The Lets Read Podcast - 285: THE LEGEND OF THE MOON EYED PEOPLE | 28 True Scary Stories | EP 273

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Appalachia, terrible Waffle House experiences & real historical encounters with the moon eyed people 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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Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca I'm out. I want to tell you a little story about a pretty Appalachian girl named Willa Mae Martin, or as we call her around here, the girl who married a corpse. Willa Mae lived with her husband in a place called Clinch Valley over in eastern Tennessee. They were a young couple, married at 17 in a shotgun wedding once Willa Mae realized that she was pregnant. They moved into a small rural home together and for at least a little while they were happy. But tragically, around halfway

through the pregnancy, Willa Mae lost the baby. And unfair as it was, Alden, her husband, never forgave her for it. He blamed Willa Mae for the miscarriage, saying she didn't take care of herself properly and accused her of not loving him anymore. He couldn't deal with the grief, so he drank, and when he drank, he beat Willa Mae something terrible. And after a while, the only thing Willa Mae liked about her husband was the fact that he worked as an oil driller down in Texas. That meant that he worked two weeks on and two weeks off, which for Willa Mae meant two weeks of heaven followed by two weeks of hell. Whenever he was away, Alden asked his brother, Silas Martin, to check in on his wife every so often to keep an eye on her.

He did as he asked, stopping by once a month or so to do all the man's work around the home. But after a while, Silas, who was unmarried, began to wonder why Willa Mae had such a melancholy about her. He'd talk to her sometimes and ask her questions, and when Willa Mae realized that he was genuinely curious about her and wasn't her husband's spy, she broke down and told him everything. How he beat her, how he berated her, how her life was barely worth living. Silas did his best to comfort poor Willa Mae, and then one thing led to another and they ended up falling in love. They tried not to act on it for as long as they could, but while spirits were strong, their flesh was weak. After violating the sanctity of marriage, the clandestine couple knew they couldn't continue their affair in secret. Willa Mae had to do the right thing and break

off her marriage to Alden. She waited until Alden went on down to Texas to work for two weeks, and then after spending a few days packing up her things and planning her escape with her new bow, Willa Mae sat down to write Alden a letter. Word has it, she gave him both barrels and that old letter of hers, told him what a piece of trash he was, how she'd never really loved him, and how she'd see him in hell. She then grabbed her bags, then rode a wagon all the way to Bean Station just over 12 miles away. When Willa Mae arrived at Bean Station, she found Silas waiting for her. There was just one problem.

Silas couldn't collect the last of his wages until the next day, at which point they'd have enough money to survive on for a while once they'd made it to California. Silas put Willa Mae up in a cheap hotel then said that he'd meet her at the train station the very next morning with all the cash they needed to start a new life together. The next morning, Willa Mae got up, got dressed, and then headed to the station to meet Silas. When she arrived, she saw him waiting on the platform for her, wearing his favorite felt hat and jacket. But as she got closer and the figure turned, she saw it was not Silas Martin at all, but rather her husband, Alden Martin, wearing her brother's clothes. You see, Alden had arrived in Texas to begin his two weeks of work, only to find his services were no longer required. He could come back in two weeks and try his luck then, but for the time being,

he'd have to head back up to Appalachia and try to make do with what he had saved. Alden then caught an overnight train back up to Tennessee, then caught another to Bean Station, arriving back in town just hours after Willa Mae did. But while she was up in that hotel room, dreaming of life married to Silas, Alden was back home, reading the Both Barrels letter that she'd written just the night before. The only trouble was, and under the assumption her husband wouldn't return for a full eleven days, Willa Mae told him exactly what she and his brother were planning to do, along with exactly when she was planning to do it.

Because, after all, why not? And by the time he read it, she and Silas would be safely in California, a detail she'd completely omitted from her letter. Alden lifted his brother's felt jacket, showing the gun tucked in his britches and told her he'd spare her life if she rode to his brother's house with him for a heartfelt apology. Alden gave his wife's bags to a wagon courier and arranged for their delivery back home. He then pulled her atop his horse and then both rode out to Silas' home. On the approach, when her lover's home came into view, Willa Mae tried jumping from her husband's horse. She didn't want to see what he'd brought her to see. She screamed, cried, and bucked, but Alden was stronger. He dragged her to the yard outside his brother's home, then forced his hysterical wife to gaze upon the body of her lover as it hung by the neck from the beams of his porch. Before he let Willa Mae go, Alden told her,

go and remember, you did this, not me. He then rode back into Bean's station and handed himself in to the sheriff. Alden told deputies exactly where they could find his brother's body and that since Silas was orphaned and unmarried, there was no one they needed to inform. But when the deputies went to collect, it was gone and there was no sign of Willa Mae. The lady herself was never seen again and Silas Martin's body remained missing until the night after his brother's hanging when someone abandoned a cart in front of the sheriff's office. The next morning, someone pulled back a sheet to see what it contained and saw Silas Martin's body lying there, embalmed and pristine, with a wedding band wrapped around one of his cold, dead fingers. My grandpa grew up in this little town called Grapefield, Virginia.

These days, Grapefield is just four streets with a creek running through it, but it used to be a whole lot more. And walk about a mile out of town, past a pair of old logging patches, and you got the Appalachian Trail right there in your figurative doorstep. I used to think growing up in that kind of place would make for an idyllic childhood, with its small town values, strong sense of community, and the great green forest for a backyard. But there was a reason Grandpa got out of there the first chance he got. They used to say they moved because of the Great Depression, and there might have been at least some truth to that. But if some of the stories Grandpa later told me are anything to go by, it wasn't just money problems that made them want to move. Because although it seems like a quiet and eventful place, Grapefield, Virginia has a real dark past, and some of the folks living there still say it's

cursed. Now back before the Civil War, Grapefield was said to be a prosperous and promising little town where the vast majority of people were employed by one of two plantation families who lived at opposite ends of the holler. One family were slave owners and employed white townsfolks as drivers, overseers, tradesmen, and clerks, while. One family were slave owners and employed white townsfolks as drivers, overseers, tradesmen, and clerks, while the other family were staunch abolitionists and employed all and the same except for their farmhands and technicians were white townsfolk. For the most part, this arrangement worked out just fine for both parties, but as the violence over in Kansas got more and more out of

hand, still waters came to a simmer. Before long, the subject of slavery was no longer something that could be discussed politely, and by the time the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, folks in Grapefield weren't using words to settle arguments anymore. They were using bullets. Obviously, the abolitionists had what you might call the moral high ground. The only trouble was, Virginia was a slave state, and the profit margins of the slave-owning side of Grapefield were much higher than those on the abolitionist side, who paid all their people good and fairly. But then, this meant the slave owners had mountains of cash lying around, cash they could use to hire all kinds of unsavory types to protect them from the abolitionists, and that protection

usually involved violence, intimidation, and occasionally, murder. Some of the abolitionists tried to fight back, but seeing as they were outnumbered and outgunned, most ended up hanging from their barns and anyone with any sense fled for northern states before they could be targeted. This would have all worked out just fine for the slave owners if it wasn't for the fact that the Greybacks would go on to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And once the Federals arrived in town, the slave owners had to parlay their way back into ownership of their own plantation. Somehow, they managed to do just that, only this time, they couldn't rely on free labor, and there were no more abolitionist farmers in town to help maintain the plantation. They had all the expertise they needed, just none of the manpower,

and although they shipped in folks from out of town to try and fill the gaps, things were never quite the same as they were before. Before the war, the head of the slave-holding plantation family had been cruel and conniving, but he was at least competent. But then his replacement, his eldest surviving son, was a fool, a tyrant, and a drunk. He might not have owned slaves anymore, but he sure did treat his people like they were, and he didn't just treat them like his property, he treated their homes and their families like they were his property too.

The new plantation owner always was a little too fresh with Grapefield's womenfolk, but then one night, after a man's wife returned home claiming the plantation owner had violated her, the townsfolk decided that enough was enough. A whole mob of them marched over to the plantation house, but instead of dragging the owner outside and hanging him from his own porch, the mob started going around nailing doors and windows closed. Anyone who tried to escape was shot and there were lots of folks in there too, not just the plantation owner and his family. They had maids, cooks, nannies for the children, all of whom learned to stay away from the doors or windows lest they face a hail of bullets. Once they had the plantation house locked down, the mob doused

the place and set it on fire. The mob were liquored up and they clapped and cheered as the plantation house burned, but that all stopped when they started to hear the screams of the women and children upstairs. It was then and only then that they realized what a terrible thing they'd done. One man tried to pry the nails out of one of the window frames in hopes that he might be able to rescue some of the women and children, but it was too late. There was no way back for them. They couldn't have any witnesses to attest to what they'd done. The whole thing needed to look as much like an accident as possible, not so much for their consciences, but for appearances.

No one could ever know the truth of what happened that night. Well, you can see how well that went. The mob must have done a decent job enough of covering things when it came to the authorities, because no one was hanged for burning down the plantation house. But I guess at some point, someone talked, either to their wife or to a minister, maybe even to their deathbed, because once word got out that the fire was no accident, it was like a darkness seeped into Grapefield, one that never went away. The town's economy was completely torn apart. Fear and suspicion became the norm. It took 40 years for the place to even start to heal, but even after things started

to pick up again, folks talked of a curse hanging over the town. All that guilt meant a lot of drinking, and all that drinking meant a lot of broken homes, a lot of anguish, and a lot of misery too. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of town my grandpa grew up in, far from the kind of hallmark card upbringing that I imagined he had. As you can probably tell, grandpa talked an awful lot about growing up in Grapefield, probably in an attempt to instill gratitude in myself and his other grandchildren. I can promise you it worked. Because as much as my grandpa had 101 stories from his childhood that'd make you laugh your butt off, he had one or two extremely

creepy ones too. He wouldn't tell them often, and he didn't tell us any scary stories when we were kids, but once I was old enough and I happened to be picking his brain one dark October evening, he told me one story I'll remember for as long as I live. It all started when a hunter named Hiram Carter walked back into town one day after spending all morning sitting in his blind out in the woods. This was back in 1934 just after prohibition ended and someone had set up a little speakeasy kind of joint over on Apple Lane. Hiram walked straight into the speakeasy, drank a whole bottle of beer in four or five gulps, and chased it down with a double shot of whiskey. Then, when both bottle and glass were empty, Hiram asked for another

round. Obviously, a man doesn't drink like that unless something very good has happened, or something very, very bad has happened. So naturally, Hiram's fellow patrons were pretty keen to know what the occasion was. But Hiram didn't have any good news to share. In fact, he was more frightened than he'd ever been in his whole life. He'd been sitting in his blind, which, for those that don't know, is basically like a camouflaged shelter that hunters hide in, and Hiram's there for hours before anything comes along,

but sure enough, he starts seeing this big old buck walking through the trees towards him. It's still some distance away, so Hiram's got to wait as it gets closer and closer so he can get the perfect shot. He's got that buck trained in his sights, he's steadying his breathing. Then something spooks the deer, and it goes bolting off through the woods. Hiram lowers his rifle, trying to spot whatever it was that spooked his deer. Then suddenly, he sees it. Something darts through the trees in front of him, too skinny to be a bear, too big to be a dog, and it's moving so fast that it just about scared Hiram half to death.

