's the good news. At that point, and over a period of time, Luke filed for divorce. He came to stay with us for a while until they could settle some stuff, sell the house, whatever. And of course, he apologized to me a million times and Miriam was out of my life for good and the divorce was settled about a year later. Things are much better now. Luke and I live in our own separate apartments and he's now dating an absolute gem of a woman but I don't think he'll get married again anytime soon. And I come to find out that Miriam was actually struggling with some

degree of ongoing drug issue, but Luke never really wanted to go into that. But after a period of time, it also started to all kind of make sense in my head. I felt bad for her, but I also was glad that I was able to get her out of his life to some degree in the end. A few years back, a few friends and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail not far from Allentown, Pennsylvania, when we found something that scared the crap out of us. We were taking a break at this small collection of rocks that sort of served as little chairs for us when a friend of ours stood to stretch his legs a little and walked around his rock and then noticed something sort of jutting out from the base. He reached down and pulled out what looked like an old-fashioned sort of tin of candy, the metal kind with the lid on a hinge. We start making jokes about how he's found someone's stash,

but when he opens it, all he finds is these two dirty pieces of paper. He takes them out, sets that tin down on the rock, and then unfolds the first of the two pieces. He takes a look at one side and then turns it around to show us that it's just this sort of crude drawing of some rocks and some trees, presumably the same rocks and trees that we're at right now. But then as he turns the piece of paper around to show us, he reads what's on the back of that paper, and his face just seems to drop.

We ask what's wrong, and he reads the short message aloud. This was the last thing Sarah ever saw, he said. And we all respond, what? No way, dude, show us. And he wasn't lying. It really did say that. But then I ask him to unfold the other piece of paper, but he refuses. So another one of my buddies gets up and walks over and takes the unfolded paper from him. And then after unfolding it and briefly taking a look at what was written, his expression drops as well. List of people I want to apologize to. He read aloud, and then went on to list a bunch of people that someone had apparently stolen from. My first thought was that it was maybe a note that someone leaves before they take their own life,

written by someone who liked to draw and refer to themselves in the third person or something. But then hearing how they stole from someone, that made me think that it was written in the third person because it truly was written by someone else. This sparked a lot of debate between us because obviously theft didn't exclude the possibility of someone dying, and Sarah could have stolen a bunch of money, regretted it, and then walked up into the hills to take her own life. But then surely a note like that would have included an apology to her parents or something.

At least, that was my take on it. Why only list the people you stole from? It took a minute before one of us thought to compare the handwriting on each note, but even then, we weren't all decided. The apology note was 100% written with a different pen, but the handwriting was so shaky that it's not out of the question that it was written at a different time, when the writer was feeling extreme emotions and all that. In the end, we stopped arguing over it and decided to look around for any signs of a body or anything. There was no chance of us just sort of slipping the notes back into the tin, sliding it back under the rock, and just walking away after finding something like that. Even if

it was just someone's idea of some sick joke, then it was worth our peace of mind to make sure that we weren't leaving someone rotting in the woods. And we walked around for a while, but didn't find any bodies. We didn't find anything suspicious or anything either, and if I'm being honest, I didn't even know what I was looking for. I kept telling one of my buddies to watch out for disturbed earth, thinking there might have been a shallow grave under our feet. But then we were in the woods. All the earth is disturbed. And after that, we got to thinking on what we should do again,

and we decided to take the box and the notes into the next town, and then drop them off at the precinct or the department of whatever kind of law enforcement-related place they had in town. And when we got there, we told the cops the same thing I just told you. It might be nothing, just a dumb joke or something, but we couldn't just walk off and forget that we ever found that tin and those notes. And to this day, it remains the creepiest thing I've ever come across while hiking. I grew up in a small town in North Carolina, a place called Bakersville. It's only about 16 miles from the Tennessee state line, and beyond that lies the fabled Appalachian Trail.

I never really considered it until I moved elsewhere, but there's a certain spirit to Appalachia. Especially the lower half, where the trail extends up into the Great Smokies and the Pisgah National Forest. Bakersville is about 20 miles north of Pisgah, right in the center of the triangle where the three forests converge. And I don't know if there's something in the trees or the hills or the water, but it gets into the people, for better and for worse. For example, Appalachians are just about the most superstitious people I had ever come across. Just about every culture has its little idiosyncrasies like that. You've probably heard someone say, knock on wood, to prevent something bad from happening, or perhaps they suggested that a black cat crossing your path is an omen of misfortune. You've probably heard someone say, knock on wood, to prevent something bad from happening,

or perhaps they suggested that a black cat crossing your path is an omen of misfortune. Some people are told never to walk under ladders, or that stepping on a crack will doom their mother to a broken back. But of all the people I've met on my travels, Appalachians win the prize for their bizarre superstitions. For instance, my grandmother, God rest her soul, said she never trusted anyone with a dimple on their chin. She always used to say, dimples are made by the devil's shoe. And it wasn't just some silly saying to her either. She was deadly serious in her belief that people with chin dimples were essentially cursed. She also thought that if your chickens laid eggs in odd numbers, it meant misfortune was on the way, and that you should never, ever wash your clothes on a Sunday. She had a ton of other crazy rules like that, and like I said, it was no joke. She really did believe that if she did a certain thing,

like wearing a buckeye in her bra to ward off rheumatism, it would achieve the desired effect. And she also believed in the power of bad luck and black magic with all her heart and soul. I guess we're just much more prone to believing in things like that down here in Lower Appalachia. Things of an otherworldly or fantastical nature. And that's why I believe my friend Scoot wholeheartedly when he said that there was a witch living up near Rattlesnake Ridge. I didn't believe him when he first told me, but he said that his cousin swore on his eyes that there was a witch living out there in a one-room shack and that she'd put a curse on four men just after the war who'd all ended up dying in mysterious circumstances. But not only that, and thanks

to his cousin, he knew exactly where this witch's shack was located, on the south side of Rattlesnake Ridge. Naturally, I demanded that he take me to it at the first available opportunity, to prove he and his cousin weren't a pair of no-good rotten liars. But to my surprise, he indignantly promised to do just that. We were both twelve and thirteen years old at the time, so we were capable of finding our way back after a lengthy sojourn in the woods, and aware enough for me to want to show Scoot what a long-tongued liar his cousin was. So, one Saturday, we set off in the early afternoon, bound for Rattlesnake Ridge. to want to show Scoot what a long-tongued liar his cousin was. So, one Saturday, we set off in the early afternoon, bound for Rattlesnake Ridge. I understand that probably sounds like far too dangerous a trip for a couple of boys in their early teens,

