The Lets Read Podcast - 283: OUR CAMPING TRIP TOOK A HORRIBLE TURN | 30 True Scary Stories | EP 271

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about delivery drivers, camping, sea stries & how one redditor e-dated a psychopath! HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Music, Audio Mix & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt

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Over, under, money, line, same game, parlays, it's all fine. You'll put a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with BetRivers Sportsbook. Take a chance. We'll be right back. I'm out. my name's chris i'm a longtime fan from from Melbourne, Australia, and the story I've got for you actually involves you and your YouTube channel in a sort of roundabout way. I met my girlfriend in May of 2019, and it was her that introduced me to your videos. I'm not gonna lie, at first I did think it was a bit weird that scary stories seemed to help her fall asleep, but after a while, I started to see the appeal, and we'd often put on a video while doing the dishes after dinner. This became something of a long-time ritual for us.

Then sometime in late February the following year, we were listening to some camping stories of yours when my girlfriend suggested that we pay a visit to the Oneingada Valley. Oneingada Valley is about a four-hour drive out of Melbourne, and it's a fairly popular destination for hikers and campers. I know it probably makes us sound a bit mental to listen to a load of scary camping stories and then be like, well, that sounds like a good time, sign me up. But we're actually aware of how rare any kind of rural crime is. We didn't feel like we would be in any danger, and we weren't in all fairness. But then, at the same time, that makes what I'm about to tell you pretty bloody ironic. So we drive out to Wanangatta and remember the exact date being the 21st of March, 2020. We bought a load of camping gear online and we were looking

for a good spot to pitch our tents when we came across a couple of other campers. They were standing just off the trail and about 10 to 15 meters away was a burned out utility vehicle and what looked like charred remains of a tent. There was a man and a woman there, fairly young looking, and the man was pacing back and forth with his phone to his ear, looking majorly concerned. My first thought was that these guys had accidentally set their tent or ute on fire, which had then caused the other to catch fire. God knows how they might have managed that, but figuring out exactly what had happened wasn't the first thing on our minds.

We just wanted to make sure that the couple was alright. As we're walking up the trail, the guy thanked whoever he was talking to on his phone and then just hung up just in time to greet us as we got closer. It turns out, it wasn't their campsite. They just had come across it at the same time as we did and figured they'd report it since it was obviously fresh. We could smell that charred kind of burn smell from all the way over on the trail, so he was right when he said that it must have been fresh. But the guy said that there was some untouched food lying around too, recently purchased stuff, which made him think that it wasn't just some dickhead teenagers looking to destroy the evidence of their last night's joyride.

The bloke had actually been on the phone to the coppers right as we turned up, which was obviously the right thing to do. But since someone was already dealing with it, me and my girl just kept on walking after wishing the other couple good luck. It sounds crazy looking back on it, but at the same time, we didn't think there was anything sinister going on. What it looked like was that there had been some kind of horrible accident and someone was potentially hurt. There were no signs of a struggle, no blood or any other sort of human remains. It didn't look like what it was. Not long after we got back, my girlfriend sent me a link on Facebook to a local news story. The burned out Ute and Tenth that we'd come across belonged to an elderly couple who had

been out camping just like we had, but instead of getting the help that they needed, they hadn't shown up anywhere at all and they were still considered missing people. There was a big appeal for information, so obviously me and the missus got in touch to offer our services but to be honest I'm not sure that we were of much help at all. We'd been in the valley for two nights but aside from the run-in with the couple and the burned tents we hadn't heard or seen anything even remotely suspicious and for a while we started to worry that the couple that we'd seen might have been in on it in some way. I mean we just rocked up and asked if they needed any help and then

walked off after a quick chit chat. The bloke told me that he'd been on the phone with the emergency services but I had no way of knowing that for certain. We'd mentioned them to the police when we called them and they told us that they'd already talked extensively to the person who made the call. But they didn't tell us exactly when the call was made and neither did they give us any details on the person that had made it. Spoilers, but we really were just being a bit overly paranoid because the couple we bumped into had nothing to do with the missing people. And we found that out for certain about 18 months later when the bodies of the missing couple finally showed up. It was sad, and I hate to sound harsh here or whatever, but it wasn't really a surprise to me or my girlfriend. This poor old couple had gone missing after some kind of accidental fire had inflicted God knows what kind of injuries to

them. It seemed like they'd gotten lost, gotten hurt, or even worse. Then, sadly, they'd succumbed to the elements and passed away. I remember my girlfriend saying that, like, say they'd been in the tent whilst it was on fire. They could have inhaled all kinds of nasty smoke on the way out, not to mention getting burned and then those burns getting infected or something. It was just an all-round horrible, tragic way to go out and you really felt for the couple, but then the news broke that it hadn't been any kind of accident at all. The elderly couple had been murdered and their ute and tent had been burned to get rid of any physical evidence their killer might have left

behind. Knowing we'd come across the scene of a murder like that, and in complete ignorance too, it was chilling. According to things we read online, the murder had taken place not even 24 hours before we arrived. If we'd left the day before, we might have even seen them, hanging around their little campsite. We might have even swapped a good day or two going past, or at the very best, maybe the trail being a bit busier might have saved their lives. It felt terrible for their families, for their friends, but at the same time, we couldn't help but wonder about the gorier details. Call it morbid curiosity, but my girl

and I were pretty desperate to know what had happened to that poor old couple. I mean, we spent two nights in the valley after they were killed, so were we in any danger at all? Was someone just hunting people at random, or had it been some kind of personal thing? As it turns out, it was neither of those things. It wasn't some psycho serial killer stalking the valley for victims, nor had the killer and his victims ever laid eyes on each other before. The murders happened because of an argument that started over a bloody drone. The whole thing is going through the courts now, or at least it was when I had the idea to write this all up and send it over to you. I'd tell you to look it up for yourself, but it's as confusing as it is depressing. The killer's defense lawyers are saying that his victim pointed a gun at him and

that he somehow managed to rush the guy, grab the gun, and then killed the elderly couple, both man and wife, before he burned all the evidence. He even burned their bodies too, and there's court testimony of him saying how he felt terrible for doing it. How he vomited from the smell. All this stuff trying to make him seem like a victim of the whole thing too. It's just gross, man. But anyways, all the best with your channel and all that and best of luck in the future. I don't know when this bloke's going to be sentenced or whatever, but I hope it's for a bloody long time.

Fancy killing someone over a drone. It hardly bears to think about. Patapsco State Park used to be one of my favorite places in the entire world. I grew up just outside of Baltimore in a place called Woodlawn. Some of you might recognize that name, but probably not for the best of reasons. I went to Woodlawn High School, same one that Adnan Syed and Hyman Lee went to, and the same one made infamous in the podcast Serial. For those of you not in the know, Serial was probably the first big true crime podcast and it told the story of how Adnan supposedly murdered Hymen, who was his girlfriend

at the time she was killed. It cast a long shadow over Woodlawn and Baltimore's reputation had been in the toilet ever since The Wire came out during my final year of middle school. I used to love both places and I spent what's probably an embarrassing amount of time defending both in various online game lobbies. But then came the day when I was no longer able to defend Baltimore or the wider county and that just so happened to be the day that I decided never to visit Patapsco State Park ever again. My girl and I decided to visit during the summer of 2014, as Patapsco has a ton of different places to camp that came with their own table and fire ring. I'd spent almost my entire life hiking and camping around that park, hence why it was one of my favorite places.

And that also meant that I knew the place like the back of my hand, like how I knew one of the most secluded and picturesque places to hike was between the river and the train tracks. You had this stretch of barely trodden trail right there next to the river, and provided a train didn't roll past every so often, you might think it was a scene from a fairy story or something. Which is obviously why I was so excited on showing my girlfriend at the time, because I figured if I thought it was pretty, she would go absolutely nuts over it, you know? Anyway, we drive out to Patapsco, found ourselves a free campsite, then once we were all set up, we crossed the train tracks and started heading for the river. We're about 10-15 minutes into

the hike, my girlfriend is absolutely loving the river and was taking all kinds of pictures on her phone when suddenly we heard voices from somewhere on the other side of the water. The river isn't all that wide but since it was summer and all the trees and bushes were in bloom, we couldn't see who it was until someone suddenly burst up from the bushes and ran into the river. They looked scared, and as they were running, their foot must have caught on a rock or something because they suddenly just splashed down into the water in what looked like a pretty nasty fall. I was about ready to jog up the bank a little to see if the guy was okay and if he wanted any help. But then, right as I was about to take off, he stands up, turns around, and yells out, no, please no. And the next thing we hear is,

bang, bang, bang. Three gunshots. Then the guy fell backwards into the river again. It was all over in a matter of seconds. We heard the voices, saw the guy fall, then he stood up and he was dead. But I swear I don't think his back had even touched the water before my girlfriend and I took off running. The split second we heard those shots, it was just a complete 180. Not in terms of the direction we ran, either. Everything was turned on its head. One minute I was the happiest I'd been for many, many months, and the next, we were quite literally running for our lives.

I mean, I know it wasn't us getting shot at, but I figured if someone was willing to do that, they probably didn't want any witnesses to it either. I think the thing that really sticks with me was how I didn't run as fast as I could have. The whole time my girlfriend and I were running, I was trying to keep my body between her and the shooter, thinking something like, if anyone was going to get hit, I wanted it to be me and not her. I'm not saying that to sound heroic, it was purely out of instinct. I just remember the skin-crawling sensation that came with it though. Slowing myself down when I wanted to sprint off through the trees, all while hoping that I didn't get shot, and then hoping

that if I did get shot, the bullet wouldn't go through me and hit my girlfriend too. She was amazing by the way. She ran like the wind and stayed as quiet as possible, and she didn't even start to slow down until we were safely back across the tracks. Without a shadow of a doubt, those were the most terrifying few minutes of my entire life. If it was just me on my own, or maybe me with like a guy friend, it would have been scary all the same. But with it being my

girlfriend with me, for some reason that made it all the more terrifying. I guess there was just that natural instinct to protect her, but at the same time, I knew that if push came to shove, I wouldn't be able to protect her from a guy with a gun, especially if that person wanted to do us harm. The best I could do was try to shield her and I'm proud of myself for doing that, but it still made for a terrifying few minutes. We ended up getting out of there safely and we called the cops as soon as we were able, but I don't know anything about the person who got shot, and as far as I know, their killer has never been caught. Back in the late summer of 2009, I was working on a tugboat that was assisting an oil tanker

off the coast of Louisiana. There had been some storms and rough seas, so as much as we weren't in any danger, our tug had been helping to stabilize the tanker, which was way more valuable to the large waves. I always loved the water, and I still do. But on the morning of, I remember, August 17th, as we were guiding that tanker along the coast, something put the love to the test in a big, very bad way. I was in the bathroom when it happened, probably the worst place that you can be when you get hit by a freak wave. I'd been awake for maybe no more than 10-15 minutes and then out of nowhere, everything got turned upside down. One second the toilet was on the floor and the next it was on the ceiling. I tried to open the door to the bathroom but all the light suddenly went out and I could hear the bathroom slowly filling with water. I couldn't tell if it was blood or seawater stinging my eyes and then I finally got the bathroom door open but I didn't have long to

celebrate at all because I felt this heavy thunk as the tugboat touched down on the seabed at least a hundred feet below the surface. When we got the door open, everything was dark, water was everywhere, and I had no idea which way I was facing. Our propeller was up, our wheelhouse was down, and in the alley next to the watertight door which led to an exit hatch, I saw two of my co-workers struggling with the hatch as the water levels continued to rise. I panicked, thinking we'd all drown if we failed to get that door open, so I did something completely against my instincts and dived into the water to look for a different way to escape. I don't imagine many of y'all have been in a shipwreck before, but when your ship goes down like ours did and takes on a ton of water, it rushes through your ship in very odd patterns.

Imagine pouring a gallon of water into an ant farm and watch how it reaches some tunnels faster than others and creates little air pockets here and there. Well, that's how I managed to get swept into a second bathroom, this one attached to the second engineer's cabin, and with the door having been swept shut as I pulled it into it, it created one of those air pockets I had just mentioned. At first, the water continued to rise, and I thought that I was going to be trapped in there and drowned. But to my relief, it didn't fill the bathroom completely. It only filled up about a third of the way and then just suddenly stopped. Part of the reason it didn't fill up was because we routinely kept all the cabin doors closed. We did this mainly as a security precaution, but it also secured parts of the ship from flooding and meant that I could cling to a wash basin in my own private air bubble

at the bottom of the gulf. And as I stood there in the darkness, I started to hear my co-workers screaming and yelling. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I figured that they might have gotten the hatch open. And so, with that in my mind, I decided to do everything I could to swim back to them. But when I tried to pry the bathroom door open, the door handle snapped off of my grip.

I remember feeling a panic rising up in me again, one so intense I thought that I might lose my mind right there and then. But then suddenly, it just stopped, and I felt this strange sense of calm wash over me. Everything that had happened over the previous few minutes had been so chaotic and terrifying, but after that door handle snapped off in my hand, it felt like I had control of the situation. I knew where I was, I knew what I needed to do, and I had no choice but to solve the problem of opening the door. It was that, or die trying, and as crazy as it sounds to just think it to myself, all these years later it brought about that strange or die trying. And as crazy as it sounds to just think it to myself, all these years later it brought about that strange sense of calm.

It was just me and that bathroom door. Whatever came next, we could cross that bridge once we came to it. I remember spotting a vent and thinking that if I pulled off the steel grill that I could probably use it as some kind of tool. Luckily, it was strong enough for me to use to force open the bathroom door. But that wasn't like an instant thing. It took a lot of time and effort, and during the attempt, I heard the cries of my co-workers going silent, one by one.

I thought they had escaped, but now I know different. Once I had the bathroom door open, I was back in the second engineer's cabin. I saw two life jackets, each with a small flashlight attached. I put one in my mouth, lodged the other in the elastic of my underwear, and then attempted to swim for the escape hatch. Outside of the cabin, all the corridors were full of water, with no air pockets for me to use, meaning every time I ran out of breath, I had to stop trying to open the hatch and swim back to my air pocket in the engineer's cabin to take a breath. The first time I swam back, I almost missed the door to the engineer's cabin. It was dark, all the doors looked the same, and I knew that if I got lost or confused, I'd most likely drown.

I later found out the exact same thing happened to a co-worker who drowned in the mess room after confusing it for some place with an air pocket. To stop myself from getting turned around, I tore off some fabric from one of the engineer's coveralls, tied it into a rope and then attached one end to the door of the cabin so I could use it to guide myself back whenever I ran out of breath. I tried again and again, but still the hatch wouldn't budge, and I eventually decided that I should save my strength, stay in my little air pocket and rethink my attempts to escape. I had to just stay put, stay calm, and think. And I'm not kidding when I say hours went by. I ate tinned sardines and drank canned soda just to keep my energy levels up, but I had to keep my legs out of the water.

I knew I'd scrape my leg during one of my escape attempts, and at first I thought the stinging was just the salt water getting into the wounds, but I quickly realized it wasn't just the salt water. It was little crayfish swimming up to pick at the peeling skin around the wound. I also thought the water level would remain stable, but after a while, I realized it was slowly rising from how it seemed to be creeping up the wall. And that's about the time I just accepted that I was going to die. I kept thinking about my family, and it brought me a strange sense of peace knowing that they'd be there to carry on without me. Sure, it'd hurt some. My kids would grow up without their father, but they'd no doubt get a

big payout from the company. And then on top of my life insurance, they might just get a big payout from the company. And then on top of my life insurance they might just get a big enough check to keep them comfy for the rest of their lives, I imagine. And thinking those kinds of thoughts was all I could do to comfort myself and remember just sitting there, trying to conserve whatever oxygen I had left in total silence, just waiting around to die. Then suddenly, the silence was broken by the sudden sound of metal on metal. It was like a hard clunk, and although I couldn't see what was going on outside the boat, I knew that there was a good chance someone was out there, someone that might be able to hear me. I didn't scream or yell, as that would have burned valuable oxygen. Instead, I started to hammer my fist against the

bulkhead, hoping whoever was out there would recognize that someone was alive inside the tug. And minutes later, I saw a light through one of the portholes and realized that there must have been divers swimming around outside. I took a deep breath and then dived back into the water. My goal was to find a porthole through which I could see the divers so I went room to room, prying open doors then heading back to the air pocket for another gulp of oxygen. Then back I went, repeating the process over and over until finally I caught sight of the divers outside. I remember pushing my hand up against the safety glass, and one of the divers later said he just thought it was another body at first.

But when I started trying to bang on the glass, they realized I was alive. I wasn't taken straight to the surface. You'd think that that might have caused more emotional turmoil than it did, and after being trapped in a wreck like that, most would want to return straight to the surface. But you can't do that. The sudden change in pressure might actually kill you, so I spent a real long time at a diving bell sucking air from a spare oxygen tank before I was allowed to resurface. The divers told me I'd been down there for almost 14 hours. I don't even think it even felt like three.

I guess my sense of time was disoriented, but resurfacing to the night sky instead of daylight made it feel like I'd time-traveled or something. A bunch of medics checked my vitals to ensure my temperature and blood pressure were okay, and then they advised that I go visit a hospital. But all I wanted to do was get home to my wife and kids, so although I wouldn't advise anyone to ignore medical advice like that, I went straight home and gave them all the biggest hugs of their lives. I had some real bad dreams for a long time afterward. Sometimes I'd feel like my bed was sinking and I'd wake up with sweat soaked bed sheets, which I guess prolonged the process of realizing it was just a nightmare. Other times I dreamed that water was rushing in via my bedroom windows and that my wife was unconscious. I'd pick her up, carry her to the door but it wouldn't open and the water would just keep rising and rising until I woke up. Some friends suggested that we just take a vacation, someplace really landlocked, you know.

And that helped a whole lot. I stayed away from the pool for a whole week and a half, though, until I finally forced myself to face my fears. I guess the context of that vacation helped, knowing that I was safe, and like I said at the start, I tried to organize a camping trip for myself and a few friends. They'd been talking all spring about how awesome it'd be if we all went camping together. Just a bunch of dudes, no phones, just living in the moment, all that kind of stuff. But then, as it came closer and closer to the date, each of the four dudes dropped out one by one, citing various reasons as to why they couldn't attend. And obviously, it sucked. I was super stoked for some kind of crazy adventure and I'd also invested, what at the time was, a ton of money in all the clothing and gear I thought I needed.