He stays put in his hide for a few minutes, clutching his rifle with sweaty palms, and then he rushes out of his hide, back to his truck, and drives all the way back into town as fast as the engine could handle. He said that whatever it was, it was stalking him, all the way back to his vehicle. It stayed just out of sight, but it was there, following him, and Hiram said it just about frightened the life out of him. The boys down at the speakeasy told him it was probably just some coyote or a mangy bear that didn't get enough food before hibernating, but Hiram said he was certain about what he saw, and he hadn't seen nothing like it before in his life. It was big, it was fast, and most

importantly, it seemed smart. After finishing his drinks, Hiram walked out of the speakeasy and made his way home, but not before warning every man in there to stay the hell out of the woods. Something was out there, and it was dangerous. When word got around about Hiram's encounter out in the woods, some folks took it with a pinch of salt, while the rest took it with a whole shaker. See, Hiram was in the habit of telling tall tales after a few whiskeys. In fact, the only reason he was hunting in the first place was so he could spend half his grocery money on booze. Having the reputation that he did, no one took Hiram's claims all that seriously and went about their business as usual.

But just seven days later, Hiram's story was the talk of town, and unlike the week prior, they took his claims much more seriously. By the time my grandpa was a boy, the sight of town, and unlike the week prior, they took his claims much more seriously. By the time my grandpa was a boy, the site of the old plantation house, the one that had been burned down by the townsfolk, had been abandoned and overgrown for almost 50 years. With no heirs to inherit the property, the land had fallen under the temporary ownership of Bland County's controller whose only task was to find the property a buyer. But then, in the 40 plus years it had been up for sale the county hadn't been able to find one.

Even the carpetbaggers from up in New York and Chicago wanted nothing to do with it. They'd roll through in their fancy stagecoaches and top hats take one look at the land and the folks living on it and say, thanks, but no thanks. As a result, the land was all waist-high grass, wildflowers, and cypress trees surrounding the brick foundations of the old plantation house. Local kids were warned to stay away from the place, but I guess kids back then were no different than kids today because they ignored their parents' warnings, but I guess kids back then were no different than kids today because they ignored their parents' warnings completely. I guess on account of how mysterious and spooky it was, but kids around my grandpa's age, so about 10 or 11, would often sneak up to the

old plantation to explore the grounds. My grandpa said that he went up there once or twice himself, but that he was always getting a bad feeling whenever he was near that place. He'd heard the stories everyone had about the plantation being haunted, about the town being cursed. It just wasn't enough to keep the kids away. And for one little girl, ignoring those warnings almost cost her, her life. One day a little girl came running back into town with her even younger sister in tow and they were both out of their poor little minds with fright. They'd been taking their beagle pup out for some exercise and decided to take it onto the old plantation grounds to run him around a little. They were there for no more than a few minutes before their dog suddenly tucked its tail between its legs and started to growl. The older girl gave the dog's leash a tug and was only too happy to get the hell away from that creepy old place.

But then, as they're walking, the older of the two girls see something moving in the trees surrounding the old plantation. Something that scared the living hell out of her. Something she later described as a monster. Later, she was safe and a little calmer. The older girl was asked for more details on what she'd seen. She said that the monster had been creeping through the trees on all fours at first, but when it saw her, it raised itself up on its hind legs to watch her from across the clearing. Then, when she and her sister started to run back towards Grapefield, the thing in the tree line dropped back on all four legs again, then started running in their direction like it was trying to cut them off.

The two girls ran as fast as their legs could carry them, with their dog doubling back every so often to bark up a storm in the hopes of protecting his owners. Thankfully, the girls managed to make it into town before whatever it was caught up with them, but when they arrived, they were sobbing something fierce. The older of the two girls said the creature was huge, with shaggy hair all over its body, but none at all around its muzzle which appeared horribly misshapen and deformed. This time people took the claims much more seriously but they still thought that it must have been some kind of mangy bear that had attacked the girls. After their hibernation period if a bear can't find itself a snack in quick enough time they can get really hungry and you better believe that a hungry bear is a very

dangerous bear as well. And having something raid a few chicken coops or butcher a few hogs, that was one thing, but having the thing hunting the town's children, that could not be tolerated. The most accomplished hunter in Grapesfield, a man named Rufus Robinson, volunteered to head out into the woods with his Australian shepherd. He'd said he'd come back with the beast's head, or he wouldn't be back at all. Well, a few days later, Rufus's Aussie shepherd came hobbling back into town all on its lonesome. It walked right over to Rufus's cabin, but then instead of sitting on his porch, the dog went and laid down on his neighbors,

almost like it knew that Rufus wasn't coming home. Folks said Rufus' dog might have run ahead, gotten itself lost, then simply walked back home to wait for his master. He'll be back in a few days, they said. Ain't no mangy bear got the better of old Rufus. But Rufus never came back with no mangy bear's head. In fact, Rufus Robinson never came back at all. And there was no sending a search party in after him, unless its first and foremost task was hunting down the bear that took him. And that's when the townsfolk formed a hunting party,

six of their best men that'd head out into the woods with shotguns and rifles and bring home Rufus's body and end the threat that that mangy bear posed once and for all. Well, according to a member of the hunting party, they were out there for less than 24 hours before they found the thing that had been stalking the town's children, and it wasn't no bear. One night they set up a real simple trap, just laid some fresh meat as bait out in the open, then all they had to do was wait. Well, they waited, and they waited, but nothing showed. Then just when someone gets up to collect the meat so they can move it someplace else, bingo, the thing comes tearing through the trees and attacks the man who approached the meat. It almost took a chunk of his arm before he managed

to stick a knife in the thing, then once he was free of its grip, his hunting buddies emptied almost every shell they had into it and they didn't stop firing until the beast stopped moving. Once they were quite certain the thing was dead, the hunters approached, shining their lanterns on the creature to get a better look. Only then did they realize what they were looking at. It wasn't any kind of bear. It was a man. His hair and beard were long and shaggy, his unclothed body so filthy in parts that the dirt and mud appeared as a second kind of skin. Wherever there was bare skin, such as his face, his chest, and his shoulders, there were hideous webs of burn scars, so much so that the man beneath had been robbed of his

human appearance. His spine was arched and contorted, his hands and feet bore heavy calluses, and at the ends of long bony fingers sprouted sharp, filth-encrusted claws. Obviously, none of the men had ever seen anything quite like it, so they dragged the man's body out of the woods, then woke up the town's doctor to come inspect their quarry. Now, this doctor had been Grapefield's resident physician for the better part of 50 years. He treated everyone in town that had lived there since the 1870s, including the old plantation owner and his family. It was him that realized who the man was, why he was covered in burn scars, and why he'd been living like a wild animal for what must have been decades.

It was one of the plantation owner's sons. Back on the night of the plantation house being burned down, the mob encircled the building to make sure no one could escape. They took shots at anyone who came near the windows or doors, at least all except one. The plantation house was huge, so the dozen or so men that made up the mob had to space themselves out real wide to cover all the angles. One man, stationed just off the east wing, sees someone scrambling out of a small cellar grate. He raised his rifle, got ready to fire, but then saw it was just a boy, his skin all scorched and blistering. And he didn't have it in him to execute a child. Besides, he was so burned up that there was no way that he'd survive more than a day or two out

there in the woods all alone. So instead of filling him full of lead, like they did with the others who tried to escape, the man let the boy go, having no idea that in decades to come, his decision would come back to quite literally haunt them. No one knows how the boy survived out in the woods for so long or why he'd chosen to live out in the trails of Appalachia instead of trying to settle down anyplace. Most suspect that the grief of losing his whole family so suddenly drove him insane, and that fear of mankind kept him living in the woods like some type of animal. But there are a few who agree on how he came to look the way he did. Obviously, the scars were present all over his body, being from the fire, but what wasn't so clear was how

the boy had come to be so comfortable running on all fours like some type of dog. Some said that he must have been born that way, and his appearance was probably why he couldn't settle down anywhere. They figured that since he got treated like a monster, he started acting like one too. But others said that he was perfectly healthy, and that in slowly losing his humanity, he learned to run and hunt like an animal. Honestly, I don't know what to make of any of this and neither did my grandpa. He always thought it was some myth or legend until his own ma and pa confirmed that it was indeed the truth. They said that the boy's death was just another in a long line of murders that never saw justice and since they couldn't stand another one, they decided to move.

Grandpa raised the point that it couldn't have been murder if the hunters were just defending themselves, and his pa responded with what I think are some wise words. He said that the boy never really survived the plantation fire that night, how he was probably wandering around the woods living like an animal, never truly being a person. Whether he came back to Grapefield for revenge or just to revisit the place he grew up, killing him meant finishing off a murder that started 30 or 40 years earlier, and that's why people say the town is cursed. Not because there's some evil spirit lurking around the place, but because those who came before condemned those who came after, to have all the same blood on their hands. We'll be right back. Did you know that many products for pregnant women

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or the Flatwoods Monster, who many believe is an example of extraterrestrial visitation. Yet fewer are familiar with another Appalachian legend, which, after some research, might just be rooted in a very unsettling truth. In certain parts of southern and eastern Appalachia, some folks still talk of an eerie, nocturnal race of imp-like humanoids known as the moon-eyed people. The moon-eyed people are said to be around four foot high with pale ghostly bodies and large, slightly bulbous eyes. They're mostly harmless and only ever come out at night due to their general fear of humanity. But go walking on the trails where the moon is big and

bright and you might just spot a moon-eyed person bathed in silvery light. To most, the moon-eyed peoples sound like nothing but a quaint rural folktale. But like many so-called myths and legends, there can be varying degrees of truth to them. And in the case of nocturnal gnomes, that degree of truth might be very large indeed. Prior to the removal of 1838, North Georgia and other parts of the Appalachians were still part of the Cherokee Nation, and in 1782, the region's governor was a man named John Sevier. That same year, Sevier paid a visit to the Cherokee chief Okonostoda at Fort Mountain, who had recently reached the ripe old age of 90 years old. Given his status as the region's governor,

Sevier and Okonostoda dedicated a great deal of their discussion to local politics. Sevier sought the old chief's wisdom, yet he also sought his experience and before long, the conversation turned to history. Sevier and Okunastoda began discussing the origins of the Cherokee, with the old chief describing how his people had migrated to Appalachia from the northern Great Lakes region. Okunastoda claimed his ancestors had arrived to find another people had settled the area, a people so sophisticated that they turned the mountain into a veritable fortress, hence why it was given the name. The Cherokee fought hard to conquer the indigenous tribe, but eventually they prevailed and drove their enemy from the region before settling it themselves.

Sevier then asked the old chief if he knew anything of the vanquished tribe. What he was told shocked him deeply. Chief Okonostota's forefathers told him that those who had occupied Fort Mountain before the Cherokee were, and I quote, white men from across the great sea. The chief went on to describe how these moon-eyed people earned their name. Not only did they have huge disc-like eyes, much larger than any humans, but they'd evolved to be viciously effective nocturnal hunters, with natural night vision so strong that it struck fear into the hearts of the Cherokee, who didn't dare venture away from their camps after dark.

Governor Sevier was stunned and assumed that these Caucasoid tribespeople were merely the stuff of legend, yet Chief Okunostoda assured him that his account was no mere myth. Sevier promised to return the following spring and in the company of a historian so that the chief's account could be officially recorded. Yet sadly, when Sevier returned in the spring of 1783, he discovered that the elderly chief had passed away. Despite Chief Okunastoda's death, rumors of the Moon-Eyed People did not abate. In fact, almost every band of Appalachian Cherokee were familiar with the legends, so much so that it attracted the attention of a man named Benjamin Smith Barton. Born in 1766 in the British colony of Pennsylvania, Dr. Barton was one of the early United States' most prominent physicians. He'd studied at the Philadelphia School of Medicine, but also at Scotland's University of Edinburgh and Germany's University of Göttingen.