but you grow up in rural North Carolina, and you learn how to walk in the woods. I feel like there are stereotypes of the southern outdoorsman or midwest mountain man, treading softly through the woods like a cross between a Choctaw and a ninja, but that's just not accurate at all. Any woodsman worth his salt treads heavy through the woods. Snakes pick up on vibrations, and the handy thing about rattlers is they let you know that they're there if they don't hear you coming and get out of the way first. Anyway, that's just to give you a little background on why our parents were okay with us hiking out to a place named after a venomous snake. From our neighborhood, the walk out to the ridge took about an hour at a casual pace, until finally we see the tree-covered ridge rising up before us like some great sleeping

giant. Scoot's cousin had said the witch's shack was on the southeastern side on the ridge, and that we'd smell the smoke of her fireplace before we ever saw her. This was the same fireplace where she supposedly cooked the butchered bodies of the children she captured before turning their bones into magical charms. I thought we'd spend an hour or two just wandering around, not being able to see or smell anything, before Scoot finally accepted that his cousin was full of crap. But then suddenly, we started to detect something that smells a lot like a campfire, or perhaps even the smoke billowing from the chimney of a witch's cottage. Scoot just about pops a gasket telling me, I told you, I told you he wasn't lying, in reference to

his older cousin, and honestly, I'd be a liar if I said that it didn't send a shiver running through me. I just remember standing there, slack-jawed, having gone from not believing in him to not wanting to believe him. It was creepy, all right. But it was creepy in the way that a Boy Scouts campfire ghost story is creepy. Smelling that smoke in the way that we did, it had a kind of perfect timing to it. Like when the innocent high school couple discover the hook that's still buried in the car door, or when the babysitter learns that the call was coming from inside the house. It sent a shiver down my spine, and it couldn't have been real.

There was no such thing as witches, and smelling campfire smoke was evidence of a campfire and nothing more. Once I realized that, I felt foolish. Scoot's cousin was lying, and feeling foolish only made me more determined to prove it. Plus, it was a fine opportunity to prove how brave I was to Scoot by marching off into the woods in search of the smoke source. He thought I was straight up crazy, saying that we'd had to get out there and that I must have some kind of death wish to go looking for that witch. After all, she'd already killed four men by putting curses on them, so there's no telling what she'd do to two kids who deliberately set off to go treading round her holler. I knew that whoever was out there probably wouldn't react kindly to strangers, but I also knew that there wasn't any such damn thing as witches.

So I didn't exactly go running off through the woods, but I kept on going with Scoot behind me, keeping an eye out for where the smoke was coming from. Then, about 200 yards in, we see this thicket of myrtle trees, the real dense kind with the wavy leaves, and behind them is what looked to be an old log cabin, one with a big old stone chimney affixed to the side

of it. And Scoot says, you believe me now? And I'll admit, the evidence was mounting in his favor. But until we saw black cats and flying broomsticks, I wasn't buying a word of it, and I wasn't about to go all that way only to turn back now that we'd found what we were looking for. And so for anyone who doesn't know wax myrtles, they sprout fairly close to the ground, meaning you gotta duck down low, under all the leaves and branches if you want to traverse a patch of them. There was also the occasional dogwood in there too, meaning that we had to weave in and out to get to where we could see the log cabin and all its shabby ingloriousness. But when we did finally lay eyes on that cabin, it looked exactly like you might expect a witch's shack to look. There was a broomstick right there near the little entrance with all kinds of dried herbs, wind chimes, and charm-looking things hanging

on either side of the door. Scoot just about had a fit when he saw the broomstick, and I have to admit, I was starting to actually believe it myself at that point. But then right as we're starting to get really and truly frightened, the door to the shack swings open, and out steps the witch of Rattlesnake Ridge. Her hair was white and patchy, and she walked with a bit of a stoop, and I swear that she'd had a wart or two on her nose and chin. I was just about ready to pee my pants with fear at the sight of her,

cursing myself for not believing Scoot and his cousin, but at least I stayed quiet. Scoot, on the other hand, he blurts out in a shaky voice, There she is! Which the witch then hears and spins around to squint in our direction. She starts crowing, Who's there? Y'all better show yourselves! But by that point, me and Scoot are bolting like startled foals, deaf, dumb, and blind to anything and everything except getting the hell away from Rattlesnake Ridge and the witch we should have known better than to go looking for. We were terrified, absolutely beside ourselves with fear. We were convinced the witch was going to put a curse on us for having trespassed on her patch

and that it was only a matter of time before we too ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. We agreed to each head home to our parents to ask what they could do for us, how maybe the cops might be able to head out there and convince the witch to take back her curse. But whatever we did, we had to do it fast. So after issuing each other what we'd hoped would be not our final goodbye, we each headed home to beg our parents for help. I remember holding back tears until I got to my parents' house, but then the second I walked through the door and my mom asked me why I looked so terrible, I broke down and told her everything. How I hadn't believed Scoot and his cousin about the witch up

on the ridge, how we'd trespassed on her property, and how we were now probably cursed to each suffer an untimely death. All the commotion brought my dad in from the garage and he and my mother listened to the whole story before finally issuing their assurances. They told me that there was no such thing as witches, but that there was indeed an old woman living up near that ridge. She'd been living there for quite some time, and all she wanted was to be left alone, and that's why she'd gotten angry when she'd heard us in the bushes.

She couldn't put any curses on us, we weren't going to die, but it was not a good idea to go wandering off into the woods like that for any reason, especially when that reason was to go bother some old little lady. And once I was safely reassured that the lady that we saw was most certainly not a witch, I started to calm down a little. But it didn't explain why a woman lived out in the woods, all on her own like that, and when I asked, I was essentially told that it was complicated, but that she wanted to live out there on her own like that, and when I asked, I was essentially told that it was complicated, but that she wanted to live out there on her own. It wasn't like the people in town were mean to her or anything like that. And after that, my mom called Scoot's mom and they talked it out to

make sure everyone was on the same page. Scoot's parents were nice folks, so they told him basically the same thing as I was told. We didn't have to be scared of that old lady, but we weren't to go snooping around her property anymore. And Scoot and I were then allowed to talk on the phone, and we went from crying to laughing in the space of a few minutes. It was just pure relief, I think. That and how funny it was that we ran full sprint from a woman whose top speed was probably a mile or two an hour. We just kind of moved on after that. I remember thinking of that woman every so often, but I wasn't afraid of her. I just thought that she was kind of weird, living all alone in the woods like that.