I was kind of heartbroken that the trip was basically set to be cancelled, but then it occurred to me, why not just go on my own? We planned the trip for mid-July, which is easily the best time to camp in the far northeast, meaning it was very much a case of stick to the date, or possibly wait a whole year for the opportunity to resurface. So I packed my stuff and on the day that we were due to depart, off I went on my lonesome for a few days camping in Acadia National Park. For the three days that I was there I had the time of my life. I actually figured that I might regret going solo, that I'd be bored out of my life. I actually figured that I might regret going solo,

that I'd be bored out of my skull for the duration, but I couldn't have been more wrong. First off, I barely had a moment to myself. Between making camp, collecting enough firewood, setting up the bear alarms, and then getting the fire going, I literally did not have a spare moment until sundown. Then, when it did finally go down, I was in no mood to relax. Nighttime in the woods is freaking scary, dude. And since that was my first night in the woods in probably ten years, and I was on my own, it was just a lot to get used to in a very short space of time. At least if I wanted any sleep, anyway. I got used to the night sounds in the end, and

there's only so many times that you can play that scene from the Blair Witch Project in your head before it just gets kind of old, you know. And so after that, the second and third night were way easier and I managed to actually get some decent bouts of sleep. Then on the third and final night of my trip, I woke up in the middle of the night in some serious discomfort. There's also no delicate way to put this, so I'll just be real blunt about it. I didn't poop for three whole days while I was out there. Every time I even thought about it, I'd picture a snake slithering up, me having to abort and either getting poop all over me or getting my butt bitten by a gardener's steak or something. There aren't any venomous steaks up here in Maine, but they'll

still bite you if the mood takes them, so the idea of dropping trowel and squatting someplace wasn't in the least bit appealing to me, but I could only put it off for so long. I was almost constantly busy or on the move, at least during daylight hours anyway, and that meant that I needed to eat a lot. But then, the more I ate, the more I needed to take a dump until I finally reached the point where I couldn't hold it in anymore. I got up, put my headlamp on the tactical setting so that it emitted just a little blue light, it's harder to spot, and then walked off into the woods with my wet wipes. I didn't walk far, but I didn't exactly want to poop right next to where I was

planning on eating breakfast the next morning either, so I must have walked for at least a minute or two trying to find the perfect spot before finally leaning up against a tree and dropping my pants. I promise, that is enough poop talk for the remainder of the story. Just know that everything went smoothly, maybe not the best choice of words, and I managed to wipe and pull my pants up before starting on the walk back to my camp. But literally, just as I'm about, I don't know, 80 to 90 feet away, I see another person's flashlight shining up near my camp. The sudden appearance of this other person in the middle of the goddamn night obviously sent major alarm bells ringing in my head. And obviously, there were a handful of innocent explanations, but there were way more

not-so-innocent ones too. So, instead of just walking back up to my camp to see what this mysterious stranger wanted, I switched off my headlamp real quick and then crept over to a tree trunk in the darkness and watched from behind it. Some of you might be thinking, why the dim blue light? Well, if you've given yourself night blindness by using a big bright flashlight like my visitor was, it's almost impossible to detect that real dim shade of blue. And that's why I was able to turn my headlight lamp off real quick without being seen. Anyway, so I duck behind a tree, watching as this guy's flashlight beam is just sort of moving around my camp.

I can't see the guy holding it, not in any sort of great detail anyway, but I could see that he was shining his flashlight on different stuff, like he was inspecting my camp or looking for something. Seconds later, I see a second flashlight appear, meaning two people were now walking around my campsite. The second flashlight seemed to follow the same pattern as the first for a minute, before the two strangers stopped inspecting my camp and started talking to each other. Now I couldn't hear every word, but I heard enough to know that they were looking for me, specifically. One guy asked the other a question and his reply was just a little louder when he said, He was just here. Now hearing those words made for one of

the creepiest moments of my entire life. I get that two guys might just randomly stumble across the campsite after dark, that's not entirely out of the question, but then to know that at least one of them had been watching me somehow, that made me feel sick to my stomach. I felt perfectly capable of defending myself, but only against things I could see, and things that didn't creep up on me in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping. You also gotta remember that I put down a bunch of little bear alarms, which are basically tripwires with a noisemaker on the end, and those guys made it up to my camp without triggering a single one. Sure, they had flashlights, but those things aren't easy to see if

you don't know they're there, even in broad daylight. I watched the two flashlights for a few minutes longer, trying to figure out what the two men were saying. I could barely make out a word, but then I heard one of them say something like, we'll just come back tomorrow. A few more words were exchanged and then the two guys turned and walked away from my campsite. I stayed put for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, internally debating on what I should do. In my head I was almost certain that the two guys, or at least one of them, would go back to wherever they were watching me from and then return the second I showed up at my camp again. I wanted nothing more than to just run back to camp, pack my stuff away, and then get the hell out of there before dawn. But that first

thought stopped me. Packing up camp would make way more noise than I was comfortable making, and there was also no way that I'd be able to do that without cranking my headlamp up, which in turn would make it much easier to see me, and this was also assuming that the two strangers didn't have some kind of night vision capability. Now I know that sounds like I was overthinking the whole thing, but I literally had nothing else to do. I was just stuck there in the darkness, barely breathing, not moving. All I had were my thoughts and my fears, nothing else. I stayed exactly where I was for what seemed like forever, and then I finally started to see dawn approaching, and I felt safe enough to creep back up to my camp and started to dismantle it. I did it as quickly and quietly as possible.

Then instead of having some breakfast like I planned to before departure, I walked all the way back to where I'd left my car. This took me way longer than it would have done under any other circumstances too because I made a huge effort not to stick to any regular trails. I also made a point of stopping at the information center on the way off the island where I asked if any of the rangers had come across a campground in the middle of the night. They didn't have a clue what I was talking about. No rangers had been patrolling the park after dark and if they had been, there's no way they'd have just walked up on some sleeping campers like that. Since the rangers also handle

law enforcement in the parks, I was invited to file a report and give as much detail as possible. If folks were creeping up on campers in the middle of the night, the rangers damn sure wanted to know about it, but as much as I appreciated their concern, I wasn't exactly filled with the kind of confidence that made me want to revisit Acadia anytime soon. We'll be right back. with that river sports book. Take a chance. Must be 19 plus, available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario

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Ritual doesn't just have your back. They have the receipts. Get 25% off at ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. When I was 14 years old, my family and I went on a boating trip out of Melbourne's western Port Bay. I remember being at the helm with my father, steering the little boat over the waves and then the next thing we knew, my big brother was shouting that water was coming in. And it all happened so fast.

Mom and dad were shouting for us to stay together and then suddenly the boat tipped over and we were in the water. We later found out that the bottom of our boat had been almost completely rotten and that its owners had been extremely and willfully negligent in renting it to us and we had no choice but to start swimming. Since it was late in the evening, no one had seen us go down, so it was up to us to rescue ourselves. I was a reasonably good swimmer, and we all had life jackets on, but it was still around two miles back to shore, so land looked like it was a long, long way away. Darkness fell as we were swimming, but my dad started to struggle and my big brother swam back to try and help him. My mom and I stuck together and kept going, but we soon lost sight of my father and brother. Seagulls cried out above me and I kept imagining that they were warning me of an attack from

sharks that were no doubt swimming in the waters around us. I could see land, but it didn't seem to get any closer. Finally, after more than three hours in that water, I felt the sandy bottom against my feet. I'd reached the mudflats of what I believed was the mainland, but my mom, dad, and brother were nowhere to be seen. I was weak, cold, and exhausted. I dragged myself through the mud, which at some points was almost up to my waist, and this was even more terrifying than the swimming. The mud kept on sucking me down and I was terrified that I'd sink and be suffocated. My muscles ached, my lungs burned and I felt like I was about to pass out at points.

But at the same time I knew the clock was ticking that it was essentially down to me and me alone to get help for my family. The clock was ticking in my head, and I needed to get my family the help they badly needed. When I finally made it ashore, I realized that I was on French Island, an island with an old, disused prison on it that has only about 50 people on it. I ran through the bushland, using up the last reserves of my energy it felt like and feeling thorns scratching against my legs and arms. I ran for a long time too, stopping every so often to catch my breath before continuing through the bush. Finally I found a house and after banging on the door someone opened it and I told them what had

happened. I just remember crying and crying as they tried to comfort me and how I told them what had happened. I just remember crying and crying as they tried to comfort me and how I begged them to help find my family. They told me everything was going to be okay and that they'd contacted the Victoria Coast Guard. I appreciate that they were just trying to console me, but I knew they were wrong. The next morning, the bodies of my mom, dad, and older brother were recovered from the water off the coast of Fairhaven, and words can't express how devastated I was. I was filled with this overwhelming survivor's guilt, thinking that I should be the one dead. And for five long years, I was a wreck, and I think I might be dead from drinking drugs if it wasn't for the birth of my first kid. And for a long, long time, I avoided any kind of large body of water, which included swimming pools,

before my therapist suggested that I undertake some exposure therapy. This would involve brief trips to a local pool, but at first, my anxiety was so bad that even if my head was above the water, I just couldn't breathe. I tried for four months, but nothing worked until a local swim coach heard my story and offered some help. And then over the next year or so, the therapy started to chip away at my fear until, finally, I was able to look at the sea without feeling like I was about to have a panic attack. My proudest moment has been taking part in a charity swim across the rip which is an infamously rough stretch of water. We helped raise money for a domestic violence charity here in Australia which is a cause very close to my heart for reasons that could well make for another true scary story. It might have taken me 20 years, but I no longer let my fear control me.

I now understand that what happened wasn't my fault, but the irony of needing water to heal the very trauma that it created has never been lost on me. I'm a physician from western Massachusetts. Unfortunately for me, I started as an officially licensed doctor in the fall of 2019, meaning that the pandemic was where I had to get my sea legs for being a hospitalist, so to speak. Being a new physician during the pandemic was harrowing for many reasons, but this experience was by far the most disturbing I have had since I started practicing. As a bit of a preamble disturbing I have had since I started practicing. As a bit of a preamble, I have never completely understood why people have such an intense fear of oblivion. If you were kidnapped, tortured, and eventually killed by Albert Fish,

would you truly be interested in an afterlife where you retain that memory? Death is often very merciful because it's true erasure. You no longer have to live with terrible pain or haunting experiences. Trauma lives on only for those who can remember it. And as for hell, I think we are able to create something much worse than fire and brimstone, even with the best of intentions. And that is where this story comes in. During the height of the pandemic, a lot of non-ICU staff were being asked to help run the ICU because of the volume of critically ill patients and it being so unbearable.

Normally I only work with hospitalized patients on the regular ward's floor, but in December of 2021, I was drafted to be a pseudo-ICU doc, much to my own dismay. The vast majority of our ICU patients were intubated, and for those unfamiliar, this means that they had a breathing tube in because their lung tissue was completely non-functional. Despite what you might see on TV, most patients who are intubated are given sedating medications. They essentially sleep through the experience. This is both humane and therapeutic. We generally don't want people who are intubated to try to breathe on their own, as it can essentially over-inflate their lungs. The day this happened was like any other normal

shift. The patient in question was a 60-year-old woman with no past medical history. She had been intubated for two weeks because her immune system had essentially shredded her lungs trying to eliminate her COVID infection. Pretty much the same story as most people who went through that, and like many others, she was only slowly recovering. Her blood pressure, however, had really been difficult to control. It had been dangerously low intermittently throughout her entire admission. Because of this, the sedating medication we used primarily was ketamine, which generally doesn't affect your blood pressure. If anything, it actually makes it a little bit

higher, but can be associated with disassociative reactions, which is a type of psychosis. When you've been on the ventilator for that long, your trachea actually starts to become rigid and inflexible. If that change happens, you can't really breathe without a ventilator tube, and your body is essentially molded around this foreign instrument. And because of this, after about two weeks, we decide whether or not you need to have a tracheostomy performed. Think of smokers with a hole in their neck. This often has a very negative impact on a patient's life, so in an effort to see if she could breathe on her own, we began lowering her sedation. 30 minutes later,

I heard it. Initially, I couldn't recognize the sound. It was like if you recorded the sound of a blender and then listened to it on cheap headphones. The sound was high in pitch, but at the same time, it was a bit muffled and coarse. When I turned around, I saw this patient sitting up straight in bed. I gasped and moved back slightly. That sound I heard was her screaming into her ventilator tube. Not yelling, not hollering. She was screaming bloody murder through her ventilation tube. Her eyes were bloodshot and bulging and it looked like she was also crying but that may have been the artificial tears. Blood was also starting to leak down the corners of her mouth. Oropharyngeal and laryngeal trauma from her screaming so vigorously. Since she had COVID,

there was no one in the room with her when she initially started screaming, and this was part of infection control. In order for us in healthcare to not contract COVID, we needed to essentially be in hazmat suits to interact with a COVID patient. We all rushed to get the proper equipment on to enter her room, and in that time, she managed to completely pull out her ventilatory tube to our conjoined horror. And I'll never forget the things that she said when we got to her bedside. She was pleading with us. Please, send me back. Please, please, this is all wrong. This is not who I am anymore. I don't want to be here. It hurts, and it's wrong. I don't want them the tube. We did eventually get the tube back in after we gave her some emergency sedation, but the damage was already done. She died a few hours later. One family member was able to visit

her at bedside while she passed, and we didn't have the heart to explain in full graphic detail what had happened. We only said that she took her breathing tube out and it had caused a lot of damage. I don't know where our consciousness lies when we are sedated for that long, but I am afraid of that place. Death is permanent, but it is also balanced and equal. Everyone rests in oblivion, unbound from the traumas of life. The hells that we can create, however, those places do not seem nearly as merciful. I'm part of a volunteer search and rescue organization, and every year, our group takes part in a late summer retreat full of team

building and bonding exercises. One of these exercises involves night training, which, as you can probably imagine, involves practicing our search and rescue skills after dark. My specific job title is SNR canine handler, which sort of encompasses why I joined in the first place. I always wanted to work with animals, I just never had the grades to study to be a vet. And so joining as a dog handler meant the best of both worlds. I could do something constructive and contributive with my spare time, all the while playing with dogs. I use the word play very loosely there, but you get the idea. Anyway, we were out on night exercises when my dog, who was trained to find human remains, started to alert us to a scent. I was partnered with a more senior member of the team at the time, but when I looked at them for some guidance, she basically said, let's just go with it. I'm sure a lot of you are thinking,

your dog picked up the scent of human remains. Why weren't you freaking out? Well, the answer to that is simple. Even the most highly trained cadaver dog gets things wrong sometimes. And in a place like Washington, where we get California's annual rainfall on a Tuesday, damp scents can often confuse HRD or human remain detection dogs. So when my dog started to alert, our policy was basically just let him do his thing. Because best case scenario is a false positive and the very worst case scenario, we find some previously unearthed human remains. Which as horrifying as that'd be, was obviously a major part of our job. So the senior team member and I agreed to part ways temporarily. She'd wait on the trail while my dog and I went off to follow the scent that he'd picked up. Since we both

figured it was just a false positive, it would only be a matter of minutes before my dog lost the scent and then we'd be back on the trail and on our planned route before we knew it. But then, a few minutes turned into like ten minutes of walking through the dark woods, and then after my dog started to lead me down a fairly steep slope, I lost my footing and took a really nasty fall. The next thing I know, my chest is on fire, probably from the two broken ribs that I'd just sustained, and I could feel blood oozing from where I'd bashed my head on a rock on the way down. The first thing I did was press the emergency alert on my GPS, which signals base camp that one of the team needs assistance. The second thing I did was start calling out for my dog because I'd lost control of his leash during the fall which I think scared him so bad that he ran off or something.

That or he just mindlessly followed the scent trail thinking that I was still following close behind. As you can probably figure, I was not feeling like my best self. I was in agony, I was confused and having dropped my flashlight as well as the leash during the fall down the slope, I couldn't see very well either. I just lay there, calling out for Brody, hoping that base camp had someone closing in on my position so I could get to the damned hospital already. I don't know exactly how long I was lying there before someone showed up, but when I heard footsteps getting closer and closer, I felt this wave of relief washing over me. I started to call out something like, I'm here, I think I broke something, assuming it was a fellow S&R volunteer, but the second I heard their voice, I knew that they weren't with our group.

Like I said, we did all kinds of icebreakers and bonding exercises as every year there tends to be a couple of new volunteers. But the voice I heard that night didn't belong to a long-term team member and it didn't belong to the new girl or new guy either as we only had two new faces on the team that year. It was a man's voice, and when they started talking instead of directly helping me, I swear, it sent this chill of fright running right through me. The voice most definitely belonged to a man, and they started talking about how I was in a dry creek bed, one that dozens of people fall into every year. He went on to say that at least one person dies there every year thanks to

the flash floods the place sees during the rainy season. Someone falls, they get stuck, and then they drown. I went from asking for help to literally begging for it, but the guy just completely ignored my requests and carried on giving his little speech about how often folks go missing or lose their lives out in that area of the woods. I remember losing my temper and asking what the hell was wrong with him. And when he replied with something like, you're not in a position to talk to me like that, I started to scream.

Not wild screams of fright, but help. Somebody help, over and over, while I tried and failed to reach for my flashlight. I also cannot overstate how goddamn painful that was, having to scream when doing so made the burning pain in my chest feel so much worse. And around about that time I started to hear my dog Brody calling out for me. He's part Australian Shepherd and he's a very vocal dog, so I started to hear a series of awoos and trills and rolled barks, all of which tended to mean, hurry your butt up, human.

As soon as Brody started making those noises, the shadowy figure stopped talking. And then as we both started to hear the sound of Brody getting closer and closer, I heard that guy's footsteps as he made a hasty retreat. I think maybe a minute or two later I start hearing more footsteps, only they're from multiple people that time and they came with flashlights. I call out for help one more time and the next thing I know, two of my fellow volunteers are walking up the creek bed and one shines their flashlight right on me. My first thought was to tell them about the guy that had just been talking to me, the one that had talked about the accidental deaths in a way that made me think that they weren't so accidental.

I know that might sound kind of crazy, but the way he talked about them, like those deaths made him happy, it was one of the creepiest encounters of my entire life. So yeah, I told my two rescuers about the stranger, and one of the first things they did before administering first aid was to make sure that he was actually gone. One guy shone his flashlight all around while the other started asking me were you pushed and both later said that they were scared that that creepy guy had been the cause of my injuries hence one asked if I was pushed or not and then asked if I was sure about that when I said no don't get me wrong I was terrified that he was about to do something especially since I was basically incapable of getting away from him but he didn't cause me to slip he was about to do something, especially since I was basically incapable of getting away from him. But it didn't cause me to slip. He was just there to see it, or maybe hear it. But that obviously raises the question of, what the hell was he doing out there in the first place? My two teammates then kept me company until the medics showed up with an ATV and a

backboard that they could attach a stretcher to. I was then slowly driven back to base camp, given a quick look over, and then we headed over to a very rural medical clinic once we figured out my ribs were broken. Once I'd been given some pain medication and the doctors told my team leaders I was stable, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and a bunch of my fellow volunteers came to visit me in the morning to see how I was doing. And that's when I finally got a chance to tell everyone about the guy that had showed up in the minutes after my fall and how his warnings sounded an awful lot like thinly veiled threats. About a week later, after I'd been discharged from the hospital and I was safely back at home, I got a call from that same senior team member that I'd been with before my fall.