He was also such a famous and well-respected figure that he'd received honorary diplomas from both Lisbon Academy and Kiel University. At one time, Dr. Barton specialized in botany, and after corresponding with naturalists throughout the United States and Europe, he published the first American textbook on the subject. Yet around the end of the 18th century, Barton became fascinated with the subject of anthropology, and more specifically, the origins of humanity. After many years of study, Dr. Barton published his 1797 book, New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America. The book includes excerpts of an interview with a U.S. Army colonel named Leonard Marbury.

Fluent in the Cherokee language, Colonel Marbury acted as an intermediary between the government and the natives for the better part of 20 years, and in that time had heard many a story regarding the so-called Moon-Eyed People. The Cherokee tell us that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by a certain Moon-Eyed People, Colonel Marbury explained. These wretched people could not see in the daytime, and were expelled following a brief but bloody war. At first, Dr. Barton theorized that there had been some kind of miscommunication, and that these pale, moon-eyed people were not some previously undiscovered race of stunted humanoids, but rather a collection of French settlers.

The Cherokee had sometimes described the moon-eyed people as possessing what they described as alien or unfamiliar weaponry. Yet when Dr. Barton interviewed one frequent visitor to the Cherokee, he claimed these alien weapons were little more than hoes, axes, guns, and other metallic utensils that had been brought to the New World by the French. Many others have supported this assertion, claiming the Moon-Eyed People were no more than rogue European settlers who specialized in hunting by night rather than by day. Yet when South Carolina historian B.R. Carroll interviewed merchant explorer James Adair, he refuted any and all claims that the Moon-Eyed People were European. Born in the Irish county of Antrim in 1709, Adair sailed to the New World with a British trade mission at the age of 26. He spent the next 40 years living among the natives,

chiefly among the Chickasaw and Eastern Choctaw, while being almost entirely cut off from the outside world. In 1775, when Adair was in his 60s, he was encouraged to pen an account of his experiences with the native tribes, titling the book A History of the American Indians. The book cemented Adair's status as one of the most knowledgeable Indian experts of his generation, hence why he was sought out by the author B.R. Carroll, and when asked if he was familiar with the so-called moon-eyed people, he replied in the affirmative. Adair claimed that almost all of the Appalachian tribes had stories concerning this primordial race of albino humanoids. But it was not the frequency with which he encountered these stories that condensed Adair

of their veracity. It was the consistency with which they were described. Each and every tribe spoke of the moon-eyed people being stunted, nocturnal, and incredibly pale. And what's more, most tribes agreed that the cause of their malformation was that they chose to live underground. Scientifically speaking, the moon-eyed people's wide-eyed physiognomy is entirely consistent with an offshoot of humanity having taken to living underground, especially if they've done so for thousands upon thousands of years. And while this all might sound like the stuff of science fiction, it is firmly rooted in truth. Back in 2003, a team comprised of local and Australian archaeologists

began excavating an Indonesian cave known as Leong Bua in the hopes of uncovering pre-modern human remains. Two years later, the team was undertaking a routine dig when they discovered evidence of a human skull. When a section of this skull was sent away for analysis, an Indonesian scientist believed that, due to its relatively small dimensions, the skull must have belonged to a child. Yet after more of the person's skull was uncovered and analyzed, it was discovered that their teeth were that of a full-grown adult.

The remains they discovered were not those of a Homo sapien. They belonged to a previously undiscovered relative, Homo florenziensis. Named after the island of Flores, in which they were found, Homo florenziensis were determined to be an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago. The remains found in the Leong Bua cave belonged to an adult female, believed to have stood at 3 foot 7 inches tall, which earned her the nickname, The Little Lady of Flores. If the Cherokee did indeed migrate to Appalachia around 12,000 years ago,

which is when the last of the Flores Hobbit people are believed to have died out, it's frighteningly feasible that they encountered a prehistoric race of sub-human cave dwellers against whom they waged a terrible and ultimately genocidal war. But then again, how could the Cherokee be so certain that every last one of the moon-eyed people were extinct? Perhaps they simply took shelter in the deepest recesses of their subterranean settlements and became even more cautious following the arrival of European settlers. Maybe the stories of stunted, ethereal-looking beings roaming the Appalachian Trail aren't just stories, but rather an aspect of ancient anthropology that we have yet to fully

explain after all if the little lady of flores and her kin were only discovered in 2003 what else has mankind yet to discover regarding our ancient and mysterious origins About ten years ago, an old college buddy and I had the bright idea of hiking the eastern Tennessee section of the Appalachian Trail. We weren't too hardcore about it or anything. We just took things at our own pace and stopped at grocery stores and diners whenever we could to stock up on home comforts. At one point, we stopped in a town in Hancock County, intending to pick up a few six-packs and maybe a bottle of Jack's since we were in his home state. Anyone who's from there will find that hilarious because they'll know what we didn't walking into town, and that's how there isn't a drop of alcohol for sale in that whole goddamn county. We'd managed to stop in a dry town, meaning we had

access to all the snacks but none of the booze. And while we were at the store, the nice lady behind the counter said that we'd have to walk to the next county if we wanted to buy any alcohol. But she also said that if we asked someone real nice, they might be able to pick some up for us if they were already out of town. We asked around town for a while, approaching anyone who looked approachable, but while everyone was real nice, no one was able to help us out. We were just about ready to give up and we were walking back the way we came when we suddenly see this dude walking out of the general store toward what we assumed was his truck. He looked to be around our age, so maybe 25 to 30,

and he sure looked like he enjoyed a drink. So me and my buddy decided to ask him if he could give us a ride or something, and we pick him a few beers as a thank you. So we walk up, introduce ourselves, and then make our proposal. The guy seems friendly enough and didn't seem too keen on giving us a ride until we mentioned buying him a few drinks out of gratitude. After that, he invited us into his truck and we took off in the direction of the next county over, which was the home of the nearest liquor store.

We were making some small talk with this guy, just about how the hike was going and stuff like that when we got to talking about how long the ride would be. He said that it'd be about an hour there and back if we wanted to carry on hiking where we'd left off, at which point we'd have lost all of our daylight and finding a place to camp would be a real pain in the butt. We mentioned this to him and he seemed to have a sort of flash of inspiration. He knew of another place we could buy booze, but seeing as it was a dry county, it wasn't strictly legal either. He asked if we were cops and we laughed when we said no.

And he then asked if we were okay buying shine instead of just beer. Now at this point I should explain why this got us so excited. By shine the guy obviously meant moonshine which was something we talked about at length before we even stepped on the trails. Sipping beers and whiskeys around a campfire was one thing but getting our hands on some genuine homemade moonshine would just about be the coolest thing ever. If you went to Oktoberfest in Germany you'd want some genuine Weissbrau to wash down that bratwurst, right? And if you were vacationing on some Caribbean island, anyone in their right mind would couple that with a good locally made rum. So the fact that we were in the middle of moonshine country, we were just about ready to jump at the chance to enjoy some genuine locally

made liquor, because when in Rome, you know? And that's why when this dude said that he'd drive us over to his buddy's place, a total stranger, to buy moonshine, we just kind of said, okay, cool. Anyway, the guy changes course a little, and we're totally under the impression that we're going to pull up to some house, we're going to give him some cash, and then he's going to go inside, get us our shine, and then off we go. But then, when we arrived at the place where he was taking us, it didn't look like anyone's house at all. In fact, we recognized what the place was almost instantly. The building itself almost looked like a community center or something. Definitely not a house, and way bigger than most that we've seen out in those

parts too. But the thing that really clued us in to what we were looking at was the big row of motorcycles outside. My little brother was a big Sons of Anarchy fan at the time, like he had all the box sets and was almost constantly watching it on the big TV downstairs in our house so right away I knew what I was looking at. We were at a motorcycle club's clubhouse. It was pretty awesome seeing this actual clubhouse right there in front of us, but it was like being at the zoo or something. We were still under the impression that our new friend would just go in and buy the shine for us while we got to sit in the truck. Somebody got out of the truck and told us to follow him inside, we both are like,

uh, are you sure about that? Not gonna object to strangers in their clubhouse? But our new friend said no, it'd be fine. And they wouldn't mind at all so long as we were respectful, etc. And so, and we went. And while there wasn't any kind of branding on the outside of the building,

the inside was totally different. They had the name of their club everywhere, and while I'm not about to reveal what that was for reasons that'll become obvious, they sure did like their branding. They had all kinds of memorabilia all over the walls, pictures and antiques and stuff, and I mean, it'd be pretty cool of an experience walking into a bar like that if it wasn't for the record scratch moment when we walked in. The second we walked in, all these big, hairy biker dudes just stop what they're doing and turn to look at us. Our new friend asks if the prez is around, which I'm assuming means the club's president.

And when told that he was in his office, our new buddy tells us to take a seat at the bar. We do as we're told, but no one comes to serve us drinks or anything. There's just all these dudes and a few chicks standing around, looking at us like, what the hell are you two thinking about walking into a place like this? Our new buddy walked off down a hallway then after knocking on what must have been the door to the president's office he walks inside and disappears. Both my buddy and I aren't saying a word but we're looking at each other like this is a really bad idea. Everyone in there is giving us death stares and I even said to one guy like The guy said it would be fine

And he says nothing to me in reply Just grips a pool cue like he's imagining it's my neck and carries on staring at me I was right on the verge of just being like We'll just go ahead and wait outside, sorry for the intrusion When we suddenly heard yelling coming from down the hall. So loud we could hear it over the heavy metal music playing on their in-house PA system. We heard yelling and some kind of crashing then our new buddy flies into the hallway with this huge fat bald dude following quickly behind. The big dude kicked his butt the entire way down the hallway,

stomping him at first but then dragging him to his feet and smacking him around while screaming all kinds of stuff like, you dumb POS, are you trying to get us busted? You bring them in here and expect us to just, I should drag you back and blow your head off you rat. My buddy and I get off our bar stools and head towards the way we came in. But another biker dude stands in our way and is like, you two aren't going anywhere. So right then, in my head, I'm thinking that our new buddy had walked into the office, announced that he'd brought two strangers to the clubhouse to buy moonshine, and the club's president had freaked out on him. We knew it had been a risky move to just walk in and ask,

but we also figured our new friend was connected enough for that not to be a problem, otherwise why bother risking it in the first place? But then apparently, the president had not taken it well and it seemed it was us that were about to pay the price too. So as I said, one of the other bikers had stepped in our way and wouldn't let us leave, right? So we just had to stand there and watch our new friend getting smacked around until we finally turned his attentions to my buddy and I. And right away, I start saying things like, we're so sorry, we had no idea. He told us it was cool, we didn't know, and all this other stuff. But then instead

of just beating us right there, the president points towards the door and tells us both, get the F out. I remember feeling relief at first, like this sort of lucky, relieved feeling at the idea that he was just going to let us go. But then, at the same time, I'm not the kind of person to just walk off and leave someone in trouble, and neither was my friend. Every fiber of my being wanted to just walk out of that door, run like hell. But there was also this voice in my head, saying, if you just leave that guy here, after he put his butt on the line to get you booze, you are the lowest form of scumbag imaginable. I still feel like that might hold true.

