The Lets Read Podcast - 282: MY BEST FRIEND WAS A MONSTER | 33 True Scary Stories | EP 270

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about fake friends, Grandparent stories & how one redditor's roommate nearly killed them! HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Music, Audio Mix & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by: - Betterhelp - IQ Bar

Thank you for watching! My grandpa used to work as a stevedore over in Savannah, and he'd tell us all kinds of stories from his time on the job. Like one time, they got a whole shipment of bananas from the Philippines or somewhere, and back in those days, they'd transport the bananas still attached to the big old branches that they grew on. They'd pop the crate, and then carefully pull the bananas out wearing real thick pairs of gloves, and they wore those gloves because of the tarantulas. The tarantulas didn't eat the bananas, but other smaller creepy crawlies would, making the banana branches a prime feeding ground for them. Most of the time, the workers over on the other side of the ocean would do their best to get all

the bugs off their produce. But every so often, a tarantula would tuck itself away among the bunches after getting its fill of bugs, and then survive the entire transit process from whatever tropical islands that they were from to the ports of the United States. My grandpa said that one time he was working with this guy popping crates of bananas when the guy started to get a little too comfortable. He starts getting slow, talking when he should have been working, and then the next thing, grandpa's turning around to see this guy's arm deep in a crate, but looking back at grandpa trying to talk to him and paying no mind to what he was doing. Grandpa said that the second he turned around, he saw this huge, hairy spider just slowly wandering up the guy's arm, biggest thing he'd ever seen during all those years on

the job. The guy couldn't feel it because of the big, thick, elbow-length glove that they used to wear to prevent spider bites and whatnot. Grandpa freezes, scared out of his wits, and then just points at the thing crawling up the guy's arm. Only then does the guy actually pay attention to what he's doing. But by then, it was too late. He sees the spider, then lets out this almighty yelp of terror, but this only succeeds in freaking the spider out too. I'm guessing the thing just kind of reacted on instinct and moved to neutralize the threat, so to speak. And still, instead of just jumping off his arm or something, the tarantula

runs up the guy's sleeve and makes this crazy leap right at the guy's face. Grandpa said that the guy's second scream, the one he did when the tarantula hit his face, was just about the loudest and most terrifying noise he'd ever heard. It was like, like a death scream or something, like the kind of sound a person can only make when they're in fear for their lives. Grandpa said that he did the first thing that came to mind which was grab something to try and whack the spider off the guy's face. He grabbed a broom and then turned to run back over to his co-worker, but saw that he'd already batted the spider off of him and was running for the door of the warehouse. They get outside, slam the door behind them, and Grandpa's checking if the guy is okay when

he sees these two big puncture marks on the guy's lower cheek from where the spider had bit him. Again, Grandpa is dumbstruck with fright and all he can do is quietly point towards where this guy has been bit. I think maybe he just didn't know that he had been bitten, maybe from the adrenaline or what have you, but a moment later, the guy puts a hand to his face and realizes that he's been bitten and then promptly passes out. Grandpa thought that the guy was dead. He thought the spider's venom had gone straight to the guy's brain and killed him dead in an instant. But then, the same deadly spider is now loose in one of the warehouses, so Grandpa goes running off to warn

everyone that his co-worker was dead and that there'd be more deaths if they didn't get the hell out of the area. He starts screaming at everyone to run for their lives because some deadly spider just jumped out of a crate and killed the guy he was working with. And this causes a full-blown panic on the docks, with half the guys running to save their skins and the other half organizing impromptu hunting parties so they could track the spider down and kill it. In truth, the guy who had been bitten wasn't dead

at all, he just passed out like I said. But then the area around the bite got so swollen and red so fast that even though the guy woke up and started wandering around, confused, it didn't really do much to calm the situation down. The reality was that even though the bites from the spider were very nasty, they weren't even close to deadly. But since this was like the late 50s or something, there was no discovery channel back then and folks just kind of assumed that every tropical tarantula had a bite that could kill a man stone dead in mere minutes. You had all these stevedores running around with just about any kind of weapon they could get their hands on until finally one of the bosses got wind of what was going on.

He shut the place down for the night, called in animal control and they sent a guy over to find and trap the spider before they took it over to some museum or something for identification. The guy who got bit spent the night in the hospital and then was back at work just a few days later. We always enjoyed hearing that story, but the thing is, that wasn't even the scariest or craziest story my grandpa had from his time as a stevedore. He'd always break the spider story out for the younger crowd at family gatherings, and after miming all the spider stuff with his fingers of one hand, he'd almost always have all the little girls running off in disgust while all the little boys sat around him, completely enraptured by the tale of an encounter with a great hairy monster.

But then, after they'd all gone to bed or their parents had taken them home, he'd break out the wilder stories for the adults. Most of these consisted of things like fellas sneaking their girlfriends onto the job with them, then getting caught catching seven minutes in heaven together in a back office or shipping container, or the time they stole a whole crate of scotch because they realized that there was a mistake on one of the shipping manifests. The right call would have been to simply correct the manifest, but nope, almost $5,000 worth of luxury scotch went poof and disappeared and everyone had a very merry Christmas that year. But then on one occasion, he told us a straight up horror story. Back during his first year of

being a stevedore, my grandpa worked with this guy called Crazy Al. Al was a war veteran, as in, he was in the army during World War II. The guys on the docks knew that he served in the Pacific Islands, and they knew that he'd seen or where he'd fought because no one wanted to upset him and no one wanted to upset him because, like I said, he's Crazy Al. My grandpa said everyone fell for the guy but that he wasn't particularly popular neither on account of him being almost impossible to work with. Crazy Al couldn't be around loud noises, and woe betide anyone who accidentally startled him. So, instead of working the warehouses and whatnot like the rest of the workers, Grandpa said Crazy Al was kept in the equipment room, where folks went to get tools, slings, safety gear, and things of that nature.

You just didn't walk in either. You knocked really softly on the door till Al came to ask you what you wanted, and that way, he was kept at a safe distance from everyone else. Anyway, one day, the docks get this big old cargo ship coming in, only right away, they can tell something is different about it, because some of the containers had different kinds of letters on them. It turns out, the ship had come all the way from South Korea, and since the country was rebuilding from the war at that time, I figured this was one of the first Korean ships to dock in America for quite a while. So the ship docks, and these two

Korean officers walk down the gangplank to greet the foreman in perfect English. They exchange a few words, discuss the unloading of their ship, then off they went back to their quarters while the stevedores got to work. Sometime later, Crazy Al comes out of the equipment shed for some reason. Someone later said that they saw him walk out and when he saw the ship floating in the dock, he just stopped and stared at it, like he was hypnotized or something. According to my grandpa, this person mentioned Crazy Al's episode to one of his co-workers, but since Al had more than earned his nickname by that point, it was kind of like, what else is new?

And so the last people saw of Al, he was marching across the dock with a crowbar in hand, heading straight for the gangplank of the Korean ship. Then the next thing, everyone on the dock started to hear screaming coming from it. And there are screams and shouts all in Korean and from the sounds of things, it was like they were having some kind of fight up there. Then the next thing, gunshots. And so everyone scatters and the cops get called. Everyone's still sort of hiding out, keeping an eye on the ship when the cops show up and run aboard with their guns drawn. And there, they find Crazy Al, shot to death with a crowbar in his hand. Then in the vicinity were two dead Koreans, beat to death by Al, and about half a dozen wounded Korean soldiers, one of which had shot Crazy Al dead with a gun that they kept on board for emergencies.

For years, everyone kind of figured that Al had mistaken the Koreans for Japanese, which is obviously one of the two countries we were at war with while Al was serving as a soldier. But the truth is much more disturbing. which is obviously one of the two countries we were at war with while Al was serving as a soldier. But the truth is much more disturbing. You see, as it turned out, Al had been a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp, a particularly brutal one too. He'd seen his fellow soldiers tortured, executed, and slowly worked to death over the course of two to three years.

He learned to hate the camp's guards, but not all of them were Japanese. Part of Japan's conquest of Asia included the Korean peninsula, and they gave a lot of Koreans a chance to prove their loyalty to their new masters by serving as guards in their prisoner of war camps. Then, to prove just how fanatically loyal they really were, they treated American POWs way, way crueler than the Japanese did as a way of winning over their new masters. And Crazy Al probably had his very own Korean camp guard, and I'm not saying it could possibly excuse what he did to those poor sailors, but it certainly explains why he turned so murderous just at the sight of them.

The thing is, folks just carried on thinking Al was crazy. Couldn't tell the difference between Korean and Japanese, they'd say. Stupid old crazy Al, crazier than a poop house rat. But then, it seems to me and my grandpa that Al wasn't all that crazy after all. Sure, he was disturbed, but there's a chilling kind of clarity to him choosing to take vengeance like that. The way my grandpa tells it, he was just quiet. He didn't run across the docks, screaming and cursing, waving his crowbar around. He just walked, all cool and calm to try and commit a massacre without saying a word. And that little detail never fails to creep me out. To be continued... and I'm from East Lothian here in Scotland. I've been a fan of the channel for a while now,

so I know this probably doesn't qualify as your typical scary story, but it's something that's been bothering me for a long time, and if it scares me, then I'm pretty sure it'll scare your viewers too. Three and a half years ago, a lad that I went to school with murdered his grandparents. It happened on Boxing Day of 2021, and it was all over the news the next morning that this lovely old couple had been found stabbed to death in their own home. Police said that they arrested the person that had done it but for the first few days they didn't release any details on

who they were. Then once they were sure that they were going to charge the person with murder, the police announced who it was. Their own grandson. As you can probably imagine, everyone was absolutely gobsmacked when they found out, but what we wanted to know was why. Why kill your own grandparents in such a horrible way on the day after Christmas, too? We had to wait ages for the hearing and all, but there were loads of rumors flying around about why he'd killed them. I think most people thought that it was like a mental illness thing. So when the hearing kicked off and the lad's lawyers told the court

that he heard voices telling him to kill his nan and granddad, there was this collective thing of, told you so. I understand why people would choose to believe that too, I mean, why else would someone kill two people that love and care for them? This lad was living with them at the time and they were looking after him too, properly, and they weren't abusive or anything, so he had to be mental to do something so horrible, right? But no one knew him thought that, though. At least, no one I knew anyway, because in actual fact, the guy had always been like that. At school, everyone called him James, or Jay for short, and even back then, he was a proper weirdo.

And I don't mean a little bit of a weirdo, like lovably weird. I mean he was a complete arsehole. He was a bit of a goth, loved his rock music, obsessed over horror films, but none of the other goths in our school would hang around with him because he was a total dick. I'm sure the school had a name for whatever condition he had, antisocial behavior disorder or something, but to us, he was just an arsehole. Some of my mates grew up with dyslexia, autism, ADHD, you name it, but they were sound guys, that lovable kind of weird, whereas Jay was just an arrogant prick with a bad case of main character syndrome. The last I heard of Jay, he changed his name from James to Vincent, and people wondered why for a bit until someone worked out that it was because he was

obsessed with some vampire film that had a character with that name. And that was Jay in a nutshell, really. He thought he was better than he really was, when really, he was just a sad act. We thought that's all he was too. A total dickhead, but a fairly harmless one. And then he went and murdered his own bloody grandparents and proved us all wrong. I actually did start to believe that Jay had gone just mental because we started hearing all this stuff about how he was hearing voices and that he didn't really remember killing his nana and granddad

and just sort of came to after it happened. You see, he actually handed himself in to the police after he'd done it, went right down to the police station and told them everything. So to me, it sort of did seem like he'd had a mad psychotic episode then felt terrible afterwards. But then we all heard something about how the thing that caused Jay to snap was an argument over a Christmas hamper. Someone had sent Jay's grandparents a load of wine and cheese or whatever, or maybe a few of those miniature whiskey samplers. Either way, there was alcohol involved and Jay decided that he wanted it all for himself. He very selfishly

Fs off to his bedroom with the booze and then up the stairs comes granddad to tell him to give it back. An argument ensued, nasty words were exchanged but then Jay's solution was to grab a kitchen knife and stab both of his grandparents so deep that there were knife marks on their bones. Jay's lawyers obviously managed to weave in the whole story about him being a schizophrenic and I read that some doctor agreed that he wasn't fit to stand trial. He never went to prison, he's in some mental institution now, but I think that's exactly what he wanted. I don't give a monkey's toss what some doctor has to say about it,

because anyone who knew him knows that Jay has always been like that. If he didn't get his way, he threw a fit, which is basically why he had no friends in school. I also think Jay's behavioral problems are why he ended up living with his grandparents in the first place. He turned 18, his parents told him to get his act together or get out of their house, and the grandparents stepped in to take care of him. All that considered, I think it makes what he did to them extra terrible. They gave him a chance and he returned the favor by stabbing them both to death on freaking boxing day of all days. I don't think he's sorry either. I mean, I think he regrets killing them because he has to face the consequences of his actions,

but that's all he's sorry for. First thing he did after killing his grandparents was to think, how can I spin this to make me look as good as possible, which was exactly the same kind of thing he did in school. Not long ago, me and a few pals went to a local boozer for a few pints on Boxing Day, and I ended up bumping into one of the goths that I used to hang around with in school. We swapped a wee bit of small talk at first, you know the sort of how you been, what you been up to. But then after we'd gotten a few drinks in us, the subject of weirdo Jay came up and he ended up telling me what happened to make his little friend group exclude

him and by the time he'd finished I was practically picking my jaw up off the floor. They'd been hanging around with Jay just after school kicked out, walking through the school car park to where the bus stop for school pickups used to be. He said Jay picked up a rock then just hurled it through the car window of a teacher he'd clashed with that day. They were all like, what the bloody hell do you think you're doing, you rage? And then everyone legs it, but then the next day, they all get dragged up to the head teacher's office where there's a police officer waiting for them. The whole thing had been partially caught on camera so the teachers knew roughly who it was, they just needed to figure out exactly who did it

and why. The goth lads, once they were told it had been caught on camera, owned up to the fact that they'd been there when the window was smashed, but they also told the truth when they said that it was Jay's fault and that he'd done it out of the blue. One second, they're just walking along having a bit of crack, and the next, Jay's lashing a stone through the car's window. All four goth lads said the same thing, but then when it came time to question Jay about it, he gave an excuse that sounds frighteningly familiar. He told the head, and the Bobby who was with him, that it was the four goth lads that had bullied him into doing it. According to Jay, the lads that he was with had threatened him with a good old-fashioned kicking if he didn't smash the window, so to save himself a hiding, he did as they told him. And that was Jay all over.

Nothing was ever his fault. There was always someone else to blame. Every situation he entered himself into was unfair and folks conspired against him no matter where he went or what he did. But then, I'm sure you're asking by now, why didn't Jay get expelled for smashing a teacher's car window? Well, word was that he put on such a good show that the teachers didn't know who to believe. So rather than go ahead and press charges against him or exclude him from school, Jay ended up with a week's suspension and then he was allowed to come back. But then the other goth lads got the same punishment too. He obviously stopped hanging around with those goth boys but it wasn't because they were bullying him, it was because he couldn't manipulate and

control them. To me, I see exact parallels between what happened with that car window and what happened with his grandparents. He learned from a very early age that it's possible to manipulate the system, even though you've done something wrong. The lad that I bumped into at the pub said that, after the whole window smashing incident, Jay had personally told him that he was untouchable. He used that exact word too, untouchable. They never hung around with him again after that, having secured the title of the most arrogant prick they'd ever had the displeasure of coming across. But Jay didn't just stay some arrogant gobshite. He got worse and worse, until in the end,

when he learned that he couldn't manipulate his grandparents anymore. He just killed them. If he'd just gone to prison for 30, 40 years, it wouldn't bother me so much and I 100% wouldn't be writing this. But an absolute psychopath of the cringiest order has managed to game the system and basically get away with murder. Instead of living the rest of his life in a vulnerable prisoner's unit, because blokes are rightfully kicking the crap out of him for killing two lovely old deers who wanted nothing more than to look after their wayward grandson, Jay is living out the rest of his life in relative comfort, having completely cheated the system and won. And that scares me more than any ghost story ever could.