I didn't feel sorry for her. I mean, she chose to live out there. And I didn't know why, but I didn't care to know either. She was just the crazy cat lady who lived out in the woods, and just like everyone else in town, that fact grew as normal to me as just about any other thing. I guess a lot of other kids asked their parents the same thing. Scoot's cousin talked about the witch,

and so did we when we returned to school that Monday. We were telling people how we'd been out there, and how she wasn't really a witch, and then we laughed off everyone who swore blind that she was, and that we were doomed to die any day from the curse that she put on us. The other kids had heard about those four men she supposedly cursed to die, but we knew better. We'd had grown-ups to tell us the not-so-scary truth, so we weren't afraid at all. And that pretty much settled the argument, as a bunch of other kids mentioned how their parents had told them the truth too. She was just a sad, weird old lady, and those four men's deaths had nothing to do with her. But as I came to learn,

that wasn't strictly the truth. The first part of this story, as in mine and Scoot's little encounter with the witch, that took place back in the mid-70s, a long time ago. I remember it was around late April of 1975 because the TV had pictures of Vietnam on it almost non-stop. Things were turning real bad for the folks on the ground, and I remember my dad watching reels of helicopters lifting people off of rooftops in Saigon. And the next part, which doesn't really involve the witch at all, took place in 2004 when myself and Scoot were home in Bakersville visiting family. Now, there was nowhere to drink alcohol around Bakersville,

so we had to catch a ride over to Burnsville, ten miles south, so we could get drunk there before my sister drove over to pick us up come closing time. I hadn't seen Scoot in maybe two years at that point, and since the Panthers were playing that night, I wanted to whoop his ass at pool, and I thought that we'd take things over to a little bar down there so we could really make a meal of things. But anyway, we headed down there. The Panthers lose their game, but I win at pool, so that just about evened things out. It was a weeknight, too, so the place was pretty empty during the last hour of service. Just a few patrons and a few of the booths, then myself, Scoot, and this older looking guy finishing our beers at the bar. Scoot and I are deep in reminiscing by that point, and we're talking about this and that until eventually the subject of the Witch of Rattlesnake Ridge comes up, and we start laughing to ourselves,

cursing his cousin for having us scare the bejesus out of ourselves like that. But then, with years of hindsight under our belts, we start kind of ruminating on why the witch was living out there in the first place. I'm sure she wouldn't mind us calling her that either. The reputation sure did keep folks from prying into her affairs too much. But it did strike me as odd that I'd never taken the time to really find out why she was out there. But also, who were those four men who supposedly had died, and why did people blame their deaths on our wicked witch's

curse? We started speculating, very casually too, I do recall. I didn't think that she'd be around anymore. She was ancient back when we were kids, so we both agreed that she probably wasn't around almost 30 years later, not unless she really was a witch. Anyway, we're talking about her back and forth when suddenly, the older guy sitting down from us at the bar asks the bartender for one more for him, and one more for each of the two fellas he's about to tell a very long and eerie tale to. And then he invites us down to the stools to sit next to him and introduces himself as a former resident of our hometown, Bakersville. We introduce ourselves, thank him for the beer, and then ask him what sort of eerie tale that he has to tell us,

as we both kind of laugh. I should have known that it concerned the witch, and I guess I was a little slow on the uptake on account of the beers, but when he told us that he knew why the witch of Rattlesnake Ridge chose to live where she did, and what's more, he knew why people linked those men's deaths to her, my interest was piqued. The old-timer told us that if this was 30 or 40 years ago, he'd never have dreamed of telling us the truth. But since everyone involved was surely past by this point,

the witch included, there wasn't any reason why we shouldn't know the truth, especially if we'd once seen her with our very own eyes. And foolishly, I started poking fun at the guy, probably due to all the beers again. It wasn't that he'd offered to tell us, nor was it that he did so in such a dramatic way. It's that he tried to tell us that the witch and the deaths of those four men I mentioned really were linked in some way. I started asking if she'd turned them into frogs or flew out on her broomstick to claim their souls on the night of the full moon, but the guy shook his head, evidently not appreciating my attempts at humor.

He told us the men's death had nothing supernatural about them, but they were very much connected to both the witch and the reason she chose to live out there alone. He reiterated that if folks involved were still alive, there's no way in hell that he'd be telling the whole tale to a little brat like me, in his words. So I didn't want to listen, and I could just take my beer and go jump in a goddamn lake, his words again. If I did want to listen, I could sit my ass down and find out why at least one of those men's deaths simply had to be connected to the witch because one of the men had been her own goddamn husband. I then realized how terribly I'd misjudged this whole situation. In all my years, I never once heard anyone mention how one of the witch's so-called victims had been her own husband. The fact this guy knew that and was willing to tell us, that gave him this whole level of legitimacy. And so I sat

my ass down and listened to what he had to tell us. The witch's name was Dora Ann Quinlan, and back in 1941, she'd gotten married to a man named James Cranwell. Their marriage was a happy one, at first anyway, and then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the whole world changed overnight for them. Cranwell was called up into the army, and then was sent off to fight the Germans in North Africa. And then at some point during his service, he was declared missing in action. A few months later, Dora Ann gets news that a whole bunch of American bodies had been found. Germans had taken a prisoner, then instead of taking them off to some camp,

those Nazi bastards massacred them, piled up their bodies, and then set them on fire. Some of James' stuff was found among the charred remains, so it was assumed that he'd been among those executed by the Germans. She got the news in the late summer of 1942, and Dora Ann was devastated. She wore black for months, but by Christmas of 1943, she was said to be getting cozy with a grocery store clerk who had been declared unfit for service. I don't think that you could find a single person who'd judge Dora Ann harshly for wanting to find happiness again. But all the same, she didn't want to sully the memory of her marriage to her late husband,

so she opted to conduct the affair in secret. And that worked for them all throughout the early 44, but by the holidays of that same year, the affair was something of an open secret. Yet naturally, almost no one thought any less of Dora Ann for wanting to rekindle a little romance in her life, and so folks kind of just played dumb while silently hoping for some kind of marriage proposal. But then, in early 46, right when everybody is expecting Dora Ann and the clerk to tie the knot, she gets a telegram from the army with news that shook her world just as much as when those Japanese torpedoes sunk the Arizona. Her husband, James Arthur Cranwell, was alive. Cranwell had been a prisoner at one of those last camps to be liberated during the Allied march through Germany, and when he'd been found. He was on death's door.