It's just that that's not what happened at all. So the big biker guy stepped out of our way so we could leave, but then I say, What about our friend there? What's going to happen to him? And the president says, he's not your friend. I'm still very much in the dark, so I try appealing to the guy's conscience or whatever, telling him he was just trying to help us. But the president yells back, help you? He was robbing you. Now get out of here while you still have a chance. And I couldn't believe it. Well, at the time time I couldn't but now it obviously makes way more sense to me. But what I still can't get my head around is the fact that those bikers kind of

had our back in a way. I guess when the president was asking something like are you trying to get us busted he didn't mean that we might be undercover cops or whatever. He meant that robbing and maybe even killing us would bring way more heat down on them than just selling a little moonshine so they could pay to patch the leaks in the clubhouse roof or something. But anyway, once we realized our new friend was in fact out to get us, we dropped him like a live hand grenade and then got the hell out of there, just like the president had told us. A few years back, I was hiking the Appalachian Trail with a few friends of mine and we ended up stopping at a campsite that had comfort stations and all of that. One night I woke up at around 2 in the morning and needed to use the bathroom. The site was one of those corner sites, so there was a really short trail at the back of the site which led through the woods before you get to the lights where the washroom is.

I guess I could have gone around the front but I figured that I would just cut through there like I usually do to save time because I was tired and needed to pee real bad. So as I'm passing the middle of the trail I hear a very faint noise coming from my right, something that sounded almost like laughing. I didn't freak out or anything, like I know raccoons and porcupines make something like a sort of teeheehee sound at night. I couldn't see anything like a raccoon or a porcupine, but it was dark, so why would I? I just kept going towards the comfort station without a second thought but then a few seconds later I hear a voice deep in the woods. A woman's voice asking, hello? To say I jumped was an understatement but then I was just startled you know. Not scared at all but I also didn't know what to say in response or if this girl was talking to me or someone else entirely.

I ended up just saying, hey, and like a sort of friendly voice, because if some girl was freaking out hearing footsteps in the middle of the night, I didn't want her to think that I was some kind of creeper. But then after I said, hey hey, there was no response. And that's the point that I started to get a little bit freaked out. Once I was at the comfort station, I did my business and managed to talk myself out of having a serious case of the creeps. I don't believe in ghosts or anything like that, and I still don't to be honest. And although the timing and sudden silence had been fairly creepy, I knew that worst case scenario, it was just a person that was probably as spooked as I was. Anyway, so I started heading back the way I came, thinking, if I heard anything this time,

I'm just going to sprint. But I'm getting further and further along the trail, and it's as quiet as the grave out there. I'm maybe 75% of the way along the trail, thinking to myself, I hope I didn't scare that girl too bad when I hear her voice again. Only it's not her voice, it just sounded like her voice, but it was different in a way that made my skin want to crawl right off my body when it said, come back. And I think that was the fastest I've ever ran in my entire life. I beat feet like an athlete and threw myself back into my tent so frantically that I woke everybody up. They kept asking what was wrong and all I could say was, I think I just freaked myself out is all. There was no way in hell they'd believe me if I told them what I'd heard. They'd think that I was drunk, high, or just a little baby man, or maybe a little of all three. But they would not believe that I heard a voice change in a way that it did. It sounds crazy, but I actually hoped that they would hear it at some point, but we moved

campgrounds that next day and I didn't hear anything like it for the whole rest of the trip. I'm obviously very glad that's the case, I just wish that I knew what I heard that night, because I'd be lying if I said that question didn't keep me up at night. This happened to me back in the early 2000s. I was living with my ex in Texas. My girl and I had been forced to move cross-country after we lost everything in a house fire. We were in a very bad position and when all hope appeared to be lost, her family offered to rent us a place that had been just sitting, unused. The few things that

survived the fire were packed into our old jeep and we hit the road. Two days later, we arrived at her Aunt Jenny's house, road worn and ready to get moved in. We didn't have much, so it didn't take long. Although we had to spend the first night in sleeping bags on the floor, it was a giant first step toward getting our lives back. Early the next morning we went shopping for a new bed. It was probably the most satisfying event in my life up to that point, and I never slept better than in that bed. Maybe it was just the relief of having a stable place to live, but I still look back at that time with fondness. The next few days were spent scouring Goodwill and charity

shops for furniture, lamps, and such. By the end of the week, we were settled in and it was time to look for work. I've never been averse to hard work. Maybe I'm a masochist, but I've always sought out the most physically strenuous jobs I could find. I think a lot of the employers I encountered were a bit shocked at how hard I pushed myself. My insane work ethic has a lot to do with my upbringing. I was one of four children in a very poor family. We lived in a remote part of West Virginia and life was beyond tough. Going to bed hungry was a regular occurrence, and although I was not above rating the neighbor's gardens in the warmer seasons, my Christian morals stopped me from becoming a full-blown criminal.

I'd rather not go into too much depth about my folks, but suffice it to say my dad's love of the good life meant he rarely had a job for very long. Mom did the best she could, but she had her hands full taking care of us, and as soon as my last sister got old enough to go to school, mom began working part-time with her sister at the dry cleaners. Once I was old enough, I took her place there and she moved on to better paying work. Dad and mom had split up by then, life only got harder after that, but somehow, we all survived to become useful members of society with families of our own.

At that time time there was plenty of work to be had. Texas was just beginning to grow in the economic powerhouse that it is today, and everywhere I looked, houses were popping up and new people were moving in. Folks were hiring for every imaginable position. I'd done landscaping work before, so it seemed logical to try. I bounced from job to job, site to site, doing any work that had let me. I put food on the table but working in the Texas summer was rough and the rainy days weren't much better. For some crazy reason I turned to the food service industry. I was trading one hot place for another. Stupid in retrospect but I'd been a line cook after high

school. I knew my way around a kitchen. There are a few things in the south people like more than eating, and our area was overflowing with places to do it. I landed a part-time position washing dishes. The pay was alright, but I was getting killed on gas costs in the long run. I was about to go back to landscaping when I got a call from a waffle house. The pay was better and the location was I got a call from a Waffle House. The pay was better and the location was less than a mile from her home.

I could walk to work and Missy could take the car if she needed to, and it seemed like the best thing to do. Now we could both work full time rather than juggle our schedules with one car, and I went for the interview and was hired in less than 15 minutes. Missy was over the moon to hear it and I'll admit that I was pretty excited too. Stable work, no matter what it is, can go a long way to ease your money concerns. Missy's boss had been nagging her to take on more hours and now she could. Overall, things were beginning to look up. As I walked to the restaurant that Monday night, I had the worst case of butterflies in my life. For some reason, my instincts told me this job would be like none before it, and boy, did I

turn out to be right. My first couple of weeks turned out to be relatively uneventful. There were occasional drunks getting a little rowdy, but they usually calmed down if we were assertive enough. The rest of the staff were cool too. Most of them were older than me, but they usually calmed down if we were assertive enough. The rest of the staff were cool too. Most of them were older than me, but they didn't take themselves too seriously. When it was slow, we'd talk about where we'd come from and our hopes for the future. But when we were slammed, everyone kept their heads down and got the food out as quickly as possible. And everything was going really well until one Friday night when an especially drunk man came in looking for trouble. In Texas, the bars usually close down at 2am.

Around 2.30 or so, the drunk stumbled in looking for something good and greasy to soak up all that booze. Waffle House is a very popular place to do so. On this night, the regular group of bar patrons came in for their late night meals, and since this was a smaller city, we knew most of the people that came in. The overwhelming majority were salt of the earth hardworking folks just looking to let off a little steam. They were harmless for the most part. Unfortunately, this situation was going to be different. From what I recall, it was just before 3am when a very intoxicated stranger staggered into the restaurant. I didn't recognize him, but I was there to cook food, not vet people.

And anyway, the drunk man paced around, occasionally stopping at tables and then walking on to the next. Most of the other patrons ignored him and focused on their meals. And that was until the drunk man stopped at the bar and began leaning too close to one of the regulars. I'll just call this guy Mike. Mike had been coming in on the weekends way before I was hired and I bet he still does. Mike had his own share of drinks and must have been annoyed at the other man's presence. He started barking at the man to get away from him and he told him he stunk. The stranger took offense to this and tried to take a swing at Mike but missed. Mike pushed him down onto the floor and stood up from his stool. He was looking down at the stranger, shaking his finger at him while he cursed him out.

The drunk stranger stumbled back to his feet and rushed toward Mike. He managed to punch Mike in the chest and stomach a few times before Mike pushed him away again. The stranger fell back onto the table behind him and just stared for a minute before turning and running out of the restaurant. I chuckled to myself as I watched the brief fight before turning back to my work. A few moments later, I heard a woman's voice say something like, you're bleeding from your chest, Mike. I turned back around to see Mike wiping at the front of his gray shirt. There were a few dark spots on it, and when Mike looked at his hand, there was what appeared to be blood on it, and that was when we realized the drunk

stranger had stabbed him, not punched him. It looked like he managed to pull out a knife during the scuffle and got a few quick jabs before Mike could stop him. I'm not sure what made me do it, but I ran to the back and grabbed a stack of hand towels, and from there ran over to Mike and began putting pressure on the wounds. By now, Mike had dropped to the floor from shock, I think, and a few other patrons helped me hold the towels on the wounds while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. This whole time, Mike was talking about his kids. I did my best to assure him that he was going to be okay, but to be honest, I had no idea how serious his injuries were. About seven minutes

later, the ambulance arrived and whisked Mike away. We had to close things down while we talked to the police. And just before dawn, we were able to get things up and running again, and all I could do that morning as I walked home was think about Mike. I continued to wonder about his condition that whole weekend, and when I showed up for work that Monday, I was told that he had a rough time but was now out of danger and recuperating in the hospital. For the next few weeks I was given little updates by some of the customers that knew his family. He was doing well and enjoying his time off of work though. I think almost two and a half months passed when

I was standing at the flat top and heard a familiar voice behind me. I turned around to see Mike standing there with his big toothy grin. I asked how he was doing and he said he was great. We shook hands and he gave me a big hug. He thanked me for saving his life. I wasn't sure if I had but I wasn't about to be rude and I could tell that he was serious. I quickly mentioned the others and tried to be humble about my part in it and from there the subject just veered off onto other topics and I returned to my work. I'd continue to see Mike regularly for about a year until I got a better paying job elsewhere. It's been at least 15 years since I last saw him and I hope he's still doing

well. I'm not sure if the drunk eye that stabbed him was ever caught that night. It never seemed appropriate to ask. He moved on with his life and I didn't want to stir up bad memories. Mike, if you do happen to hear this or see this, give me a call. I'd love to catch up. It was the weekend before spring break was to end and I was out with a few friends from school. This was my senior year in high school. Everyone except my friend Keith was in their final year. Keith was a junior.

And to be specific, it was Saturday evening at around 15 past midnight. The four of us had piled into Keith's Mustang and went to see a movie earlier in the evening. After the movie ended, we decided to go to the Waffle House for a late night snack. We ran into a couple of more friends and lost track of time, and before we knew it, it was way past our curfew, including Keith's who was driving, and we all paid our bills and rushed out to the car, only to find that it had a flat tire. Panic started to take over for a moment, but Kim, Keith's girlfriend, managed to calm us all down, and I was the only member of the group who had ever changed a tire before, so obviously I was chosen to do it this time. I began by asking Keith where his spare was located, and I was rewarded with a very blank stare and a lazy shrug.

And it was clear that it was going to be of no help, so I just went in search of it myself. And after countless minutes of digging through a giant pile of clothes and junk, I finally found it. Luckily, the jack and a lug wrench were lying underneath, and once I was able to dig everything out, I rolled the tire over and jacked up the car. Kim was kind enough to sit next to me and light things up with her phone. Keith and our friend Seth just sat on the curb texting people while we did the work, and to be honest, there really wasn't much they could do, but their lack of concern did annoy me a bit, especially Keith's. I shrugged it off and got down to business. The spare did appear to be a little underinflated, but it was going to have to do for now.