You need to be careful with some of the nicest people you've ever met. The one person in my life who just came in and fit perfectly into my friend group was also the most disturbing man I've ever encountered. However, it was thanks to him that I understood a few things about life and how easy it is to fall into a strange crowd. I had a large group of friends consisting of three women and five men, including me. We met during high school and stayed friends because we all went to the same nearby college. My other groups of friends said that I was lucky because most people lose touch with their old school buddies once life gets in the way. I like that I still had them because they represented easier times in my life. Being around them felt like I

was eating comfort food. The worries about the future and current responsibilities disappeared when I was with them, and we were all in our mid-twenties, and although some of us dated and introduced new partners, those people weren't exactly part of the gang, as you say. No one could really join us until one of my friends, Richard, introduced us to a guy named Francis. Francis was his friend from work and the most charismatic guy in the whole world. It wasn't a blatant class clown in your face charisma, but just this infinite confidence and the way he spoke that made you feel like you were the only person in the room. I like women, but there were times when I questioned it around him. He would always be touching you, not rudely,

but with a hand on the shoulder or a nice pat on the back. He formed a connection instantly, and we all liked him more than any other new person, so Francis began joining our little hangouts more often. It was refreshing. Eight friends from high school tend to repeat the same anecdotes over and over until they die of boredom, but Francis had

fantastic tales of getting in trouble from the age of 10, running away from his parents until the police found him, sneaking out to see his girlfriend whom his parents hated, and tons more stories. We were all engrossed, and it wasn't just what he said. It was what he did with what he learned from each experience. Francis told us that his rebellious days stopped in college when he met some inspiring people, and he started looking at life as an opportunity to support others. He said that everyone should help each other as much as they can. And that was a nice thought, sure, but most of the time people are too busy or too tired to do favors so easily. But Francis wasn't. One of our female friends,

Hannah, was fired from her job for trying to file a complaint with HR about her handsy co-worker, and we texted that in the group chat, and I wrote that we should find a lawyer to sue the company. I discovered then that Francis had been added to the group with the little pop-up message saying Francis is typing. He told Hannah not to worry because he knew some people and could get her a new job. And he came through and Hannah had a job less than two weeks later with a higher salary and actual benefits. Once she settled into the job, she wanted to forget about her old one and we supported her decision not to pursue legal matters. Francis was the hero of our group at that point. When another

friend, Tina, needed to move, he brought over some of his other friends and helped her so no one would spend a dime. I couldn't help because I have a bad back, but that was impressive of him. And there seemed to be a million scenarios like this, and it seemed like Francis had helped us all out at one time or another. and we had only known him for a few months, but he became our go-to person, the one we depended on the most. And this meant that despite being the new one in the group, he actually kind of took on a leadership role. Francis picked wherever we went, and in the beginning we didn't care because it was just a nice break from the routine to eat new food or check out a new spot.

But something rubbed me the wrong way one evening when Hannah mentioned craving our usual Hangouts buffalo wings, but Francis had seen something and wanted to support a local Vietnamese shop. I also wanted wings, but I didn't want to go against Francis at that moment. Not because of anything consciously, I just somehow felt bad that here was this guy trying to support a small restaurant and we wanted to go to our usual franchise spot. In the end, we went with Francis' choice and it was fine. The food was exotic and aromatic, but no offense, it wasn't something I could enjoy all the time. And Hannah wasn't happy and I tried to make her laugh, telling her that we had eaten wings a million times. And it was nice to spice up our choices and Frances was right about helping shops locally. She cheered up and we forgot about it and I only remember thinking something was strange then because of everything that happened later.

Life from our group went on as usual. The third female friend, Ellen, introduced us to her boyfriend and he was a nice guy. But like I said earlier, we weren't the best at welcoming people so we knew that we wouldn't see him often. Partners, boyfriends, and girlfriends were kind of kept at arm's length. But the next thing I knew, Ellen had broken up with the guy. They were together for only two months which was strange because Ellen was a very serious person. She didn't get into relationships unless it was for the long haul. She vetted these guys for a while before calling them boyfriends. I asked Richard what happened with Ellen when Francis took us to a strange Brazilian barbecue with karaoke, and while

everyone was singing, Richard told me Ellen broke up with her guy because of Francis. I asked her if she liked him and if they were together, and Richard told me it wasn't like that. Francis had caught Ellen's new man checking out too many other women in the club, and he knew some people who knew him. He wasn't the good guy he seemed, so Francis talked with Ellen, and a few weeks later she had broken up with him. Richard said that he was glad that Frances had caught that about this guy because Ellen didn't deserve to get her heart broken, but I wasn't comfortable with this whole story. I said that Frances probably shouldn't have meddled and should have just let things take their course,

and Richard told me no way, and he was even more glad that someone in the group cared about the girls so much to actually protect them. And so far, Francis had protected and helped them out the most, I guess. I thought he liked one of them, but it didn't seem likely because he didn't really hit on them during our hangouts. And Richard saw me kind of scoff and told me that I had to be grateful to Francis too. And I knew that, I guess. And a few weeks before this conversation, my parents'

basement flooded and we discovered that their home insurance didn't cover it. Francis managed to find people who worked for almost nothing and he got everyone else to help cover the funds my family needed. I told Richard that it was completely right and I was so grateful to Francis despite all of my concerns. And this must have been the reason why I and everyone else agreed to the next outing that Francis suggested. We were at our friend Ollie's house when Francis announced that we had to save one weekend for his special annual glamping trip. I booed because I hated nature. Hannah was on my side, but the rest of the guys, Richard, Ollie, Julian, and Zach, told me that I owed Francis. Francis said no one owed him, but the trip was something that he did every year, and he would be eternally grateful to have his friends there this time. I was nervous. I couldn't exactly refuse after he put it that way, and I looked at Hannah, Ellen, and Tina, who all kind of just shrugged.

None of them really wanted to. It wasn't like us, but our other friends were already on board, and Tina, who all kind of just shrugged. None of them really wanted to. It wasn't like us, but our other friends were already on board, and finally I just said, glamping it is then. And a few weeks after that party, we set off on a three-day, two-night glamping trip. I had bathed myself in insect repellent and bought more just in case, and we arrived at the spot Francis picked after five hours of driving. It was remote enough to smell the pine trees but other people were there too and that made me feel much better. However, my idea of glamping was much different than Francis's. This place had tents but they didn't look glamorous at all. The rinking dink beds looked dangerous, particularly from my back, and the only bright side was that we had a little

building nearby with actual toilets and showers. The girls whined to Francis about his concept of glamping, but he told them this was much nicer than what real camping entailed, and he even picked this place because of the bathroom building, just so they could be more comfortable. Now looking back, I see this as sort of a deflection. Whenever we had something to say, Francis pointed out how nice and accommodating he was. It was an extremely effective method of keeping us in line, I remember thinking later. After everyone picked their beds and settled their stuff, Francis gathered us all around the not yet lit campfire as it was still daylight. He said that he always liked to start his trips with a little prayer to the heavens. I didn't know that he was religious and asked him about it,

and Francis just chuckled and said that he was only spiritual, but he wanted all of us to join in. And so we did, and it started out serious enough, although I knew some of the men thought that Francis was kidding, and then we made it into a joke. You've seen that Sandra Bullock movie with Betty White, right? And we did that and fold around, jumping all over our glamping spot. It was the first time that I had relaxed since I got in the car earlier. I was one of the drivers because I had an SUV. But I saw Francis's expression. He was, let's just say, disappointed. And I can't say that he was angry, let's just say, disappointed. And I can't say that he was angry because he didn't say a word and went into his tent after finishing his little prayer,

while the others remained kind of just messing around. I didn't want to pay him any attention anymore, so I just laughed and sort of twirled around with Hannah some more. I was surprised at how much fun we had that night, though. We ignited the campfire, ate hot dogs, and Zach told us some scary stories, and Francis added a few more tales from his adventures which I wasn't sure were true then, but I really didn't care. I wasn't so worried about mosquitoes because my citronella candles had actually worked. After everything, I slept like a baby.

But early the next morning, Francis told us that we were going on a deep hike into the woods. I asked if some of us could skip because walking was awful for my back pain, but after last night, everyone wanted to be adventurous, so they roped me into it. It took hours of hiking before we reached a very nice little waterfall. Francis told us to stop there. I said the water looked freezing so he couldn't ask us to jump in, that I wouldn't do it. I sort of said this jokingly but I was being honest and I had to put my foot down. Francis sort of just stared into my eyes and said, you're going in that water. We all are. Right now. Take off your clothes. I laughed. I told him that's

pretty funny, but no, I wasn't doing that. And then he said I had no choice. I had to do it. Everyone had to do it because that's what we came here for. I again said no, thinking that maybe he was still joking, and Hannah stepped to my side saying no too. Ollie joined Francis' side though and started calling us chickens. Suddenly everyone was taking sides without any prompting. Hannah, Ellen, and Tina joined me, not just because the water looked too cold to swim in, but also because they didn't like the idea of getting naked in the woods. Yes, Francis meant everyone had to get

naked. And we had been friends for years, but not that kind of friends. We went to the beach and saw each other in bikinis and shorts, and that was it. And Francis had all the men on his side, though, except for me. And they were dead serious. And everything got real quiet for a moment before Hannah said that enough was enough. She was sort of chuckling awkwardly and started walking away in the direction that we came from, but Francis took her by the arm and pulled her back very roughly. He told her that she couldn't leave and that he had gotten her a job and helped when things got tough, so she had to trust him. I wasn't comfortable with that phrase. It was more of

his manipulation, and I said it was time to cut this out because we wouldn't do it. It wasn't funny. And the best compromise was for us to just go and the rest of the guys could do whatever weird stuff naked that they wanted to. Francis looked at my male friends and made this sort of head shake, like when you're asking, what are you waiting for? And suddenly, all the guys sprung into action. They surrounded all of us and started pulling at our clothes, taunting us. And I can't describe what that was like as a man, so I can't even imagine what it felt like for Hannah, Tina, and Ellen. I fought Ollie off and helped the women, and

I was incredibly livid with all of them. Francis hadn't touched a single one of us. He was just waiting with his arms crossed, like some father waiting for his kids to do what he ordered. And the rest of the men were just laughing and sort of waiting for something while we stared at them in just shock and hurt. In that moment, I didn't recognize any of them. I heard Ellen sniffling, Tina had her arms wrapped around herself, and Hannah was putting her jacket back on. I don't remember who took it off of her, but I knew our long run as friends had, at that moment, come to an end in one second. Francis clapped and shouted, they need some encouragement to follow us, huh? I don't know what in the universe he came to that conclusion after seeing our faces, but

the men started undressing. The girls all instinctively turned away and huddled together, and Francis took off his clothes, and I'm talking fully nude here. He started jumping around, yelling, but also making these sort of monkey noises and all the other dudes echoed him. I literally felt like I was in the twilight zone because all these dudes had just gone completely primitive. They ran around us, making us get closer and I was just trying to cover the girls from them, but I was also scared out of my mind. Suddenly Francis got on a rock and started chanting his own name over and over again. And once again all the other guys followed chanting his name. The forest was just filled with their shouts until Francis told them to jump into the freezing water. I still couldn't tell if this was some insane joke.

I was slack-jawed watching all of them as they cannonballed without a second thought. But then, all these women were just crying behind me. Francis got down from the rock and came to me in all of his nakedness and his expression was nothing like the guy who had rushed to help us all before. It had this sort of pride and his expression was nothing like the guy who had rushed to help us all before. It had this sort of pride, and his signature confidence, but it was all amplified and sprinkled with a touch of outrage that we were denying him whatever he wanted. He said he was going to ask us to join him one last time, and if we didn't, we would never be welcomed around him again.

It took all my strength to tell him that we weren't doing it, and he spit on my hiking boots and just ran off to jump in the lake while the other men cheered. I turned, told the women to hold hands, and used my phone to find our way back. We heard them calling us all back, jeering for us, but we didn't listen. We kept going until we got to our camp. I just urged them all to pack their things because we were leaving immediately and they agreed. We got into my car and we drove off. And that ride back home was insane. Alan and Tina were sobbing while holding each other in the back seat. Meanwhile, I could feel my hands shaking on the steering wheel because I was trying not to break down and just get everyone home safely.

Hannah put a hand on my shoulder and started rubbing it and we were talking. And about an hour later, the car was mostly silent at that point and Hannah just asked softly, what are we going to do? What was that? And I just shook my head. I had no idea. I didn't know if those weirdos were all on LSD or drugs or what. And Ellen asked if we should go to the police and say something because yeah, they technically were assaulted. I didn't know much, but I told her that we could do anything they wanted and as the women talked about their options, I just started to cry. I was blubbering, telling them how sorry I was that I couldn't protect them better. And Hannah was the voice of reason in that moment. She told me it wasn't my fault. It wasn't any of our faults. It was that weirdo Francis and our other friends.

Tina made it clear that she was never going anywhere near any of them again, and we all agreed to that. I didn't want to see them either, no matter how close we had all been for our whole lives. They had changed. None of that should have ever happened. Hannah convinced the other girls to stay at her house, and she invited me, but I wasn't sure they wanted a man around that night. Instead, I offered to pick them up the next day and take them to the police if they wanted. In the end, they didn't, because Hannah called her cousin, a lawyer, who said that the police probably wouldn't do anything. To them, it would just look like a harmless game with friends going skinny dipping.

But I joined them for lunch at Hannah's house the next day, which was a Sunday, and we discussed things further. I got to air out all I felt about Francis and how he had started making me uncomfortable. They felt the same way and told me some more stuff. How he often showed up at Tina's new house unannounced and stayed way longer than he should have. He was never inappropriate, so she didn't have the heart to tell him to leave. Ellen talked about her breakup with the guy Francis didn't like. It turns out, Francis talked with her new boyfriend behind her back and got him to break up with her.

She just told Richard and the others the same story to hide that, and she didn't want to tell us the truth because everyone seemed to like Francis so much. And I'll be honest, I was angry with her in that moment. If she had been truthful, perhaps we could have done something. But I didn't say anything, and by the end of that lunch we all agreed that our friend group was pretty much done. It was bittersweet, but it was the right thing for everyone. I went home, not knowing when or if I would see any of them again because we all just needed some space. That evening, Richard called me. I didn't answer. We had all left the group chat,

but I blocked them individually too. Ollie came to my door, but I wouldn't open it either. Francis came knocking a few days later and this time, I got real close to my peephole and told him to just get out of there or I'd call the police. I also told him that women would do the same and that he was a psycho who needed to leave our lives for good. I didn't expect him to do what I asked but he did. The rest of the guys stopped trying to communicate eventually and they didn't reach out to the girls either. As I expected we all lost touch. I had other friends, so I was never truly alone, and I had some trouble for a while after that trip, but

I worked it out, and thankfully my life is pretty solid. Ellen managed to get back together with that boyfriend, and I actually saw that they're getting engaged, according to her Instagram. Hannah quit the job Francis got her and just moved abroad somewhere, and she's the one that I actually text the most, but it's not that frequent. Tina's doing good too and just settled into a new house with her partner. As for the men, I don't hear from them. Whenever I get curious, I remember that hike and I stop myself from checking their socials. But I've heard about Francis. He's become some sort of motivational speaker on social media and people in our area seem to know of him.

I try to ignore his fame as best I can for my own mental health. I have no idea what came over all of them that day. I still have the theory that maybe they were on drugs or something, some of them experimented from time to time, but just how insane they acted that day, it just doesn't make sense. I'm a 36-year-old female in Sweden. I've worked in mental health care for the last 18 years, mainly with people with psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia. I was working at a group home for 9 years and were very close with my co-workers there, especially two females. The last few years I worked there, another female started working there, we'll just call her M, and the four of us grew very close. She was very timid, shy, friendly, and we all got along well. She was often on long-term sick leave due to her own mental health issues, so we didn't meet much at work. However, she always showed up at our after-work dinners, allowing us to stay in touch even when she wasn't well enough to work full-time. She told us that she had a history of schizophrenia, just like the patients we were treating,

but that she was medicated and hadn't had any psychotic episodes for years. Since I have an education in psychiatry and extensive experience with schizophrenia, I had no judgment toward people suffering from the illness, and didn't bother me to be friends with someone who had such a diagnosis, and even after what I will tell you, I still feel the same way. In the summer of 2023, I had moved on to work at a new place, still within mental health but this time in forensic psychiatry. Like a halfway house for mentally ill individuals who had committed serious crimes, though.