When he left the States. James was around 180 pounds give or take. But by the time they got him back. To the American field hospital. He didn't weigh an ounce over 95 pounds. Skeletal they called him. But over the months that followed his rescue. He put on some weight.

Learned to walk again. And the first thing he asked. Was for his wife to be contacted, so she learned of his survival. A few days later, Dora Ann gets her telegram and she and her clerk know that their relationship is doomed. James comes home and the whole town welcomes him back as a hero, Dora included. But there's just one big problem. She doesn't want to end her relationship with the clerk, which results in them making a serious error of judgment. And one night, after a session of heavy drinking with his old high school buddies,

James Cranwell comes home to find his wife in bed with that grocery store clerk. What happened next is something that almost doesn't bear repeating, so I'll try to put it in as implicit a manner as possible. Cranwell was furious. He beat the clerk to a pulp, tied him to the bed frame with his belt, and then set about teaching Dora Ann a lesson. But that wasn't enough. When his buddies tried to leave, Cranwell insisted they stay and watch. Then when he was done, he demanded that they teach Dora Ann a lesson too. And they beat the hell out of that girl, and then took turns having their way with her. Then when it was all said and done, the clerk, who had been forced to watch the entire thing from just a few feet away, was dragged into the woods outside of town and then shot in the head. Cranwell and his buddies then did something to hide the body. Nobody knows what because they never found it,

but Dora Ann knew that they killed the clerk, and she told the town sheriff that much when he asked her about it. Cranwell kept Dora locked up for a few days, and then he kicked her out of the house barefoot, wearing nothing but a dirty dress. She walked into town, then went straight to the sheriff's office to tell him everything. The sheriff then goes over to talk to Cranwell, but he denies the whole thing.

Yes, it was true that he'd come home to find his wife in bed with another man, after she'd falsely believed him to be staying out all night. And sure, he might have slapped the guy around a little before kicking him out, but he hadn't killed him. He'd threatened to if he ever saw him again, but he hadn't murdered him. No, the clerk had gone missing due to the shame of what he'd done, and if he did so happen to show back up in town, Cranwell claimed that he was happy to let bygones be bygones. After all, coming home drunk like that, thinking that he might have been assaulting poor Dora Ann in their marriage bed, Cranwell said the clerk was lucky to be alive, and reluctantly, the sheriff agreed. The thing was, if he had a shred of evidence that Cranwell killed the clerk, or if he could prove beyond all doubt that all the stuff Dora Ann said was true, he'd be happy to bring a case against Cranwell and his buddies.

But aside from Dora Ann, who at this point was not looked on favorably thanks to her decision to continue the affair, the sheriff had no witnesses, no evidence, and therefore no case. But that didn't sit well with the Bakersville townsfolk. From their perspective, all they noticed at first was that the clerk was missing, and it took days before Dora Ann limped into town to give an account to the sheriff and his deputies. After that, word of the incident spread like wildfire, and although everyone agreed that Dora Ann and her beau should have ended the affair, no one thought it warranted a death sentence,

and what Cranwell and his buddies did to Dora Ann was nothing short of unforgivable. Certain figures approached the town sheriff and begged him to do something about it. The sheriff then ordered corpse hounds to go sniffing around the Cranwell place, and they picked up the scent of a body that had been moved sometime in the past week or so. This on its own was incriminating, but the deputies couldn't actually find any corpse, as the trail just sort of petered out somewhere in the woods near Rattlesnake Ridge. Sure, someone else might have killed the clerk, and maybe they did it on his property, Cranwell claimed, but it sure as hell wasn't him. And his soon-to-be ex-wife was welcome to press charges if she wanted to, but she didn't.

Instead, Dora Ann went to live with her parents and spent the foreseeable future tucked into her old childhood bedroom, lingering in a very deep depression. It was an incredibly sad and incredibly horrible situation, but the people of Bakersville weren't about to let such an atrocity slide. Months went by, and with each passing day, those who murdered the clerk became more and more convinced that they'd gotten away with their crimes. But then one night, Bakersville settled down to sleep without a care in the world, and then the next morning, residents awoke to find the town crawling with state patrol officers. During the night, not only had Cranwell's house gone up in flames, presumably with James Arthur having been burned to a crisp,

but his two old high school buddies had also suffered mysterious and horrifying accidents. One had driven off the road on a clear stretch of highway, then struck a tree at what had to be at least 50 miles an hour. The other had drunk an entire bottle of bad whiskey and had been slowly poisoned while in a state of unconsciousness. The three suspicious deaths had caused quite a racket on law enforcement channels, and with the local fire and sheriff's departments overwhelmed with the various scenes, the state patrol had been called in. They visited every home and town, asking everyone the same two questions.

Did you see anything? And did you hear anything? To both questions, everyone gave the same two replies, no and no. Somehow, three men had died without anyone in town having the slightest idea of how they'd lost their lives. To the townspeople, it was a freak accident, and the fact that all three men had died within hours of one another and all happened to be involved in the disappearance of the clerk. Well, that was just all one big coincidence now, wasn't it? Just like it had been a mere coincidence that someone had been murdered on James Cranwell's property, on the very same night the clerk had gone missing.

Only one of the deaths were ever proven to be murder, as the state patrol proved the fire at Cranwell's house was caused by arson. But as for his two buddies, well, both their deaths appear to be nothing more than tragic accidents. When news of their deaths reached Dora Ann, she was said to have smiled for the first time in months. She started eating properly again, started to sleep properly again, and after a while she started taking long walks in the woods. She'd walk out on her own most days, leaving just after sunrise and coming home just before dark, and she'd spend every trip wandering around the last place those corpse hounds picked up the scent of what everyone believed was the clerk's dead body at Rattlesnake Ridge. She was looking for the body, and she carried on looking for it for years and years until one day,