She asked how I was doing, how my recovery was progressing and stuff like that, and she then told me that the team leaders were discussing a change of locations for the following year's retreat. A couple of other team members had reported someone walking around in the dark, someone who definitely wasn't a volunteer, and that after talking it over, they decided that safety was paramount and that they'd be looking at alternative locations. In the words of one team leader, a second run-in with that creepy, shadowy stranger was not something they were willing to risk. I'd say the most life-threatening thing I'd ever faced was during a solo camping trip back in late June of 2012.

For those of you that either don't remember, weren't in West Virginia at the time, or have otherwise never heard of them, the region gets these crazy summer storms every couple of years that folks call derechoes. I'm terrible at explaining these types of things, so here's just the definition from weather.gov. A derecho is a widespread, long-lived windstorm that's associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. Although a derecho can produce destruction similar to the strength of tornadoes, the damage typically is directed in one direction along a relatively straight swath. By definition, if the wind includes gusts of at least 58 mph or greater along most of its length, then the event may be classified as a derecho. If you consider that the mildest form hurricane has wind speeds of like 70 plus miles per hour,

you start to understand that the Rachel is basically like a baby hurricane. They can be dangerous, but to most people they're little more than an annoyance. But then, imagine solo camping in the middle of West Virginia, seeing the skies darken and realizing the wind is strong enough to uproot dead or dying trees, and you start to understand why I got so scared being there. Luckily, as I was searching for a safe place to camp that night, I came across a kind of man-made shelter. It was really little more than a single-walled concrete pavilion, which didn't do much to keep the wind and rain off of me. But in the event of a falling tree close by, I knew that it might just be the difference between

losing my life or not. But then apparently, and very unfortunately for me, I wasn't the only thing in the forest to have that same idea. About an hour before sundown, with the wind still howling in the trees, I heard that sort of thumpety-thump of something heavy running towards the shelter. I couldn't see what it was at first, nor did I hear the thing until the last second because of the wind and how the shelter was positioned. A second later, I was barely on my feet when it came hurtling around the corner of the shelter. It was a black bear. The storm had scared it out of its wits, which was very bad news for me.

My first reaction was obviously to roar and wave my arms around like a crazy person trying to be even scarier than the storm, but as you can probably guess, that was much easier said than done. The bear saw me and jumped back in fright and then appeared to keep on running in the direction it was going. But then all it did was loop around the blind side of the shelter then come tearing back around the same side I first saw it, basically in a rough circle. I did the same thing I did the first time, jumping up and down and screaming like a madman until it ran off again, but then for a second time, all it did was loop back around. It obviously wanted the shelter. It was just weighing up whether I was worth fighting

or not, and the scary thing was that every time it looped back around, it got closer and closer. After a few more loops, I heard its claws clacking on the concrete just a few feet in front of me, like it was that close, and the huffs and puffs of anger and confusion it was making were equally terrifying. It was getting closer with each loop, until in the end, I had to back off to keep from coming within clawing distance. Then the more I backed off, the more ground I gave it until suddenly, it darted into the shelter and took a swipe at me before backing off for another loop. At that point, I grabbed my backpack to use as a kind of improvised shield for the next time it came in for an attack. And I had it by the straps, and it still had most of my gear in it, so it was still pretty heavy, and I was planning on using it like a battering ram too.

If the bear rushed me again, I'd thrust my pack towards it too, hopefully giving it enough of a scare to deter it from any further assaults. My heart was in my mouth as it came around for that next pass, and when it did, it once again looked like it was about to dash into the shelter a little to try and take a swipe at me. But then, I guess the sight of me holding my pack like that, the way it changed my size and shape and appearance, that gave the Baron enough of a scare to back off altogether. It didn't even head in for a second attack. It just sort of roared a little, did a kind of 360 as it must have been thinking what the hell and then ran off in the direction it first

came. The thing to do after that would have been to get the hell away from the shelter because the bear was most probably going to come back, right? But then, where the hell was I supposed to go? Pretty much every second I was out in those woods with no sort of shelter, I was at a solid risk of being squished by some falling tree. But every minute I continued to stay in the shelter was one that I was at risk of a bear attack. If something happened to me in the woods, something which meant that I couldn't walk or even run, the bear might just catch up with me and inflict some serious, real damage. But if I stayed in the shelter and used that same tactic of using my backpack as a shield, then I might just withstand another bear attack.

I guess that might seem crazy to some people, but I was actually fairly confident that it wouldn't come back. But I was absolutely certain that at least a handful of trees would be uprooted by the wind and come crashing down on the forest floor, and there was no scaring one of those off by waving my pack around. And that's why I opted to stay in that shelter, even though it meant a sleepless and thoroughly terrifying night in the storm. We'll be a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with BetRiver Sportsbook. Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. A few years back, my boyfriend and I were on a camping trip last summer in Arkansas. The first few days were real nice, and then late one afternoon, we were casually grilling some dinner when we heard someone loudly yelling for help. It sounded like it was coming from a few campsites over. Just out of sight but close enough to hear, so me and my boyfriend booked it over to the source of the yelling, and then we're faced with something that looked straight out of a horror movie. Some guy is leaning against a camp table with a huge gash across his stomach. Apparently he'd been walking along, knife in hand, and then he tripped and stabbed himself so deep that he was gushing blood. We laid him down.

My boyfriend tried to put pressure on the wound and then I pulled out my cell phone, only to find that I didn't have service. The only hospital was maybe 20 miles away, so even if I did have bars, it was going to be a while before anyone reached us. And that's when my boyfriend had the idea to ask the guy where the keys to his truck were. He tells us where and I went to grab them then the next minute we're hauling this guy onto the back of his truck then driving off in the direction of the nearest hospital. The whole situation was made infinitely more terrifying for me personally because at that point we had quite a bit of blood on us and blood has always made me extremely squeamish. I've gotten a bad cut on my hand before

now, ran it under a faucet in the kitchen and then woke up on the floor moments later. I see blood, I pass out. So I had no other option but to drive so that my boyfriend could continue keeping pressure on the guy's wound. If I'd have stayed back in the truck bed with him, I'd have passed out and maybe fallen out of the truck bed, and if our guy bled to death in the back there, there'd be two funerals. But then if I passed out at the steering wheel, we'd all be dead or severely injured at the very least. I tried to raise that point with my boyfriend but I guess it was him being protective that had him imploring me to drive and keep my eyes on the road and not on the guy's blood. He told me to pull over if I felt woozy or anything but I think the pure

adrenaline saw me through and we made it to the hospital in exactly 12 minutes. My boyfriend later said that we arrived just as the guy was beginning to slur his words and whatnot, which was obviously a very bad sign. Any longer in the back of that truck and he might not have been conscious when we arrived, which as anyone with any medical background will tell you, is a place you don't want to be. I remember when the hospital staff opened up the back of the guy's truck to pull him out and there was this huge pool of blood underneath him and my boyfriend and my boyfriend's pants were completely soaked with it. Once the injured man was safely handed over, we drove his

truck back to our campsite and ended up having to watch his dog as we tried our best to have something that resembled a normal evening again, which was obviously impossible. The next morning, the guy's brother showed up to collect his things and thankfully told us that he'd survived his ordeal and was going to be okay. It was deeply emotional. If you've ever had someone thank you for saving the life of a loved one, you'll know just how intense and humbling an experience it is. The guy had a huge lump in his throat, as did we, and we wished him all the best after helping him pack away his brother's gear. All in all, it was a horrifying situation, but we saved a man's life, so not only did we have a happy ending, but it's something that brought me and my now husband much closer

together and became a memory we'll never forget. A few years back, I decided to go camping with about ten other friends at Snively Hot Springs in eastern Oregon on Friday the 13th, which also just so happened to be a full moon. The drive out there took a little over an hour and since I had work the next day I decided I wasn't going to drink much so I wouldn't be hungover in the morning. And so we arrived, set up camp in a nice spot away from the majority of other campers and then we started cracking open the beers. After that we took a dip in the nearby springs and then after sundown, we went on a night walk to enjoy the mountains illuminated by the full moon and the stars. It was really dark at this point and people dipped out, so only a few of us ended up actually going on this night walk.

Now, side note, the three of us that went had all been microdosing mushrooms pretty much the majority of the night. Things were slightly trippy, but I don't like to get super glonky and or unaware of my surroundings. So, it's the four of us, myself, two friends, and one of my friend's dogs. We're walking uphill for about ten minutes, flashlights lighting the way before us, when we suddenly take a right onto a trail. We didn't even make it three minutes without hearing some very loud and very close rustling in front of us. We stop on our tracks and my friend in the front of the line starts scanning the area with his flashlight. Have you ever seen a big cat's eyes in the dark? The way they glow is chilling, especially when the cat is bigger than you. So when I tell you I have never been so scared in my life, I mean it with all my heart and soul.

And so, we're face to face with a big old mountain lion. It's not more than a few yards in front of us. An instinct kicks in for all of us and we just back away slowly. My friend's dog, on the other hand, had an instinct of its own and ran off to the right of us into the woods, but the mountain lion didn't cash in on her. It kept those glowing eyes glued directly on us. We continue to back away until we can't back away anymore and sure enough, we see the dog is right next to us, in which case, what had we heard running up behind us? We shine the flashlight and holy crap, another freaking mountain lion, only this one, we figured was her baby. On the other side of the fence was someone else's campsite and we had no choice but to turn around and jump it. We got the dog over first and then jumped it and ripped all of our clothing in the process,

with my friend cutting his leg pretty bad. And so, we're in someone else's campsite, on Friday the 13th, under a full moon, in the mountains, tripping on some shrooms, completely lost. We don't know where the people are, but we don't care. We got into their unlocked car and honked the horn for about a minute to scare off the cougars. We made sure to clearly yell and let any and everybody around us know that we weren't robbers and that there were cougars close by.

We got out after a couple of minutes and were pretty weirded out that nobody came out to check on their campsite. My friend swore that she could hear someone screaming or trying to scream but her boyfriend insisted that we needed to leave the campsite. Part of me believed her though I didn't hear any noises but I was also ready to just GTFO away from that area. We found the exit of their campsite and on the way back to ours I said my final prayers and I'm not even religious. We got back to camp and every rustling noise around me had me convinced that we were being stalked by these cougars. I had a full-fledged panic attack in the car for about an hour and was absolutely covered in gnats because of the sunroof being cracked. Everyone else was having fun around the campfire, even the other two who had

just gone through the same experience I had. I was hungover as all hell the next morning. No showed my job and got fired when I got back into town actually, which sucked, but I didn't give a single F. I was just happy to be alive. Back in late August of 1985, my fiancé and I set out on a three-week sailing trip. Our job was to sail a 44-foot yacht named Tamaru from French Polynesia to San Francisco, and we were being paid handsomely to do so. We had years of sailing experience between us, but the 4,000 mile journey was the furthest either of us had ever been on. We were confident that we could do it, but early on, there was a worrying change in the weather's forecast. Statistically, hurricanes happen

really late in the South Pacific and tend to arrive in mid to late October, so by setting sail in late August, we figured that we'd avoid the worst of the bad weather. But as the saying goes, man proposes and God disposes. Three weeks into our voyage, we were faced with a Category 4 hurricane, which whipped up waves as high as 20-story buildings. We'd sailed through gales and storms before, but never a hurricane. We tried to escape it for three days, but the boat could only go 15 miles per hour, and so eventually it caught up with us. Once the hurricane hit, it was too late for us to turn around and escape, so we had no choice but to brave it head on. We put on our raincoats and

boarded up the yacht, all while 140 mph winds and 40 foot waves battered against the boat. The wind and rain felt like BB pellets on our skin and it was like nothing we'd ever felt before. But we were still confident of being able to handle the situation, we just had to wait for the worst to be over. At one point I remember heading below deck to get something and then I suddenly heard my fiancé yell out, Oh my god! We got caught in a massive wave. I was thrown off my feet and the last thing I remember is my head smashing into something before everything just went fuzzy. I think I must have been out for a minute or two because when I woke up,

there was blood all over my face and raincoat and I was lying on the floor. I couldn't hear my fiancé so I went topside to check on him. The last I'd seen of him, he was strapping himself into the safety harness but when I went to check on him, the harness was empty and he was nowhere to be seen. I remember screaming but I knew I had to pull myself together. There'd be time to grieve later, and if I didn't focus on the task ahead of me, people would end up grieving me too. I knew the yacht had suffered irreparable damage that would make it impossible to sail. The navigation system, engine, and even the sails were all waterlogged or shredded beyond repair. But even worse, the yacht itself was taking on water at crazy speeds. My instincts kicked in and I started pumping water out of the cabin

before using the storm jib and a broken pole to create an improvised sail. The only tools I had at hand were a sextant and a watch, but I had enough sailing experience to use them to navigate to land. After 41 days adrift in the Pacific, rationing my canned food and water, I finally spotted land. It turned out to be the Hawaiian island of Hilo, and as I slowly drifted towards the harbor, I was spotted by a Japanese ship and rescued. And for weeks afterwards, I kept one of my fiancé's old shirts wrapped around my pillow. His scent was the only thing that got me through. I put all the pain and grief to the back of my

mind, and once I was safe, it all came gushing out of me like water through a broken dam. And it took me many years to get back to sailing, and these days I'm much more cautious about the jobs I accept. I thought about retiring from it altogether but after a while I realized that it's where I belong and if there's one sliver lining to the dark, dark cloud of my fiancé's tragic death, it's that he went out doing what he loved most. So this happened long ago. It was like 2003 or 2004 and I was about 17 or 18 at the time. Online dating was basically a new thing and it was fun and exciting. I was single at the time and was talking to different people online, you know, just flirting and having fun. One day a guy contacted me on a dating site. He was kind

of handsome and polite, typical boy next door looking with blonde hair and blue eyes, and I was intrigued. I learned that he was six years older than me. He lived pretty far from me, but it was exciting to talk to him. We started talking daily, getting to know each other, planned on meeting up, where he said that he would buy me plane tickets and stuff like that. And as a teenage girl, getting that kind of attention from an older man who's actually nice and even funny, I seriously thought about accepting his offer. So we played with the thought of doing just that next school break. We continued to talk, but the more I got to know him, the more I realized that maybe he was too mature for me. Because he talked a lot about politics,

news and stuff like that. And as a teenager, I couldn't care less about that. And so I began to lose interest and eventually our daily contact just fizzled out. Time would go by, I would meet someone else, get married at 23 and build a new house and just grow up. Years later, July in 2011, my husband and I were laying floor in our new house when news cut through the music on the radio. A bomb had gone off in the country's capital. We, as the rest of the population, were in shock and rushed to turn on the TV and watch the news. You see, an attack had happened in Norway. The first attack was a car bomb explosion within the executive government quarter of Norway,

and the bomb was placed inside a van next to the tower block housing the office of the then prime minister. The explosion killed eight people and injured at least 209, 12 severely. Two hours later, a second attack happened at a summer camp on the island of Utøya. The camp was organized by the AUF, the youth wing of the ruling Norwegian Labour Party, AP. A man, dressed in a homemade police uniform and showing false identification, took a ferry to the island and opened fire at the participants, killing 69 and injuring 32. Among the dead were friends of the Prime Minister and the stepbrother of Norway's Crown Princess. The Utøya attack is the deadliest mass shooting by a lone individual in modern history, and the attack was the deadliest in Norway since World War II.

When they apprehended the suspect, they reported that it was a 32-year-old Caucasian man, and they showed his picture, and he just looked like a normal white dude. But somewhere in the back of my mind he looked very familiar but I just brushed it off. As the case moved forward more pictures of him flooded the media and one day an old picture of him was in the news and I felt my stomach drop and my entire body went cold. I realized why he looked familiar. He was the political guy I was chatting with years prior. It was the picture that he had used as a profile picture on the dating website and I honestly felt physically ill. I haven't told anyone this as you can imagine the

reactions I would get. All I can say is that I am so happy I stopped talking to him when I did. When I started middle school, I made a friend named Erica. One of the first things that she said to me was that she hated supermarkets and grocery shopping in general. I laughed at her at the time and asked, why? Your mom won't buy you candy or gummy bears or something? And she responds by saying, no, because I was almost kidnapped by a man at a supermarket when I wandered away from my mother. And that was the first time that I had been really sobered as a child. I was a talkative person who could always respond with an awesome comeback and maybe even a little joke, even as a kid.

But that comment, which she made as if it were just common knowledge, was very distressing. I asked her for more details and she explained all that she had gone through. She wasn't taken, thanks to her mom's quick senses. I wondered if the guy had been caught and Erica said that he had but that her mother warned her he wasn't the only one who did such things. She also told me to be careful who I trusted. It was solid advice for a middle schooler and I perceived Erica as a really mature person thanks to that conversation and decided I would maintain being friends with her. The problem was is that I quickly realized Erica wasn't just wise because of this experience. Years later, I would learn to give her situation a sort of name, traumatized. But back then,

I started seeing her as paranoid about almost every stranger, particularly men. Now don't get me wrong, I get it now of course, but at the time it was quickly getting annoying. Every time we went anywhere, she was very wary of everyone. She told me not to speak to certain people and sometimes it was literally another teacher we didn't know because in our school we had one teacher for almost every subject except PE and other grades had their own teachers. Other times, she would be scared of the bigger kids. When we got older and started going out on our own, like to malls and movies, things were even worse. She was in a constant state of alertness, but I considered

it a state of war. But I would often tell her that she couldn't keep acting that way because we were going to meet strangers, and sometimes strangers could become friends just like we did. Erica said that it was different because we had the same classes and saw each other every day and she didn't fully trust me until I proved that I was a nice person which at that age meant that I shared my snacks at lunch with her. Come on girl. You're probably wondering why I didn't stop being friends with her. Come on, girl. Now, you're probably wondering why I didn't stop being friends with her immediately if she was this annoying. Well, the truth is, I didn't know. I could easily have made friends with others. The other girls in our class were fun, but I felt like I owed it to Erica because we had become so close before I even realized how

much trouble she was by her own experiences. I also thought it was nice having someone who was always aware of our surroundings. Our moms had already met and liked each other too. I couldn't give up my first real friend in my new school so I stuck it out. But I honestly wanted to change that when we reached high school though. It was a significantly larger school and our first day there was an absolute mess for Erica. Everyone was a possible threat. The worst was that we had one of the best football teams in the state, meaning that some of the boys were huge and incredibly intimidating. Erica would pivot and run away whenever one of them walked by. It was very inconvenient.