And the four of us stayed in touch and still met for dinner parties. M told us that she had been evicted from her apartment because of an incident where she accidentally entered her neighbor's apartment in the middle of the night. She explained that in the huge apartment complex, all the doors looked exactly the same and she had simply walked into the wrong door by accident. She claimed the neighbors had created a scene and reported her to the police out of pure drama. I felt that while eviction seemed out of proportion for that incident, perhaps the landlord took action because he had judged her based on her medical history and I felt bad for her. I questioned her if something else had happened but she insisted

that that was the full story. In Sweden, it's very difficult to get a contract for an apartment after being evicted. You pretty much get blacklisted. Em asked me if she could move in with me and she said she was literally homeless and I said, of course you can. I've always gotten myself into uncomfortable situations by saying yes instead of thinking about myself and I had no idea how severe the situation would get when I said yes to Em. I live in a small apartment with one bedroom, a living room that only fits a couch and a TV, a small kitchen and a small bathroom. I also had two cats. We decided Em would live in the living room and I offered to throw up my couch so she could have the bed there, but she said she was fine with sleeping on the couch. I insisted

on giving her a bed, but she declined. There's a door between the living room and bedroom, but only an open arc between the living room and hallway, so she wouldn't have total privacy. I hung up a thick velvet curtain to give her a sense of a door and more privacy. There's another door from my bedroom to the kitchen, so I kept the kitchen door open at night for my cats to go in and out. She wasn't working at this time because she was on one of her long term sick leaves while I was working shifts. Sometimes I had to get up at 6 am and sometimes I didn't get home until 11 pm. I have severe insomnia, need to combine sleep medications and even then I wake up easily. I told her I would appreciate if she could try to stay quiet on nights when I had to get up early,

but that it was fine to be loud when I was off of work or doing evening shifts. She was a heavy smoker and coffee drinker, so I bought her a coffee machine to make her stay more comfortable. The coffee machine and sink are placed right outside my bedroom door in the small kitchen. The first night together, I had to get up at 6am for my shift. As usual, I had a hard time falling asleep. Em had been up several times that night to smoke, waking me up each time. At 5am, she started making coffee and the noise woke me up completely.

I asked her nicely why she was waking up so early, wondering if she had any plans. She said she had any plans. She said she couldn't sleep. I explained that I really needed that last hour of sleep because of work and asked if she could wait until 6am to make coffee. I also mentioned that my epilepsy gets worse when I don't get enough sleep and I was at risk of having seizures at work if I didn't sleep enough. She said that she wanted coffee with her cigarettes but would try to wait next time I had to work. Despite this, she continued to wake me up early in the morning and throughout the nights, insisting that she needed coffee with her cigarettes. I suggested making coffee the night before or drinking iced coffee or coke instead, but she refused.

She demanded silence at 10pm because that's when she wanted to sleep and I respected that. She also had moments of binge eating, emptying my fridge and pantry. Once, she ate an entire loaf of bread within 30 minutes of me leaving the apartment, promising to replace it once she got money. I'd also told her to feel at home so I couldn't really get mad, but it started to annoy me because of the cost and inconvenience. Em had long black hair that was everywhere, on the sink, floor, and bathtub. I'm not a clean freak, but it was unpleasant, and she also left fingernails and toenails on the bathroom floor and drops of urine on the toilet seat. I saw a silverfish on the bathroom floor, which feeds on hair and nails, likely enjoying its dessert.

I initially tried to imply the need to clean by putting a broom and shovel in the bathroom, but it didn't work, and I eventually asked her nicely if she could clean the bathroom floor more often, using we instead of you to avoid making her feel attacked. She promised to think about it, but nothing changed. I started dating a guy and was head over heels for him. He was also in a roommate situation, so we had a tough time getting alone time. I asked him if we could have one night to ourselves occasionally, but she could have the apartment to herself as well. She claimed that she had nowhere to go, no friends or family. I wasn't asking for 24 hours, just a few hours for quality time, and she eventually accepted after some persuasion and stayed with a friend one night while I stayed

away the next week to give her more alone time. One morning I found my cat's water bowl completely dried out. There was no spill and it looked wiped out with a towel or paper. I had filled it the night before. She claims that the cats must have tipped it over but there was no evidence of a spill and my overly social cats began to withdraw from her, spending most of their time in my bedroom which was unusual. I had an old saucepan from the 60s that meant a lot to me because it was my grandmother's and held nostalgic value. She burnt it and made no attempt to clean it, just left it on the stove and went out for a smoke. I found it ruined and cried, and she didn't even apologize. She also broke dishes several

times without replacing them or apologizing, and this added to my frustration. After two months, she kept waking me up at night, binge eating my food, never cleaning, never leaving the house, scaring my cats and ruining my things. I realized that she had stolen my prescribed sleeping pills. I had 20 in my nightstand when I left for work and they were gone when I returned. She denied it but no one else could have taken them. The summer heat was strong and I felt locked up in my tiny bedroom with my two cats. I never got any time to myself or alone time with the guy that I was dating. My apartment was messy and she was stealing from me. Out of nowhere, my old elementary school

classmate texted me on Facebook and asked how I knew Em. He had seen my Facebook post about us being roommates. I told him that we were old co-workers and that she needed a place to stay because she got evicted. And he said, I know. Do you know why she was evicted? Yeah, she accidentally went into her neighbor's apartment, I replied. He said, that's not the full story. She broke in and snuck up to their sleeping baby with a knife in her hand. The father woke up and wrestled her down, saving the baby.

I felt sick to my stomach. Could this be true? It would certainly explain why she was evicted, but it sounded so horrible. She seemed so timid. My friend had the full police report. Apparently the couple that she broke into was his ex-girlfriend's family. It seemed M had a psychosis during the break-in, but those parts weren't public. It was clear that she had been lying about what happened and how long she had been mentally stable. I started getting paranoid

and wanted her to move out. We had a contract with a 30-day notice period. I knew asking her harshly would mean 30 days of chaos, so I wanted to handle it nicely. I started looking for cheap hostels for her to suggest so that she wouldn't be in the streets. I sat down with her and explained that I missed my alone time and the apartment was too small for two people. I said it wasn't personal and that I wouldn't want to live with anyone right now. I expressed regret and hoped that we would remain friends. She looked crushed and said it wasn't possible. I showed her the hostel I found and explained that I needed her to move out because I felt suffocated.

The summer heat made it tough to keep the door to the bedroom closed and I needed my sleep. She said that she would try to move out but not until the 30 days had passed and I agreed. The first night after our talk she got up and made coffee at 2.30am. I nearly had a mental breakdown. I was going to get up at 6 and couldn't go back to sleep. I asked her in the morning for probably the 10th time to wait until I got up to make coffee but she didn't even answer. She just sat on the sofa and stared out the window. I was freaked out, but left for work. She kept being weird, making a mess,

waking me up, eating my food, and all I could think about was the incident with her and the baby and the knife. Eventually, I got so angry about being woken up by the coffee maker that I unplugged it and stored it in my attic, which she had no access to. It may be childish, but I was going crazy and just wanted her to stop. The next night, I woke up at 4am to her making coffee in a saucepan. I tried talking to her again, but she just stared and didn't reply. In my frustration, I stored the saucepan in the attic too. The third night, the guy I was dating was sleeping over because I was getting really paranoid about her weird behavior. I woke up to him poking me, whispering, look. In the doorway, Em was just standing silently, staring at us. It was like a scene

from a horror movie with her long black hair over her face. I didn't say anything at first, wondering if she was doing something by the door, but realized that she was still just standing still, staring. It reminded me of the ending of Paranormal Activity where Katie just stares at Micah. I sat up and said, what are you doing? But before I could finish, she slammed the door shut and I heard the sound of something metal falling and her running into the living room. I yelled, you need to leave and just started crying hysterically because this was turning into a literal nightmare. Of course, I didn't go back to sleep and was really happy to have company that night. I kept asking myself if she had done

this before, staring at me in my sleep. The next day I opened the door that she had slammed shut and saw a kitchen knife on the floor. That was the metal sound that I had heard. I took all my knives and locked them in the attic. I asked a friend to come over when I told M that she had to move out immediately. During the conversation, I tried to stay calm, knowing that she had a mental illness and meant no harm despite my frustration. She didn't answer me, just stared out the window. She left the apartment and sent me a text saying that I was disrespectful for bringing a friend over to her place. That night, I thought that it would be quiet without the coffee maker or saucepans. But at 3am, I woke up to her burning dry coffee powder in a frying pan, and I was terrified.

Her face was dead, her eyes black and I suspected that in that moment she was in a psychosis. I stopped the fire that was starting and she ran off to the living room in silence. She had an appointment with her psychiatrist the next day and while she was away I packed all her things and sent her a text telling her that she needed to pick them up and return my keys. I offered to give her money for a hostel for the remaining 26 days and she didn't reply. The guy I was seeing came to keep me company in case she thought about it and she didn't. She left the keys without looking at us and left. Our co-workers told me that she moved in with the guy that she was dating and stayed there for a few weeks until she somehow got an apartment on her own. She started working again and I was always happy to hear this, and she seemed to be doing well.

Then, in January, one of our old co-workers told me that M had called her saying everything must burn, she had a baby to save, and some other very delusional stuff. She had called 112, the Swedish emergency number, but they hadn't taken it seriously. M then proceeded to burn her entire apartment down because the voices in her head told her that she had to burn everything to save her friends and family. Her neighbors tried to rescue her, but she fought them off and ran back in, pouring liquor on the fire to make it burn more. She was arrested and sentenced last week for aggravated arson, and she will serve her time in a mental institution slash prison for a long time, possibly forever. Ironically, she will probably be in the facility where I used to work and where she used to work herself.

My old coworker was a witness at the trial. Apparently, Em had stopped taking her medication, the Abilify, because she felt that it made her numb and thought that she was stable enough to function without it. Apparently not. She had also stopped taking her medication the last few weeks that she stayed at my house, which explains her behavior. It's disturbing to think about what could have happened to me and my cats if she had stayed, or if I had been a heavy sleeper. I also think about what could have happened to that baby that she snuck up on before she was evicted. I know it's crazy that I just didn't throw her out sooner.

It was complicated. The reason I haven't been able to talk about it with my friends is that they sympathize with her and minimize my experience. They think I'm making a bigger deal out of it than it was, and I sort of understand since they never saw the darkness in her eyes that I saw in those last couple days. One particular story my granddad told me last year really stuck with me. When he lived in Britain during World War II, as the London Blitz happened, and he remembered seeing a German aircraft dropping a bomb on High Street in Lewisham when he was working there as a cinema projectionist. And since the street was so wide, the German plane was able to descend in between

the buildings themselves. All the staff at the cinema he worked at used to be air raid watchers so when they were sending over the flying bombs like that, he and his friends had to go up on the roof and spot them. One instance was where there was a buzz bomb coming straight at him and he pressed the button for the alarm to alert the bystanders below. Luckily the engines were designed to cut out so it nosedived down and struck Lewisham Market about another 200 meters up the road. So he and a couple of his friends went to try and help with the casualties. There were about 52 killed, several hundred wounded, and he helped to try and get stretchers

there, and he said that there were people with no arms, no legs, and no heads. One other time he said that he saw people trapped in a building on fire after a bombing, but there was nothing he could do to help them. After that, he never, ever boiled water in those old-style kettles that whistle. He always filled a pot and boiled it like he was making soup or something. My grandma learned the hard way when she used a hissing kettle and then walked into the living room to see my granddad curled up in a ball on the floor with his hands over his ears.

He said the whistles reminded him of all the people screaming inside the burning building. My pop pop is a real straight-laced, conservative kind of guy. Just about the last guy you'd expect to have been a major hippie back during his youth. He used to be a beatnik, as they called him back then. But after falling out of love with berets and snappy poetry, he grew out his hair and beard, got himself a motorcycle, and then rode off into the sunset. And he went everywhere too. All over Canada and the United States and down through Central and South America, all while lovingly maintaining this old BSA. He's got some crazy stories from those years, but none so creepy as this one. And so like I said, Pop Pop drove down through Mexico, financed by all the money he'd earned while up in Canada, working as a motorcycle taxi in remote areas

during the fall. He has a ton of wild stories from his time in the great white north, but for now I'll just stick to this one. Pop-Pop would drive from place to place, sometimes staying in some pretty nice places too, but the further out into the sticks you got, the more you had to rely on what the Mexicans call posadas. Posadas are basically like inns or taverns, but on a much smaller scale than you might be imagining. Sometimes they're just a spare room in someone's house, and for a small fee, the owners will feed you a little breakfast too. Pop-Pop stayed in a lot of these posadas while he was driving through Mexico, and even made a second trip to some of them during the returning leg of his journey.

But there was one Posada that he vowed never to go back to as long as he lived. He said that one Posada had a shared sleeping area, and that during his visit, a bunch of European travelers happened to be staying there too. He said that there were two Spanish girls and a Dutchman all traveling together after graduating from college over there or something. Pop-Pop said that they were nice folks and he chatted with them a little before they all turned in for the night. But then, in the middle of the night, he woke up to the sound of screaming. Someone turned on the light to find one of the Spanish girls sitting up and crying in bed.

There was a huge chunk of her hair missing, and when they looked underneath her bed, they found her hair just lying there on the floor. My dad says that she was hysterical for a few minutes, so no one could figure out what had happened until she calmed down a little. But when she finally spoke, what Pop-Pop heard terrified him. The girl said that she had been having a nightmare where someone had been pulling her hair, and then the next thing she knew, she was awake and part of her scalp felt like it was on fire. She put her hand to her head and said that she could feel that some of her hair was loose, and connecting that sensation to the dream that she just had,

she became so scared that she just completely freaked out. Everyone was sleeping when she woke up too. There was nothing moving around her, so the confusion of not knowing who pulled her hair out only added to her fright. Pop-Pop said that no one got any more sleep that night, and they kept each other's spirits up until dawn, before getting back on the road again as soon as there was enough light to do so. Pop-Pop said that there was no sign of the Posada's owner on their way out, but that as he was riding off on his bike, he caught sight of one watching him from the window of what must have been their bedroom. There's no way that they couldn't have heard the Spanish girl's screams. They were out in the middle of nowhere and the sleeping area wasn't all that far away from their bedroom, it would be 20 or 30 meters across the courtyard. Pop-Pop said it was like they knew to stay away from the sleeping area, which let Pop-Pop know that he should stay away

from that whole place entirely. I once asked him what he thought had happened, as in, who pulled out the Spanish girl's hair. And he just sighed and told me that the world was full of some beautiful, wonderful people, but also some real sick ones too. And to say that that stuck with me would be an understatement. I thought I had hit the lottery when I met my boyfriend's family. His mother was so nice and welcoming from day one. She immediately wanted to include me in family traditions, although I was still just a girlfriend back then.

My boyfriend's father was a little quiet and a typically manly man, but he was nice enough to everyone. It felt beautiful and things only got better when my boyfriend proposed. I invited my mother-in-law along with my mother and sisters for almost every event that I was having as the bride. She cried when she saw me in my dress at the fitting and I can't describe the kind of speech that she made at the wedding. And those were some of the most beautiful words anyone has said to me in my entire life. My own mother told me that I was the luckiest girl alive to find such wonderful in-laws because my paternal grandmother was, I guess, a raging lunatic. In short, she was never our grandma because she hated my mother so much, but as it stood, my future children, if and when I decided to have them,

would have both sets of grandparents so my mother was so excited for me. I should probably give everyone some fake names to make things a little clearer here and keep things relatively anonymous. I'll call my mother-in-law Lucinda and my husband Eric, and you should also understand that we're Caucasian, an American family and this happened this century, obviously. No one was really religious, my husband's family were Protestant Catholics but not really churchgoers and my family only attended church for weddings. And really in short, there was no special clashes or really any signs of what would come next. I can't say that there was any evident flip of the switch

because it all happened so gradually. I was the literal frog in a pot of slowly boiling water, as I like to say. Eric and I went on our honeymoon to the Bahamas and had a wonderful time. We talked about nothing and everything at the same time. One thing I made clear is that I was considering graduate school, so I wanted to wait a few years before we started having any children. We had only discussed these things in general terms, but after marriage, you have to set a few ground rules to really let each other know which direction you're going in. And Eric was completely supportive. He said it was a wonderful idea to wait and we could save money for the future, get a better house, etc. Amazing, I thought. When we got back from our trip, we

settled into our daily routines as a married couple. I should have noticed at that point what I didn't when we were dating. Or you could say that it started at that time. But I began cooking all the meals and Eric got sloppier than ever. We only lived together for a year before we were married and he was never really that sloppy. He liked cooking for me. But in this sort of new normal, he was leaving things around, not washing dishes, telling me when he needed laundry done and what I needed to make him for dinner. And I know, that was a red flag right away, but

you don't notice this stuff when you're still riding the high of wedding and honeymoon. I was working too and researching how and where to apply to graduate school, how much money we would have to spend, and if I could juggle it with my job. And by the end of that first week back, I was completely exhausted. And Sunday I was looking forward to sleeping and just sort of rotting in bed all day. Instead, Eric dropped the bomb on me that his parents were coming for lunch so I needed to get the house ready. I asked him why he didn't tell me sooner and he replied that he thought he did. And anyway, this will be our weekly routine now, he said. Excuse me? I asked what he meant by that and he said

that his mother had decided that we needed to have a weekly lunch or dinner because she didn't want us to lose touch with daily life. I told him I would have been fine with that if only he had discussed it with me earlier and I'm tired from that crazy week previously. Eric said that if I didn't want to do it, I should be the one to call his mother and tell her. That was so angry and honestly, I loved Lucinda so much that I wouldn't dare do such a thing. I got up from bed and told Eric that if we were working so hard on a Sunday, he had to help and he agreed. Lucinda and her husband, we'll call him Anthony, arrived after I spent the entire morning making a nice lunch.