And the actual operation was going relatively smoothly, but it was looking like we'd be on the road soon until a new problem arrived. Just as I was beginning to hand tighten the bolts on the spare, a car of college guys pulled up a few spaces over. Normally, this wouldn't have really mattered, but in this case, it probably meant trouble. You see, my friends and I had problems with these guys in the past. Three of the four in the car had jumped and beaten one of our friends at a party the summer before. Keith and I ran into them a few days later and almost got into a fight with them. A lot of threats were exchanged, but their girlfriends got them to back off, and

I knew that wouldn't be the end of things. And now here we were, almost a year later, unable to get away or distance ourselves. I quickened my pace as fast as I could, but it was obviously too late, and just seconds passed when I heard a drunken curse coming from a yard or so away. Great, I thought. As if things couldn't be any worse, these morons were drunk as a skunk, and I knew this wasn't going to go well. And rather than react, I just continued my work, and our only hope was to get this done before a fight broke out. Keith and Seth started exchanging words with those guys and things got heated quickly, and I whispered to Kim under my breath that things were

going to be okay, but in truth I clearly had my doubts. The last lug nut was tightened just as things were popping off. I didn't see the first hit, but I knew something was wrong when the light disappeared. I turned around and saw Keith stumbled back onto the ground. Seth was all alone now and outnumbered 4 to 1. Without a second thought, I ran towards the attackers swinging wildly with that lug wrench as I went. In hindsight, it's probably a miracle I didn't seriously injure anyone or kill anyone with it. I know I made contact with at least two people, but I'm not sure where, and I continued swinging around like a madman until I heard a voice behind me telling me to stop. It took me a moment to realize that it was Seth. I turned around and saw him

waving his hands, and now that I was out of my haze, I could see Keith lowering the jack while Kim helped him. I didn't know where the college guys had gone and at that point I didn't care. My single thought was to get away from the situation. Seth and I gathered up all the tools and threw them into the trunk while Keith and Kim got into the car and started it. We hopped into the car and pretty much squealed out of that parking lot. It's a miracle that the spare held up. And I don't recall checking the nuts one last time

before leaving. And now is when I began asking questions. Seth waited patiently until I finished to answer me and he said that three of the four were about to jump him but I went crazy and started swinging that wrench around and they turned to jump on me but I hit them all a couple of times and they just turned tail and took off. And to this day I still don't really remember much of it. I guess it doesn't matter though. We all got away unharmed and we never saw those idiots again. I was worried for a while that the cops were probably going to show up but thankfully they never did and hopefully those losers learned their lesson that night. No matter how tough you think you are, a scared nerd with a lug wrench probably is tougher. I used to work at the Waffle House in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

People sometimes ask me if I ever saw one of those Waffle House brawls or anything like that, but honestly, it really wasn't that kind of place. We were just down the street from a bunch of bars and stuff, and the Lehigh College campus was less than a mile away, so we definitely got our fair share of customers during the midnight hours. But I think during all the night shifts that I worked, I only saw maybe two or three physical confrontations, and those mostly consisted of a little shoving before the two people about to fight were separated by their friends. And that's not to say that I didn't end up quitting after a very violent incident. It's just that the incidents in question happened to be considerably more messed up than some dumb street brawl. As you can probably guess, weekend night shifts tended

to be the busiest when it came to drunk college kids or sports fans stopping by for all-star specials. But the weekday night shifts could actually be pretty quiet. You'd get your giggly stoners staring at the menus for like 20 minutes before ordering, but they were never any trouble at all. And the same went for the truckers and shift workers who came in the store cold sober for their patty melts and hash browns. But then this one night, we had this super sketchy crackhead looking guy walk through the doors, and I swear to god, when he first walked in, I was like 90% certain that he was about to pull out a gun and rob us. The Waffle House I worked at never had a single robbery for the whole time that I was employed there, but it was still one of your

biggest fears when it came to working the night shifts. And whenever anyone came in who fit that profile, basically anyone who looked like they were on crack, we always got a little nervous and kept an extra eye on them. The guy was definitely high on something, and not only was he twitchy as hell, but after ordering his food, he just sat in his booth, intermittently looking over at us without even touching his grilled cheese. I let my co-workers know that the guy was giving me some pretty bad vibes, and carried on cleaning down my station while kind of low-key scoping him out.

As I'm watching Mr. Twitch, some regular-looking white guy with dark hair walks in, and then orders a coffee and a piece of triple chocolate pie. My co-worker serves him, and he takes a seat at the counter to drink his coffee, so I just keep on cleaning while I watch Mr. Twitch. Mr. Twitch looks up, and we make eye contact for a second, and then he looks back down with a sort of nervous expression, like he's either high out of his mind or something and the paranoia is kicking in, or he's thinking about doing something crazy.

And I'm getting more and more nervous, but then to my left I hear, Don't I know you? And I look around to see that Mr. Coffee and Pie has turned around on his stool and is talking to a guy eating in the booth behind him. The guy in the booth is like, I don't think so. But then Mr. Coffee and Pie is like, no, you went to such and such elementary school, You were in my fourth grade math class with Mrs. So-and-so. And I can hear the guy at the table having a bit of a moment of recognition, but I wasn't watching them like I was watching Mr. Twitch. They go back and forth about how crazy it is to run into one another in a Waffle House at 1.30 in the morning, and then start reminiscing about this and that and the other. I lost track of their conversation when I went to get some more cleaning supplies, but when I returned, they were wrapping

up their chance encounter with a few good to seeas and take cares. But then, out of nowhere, Mr. Coffee and Pie stops by the door and says, oh, and one more thing. Then I look over, just in time to see him pull a gun from out of his jacket. The guy sitting in the booth didn't stand a chance. He looked up just in time to see Mr. Coffee and Pie pull the trigger, and then after three shots, the guy slumped forward onto his half-eaten plate of food. The place was so quiet after Mr. Coffee fired his gun that, after I ducked down below the counter, I heard the sound of the gun hitting the floor after he dropped it. I stayed down below the counter while I heard the door open and close,

and then everyone stayed silent for a few more seconds until some lady started screaming like a goddamn banshee. At the time, there wasn't really any kind of contingency plan for someone getting shot in the face at your Waffle House, so we did the only thing we could think of, and got everyone that hadn't run off to walk behind the counter so we could guide them out into the rear parking lot. Naturally, everyone was extremely shaken up, and the woman that had been screaming was hysterically crying. The restaurant was closed for a few days after that, because obviously the cops had to perform all kinds of crime scene analytics and forensic stuff.

Wafflehouse offered us free counseling and a bonus to anyone from that shift who would return to work. But unlike my three co-workers, who were working with me on the night of the murder, I didn't take management up on their offer, no matter how generous it may have seemed. Now call me a coward, but I just figured, why go and work back at a place like that? Where every time I wiped down a table, every time I looked at it, I'd be reminded of that guy slumped over in his food, with that stream of blood just oozing off the table onto the floor.

I take my hat off to anyone that could just go back and act like nothing happened, but to me personally, I'd rather just get a job someplace else, someplace I don't have memories of someone getting murdered, right there in front of me. I saw some crazy stuff during my time working at a waffle house. I saw some brawls between drunk family members. I saw some people getting freaky in the booths like they thought no one could see them. And I saw people doing drugs right there at the counter, as if they didn't give a damn who saw or told on them. But the single worst thing I ever saw was something I walked into on a quiet Monday night shift, at a time when I never expected to see anything so haunting or horrifying.

Like I said, it was just after midnight, so technically a Tuesday morning, and the only two people seated were these two dudes who looked like they were a little more than just friends. They were sitting at their booth, flirting and holding hands and stuff, then at that point, they both got up and headed for the bathroom. One of my co-workers waited until we were out of earshot to make a very crude joke about how, if they're not out in three minutes, I'm going in there to pry them apart. It was just a dumb joke though, like I don't think anyone believed that they were about to do anything unsavory in there. Then within a minute or two, the older of the two guys walked out of the bathroom, thanked us for his meal and then wished us goodnight.

As he walked out of the door and over to his car, we figured that he'd wait for his boyfriend or husband or whatever. Even as he got into the driver's seat and started the engine, my buddy and I figured any minute now, little Twinkerbell in the bathroom there is going to come running out to join his boo. But no, the older guy slams his door shut, backs up his car, and then drives out of the parking lot and off into the night. We're both like, huh, that's weird, where's the other guy? Then, after a minute or two of waiting around, I volunteered to head into the bathroom to see what the deal was. I honestly figured the younger guy would be in the bathroom, probably just still in a stall, crying because the older dude had just broken up with him or something like that.

That, or maybe the younger dude couldn't handle his liquor, puked all over the bathroom and then the older guy was just like, F this crap, I'm outta here. I remember pushing open the door, calling out, Hello? Anyone in here? And the question immediately struck me as dumb because, unless they escaped out the air vents, there had to be someone in there. Right away I could see that there was someone sitting in the toilet in one of the stalls, but the fact they didn't respond to my question had me mildly concerned. I asked,

You okay there, buddy? And when that question got no reply, I knew I had to check on the guy to make sure he was okay. I asked, I knew I had to act fast. I walked over to the stall, tapped on the door, but it moved, showing that it was unlocked. I then pushed it open a little more and as it touched the guy's knees, it was just enough gentle force to push him off balance and send him falling off the toilet to his right. And the second he hit the floor, I could see something poking out of his right eye. His left was wide open and undamaged and he seemed totally unconscious, but there was clearly something long and thin sticking out of his eye in a way that I couldn't see the exact entry wound, but I knew it must have been bad, because there was a lot of blood

dripping off whatever it was that was stuck in there, on top of what was all over his clothes and on the floor too. I immediately felt sick, but rushed to call the cops and told my co-worker to lock the front doors, because the restaurant was now a murder scene. And that's what it looked like to me anyway. All that blood and an unconscious person who's been stabbed right through the eye and one who hadn't responded to anything I'd said, I was almost positive that guy was dead. So imagine my surprise when the ambulance shows up, we walked into the bathroom and the guy that I thought was dead was just stumbling around the bathroom with a hand partially covering his

wounded eye. I think the poor guy suffered some kind of horrible brain injury or something. The EMTs were telling him don't touch your eye and not only was he acting like he couldn't understand them, but the stuff he kept responding with was like nonsense baby talk. It was really distressing to see and I had to leave the room as the EMTs went to work on the guy and then wheeled him out to the ambulance. The cops showed up around the same time, then after locking the doors behind them, we threw up a closed sign and then got to talking to the cops and giving them descriptions of both the older guy and the car he was driving. Nothing I ever did or saw was crazier or scarier than what I saw that night and frankly, I'm glad nothing ever topped it. But the thing that haunts me so much about the whole thing wasn't just how that poor guy got

stabbed in the eye so deep it messed with his brain. It's how we never found exactly what happened or why it happened in the first place. We didn't hear any screaming or yelling, which you'd figured if there was a fight like that someone would have made enough noise to attract our attention, but it was totally quiet in there. Those two guys looked like such a happy couple and on the way out, the guy who'd done the eye stabbing didn't seem to even have broken a sweat. He seemed relaxed, had a big smile on his face and was perfectly charming and polite when he thanked us for everything we did that night. But all that, after he'd just tried to kill someone in our men's bathroom. Like I said, I saw my fair share of crazy fights and served my fair share of creepy customers.