And as girls, we'd heard stories and been warned enough to be careful, even with just boys who were in our class. So taking on a cautious attitude wasn't a bad idea. But it wasn't sustainable. Our high school was much different than our middle school, with one teacher and always sitting in the same classes for the entire time. In high school, Erica and I had different classes and schedules. We only shared a couple over those four years, and I also started to make friends with other people. I found it refreshing to not be constantly on edge or have someone always commenting, that one looks like a bad guy,

that girl is not nice to people. Let's just eat by ourselves. I'm sorry, but for a teen who wants to exert her independence for the first time, that can get real tiring real fast. I didn't feel great about this, but I started sitting at lunch with some of my new friends. I did invite Erica over, but she was uncomfortable as always. I wouldn't say that we drifted completely apart because I still considered her a friend, but a lot changed. It wasn't a missed popularity versus a loner geek situation, however. We just naturally drifted apart. During our senior year, Erica and I only had one class together, home economics, which I'm now learning has changed a

lot. Apparently it's called consumer science in some schools these days, and those courses look different and actually useful, but I digress. For the entire first semester, we had a teacher named Mrs. Bradley. However, for the second semester, we got a substitute because Mrs. Bradley fell and broke her hip. The new lady was much younger, and she couldn't be anywhere over 25. I knew Erica wouldn't like this. Changing teachers wasn't easy but surprisingly it only took a few days for Erica to warm up to Mrs. Perrin and I was shocked. Had she changed that much during these past few years? And then I was glad because Mrs. Perrin was a quietly reserved

woman much like my friend but she was nice to anyone who wanted to listen. Most of the people in that class only took it as an easy elective, but Mrs. Perrin noticed anyone who took it seriously. Erica was always interested in manual, creative stuff like crochet, so she was perfect. She bonded with our teacher in a way that she hadn't with others. Because of how easy it felt to be around my friend again, I started finding crochet fascinating during that one-hour class. It was comforting, and it was nice to actively talk to Erica like we used to. She had become comfortable with our school, recognized that the huge boys on the football

team weren't threats, for the most part, and was acting like a bomb could drop on her at any moment. And I marveled once more that Erica spoke with a maturity that was beyond me and my close friends, and it made me feel like that kid again, who wanted to be closer to her and act more grown up. I invited her to sit with my group and she invited her friends over, and it was nice. We had grown up and we were breaking the stereotypes of just hanging out with like-minded people. And so we settled into that norm for the rest of senior year. I remember one lunch when Erica invited me to her house to see her new crochet things.

I hadn't seen her mom in some time so I accepted. Erica had her own car which I didn't know and I thought it was so cool. However, she pulled into the parking lot of a local supermarket and started to get out of the car. I stopped her for a second and asked if she was alright with this and Erica actually laughed in my face. She said that her mom made her buy all her crochet materials alone because she had to learn not to have that anxiety, and I was pretty happy for her. We got out of the car and went inside with our cart. We talked about everything and nothing until Erica said, is that Mrs. Perrin? I looked where she was pointing and a few aisles away was our substitute teacher.

I said, yeah, that is. However, Erica was frowning while staring straight at the teacher. I asked her what was wrong and she responds, I didn't know Mrs. Parent had a daughter. I looked again and our teacher was pulling a struggling little girl. I didn't know why I hadn't noticed before, but it didn't seem like anything major. I remember saying something like, oh wow, she must have had her kid young. And Erica immediately countered with, yeah, something's wrong here. I looked over and she had her paranoid face on, the one where she looked like she was afraid a bomb was going to fall on her head. I asked her to stop it because it was just a teacher with her daughter at the market perfectly normal

I started to walk to the next aisle in the opposite direction of the sub but Erica took my hand and gave me this face saying please just listen to me once let's go over there let's say hello I just feel like something bad's happening and I sighed and said okay let's go say hello we walked over there faster than was normal while we pulled a shopping cart and I almost ran into Erica's back because she stopped

so abruptly. I leaned away to see what she was looking at and noticed Mrs. Perrin, the girl that she had been pulling, and a strange man. Mrs. Perrin was pushing the little girl over to the man, and after truly looking at her small distressed face, I immediately knew that Erica was right. But I didn't have time to process before Erica was yelling at the top of her lungs like nothing I had ever heard, and in this market that noise echoed horribly. Everyone immediately turned to look at us, including the man and Mrs. Perrin. Mrs. Perrin came up to us with this horrible grimace on her face and started to push Erica to the floor, yelling, Shut up!

I had taken a step back, but Erica was still screaming and not stopping for anything, and it caught every shopper's attention. Suddenly I noticed that the man had just suddenly run off. I had no idea where and then a crying woman appeared on the other side of the aisle. She runs up to this little girl who then sprints into her arms yelling mom. Jesus Christ. And that's when this truly sunk in for me what was happening. Mrs. Perrin looked around and spat in Erica's direction and ran off. People tried to grab her, but she was skinny and faster than I ever imagined. At that moment, my friend started to cry,

and I had no idea but to kneel down with her and just hug her, letting her know that everything's okay, that that little girl was okay. I had to call Erica's mom, and I called my mom too, and both came in and we were taken to this little room in the back and asked some questions by the police. Erica managed to calm down enough to explain what we both had witnessed, but she and I had seen two very different things. Erica saw Mrs. Perrin pulling the girl and I knew that she had been struggling but I thought it was just a tantrum. My friends saw a little girl being pulled by a stranger and she immediately was taken back to that day and knew. When we walked over and reached the aisle, Erica explained that Mrs. Perrin was giving that little girl to the same man who tried to snatch her all those years ago.

Or, I suppose, at least what she perceived to be the same man, based on her trauma. She was little, but she said she never forgot that face, and I was floored. I didn't understand how that was possible, though, when Erica told me years ago that the man had been caught, and I had a very different perception of cops, I guess. That was my introduction to the real world and how things, particularly crimes, aren't always wrapped up so neatly. We both had to give statements to the officers and I asked one of them, you'll catch them right? And I specifically remember him looking at me and just saying nothing and it was almost like he tried to tell me, well try, but don't get your hopes up. When we left that office and had to walk back through the supermarket, the crying woman came over and wrapped her arms

around Erica, thanking her for saving her daughter, and I cried just watching them. And she was right. If my friend hadn't been traumatized so badly and been so paranoid for most of her life, a little girl might have actually been taken that day. I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole after that experience, realizing that kids snatching like that is not as uncommon as we believe, and that cops aren't superheroes who can just solve every single case like on TV. It was a true awakening to me. Someone else had an epiphany too. Erica's mom realized my friend was still traumatized because this incident brought back that fear tenfold, and she finally got her a therapist, even though at the time it was still traumatized because this incident brought back that fear tenfold and she

finally got her a therapist even though at the time it was still a very modern concept very LA I guess you could say. She did well as expected afterward and we remained friends the rest of our high school time and we kept some contact in college but reconnected fully when we both moved back to our town. We have our own families now and I actually do see her often. She's my best friend and while I know that I can't live with the whole paranoid thing that much, it doesn't actually hurt to be aware of your surroundings at times. We'll be right back. Please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. So I worked at a domestic violence shelter and I've seen a lot of stuff.

Some paranormal, some just the truest chills of human nature. One of these instances was when a woman came to the rather large shelter that I was working at after leaving her partner. Pretty typical, only her partner was an ex-military sniper. Naturally, she came in the weeks our regular night shift workers were off on vacation, so I had been voluntold to take off my regular day shifts and have the pleasure of working alone. Now I start my shift, nothing much to note, help the residents get their medications, do some chores while I watch some Netflix. Usually I'm a horror junkie, but I would never watch it at work.

Mostly because I would become extra jumpy and I was certain that the place was actually haunted. As there were women who had passed in the building but most of the spirits were chill and I'm certain that they were messing with me at times. Anyways, at the time our office had windows that looked out onto our tall pine trees in the backyard, designed to give us privacy for our residents sake. However, at night all you could see was darkness leering at you with no shielding from curtains. Naturally our backs were turned to the window making us feel pretty vulnerable. The windows at least had tints but it didn't matter because we could still see outside and anything outside could see us. At this point in my job I had seen multiple residence ex-partners who they had fled trying to peek in or even break in

but nothing compared to this dark night with not even a glimmer of moonlight. So I went to complete my assigned chores hoping to finish them and then relax until everyone woke up in the morning. I took my time in the basement where most of my chores were. The basement was the floor below my office where the residents stayed and when I returned I started getting cozy for my shift. I wrapped myself in a blanket, put on some goofy rom-com and just relaxed. And this is until I felt like I was being watched. I had a habit of always feeling like something was watching me though, as I grew up in a house with a similar window situation and was just a very anxious kid. I initially brushed it off as me being paranoid,

which wasn't a bad thing, but I checked the many cameras that we had and didn't notice anything out of place inside or out. I continued snacking and watching my movie, and at around 2am, when most residents were asleep, one of them knocked on the office door. This always spooked me at night, but I went to answer it. It was one of the residents, looking very panicked. She explained that she believed that she had heard someone out in the backyard while she was in her room and was worried that it was one of their ex-partners. The residents all had windows that could open to the backyard. Too small for anyone, but a small child could fit through, but still. So I double checked with this resident that hers was closed,

and we had a policy that all windows be closed at night, especially at curfew, which was midnight. She said hers was closed, but that it sounded like someone was in the backyard. I suggested that she go to her room, close the blinds and I would look into it. Again, I peered outside into the darkness, both on the cameras and with my own eyes, and I saw nothing out of place but felt an absolute pit in my stomach as the darkness kind of stared back. I let this woman know that I didn't see anything but would check regularly. She thanked me and said that maybe she was paranoid. I reassured her that the building was secure but understood her fear. One thing about working at a shelter is that even if you're scared,

you can't show it to the residents or they panic, rightfully so, tenfold. So despite my stomach and knots, I kept a calm and cool demeanor. As soon as I returned to the office at about 3.30am I felt a little bit better and went to sit down and that's when I noticed something dash into the pine trees. Absolutely petrified and going against my human nature which screamed a bolt like a madman I went to investigate near the window. I cautiously crawled because I didn't want to be seen by some wild man out there. I couldn't see anyone, but I again felt that gaze and noticed one of the pines move. When I say that I had never called the police quicker, I mean it. Luckily, because my workplace was well known by the police,

they arrived pretty quickly. I met them at the front door and explained the situation and mentioned the woman with an ex- military partner. The police fanned out and looked around the pines. Luckily, no one was found, but they did find that something had disturbed the pine trees and they did find one of those sort of fake leave-slash-camouflage suits. I think they're called a ghillie suit. And right then, they might as well have just commanded me to poop my pants. They suggested that it was possible someone with a military background was in the pine trees trying to scope out the shelter, and I felt like I had just lived three lives in one night.

The police said that it appeared the person had left, likely after seeing the flashing red and blue lights. They then left and said to call back if I felt unsafe again. The rest of the night was uneasy until my manager and other co-workers came in. Luckily, I had never seen curtains put up so quickly and security guards hired. And this happened while the woman and another resident with an ex in Hell's Angels were no longer with us. I have no certainty that it was that ex-military person, but based on how I felt that I was being stalked like prey and how she had described her ex-partner, it truly did feel like him. I'm just going to include several experiences I had while delivering pizza for a popular pizza chain a long time ago. I live in a small rural town in the southeast United States, and it has the usual suburban developments as well as some

more outlying country slash rural areas. When I was younger, just as I had moved out on my own, I worked as a pizza delivery guy and these are some of the creepy encounters I had during this time. One afternoon, I got a delivery order for an area of town that I rarely, if ever, visited. It was on the east side of town, which was very run down and poor. An old textile mill used to employ many in that area, but had been closed for some time and been overrun with kudzu and had begun falling apart. The houses around this area often had failing foundations or were very old, rusty trailer homes. This particular order was to one of the trailer homes and I knocked and no one answered. I tried again for several minutes as I could hear music coming from the inside and I figured maybe they couldn't hear me.

When they finally opened the door, it was a skinny dude with no shirt on and he asked me to step inside. When I walked in there was a lady behind him who was wearing a robe and another sketchy couple standing at the back of the room. They had a boombox playing loud country music. These people were high and drunk which I was used to but this place was buzzing with crazy. All of them were at least 10 years older than me and as I sat the pizza down and waited for payment, they started making really inappropriate comments regarding my body. Whenever one would say something, another would encourage them to continue. Eventually the guy who opened the door walked over to me and the lady behind him said, go ahead, pay the man. And he handed me the cash and put his free hand on my arm and in a very hot breath full of natural light,

he whispered in my ear and said, hey, we're all about to get real weird if you want to join us. I just said no thanks and made a beeline for the door. My other story is a time that I got two orders for the same area of town that I mentioned above. One was a 20 pie order for a church fellowship hall and the other a single pie for a residence. I dropped the pies for the church off first and then headed over to the last customer. When I arrived, I immediately noticed the house looked off-putting, dark and dirty. I was like, please let this be the wrong house, but it wasn't. There was a creepy old naked doll on the porch and an empty birdcage hung from one of the trees in the side yard. I got out, grabbed the pizza and slowly walked up to the house. I tried the doorbell which was glowing

so I figured it worked. No one answered so I tried knocking. Again, nothing. Eventually I got creeped out so I started walking back to my car. And halfway to my car I heard a psst and I turned around to see an old man with wild and unkempt hair literally peeking his head out from the back of the house. It was getting dark out and my patience was draining, so I was not in the mood for someone playing games, and I simply said, Did you order a pizza? and waited for him to answer, but he ducked back out of sight. I started to just turn to leave, but then he peeked out again.

I said, Sir, is this your pizza or not? And finally he re-emerges. He walks up to me carrying a shovel of all things and he says, Yeah man, sorry, I'm just messing. Don't mean nothing by it. To which I responded with the total and held the pizza out. And luckily that was the end of the transaction and I was just able to get out of there. I worked the same job for a few years and had plenty more weird experiences that then moved on to find something better and safer. If you work delivering items to people at their homes, stay safe. And never go inside their house. I'll preface this by saying we were 12 or 13 at the time and my friend and I often snuck out

either of our houses during sleepovers for late night walks. And this was the basis of this terrifying encounter and it stopped us from ever sneaking out after dark again. My friend lived opposite a huge forest so her house was the preferred choice to sneak out of for us to roam around at night. Because the forest was more scary and thrilling and we always took flashlights, food and blankets so we could camp out for a couple of hours before going back home again. Well, on this faithful night, we inadvertently fell asleep instead of staying awake, so when my friend suddenly jolted me from sleep, it was well past 3 a.m., a lot later than we usually snuck out. We grabbed our essentials and creeped out of the back door into the cold and dark night. Frost crunched underfoot as we crossed the

deserted road and as we reached the entrance to the forest, we noticed that it was pitch black and completely silent. It was almost unnervingly so. We turned on our torches and stepped into the uneven path into the forest and the light illuminating the trees swaying in the icy wind. We stepped on fallen sodden leaves and bark as we made an unsteady but familiar way into our favorite part of the forest, our cold breath the only noise to invade the deafening silence. We reached the small hut that we constructed one afternoon made entirely of sticks purely for the purpose of having some shelter for our campouts. There were times that vandals or other kids damaged our hut, but for the most part, it stayed intact,

but on this occasion, it was completely destroyed, sort of like a harbinger of worse to come. We were just deciding to just call it a night and come back later on that day to repair the hut when we heard it. This loud shrieking giggle that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My friend and I jumped in shock and looked at each other like what? We were completely freaked out. The eerie and unnatural giggle rang out again, contradicting the silence and making my body break out into goosebumps.

Someone's in here, my friend whispered to me, looking completely terrified. We have to go now. Her voice of rationale made it even more scary and unnerving to me that someone was in the forest with us at three o'clock in the morning. We just looked at each other in assent and took off running in unison, our footsteps navigating the path as naturally as we could from muscle memory, our uneven gasps of air punctuating the giggling that seemed to be following us getting closer and closer. Our torches' light went up and down with our fast movements illuminating random patches of the trees and bushes as we finally saw a small sliver of

light as we came to the forest entrance. Running out of the forest we didn't stop until we reached the back door of my friend's house and almost collapsed in a breathless heap of relief to be safe. Then my friend's eyes went wide and she nudged me, pointing a shaky finger to across the road. We saw this very haggard woman of indeterminate age standing at the forest entrance. She seemed to be hobbling, exiting the forest as we did, looking left and right like she was looking for something. We let out a scream, ran to my friend's bedroom, looking out the window through the smallest gap in the curtain and could still see the woman, sort of hobbling back and forth looking around.

Worse yet, was that she was just hobbling back and forth, seemingly with no purpose other than potentially looking for us. She turned very slowly and walked back into the forest again. Now the area is known for having homeless and various drug addicts wandering the forest at times, but it was very rare and very infrequent, especially in that area. We never went back to that forest,

nor went out after dark again. This story happened to me back when I still lived with my parents. I was commuting to college at the time and had three siblings that also lived at home, my brother and two sisters. For some context, we lived on five acres in rural Ohio, surrounded on both sides by woods and farm fields. Additionally, during the week, my dad normally left for work at 2am, so I had always felt like it was my job to be the man of the house because he was gone during the times when you would imagine something sketchy happening. However, on this night,

because it was the weekend, my dad was home. I woke up to the sound of my brother's voice trying to get my attention. We had separate rooms upstairs and coming out of our rooms you could look down over the banister and see our front door. When I woke up, I took a few moments to get out of the haze and realize what was going on. I looked at the clock and it was around 2.30am and my brother told me that there were two men at our front door. Of course, now this was a real wake-up call. We quietly walk out of my room and peek over to look down at the front door. When we looked, there was no one at the door. But I noticed my parents off to the side had a view of the glass on the front door and I whispered down to my father and he told me that there were two men

who had been talking to each other and knocking on the door. Hearing my dad say this freaked me out even more. I went back into my room and grabbed my pistol, quickly shuffling down the stairs after looking to make sure that they weren't at the door. If they had been, they would have easily seen me coming down the stairs as it's in the direct view of the door. My brother is right behind me as we head over to where my parents are, whispering to try and find out what's going on. My parents had woken up to our dog barking and come out to see these two men knocking loudly at the door. At this point we see the men return and they begin knocking again, despite the fact that no one had come to the door and our dog is still actively barking. The fact that they were there at this time in a location where houses are very spread out,

hundreds of yards, and still knocking while the dog was barking, made the situation even more terrifying. After a couple of minutes the men walk away and we all shuffle across the kitchen into the family room to peek out the windows into our driveway which is lit up by our outside light. There was a black Cadillac sitting there, but no one was inside from what we could see. Immediately the question was, where did they go? They weren't in their car and they were no longer at the front door. Unfortunately, we figured out the answer when the handles on our back French doors started jiggling. They were actively trying to enter the back of our house which enters the kitchen.