And what did Eric do? He mowed the lawn, I guess that was something. But anyway, we sat down to lunch. Lucinda wanted to know all about our honeymoon and we laughed, telling her stories and such. After lunch, Eric and his father went to the back patio to drink and talk. I didn't like that because it left me with all the dishes. Luckily, I had Lucinda who volunteered to help and I thanked her gladly and I felt comfortable enough to talk to her about the few things that I was currently dealing with. I told her that her

son was becoming sloppier than he'd ever been and she just sort of laughed and said something along the lines of, that always happens to men when they get married. I asked her what she did to change that and she looked at me funny. She didn't understand why I wanted to change that. She told me I simply had to follow along because I was married and becoming a wife meant taking care of my husband. I laughed. I honestly and truly thought that she was kidding in that moment. And there was no way this amazing woman was telling me something so 1950s.

She had to be joking. When I looked at her again, she wasn't laughing with me. Lucinda was staring me dead in the face, and I kind of lost my breath for a second from how creepy it was. I'm not kidding, she said, and showed only a little annoyance as she continued. She said it was her job for years to take care of her husband, and she also asked if I was looking down on her. I immediately shook my head. I couldn't believe that she would interpret my laughter that way, but I also explained that I was working just as hard as him,

and that we should be sharing the household responsibilities and everything that entails. Lucinda grabbed my arm and squeezed a little too hard for comfort, but not enough for me to complain in the moment. And she says, this marriage, and when you have kids, it'll be harder, and you have to prepare for that. I want my grandkids to grow up in a good home. I tried to loosen her fingers and said that was fine but Eric and I had discussed kids and we wouldn't be having them anytime soon. The arm squeezing got painful this time. She asked what I was talking about and I told her that Eric and I had agreed to wait because I was going to grad school. Finally she let my arm go and threw the dish plate that she had been helping me dry onto the sink. I actually jumped at the noise. She told me I

couldn't wait to have children. I was getting too old, I guess 28 is old, and I needed to start having children immediately or they would come out. And I won't write this, but she used the R word and other not so nice terms. Then she went into a lecture about women prioritizing the wrong things. According to her, a career wasn't important for a woman. What mattered was family only. Besides, I already had a college degree and a good job. Why would I need anything else? I had accomplished everything and it was time to focus on the future. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't being persuaded by this very antiquated rant, but I was in such shock that she would say these kind of things to me. One reason I mentioned our country, race, and religion, and more is that I understand people in other places still have these sort of

expectations in their society, but not in modern America, I thought. Not the one I grew up in or the one I thought I was marrying into. Yet I was so stunned that I just sort of took it. And when Lucinda finished her rant, she went to grab the dish plate again, but I lowered my voice to something very soothing and asked her to sit down. I served her some tea and got back to work to finish the dishes. When I picked up her empty cup, she gently took my arm again and said, don't tell Eric any of this. These are wife worries. He doesn't need to know. Screw that, I thought. I sat Eric down that night as soon as his parents left, which took way longer than I expected, and lunch almost turned into a nightmare. I was worried

about having to make them dinner but I also told my husband that I wasn't going to put up with any of this attitude and I didn't sign up to be a housewife. I was going to advance my career and he was going to be my partner, not a child that I had to take care of. If he couldn't do that, I thought that we might have to get divorced. And he panicked, and he apologized and said that he hadn't noticed what he was doing, and he was sorry. Well, good, I thought, but I needed more than just apologies. I wanted a real change in him. And this did work. And following that conversation, Eric went back to being the partner that he had been before marriage. The problem was, of course, Lucinda, my mother-in-law, whom I really couldn't talk to like

I did with my husband. I agreed to Sunday lunch every week just to keep the peace, but Lucinda began to show up more often. It was always after I had arrived from work. On the first surprise visit, she knocked and I opened and let her in. Not so gladly but what could I really do? She came to show me something under the guise of welcoming me more into the family. It was a cookbook, a copy of the one all the women in their family had at home. It was very nice but she made me cook one of the recipes that night and she stayed and she didn't help at all. Lucinda said that I had to learn on my own because she wouldn't be there forever. Eric arrived and we sat down and she left without

helping to clean up. Another day she showed up with my father-in-law's shirts to teach me how to sew buttons. Another time her lesson was a special way to do laundry that left things softer and better and I was kind of losing my patience with her. I told Eric and he said that he would have a talk with her. And later, she wanted me to come over and at first, it was different because she was buttering me up. She fed me cookies and showed me old photo albums of Eric as a child. I knew this was a sort of persuade me to have kids type of day and I just sort of nodded and smiled. But one night was terrible for me.

I don't remember if I had a bad day at work or if I was just feeling awful. But when I saw that Lucinda was waiting for me I just knew that something would happen. I tried to hold it in and led her inside the house, listening to her happy chatter about some friend of hers who had just become a grandma. She looked at my house and told me that I needed to start vacuuming more often because it was getting too dusty, and I said that I would soon. She started making sniffing noises

and said that I needed to do more cleaning too because the house smelled musty. I stepped into the kitchen for some water and she followed. There were, honestly, like two dishes in the sink that I hadn't cleaned that morning because I was running a little late and Lucinda started clicking her tongue and shaking her head. She said something like, Dear, it's your responsibility to keep the house in shape. I'm coming here more often. I need to train you. And that was it. I spit out the gulp of water that I had just taken and coughed for a while before I could start speaking.

Or really, shouting. But I did. And I told her there was no training me. I wasn't a dog. I wasn't a maid. Two dishes and a little dust doesn't matter. And her son didn't marry me to get live-in help that he could sleep with. I admit that I was very rude and kind of hysterical, and to be honest, I expected a little pushback. Lucinda should have gotten just as crazy with me, and I thought that she would scold me for raising my voice and go into another 1950s rant, but she didn't. I saw her face become completely stoic, and her mouth was tightly

shut and her nostrils were flaring only a little. Then, she left the kitchen and got out of my house. I would have followed and apologized, but I was too tired. I was sure that I would see her later, obviously, and we could just have that conversation. I considered that Eric probably never spoke to her about our agreement. Perhaps Lucinda would call him, crying about the way that I spoke to her. I look forward to that, to this open communication, you know. But my husband got home, kissed me, and we went about our night as normal as ever. He was tired, but he helped me with the dishes, was affectionate, and we went to bed on great terms.

Alright, I thought. Lucinda wanted to keep these things between us, and maybe that's why she had asked me not to tell Eric about these wife worries. But the next morning I decided to apologize when she came over and we could sit down and talk. Lucinda didn't come, and she didn't answer any of my calls. I asked Eric if everything was alright with her and he said that he talked to her and everything seemed fine. I gave her a few days before I decided to go to her house. My father-in-law answered the door and said Lucinda wasn't feeling too well so I left and then I have to admit that I didn't try harder. I got busier at

work and with the upcoming deadline for grad school. Eric and I were happy at home, so Lucinda kind of just slipped into the back of my mind. Also, my boss was supervising everything I did more than usual for some reason. Months passed, and things were a little sad for me because none of the schools that I had applied to accepted me, and I was pretty bummed out around that time. Eric got busy at work too. Life, you know. And before I knew it, it was now Thanksgiving, and we were going to Lucinda's house. She was hosting the extended family, and I hadn't seen most of them since the wedding.

And so, to be nice and a little kiss-ass, I cooked an apple pie from the recipe book that Lucinda gave me. I brought it in and she wrinkled her nose and said something snarky like she didn't think that I wanted to be a maid and a cook. I let it go because she obviously was still angry at me. The issue later was that almost everyone at the party avoided me. At first I thought that I was just imagining things, but people stealthily left rooms whenever I was around. A few conversations stopped when I stepped out of the kitchen onto the back porch throughout the evening. Eric didn't even notice, but I was getting more concerned. After dinner, while everyone was still outside, I managed to corner Lucinda in the kitchen. I apologized for yelling at her and went through my list of excuses and justifications.

I blamed myself entirely just to get on her good side. Lucinda put down a tray of empty drinking glasses on her kitchen counter and turned to me. She started thanking me for the apology, but it was too late. I had shown her that I wasn't good enough for her son, but she was going to make sure that I changed that soon, she said. I asked her what she was talking about. Lucinda crossed her arms and insisted that I would be arranging my attitude soon. Lucinda was never a scary person, but the way she looked at me, she wasn't the woman who had cried at seeing my wedding dress. I held my ground, though. I said that I wasn't going to change, and what's more, Eric loved me the way I was a woman who had cried at seeing my wedding dress. I held my ground, though. I said that I wasn't going to change, and what's more, Eric loved me the way I was.

She smiled and chuckled, all very condescendingly. Lucinda said that he didn't love me fully right now because he needed a real wife, just like his mother. I had a chance to become that type of wife with her help, but I had squandered it, which gave her no other choice but to intervene. What? Intervene how? And Lucinda came out with the entire truth. She said that she had called all my schools because my husband told her which ones I had applied to and made sure to speak very badly about me. She also found out my boss was married to her aunt's friend and called him too. She said, soon you won't have school or work, so you only will

focus on Eric. That's your purpose. And I really couldn't believe it. Our thing happened months ago, and never in my wildest dreams would I have suspected anything like this. I asked her why she was telling me because I could easily expose her wrongdoings to the family and she laughed at me again, this sort of little huff sound and asked who would believe me. And I knew, this was the reason people were avoiding me that day. She had said something to turn the family against me and they were only being polite for Eric's sake. Except it was obviously more than that, as she smugly started telling me. Lucinda told everyone that I was alienating her from her son. She told me that Eric barely visited her because I didn't allow it and that I wanted to make him have a vasectomy so we would never have kids. It was insane. It was diabolical, really, and nothing like the

woman I had known. I think Lucinda had been waiting to tell me her plans, like a villain in a movie who details his entire plot right before killing the hero, because she just sighed happily after she was done. It was insane, though. I was barely breathing thinking what would be her final blow and would I even survive all of this. But I guess I did. But Eric and I didn't. As soon as we got home I just broke down. I was sobbing and snot was coming out of my nose in a disgusting display and after a while I realized that Eric wasn't very comforting to me. He had sat on our couch and crossed his arms and he looked so much like Lucinda and his next words were an echo of what she said. And I didn't want to hear it, but I did. Eric told me that I should have listened to his mother and

he thought that I'd be a great housewife just like her and that it was my duty to become what I was meant to be. And that meant that he had wanted all of this, although he hadn't said a thing and had supported me before. When he was done practically scolding me, I asked why he had taken my side the times that I had talked to him, and Eric thought that I would come around to what really mattered, he said. Also, he hoped that getting me pregnant might help. But he shut up and just stood. I don't think he meant to tell me that part though, but he did. And I don't know precisely what he was doing about my birth control, but I believed him capable of anything at this point. Either way, I knew things at that moment were over.

But I had one final question for him. Did you and Lucinda plan for all of this together? And Eric didn't answer, but he got that same stoic look just like his mother's. I can't describe it very well, but his silence just made me violent. I lunged at him, slapped him as hard as I could. Now I know I was wrong, I know I shouldn't have laid hands on him, but I told him to get that look off of his face immediately. I was repeating myself, but I told him, more like screamed at him in no uncertain terms, that I was not some perfect housewife to be bullied around, and that's not what we had planned. And out of nowhere, a slap came back at

me. Logically, I knew it was payback because I had done it first, but the pain that radiated from my cheekbone all the way down to my toes was nothing like I had ever felt before. I wanted to fall back, down on my butt and sob some more, but the look of hatred in Eric's eyes stopped me in my place. I wondered if he would hit me more, but he shook his head and just left for the night. I don't know whether I had been stupid not to leave earlier, as soon as his mother started acting weird, but I wasn't going to be an idiot any longer. I came from a family full of strong women who would tell me to walk away, but it was just so bittersweet. The entire last year of my life, the dream wedding, honeymoon, and family

that I had started to make was over. I packed my bags and was ready to go in less than an hour. Eric returned as I was readying my car, I braced for something but we were outside. And we only stared at each other before he gave me a parting shot saying, You'll never find anyone like me. And of course, he was right. I found someone even better. And guess what? As time went on, ironically, I am a stay-at-home mom.

But I have a real partner, who wants me to be a real parent and husband once he gets off of work. And I did go to graduate school. And I hope to get back to my career once the kids are older. Oh, and I quit that job almost immediately. And I am sad to report that I do believe Eric and Lucinda found themselves a little Cinderella to exploit. But to make a long story short, they're not my circus, not my monkeys anymore. I discovered this sub while with my friend Julia, who is with me as I'm typing this out because we just got back from a camping trip where we experienced the scariest thing either of us have ever experienced. So Julia and

I are both women in our early 20s and we were out camping in a remote area of Montana that isn't super popular but it's still fairly popular amongst locals who camp a lot like we do. Which meant that it wasn't super unusual when we saw a group of three guys who looked to be a little bit older than us drive past our camp about an hour after we had set up our chairs and table. We just assumed that they were searching for a good spot to camp. But then, when the car was still in our sight through the trees, we saw it turn around and as it was driving back, we both noticed one of the guys sticking his phone out the window and seemed to be recording us. Both of us thought it was really weird and I walked a bit closer to take a picture of their

license plate as a safety measure but when I got closer I saw that the back plate had all the numbers covered with black paint. Julia and I both got bad vibes from this but both of us were aware that men are creeps towards women all the time and both of us are prepared with bear spray because Montana is grizzly bear country and we decided it wasn't a weird enough interaction to pack our stuff and find a different spot. We decided to set up an empty tent outside and sleep in my car instead to trick people into thinking that we were sleeping in the tent in case anyone tried to attack us. Now later that night while we were both asleep in my car, we heard branches rustling and snapping

near the empty tent despite the calm weather. Initially, we assumed it was a bear trying to reach the bear bag with our food and scented hygiene products, and then we heard male voices outside. I lifted my head to the window and saw the same car that had passed us earlier. I got off the air mattress on top of the back row of seats that we had put down to create a sleeping area and locked the doors individually to avoid the car making a beeping noise. Julia and I stayed still, hoping the men would leave. We would hear them talking, but it was difficult to make out their words from inside the car. The rustling and snapping of branches continued, leading us to think that they were trying to steal something from the bare bag. However, neither of us wanted

to look out the window in case one of them spotted us. Eventually, we heard the car leave, which was a huge relief. However, we were too frightened to leave the car until daylight when other campers would be waking up. When I finally got out, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Above our tent, the men had hung a dead deer that had obviously been killed recently as it was leaking blood all over our tent. The internal organs were ripped out and its limbs were cut off and laid out in a circle around the tent. This was disturbing enough on its own, but hunting permits weren't even being sold at the time which meant that the deer had been killed illegally. And once we processed what we were seeing, Julia and I freaked out and drove away without taking down our camp.