Dora Ann stopped coming home again. People thought that she might have offed herself out there. Others thought that she picked up a rattlesnake bite or had a run-in with an overly protective mama bear. But then sometime later, I guess someone must have found her cabin out there, either newly built or haphazardly refurnished, and then word spread that she was still alive. I guess the men's death must have stayed in people's minds for a while back then, enough to get their kids and grandkids talking about it. And that's when I figured the rumors of witchcraft first started. To get some over-curious kids to shut their damn mouth. The less people talked about it, the better, and if kids did insist on talking about it,

then the next best thing was to shroud the truth in myth and legend. I guess Dora Ann figured that she'd be better positioned to find her old lover's body if she resided around its last known location. That way, she could spend the rest of her days trying to find it, while being pleasantly sequestered from a world that had so terribly let her down. And may she, and her long-departed lover, rest in peace. And many thanks to the old-timer in the bar that night who finally gave us the answers to the age old mystery of the witch

of rattlesnake ridge To be continued... but my reputation was already ruined. Everyone who knew believed it. Believed him, rather. So I had no choice but to get ahead. I didn't know if things would turn violent. I didn't know what he was capable of, obviously, but it was the only way I could think of and sometimes I still can't believe I beat him. But let's go back to the beginning. I started dating my boyfriend, Chad, about a year before the pandemic hit. Everything went great. He was sweet, thoughtful, and a great problem solver. Exactly what someone messy, life messy, not home messy, like me, needed. He grounded me, but I didn't know what lurked under the surface. Everything went down a couple years ago, and everyone was panicking in the world,

so we moved in together to create the bubble that they wanted us to have. We also thought that it was a good idea to save on rent and all that kind of stuff. I was lucky enough that my lease was up in two months and my landlord let me go without asking for the penalty fee. Some moving companies were still working in our town and our jobs went fully remote, and it seemed kind of meant to be. We set up our offices. Well, Chad did. He's the techie one, not me.

In hindsight, that was a mistake. But the spare room was our shared office. If one of us had a meeting, the other would leave for a little while and work in the living room. I won't go into details about our jobs, but Chad had a lot more hours than I did. I would finish my stuff pretty early. Earlier than I would on a regular office day, and then I had more time to myself than him. I started cooking more, reading more, and exercising more, if you can believe that. My mental health was so much better, but I had a feeling that Chad wasn't doing so well. I told him to take more breaks.

His job seemed to want more out of him than before the pandemic, and that wasn't fair. He wasn't getting paid more or anything. So I read some things online about separating your office space and your life space, even while working from home. We had more money since we weren't going out than saving on rent, so I bought him a new computer. Again, I'm not techies, so I had some help from the guy at the store so I could buy the right gaming computer. I told him that when he was done with work, he had to go to our room and use that computer for just fun if he still wanted to be connected. And I was serious about it. I didn't think that I would ever become that nagging girlfriend though. But it seemed to work and Chad got to finally notice how things had

changed a little. Before I would bring him dinner at his work desk and he would eat without thinking. But then we were eating together and actually enjoying ourselves. He watched me exercise to YouTube videos and we were laughing a lot more. He was also gaming more on his other computer. I would sometimes spy on him and he would be laughing and actually enjoying himself. Our intimate life got so much better and I began to think that all of the crazy stuff from a few years ago was the best thing that could have happened to us. We were doing so much better than some of our friends, who had been together or married longer and were going crazy staying at home. But I didn't know that Chad wasn't having fun by just gaming on his new computer that I bought him.

He was doing something different, and something I should have noticed. At the time, I didn't think much about it, but hindsight is everything. I think that's when it started. My friend Paula sent me a message one day asking how everything was going for me. I told her, great, because it was the truth. I was doing better than ever. She said, good, but what about work? And that was confusing.

Work was perfect, and I told her that. and she didn't ask anything about it again. But I believe that she had already discovered what I would only find out months later. Another time that it should have alerted me to something weird was when Chad was having a gaming session with his Discord on, or whatever. I don't know how that works. I had made it a point not to go into the room when he was winding down with gaming, but I needed my charger, and it was just for a second. I was leaving when I heard something like, man, she's just the hottest. I can't believe you got her to...

And that's it. I didn't hear anything else because I was just used to compliments, especially from all of my previous boyfriend's friends. It wasn't unusual for me, so I knew that it was better to just not listen too closely. And it kills me that I didn't, though. Needless to say, I was much more vigilant now. And here's where it begins. Paula hadn't sent me anything else after asking about my work. Granted, everyone was busy or dealing with different things, but it had been around two months.

Chad and I were the perfect couple, I felt like. We stayed at home unless it was absolutely necessary, and we didn't order much takeout either, but I missed my friends in general. I texted Paula, asking about her life and if everyone around her was okay. She didn't write me back at all. I wasn't blocked, but she ignored my messages. So I wrote to someone else, Julie. I asked her how she was doing, how was work, and how her family was faring through all the pandemic,

and she wrote me something strange back. I'm sorry, Elle. I just don't want to be friends with someone who was doing that kind of stuff. You know you could have talked to me if money was tight, right? Everyone's fine, but I think this is the end of our friendship. I had no idea what she was talking about. I asked, who told you money was tight? I'm doing great at work.

I added that I would probably get a promotion soon because COVID didn't affect doing great at work. I added that I would probably get a promotion soon because COVID didn't affect our business at all. Fortunately, Julie hadn't blocked me after that odd message, so she wrote, if you're still working, then why are you putting all that stuff online? I asked her, what stuff online? And that's when she called me. Julie was so hesitant to ask me more questions and then she said, honey, you opened an OnlyFans. Everyone thinks you're doing that because you lost your job. She then told me that OnlyFans wasn't the only thing, that there were videos of me on public websites, you know, those kinds. I laughed on the phone and told her this was the weirdest prank

anyone has ever played on me, but she said it was true and started sending me stuff. At first it was weird because some pictures were so obviously not me. It was good photoshop, I guess, but it wasn't me. I told Julie that, but she sent other videos. Some were surveillance-type footage of me working out in the living room. And at that moment, I was floored. We had cameras, of course, I knew that, but how did those get online? But another video of me cooking in my kitchen, except it was an entire shot of just my butt. When she was done showing me what she had, Julie asked, Elle, you're not the one posting these things? I most definitely wasn't, and I was crying at

that point and I couldn't even feel my throat. There were pictures with my face in lingerie and bikinis that I had never in my life worn, much less taken photos of, but some look so real. I asked her who else knew about this and Julie said, everyone. Everyone but me. And I went out of control then. I'm not proud of it, but I went into our bedroom and screamed and hit him and almost went for his computer, but he grabbed me. His idiot discord buddies may have heard the entire fight, but I didn't care. They had probably seen those things too. Chad shouted in my ear, what are you doing? Why are you acting like this? And I broke out of his hold, even more enraged.