At this point, I just remember my mom frantically saying David as pure terror overwhelmed her. At this point, two things happened. Adrenaline filled my body as I prepared my handgun, horrified at the very real possibility that I might have to shoot these men. Secondly, my dad finally grabbed the phone, called the police, and calmly told them what was happening. Thankfully, after a minute of the jiggling, they stopped at the back door and disappeared again, only to return to their knocking at the front. However, at this point, several minutes had gone by and suddenly we saw the local police fly up in multiple cruisers with their lights on. As they whipped into our driveway and front yard, the two men bolted away, attempting to run the long way around the house across the driveway.

One of them disappeared out of our view, but the other one was intercepted by an officer yelling for him to get on the ground. He didn't, and he was immediately tased and fell on the ground. Some of the officers went around the house after the other guy, and one of them came to talk to my dad and I as we came out the front. They ended up finding the other man hiding in my sister's little playhouse in the backyard. It appears both of them were drunk and or high as the one who hid had cocaine on him and while they were both arrested that night we never did find out

what they were charged with or what happened to them and needless to say, the whole experience was not fun, and it was another reminder that you're not even safe out in the sticks. I normally am a nighttime walker because I have a cat that roams as well. I sometimes like to make sure he's okay or that the roads are clear. I don't want to get into more details about my cat being outdoors but I do come from a toxic abusive family dynamic and they won't allow him indoors. I'm also on disability so yeah I'm a loser still living at home. Anyways I'm 36 years old and I make sure I'm aware of my surroundings and I take precautions when walking. I've had randoms stop and ask me questions sometimes but never experienced something quite like this. So I went out for a walk at midnight. I usually take a brisk walk and I'm fine but this time as I was reaching the end of the street and turned back to walk home a man in a big white van stopped and asked me a question. He opens up his window and says,

What are you doing and where are you going? I replied that I was walking back home. He then suggested that I take a lift from him because he didn't want to see me walking home alone at night. I declined his offer and told him to leave me alone, assuring him that I could walk home safely if he just kept driving. He drove off but then made a U-turn back towards where I was walking, seemingly to watch me and maybe see where I lived. I stopped walking, waiting for him to pass, but he didn't. Instead, he stopped his van again and said that he just wanted me to get home safely, once more requesting that I get in his van. I declined again. At this point I got very angry and told him to stop following me, explaining that I couldn't show him where I lived. He then drove off slowly but stopped at my street, which was just up ahead.

I decided to make a u-turn and run into one of the side roads where I could hide. He didn't show up and I thought he was gone so I came out of hiding and walked slowly just in case. Then I saw a car's headlights approaching around the bend so I quickly jumped into a cluster of big plants on the sidewalk. I easily ducked down and he didn't see me. I saw his white van driving slowly past me and then turning into the road that I had just come from. He made a u-turn and went back the way he came. I waited for a while, feeling like a cat hiding and waiting for a safe moment to come out again. And finally the coast was clear and I couldn't see his van anywhere so I made a run for home. Thank god I made it home safe and sound and I made sure

to look around me and in the shadows to see if he had parked his van anywhere else but I didn't see it. I don't know who that man was or whether he was genuinely concerned for my safety or if he was up to something else. What do you guys think? I'm sitting here with a cup of tea just trying to process what just happened. I, a 40-year-old female, went to the University of Buffalo fresh out of high school in the early 2000s. At that time, the online world was a bit like the Wild West, which included having to do quite a bit more digging to find specific information than today's split-second Google search. And as such, it was a much easier time for colleges and universities to hide or spin campus crime statistics to make themselves look better for prospective wallets, I mean students.

Case in point, I was at orientation a month or two before my freshman year, and one of the mass presentations I had to attend was about campus safety. Bright-faced upperclassmen orientation aides enthusiastically verbally flayed the school, boasting about how North Campus was in, at the time, the safest town in the country, Amherst, New York, and that the only murder in recent history has occurred nine years ago to an unfortunate student named Linda Yalum, who was murdered on the campus' bike path during a lone early morning run. It was a fate that, we were assured, could be avoided by simply not hitting the bike path alone. What they conveniently didn't reveal was that A, the killer hadn't been caught, and B,

Yellam wasn't his only victim, as he was a serial killer who had already been active in the area for at least 25 years in downtown Buffalo and on the secluded bike paths of the Buffalo suburbs. In retrospect, had this information been as readily accessible as it is now, it probably would have kept me from the most bone-chilling encounter of my life. Fast forward three years, I was very depressed, a 20-year-old who was struggling with her identity and her parents' reaction to it in a much less accepting time than now. I'd left school and, to avoid being home, shacked off with a woman who'd promised me the world but then rejected me in favor of her ex-girlfriend on the night I moved in and

eventually turned out to be a felon who drained vulnerable would-be love interest bank accounts, though that's a very convoluted story for another time. So clearly, I was an unhappy young adult desperate for love and a sense of belonging, sometimes to my own detriment. Despite my roommate's many unkind and hurtful gestures, I stuck with it in the naive hope that she would eventually come around and fulfill her pie-in-the-sky promises to me. On a particular July night, that hope just fell flat. I was at Roxy's Green Room, a now defunct lesbian bar and club that many wayward buffalo lesbians, myself included, flocked to at night to feel a much-needed sense of community and to hopefully land a special someone. Since the latter just wasn't happening for me,

and since I didn't yet know what kind of person she really was, I was still stuck on my roommate. She liked to dangle emotional carrots overhead out of some sick joy that she got for making me hurt, but also hang on to hope, and after I promised to hit Roxy's alone with me and talk about us, she showed up with her ex-turned-current and shut me out. I was wounded and upset enough to leave at around 1am, well before the 4am last call that I was still young and spry enough to stomach, and without a ride home like my usual wiser self would have secured. While my apartment on Delaware was walking distance from Roxy's, it was a good half hour walk. Being as emotionally charged as was, though, I angrily hoofed it down the main street sidewalk, still managing to follow the pedestrian rule of walking against traffic

despite stupidly ignoring a rule that I knew well from years of watching forensic shows. If you're a woman, never leave a bar at night alone, especially if you're walking. I got exactly halfway home when a dark green sedan started driving toward me. I thought nothing of it until the car slowed down near me as I walked. A lone middle-aged man was in the car with a skin tone that I originally associated with the guy being Italian, but in retrospect, he could have easily been Puerto Rican. He had dark hair and, more importantly,

almost impossibly dark eyes that seemed to hold no light of good intentions. Now, I was used to guys being pigs. I'd been catcalled by downtown construction workers when an ex-girlfriend and I shared a kiss, and I'd endured all matter of wholly unwanted graphic and ham-fisted advances from dudes at school. And although I'd never take that stance that I was asking for it, I was young and thin, so I dressed in a tight red top with flare-legged black spandex pants. The getup was meant to turn women's heads, so I wasn't exactly surprised that I caught the attention of the wrong gender. I paid it little mind past mild irritation that a guy old enough to be my dad

would look at me like that as the guy drove off and turned at the next intersection behind me. My walk resumed. I put the guy out of my mind and continued my trek, but the peace didn't last. About two or three minutes later I see a familiar green car coming up on me again. This time the guy's window was down a bit and he shouted, hey, in a beckoning manner and gestured in a way that made me wonder if he thought I was a lady of the night. Now that incensed me. Despite my recent struggles with my identity and the resulting entropy in my life, I was always a good kid. I flashed him a quick annoyed look to inform him that despite the mildly revealing clothing, I was always a good kid. I flashed him a quick annoyed look to inform him that despite the mildly revealing clothing, he was barking up the wrong tree for several reasons

and then I ignored him, focusing forward. Then he sped off again and turned again. At that point it was clear that the dude was casing me like a cat burglar cases a house. It was before the time of Uber or even widespread use of cell phones and with no cabs passing by, I had little hope of getting one. Public transit existed but it was both sparse and not running nearby. The stretches of main between intersections were long enough and I'd probably be spotted on them anyway since the guy was circling. Being 50 minutes away from both Roxy's and my home, there was also no way that I could get anywhere near either place before the green car came back around again. I quickly thumbed through my mental Rolodex of true crime show inspired safety tips that should have kept me out of the situation in the first place. Tip one, get to an open business, inform the clerk, have him or her call the police and stay put.

Then the guy would either give up or get caught. I was coming up on the convenience store on the opposite side of the street where I bought a pack of cigarettes earlier in the night, but as I got closer, the desolate blackness through the windows told me that it was closed. I looked around for something else. Another bar, a gas station, anything. the desolate blackness through the windows told me that it was closed. I looked around for something else. Another bar, a gas station, anything. But the street was flanked by shuttered brick buildings and locked up churches.

And then came the headlights and green again. Again, the guy slowed down as he approached me, but his demeanor had shifted again. He put his palm out impatiently, as if he couldn't understand my lack of complicity. Come on! The guy yelled through his now open window. His face an equal picture of aggression, intimidation, and frustration. I kept out of arm's reach on the sidewalk and once again ignored him, but this time, I was properly shaken. He angrily punched the gas and was off on his familiar circuit back around to me. Now I knew that I was in trouble. The guy's behavior was escalating and

I was genuinely scared that his next move would be to grab me off the sidewalk and pull me into his car and from there God only knew what sort of depravity I was in for. I scrambled through my memory for another safety tip and I remembered that making myself both impossible to ignore and obviously in distress could get me some much needed attention from an outside party. I ran into the middle of main street and started frantically waving my hands and shouting at every car that was coming my way. The first drove by, the second car drove by, and the terror in me was palpable. I knew the stories of the city dwellers like Kitty Genovese

who were left to their horrible fates at the hands of monsters by jaded throngs of people who heard the attacks perpetrated on them and their cries for help but did nothing out of both an assumption that someone else would step up and a reluctance to get involved. Would I be the next victim of the bystander effect, snatched away to an early end because of big city indifference? As I was beginning to lose hope but still determined to keep trying while thinking of my next bold move, a van pulled over that had four black guys in it. As a white woman, I was relieved. I knew that statistically male predators overwhelmingly tended to prey on women of their

same race. In a game of numbers, this van full of guys was exceptionally safer than that single stalker in a green car, and I opted to take the gamble. I frantically told them about the man in the green car who kept circling around the block and following me and begged for a ride home. The driver asked if I had any money in exchange for the favor. I didn't. Then he asked if I had any cigarettes. I may be one of the only people you ever meet who actually had her life saved by smokes, though I had never been a smoker before. I briefly picked up the filthy habit because New York State bars still allowed smoking and it was a weird part of Buffalo lesbian bar culture that I emulated to fit in, yet another way that I was, as are many, kind of an idiot in my early 20s.

Yes, I answered urgently, I just bought a pack and you can have the whole thing if you get me home. Admittedly, I was initially a little miffed that the driver wanted something from me in exchange for not letting me get abducted off the street, as well as the implication that he may not have helped me if I had nothing. Still, I had the Marlboros, he had a vehicle, and the stars had hopefully aligned. Regardless of how it went down, I had help if he let me in and the details didn't matter. After a second or two of thought, which seemed like an eternity to me, the driver agreed and one of the two dudes in the back opened the side door for me and got out so I could slide into the seat behind the driver. As the door to my safe carriage, full of impromptu knights, shut and I

got buckled in, I looked out my window just in time to see the green car creeping past the van and proving to my saviors that I was telling a very disturbing true story. Until my dying day, I will never forget that man's eyes. Feeling safe surrounded by a closed van full of young, tough-looking rescuers, I looked that bastard dead in the eyes. Part of me was rightfully terrified, but another part of me wanted to look right at him defiantly and tell him with my eyes, I got away from you. I win. I was repaid with the most evil, hateful look that I've ever had directed at me, let alone seen. His eyes were black, black like a cat's eyes get when it sees a bug in the house and its hunting instincts cause its pupils to blow to allow more light in.

But at least there's usually a hint of playful mischief in a hunting cat's eyes. The eyes I was seeing were those of pure, unadulterated predator, and the vitriol that practically oozed from them as he glared at me let me know exactly how he felt about his prey having the audacity to elude him. He drove off into the night, and so did we, in a bit less direct route to make sure that we lost him. After a blessedly quick jaunt with frequent looks behind my shoulder, I was delivered home, one pack of cigarettes short but alive and in one piece. The first thing that I did when I got into the door was check the locks on absolutely everything. After that, the adrenaline started to wear off and the pure fear set in.

I was so terrified that the man in the green sedan was searching the area where I got dropped off that I grabbed the cordless phone, then lay completely flat on the living room floor for hours for keeping totally out of sight from any of my apartment windows. As I lay there, I called the Buffalo police and relayed my terrifying tale in as much detail as I could give them. Being painfully aware of the prevalence of hate crimes against the LGBT community at that time, I told the cops that it was possible that the man was cruising near Roxy's to prey on vulnerable queer women who were out and about. In hindsight, I think the guy just saw who he thought was an easy mark out by herself and availed himself of

the opportunity to strike. Fast forward another four years and I had moved out to Chicago to live with my then-girlfriend. For about half of our four years there, I was pretty homesick. I'd never lived anywhere except my home state of New York and I went there knowing no one except my ex, who wasn't exactly an empathetic soul, adding to my feelings of isolation. I coped by keeping up on upstate New York news so I'd feel a little less far away. On a chilly mid-January morning in 2007, I was at our computer looking up headlines from my home state when one from WBFO popped up that immediately snared my attention. Bike Path Killer is Arrested. By then, I knew the moniker well. The internet had since aged into a beautifully organized repository of sometimes knowledge and despite the lack of transparency from my alma

mater, I became familiar with the Buffalo area mystery man and his active status throughout my time in Buffalo. And now I had a name for the specter responsible for that bit of eeriness that was always in the back of my mind when I was a student. The bike path killer was revealed as Artemio Sanchez, a middle-aged native of Puerto Rico who coached his son's sports teams and was affectionately referred to as Uncle Al in his neighborhood. As with many other killers, his disguises were his community involvement in just being ordinary. The man was estimated to have been responsible for 9 to 15 violations of women around the Buffalo area since 1975 and had confessed to three murders, the Yala murder in

1991, a second in 92, and a third which had occurred only three and a half months prior to his capture. I don't know if you've ever felt your heart somehow get wedged up into your voice box and get dropped into the depths of your stomach simultaneously, but believe me when I say that it's possible, given the right catalyst. And for me, that catalyst was the printed proof that the man was active while I lived in Buffalo and frequented Roxy's. More so, I knew that serial killers rarely take breaks as lengthy as the one between his 1992 and 2006 killings. He had to have at least been attempting to sate his evil impulses for those 14 years. And that realization gave me a very, very bad feeling that I'd crossed paths

with someone much more dangerous than I'd realized. The news articles had no picture of Sanchez, but the sickening feeling in me prodded me to find one. It was almost as if I knew what I would see before I even ever looked at him. A yahoo searched his name, because that was still a respectful means of finding things on the internet in 2007, and I was horrified, though not surprised, to see those same black soulless predatory eyes that I looked into four times on that summer night in Buffalo in 2003. The timeline fit, my profile as a victim fit if he did in fact mistake me for a downtown prostitute and bearing all else, I knew those eyes. I had a potentially deadly encounter with Altimio Sanchez, the bike path killer. My lack of sense put me in his orbit and a van of angels pulled me out of it.

I know who I saw and as God is my witness, I will never be convinced otherwise. Though many of the victims fell victim to the statutes of limitation, Altimio Sanchez pled guilty to the three murders and was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison. In essence, the guy won't be exposed to the outside again unless he it on a field or ice or course, BetRivers is the place. Over, under, money, lines, same game, parlays, it's all fine. We'll put a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with BetRivers Sportsbook.

Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. On April 17th of 1918, the SS Dumouriel set sail from Portland, Oregon, bound for the South Pacific. Owned by the U.S. Shipping Board, the 270-foot, 1,500-ton wooden steamer would transport goods between the United States and the many Philippine islands approximately 7,000 miles to its east. Its manufacturers, the Grant Smith Porter Ship Company, had high hopes

for their creation. But right away, ill omens prompted hushed concern. When the ship launched in Portland during the spring of 1918, it tumbled into the water and smashed into several houseboats on the Willamette River. The ship's captain, a hardy Scandinavian named Ole Berenson, dismissed the apprehensions of his anxious crew members and they set sail for San Francisco during the finer climes of the late summer. The Dumourou departed the United States in September of 1918, made a stop in Hawaii and then sailed on to Guam. Finally, on October 16th, the ship sailed out of Guam's Apra Harbor, destined for the Philippine capital of Manila. Only then was it loaded up with its final cargo,

which just so happened to be several thousand gallons of gasoline and a monumental shipment of tri-nitro-toluene, more commonly known as TNT. As the Dumuru pulled out of Apra Harbor, heavy storm clouds gathered on the horizon. Then before long, the storm broke in earnest. The Dumuru crashed through the roaring waves of the Philippine Sea, its crew battling the elements to keep her afloat. And then suddenly, disaster struck. A bolt of lightning streaked through the sky, striking the Dumourou's wooden deck and setting off a chain reaction which ignited both the shipment of gasoline and the crates full of dynamite.

In the year that followed, survivor Theron Bean stated that the forwardmost portion of the ship simply erupted into flame following the bright white flash. Soon after, the call went out to abandon ship. The ship's crew rushed aboard its three-life vessel which consisted of a small raft and two boats, but in their panic, the men failed to evenly distribute themselves between the three vessels. This meant that while one of the lifeboats departed with just nine people aboard and eleven empty seats, the other became dangerously overloaded, with over thirty terrified sailors hanging on for dear life. Soon after, the three vessels were separated by rough seas.

On October 26th of 1918, the Sunday Oregonian reported that Captain Berenson, his second mate and three crew members, had been found alive and well. They had been picked up by a transport ship just nine days after the Dumourou exploded. Their quest for survival was over. Their shipmates, on the other hand, were not so fortunate. Theron Bean, who found himself crammed aboard the boat of 32, stated that they rowed through the night until finally the rising sun revealed Guam on the horizon. Yet the Dumourou's survivors were horrified when a sudden change of wind and current sent their boat off course. Floating aimlessly in the Philippine Sea,

the men's hopes were reignited by the sudden appearance of a passing steamer. They began frantically rowing in its direction, waving and shouting as they went, but frustratingly, they remained unspotted as it sailed past them and into the distance. For the next few days, the sailors hoped and prayed for favorable winds, but as time passed, the situation grew critical. Their daily rations allowed for only two tablespoons of water and one piece of hard tack, and then after seven days of drifting, they found themselves too weak to row. Around two weeks into their ordeal, the first of the survivors began to die from exposure.