Once we had cell service, Julia called the police and the forest service to report what had happened while I drove home. The forest service was kind enough to retrieve our belongings, but I don't even want mine back in case there was some weird curse put on them with those weirdos. The police are investigating to impose a fine for killing wild game out of season, but as far as I know, what they did to us isn't technically illegal, just very strange and really creepy. I haven't heard of anything like this before, but if you have, let me know. I'm very curious and also very spooked. I love camping, but after this, I don's not often that we get creepy people as customers. But the other day I was working at the register and an old man walks in.

I always say hi, welcome in, how are you? And he didn't look at me or acknowledge what I said. He immediately pointed to a cookie and asked what flavor it was, to which I said the name of it and then he asked what all was in it. I started listing out what was in it and he cut me off and said stop, all frustrated like. And then he finally looks at me and leans his face over the counter till he was about a foot away from my face and says, wow, you're a really pretty girl. You're so attractive, you know that, right? I just said thanks and a monotone voice and looked down at the ordering screen because i felt very uncomfortable but it gets worse he then continues to say

you must get that a lot don't you, you're such a beautiful girl. How old are you anyway? 14? 15? Surely you're 15, eh? And that's when my gut was telling me something is wrong with this dude. And I looked up at him and said very coldly, No, I'm an adult. And he gets all antsy with his body language and says, but what age? And I said,

an adult. Because I didn't trust him knowing my age. He already could see my name from the tags that we wear on our hats and that already made me feel nervous that he knows that piece of info about me plus where I work. He then shook his head like he was disappointed and said, Oh, well, you're just really attractive. I hope you know that. And I said, okay, and then he ordered really quickly and left. The point of sale saved his full name from his credit card after he placed his order, and my coworker and I looked up his name and

the town we're located in on a registered offender's website and it turns out that he has a criminal record on it which then made me feel sick to my stomach about the whole interaction that he was trying to have with me. My grandma once told me that back when she was 17, she almost got kidnapped, or worse. When she was 17, she had a driver's license, a car, and an after-school job, which kind of makes you feel like a huge loser in comparison, but oh well, I guess. She said that sometimes her shift wouldn't start until maybe an hour or two after school, so she'd park in an adjacent lot from the store and take a catnap. One day, a guy in a black sedan pulls up beside her, gets out of his car, and then stops

and knocks on her window. Grandma rolls down her window, and a man in a smart black business suit asks if she might be able to help him with something. He was headed into a nearby bank to sign some documents and these documents somehow required the signature of his wife too. Unfortunately, she was caught up with a minor medical emergency involving one of their children and wouldn't be able to make it until the situation was resolved. Not knowing what that might be and being desperate to get the documents signed, the stranger asked if my grandma might be so kind as to pose as his wife just for a minute so he could get his banking papers filed

or whatever. Grandma said that she was pretty taken aback by the request and was concerned that it might be illegal. The man said that yes, it was technically breaking the rules, but that she had his wife's consent to fake a signature and that ultimately no one would find out. Grandma was still a little hesitant, so the guy offered her $50 cash if she'd do him the favor. Getting the documents signed would unlock tens of thousands of dollars, so $50 would be a very small price to pay to get his hands on that kind of money. Eventually, my grandma is right on the verge of agreeing to do it, thinking, sure, what's the harm? But then she checks the time and realizes that she's just a few minutes away from starting her shift.

She had to totally reverse herself, having been almost on the verge of accepting the guy's offer and he knew it too. The guy started getting increasingly desperate, leaning in further and further into her open car window until finally, he snapped. He went from saying please, it'll only take a minute, to get the hell out of the car you little tramp in just a fraction of a second. And what terrified my grandma even more was how another man rose up from the back seat of the sedan. He'd been hiding there, but when he revealed himself, he got out of the car and started helping the man in the nice suit to open the car door and drag my grandma out of her vehicle. The whole thing was only stopped when someone came out of the store armed with a pistol and fired it into the air to scare the two guys off.

Grandma said it was the most terrified she'd ever been in her life, and that she my grandparents in the city with my mom, dad, and sister. We were walking towards the city's center, so it was pretty crowded. I remember letting go of my granddad's hand and feeling him grab back hold of it a few moments later. I kept walking, I don't know how far, but then I hear someone shouting from behind me and grabbing my other arm. I hear him say sorry, and I look up and realize I was holding hands with an old man that I didn't know. My granddad assumed that I'd accidentally grabbed onto this man's hand thinking it was him. I remember him pulling me away all embarrassed and I was just thinking, but the man grabbed my hand. And I remembered how he tugged on it too to get me to walk with him. I think some guy tried to snatch

me out of a crowded area. I still don't understand why my granddad thought I grabbed onto his hand. My grandparents were normally quite paranoid about strangers. One time, my grandma and I were doing some backcountry camping in the northwest of Washington State. We made camp and ate dinner in a fire-restricted patch of the National Forest, which, as you can guess, meant no campfire. We made dinner and went to bed at around 10pm, but spent the next few hours talking before we actually did sleep. Right when I was dozing off at around 1am I think I heard a rustling in the trees above us and then the frog stopped croaking and then more rustling in the trees. I whispered to my grandpa if he heard that and he said that he had. We were both tired but we were suddenly keyed up and very alert. There was

more rustling in the trees. Finally, I was tired of the waiting to see what the hell this thing was so I rolled over and a flashlight. So I rolled over and grabbed a flashlight and then shined it into the woods to see what was sneaking up on us. What came falling out of the tree and landing right beside me was none other than about a 200 pound mountain lion. It hit the bush next to me and disappeared into the night in a flash. Needless to say, we packed up and hiked out immediately. Our exodus from the woods looked like a scene from pitch black, as every light we had brought was turned on and taped to something. Many years ago, my grandfather and I were driving home from one of my swimming lessons when he suddenly seemed strangely on edge. For some background, I was a little kid, I lived with my grandparents and my grandpa was a cop. It also happened that our house had been the target of two recent break-ins that week but the suspects were believed to be neighborhood kids just messing around because nothing had been taken.

Suddenly, grandpa pulled over and the car behind us just so happened to pull over too. Grandpa tells me to lay down in the back seat and then turns off the lights in his truck, locks the doors after grabbing his gun out of the center console. I hear him yelling at a guy, telling him to leave him alone and I hear the guy yelling some things back. I just remember being very confused and scared. I'm not sure how long later, but I'm assuming it was a lot shorter than it felt. I saw two squad cars pull up. The door on my side opens and I'm faced by two police officers in uniform who help me out of the truck.

I later heard my grandpa say that the stranger had threatened to shoot him and me as well as follow him home and murder my mom and sister too. About a year ago I found out from my dad that the man was a friend of some drug dealers my grandpa had arrested and was likely looking for some way to even the score. They found that he had had pictures of the inside of our house as well as some miscellaneous belongings. I don't know what happened to the guy, but I hope he's in jail. The thought of what could have happened still scares me. When I entered high school, I met someone named Stephanie. The person who would become my everything for over 10 years.

I was a lonely, shy child and Stephanie managed to make high school super fun. We had other friends, but at the end of the day, it was always Stephanie and me. We decided together to go to the same university and study business because she said that that would open many doors. I thought it was a good idea, and the universe was on our side because we managed it. We got to share a dorm our first year there and moved off campus for the other three years. When we graduated, I thought it would be a good idea for us to have our own place so we could experience adulthood for the first time. But we needed jobs for that, so we both started looking. Stephanie got an interview at a nice company a few weeks after graduation. She got the job and managed to recommend me.

I was encouraged to apply and a month later I was working at the same place and I really felt like we were sisters through and through. We found studio apartments on the same street and they were reasonably priced. Stephanie said that we could be independent and still be there for each other and this was a great idea. For most of my life I couldn't believe that I had been so lucky to find my best friend. But this new living and working situation came with some changes. I had longer hours than Stephanie because our roles were slightly different. It's hard and boring to explain, but I had to stay an hour more almost every day.

At first, Stephanie waited for me so we could take the subway together, but the rush hour crowds were rough to manage. Eventually Stephanie decided to leave promptly at the end of her day and run errands. She always checked on me though and I always sent her a message or a quick emoji when I got home. The thing is, I had something then that I didn't have since high school. Time to myself. I could go to the grocery store alone which is where I met Curtis. I'm a little quirky, so I was never interested in dating much when everyone else was, and I only remember having a two-week boyfriend back in high school and sharing a few kisses with randoms at university, and it was nothing. Book boyfriends were all I needed to keep me satisfied in that sense, if you know what I mean. Curtis was different though. Our carts

bumped in at the supermarket, kind of like a rom-com actually, and he flirted with me pretty blatantly. He looked like the men in my books and I just jumped at him. Figuratively, not really, because we spent that first night together. You know, I've always believed shy girls are only shy because they haven't met the one they want. In the end, it wasn't a one night stand. He wanted something more and he lived close by, and I was completely in. So it took a while for me to notice that I hadn't seen Stephanie in almost three weeks, and she was actually waiting for me after work one day and told me so. And I'm so sorry for being so callous. Just texting and sending memes was not enough.

But she asked me what I was doing that day and I told her about Curtis. To say that she was shocked is sort of an understatement. When I told her how serious things were going, she was even more surprised and worried. I assured her that everything was okay. I liked him very much, but I wasn't stupid either. However, I couldn't go out with her that night because he and I had plans already. She didn't like that and wasn't afraid to tell me. We had discussed this while growing up,

how we never wanted to be the kind of women who forget about their friends when they get boyfriends. I told her this wasn't the same because I had made plans with Curtis before. Stephanie said that we never needed plans before, but I told her to start making them, otherwise we would spend days without seeing each other. I was acting cheerful during this conversation, but I could tell that she wasn't entirely happy. She sighed and said that we were going out the next night and I had to promise to tell her everything. I thought that was an excellent idea. The next day, during our hangout, I told her all I knew about Curtis, everything that wasn't private, but she asked even more. She wanted to know where he lived exactly, where he worked,

his height, his astrological sign, his birthday. I was confused, but told her what I knew. Stephanie asked me to find out the rest, and I said I would because we were probably seeing each other in a few days. We agreed to go to a new restaurant, and Stephanie asked which one, and I answered, not thinking anything of it. And believe it or not, she showed up on our date, uninvited. Curtis and I were already sitting at our table, and she just stood there. And the silence was awkward, so I looked at Curtis, biting my lip.

He got my cue and invited her to sit. Okay, I didn't like that. And the next day at work she came into my cubicle and asked if we could have a girls night at my house soon. I loved that idea because I was trying to think of ways to tell her that showing up at the restaurant was not cool. But I was still unsure if it was a big deal or not, seeing as we'd known each other forever. We had our girls night. It was fun and fatty and full of laughs. I brought up the whole date crash and she skirted over the subject until I sort of let it go. Whatever, I thought. I didn't want to upset or hurt her by telling her that she was actually third wheeling.

Stephanie's dating life was complicated. I didn't know much, but she went out with many guys at university, and she said that it was the time to experiment. Anyway, I thought that she was the opposite of me, who just didn't care. I never saw the faces of the men that she met, and if she slept with them, she did it at their dorms or their apartments. What I knew was that she hadn't been serious with anyone either. Technically, I was the first to have a stable boyfriend. But a few days after our girls' night, I noticed that Curtis hadn't texted or called since the last time we saw each other, the day before that girls' night. He didn't reply to my messages, and I was starting to worry. I thought about calling Stephanie, but He didn't reply to my messages and I was starting to worry.

I thought about calling Stephanie but I didn't want to. Curtis and I and whatever went down with us seemed private. It also seemed stupid to panic after only a few days so I waited. I decided to clean my apartment to pass the time and that's when I found it. There was a shoebox under my bed. I didn't keep any shoeboxes at all. My parents were practically hoarders, and I had promised myself to throw out everything I didn't need. But this one was small, like the kind for children's shoes.

I took it out and almost discarded it, but something told me to look inside. That was confusing. I saw a cloth napkin smudged with food, an old tube of red lipstick, some hair, and a vial of some black liquid. The interior smelled like incense, the kind that kind of gave me a headache. I didn't remember having this trash, but I grabbed the napkin and noticed the new restaurant logo. We hadn't eaten there since Stephanie crashed our date. I never took this napkin which meant that only two people were capable of making this box and putting it under my bed. A flash of something passed through my mind,

my two-week boyfriend from high school. We had broken up and I was bummed in my room when Stephanie came to visit with ice cream and cookies at that time. I dropped a cookie accidentally and it rolled under my bed. While getting it back, I found a sock that smelled like this shoebox and I remember not being able to tell what it had inside. Stephanie took it before I could look further and told me not to worry about it because I was wallowing in depression. Not really, but fine. And she threw it away or took it home. I didn't care. So the shoebox had to come from her, not Curtis. I had a strange feeling and took a picture. I eventually found a forum online and almost immediately people told me not to touch it. Too late I guess but okay.

They said it was witchcraft. The bad kind. I don't know what that meant but someone went into further detail and I was shocked by what she told me without me explaining anything about my life. This user wrote asking if I had a boyfriend and if so I was probably having problems with him because that box had the intention of breaking us up. I replied that I hadn't talked to my boyfriend in days and I think I knew who had done this. She told me that I needed to confront whoever did it and throw those items away after. I wasn't sure if I believed any of this but I took the box with me to work and during lunch I went to find Stephanie. I asked her to come to the bathroom with me for a second and she smiled. As we were walking she asked if everything was okay with Curtis and her little

comment made my hackles rise like she already knew. We went into the bathroom and I checked if it was fully empty and I took the shoebox out of my purse demanding to know what she did. Stephanie denied knowing anything about it but I knew she wasn't a good liar. I knew her or thought I did for years and I even mentioned the sock. She transformed before my eyes, but turned to only look at me through the mirror. I don't know why. I can only describe this moment as like that scene in The Little Mermaid where Ursula is Vanessa, but in the mirror, she looks like Ursula. Not as obvious, but the way Stephanie's face contorted in this sort of restrained anger was not normal for

her. She was a bubbly outgoing woman usually. Then she took the box from my hands and threw it in the trash. After she went back to only staring at me through the mirror and said fine I did it. What are you gonna do about it? I backed up and tried to make her look at me for real, but she wouldn't, so I just stared at her through that mirror. I asked her why she did something like that, because I actually looked it up, and people told me that it was voodoo or whatever. And she started deflecting and asked if I had broken up with Curtis. I hadn't because I hadn't talked to him in a while, and she just started to laugh. That same creepy laugh. Okay, maybe it wasn't as dramatic as Ursula, but I swear it seemed that way. She said it was over for me and him and that I had to remember that she was my best friend

and I was hers. And she really dug into that phrase, you're mine. And I just stepped back. I had no idea what was going on or what she meant, but before I could back away any further, she grabbed my hand. Her face did turn to me this time, but for some reason she couldn't look directly at my eyes, and her fingers started to move across my knuckles, almost in a caress but not quite because I was trying to pull away. I asked her to stop, to look at me, and talk like a normal person. She was freaking me out. I don't know if I was yelling. I probably

was, but Stephanie wouldn't stop. She tried grabbing my other hand, but I avoided it until my back hit the wall. I heard a small whisper come from her mouth. You're mine. You won't leave me. She did finally take my other hand and did the same strange knuckle caress thing, almost like she was counting each one slowly. But that caress started turning painful. She was pushing her fingers into the indentation between each knuckle, pushing hard. I couldn't speak. Although I wanted to cry out from the agony of the pain, I was just sort of frozen with my back against the tiled wall.

I had no idea what would come next. I didn't even know if I was crying in that moment or not. All of this was just so insane, freaking me out. This was not Stephanie. Someone walked in. The door in that office bathroom was extremely loud and like a spell breaking, everything just snapped back into reality. I almost felt like it had been a vision because I just blinked and Stephanie was at least four paces away and finally looking directly in my eyes. And she just smiled and said that we would talk later and left. But we didn't, in fact, talk later. I waited because I was still hurt, confused, and curious, but Stephanie ignored me from then on and asked for a transfer from work after that, and she just cut me off fully from

her life after, and I still have no idea why. Look, I know anyone else would have just cut her off first, but she was my best friend before that day. All of this was so strange and I couldn't understand anything. And as crazy as it sounds, the night of our bathroom face-off, Curtis actually called me and apologized for not texting sooner. He got spooked about us moving too fast but snapped out of it that day and wanted to make it up to me. I find it hard to believe that this was all because of the box or whatever Stephanie was doing to me in that bathroom.