But none of those memories keeps me up at night, like remembering the way that guy smiled as he walked out. It was like taking someone's life, or at least trying to take it, was like the some wild things in my time. I saw a lot of drama and a lot of stuff that made me laugh my butt off, but it was rare that anything actually creeped me out or scared me. But then the one thing that I actually did take home with me has stayed with me for quite some time. We had a guy pull in just after 6am on a Sunday, dressed like he was headed to church and with all the same kind of cheerfulness too. I remember his order like it was yesterday. Steak and eggs, extra hash brown, with biscuits and gravy on the side. Man ate like a king that

morning. Then as he sat there, over a clean plate and as the customers were filing in here and there, I remember seeing him make a phone call. And after that, he just sort of sat there and waited. When two cops first walked in, people looked up, but only in the way that they would if any other kind of customer walked in. We get a lot of police officers on and off duty thanks to the 10% law enforcement discount that we offer, so it's not uncommon to see them walk through the door. But to see them walk straight up to our well-dressed churchgoer and pull the handcuffs straight out, that didn't just draw everyone's attention, it pretty much demanded it. He just stood up, turned around, let himself be

handcuffed, and the cops walked him out of the building and out to the patrol car. One of the cops drove the guy off then the other came back to recommend that we just close for the day. Forensics were about to be all over the guy's car and it'd be one hell of a bad look to have an active crime scene in our parking lot. My supervisor touched base with management and they agreed that having people watching all that CSI stuff over their breakfast melts was probably a major no-no. And about an hour later, we'd closed down the restaurant and I was walking to my car just as they were pulling the first body out of that guy's trunk. I caught one glimpse, then averted my eyes because I instantly recognized that the body was small, child-sized, and I did not want to deal with the memory of seeing a dead kid like that.

I texted some co-workers later on saying how I was pretty sure that they pulled a kid out of the guy's trunk and then a few days later the whole story broke on the news. The well-dressed, cheerful customer who ordered his steak and eggs, extra hash brown with biscuits and gravy on the side, had killed his whole family that morning before he decided to drive them to a waffle house. The guy must have known that, in the very best-case scenario, he was going to jail for the rest of his life. Worst case, he'd just be up for lethal injection. But before any of that, before he had to face the music, the guy wanted a few final plates from his favorite breakfast place. And I swear to God, I would never ever have guessed what a terrible thing that guy had done.

The way he came up to the counter, like it was just your average Sunday morning, it was like the part of the guy's brain that accounted for emotion was just gone or broken. I can't even imagine the kind of headspace that I'd be in if I just annihilated my own family. I lose my appetite whenever I even get remotely stressed out. So the idea that this guy bashed in his two kids' brains and then thought, I could go for some biscuits and gravy right now. That's just about the creepiest, most haunting thing I've ever been unfortunate enough to cross paths with. In the early hours of April 22nd, 2018, 29-year-old Travis Jeffrey Reinking pulled into the parking lot of a Waffle House in the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. Sitting in his pickup truck, Travis spent the next four minutes contemplating what he was about to do. He was completely naked apart from a thin green jacket which covered his torso,

and resting on the back seat of his truck was a fully loaded assault rifle. Travis was born in Morton, Illinois on February 1st of 1989. He had a history of erratic conduct, paranoia, and delusions, and was particularly obsessed with the globally renowned singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. He once told co-workers that Swift had accepted his marriage proposal, but when confronted on the date of his supposed matrimony, Travis announced the engagement had been cancelled after he realized that he was gay and that he and Swift were never, ever, ever getting back together. In May of 2016, sheriff's deputies in Tazewell County

responded to a call from Ryan King's parents in the parking lot of a drugstore. Upon their arrival, paramedics saw Travis was suffering some kind of mental breakdown and heard him claim that Taylor Swift was hacking his phone as well as stalking him. A subsequent written report stated, Travis is hostile towards police and does not recognize police authority. Travis also possesses several firearms. Later in 2017, Travis was living in an apartment above his father's crane rental business in Tremont, Illinois. He was briefly employed as a crane operator for another company but quit his job in March 2017 because he believed police were following him and that his last chance to

marry Taylor was swiftly approaching. In June of that same year, an employee of his father's business called the police, saying Travis had walked downstairs carrying a rifle and wearing a pink dress. He then tossed the rifle in his trunk, cursing loudly as he did so before departing the building. On another occasion, the director of a public swimming pool called the police to report Travis had arrived wearing, in a quote, a pink woman's house coat. When asked to leave, Travis reportedly exposed himself to lifeguards and members of the public alike, but fled the scene before he could be apprehended by attending police officers. Just over a month later, Secret Service agents arrested Travis near the White House

after he crossed a barrier and refused to leave. The Secret Service said Ryan King had said he wanted to set up a meeting with the president and that he mentioned being a sovereign citizen. Travis was subsequently charged with the misdemeanor of unlawful entry and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement. He agreed to perform 32 hours of community service and agreed to stay away from the White House on the pain of much more serious charges. By November of 2017, Travis had successfully completed the program, meaning his case was dismissed entirely.

But his conviction meant authorities in Illinois were entitled to revoke his state firearms authorization. Police then confiscated two bolt-action hunting rifles, four semi-automatic long guns, and a single handgun. However, after being approached by Travis' father, Jeff Reinking, who promised to keep the weapons secure and away from his son, the firearms were returned. Travis was once again employed as a crane operator from January until April of 2018 and used his wages to relocate to Davidson County, Tennessee. However, on April 3rd, he was fired after claiming that his fellow employees were, and I quote, after him. It's not clear what Travis did over the next two weeks or so, but on April 18th, he stole a brand new BMW X6 from a dealership in Brentwood, but was swiftly apprehended by

the police after they tracked the car's location using its built-in GPS system. Again, it's not clear what Travis did in the days between his arrest for car theft and his arrival at the Antioch Waffle House. But after those long four minutes spent contemplating his future, Travis grabbed the rifle, stepped out of his truck, and began walking towards the restaurant. Inside the Waffle House, two close friends named James Sean BJ McMurray were enjoying their food. James had been an electrical technician since the age

of 18, stating that, I've been destroying stuff and putting it back together since I was a little kid. I would take stuff apart and just hope I could reassemble it. After graduating from Tennessee State University, James began working for AT&T, installing internet, television, and phone connections in homes and apartments across Tennessee. James and BJ had been sat in the booth for around 25 minutes when, suddenly, both heard a loud pop before a nearby window suddenly shattered. I knew straight away that they were gunshots, James later said, so me and BJ rushed towards the bathrooms to take cover.

Yet it also occurred to him that if he hid in the bathroom, he'd be cornered and almost completely defenseless. It was then that James remembered the simple three-word instruction that had recently been given to people caught up in such a senselessly violent incident. Run. Hide. Fight. James positioned himself behind the counter, out of sight of the restaurant floor just as a heavily armed Travis walked through the doors of the Waffle House. He fired two more shots at cowering innocents, killing one, and seriously injuring another. But following that second shot, Travis' weapon suddenly jammed.

Sensing the opportunity to strike, James launched himself over the counter and lunged for Travis' rifle. As his hand found the weapon's barrel, searing pain shot up James' arm as the heated rifle barrel inflicted second-degree burns to the skin of his palm. But at that moment, and thanks to the huge amount of adrenaline coursing through his veins, James could barely feel any discomfort whatsoever. All he was focused on was neutralizing the threat. Travis had been completely and utterly surprised by James' decisive and valiant actions and failed to prevent him from wrestling the rifle from his grip. James then tossed the rifle over the counter, out of Travis' reach, and then began furiously beating him. Travis discarded his jacket,

the only item of clothing he was wearing during the ensuing fracas, and then fled the Waffle House on foot. The subsequent manhunt lasted just under 34 hours, but eventually, Travis was tracked down to some woods not far from the Waffle House, where he was cornered, then arrested following his eventual surrender. Shortly after news of the shooting hit the airwaves, Nashville Mayor David Briley was quoted as saying, It's a tragic day for our city any time people lose their lives at the hands of a gunman. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam added that he was deeply saddened by the tragic incident in Antioch earlier this morning,

and we mourn the lives taken in this senseless act of violence. Prior to his trial, Travis was charged with four counts of criminal homicide, four counts of attempted homicide, and one count of having a firearm while committing a dangerous felony. Following an intense psychiatric examination, forensic psychologists declared that Travis was suffering from severe schizophrenia, leading a judge to categorize him as unfit to stand trial. Travis was then committed to a mental hospital for treatment, but just over a month later, it was determined that psychologists had grossly overestimated the extent of Travis's mental illness, and that in essence, Travis had played up the worst of his symptoms in order to court their sympathies.

He was declared fit to stand trial. But in January of 2020, prosecutors announced that they would not seek the death penalty against Travis, and would instead seek a sentence of life without parole. Travis pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to 16 counts of murder and assault and was found guilty on all counts at his trial's conclusion. Then the following day, the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Travis' father, Jeffrey Reinking, was later charged with unlawful delivery of a firearm for returning the weapons to his son. He was eventually found guilty in May of 2022 and sentenced to a year and a half in prison. The attack claimed four victims, Aquila da Silva, de Evany Groves, Joe Perez, and Torian Sanderlin. But all agreed that if it wasn't for James Shaw's courageous actions, many more people

would have lost their lives. James later established a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the families of the four victims, with donations surpassing $200,000 by May of 2018. While he has been described as a hero by numerous people, including Tennessee authorities, James has stated that he does not think of himself in those terms. Quote, I did that completely out of a selfish act, he said. I was completely doing it just to save myself. Now in me doing that, I recognize that I saved other people, but it was never my intention. I never set out to be a hero. I'm just a regular guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time. The following month at the 2018 MTV Movie and TV Awards, the late Chadwick Boseman won an award for Best Hero for his work in Black Panther.

However, during his acceptance speech, Boseman brought James Shaw to the stage and instead presented him with the award for Best Hero. Boseman then stated, Receiving an award for playing a superhero is amazing, but it's even greater to acknowledge the heroes that we have in real life. Worst thing I ever saw at a Waffle House started as one of the nicest things I'd ever seen at a Waffle House. There's probably something deeply philosophical in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if it's me that's finding that. So, me and a fellow buddy stopped by a Waffle House in Gainesville a few years back,

first and last time we ever stopped there. Then, as we're eating, a man comes walking through the doors and gets the reception of a minor celebrity, and we soon figured out why. The moment after the guy walked through the doors, different groups at different tables started trying to get his attention. It was just after two in the morning, but the place was still really busy because it had all the Saturday night drinkers in there. So there was a whole bunch of people calling out, Mr. Brewer, over here, Mr. Brewer, and stuff like that. My buddy and I were like, what's going on? But like I said, we soon found out. Mr. Brewer was obviously some kind of big shot, or at least he sure played it that way, because he starts walking to each of the tables that seemed to recognize him and handing out wads of cash. And he's not just giving them the money.

He's sitting down with them, talking to them, asking about their families and their jobs and stuff. Real pillar of the community type things. Some folks are refusing the money and are just happy to check in with him, but others, and I mean no offense by this, look like they needed it, you know. So they seemed only too happy to take his money. Anyway, this guy carries on going from table to table, then when he seemed done with his rounds, he stood up and waved goodbye to everyone as he walked towards the doors. But then, as he's walking, some lady in the back starts calling out something like,

why didn't you pay for our meal? I looked over and the lady and her old man were looking over at this Mr. Brewer guy and they looked mad. Mr. Brewer starts telling them that he can't pay for everyone's meal. But this doesn't go down well with the lady and her man and she starts saying how Brewer there was trying to embarrass them or something. And by this point, people are telling the lady to shut up and this is making her man even madder, talking about, don't you talk to my woman that way. But Mr. Brewer is chill, tells everyone to pipe down and basically explains that if they're going to be so rude, he's most definitely not paying for their food.