Three days later, they ran out of hard tack, while the heavens had failed to provide them with a single drop of rain. Some grew so thirsty that they began to drink salt water. All who did so died in agony just hours after their first sip. Other, savvier sailors fashioned a makeshift catchment device, otherwise known as an evaporator, using their shoes, the boat's oars, along with some spare wood they'd managed to chip away from it, with which to fuel a small fire. It was a creative but futile attempt to replenish their water supplies, and ultimately, they decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. After a brief but confrontational discussion, one of the starving sailors took a rubber hose from a bailing pump and fashioned it into a makeshift fishing line.

He then took a knife, began carving off pieces of his dead shipmate's flesh, and after tying the meat to the improvised fishing line, used it as bait to attract nearby schools of fish. Eventually a group of dolphins passed by and after luring one ever closer with the tempting taste of human flesh, the sailors speared it, killed it, and butchered it. Theron Bean later wrote that the dolphins's meat and moisture were warmly welcomed but scarcely comments on the method by which it was obtained. Finally, on the 24th day of their ordeal, the survivors of the SS Dumourou began to drift towards land. There had been weak celebration upon its sighting and for the first time in weeks,

the men felt some semblance of hope return. Little did they know, but the worst was yet to come. As their lifeboat approached white, tropical sands, choppy waves caused it to capsize. The surviving sailors were tossed among a seabed strewn with jagged, skeletal coral, inflicting terrible gashes and scrapes to their tender, sunburned skin. Some men were simply too weak to swim to shore and drowned among the coral, failing at the final hurdle in a tragic turn of events. Of the 32 men who climbed in the Dumourou's lifeboat on the day it exploded,

only 14 of them lived to tell the tale. Those that returned were treated as minor celebrities and like Theron Bean, were venerated by a sympathetic media that was already buzzing with excitement over the great war in Europe. They were treated as men of grit, will and determination, while those who died were revered as great Americans. Men who braved wild frontiers not just for their own enrichment, but for the benefit of their families and their nation. Theron Bean claimed that, upon their passing, his fallen comrades were given a respectful burial at sea. But the truth was deeply and

disturbingly different. Almost twelve years later, on January 1st of the year 1930, a man named Lowell Thomas published a book which stunned the American maritime community. It was entitled, The Wreck of the Dumourou, A Story of Cannibalism. In his book, Mr. Thomas claimed that after extensive interviews with one of the ship's survivors who wished to remain anonymous, he was quite certain that the shipwrecked sailors of the SS Dumourou had resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. The book caused outrage and indignation among the vast swaths of the American public, so much so that a reporter from the New York Times was tasked with verifying Mr. Thomas' account.

This reporter subsequently discovered that not only was Mr. Thomas' source a reliable one, being the Dumourou's assistant engineer, Fred Harmon, but his narrative was identical to the U.S. Navy's own official version of the incident. According to the report, taken from a U.S. naval base in the Philippine Islands, four of the Dumaru survivors passed away on the 18th day of their ordeal. One of these men, the ship's first engineer, had supposedly permitted his fellow sailors to consume his flesh upon his passing. And so, they did. After carving off pieces of the dead man's flesh, the surviving sailors boiled the meat in a kerosene can. It tasted good, the assistant engineer reportedly stated. Everyone seemed to feel a little bit better. The next day, the survivors

ate a little more, but this time, Harmon reported that the amount of salt in the meat made everyone sick and crazy. Harmon also stated that the proposal to cannibalize the dead was the suggestion of a Greek sailor he referred to as George Wielding a hatchet, George was alleged to have demanded that they consume the flesh of the fallen We're all dying, he reportedly yelled Cook the chief, or I'll do it myself Finally, on the orders of the Dumourous' first mate George the Greek prepared the flesh of the dead men for consumption, and did so under the watchful eye of a lieutenant named E.V. Holmes.

The lieutenant went ahead and ordered the Greek to place small parts of flesh on the wooden boat baler that was shaped like a large sugar scoop, and then wash them in the sea, Harmon said. Afterward, the wooden baler was passed around to all. Harmon went on to state that George the Greek ate first and then, I quote, offered the flesh to Holmes, who took it and ate it, thereby showing the rest of us that he desired us to do likewise. We ourselves had come around to George's way of thinking, and we decided to go right on with what the Greeks started. Though the men had initially been horrified at the idea of eating their crewmates, they eventually agreed that it was, and I quote, the only possible means

of saving our lives, and for our comrades it was a fate not much worse than to be eaten by sharks. After eating the head engineer, they allegedly also ate a Hawaiian mess boy who had grown so weak that he couldn't move. Following the publication of Lowell Thomas' highly controversial account, the Dumourou survivors admitted that the reports of cannibalism were true. However, the Connecticut Examiner went on to report that, quote, speculation still persisted about several disappearances, speculating that some men jumped overboard and became shark food rather than risk being eaten by their comrades, and grisly unsubstantiated rumors of casting lots before an unlucky chief engineer

and Hawaiian mess boy were killed, cooked, and eaten. Reports of cannibalism and the allegations of voluntary deaths include details that are beyond horrifying. But perhaps one of the more subtly chilling aspects of this case is that, had it not been for a shift in the wind, or had the passing steamer noticed the small lifeboat and come to its rescue, this grisly and terrifying episode might well have been averted entirely. The Luxborough was to complete a triangular trade route for the South Sea Company, transporting cotton, slaves, and rum between the Americas, Africa, and Europe. In the years that followed, the vessels suffered

considerable misfortune. In one incident, more than 600 African slaves perished after an outbreak of smallpox, accounting for just over a third of its human cargo. Many believed that such a huge loss of life had left the Luxborough haunted, and that it was only a matter of time before the dead sought retribution against those who sailed her. It took until June of 1727 for their grim portents to bear fruit, but when they did, the results were catastrophic. After hauling a cargo of rum and sugar across the Atlantic, the Luxborough caught fire during the return leg of its journey. According to a 24-year-old second mate named William Boyes, who had served in the Royal Navy since his 14th birthday, the fire was started by two young cabin boys who noticed liquid dripping down a column of wood. Worried that there was a leak in the ship's hull, the two boys sought a candle to better illuminate their surroundings,

but upon raising the candle above their heads, the liquid burst into flame. It wasn't water leaking from the ship's hull. It was rum, leaking from a poorly sealed barrel. Within minutes, a fiery explosion doused the hold in flames and, despite the efforts of the ship's crew, the conflagration grew. When it became evident that their attempts were futile and fearing the ship's supply of gunpowder was about to explode, many of the crew simply dropped to their knees and began praying for their mortal souls. Others rushed for its escape vessel, a 16-foot yawl containing three oars. Within minutes, the tiny boat was filled beyond capacity with 22 men and boys, and 16 souls were left behind. A handful had opted to go down with the

ship, but many more were asphyxiated as they attempted to commandeer a second lifeboat. The survivors rowed like madmen, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the coming explosion. When it came, it showered the surrounding ocean with splinters and scorched human remains. Those who rushed the yawl had survived the explosion, but they were now faced with a new and potentially deadly dilemma. They were stranded in the middle of the Atlantic, with no food or water and no means of sheltering themselves from the scorching summer sun. After two weeks of drifting aimlessly among the waves, the number of survivors had dwindled from 22 to just 12.

It's believed that even more would have perished in the coming days if it weren't for the decisive actions of some Newfoundland fishermen who spotted the drifting vessel during a routine trip. Sadly, despite his rescue, Captain William Kelleway passed away the day afterward and was joined by six more of his sickly shipmates in the weeks that followed. Only five of the Luxborough's crew made it home and although two of their names have been lost to history, three remain on record. William Boyce, the shipmate's second mate, who had been a 24-year-old veteran

of 10 years at the time of the disaster, lived to the ripe old age of 74. The ship's surgeon, Dr. Scrimsor, passed away aged 80. Yet perhaps most pertinent to our story is a sailor named George Mould, who died at Greenwich Hospital, aged 82. One of George Mould's physicians at Greenwich Hospital was Dr. William Boyes Jr., the son of the identically named Luxborough survivor. Not only had Dr. Boyes heard his father's tale of survival on scores of separate occasions, but he'd also conducted extensive interviews with his patient, George Mould. That meant that, upon the passing of the Luxborough survivors, Dr. Boyes was perhaps the preeminent authority on the disaster

and the survival of those that escaped it. Then, with a knowledge gleaned from his father and patient, the good doctor put pen to paper. His 1787 account of the Luxborough disaster was picked up by newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. Readers of the Boston Gazette and London's Evening Post were riveted by the events leading up to the ship's sinking and marveled at how they improvised a sail and engineered methods of obtaining fresh water. But it was the account of the survivor's fifth day at sea which caused international consternation.

What follows is an excerpt from that account. We often saw birds flying over our heads and fish playing around the boat's stern, which we strove to catch with our hat bands knotted together and a pin for a hook baited with a piece of the dead men's bodies, but with all our contrivance could not catch either fish or bird. The sensation of hunger was not so urgent, but we all saw the necessity of recruiting our bodies with some more substantial nourishment. It was at this time that we found ourselves impelled to adopt the horrible expedient of eating part of the bodies of our dead companions and drinking their blood. Our surgeon, Mr. Scrimsor, a man of the bodies of our dead companions and drinking their blood. Our surgeon, Mr. Scrimsor, a man of the utmost humanity, first suggested the idea,

and, resolute to set us an example, ate the first morsel himself. But at the second mouthful, he turned his face away from as many as he could, and wept. With great reluctance we brought ourselves to try different parts of the bodies of six, but could relish only the hearts of which we ate three, but we drank the blood of four. By cutting the throat a little while after death we collected a little more than a pint from each body. Here I cannot but mention the particular respect shown by the men to the officers, for the men who were employed in the melancholy business of collecting the blood in a pewter basin that was in the boat and the rest of the people would never touch a drop till the captain, surgeon, and myself had taken as much as we thought proper. And I can truly affirm we were so affected by the strong

instance of their regard that we always left them a larger share than of right belonged to them. This expedient, so shocking in relation and so distressing to us in the use, was undoubtedly the means of preserving those who survived, as we constantly found ourselves refreshed and invigorated by this nourishment, however unnatural. Obviously, since the vast majority of those who'd cannibalized their shipmates had passed away, no charges could be brought against any of the survivors. But to this day, the episode remains one of the darkest chapters in British maritime history. On May 19th of 1884, a yacht known as the Mignonette departed the English port of Southampton, bound for the coasts of eastern Australia. Constructed in 1867, the 52-foot cruiser had been purchased by an Australian lawyer named Jack Wont, who sought a suitable crew to transport her to Sydney.

But it was no small feat. Many experienced sailors noted that the yacht was an inshore boat, unsuited to long voyages and open waters. And what's more, even the most experienced of sailors were intimidated by the 15,000 mile journey, with many turning the job off or down before a full crew was finally assembled. In the end, a four-man team was put together, which consisted of Captain Tom Dudley, Edwin Stevens, Edmund Brooks, and a 17-year-old cabin boy by the name of Richard Parker. Almost two months into their journey, the crew of the Minionette found themselves sailing into a gale

around 1,600 miles northwest of South Africa's Cape of Good Hope. Despite the fierce winds, their journey was progressing steadily. Then, in order to enjoy a good night's sleep, Captain Dudley gave the order to heave-to. In sailing, heaving-to is a way of slowing a vessel's forward progress, as well as fixing the helm and sail position so that the vessel does not have to be steered. It is commonly used as a way for sailors to take a break or to wait out strong or contrary winds. However, just as the maneuver was completed and young Richard Parker was sent below to prepare tea, a freak wave struck the mignonette, damaging a bulkhead and causing vast amounts of seawater to flood into her hold. Realizing the yacht was doomed, Captain Dudley ordered his three crew members to man their single 13-foot lifeboat.

The lifeboat was of flimsy construction, with its boards only a quarter inch thick, but as the Minionette began to list and groan, it proved the crew's only source of salvation. Just minutes later, the crew watched as the mignonette disappeared below the waves, having managed to salvage nothing but a few pieces of navigational equipment and two tins of turnips. At first, Captain Dudley managed to stabilize the lifeboat by constructing an improvised sea anchor, a device reminiscent of a kind of waterborne parachute. It dragged behind the lifeboat, slowing its progress slightly and allowing for more effective manual steering. The captain also determined that they must have been around 700 miles from the nearest dry land, meaning that they were unlikely to be rescued any time soon. During their first night

at sea, the crew were forced to fight off a great white shark using nothing but their oars. The next morning, they were able to catch a sea turtle by simply dragging it out of the water. This yielded about three pounds of meat each plus the bones, which, along with the tins of turnips, lasted until July 17th. The sailors planned on drinking the turtle's blood to stave off fatal dehydration, but after it became contaminated with seawater, they began imbibing their own urine. By July 20th, the teenage cabin boy Richard Parker had become so sick of drinking his own urine that he began slurping up handfuls of seawater. But this only exacerbated his dangerous levels of dehydration and he fell unconscious shortly

afterward. Around the same time that young Parker began to drift into unconsciousness, Dudley, Stevens, and Brooks began discussing the prospect of cannibalism. On July 24th, Dudley told the others that it was better that one of them die so that the others would survive and suggested they should draw lots. Brooks refused, but that night, Dudley once again raised the matter and pointed out that while the childless cabin boy was most probably dying, he and Stevens had wives and families to take care of. The boy would be mourned, but unlike their women and children, his parents would not starve without his wages.

This appeared to have been the most effective method of argument as, the next morning, Captain Dudley and Edwin Stevens made the decision to kill Richard Parker, as doing so prior to his natural death would ensure his blood was fresh enough to drink. Brooks, who had refused to take part in the earlier discussion, claimed he neither agreed nor disagreed with the decision. Captain Dudley then said a prayer, and with Stevens holding the boy still in the event that he woke up, the captain pushed his penknife into Parker's jugular vein and ended his life.

Once Parker's heart had ceased to beat, the three surviving sailors began butchering his body. Ironically, and despite his early reticence, it was reported that Edmund Brooks was ravenous in his consumption of Parker's flesh, while Edwin Stevens appeared to have a change of heart and ate very little. Speaking of the scene that followed, Captain Dudley later said, I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal. We were like mad wolves who should get the most, and for men, fathers of children, to commit such a deed, we could not have our right reason.

Just a few days later, the survivors were still feasting on Parker's remains when they spotted the sail of a passing ship named the Montezuma and successfully garnered its attention. Finally, on September 6th of 1884, the Montezuma sailed into Falmouth Harbor where the three survivors of the mignonette reported to a customs officer by the name of Mr. Cheeseman. Initially, the men were greeted with great relief, as it was assumed the Minionette's crew had been lost when it failed to reach its Cape Town checkpoint. Yet after explaining the grisly methods by which they had survived, the situation took a dramatic turn. Incredibly, the surviving crew members were

remarkably candid regarding the retelling of the events and openly admitted to having murdered young Richard Parker before consuming his still warm flesh. Contemporary defense attorneys, who tend to limit their clients' vocabulary to the words no and comment would consider such a frank admission to be nothing short of madness. But although Captain Dudley and his two surviving crew members felt deep shame and guilt, they were comfortable in their confession, because in doing so, they invoked what was known as the custom of the sea. Since the very first days of humanity's oceanic exploration, accidents and misfortune have humbled even the hardiest of vessels. And those who survived their sinking ships, either cast adrift or washed up on some far-flung shore, were often faced with what was referred to as the delicate question. To eat or not to eat, they're dead or dying shipmates.

Thankfully, only a very small number of seamen and explorers have been faced with such a grim situation, but with 19th century British culture being so centered around its maritime industries, such incidents became embedded into the public consciousness. For example, in the early 1600s, seven English sailors were cruising through the Caribbean when they were blown out to sea and cast adrift for 17 days. When they reached the point of starvation, the sailors drew straws to decide who would sacrifice their flesh for the good of the collective. Ironically, the man chosen was the one who suggested the idea in the first place, but according to his shipmates, he nobly consented and was swiftly put to death. The sailors survived on the man's flesh till they reached the Isle of St. Martin, then following the repatriation to British territory, they were put

on trial for murder. However, on the day of their hearing, the colonial judge showed a great deal of sympathy towards them, which in turn reflected the views of their hearing, the colonial judge showed a great deal of sympathy towards them Which in turn reflected the views of the wider public The sailors were pardoned, with the judge stating their actions were of inevitable necessity More than 200 years later, consuming one's dead shipmates in order to survive periods of deprivation Became known as the Tradition of the Sea. And as recently as August of 1874, the crew of the Collier-Yukesine was said to have resorted to cannibalism after their ship went down off the coast of Western Australia. The governor of Singapore had ordered the surviving crew

members arrested and, at first, the British government encouraged him to hold a judicial inquiry. However, when it came time to actually prosecuting the men, extended procedural wrangling meant that charges were eventually dropped, and this was no accident. During this period, the influence of British admiralty over their counterparts in government cannot be overstated. Many serving members of parliament had been officers in Her Majesty's Royal Navy prior to their retirements, so naturally they had a great deal of sympathy for the survivors of any shipwreck. This didn't mean sailors were free

to murder and cannibalize as they pleased, so long as it was on the high seas. But under the right circumstances, invoking the custom of the sea could prove a powerful defense, and the surviving crew members of the Minionette knew this all too well. Yet after relaying their story of survival to the Falmouth Customs Officer, the deliciously named Mr. Cheeseman, the survivors found themselves standing before a police officer named Sergeant Laverty. And they were informed that, although they were not being placed under arrest, Harbors found themselves standing before a police officer named Sergeant Laverty, and they were informed that, although they were not being placed under arrest, they were not permitted to leave Falmouth until the situation had been resolved.