I couldn't believe that he would ask that question of me. The audacity. But I guess that was part of his personality. To pretend somehow. And I told him I knew everything, and I wanted him to take everything down now. And I kept yelling, and through the adrenaline haze, I felt like I had to leave immediately. I grabbed a bag and started packing, and that's when Chad changed. But again, looking back, I misunderstood him. I thought I was in big trouble because he grabbed my face and looked straight into my eyes, telling me that I was not leaving under any circumstances. I thought I was in big trouble because he grabbed my face and looked straight into my eyes telling me that I was not leaving under any circumstances. I told him he was crazy

if he thought that I was going to stay with someone who had done something so crazy to me. But he laughed. I thought I was probably going to get out of there by scratching, biting, fighting my way through him. I was ready for the fight of my life. Instead, he started laughing. And he wasn't angry. He wasn't confused or even pretend confused anymore. He was relaxed as he said, you're not leaving. You're not leaving me. And you'll never leave me. You're mine. Again, I braced for the anger that I thought would come or the threats of physical violence, but they didn't come, and I got brave and said, yes, I'm leaving, and I'm telling everyone the truth. And he laughed some more, and that's when the real threats came.

Well, if you leave me, I'll release more. I have much more than what I've already uploaded. I mean, if my tapes were already on OnlyFans, then what else was there to do? But he said that he would make more, and make worse things. He would use more Photoshop and other stuff to make things look even worse. And look, I didn't understand much, but some of the pictures Julie sent me were already very intense, and I just didn't want more. I just threw my bag to the ground and said something like, Why did you do this? I was the perfect person to you, and I felt like I did everything to make you happy. Taking on traditional gender roles and doing everything around the house, and I was happy to do it. We were happy.

He didn't laugh at that. He sighed for a second, and then he said that he had gotten a pay cut at work, a big one. He wasn't fired, but apparently I was now out earning him, and he loathed that. He hated it. So he wanted to do something to bring in extra income. I asked, why the hell didn't you make an OnlyFans for yourself then? At the time, I didn't know much about that website. But I remember reading an article about its popularity rising. And as far as I knew, it was an adult site. But the article said that men and women were doing it and some people were earning loads of money. He could have been the model on the site. And I was like, so you exposed me for money to our circle of friends? And he said yes, but he didn't think my parents and most of my

family would find out. I don't know what came over me. Almost against my will, I asked if my stuff was earning good money. And he smiled and said yes, that he was earning more than enough to compensate for his pay cut. He asked if I wanted to see it, and at that point, I just felt numb. I watched as he showed me everything, and there was a lot more than what Julie had sent me. But a lot was photoshopped. What was real was footage at home. Photos of my butt, boobs, and feet. Yuck. And there were a few adult tapes of him and me. But Chad explained something about those being extremely exclusive and very expensive stuff.

Not everyone subscribed could access the worst stuff. Only a few had bought them. And I'm sorry. I didn't understand much and I didn't ask more. And I remember standing and saying that I was going to make dinner. And Chad said no. It was his turn to cook that night. So we could celebrate that I finally knew and could join him in that and get more money.

What was he talking about though? He pushed me to the bed and went to the kitchen and I just plopped down and looked at the ceiling until he called me to eat. It was burgers and fries. Okay, fine, I thought in the moment. And I ate and I was just staying quiet. And he blabbered on about real photos and more videos and I just nodded. Not because I agreed, but because I just didn't know what to say. I was thinking hard. Number one, if I tried to leave, he would do worse. At that point, it seemed like this hadn't gotten to my parents or my work.

So I felt safe, for now. And number two, my friends knew and thought that I was in on it. And number three, Chad wanted me to be in on it. But why? Aside from the money, why would any man with a girlfriend or wife want to show her privacy online to a bunch of perverts? Wouldn't he get jealous? And that's when it hit me. Jealousy. That was my way out. I'm not some evil genius or anything, but I thought that this was the only way that I could control this and take my life back. I ate my last fry and spoke for the first time since I had asked about money. I said if we

were going to do this, I wanted control. I wanted the password, and I would get a say in what's uploaded. I told him that would be better because it would finally get more real. And Chad got excited and talked about some ideas, but I asked him to show me everything that he had done again and how to access it. And we had a sort of lesson on OnlyFans and other sites, which even had chats between fake me and people who paid privately for exclusive stuff. I knew I couldn't just take those and change the password at the time. I couldn't shut it down either because he had threatened me. I had to be sneakier, right? And so I played along, for far too long. I'm not proud of any of it, but I agreed

to almost anything Chad wanted. It wasn't too far-fetched, though. So I somehow still believed my jealousy plan could work. And it took months, but at one point, I was the only one uploading, messaging, and handling more stuff. And the world around us started opening back up. Chad started to get busier at work, they upped his pay, not to what it originally was though, and we were still working from home. He kept telling me that he wanted to quit his job because I was actually doing better. I wasn't big, famous, but he had more plans for me. I told him that that was a bad idea because we didn't know if this was temporary. It was better to have a real job and use this money for fun in the future, and Chad saw the logic in that. And that's the day that I changed all the passwords. I added an extra layer

of security and made sure that they were erased from his computer and only in mine. I had searched a bit about how to do that. When he asked about it, I told him it was my OnlyFans and my image, so I was taking over from now on. I said, as a woman, I know what entices men, so I can do this better than you. Don't worry because you still have input because you have good ideas. But that was all a lie. But I wanted to do it. At first, Chad accused me of wanting to shut it down

and tried to threaten me with sending videos to my parents. I told him he couldn't do that, and I would accuse him of sending revenge images to get him in trouble, which was illegal. And he then started talking about laws or something, and I just got kind of lost there and a bit scared. And so I switched it up. I said that I would tell all my fans that he was a jealous boyfriend who couldn't stand having a popular girlfriend.

Chad knew some of his friends were subscribers and knew that he wouldn't want to look bad. And so he shut up. I still did some of his ideas, but I started on my own. And once the world started opening up a lot more, I felt ready to start going out again myself. I joined a gym, got newer, sexier clothes, and opened a, let's say, legit social media where I posted myself and some poses at the gym. And I pretended to exercise and use the tightest things I could find, and Chad was angry about that. I told him that if I became an influencer, we would earn so much more money, bring more people to my OnlyFans, and maybe we could just both quit our jobs and travel in time.