People start clapping and cheering and it's all amped up to 11 because most people are drunk out of their minds. But again, the rude couple do not take this well and the angry man gets up, marches toward Mr. Brewer, and takes a swing at him. The guy is drunk and Brewer seems sober as a judge so the swing completely misses, and then people are jumping in to separate them and push the instigator out of the Waffle House. There were people keeping him outside, people making sure Mr. Brewer was okay, and people yelling at the rude lady to get outside and control her man. My buddy and I are just trapped in the middle of all that chaos, so we're both just like, let's get the hell out of here here and are taking a few final

sporkfuls of food we got up and head towards the door right in time for the shooting to start. I didn't see where the shots came from but I saw Mr. Brewer just buckle and hit the floor. Then the next thing someone's getting wrestled to the ground outside and the cops showed up just in time to put the cuffs on him while folks outside helped hold him down. The shooter was that angry guy trying to defend his woman's honor or whatever. And he just killed a man because he wouldn't give him money to pay for his waffles. I think that was probably the worst thing I ever saw. Not just in a waffle house either. Ever. And my mom loved that movie To Kill a Mockingbird and I once asked her why it was called something like that when there was no mockingbirds in it.

And she told me it was because it was the worst kind of sin to kill a mockingbird because all they did was sing and make folks happy. And I feel like that's what Angry Guy with the Gun did. He killed a mockingbird. And I just pray that he realizes what he did and we used to have this one family stop in whose kid was a total psycho, but also had some pretty serious learning difficulties too, so it was a difficult situation to say the least. I think he was only like 13 or 14, but we used to joke about how his parents must have been slipping supplements into his milk bottle or whatever

because he was huge for his age. And that was just about the only funny thing about him though, everything else was a total nightmare. He beat up two employees one day, broke one of their noses and did thousands of dollars in damage to both company property and staffs. Televisions, windows, doors, gaming systems, windshields, glasses, phones, you name it, he broke it. His parents used to get mad at us if we called the police to help us. They didn't want him to get a bad reputation in the community, which was ironic because I'm not sure his rep could be any worse. We weren't officially forbidden from personally pressing charges, but it was not encouraged. Everyone did everything to make sure he never

faced any consequences. For the two staff that he pulverized, he had to draw a picture to say he was sorry. He finished the picture and his parents brought him along to present it to us with an apology. And I swear to God, he looked one of my co-workers dead in the eyes and said, I'm not sorry. I'm glad I did it. I wish I'd hurt them worse. His mom yelled at him, told him not to be so rude, and I don't think any of us were all surprised. I ended up dealing with him on a couple of other occasions, and when he wasn't in a rage, he had his moments of decency. In one of our calmer conversations, he was playing Legos, and I asked him if he'd like to talk about some ways to avoid hurting people when he gets angry.

The kid looked me dead in the eyes and said, No, I don't want to stop hurting people. I like hurting people. I asked him why, and he shrugged and told me, I just like it. It's fun. I still think about that kid from time to time, and whenever I do, I wonder how much longer it'll be before I see him featured in some online news article about how he's killed someone or beaten them half to death.

Something violent in nature, anyway. I hope his family have found more effective ways to deal with whatever he was suffering with, but to be brutally honest, I think the way they treated him made him worse and worse. You can't have kids like that thinking there's no consequences, even if they are a little slow. And that's how you end up with the Green River Killers or Sons of Sam. As I said, I wonder what they'll call that kid if worse comes to worse and he ends up taking a life instead of making one for himself. This happened last July, 2023, but a hilariously unfortunate Instagram notification reminded me of this unusual incident. My birthday was yesterday, and I, a 26-year-old male, got a celebrate-the-year notification that an algorithm paired with a picture of my

black guy from when I first posted about what happened. And while this is far from the creepiest encounter on this subreddit, it's certainly a very bizarre and dangerous one. For context, I was a struggling homeless door dash delivery driver in New York City at the time of this incident. I say driver in quotes because back then, I didn't have a car or know how to ride a bike. I made deliveries either by taking the subway trains or limiting my delivery radius to a mile or less. I tried to stay in hostels, whether I could afford them, but one unlucky night last July, I was out making deliveries at four in the morning since I had nowhere to go.

Maneuvering on foot with food at this time made me an easy target, so I decided to stay near the highly populated and brightly lit Times Square area. I received an order from the Taco Bell in Times Square and accepted it since it paid well, and the destination was less than a mile away. As I turned the first corner, I felt something was off. I noticed two men walking closely behind me, and given the bright lights and tourists surrounding me, I initially dismissed the uneasy gut feeling that I was being stalked. And then they started walking faster and closer. I started changing my movement patterns, and they copied my exact movements.

At this point, I realized that they were probably after the food that I was carrying, and I eventually yelled out loud, Back off! And they kept following closely behind. I started walking faster, and the men didn't stop and they started increasing their speed. Back off! I yelled more aggressively, and they continued to follow closer. Taurus and bright lights still surrounded me, even at this point.

As I approached the intersection into the following neighborhood, I continued shouting at these stalkers, and one of them yelled, Shut up! while the other punched me right in my right eye. Luckily, this caught the attention of the police who were right at the intersection where I was hit. Unfortunately, this was also the moment that I lost faith in the NYPD. The men that attacked me fled at that moment and two cops started chasing them. However, the bumbling morons lost sight of the attackers before even a minute passed. The men that attacked me fled at that moment and two cops started chasing them.

However, the bumbling morons lost sight of the attackers before even a minute passed. I stayed at the scene for about a half hour or so with about six officers, with a couple of them interviewing the many witnesses around. I remember feeling a sense of validation for what I just went through when one of the witnesses came up to me and said, Dude, that's messed up, man. I hope they get him. The officers eventually had me ride in one of the patrol cars to see if I could identify the attackers in the surrounding area. And my memory of them was hazy due to all the chaos, but I remember the clothes they wore. And we eventually passed by some other officers cuffing the attackers who I was able to identify from their clothing and from seeing their faces again. I was advised to go to the hospital, which I initially declined due to my current financial situation. However, I eventually decided to go since I had no idea how severe my injuries were.

Ultimately, I only had a black eye that healed after a few days, thankfully. The DoorDash order was cancelled despite the customer making no attempts to contact me, and this meant I got full pay and could keep the Taco Bell cravings box for myself. And I'm not going to lie, it was nice to have a place to rest for a bit and enjoy a free meal, despite it being cold by that point. And after examination, I was permitted to rest for a free meal, despite it being cold by that point. And after examination I was permitted to rest for a few hours, when I was rudely awakened and told to leave in 10 minutes before security was called. My takeaway from this incident is that, even in brightly lit areas with

multiple eyewitnesses, it's always best to stay aware of your surroundings. Food delivery at night is no joke, believe me, I have a laundry list of other sketchy encounters I could share here, but this was the only time that I was attacked in front of so many others, including police officers themselves. My senior year of high school, I dated this guy, Tom. We dated for over a year, but the relationship was not good. We were always breaking up and getting back together again, fighting a lot. He threatened me often. Overall, it was very toxic. His parents also had a very rocky relationship. His dad was an alcoholic and beat on his mom most nights. I even witnessed it when I spent the night there on rare occasions. It was

pretty scary. Toward the end of his senior year, Tom cheated on me at his birthday party and so we broke up again. Two months later, we tried to get back together but I realized that I just didn't like him anymore and called it quits for good. And that was 15 years ago. And it was the last time that I saw him. Since then, I've heard that he became an alcoholic just like his dad. Became very violent and wound up in a mental hospital. I wasn't sure of the details on this, but I heard that he might actually be schizophrenic. Nine years ago, I met my now husband. We've been married for four years and have a two-year-old and another one on

the way. This is just for context. And maybe about a year ago, I got a random text message asking my name? No, I get work calls and texts on my personal phone, so I answered yes? And they wrote back, how are you? I should mention that I've had the same phone number that I've had since high school, and I didn't respond because I didn't know who it was, and at this point I figured it wasn't something related to work. A few minutes later I got another text, it's Tom, how are you? When I tell you that I gasped, I responded, I'm well, I hope you are too, and he wrote again, what are you doing? Again, I didn't respond and then a minute later, do you ever think about us?

Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we still lived together? Do you ever think about getting back together? I sat in silence, rereading these messages, unsure of how to respond. Finally, I replied, I'm sorry, Tom, but no. I'm married now and wish you the best, but I don't think that we should have any form of communication. And he responded, okay, sorry. Now, I thought this was weird, but whatever. Maybe the dude is lonely and just decided to reach out. Who knows? That was that. Now, last week, his mother showed up at my family business. I've worked here since high school in different roles,

and she and his father have gotten a divorce, and she now has a boyfriend she seems to actually be happy with. We exchanged pleasantries, and then she asked, Did you hear about Tom? He was in an institution. I said I'd heard that, and that I was sorry to hear it. And she said, he killed several animals. And that's why he ended up getting locked up.

Again, I said that I was sorry to hear that. And then she said, yeah, but he's out now. He's been for a while. You know, you were always my favorite girlfriend he had. Do you ever think about him I wasn't sure what to say to this I wanted to say lady I was in high school no instead I said no I'm married now with a toddler I don't have much time to think about anything trying to lighten the mood I guess and she then responds you know he's not a guy. I don't see him that much anymore,

but when I do, he still talks about you. He wonders what could have been. Would you ever be open to talking to him? And that's when I shut things down. I told her it was great to see her, but that option was off the table now and forever. I said I had to get back to work. I walked away and hid in the back until she left. What in God's name, though? This high school relationship was years ago. I want no part of him or his family. And I'm just so sincerely hoping that he doesn't pop up at my place of work.

I have no idea if he's still around the area. But I really, really hope that his institutionalized self isn't. I hope this is the right place to share this, as this happened about five years ago. Well, actually seven years ago. I realized the recording is time-stamped, so I did make a mistake. And I can also provide the sleep recording if it's allowed. You see, I was spending the night at my friend's house with another friend. It was summer so we slept with the windows wide open and she didn't have a screen on her window. We were in a safe area so we didn't think anything of it.

I slept right next to the window with my phone on the windowsill. I used a sleep recording app on my phone because I was known to talk in my sleep and it was amusing to hear what I'd have to say. It's also important to note that we were completely home alone that night. This time however my phone recording caught a man's voice. The first thing sounds kind of like a grunt. Her window was high up but not not second story high, and her house was kind of on a slope. And then we heard a man say, oh, hello, in a loud and almost cheery voice. And at the end of the recording, you could hear the man whisper, oh, God, something is wrong. Now, thank the heavens nothing happened that night.

We weren't sure who the hell it could have been. And it sounded like a full-grown man grown man and as mentioned no one was home. I never slept over at her house after that which I felt bad about because she was absolutely petrified to sleep in her own room again. She also never slept with her windows open again. We don't know if he was trying to break in or if maybe he thought that it was a buddy's house but then saw three teenage girls all cuddling and sleeping together. I'm not sure, but I still get goosebumps listening to that recording. I still don't sleep with the windows open and I live nowhere near her now. To clarify, I'm a 16-year-old female who lives in a very, very small town, and this happened three months ago. Every morning, I would go out to our yard, drink some coffee, and watch the sunrise.