In the hours that followed, an emergency meeting of the Harbors' commissioners yielded the following report. The police have apprehended Thomas Dudley, Ed Stephens and E. Brooks of the Yacht Mignonette on a charge of killing at sea on the 20th of July last, the boy Richard Parker after being for 18 days at sea with no food or drink. Summonses were also served on two seamen of the German Bark Montezuma, as witnesses in the case being those who cleared the boat of the remains of Parker. When news of the macabre story spread around Falmouth, there seemed to be a surprising amount of sympathy for the Minionette survivors. When they were officially arrested, a local businessman named John Burton paid a generous amount to bail them out of prison, and even

though he had eaten heartily of Parker's butchered flesh, there were deafening cries for clemency when it was heard that Edmund Brooks had refused to take part in the boy's murder. Brooks was acquitted, but despite the controversy, Ed Stevens and Captain Dudley were to be put on trial for murder. Following their transfer to an Exeter courthouse, Stevens and Dudley were found guilty of Richard Parker's murder and condemned to hang. Yet as one might imagine, the decision was met with outrage from both the Admiralty and the wider British public. And finally, after lengthy and considerable pressure, the death warrants for Stevens and Dudley were torn up and their sentences were reduced to a mere six months imprisonment. The case of the Crown v. Dudley v. Stevens is one of the few 19th century criminal procedures still analyzed by law students today. It was also the inspiration for the name of the Bengal tiger in Jan Martel's work, Life of Pi. Some mistakenly believe that the case also inspired Edgar Allan Poe's only complete novel,

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and it's easy to understand why. Told from the perspective of the eponymous Gordon Pym, it recounts the tale of a perilous sea voyage in which, following a mutiny and monstrous storm, Pym finds himself in charge of the ship's battered remains and, accompanied by just three others, Augustus, Peters, and a young cabin boy by the name of Richard Parker. Halfway through the novel, having survived for days on nothing but scraps of turtle meat and drops of fresh water, the desperate survivors are forced to invoke the so-called custom of the sea and begin drawing lots to determine the victim. In the end, it comes down

to just Gordon Pym and Richard Parker, and it is Parker who was chosen to be eaten. Yet, the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was not published in the aftermath of the Minionette's sinking. It was published in 1838, a full 46 years before the Minionette sank, and 29 years before Richard Parker, the ill-fated cabin boy, was even conceived. Some suggested this was evidence of Poe's morbid prescience, a symptom of his ever-lingering genius. But perhaps such a coincidence is suggestive of the repetitive and inevitable nature of the event itself. For since the very first days of humanity's oceanic exploration, accidents and misfortune have humbled even the hardiest of vessels.

And so perhaps those who survived disasters involving interstellar starships who ended up stranded on some far-flung shore will once again be faced with what was once referred to as the delicate question. Has anyone else gone through an addiction to DoorDash and Grubhub? My husband and I went through a phase where we were extremely busy and found ourselves using a delivery service a few times a week. This particular week I think this was our third time ordering. We just got done with work and it was already 7pm and we just didn't feel like cooking. We usually have good experiences with delivery services. Once in a

while we'll get a crap delivery person who just kind of throws the food around or the occasional cancelled order. But on this particular night, my husband and I chose to splurge. We each ordered three courses from a pretty pricey restaurant but also knew that we'd have leftovers for at least a few days. In the hopes that the food would arrive quickly and safely, we put a very large tip on the order. The delivery person, Rachel, seems to be courteous and prompt, letting us know each step of the way until our order arrives. The food arrived perfectly, and Rachel thanked us for the generous tip to let us know that it meant a lot. We were feeling good and getting the food ready and throwing on a movie to have a little at-home date night.

We started putting food on our plates and heard a knock at the door. We both kind of looked at each other and then made our way towards the front door. My husband swung open the door and what once was a smiling and bubbly delivery person was now at our door expressionless and white as a ghost. Rachel looks up at us and says softly, Can I please come in? I think there's someone in my car. My husband, who always assumes the worst, is super protective and says no. He never ever lets strangers inside and has read and seen too many things where a good Samaritan lets someone in

their house or helps them on the side of the road and you're just set up for some trap. He has said to me multiple times, as soon as you open the door for a stranger and let them in, it's already too late. After a minute or two of pleading with my husband, he agreed that this tiny girl wasn't a threat and we would let her in and lock the door right after. We motioned for Rachel to come in and we could tell that she was thankful but starting to get a little bit hysterical. We phoned the police and let them know what was going on and asked if they could send someone out. They let us know that they would send someone as soon as they could and we sat with Rachel and tried to calm her down and

let her know that she was safe now. We weren't going to let anyone in the house and the cops would check her car in the surrounding area, I'm sure of it. As we waited for the police, now in a mostly awkward silence, my husband noticed a few of our motion lights beginning to turn on. First, we saw one go off on the side of the house, followed by one going off in the backyard just a few moments later. Trying not to cause any panic, but definitely moving with some speed, my husband was darting around the house making sure that all the windows and doors were locked. I knew they were because unless I specifically opened them, my husband always keeps everything closed and locked, and after he checked all of the locks, he starts to look through the blinds to see if there was

anybody on the property illuminated by the motion lights. My husband thought that he saw something by the trees and bushes towards the northwest corner of our yard. He couldn't make it out, but said it looked like eyes were glowing from one of the openings. He told me to go back into the living room with Rachel and he would keep an eye on things. As I was sitting with Rachel, I heard what sounded like nails on a chalkboard or the only other way to describe it is someone going down a water slide with no water. The kind of dry screeching sound that you might hear there. I went to tell my husband but he was already hot on the trail, feeling like he had heard

tapping on the windows in the dining room. My husband went to the windows where I thought that I'd heard the noise coming from and lunged back. He said that he saw a set of eyes pressed up against the glass. Thankfully, the next sound we heard and the image we saw were the flashing lights and sirens of police cars. The police arrive and search the inside and outside of our house thoroughly. They let us know no one is inside and also no one is inside Rachel's car even though both of her back doors were completely wide open. Just as they were about to finish the search, they found someone lying underneath our back deck, trying to hide. The officers corral him back down to the ground and get cuffs on him to bring him back to the squad car. We then have to give additional statements and go through some information before they let Rachel

know that they will have someone follow her home and escort her into her house. The main officer at the scene also let us know that he would leave someone outside patrolling for at least an hour and we could request it to be longer if we felt uncomfortable. We were all understandably shaken up by the ordeal and just wanted it to be longer if we felt uncomfortable. We were all understandably shaken up by the ordeal and just wanted it to come to an end. My husband and I ended up eating a few bites of our dinner and went to bed shortly after. I don't think I got a minute of sleep that night though. I felt like our privacy and safety were violated and also felt so bad for poor Rachel who I'm sure also had a sleepless night.

I'm glad everyone was okay, including the police officers, that nothing more violent or sinister happened that night. And it's safe to say, if we order out, we just go pick up the food now, and haven't used a food delivery service app since. In my early twenties, I had a knack for spending more money than I could afford. When I got my first real taste of making money, it's not an understatement to say that I was reckless. One of the first things I did was get a new car with extremely high payments. Instead of leasing a smaller, cheaper car, I decided that I was going to buy a BMW. It's not a top of the line one, but still a BMW, and my payments were over $600 a month, which may not seem like a lot for some people, but for me, it was crippling. I barely made enough money to pay my bills, and I still live with my parents

at the time, and so I found myself doing all sorts of tasks for friends and family members to make some extra money. I regularly watched my friend Dom's dog. Dom had to go out of state every other weekend for his job and since he didn't have a wife or girlfriend, he had me as his dog sitter. And I did this for about six months and honestly loved the job. He lived in a nice and quiet neighborhood. The dog, Willard, was a golden retriever and was such a good dog, not to mention easy to care for. And these bi-monthly trips to Dom's were something I look forward to. But like most good things in the world, it eventually came to an end. I'm sorry about the pessimistic attitude, but the last time I watched Willard,

the evening started like every other weekend dog sitter trip. We'd play in the yard for a while, go for a walk, and then wind down at around 9pm. One of the reasons why Dom trusted me was because he knew I could never have people over or anything like that because I would work early in the mornings on the weekends. Usually I would be asleep around 10, but on this Saturday night, I was invested in a movie that ended a little after 11. The movie was Inception, just in case you were wondering. And after the movie, I let Willard out while I got myself ready for bed. I always felt weird about sleeping in Dom's bedroom, so I would usually sleep on the couch with the dog. Just as I was getting comfortable, the doorbell rang.

I looked at the clock and it was about 11.16pm. My mind immediately went to someone in Dom's family. I couldn't imagine anybody else ringing the doorbell in his neighborhood at this hour and I rushed to the door and standing on the other side was a young man, most likely in his early 20s like me. He looked clean cut and didn't have a threatening presence about him and I opened the front door but kept the outer screen door shut and locked And talking through the screen I asked him if I could help him with something

And he didn't seem weird or sketchy In a very confident voice he said to me Hey man, I got the food you ordered And two things I feel like I need to mention here One, this was before all the food ordering apps, so your food never just got dropped off at the door. You had to physically go and pay for the food at the door and have an interaction with the delivery driver. And two, you're probably assuming that Willard is like most dogs and that she's barking like crazy at someone ringing the doorbell. Well, she isn't like most dogs. Not

only did she not bark, but she stayed on the living room couch the entire time I had an interaction with that delivery driver. I was kind of annoyed by this more than anything. I definitely wasn't scared. I mean, why would I be? I had no reason to believe that this was anything other than just some mistake. I explained to the guy that he had the wrong address and that I didn't order any food. We had a quick back that he had the wrong address and that I didn't order any food. We had a quick back and forth and then we figured out that the delivery was for a different address and he accidentally went to the wrong house. The guy started to apologize and I told him not to worry. While he was apologizing, I noticed that his car was filled with three other

people. Two in the back and one in the passenger seat. I thought that was pretty weird. I never noticed delivery drivers have anyone else in the car with them, let alone an entire carload of people. We finally wrapped up our conversation and locked the door. I made my way back to the living room and tried to get myself comfortable again. I was a little annoyed, but I understood accidents do happen. Not two minutes later the doorbell starts ringing like crazy. You know that annoying sound of the bell just ringing non-stop? Well I jumped up and ran to the door. It was the delivery driver and

now he looked a little bit more panicked. I didn't open the front door but shouted through the window beside the door. I asked what he wanted and he told me that he accidentally hit my car in the driveway while he was trying to leave. Before I could answer, he put his head down and said in an almost ashamed voice, I'm sorry man but it looks like there's a little damage. I hate to bother you but I think you should take a look. Now I was furious. I opened the front door and started following the delivery driver down the driveway toward my car. I didn't even put shoes on. Several feet from the car I noticed something strange though. His car, which was filled with passengers just a few minutes ago, was now empty. I stopped abruptly

and the delivery driver told me to keep going and that the damage was on the other side of the car. It may have taken a while but finally I started to get the feeling that something just wasn't right. I told him that I wanted to go back inside and grab my shoes. I started to walk back to the door trying to pretend that everything was fine and just a few steps into my walk back, I heard a noise to my right. From the brush on the side of Dom's house, two people emerged wearing hoods. I started to jog towards the front door. On the other side of the house, another person started to run full pelt at me, and at that point I began sprinting toward the door. I was inches from

the house and one of the men tried to tackle me. Thankfully he was just far enough away that he made contact with my ankle but it wasn't enough to trip me up. I freaked out, got inside and locked the door behind me. That tackler was immediately at the front door banging and trying to open it. I was able to get a glimpse of the man who tried tackling me. He looked like he was tan, a skinny guy with buzzed hair. He had a scruffy beard and a tattoo of some tiger on his neck. I grabbed my phone and called the police right away. I stared out the window while I was speaking with the dispatcher and I saw all four of them standing near my car. I told dispatch what had happened and gave them a very detailed description of the delivery driver and the tiger tattoo man,

and I watched all four men get into the car and drive away. I was able to tell the police that it was a red Honda Civic, and the police eventually showed up and took my entire statement. But what's frustrating for me is that even with all the details I gave the police, they never caught any of these dudes. But what's most frustrating is that I have no idea why I was targeted. I didn't recognize these guys and when I told Dom about the incident, the appearance didn't sound familiar to him either. It's scary what can happen out there in the world when you least expect it. A few years ago, while I was in college, I would deliver pizzas on my off days from school to make some extra cash.

The shop I worked at was in a busy town. You would think the lunchtime shift would be worse than the dinner rush, but I made substantially more money delivering during lunch. Mostly because it would usually be large businesses ordering pizzas for their company and most of the time they would tip nicely. One afternoon, we got an order from some new insurance company that I had never heard of before, which for the record is not really a red flag. Once I started delivering pizzas to businesses during lunch, I found out that I didn't know most companies that I delivered to. And trust me when I say, a lot of these places could use some better marketing, but that's another story for another day. So I took the order and plugged the address into my GPS. It wasn't far from the shop. The

company had an office in a building that had been recently renovated, and right in the center of town was the small business park complex that was filled with old buildings and offices. It was only in the last few years that most of the spaces had been rented out. During the time this story took place, there was still a lot of available spaces in these buildings, and this wasn't the first time I delivered to this business complex, but it was the first time I delivered to this specific building of the complex. It was toward the back of the complex and there was probably 10 cars in this massive parking lot. I walked inside the building and I swear I felt like I was in an episode of The Walking Dead or something. It was just so creepy. It was quiet in a very desolate lobby. It had the vibe of an

abandoned mall, and what made it more creepy was just the overall atmosphere of the interior of the building. It was dim inside, almost uncomfortably so. There wasn't a person in sight. The aesthetic of the place was all this tile that looked like it was supposed to be marble. There was eerie elevator music playing in the background that echoed slightly because of the lack of anything inside this big open space. Then once inside, you walk into the center of the building and into a large atrium where you're able to look up and see all the floors. I can't remember exactly, but I'm going to say the building was six floors. I looked at my order form and I couldn't read my own handwriting.

I tried to recall and I thought the woman on the phone said that it was on the fifth floor. I was purely guessing because the lobby didn't have any type of secretary or directory. I took the elevator to the fifth floor, still listening to the creepy elevator jazz that seems to be playing everywhere in this damn building. The elevator opened to a small walkway where I was able to look over the railing and down the atrium where I had just been standing a minute ago. I could go left or right out of the elevator and both directions seemed to lead really nowhere. And by that I mean the halls were dark and I couldn't see any light protruding from the shut doors that lined the halls. Since I'm left-handed, I always opted to go left when

I'm faced with these types of choices. A few steps down the hall, the lights above my head turned on and I felt a little relief. The lights in the hallway were motion-censored, which made me feel better about the dark halls. However, I kept walking down the hall and every office appeared to be shut and vacant. After a minute or two, I decided to do what I should have done in the first place and just call the company that placed the order. It rang once, and then I hung up the phone because I heard someone shout, Hey, from the end of the hall. I looked up and a man with a sweatshirt was waving me down to an office at the end of the hall. He said in a very shaky voice,

Them pizzas for me? And without thinking I just nodded and said, if you ordered five large pizzas then I'm your guy. The man laughed and I started walking toward him. As I was getting closer to the guy I noticed that the room behind him was completely dark. The door was cracked but there was a small window on the side of the door and it appeared that the lights were off. I stopped about six feet away from the man and cautiously said, are you sure you ordered five pizzas? It looks pretty closed up behind you. The man nodded and said, oh yeah, everyone is in the back conference room. I like to turn the lights off to save power. I tried not to judge a book by its cover, but this man did not give off the vibe that he sold insurance. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans and from what I could see in the shadows, his skin and teeth just looked disgusting. And against my better judgment, I followed him to

the door and when I was in the doorway, I knew I messed up. I looked inside the office and saw that it was empty and a completely vacant room. Before I could react, the man slammed the door in my face, knocking me and the pizzas over. I got up quickly, a little disoriented, and as I got to my feet, the man grabbed some 2x4 or some other large wooden piece from behind the door and just absolutely rocked me in the face with it. I was still conscious, but I was seeing stars for sure. I pretended to be unconscious, which I know may seem like a coward's move, but I didn't want that man to continue beating me and I thought in the moment it was a good idea. I could not think straight though. I didn't want that man to continue beating me and I thought in the moment it was a good idea. I could not think straight though. After all, I had no idea if the man had a weapon beyond that or if there were other people inside that could potentially attack me if I started fighting back.

While I was on the ground, the man starts to rummage through my stuff. He took my wallet, ripped off my gold chain from around my neck, and I could hear him running away. While on the ground, I could hear my phone vibrating from my left side. I must have dropped my phone when I dropped the pizzas, otherwise I'm sure this man could have taken that as well. I crawled over and grabbed my phone. It was the number that ordered the pizzas. I didn't answer it because I was convinced at this point that this was all some setup and that if I answered the phone they would summon me to another

part of the building where I would just get jumped again. I ended up staying on the ground and called the police who did thankfully show up very quickly. While I was waiting the number kept calling me and I finally answered and it was a kind young woman asking about the pizzas since they've been waiting for about an hour at this point. I get the correct floor and office number from the woman, which was floor number four, and went to the office with that police officer. As it turns out, this was a real office and a real order, and after a little initial investigation it turns out the man who jumped me was just some homeless guy who was probably squatting

in the empty offices. He saw me and just took an opportunity to strike instead of hiding. The bad news is they never caught who did it. Unfortunately this type of crime happens a lot in my hometown, and it's hard to determine who jumped someone based on a very little description and evidence. But there is good news, though. The company that placed the order felt so bad, they ended up giving me a huge tip for my troubles. Not only that, but after the attack took place, the company installed a fob for the entrance and a security guard at the front door.

And to my knowledge, this man was the last squatter that that building ever had. To be continued... years and wasn't even dating at the time. Both of my friends had serious girlfriends which usually made me feel worse about being the only one without a significant other. One weekend, both couples went away for the weekend and I was alone at the house. Usually it didn't bother me that much but for some reason, this weekend I was really sad about being single. I was depressed and low and was feeling trapped in my head. I decided to do the one thing that made me happy at the time and that was eat an entire buffalo chicken wing pizza. My plan for Saturday night was to eat my grief and sorrows away. I ordered my pizza and 40 minutes later there was a knock at the door. When I went to grab my pizza, I was instantly annoyed. The delivery driver was one of my roommate's friends.

Well, friend is a strong word. He was a semi-decent acquaintance of my roommate, and I don't actually know what his real name is. Everybody just called him Z. He was that sketchy guy that every friend group knows. He always showed up at parties with questionable people around him, and he was always in trouble with the cops for something. This guy had a brush with the law for just about everything you can think of on a minor scale. Z was smiling when I opened the door but the smile faded away when he saw that it was me. He asked if my roommate was home so he could say what's up and I explained to him that he was out of town and it was just me for the weekend. Z nodded a little bit at the front door and he tried making some small talk with me but I was very dismissive and kind of

short with him. While he was talking I noticed that he was looking past me into the house. It was a very weird interaction but then again Z is a weird guy so I didn't think much about it. I rudely said bye and just shut the door on him. I wasn't in the best mode to begin with, I didn't like Z and more than anything else in the world, I just wanted to eat my pizza. I eventually ate the entire pizza and spent several hours playing my Xbox. A little after one in the morning, I thought I heard a noise coming from outside of the house. I was in my bedroom which was on the driveway side of the house and I thought that I could hear the sound of movement or shuffling coming from outside.

I looked out the window and I didn't see anything. I assumed it was my mind just messing with me since I wasn't in a great head state. I tried getting back into my game but after I heard the noise I just had that nasty pit in my stomach and it wasn't from the pizza. It was just the feeling that something wasn't right. I went into the kitchen to get something to drink and I could hear noises coming from the back of the house now. This time I knew it wasn't my mind. I could clearly hear movement and shuffling coming from the backyard. I gingerly walked to the back of the house which is where my one roommate's bedroom is located.