Anyone would easily explain it away as some coincidence and I think of it like that but sometimes I still wonder. Maybe. Also, if Stephanie felt of it like that, but sometimes I still wonder. Maybe. Also, if Stephanie felt like I was hers, why did she cut me off like that? And not getting closure is just terrible, especially because the mirror stare still remains fresh in my mind, and the pain in my knuckles hasn't left since that day. I still miss my best friend. When I finished uni, I moved back home until I found a job. As soon as I could afford to, I set up a profile on the website SpareRoom. I was contacted by a guy named James who had a room to rent on the outskirts of town that I worked in.

It sounded good, but he wanted to talk on the phone before inviting me to view it. We had a chat one evening and it turned out that we had some things in common. We both enjoyed fitness, particularly swimming, and were movie buffs. By the end of the call, it felt like chatting with an old friend and I was looking forward to meeting him. James didn't specify his age but I assumed that he was in his 20s like me. When I went to view the property, he actually came out of the house next door to greet me. When he introduced himself as James, I was pretty shocked. He was at least 50, dressed quite conservatively and looked like he was wearing a hairpiece.

If he told me on the phone that he was in his early 20s, I wouldn't have questioned it. I went ahead with the viewing, but I had already decided that I didn't want to rent a room from him. I wanted to live with people who were a similar age to me. I was also put off by the house decor, which looked like it hadn't changed since the 80s. When I viewed the bedroom, it looked like it was occupied by a young person. There were several pairs of trainers and a games console. James said that the previous tenant, Mark, was moving to London for work. Coincidentally, my name was Mark too. James invited me to sit in the living room after the house tour.

I didn't want to be rude, so I did. He explained that he cared for his elderly mother, who lived next door, and then he started complimenting my style, saying I looked cool. He proceeded to put his hand on my leg, which made me feel very uncomfortable. When he asked if I was interested in the room, I said that I had some other properties to view, but would be in touch. I then made my excuses to leave. Everything about him screamed a red flag, and I just wanted to get out of that house. As soon as I was back in my car, I called my mom to tell her how freaked out I was and

I absolutely would not be living there. James texted me a few days later to ask if I'd thought anymore about moving in. I lied and said that I'd found somewhere closer to town and I did eventually find something with some other young professionals which turned out to be great. Some months later, our town was shocked by the news that a man's body had been found in the fields on the outskirts. He was later identified as Mark. I didn't think much of that until I saw a murder suspect that was his landlord, James. The same James whose house I viewed. I saw him on the news and got instant chills and later he was convicted of Mark's murder. I take a walk every morning as part of my waking up routine. This morning, towards the beginning of my walk, I passed a man who asked me something.

He's slightly too close to me, but not enough to make me uncomfortable, just enough that I don't want to slow down or have to listen to what he has to say. I had my headphones in as well and don't take them out, but hear enough that he had asked me for the time. Without breaking my stride, I glance at my watch, saying 7.30 and keep walking. If he said anything else, I didn't hear it. About 20 minutes or half an hour later, well far away from the first time I came across this guy, that same guy walks up from behind, again too close to me to ask for the time. I tell him at that point to get away from me, stop following me and that I already gave him the time. That escalates things immediately because he shoots back. Why following me and that I already gave him the time. That escalates things

immediately because he shoots back. Why? Is it because I'm black? And I respond no. It's because he approached me about a mile away with the same question. He says he lives in the neighborhood, so I say fine, but please stop following me. He denies following me and calls me a ching chong and yells at me to go back to China as I cross the street to put more distance between us. It was insane. And this guy follows me across the street and keeps following me as I cross back over. At this point, I'm yelling for him to get away from me and stop following me and he's repeating the same lines about being black and hurling racial slurs at me. I'm getting worried that while there are people out at 8am either walking their kids to school or going to work, no one's going to step up because of bystander

defect. After I cross the street for a second time, he gets right in my face yelling about how he's not following me. I have my back against an apartment complex and am getting worried that things are going to get physical when a tall woman with pink hair walks up. I don't remember what she said but I at some point confirmed to her that he wasn't leaving me alone. She's about the same height as this guy and starts to yell for him to stop following me. He is now being badgered by her and he's also yelling back the same denials about not following me, being from the neighborhood and accusing that this is all because he's black. And thanks to my lady savior, I'm able to break away. A couple that was exiting

their apartment who witnessed all of this asked if I'm alright, which I say yes without stopping. I walk half a neighborhood block down to duck through an alley. As I'm alright, which I say yes without stopping. I walk half a neighborhood block down to duck through an alley. As I'm walking down the alley, checking the entire time to make sure that the guy's not following me, I see the woman with the pink hair had disengaged and is walking off. I'm so glad it didn't escalate for her and feel bad for not being able to thank her for her help. I take a very circuitous route home, looking behind my shoulders every once in a little while. It was summer break and we, my family, didn't go on any trip, unlike every break. I was just 8 years old and my younger sister was 3.

We were playing along with other kids who lived in the same building as us, just on different floors. The building is not exactly an apartment building, it's more of a multi-storied house. The front gate is a bit further from there and the only entrance and exit of the building. So since we were downstairs and playing, anybody who would enter or exit the building would be visible to us and we'd greet them because every tenant knows us and we know them, as well as their family members who might visit them. A new person visiting any tenant is rare but not impossible, and right adjacent to the big entrance gate is a small old-style window with grill but it has a small opening at the bottom. We were all playing but then I got tired and sat on one of the chairs placed on the porch area and from there the window thing was on my right side and I could see the gate clearly.

I was just looking out when I noticed a man staring at the gate and he was able to look at my sister and friends through that gate. It concerned me when I realized that he wasn't even trying to look away and was just staring at them blankly. I turned around from where I was sitting to signal my friend to move to the other side, away from his sight, but she didn't understand. Frustrated, I turned back and was about to stand up when my gaze fell on the guy and he was now staring at me. My body froze and I could feel fear creeping up on me. I couldn't move, I don't know why, but I stared back at him and suddenly he started smiling. When I say smiling, I mean full on grinning from ear to ear. And that scared the soul out of me and I mustered some courage, got up and ran towards my friends. I didn't tell them anything and just asked them

to go upstairs with me which thankfully they did without questioning. I didn't tell them anything and just asked them to go upstairs with me which thankfully they did without questioning. I didn't tell anything about this to my parents because I thought that they would stop me from going downstairs to play. The next day we came to play again and I looked through the window just to make sure that he wasn't there. Fortunately he wasn't or so I thought.teen minutes in and I spotted that guy again. He was, again, standing at the very spot and staring at us. At me. I tried to play it cool because my friends knew nothing about him, but I couldn't for long and we went back inside again. From what I remember, this happened for three to four days and now my friends started complaining

about how I didn't let them play and that they had to come back earlier than they were supposed to. On the fifth day or fourth I don't remember correctly I made up my mind not to pay attention to him and just focus on playing. We were playing cricket that evening and I was batting. I hit the ball hard causing it to go over the gate, which was a very normal thing, and as per the rule made by us, the one responsible must fetch the ball. My heart started beating because I could see his grin getting wider and creepier. He went towards the ball on the road and picked it up. He then held his hand out,

gesturing me to come and take it. I was scared, but I had to go, so I did. As soon as I reached to take the ball from his hand, he bent close to my ear and his words are still ringing clearly in my ears to this day. I'm a good man. Look at the window when you go inside. I'll leave something for you. That sent shivers down my spine and I ran with the speed of light. After we were done playing, I saw him sliding a piece of paper through the little opening. He then looked at me, grinned and waved goodbye. I grabbed the paper and opened it.

He had written his phone number and asked me to call him at two in the afternoon, knowing my parents would be asleep by that time. It was also written that if I didn't do it, my friend's lives would be in danger. As an eight-year-old, I didn't know any better, so I called him using my mother's phone. He picked up and I didn't have the courage to say anything, so I stayed silent, and he said, you're a good girl, just like me. You should come stay with me. Come outside. I'm waiting to pick you up. Since I lived upstairs, I went to the balcony and he was actually standing near the gate, looking directly at me, waving and smiling. I couldn't contain it anymore, so I started crying and disconnected the call.

I ran inside and bawled my eyes out in my room. Thankfully, my mother didn't wake up and I cried it all out. I didn't go out for the next few weeks and everybody kept asking me about it. I still didn't tell them. That guy stopped coming too and I don't remember when he stopped coming, but he did and I was relieved. And eventually this experience just started fading and I grew up. Fast forward 10 years. I was 18 and my mother asked me to buy some snacks. I took my sister and went out. And the shop that I had to go to was at the end of the road, several houses away so not too far. I was standing in a queue when I felt uncomfortable

because the man behind me kept pushing me. Annoyed, I looked at him only to realize that it was the same man. My face went pale and I could feel my heart throbbing in my throat. I tried not to panic and calmed myself down by telling myself that he couldn't do anything in public. There were tons of people there and that gave me a sense of security. As soon as my order came, I took out my wallet hastily to pay, but he beat me to it. The owner looked at him weirdly and then at me because I was a regular there, and he was seeing this man for the first time. I paid for it anyway, and the owner politely asked him to take his money back. I gave the bag to my sister and asked her to go home and inform our mom about a man following us. Just in case he attacked, I'd have a backing and she would be safe too.

Our house is within the vision range of the shop, so I waited for her to get inside. And now it was my turn to go home. As soon as I stepped out, the man followed me and he said something like, you're a beautiful lady now. We should catch up. I kept walking and walking, but now that we were far from the shop, he started speed walking and I had to walk faster. I could feel goosebumps all over my body. I started running and I could see him catching up to my speed when the owner called for him loudly saying that some of his money was still at the counter and asking him to come back

which gave me enough time to get inside and lock the gate. I haven't seen him since that day and it's been two years. I'm 20 now and I hope to never meet him again and I hope I never see him again. I don't know why but it's instilled a sort of paranoia in me, and I dread seeing him when I turn 28. A bunch of years ago, I matched with a guy on Tinder. I was a freshman in college and just got out of a relationship and was having fun. I matched with this guy. He was 24. We'll call him D. He was a little odd but we had similar interests and went to the same school so I thought why not. The red flag started rolling in immediately when I said I would go on a date with him. Of course the fact that he was

much older isn't lost on me as the initial red flag. At this time, I didn't have a car. D offers to pick me up, but tells me that he's not in town, but he would leave his grandmother's funeral early, which was at a minimum five hours away, to come and pick me up. He showed up in sweatpants, a wife beater, and flip-flops, which struck me as odd because he said that he was coming from a funeral. We had made plans just to get a bite to eat and hang out. Since he had been out of town he asked if it was okay if we stopped by to pick up his dog. He left the dog with a friend. I like dogs so I was like no problem. It's dark and we pull up to an apartment complex and he leaves me in the car and comes back with a golden retriever.

The dog immediately starts growling at me, which has never happened to me before, so I start feeling a little weird. D doesn't say anything about the dog's temperament. Because we have the dog, he wants to drop him off at his house, and this feels logical to me, so I agree. When we pull up to D's house, he asks if I want to come in, not wanting to sit in the car, and I do. The moment I walked in, I immediately knew that it was the wrong choice. The house was trashed. There's garbage everywhere, trash bags full along the front entry, bottles and wrappers on the couch, and just general crap everywhere.

D lets me know that he has a roommate, but that roommate isn't home. I assume this is to imply that the mess isn't his. After brushing the trash off the couch, he asks if I want to sit and play chess. I had expressed that I was interested in learning and he seemed more than happy to help me learn. And this too was a mistake. D begins explaining the game to me and it isn't just fun first date explaining. He's gotten very serious and is showing me each piece while telling me what it is and what it does and how it moves. D then begins questioning

me over each piece which I mostly get wrong and every time I get one wrong he yells at me the correct answer and tells me to try again. He got more and more frustrated and it made me very uncomfortable so I suggested that we just pause chess and do something else. D suggests watching a movie which is fine with me. The idea of us leaving and going to get food was seemingly forgotten. D tells me that we can watch a movie in his room and I oblige but then he explains that he has to put clean sheets on the bed. I'd assumed that we were moving to his bedroom because it may have been cleaner, but when we go in, it's not, and there was no TV in his room. He proceeds to put on Iron Man 2 on his phone to have us watch, and we watched about 10 minutes of it before things got intimate. I won't tell you strangers all these details, but short story short,

we didn't actually go through with it, but other little things went down. I will say those things were consensual, and after they occurred, I was feeling really odd about the whole situation and told him I didn't want to go any further than that. D was confused, but didn't push it at first. He said fine and we watched maybe five more minutes of the movie before he said that he didn't want to watch the movie anymore. He started complaining and asking me why I didn't want to do things with him and I simply said that I wasn't in the mood anymore. He then began pressuring me to tell him exactly what it was about him that made me feel that way.

And at this point, we had moved from the bedroom back into the dirty living room, and you might be thinking, seems like a perfect time to leave. And I thought so too, but this is where things start to get scary. As if he knows I'm thinking about how I'm leaving, he explodes and begins to scream at me. This is a six foot something man screaming in the face of a five foot nothing young girl. Of course I'm internally freaking out, but I'm trying to make sure that I don't make him any more angry but also not agreeing to anything. For the next five to ten minutes, D screams at me about why I don't like him, why I don't want him, and continuously asks what's wrong with him and to tell him. I tried to placate him as best as possible, saying the old, it's not you, it's me, and no, I don't want to leave. Again, this man is my only ride home and I'm truthfully not sure exactly where I was. Though I did have my phone and Google Maps, I didn't have Uber

downloaded at the time. D finally calms down when he believes I'm going to stay, then suggests we try playing some video games. I was in full internal freak out mode trying to make sure that I was playing the part of the interested date because I was terrified that if he felt that I wanted to leave, he would freak out again. We play this game for a while, I forget what it's called, Overwatch or something, and D starts getting upset again. He starts yelling about why no one likes him, and why no one wants to get to know him, and why no one loves him, saying that he has never had a girlfriend and all his dates had been just one night stands. Again, I placate him with a, I don't know, lots of girls are just snooty like that. And at this point I'm saying anything and everything he wants to hear. He even starts

crying about how his mother never loved him and telling me very deep dark things about what his mother has said to him and treated him like. After he finally calms down once more, he gets up and goes to the kitchen to fix us some drinks. Now, if you're anyone with a brain, you're thinking absolutely not, which was my exact thought at that moment. I decline his multiple offers for a drink, and he asks instead of alcohol if I wanted water, and of course I declined that too, feigning that I wasn't thirsty. I stayed at his apartment until about 1am because I was sitting next to him, terrified to 1. ask him to take me home, 2. say I'd walk home,

or 3. figure out how to get an Uber. I had been trying to download Uber on my phone without him noticing, but then it asked for card information and that was too hard to do without him noticing. So around 1am I yawn very loudly and say, Oh wow, it's 1am, my roommates are going to be so worried about me. I laugh as if my roommate would be stupid to worry and that I hadn't been watching the clock since he picked me up at 9 p.m. and then said I'm so tired I should get home soon again I was super scared that he would freak out but he didn't explode he just looked at the clock and said yeah it was late but I was not taking any chances, so I said, I got a great idea. If I get to bed soon, I'd love to have breakfast with you on campus.

I was hoping my offer convinced him that I was intending to see him again, and it did. He seemed very happy at the prospect of it and jumped up, walking me out of my house into his car. The drive back was excruciatingly long. The ride was completely silent, neither of us spoke. It was only a ten minute drive but I could have sworn that he slowed down every time we got to a particularly dark area or underpass. D dropped me off and I smiled and made a good show of being tired yet excited to see him tomorrow. He offered multiple times to walk me to my door but I declined every time and said that I didn't want to bother him and excited to see him tomorrow. He offered multiple times to walk me to my door but I declined every time and said that I didn't want to bother him and I'd see him tomorrow.

I walked myself to the building and the moment I got around the corner I sprinted so fast up the stairs and to my door before he could change his mind and follow me to my door. When I got in my dorm room I genuinely felt like I had just escaped a serial killer. Even now writing it makes my heart race a bit. I never met up with him but he begged me for multiple days after to meet up with him again. He even asked to pay me $20 an hour to sit near me in the library. I declined obviously and only ever saw him once after at the gym on campus. He didn't see me and I left immediately.