And he didn't say much to that, but I knew that this was starting to get to him. Now, I never really got famous, so don't look me up because a lot of those things already don't exist, for the most part I guess, as far as I could get rid of. But a pretty girl posting thirst traps on lines does get some attention. Comments from men rolled in en masse, and there was some collateral damage because my family actually saw that Instagram. But that was my front. It wasn't anything bad, it was just sexier than what they knew me as. I told those who asked that I had gotten into fitness during that whole period of time

and wanted to show people how great it was. And that's it. I don't know if someone knew, probably, but I don't care, so at night, I would handle the adult website stuff and answer people on my legit one. I wrote comments publicly so Chad would see them and I also stayed up answering DMs. He would ask what I was doing but I shut him down saying it was part of the business. I said that he didn't have to worry because I wanted him to handle the money. I didn't care how much I was making, where, how, or what happened to

it, and I let him do that because it was the best way to keep him busy and worrying. Every time a new payment came in, he wondered where it came from, and I played dumb. I think that was some guy who wanted to send him dirty underwear or something, and I never did, but I said something crazier every time he asked until he stopped asking, and on my legitimate socials, I started posing with men at the gym, the big men that drive other men crazy, and Chad wasn't like that at all. He was a skinny, nerdy guy, and this isn't an insult, that's literally my type, I don't really like muscles, and I also talked at home about several other things, like this trainer having the biggest arms,

or that guy with the designer gym wear also had a nice car. These were stupid things that I didn't care for, but this was what broke the camel's back, for Chad at least. I got home from the gym after an afternoon of posting stories with two pretty big gym bros, and he had packed my things. He said he couldn't date a woman who was flirting with other men and doing only fans and exposing herself like that just willingly. I was flabbergasted, but I said nothing and in my head I was absolutely exploding. The audacity again, the hypocrisy. I wanted to grab my stuff and skip happily out

of there, but I just acted confused. I told him that this whole thing was his idea. That he started it. And Chad said, well, I'm ending it then. I asked, well, what about him telling my parents and my work about it? And he said that he had erased every trace of me from his life and his computer already. He just wanted me gone as soon as possible. And he also said that he didn't want the money. Well, I grabbed my things, showed up at Julie's house and told her everything. She was happy for me, although I hadn't been a good friend during that entire time. And a week later, I was in a brand new apartment, paid for and furnished with my extra earnings. And slowly but surely, I just started shutting down the rest of things as much as I could find. Doing less and less to avoid any red flags,

I guess. And I was just paranoid about Chad figuring out what I had planned during that whole process. Some things remain, because obviously the internet is, sadly, forever, and I will never be able to get rid of all that was uploaded or what I sent privately, but I got away from Chad, and although I'm not proud of my methods, I'm glad that I took as much control as I could, and I beat him, and I'm free. In sickness and in health. That's the vow that I took over 35 years ago when I married my husband, Luther. It was the most sacred of promises in my book, and I kept it along with the other part, for richer or poorer. I was the picture-perfect wife, I thought, but really so much more. I not

only gave my husband the three kids that he wanted and had dinner on the table at the same time every day, surrounded by a spotless house, but I also supported him in everything he did. And I'm not talking metaphorically. When we got married, Luther had a good job, so we got a house together and started our family. But he got fired during my third pregnancy and couldn't find anything else close to his good salary. So, I took temporary jobs despite being in my third trimester and having two toddlers at home. And I triumphed through it. I was so proud of myself for still keeping a spotless house,

having cleaned and well-fed kids as well as homemade food every single day when Luther would return from looking for a new position. I was the kind of person who said that women these days didn't know what it was like to struggle like I did or what it meant to fight for your family and marriage, and I was extremely humbled much later. My third child was around six months old when Luther finally got something permanent, so I had to work a lot at the time. The good part is that we lived near his brother and wife and they helped so I could go to my temporary job, but we couldn't rely on them often. It felt wrong to me. I was supposed to be handling my kids as the wife

and we both breathed a sigh of relief when Luther got a new job and I stopped temping to focus on housewife duties once more. For many years since then, I thought that we were the prime example of what marriage was supposed to look like. Our kids turned into adults and made their own families. Luther and I became empty nesters, but we were good. Until I got diagnosed with breast cancer. The change was almost immediate at that doctor's appointment. Luther went stiff, and I thought that he was scared of what could happen. But his stance was still reserved even when the doctor told us they had caught it early and it

was highly treatable. I thought he needed some time too. I needed support, but finding out that I was sick most likely affected me more than anything else. In terms of the treatment, the doctors wanted to see how I reacted to chemo before they recommended surgery. Getting a mastectomy just felt so scary. I decided not to tell my kids for a while. They didn't live close by, and I felt my husband was more than enough support. It felt better to keep things from everyone until I recovered, and bad news should always come with some good news. Luther came to the first appointment and

seemed worried and was pretty awesome. I believe that he had accepted the situation and was ready to stand by my side, but he avoided the next two. At the third appointment, another person getting treatment at the clinic told me something strange. I went online and looked that information up. Many women on forums said the same thing and I couldn't believe it, but my intuition was telling me that it was true. Allegedly, husbands were very likely to leave their wives after a cancer diagnosis. I wanted to deny it. Luther would never do that. But when he missed other appointments and could barely look at me after my vomiting spells at home, I just knew. Women

just know. It wasn't long before Luther left me with only a small note saying that he couldn't do this anymore because he hadn't signed up for that. I guess in sickness and in health only counted when he was the sick one. We had been fortunate health-wise for many years, but I had nursed him through colds, fevers, and everything else. He wasn't willing to help me in return after all those years of marriage. I debated telling the kids, but I just couldn't do it, even when the divorce papers arrived way too quickly. I began to think that he was preparing to leave me before my diagnosis. But divorce was only the tip of the iceberg. Luther wanted everything for himself. I went to my lawyer and discovered that our home,

which was mostly bought using my money for the down payment, was in his name alone. Everything else was in his name too. I had one separate account, but it had almost nothing. I never knew that I would need to separate my money from my husband. He also wasn't answering my calls, and soon I saw his pictures with another woman on Facebook. knew that I would need to separate my money from my husband. He also wasn't answering my calls and soon I saw his pictures with another woman on Facebook. I got sicker then, but I had no idea

if that was my condition or the betrayal. I tried to call some other people. We had a small group of friends who were originally his buddies. I had become close with their wives. Not one of them answered either and I got the hint. I was getting cut off completely and Luther had already moved on. And therefore, they were moving on with him. I didn't think of calling his family either. My brother-in-law, Ronald, had always been nice to me and his wife had a beautiful soul, but I thought that they would take his side. I was alone and I most definitely didn't want to involve the kids while this situation was getting more complicated. I considered what to do for hours every day. My lawyer told me to fight because no judge in the world would allow this unfairness. He insisted on playing dirty and trying to find evidence of Luther cheating to take everything from him, but I didn't want a huge drawn-out fight either. It felt wrong. Not for him, but for me.