His door was closed but I felt like I could hear something behind it. I put my ear to the door and it was clear as day. Something was going on in that room and I knew my roommate wasn't home. I opened the door and like a deer in headlights, Z and I assumed his girlfriend were trying to and nearly successfully breaking into my roommate's bedroom window. I yelled at him, called him out and Z who at this point has completely crawled through the window was putting his hand up in a defensive position and telling me to calm down. Z looked calm but the girl he was with looked like a ghost. was putting his hand up in a defensive position and telling me to calm down. Z looked calm, but the girl he was with looked like a ghost. Z tried telling me that my roommate said it was okay for them to stop by, they were just trying to borrow a DVD. When I asked him why he didn't use the front door, he said that he didn't want to bother me. All while this

conversation was happening, Z seemed to be inching closer to me, and his lady friend was slowly moving behind me. I didn't like what was happening, so as Z inched closer to me, I started to inch closer to the door. I looked up at one point, and I saw him slowly reach behind his back, and that's when I turned around to run for the door, and the girl was standing in the doorway. Without thinking, I pushed her down and ran to my bedroom. I slammed the door and Z started pounding on it. He was pleading with me that he was just there to borrow some stuff, all the while violently pounding on my door. I shouted that I called the police and that they would be here any minute. I didn't actually call the police by that point, but I just wanted to see his reaction. He started to curse at me under his breath and then the pounding stopped. A few seconds later

I saw out of the window him and the girl running down the street. Even though it was late I called my roommate and asked if he told Z it was okay to borrow some DVDs. My roommate was confused and said that he absolutely did not tell Z that he could borrow anything and that's when I called the police. It wasn't long after the police apprehended Z for attempted break-in and that night messed me up. I can't go to sleep now unless I check and make sure every door and window is locked and as for Z, I'm not really sure what happened to him. After that night he stopped coming around and I never saw him at parties again. My roommate finally cut ties with him. I'm still terrified that one night he'll come back for me since I was the one who ratted him out

to the police. I can only hope that he doesn't hold a grudge and I really don't feel very good about that. As many people out there may know, being broke may cause you to do some stupid things, or have a major lack of judgment. That's what happened to me last year. I started using one of those apps to deliver food to make some extra money. I didn't have a ton of friends, and this was a great distraction for me. I'd throw on some podcasts and deliver food. Mindless and easy work. Most of the time I didn't even have to interact with other people which was a major perk for me. I would deliver food all over town. Nice areas and not so nice areas. One night I had to deliver food to this large building that had several apartments on the inside.

If anybody out there is old enough to remember the show Hey Arnold, it was kind of like that. Just a big house where a bunch of people basically were running out of room. The building was in a run-down part of town though, but hey, that's part of the job. This specific order was going to one of the tenants named Roxanne who lived in the basement of the building. When inside the app, you can leave special instructions such as, please leave the food at the door, and most people just leave that for the instructions. Not this Roxanne person though. She left me multiple messages through the app leaving me further instructions. She said, please enter the side door on the right side of the building. Go right and head down the stairs. You'll be in a small little mudroom. You'll see a door with the number six on it knock three times okay so i guess the instructions were normal and honestly pretty helpful other than the knock three

times part being kind of weird but i have received much weirder instructions than that in the past believe it or not i noticed that she didn't, but she left me another message saying that she would tip with cash when I arrived with the food which was great for me. I arrived with her food and followed her instructions which were spot on. I entered the door on the side of the building and went down into this small dungeon looking room with a washer and dryer and right there in the basement was a door with a number 6 on it. Everything seemed legitimate so far. The basement smelled terrible though, the building looked like it was going to fall over at any second, but everyone has to live somewhere I suppose. I approached the door and just as the instructions said I knocked three

times. Three very hard knocks. Almost immediately I got a message on the app telling me to please come inside and bring the food to the kitchen. She said that she was in the kitchen with her purse and she couldn't move very well. It would be helpful for her if I brought the food right to her and then she would tip me there. Now in written context, in hindsight, this seems ridiculous. But as it was happening in real time, I really didn't think it was a dangerous or really anything to be scared about situation. Like I said, I received much weirder instructions so for me to come inside and drop the food off, it just didn't set off any alarms in my head. I was more annoyed that it was taking so long. And so, without thinking, I slowly opened the door to the basement apartment.

It was a very dark room and it smelled horrible inside. The overwhelming smell of body odor almost made me audibly gag. I didn't enter right away, though. When I say it was dark, I mean it was pitch black inside the room other than some dim light coming from the end of what looked like a hallway. I assume that's where the kitchen was. I didn't completely enter yet, but I just wiggled toward the door a little more. Now I started to hear the faint alarm bells going off in my head though, but not enough for me to turn around and hightail it out of there quite yet. Remember the first thing I said in this story was that sometimes being broke causes a major lack of judgment.

Well, this was one of those moments I'm referring to. I started to take a step inside the apartment and when one foot was barely in the door, I heard some creepy voice from the right side that did not sound like a woman. And it said, Come on in. Thankfully the creepy voice made me freeze because according to Roxanne, she was in the kitchen. So why would someone be to the right of the door? I still had one foot out in the mudroom and it's a good thing I did.

As I stood there, someone tried to shut the door. But thankfully I was able to stop the door with my foot. I couldn't see the person but I could smell them and I could hear their heavy breathing. I threw the bag of food at the person's head and ran as fast as I could. I could hear the door slamming behind me and I just never looked back. I didn't care about that tip, I just wanted to live. Once I got back to my car, I called the authorities and reported this incident. I told them exactly what happened and honestly the cop treated me like I was just some stupid hysterical kid. It just seemed like I was not being taken seriously. The cops did follow

up and unfortunately it didn't seem like they did anything. According to police, technically no crime had been committed and since I couldn't prove that they were trying to forcibly shut me inside the apartment, the police told me it was just better that I let it go. The one officer told me that if delivering food was too scary for me then maybe I should look for another line of work. I don't know, maybe this was just a weird interaction that I mistook for something threatening. I will say this though, I don't know how many non-threatening interactions involve someone trying to shut the door while you're fighting to stay on the other side. I'm just saying. In this wonderful modern time, we have the luxury of ordering just about any food we want for delivery. It's easy to get anything from pizza to a chicken sandwich.

On the flip side, we can take jobs as delivery drivers and make a few bucks on the side. It's easy work, and when you're a single mother like me, any extra income is good income. A few weeks ago, I delivered some food to a nice suburban community. It was one of those neighborhoods you'd see on a Disney Channel show. Nice houses, picket fences, you know the neighborhoods I'm talking about. And like all the deliveries I make, I'm supposed to take a picture of the food at the front door. Think of it as like an insurance policy in case the food is at the wrong house or stolen or something weird happens. I place the food in front of the door on top of the small staircase that leads to the door. I took a few

steps back and took a picture of it. After taking the picture I was walking back to my car when I was confronted by an extremely angry and enraged woman who came out from the house across the street. I asked her what her problem was and she just kept screaming at me saying that it was private property and that I was trespassing. I tried explaining one time to the woman what I did and why I took the picture and it did not compute in her tiny little brain. After being continuously caught off every time I tried to speak, I decided to just get into my car and drive away. I tried being nice but clearly this woman was insane. I got inside my car and was checking my phone for another delivery.

The woman started to bang on the hood of my car, causing checking my phone for another delivery. The woman started to bang on the hood of my car, causing me to jump from being startled. I got out of the car aggressively to see if there was any damage and she ran back to her house. There was no damage, but I was so done with this delivery and I decided to just call it a night. I ended up driving home and spending the evening with my daughter. We ate dinner, played some games, and watched a movie together. I put her to bed and started binge-watching one of my favorite shows, and I would have guessed that it was around midnight when I heard someone knocking at my front door. Knocking rather aggressively, I might add.

I couldn't believe what I was looking at through the peephole in the door. It was the crazy woman from the delivery earlier in the day. I didn't believe what I was looking at through the peephole in the door. It was the crazy woman from the delivery earlier in the day. I didn't answer. I didn't even say anything. I just kept watching this woman trying to figure out what she was doing at my house. She had to have followed me home, which was already insanely creepy. And while I was watching her, she went over to the walkway that led to my front door. From the driveway, I have this path of little stones that leads to the front door.

It's not like big slabs of pavement, but rather small stones that almost fit together like a mosaic. The woman grabbed one of the stones, roughly the size of an average dinner plate, and put it behind her back. She started to knock on the door again, still concealing the stone behind her back. And this is where things get very weird. I didn't answer the door, but I shouted to her that I had called the police. And this must have scared her because she threw the stone at my house and ran away. I did end up calling the police and reporting what happened. They followed up, but nothing really came of it and that was the end of the story until recently. If that was all that happened, that would be scary enough,

not knowing what she wanted from me and her showing up in the middle of the night. But things got much worse. About a week after the incident, I saw the woman at the grocery store. No confrontation or anything like that. But then I saw her several other times, just driving. Again, no confrontation or anything else. I wanted to say it was just a coincidence, but it almost felt a little too weird. I have a friend who is married to a cop and I talked to him about it.

I explained that something felt off, but it's possible that it was just pure chance that I kept noticing her, and he agreed. He basically said that because I'm aware of this woman, I'm subconsciously picking her out of the crowd in our town. I didn't like that answer, but I guess technically he was right. It is a pretty smallish town after all. And this brings me to about a week ago as of me writing this account. I just got my daughter on the bus and I was outside pulling some weeds. While I was on the ground, I could feel someone standing over me. I turned around and it was that woman. The same damn woman from that stupid delivery. I was completely vulnerable in that position and I didn't know what to do. And she said in a sort of soft but angry voice,

You're a monster for calling the cops. You're a trespasser. I noticed that she had one of my stones again. And without thinking, flight mode kicked in and I got up and ran as fast as I could. She actually tried hitting me with a stone but she missed. I ran inside and locked the door. I called the police and told them that she was back and trying to hit me with a rock. The police showed up and this time they arrested that crazy woman. It turns out that that woman had some pre-existing history of mental health.

I'm not exactly sure what it was. And because this is so fresh, I don't exactly know what happened to her. I saw her get taken away in the back of a squad car because she was still at my house when the police came. I just hope this nightmare is over. At least for now it seems to be over. I just hope that she gets the help that she needs and that I never have to see her crazy face again. A few years ago, I moved to a new town to finish up my degree and to start an internship program. Even though the program paid a little bit, it wasn't enough to survive. Even though I didn't know the area that well, I decided to start delivering pizzas on the weekends since my roommate's family owned a pizza shop. My thought process was that while I was driving around on the weekends delivering pizza, I could listen to my lectures in the car. And for the most part, this worked. I didn't mind

driving around and my roommate's father was such a great boss and he was a very accommodating person. One night, I had to deliver a pizza to some house that was way off the beaten path. It was only about 20 minutes from the shop, but it was 20 minutes in a direction of nothingness. After driving that way for a few minutes, it turns into nothing but dark winding roads with little signs of life. It looks like a horror movie out in these parts of town. With all the turns and lack of light, it felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, even though I really wasn't that far away from the shop. When I was five minutes away from my destination, the GPS was struggling to maintain its signal

though. I didn't end up getting a little lost, but thankfully the GPS was able to keep me on course just long enough to find the house that I was delivering the pizza to. It was a little later than expected, but not egregiously late. When I pulled up, he came out of his run-down house, angry and shouting about his pizza. When I got out of the car and started to apologize, his tune changed quickly. I hate to assume this, but I think it was because I'm a girl and he changed his tune. Just because he attempted to start talking to me with this very sweet man voice and using a lot of words like honey and sweetie. It just felt very weird and creepy though. He went from screaming and cussing me out to telling me everything would be alright sweetie. I just smiled and gave the man

his pizza. He smiled and didn't walk back inside yet. He just stood there in the driveway holding his pizza box. I got back in my car and was trying to plug anything into my GPS but of course the GPS wouldn't connect. I didn't initially drive off right away because I'd turned so many times to get there I didn't want to get lost on the way back. I could see him walking towards my driver's side window and now I didn't want to get lost on the way back. I could see him walking towards my driver's side window and now I didn't bother to wait for the GPS. That was enough for me. I know it seems like I'm unfairly judging this guy but I know you know what I mean when I say that I just got a bad vibe from this dude. Something wasn't right and I just knew it.

I drove away from the house and I could see him standing there watching me drive away. He did this weird wave that just seemed creepy. I started winging it on my way back and this proved to be a mistake. About 15 minutes later I was still driving around winding roads with no service at all and by now I should have hit civilization but instead it was just more of nothingness. It was like a maze out there. I pulled over and was trying my best to get a signal or anything, but it was proving to be useless. I was also getting low on gas and I didn't want to just keep driving. A minute or so later, two huge headlights emerged from the distance. It was one of those huge pickup trucks with those wicked bright lights. The truck pulled up behind me and I made sure that I locked the doors.

I was hoping this person might be there to help me, but I also wasn't going to just trust a stranger in the middle of nowhere. The person got closer and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was the man that I had just delivered pizza to. He tried doing that stupid sweet talking thing to me again but I was very dismissive He kept insisting on helping but I told him I was fine I told him my boss was coming to pick me up but he didn't seem to believe me He kept telling me to get out of the car, that he could help me Even though I kept telling him that I didn't need any

He turned around and then started to pace back and forth He came back over to the car door and was trying to open it now. He felt more aggressive, but still in a calm voice he was asking me to get out of the car. I started to scream and told him to leave me alone and then his tone changed again. Now he was aggressively trying to open the door. In an annoyed voice he said, What's wrong with you? I'm trying to help you. It isn't safe here. You should just come with me. Once he started with that aggression,

that was it for me. I started my car and floored it. I could see him run to his truck and he did follow me for a little while but I dusted him. I must have been driving over 90 miles per hour just trying to get rid of this creep, and I finally got some service and was able to plug the shop address into the GPS. Thankfully, I wasn't too far away. I had made a couple of wrong turns and it took me about 10 minutes out in the sticks somewhere. The owner was so nervous because I had been gone much longer than he thought. He tried calling me and he said he couldn't get through and I told him about that guy and the delivery and he did not look pleased.

He was understanding and made sure that I was okay and he paid me and told me that I could go home for the night. I asked about calling the police and he told me that he would take care of it and that I had been through enough for one night. I'm not sure why he followed me that evening. I guess there was a small chance that he was trying to help me but why would he have followed me if he just wanted to help? There would be no reason to follow me. It just doesn't add up in my brain. This was such a weird and unsettling thing that happened to me and you just never know what people's true intentions are. I've worked in the food and beverage industry for most of my life. It has its pros and cons just like every other industry.

I started at a local Italian food and pizza place in my hometown. The restaurant had minimal seating and was mostly used for takeout and delivery. When I was hired, I mainly worked as a delivery person but also got experience in running the register, stocking the fridge, and helping cook. Most of the aspects of the job were fine, but I really enjoyed delivering. It made the time go by really fast and sometimes the tips could actually be really good. Every once in a while, on a big order, someone would even give me an extra 20 bucks, which back then was a nice chunk of change. The job I hated the most when I wasn't delivering was

taking orders and working the counter or cash register. For whatever reason the people in the store were much ruder than the people ordering over the phone. We also had a few regulars that would hang out and sometimes order stuff and other times just sit around wasting time and then leave. Every so often we would have to kick out belligerent drunks and other times college kids trying to flex their egos and fight while waiting for their slice of pizza. One regular that is still branded into my memory today is a guy named Johnny, who I guess we can just refer to as a regular visitor but not really a customer. I have no idea if Johnny was someone who worked at the restaurant's friend, an old

long-standing customer, or just someone looking for a seat and break from the heat. He was routinely both inside and outside the store, asking people passing by for extra money or asking us workers for free and or discounted food items or drinks. He was usually quiet and not overly abrasive, which is why I think the cops were never called. He seemed to be polite and courteous for the most part when interacting with customers. But when one of us girls was working at the register or counter, he was always making crude remarks or sly jokes. I feel like every time I would return from a delivery or have to work the counter, he would try to say some inappropriate joke or ask what my plans were for later in the night. It was usually creepy but harmless and

he never lingered inside for too long, especially if my manager Debbie was working. One night in particular, I got really frustrated with customers and as the line started to thin out Johnny approached the counter and asked if I had a boyfriend. I told Debbie and she immediately let him know that he could buy something or leave. The other managers in similar situations could care less and would claim to be too busy to do anything about it. Again another reason why I prefer deliveries. They get me out of the store and away from everyone else. One night, I think in August or September, the weather had forecasted some nasty thunderstorms so, per usual, we had a bunch of call-ins.

I was running double duty trying to cook and answer the phone for delivery orders. Of course, since it was raining, Johnny was now inside the restaurant sitting in a booth. He was unusually quiet, with no pickup lines or disgusting jokes. He was just sitting there in silence, staring at his hands. I asked Kyle, who was the only other person there, if he could take care of Johnny after his delivery. He said sure and promised to be back soon to try and help out. After a few phone calls I sat down trying to rest my feet and ankles that were absolutely throbbing. I knew I had to run back to the supply room and fridge to grab a few items for the next order and I was trying to take a little extra time selfishly so that Kyle would be able to help me when he got back. I headed to the fridge first,

grabbed a few things and then made my way to the storage room where we had all of our non-perishable items. I grabbed what I needed and turned around and absolutely froze in my tracks. Johnny was standing right there. I didn't hear a thing. He was absolutely silent. I tried to ask, what are you doing back here? Before I could even get the whole phrase out, Johnny lunged at me. I don't know if he was trying to attack me, assault me, rob me, or kill me. All I remember is that he lunged and his face looked lifeless. There was no anger or aggression. It was just this blank stare. I could also be misremembering or suppressing things that I saw,

but I swear it was like a blank, not on this planet type of look. I quickly dropped the items I had in my hands and struggled away, backing into the storage room and just slamming the door shut. Johnny was pulling at the door trying to open it, but I was able to find the strength to somehow keep it closed. As soon as I thought that he wasn't there, I lodged a broom into the door handle to prevent anyone from getting in. Unless they pulled so hard to shatter the broom, that is. The door started shaking again and for whatever reason I remained silent. I can still feel the tears rolling down my cheeks, but I wasn't

screaming or hysterical. I think I may have been in shock. Then out of nowhere I heard someone say, hey, what are you doing? And I heard footsteps and then light knocking on the door. It was Kyle. Everything after that is still a little bit of a blur. I told Kyle everything and we called the police. He sat with me and they helped me relay the story to the police. The owner was called to the store and had to talk to the authorities as well and Johnny wasn't found that night, at least to my knowledge, but he was banned from the property meaning that if he ever showed his stupid face again, he would be arrested. I didn't work there for much longer. But thankfully while I was there, I never saw Johnny again. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations.

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