I thought about Dee occasionally since the date and wondered if all those girls that he had one night stands with had the same experience I did. And I still sometimes wonder how many girls there were after me. When I was in third grade, my family and I moved out of state for my dad's job. I started at a new elementary school and quickly became friends with a girl I'll call Maria. The two of us were inseparable, but her hobbies were something I wasn't used to. This was about 2012, and a big thing she loved was gore. Not just any scary movie gore, but like MLP, My Little Pony gore. She really introduced me to a very dark side of the internet for an 11-year-old girl. She kept a binder full of these gory images and often showed them to me on the bus. First red flag. Second red flag, the boyfriend. Being a literal child at the time, I didn't

understand the sudden interest in dating among my peers, but Maria had a boyfriend. Being a literal child at the time, I didn't understand the sudden interest in dating among my peers. But Maria had a boyfriend. It was your typical elementary school relationship, giggling and just holding hands. And it was as short-lived as any elementary school relationship is, with him breaking up with her without a care in the world. But she, oh she did not take this well. She gathered our little crew on the playground with me as her right hand man. She laid out the plan. We were to chase the boyfriend or ex-boyfriend I guess, catch him, hold him down and she would beat him up I guess. We all didn't want to do this obviously but she zeroed in on me. I was her best friend, and I was supposed to do this for her. And I,

being the stupid 11-year-old that I was, told her that she was acting insane and I was going to play with the boys. From that point on, we weren't best friends. She was my bully. She harassed me endlessly with little texts constantly popping up on my flip phone, calling me names on the bus, and telling authority figures that I had started it. Eventually this culminated in a sit down with the principal where we were both scolded and told to play nice and for a bit everything was calm. Then the art room scissors started going missing. Red flag number three. I had been chatting with a friend on the bus when Maria put a pair of scissors very close to my neck.

She laughed it off and I stayed quiet just wanting to keep some sort of peace at school. I knew she had stolen them. I never understood why I never said anything and things were quiet for a while again. But one day, a day that still haunts me, a day that has put up barriers in me that I shouldn't have had at a young age, I was taking my usual bus route, arriving early and taking a seat near the back. Maria arrived, sitting by herself on the opposite side nearer to the front. We took off and began the ride to school. As we neared the elementary school, Maria and I locked eyes, and I'll never forget that smile.

She proceeded to pull a kitchen knife from her bag, one of the big ones from her knife block. She flashed it at me before zipping the bag as the bus came to a stop. I remember sitting in my seat as everyone piled off the bus, and I don't remember much after that. I remember freaking out in front of the school, and I remember sitting in the office all day. I remember talking to men in uniforms, and I remember reading something I probably shouldn't have. She was planning to hurt me and the boy who broke up with her and she was suspended for the rest of the year. I moved before she came back and I never saw that crazy girl again. My grandmother was addicted to those dieting pills from the late 50s and 60s, the kind they used to call Mother's Little Helper.

The Rolling Stones wrote a song about it, and these things were basically just legally available speed, and it's crazy they were even allowed to sell it in the first place. My grandma got herself addicted, so bad in fact that she owned a collection of wigs that she used to impersonate other women so she could steal their prescriptions and feed her habit. I think it probably goes without saying that she went through some terrible things to end up in that position but for clarity's sake, her mom, my great grandmother, passed away when she was just

six years old. Around six months later, her father remarried, but he married a woman who had open contempt for his children. She used to basically starve my grandma for days at a time, allowing her only cold leftovers and even the most minor infraction of her many, many rules resulted in an ungodly amount of physical and emotional abuse. And to escape, a 17-year-old grandma married a widower in his 30s. But just a few years into their marriage, when my mom was only one year old, grandpa drove his car off a bridge. Witnesses said that he did it on purpose. And this left her alone with hardly any money to live off and two young mouths to feed. She actually initially got those wigs due to her hair falling out because of the

stress, but then she realized that she could use them for other purposes too. She still had them when I was a kid in the 90s and I used to wear them for fun, although I didn't learn about their true purpose until a long dinner on a family vacation many years later. She told her entire life story from the start, and every detail has stuck in my mind. She went cold turkey when she saw the police at the house of one of her neighbors, who just so happened to be one of the women that she had been impersonating. It scared her straight, and she stopped scamming for pills that very same day. She also said that there was a time where she met a guy who promised her all the pills she could ever want.

She'd just have to do a few things for him in return. It turns out this guy was a pimp, and was later arrested and charged with murder after beating one of his girls to death. Grandma says that if she'd have worked for the guy, that probably would have been her getting scooped off of a motel mattress with her skull caved in. To look at her later in life, you would never have guessed that she went through anything remotely as traumatic and she was just a well-adjusted woman. She was also the sweetest little old lady you'd ever meet, although she had a wicked dry sense of humor. All of my best memories growing up were with her. I was always the awkward weird kid and she let me be myself, be creative, dress up, and she was honestly my best friend.

She died surrounded by her family in 2014 while she was in her 80s and I miss her every day. When I was six, my grandma, my mom's mom, wanted me to sleep over at her place for the weekend. The trouble was, my grandma never liked me, and she and my mom didn't get along whatsoever, so my mom said no. She got really angry, slammed the phone down, and that was that, or so we thought. We didn't hear from her for a while afterward, then one day the cops knocked on our front door. Grandma was dead from an overdose, which was bad enough, but here's where things get really creepy. As part of dividing up her estate, my mom got her hands on grandma's diary and, in it, she found an entry that in so many words said this. She planned on poisoning me that night that she wanted me to sleep over, saying that I was rotten and that ending me would be a favor to everyone. There was obviously no danger of that happening in reality because mom would never let me stay there.

But if they'd had a better relationship, enough so that me staying there was an option, I legitimately might not be around to type this right now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a thought that I try not to dwell on. Growing up, my dad always hated the smell of nail polish remover. And we later learned it was because he accidentally drank some of his sister's nail polish as a toddler, which resulted in him being rushed to the hospital. But then, one night, he told me how that wasn't strictly true. According to dad, when his parents were going through the Great Depression,

they lost everything, as many families did, but it affected my grandmother horribly. Something must have snapped in her because she slowly but surely started to lose her mind. The real reason the smell of nail polish remover was so horrible to my dad was because one day, my grandmother had decided that feeding my dad the nail polish remover as an infant in a crib was an easy way to kill him. In her mind, it was a mercy, and it was only my grandfather rushing in and stopping her that stopped my dad from dying. It makes me wonder what sort of behaviors I might be prone to, given some traits are more prevalent to every other generation. It scares me thinking that I might have that same kind of madness deep within me. My grandfather, from my mother's side, died way before I was born.

I was always told that he fell off a balcony and died. A year or two ago I found out what truly happened. When I was around 13 my mom was telling the story to my uncle's girlfriend while we, my mom, uncle's girlfriend and me were sitting at the table. I was just minding my own business while my mom was whispering to my uncle's girlfriend and at some point I heard my mom tell something about her dad and I started listening to what she was saying. She explained that her dad was an alcoholic and could be real abusive at times. When he got drunk, he would sometimes make wild threats to himself or others. On the night before my mom's birthday, after he put her and her siblings to bed,

he got drunk and threatened to throw himself off the balcony. He stood on the edge of the balcony, on the other side of the fence thing, with my grandma trying to calm him down to get him safe inside. It worked. My grandfather calmed down. But instead of getting inside, he accidentally let go of the fence and fell off the balcony. He probably thought if he landed in a correct way, he would break too many bones or something, so he tried to move while in the air, and it didn't work, and he died. So yeah, when my mom woke up the next morning, on her birthday. Her father was dead. Some details may be wrong.

It's been, like I said, a year or two ago since I heard this story and frankly, I'm too timid and scared to ask my mom the from the late 80s. It'll be a short one, but after all these years, I still think about it. I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors, but my mom was spending an ordinary night in her apartment. She had a miniature dachshund named Rocky, who was her only roommate. For context, my mom is a really pretty blonde. She was frequently complimented on her looks and still is. She had recently rented this place to escape a very soured relationship, a fresh start if you will. Getting ready to tuck in for the

evening, she started toward the front door to let Rocky outside to use the bathroom. Something came over her to look outside first. Just that split second was all she needed to listen to her intuition and take a quick peek out the window. As she looked outside, she saw a man standing at her door, staring directly at it. No one had knocked or made any sounds and he was just standing there as if he was waiting for her to open the door for the very reason she intended. My mom immediately called the police and when officers arrived, the man had vanished. She never got a great look at him since it was dark. Other than acting extremely suspicious and creepy, there was nothing the cops could really do other than keep an eye on the

place and look out for this man. My mom spent the rest of the evening with one of her girlfriends, who came over to stay the night with her. Not exactly a terrifying story, but one I remember strongly from when she told me in my twenties. And I started to think what could have happened if she had opened the door. I got the sense that this person knew my mom lived alone. Who knows, maybe it was someone at the wrong door or someone playing a prank that they never owned up to. My mom has always been tough as nails, and maybe that also goes hand in hand with being smart and trusting your instincts. I live in Sacramento, California, where every summer we have the state fair.

I was in my late teens and my friend and I, both females, decided to check out the fair together. Parking was $10 and we were cheap and decided to park across the street. Well, a few streets deep and from across the street because a lot of people had the same idea. The fair was typical fair shenanigans and we had fun. It was almost 10pm and we decided to get out of there. The fair was lit up with lights and chaos but the further we got away from it and the deeper we got into the back streets across the street from the fair, the darker it got and the less people you saw. My friend said facetiously, maybe I could get my mace out just in case. We both laughed

because both of our families at different points had given us mace to stay safe but because we were young and dumb we thought that we would never need it. My friend drove so she was digging in her purse looking for keys and slowed down while doing so when I was a few feet ahead of her. At that moment the fair fireworks started popping off in the sky and I turned around to look for several seconds and was walking backwards while doing so. I turned around and at the moment I was passing a creepy grey van and a man popped out from behind it and grabbed me forcefully with both arms, starting to pick me up. Immediately, my friend ran up and sprayed mace in his face, which she was able to do because the mace happened to be attached to her keychain, which she had just taken out of her purse. She accidentally got some of the mace in my eyes,

and it hurt terribly. Even though my eyes were burning, I vividly remember opening them enough to see a cloud of mace floating in front of the guy's eyes, which were wide open, as if the mace did not affect him at all. Then he said calmly in a creepy voice, I was just looking at her. And we both screamed bloody murder and he let me go. We ran all the way to her car and got the hell out of there. The weird thing is, we didn't even go straight to the police that night because I wasn't sure if that was enough of an offense to do so. I'm now in my 40s and I know that it is. My true crime loving self now is pissed off that I didn't go straight to the police then. I tried calling the not emergency line the next day to report it as I was suffering from red and swollen eyes from the mace, but I was placed on hold and not taken

seriously. Eventually, I let it go and moved on with my life. A week later, I heard in the news that there was a man wanted by the police who lingered around the American River Trails, which is near where the fair was, who was abducting women, taking them into his van, and doing terrible things to them. And I always wondered what would have happened if my friend wasn't there. Would I even be here? I've never been so thankful to be maced in my face. And ladies, even men, carry mace or some type of self-defense tool. It's an unpredictable and scary place out there sometimes.

I found out that my grandparents were in a cult for more than ten years. Over the years of being a kid, I had always wondered why they never came to family get-togethers anymore and why I never got to see them. My mom would always tell me that it was because they were reserved and liked their privacy. I always thought that that was was weird but never questioned it. One year, they moved from their home state to the state where my grandma and the rest of my dad's side of the family now lived. Now all of a sudden I was able to see them when I went out to visit in the summer which I thought was odd. I also thought it was weird that they lived with my grandma

and literally had moved out with nothing but a few suitcases. As it turns out, my aunt's family had been in a religious cult for years and weren't able to leave it because they were threatened by the church. They told them that they would kill them and make sure they never escaped. They would keep track of when they went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays and they were forced to give the church thousands of dollars a month just to remain. One day my aunt said that she had had enough, packed a few bags and booked it to the state my grandma lived in during the middle of the night. They left their furniture, the vast majority of their clothes, almost everything. They moved in with my aunt and lived with her until they got back onto their feet.

And they have been out of it for years now and have made a good life for themselves. And I'm very happy they can move on from what happened. My family is a mess in general, but the worst detail by far is that my grandparents are murderers. First thing was I found a letter on my mom's desk in high school. It was from my grandpa, her dad, but was addressed from a federal state prison. I had absolutely no clue that he was in prison, so I picked up the courage and asked her what the hell was going on. He was elderly and a bit eccentric, but not at all violent or dangerous. She tells me he's in there because he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder of his wife's mother, my mom's stepmom. Apparently, she was 95 years old and bed-bound with dementia, then, after they found out that she had cancer, he smothered her. Grandma proceeds to tell me that

the man who I know as grandpa is not my mom's real dad my mom's real dad was a violent drunk came home one night with a gun threatening to kill my grandma the children and himself grandma wrestles the gun from him and fatally shoots him she was never convicted as it was ruled self-defense. See why I think my family is an absolute mess? In 2020, I met this guy at the mall where I worked. He owned a tech store there, repairing phones, and since our offices were right across from each other, I saw him often. One day, he came up to me, asked for my name, and we made small talk. We exchanged numbers and started seeing each other, I saw him often. One day he came up to me, asked for my name and we made small talk. We exchanged numbers and started seeing each other. One night I was so tired from work that

I didn't want to go to dinner with him. As a single mom I get burned out easily and I told him that I didn't want to go anymore but he said, no, get ready, I already made the reservations. I firmly refused because I was exhausted and didn't appreciate being forced into anything. Being controlling is a major turn off for me, so I was already considering ending things with him. Despite my refusal, he insisted, saying that he was on his way. I told him that he could waste his gas if he wanted, but I wasn't going. To my surprise, he showed up at my apartment, honking non-stop and calling and texting me incessantly. I threatened to call the cops and when he didn't stop, I actually did.

As soon as he heard the sirens, he sped off. The next morning, I woke up to 60 text messages and 100 missed calls from him, expressing his disbelief and anger that I stood him up. It made me see him in a very, very weird light, as we had only been dating for two months and were not even in a relationship in my eyes. We had been intimate one time, after two weeks of seeing each other. He told me that he was a virgin afterward and I started to believe it because of how things escalated from there. After that, we never did that again. He's Muslim and his parents are very strict. He would sneak out to see me even though he was 24 at the time. After that night of honking, I broke it off with him

and called him a psycho, telling him I never wanted to see him again. However, from 2020 to now, he goes through weird mental states, blowing at my phone once every six months or so, but I never respond. In October, he sent an apology saying that he had moved on and wanted to be on good terms as friends. He asked if he could take me to dinner to make up for what he'd done. I believed that he was being honest because I hadn't heard from him in months and so I agreed. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Before we got our food, he got on his knees and begged me never to leave him again, saying that he was in love with me. I was terrified.

I ate in silence to keep my cool and asked to go home, pretending I didn't feel well. Once I got out of the car, I was so relieved and promised myself that I'd never talk to him again. Since October of 2022 he has been texting me once or twice a week asking to go to dinner and I never responded because he makes me sick to my stomach. I moved so he doesn't know where I live but recently he sent a picture of me while I was working saying that's you. It scared me because I had just switched to a different salon and he didn't know where I worked. He claimed he was driving around with a limo service, but there's no way that he could have seen me through the window. He had zoomed in to take the picture from a desk. I called the police,

but they victim blamed me saying that I couldn't file a restraining order or order of protection because I didn't know his last name or home address. I'm in Chicago, Illinois, and I don't know what he's capable of. Please help. I, a 36-year-old female, had been practicing Aikido for several years now. I have always had respectful interactions with men and women. However, recently there had been this older man, like in his 70s, who had come to the dojo. He has taught his own classes before, so my sensei invited him in to teach a class. The first class he taught, he put me on my back with my legs up to teach me a technique to protect against assault, as I was the only woman in the class. I didn't think anything

about it, but everyone in the class was very weirded out about this specific lesson being very intimate, and after that I was on my guard. Then he started giving me and other women shoulder rubs. I felt uncomfortable and told my sensei. He stopped doing that and backed off at first but now he's been creepy again. He always wants to work with me during and after class. I was talking to a new student after class and he shows up behind me with a joe stick and basically chokes me with it because he wants to practice our technique. It's like he was mad that I wasn't paying attention to him. He notices whenever I'm not in class and asks about me. He calls me baby while practicing techniques. I'm still dealing with the situation and I brought it up several times. My reaction is to freeze or shrug it off

like everything is okay, but it isn't okay. I always felt safe in the dojo until now, and I worry that he might be given a key to the dojo and he could lock me inside with him. And I also worry that he might, due to my living situation, I had to make a two-hour drive at least twice a month from a city area back to my parents' house in a rural area. About one and a half hours of that drive was on country roads with nothing but valleys, corn, or other crops on either side, with the occasional farmhouse or building that seemed inhabited. Since I was used to this drive, I didn't think much of the long stretches without cell service or phone booths, and nothing had happened before,

so I just assumed nothing would happen in the future, right? Well, one night, during one of those drives, as it was getting darker, I saw a flash of light. Well, that was weird. Maybe just a momentary visual glitch, I thought. Another flash. Perhaps someone with wonky high beams was coming my way. Another flash. Something was wrong. I slowed down a bit to avoid being periodically blinded and potentially swerving off the road. In the distance, I thought I saw a person. Actually, multiple people. My eyesight was pretty good so I realized that I was approaching four people lined up across the road as if to create a roadblock. I didn't see any car that they could have arrived in nor any farmhouses or sheds nearby. This encounter felt like it lasted an hour due to my anxiety but in hindsight it was likely no more than five

minutes. Driving at about 10 miles per hour I got closer and realized that I was approaching four adults with large bright white masks staring in my direction. Two of them definitely had bats or other long blunt objects and one person was holding something that emitted the flashes. I had seen enough horror movies and heard enough stories about crimes on roads like this to think that I had two options, slow down and risk them attacking me in my dinky car, or speed up and hope that they moved out of the way. I chose the latter.