I kept thinking that I should be the bigger person and let it go. Except I did find some evidence that Luther had cheated on me before. He had left in a hurry and since we were still fighting for the division of assets, I was still in our house. I found old hotel receipts and gifts that weren't for me, vacations we didn't take together, the works. All dated after he had gotten that new job that led to his success. All my civility, love, and respect for him went out the door. I gave all those things to the lawyer and he was sure that he would take him to the cleaners but I had a different plan in mind. I didn't want to give Luther any excuse to call me the crazy ex-wife. It shouldn't matter but I wanted to

make him look as bad as possible. The best way for that was to act the most pitiful possible. Because we were countersuing, we had several meetings with the judge, and each time I showed up looking worse and worse. My lawyer would be fighting for my rights, but when I was asked directly, I acted like a saint. I would lower my voice and say, I want us to resolve things fairly and move on. I don't hold anything against my husband. Even Luther's lawyer was giving him dirty looks. It took a while, but my plan worked. The judge denied almost every demand Luther had,

and I was given the house in full, along with part of the savings, retirements, etc. But later, I came to learn from other people that Luther had moved in with his new girlfriend. He made good money even after I won, and therefore he had a trophy girlfriend and was living the high life. I didn't like that either. One afternoon, I went to his office. I had a reason to be there, as some papers needed his signature. I could have done it through our lawyers, but oh well. I dressed and looked just as pitiful as I did in front of the judge. The people in his office knew me, so they would definitely react. As I said, I was the picture perfect wife. I was always put together. The looks I got when I walked in there were terrible, but

they worked for my plan. They all probably knew that we had gotten divorced, but they most likely had no idea I was sick and by then I was already wearing a bandana on my head and using a face mask because the doctor had added more rounds of chemo before deciding if we would go through with surgery and that helped this situation. Luther was furious when he saw me but I told him that I just wanted to get this over with. He signed and I left but not before stopping to say hello to his assistant. She asked how I was doing and I told her things were rough with my divorce and my sickness. I told her that chemo was more horrible than I had ever imagined and I saw her

face. It confirmed that Luther hadn't said a word. I knew that everyone in the office, hell, maybe even the whole building would find out soon and I didn't want to see the consequences. I knew that everyone in the office, hell, maybe even the whole building would find out soon, and I didn't want to see the consequences. I just wanted as many people as possible to know what kind of person my ex-husband truly was. A while later, I went to my brother-in-law's house with a big box. I had some of Luther's things that I decided that I should take to Ronald. He was more shocked than anyone by my appearance, and he asked, what's going on, Rose? Are you sick? Then I acted confused and said, yes, Ron, I have cancer, didn't Luther tell you? He left me because he couldn't handle it. This was the first time I said it in as many words to really anyone.

Ron couldn't believe it. His wife, Wendy, was just as outraged, but I told them that I was better off, and I just wanted to give them his things and say goodbye in case I never saw them again. My former brother-in-law got angry at those words and said, You can see us whenever you want. You're family. And I thanked him for the sentiment. But I also asked him to please not tell anyone because our kids didn't know, and I wanted to get better before I told them anything. Wendy wasn't happy about that. She told me that they should be here with me. What if something happened and they couldn't travel here fast

enough? I told her I was doing so much better and I would tell them soon. Still, she volunteered to help out. At first, Wendy came with me to my last appointments. She listened and comforted me when I cried because the doctor said chemo was doing well and I may not need surgery. At home, she cooked for me and told me more about my ex. When Luther told them about our divorce, he had just said that we had drifted apart, which I already suspected. They hadn't seen him much since he got a new girlfriend, and Wendy didn't want to meet her either. She felt disgusted because he was dating a much younger girl. I didn't care, but it was nice to know after all these months alone and sick that I wasn't alone.

I should have known, though, that Wendy wouldn't keep this a secret much longer. That one appearance at Luther's work and Wendy's friends made sure that people knew't keep this a secret much longer. That one appearance at Luther's work and Wendy's friends made sure that people knew the kind of person my ex was. She told everyone who would listen. We didn't live in a small town, but we were known in the area. People talk, and they judge. It felt like my small revenge, if you will, was complete. I was finally ready to put things to rest, call my kids, explain everything, apologize, and ask them to visit if they could. I never imagined that I would see Luther before I could call them. It happened after what was supposed

to be my last round of chemo for quite some time. Even with the anti-nausea meds, I was still breathing hard, trying not to vomit when my ex came in. He used the kitchen sliding door, which I always kept open, and the first thing out of his mouth to me after all that time and all he had wanted to do and take from me was, how could you ruin my life, my reputation? I asked how I ruined his life. I was the sick one, and he was living happily with a trophy girlfriend. He said she had left him, and that certainly wasn't my fault. Luther asked why I just didn't stay quiet and act like the good wife I always was and divorce him without issues, and he said,

no, you had to act like a martyr and get everyone on your side. I didn't say anything, but he saw my face. He saw that I found him ridiculous, and that's when I noticed a side of him that I didn't know existed. After the diagnosis, the cheating, and the divorce, I realized my husband was a complete coward, absolutely dependent on me for everything. I would bet my life that it wasn't just his ruined reputation that drove the trophy girlfriend away. He probably treated her like his maid too, and that's not what young girlies want with some sort of sugar daddy. But I thought being a coward just made him weak and spineless.

I didn't think violence was in his nature. Luther exploded when he saw that my lips lifted at his accusations. After hurling the worst things you can say to a person, I saw his hands going straight for my throat and I thought, this is how it ends. Except Wendy, my savior, opened the door and everything stopped. Behind her were my three kids with their spouses and grandkids. She did that. She brought them to me at the best moment possible. I didn't say much

about my kids before. I had two boys and one girl. My eldest, Anthony, saw his father's hands in the air and understood the implications right away. Luther had touched me, so Anthony and his brother Walter grabbed and threw him out of the house. The women and the kids came inside to stay safe and protect me, and I told them I was fine except I had to run to the bathroom for a while. I was sure that vomiting had more to do with what could have happened than my treatment. My ex-husband went away, and everyone around us cut contact with him for good. I got some grief from my kids about keeping basically almost a year of my life a secret from them, but I was sick, so they couldn't do much. When the doctor

officially told me that I was in remission, my daughter, Anna, demanded that I move in with her, and I did. It was just better to be closer to them. I've been happier in these past years than I ever was being married. I no longer judge women or anyone who doesn't want to settle down. Marriage is not for everyone. Make your life what you will and make sure to surround yourself with people that you love and trust. It's often hard to know what that'll be, but you need them. Telling Ronald and Wendy the truth was the best thing I did at that time, and I'll forever be grateful for her spilling the beans to my kids, as it seemed, to save my life. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. 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 again soon