I had no means to protect myself other than a bat in the trunk, and as a young teen who could easily be overpowered, I didn't trust my car to withstand any assault. Hearing gravel and dirt kick up from under my tires, I was more freaked out by the potential of driving off the road or hitting someone. I accepted my decision, driven by adrenaline and fear, and accelerated. The two people directly in my way lunged out of the way just in time. I stopped accelerating to catch my breath and saw them in my rearview mirror with the other two trying to chase my car. It became real that these people did intend to harm me.

I focused on driving out of there as fast as I could. I didn't turn the radio back on, feeling shook by this experience. The most messed up part was getting home and realizing that part of the road that I had driven on wasn't just gravel, but there were nails embedded into my tires. Thankfully, I had some pretty sturdy tires though that didn't lose air pressure. I didn't tell my parents the full story. They assumed that I was reckless and that someone had scattered nails as a prank. My friends said it was probably just to scare me, especially since being in a car gave me an advantage. Still, it creeped me out and I remembered it every time

I drive on a similar road. I often add that it happened before that Purge movie came out, otherwise I might have felt more comfortable saying it was just a creepy but harmless prank. I still wonder where these people came from since there were no cars or buildings nearby. I noted this every time I drove the route in daylight. Even though it was mostly in a car, the close proximity and potential for direct interaction made it feel like a personal creepy encounter. I had to share this since my friend had mostly heard the story and I had a nightmare about it recently. I still don't know if I'm overreacting, but I know for sure that those were people and I was definitely afraid. Another story here reminded me of an experience from many years ago.

Now, obligatory note, I'm on a mobile and I'm American, but this didn't take place in America. I grew up in a military family and we were stationed overseas during this story. We weren't in France, but my mom and I, I was 9 or 10 years old at the time, went on a big girls trip with a bunch of our other friends to Paris over winter break. We were only supposed to spend five days there. The first few days went fine and we all had a great time. But on one of the last days, all the moms received emails that our flight back was cancelled due to snowstorms. We spent an afternoon hanging out in the Starbucks under the Louvre, there's a whole mall

down there, and trying to figure out travel plans to get back home to other European countries where we were all living. When the airlines rescheduled our flights, the several families were put on different flights over the next three days. However, they scheduled my mom and me on different flights on different days. Yeah, a nine-year-old girl traveling alone wasn't going to work. And the next available flight for both of us was a fourth day after everyone else. Our hotel room had bookings after we left, so my mom and I had to find another place to stay for some extra nights. Not a big deal, right? But when it came time for us to take a taxi to our next hotel,

us being the only family left in Paris, the taxi driver gave us a weird look when he realized where he was taking us. Then he gave us a warning. Don't go out at night. I may have been nine, but I knew enough to know that that meant bad people and danger. I don't remember my mom's reaction, but I'm sure it wasn't good. We got to the hotel and it was nothing like the website had shown. They definitely lied on their site with stolen photos of a much better hotel, but my mom had already paid and it was only for two nights.

We were sure not to stay out too late and had no issues the first night. The last day went fine, actually. We went up to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur and hung around there for most of the day. When evening came, we made sure to go back to the hotel room earlier. And that's when bad things happened. When darkness fell, we started to hear a lot of people in the hotel lobby. We were only on the first floor and basically right above the lobby. The hotel was built in an old apartment type building, typical for European city space. For Americans, much smaller than our hotels. And we initially turned on the French TV and tried to ignore it.

Then there were pounding footsteps up the stairs and angry shouting in French. My mom definitely jumped at that and we felt uneasy. Then the angry French man started pounding on our door. We didn't speak French and most of what he was saying was very slurred and we only caught phrases like, we know you're in there and we know you have them. And I being nine had no idea what they were talking about but obviously my mom and I were terrified. She told me quietly to not make any sounds. Whatever state the TV was in, we kept it that way to make it seem like the room might be empty. The banging on the door just kept going and the shouting didn't stop. The front desk people should have heard us in all honesty. If we could hear them downstairs, there's no way that they didn't hear our door being assaulted. My mom called our dad, who was at home in our host country. We got him to try

and call the French police, as he speaks some French, but he couldn't get through, and we were on our own. I slept with my clothes on, and we had suitcases prepped in case we needed to run somehow. I, being nine, late at night on a long trip, somehow managed to fall asleep because I was so tired. My mom didn't sleep the whole night though. At some point I was woken up by the door cracking. My mom said that she had never been so scared in her entire life and the angry Frenchman just kept going as they tried to break down our room door. The door didn't give, somehow, and eventually at some point in the early morning they left us alone. We left ASAP and went to the airport for the rest of the morning.

I'm sure my mom reported the hotel and the booking sites, and we slept at our flight gate until it was a reasonable time to be awake. We ended up getting promoted to first class as an apology for the problems with scheduling and after the harrowing experience of the past night, we definitely took it. It took years of telling this crazy story from my mom to tell me the hotel was probably selling and doing drugs below us, not a party like I had assumed, which is why no one responded. The staff were all too high to really do anything, and the angry Frenchmen were either so high that they imagined someone else was hiding in our room, or their drugs were stashed in there and we didn't know about it.

I have no idea how the door didn't break, but I'm just so glad that it didn't. Hi. I'm a 34-year-old female and not really looking for advice. I just want to share my story. Many years back, I dated a man-child, relatively the same age as myself. We got along quite well. He presented himself as gentlemanly, hospitable, kind, and loving. In hindsight, things escalated quite quickly. We went from being friends to being exclusive within a month, not enough time to truly know someone. This story is quite lengthy, so I'll do my best to shorten it without leaving out integral details.

We saw each other daily, mostly at his house, which was fine with me in the beginning as I'm rather introverted. A couple of months into our relationship, I started to question why we weren't leaving the house, why we weren't going out and experiencing new things or trying out new hobbies. His responses were always cloudy and he always tried to redirect the conversation, thinking that I was truly stupid and couldn't tell that this was an obvious avoidance tactic. And that was the point where I started to become curious and from there it went downhill. I'm not an intrusive person, but considering he was my partner, I had a right to inquire why we were isolating ourselves. And after some mild questioning for a few weeks, I noticed that he began to create some distance. This noticeable

change was hard to ignore and pretty much confirm my suspicions. However, I'm not going to make a decision based on assumptions. I'm ashamed to admit this, but one night while I was sleeping, I went through his phone. I still feel disgusted even though I found 100% proof that I was a side chick. I couldn't believe it, and I still can't. I was with this person daily. It obviously confirmed why we were so confined to his home, but it was perplexing because she had no idea about me. It was 2am when I looked through his phone, and there was no way that I could sleep beside him for the remainder of the morning, so I quietly got out of bed, collected my things, and went home. The next day, I believe that he realized what had happened. However, he never contacted me to see why I left.

Things remained silent for the entire day, and then I received a phone call later that evening. I confronted him. Again, I'm ashamed to say that I did take photos of the evidence as I knew that he would try to gaslight me. The fury in his voice was palpable. He did what a usual abuser would do and blamed me for going through his phone while totally ignoring his infidelity, and was utterly pathetic. He had created this delusion that I was going to contact the other girlfriend and tell her all of his wrongdoings, all his infidelity, lying, and cheating. I would have done this, however, while I was looking through the phone, I realized that this girl was very sheltered. She was completely oblivious to what was going on.

I was afraid that he would retaliate against me and her, and I thought to myself that eventually she would find out. I do regret not informing her but my decision was my decision and I can't change that. And this is where my nightmare begins. He was so paranoid and confident that I was going to contact his girlfriend that he would constantly call me daily and make vague threats against me. I persistently advised him that I would not contact her and it was none of my business that she would eventually find out that he was a deceitful, inept brain worm sooner or later. All I wanted was for him to screw off, leaving me alone and never speak with me again, and that was my only request. He obviously didn't take my words very well, and he continued to harass me. Only a few days later, things completely erupted. His paranoia exceeded levels I'd never seen before. He sent me a threatening message with the context being, I have compromising photos of

you and I will release them, as he believed that I would ruin his relationship. I couldn't believe the delusion. No matter what I said, no matter how I phrased it, I even had my mom speak with him at one point, but it was useless. I sent him a message stating that if this was true, and if he messaged me again, I'm going to call the cops. Five minutes later, I received 11 messages in succession. A few were videos, photos, and personalized animations of himself. I'd never seen these images, videos, and animations before, and they were taken without my consent, and these were extremely intimate and compromising. Unbeknownst to me, he had cameras set up around his room. These weren't just threats. These were screenshots

of these images, videos, and animations uploaded on various sharing sites. Luckily, he lacked intelligence. He sent me the evidence, and there was nothing I could do to stop the uploads. I immediately went to the police, and they did manage to take some down. However, there were no promises as once a photo was uploaded, it could be immediately archived. This has forever altered my life. I don't see relationships the same. I can't be intimate, and I can't form strong bonds. I become apathetic, I'm forensically observant, and I have difficulty trusting everyone, even my family and so much more. In conclusion, the police were rather efficient and treated me

well. I was granted an immediate protection order, a family violence order. He broke that quite quickly and called my phone trying his best to apologize, begging to drop the charges. He was so pathetic that he got his mummy to ring me and try to persuade me. I immediately called the police and they took immediate action. This ended up going to court and I won. It's not the result that I wanted, however, he did get his name on that good old offender's registry, which is far more egregious than people may think. Nevertheless, this is beyond life-changing. And to all those who have gone through this, I'm sorry. I feel your pain. Be careful around

the people who you think you trust. I know that's quite nihilistic and pessimistic, and these are some of the unfortunate aspects of life. It's quite paradoxical. Humans are social creatures, but many humans are just pure rat crap. My grandpa had one hell of a war. He turned 18 in December of 43, got drafted almost right away, then landed in France sometime in the fall of 44. His outfit was some kind of supply company that operated to the rear of the front line, so he didn't see much actual fighting. All he did was load trucks, drive someplace and then unload them. Then just a few months later, the leader of Deutschland, as you know him, blew his brains out.

The war was over, but my grandpa's service was not. And instead of heading home like a lot of the battle-hardened infantry units, grandpa stayed in Germany and continued to load trucks. Then one day, some high-ranking officers showed up at my grandpa's unit and starts asking where he is. My grandpa's name was Murphy, he's Irish, but only on my great grandpa's side. His mother had been a German immigrant and had spoken a heck of a lot of the old language around him when he was a kid. So much so that despite not being able to speak German, he could sure as heck understand it. There was such a demand for

translators at the time that army intelligence was searching up anyone of even the slightest German heritage in hopes that they'd be able to help translate documents or interpret conversations. But then, in the case of my grandpa, he was given a very different kind of task. When he'd confirmed that my grandpa could understand enough German to be of use to him, the officer told him to get into his jeep, then off they drove to some intelligence unit where my grandpa and a bunch of other soldiers could get a short briefing. Long story short, they were to pose as guards in various prisoner of war camps, but their real job was to just listen. Anyone higher than a

private first class was to receive a very temporary demotion, and each of them was to master the art of looking very bored and very dumb. My grandpa said the first part was easy, because for the most part, German POWs talked about the same crap American soldiers did. They complained about the latrines, about the food, and about each other. All very inoffensive stuff. Then one by one, depending on the kind of stuff that they'd been up to during the war, they were either hanged, forced into labor battalions, or given their freedom. My grandpa said that over the months that followed, his camp's population kept shrinking and shrinking until there were rumors that they

were going to close the place down altogether. Then one day, hundreds of these SS guerrillas marched right up to the camp's gates, flying this big old white flag and asked to surrender. Turns out this rogue unit of Germany's most loyal bodyguards had been hiding out in the woods for months, and when they weren't taking potshots at Americans, they were terrorizing the local Germans for collaborating with the US. Friendly forces had been trying to starve the rogue unit out for a while, so they figured their surrender was simply a natural result of their efforts. There was just one problem. The camp's guard contingency had been scaled down as the number of prisoners began to dwindle, meaning that by the time these SS guys

showed up, there were eight prisoners for every one American camp guard. At first, the camp's commander was somehow completely fine with this and saw it was an opportunity to prove how just a handful of American boys could keep a lid on hundreds of rabid SS. But he was wrong. And if it hadn't been for my grandpa, a lot of people would have paid with their lives. Grandpa said that one day he was on guard duty when, for the first time during his whole stay at the POW camp, he heard something that sounded vaguely suspicious.

All these hardened SS prisoners had been on their best behavior. Not a single one had stepped out of line. But then after my grandpa overhears one say to another, how much longer will we have to wait? Which was a fairly common question among the prisoners. The other replied, Vartanav, the, which means we wait for the signal. Now obviously my grandpa is thinking, what signal? But he had also been explicitly ordered to report anything like that to his superiors, words like plan, plot, or code. These were all things that were of great interest because the main goal by that point was to prevent war criminals from escaping or destroying evidence of their crimes. But Signal, that was something else entirely. The second his superiors heard about someone throwing the word Signal around they flooded the camp with extra guards, then got my grandpa to point out the soldiers that he'd heard use it.

Sometime later I imagine after an extensive period of interrogation, one of the SS guys finally talks and gives up their whole crazy plan. You see, all these SS fanatics might have showed up flying a white flag, but they hadn't really surrendered. Like I mentioned, they'd been hiding out in the area for months, following out Germany's final order to fight to the bitter end. But they never hit the POW camp on account of it being full of Germans. They also never opted to mount any kind of prison break, but by that time, that was neither here nor there, I guess. And so one day, a few SS scouts snuck up to the camp and happened to notice that there was only a handful of prisoners,

but more importantly, only about two dozen camp staff and guards. They reported this back to their commander, who came up with an extremely fiendish plan. Fake a surrender, overwhelm the camp guards, then loot weapons and ammo to continue their partisan struggle against the Americans. But the SS didn't just want weapons and ammo. Oh no, they had a much bigger prize in mind, and that prize was American uniforms. If they could disguise themselves as Americans in unblemished uniforms, the SS could amount devastating attacks on our boys, especially if you had an SS soldier disguised as, say, an American officer.

Of which there were plenty of the camp staff. By overhearing that word signal and bringing it to the attention of his superiors, my grandpa saved countless lives. So many, in fact, that his superiors sought to award him a bronze star. I thought they only gave those things out for combat-related heroism. Turns out they award them for other things, too. They just gotta be real significant kinds of things to be worth considering. The whole thing made him a minor celebrity among the boys he served with, and around six months later, he was discharged and sent home. My grandpa never considered himself a hero. He always said that he was simply doing his job. But I got the medal and the citation

that proves that he saved and I quote, scores if not hundreds of lives. And to me, that's just about playing the definition of a hero as it's possible to get. To be continued... Super fun live streams every Sunday and Wednesday nights. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, or over email 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 and bonus content over on Patreon. Or click that big join button to hear about the extra perks offered for members of the channel. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations located anywhere you listen to podcasts. All links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends.

And remember, the bunghole rumors aren't true. True.