One morning, a guy with dirty brown hair and a dirty face came walking by, and he waved at me while I sat there, and of course, I didn't want to be rude, so I waved back. And this continued for about three weeks, until one afternoon while I was playing with my dogs outside, I saw him just standing there, watching me. Of course I waved, but I had never seen him at this time of day, and he waved and then just walked away. I didn't think much of it because I was naive. Then came the morning I'll never forget, ever. I was sitting outside and as always he walked by but this time, when I waved at him, he came to my gate and I

froze. He started small talk and slowly I started to get up, starting to feel scared. He told me to wait and I stupidly waited. My dog started barking at him and he said, very agitated, your dogs are very mean. When I tried to get in, they wanted to bite me earlier. I stood there and wanted to cry. And then he told me, I'd rather stay safe and keep by my pets. And I kid you not, he pulled out a dead rat from his pocket. I ran, and since then, I've never gone outside during those times. To be continued... of my trip, but it's hard to think positively considering what happened to me the last night in Stuttgart, and I'd like a place to talk about it. I'd spent about two weeks traveling in Germany for the Euros, and considering how many fellow Scotland fans were there for the games, I never felt completely alone despite being a solo traveler in a foreign country. I guess I became too naive in trusting the older groups of Scots who buy me drinks and

chat with me all night about where they're from and who they knew. Just typical Scottish chats, and I let my guard down. That last night in Stuttgart happened like most other nights in Germany. I'd be by myself and would get noticed by a group of older men or women who'd inquire about who I was with. When they heard that I was alone, they'd remark at how brave I was as a good-looking lassie, being there all by myself. I'd then be integrated into the group, drink with them, celebrate with them, and that night cry with them after Scotland's loss. Determined to enjoy my last night, I said goodbye to my new friends, donned a short

white dress draped in my Scotland flag, and went out looking for a good place to drink and dance with strangers I'd never meet again. I met a few people that night, but it was while I was alone that I met him. Bag's bigger than you are. I heard a jolly older man wandered over to me. It was true. I had my rucksack with me that night. Where's your boyfriend to carry it for you?

I'm not sure yet, still deciding if he's going to be German or Scottish. I quipped back with a smile. Most of my interactions would start this way with a friendly comment leading to an offer to come drink with their group. And after offering to take me to a nearby Irish pub to drink with him and his family, I graciously accepted and we began walking. He was overly exaggerating how incredible he thought I was for doing this alone, bowing to me and excitedly telling passerbys how brave I was. I would smile awkwardly and change the subject. I wish I could say alarm bells were ringing, but they weren't, and after all, he was just a wee Scottish grandpa, one of many that I'd met that night. He began prodding on me if I had somewhere to sleep that night, remarking how they had room in their hotel if need be. I wouldn't force myself on you or anything. And I froze.

It was so unexpected. I truly looked at him for the first time since I had met him. He was a relatively short man, taller than me, with a larger build and wrinkles to match the white hair poking out from under his Scotland cap. He quickly explained how he knew that I'd be cautious about that sort of thing, being a smart girl, and that I could trust him. But again reiterated that he wouldn't force himself on me. I laughed nervously as all the beer I'd drunk earlier seemed to drain from my body and I began taking in my surroundings. Where did you say your family were again?

Just an Irish pub up this hill. So like I was saying. I didn't really pay attention to him. We were still on the populated main street of Stuttgart, but the numbers were dwindling the further we went. My ears pinged an alert to my brain signaling that I had just missed something important or horrifying, so I mustered up a smile and politely said, What did you say, sorry? That I'm a vegetarian, because I killed my 44th man in a vegetable field. Oh, I've deployed in loads of countries. The first six lives I took were in Ireland. And my blood ran cold. I am a descendant of Irish immigrants who fled to Scotland to escape the brutality of the Troubles in Ireland. Did this man kill my family?

Killed twelve in Iraq. I could only listen to parts of his ramblings as I began desperately planning my escape, locking eyes with every person that walked past. There weren't many. We had almost reached the top of the main street now. Why are you so tense all of a sudden? The words brought me back to the conversation. You know I can read you like a book.

I'm doing all this for you, see? I want to protect you. And Molly, I can guarantee you right now, you don't realize how much danger you're in. I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder, spinning round to see a young German man smiling at me. Scotland, he mentioned to my flag. I love Scotland. Is there anywhere to eat around here? I blurted out, staring at him, praying that I'd turn around and the old man would be gone. Brief confusion crossed the German man's face before the old man began rapidly jumbling up the sentence, Sprechen Sie Deutsch, in an attempt to sound as if he was speaking German. Essen, I whispered, and the young man pointed in the direction we had just walked from.

There's a McDonald's down there. I turned back to the old man, whose look I could only describe as emotionless, as if he was staring through me, like I was no longer there. I felt another cold shiver before smiling. I'm going to go grab something to eat, but I'll meet you at the Irish pub later. As if snapping back to his jolly self, the man quipped, Don't be like that. I'm off to a rave just now. I'm playing at it. You don't want to miss out.

I'll catch you later. I smiled, and the man's face again dropped into a blank stare before he turned and walked off. I think the German man called after me, but I didn't hear him. I kept my head down and walked wherever my feet wanted to take me. I couldn't think, only walk. I don't know how I got to the train station or how I got to the hostel. There were no Irish pubs in Stuttgart, or at least not in that direction. I met a guy on Tinder. There was a good feeling from the start and we quickly decided to see each other.

He asked me to come and sleep at his place which I accepted because we had mutual friends and I told myself that he was definitely someone I could trust. I arrived at his house at 9pm and I immediately saw that he was not as I had imagined. He looked dirty, his apartment resembled a squatter's nest, and there was a smell of stale tobacco in every room. When I came into his house, I saw a stack of books on autism and I asked him about it. I learned at that moment that he is autistic with Asperger's and has difficulty differentiating right from wrong. He told me that he knows how to analyze non-verbal language very well and that he can tell what a person is thinking just by their attitude. I don't know much about neurodivergence, but I immediately wondered what his inability to

recognize right from wrong meant. He offered me a glass of alcohol, which I accepted, and as I followed him into the kitchen, I saw a weapon placed on the counter. I panicked a little when I saw this, and seeing my reaction, he explained that it was not loaded, and that it belonged to his father. I never knew if it was a real weapon, but I started to feel uneasy at that point. On Tinder, he told me that he wrote quite a bit, like me, so he showed me a poem that he wrote on his computer. It recounted the assault of a child in quite precise detail, and I freaked out but pretended to appreciate his talent because he was really

starting to scare me. He then talked about his ex and he told me that they had fun choking and drowning each other in the shower because they wanted to know what it felt like to have control over the other's life. It was too much at that point. I had brushed aside many red flags in just a few hours but I just wanted to leave. The only problem was I had to sleep at his house so I had to find a plausible excuse to leave without him realizing I was fleeing the situation. I was afraid that he had bad intentions and would come after me if he understood that I was afraid and had figured out his little game. I discreetly sent a message to my father with the address so

that he could pick me up immediately. I explained to the guy that ultimately I couldn't stay but that I was really disappointed not to be able to stay longer. I played the hypocrite to perfection. At that moment we were both in bed and I was just looking at my phone, waiting for only one thing, to find out when my father was going to be there. And at one point he asked me if I was in a hurry to leave because he noticed that I was looking at my phone regularly. I was scared because I remembered him saying that he knew what a person was thinking just by their attitude, and I told myself that he was going to take action if I didn't hide my fear. I managed to make him believe, at least I had the impression,

that everything was fine and that I was in absolutely no hurry to leave at all. He offered me a massage, which I tried to refuse, but not wanting him to understand my discomfort, especially since I was soon out of trouble, I accepted. I found myself in my underwear with him on top, and it was horrible. And just as he was about to touch my chest, my phone rang, and my father was in front of his house. I got dressed up quickly and barely said goodbye as I left the apartment. I sent him one last message explaining that I didn't want to follow up because his behavior really freaked me out, and then I blocked him. One of my friends matched with him on Tinder a few days later.

He had offered for her to come and sleep at his place and I warned my friend who didn't follow up on this guy. So, I was heading back to my hotel from a friend's house at about 3am the other night. My friend lives deep in Brooklyn and my hotel was in Manhattan. If you know the city, you know that's about a 30 to 45 minute train ride, give or take. The train finally arrived and I was happy to be headed home. I was exhausted and it was late. My trip had been going unexpectedly well until that point and so I had faith that I'd be able to get home with no worries, especially since the trains and streets were basically empty at this hour. The train was brand new and had just been cleaned, something I've never seen before. It even smelled like a new car and still had fresh mop water on the floor.

There were only about three other people on the train, all minding their own business and so far so good. About two stops into the train ride, a man who looked like he was in his late twenties stumbled into our train car mid-ride through the connecting doors. He had a Nike ski mask, a shysty mask if you know, you know, which usually isn't a good sign on a nice 70 degree night in general, but I'm not one to judge by appearance I guess. Plus, I know the shysty mask is sort of a trend nowadays, so I didn't think too much of it at first. He sort of hobbled in, clutching his stomach, almost like he was concealing something or hiding a wound. His eyes were bloodshot red,

and at first I thought it was because he was high or something, and he immediately hobbled into the nearest corner and sort of sulked there until the next stop. Then he ran out of the closet door and erupted into the most painful crying I've ever heard. He was just screaming, moaning and crying while stumble running alongside the stopped train on the platform, still clutching his stomach and screaming things like why and gasping through his tears. Keep in mind that I'm sitting in the middle of the train facing away from the side that he got off of, so I'm kind of breaking my neck behind me to watch what's going on. He then ran back inside the same car through the

door on the opposite side. He was on my right before and now he's on my left, and there was no one in between me and him now since everyone else was closer to the right side. He did the sulking while facing into the corner on the other side of the car now but this time he kept screaming, crying, and yelling things like why again. But he was crying so hysterically that it was hard to make out a lot of what he was saying. From the certain words that I gathered I'm almost positive that a very close friend of his had just gotten killed or something. It's the only thing that could explain why he was acting and the things that he was saying. Plus, he was suited up like he just came back from a street mission gone bad or something. At this point, everyone on the train was frantically flicking

their eyes over to him every few seconds. You could tell that they were panicked but not trying to cause a scene or rile him up more. I was getting a little sussed out myself but I had seen and heard about worse on the subway and if someone he knew had really just died, then I honestly felt horrible for the guy before anything else. But then the entire situation escalated to a point that I had only seen in movies or crime shows until now. The man stayed in this corner, crying, screaming and muttering things to himself for another three minutes or so, all while still clutching his stomach as if he was concealing something. I had definitely seen a black object in his hands by this point and I couldn't tell if it was big enough to be a gun or not. After I saw this, I tried not to take my eyes off of him for too long at a time since I was the closest person to him but I also didn't want to stare.

And by this point, he was starting to say concerning things like, Someone's gotta pay for this. And then he would just repeat it louder and louder. And then he burst into a dialogue that made my heart drop. Keep in mind, he's still facing the corner, hunched over, clutching his item. Oh, you sitting on the screen right now. Y'all gonna feel me tonight. You hear me? Y'all gonna feel me tonight and y'all gonna hate it too.

Oh my God, y'all gonna hate this. Y'all gonna hate me. And he kept getting louder and louder as he was saying this to the point where he was basically screaming by the last point. I don't know what he said after that because as soon as that train stopped next, I bolted. He was screaming stuff at me as I got off too, but I couldn't hear it and I definitely wasn't trying to turn back. I ran back up the nearest street exit, chain smoked a couple of cigarettes and waited 20 minutes for the next train to come. I've seen enough in my life to know that this wasn't a situation I was willing to gamble with at all. I pray the last three people in that train got home safe and nothing happened. I briefly searched Twitter and the news the next day for any possible info I could find and didn't see anything, but who even knows what's worth a headline to them down there anymore. I am at my parents' house for the summer.

All the lights were off and the cars were missing from the driveway, despite four people being in the house. It was 7.30 at night, raining, and a black truck pulled into the driveway. A young guy in normal clothes, I guess black hoodie and sweatpants, knocked on the door. And my sister, who's eight years old, answered the door with our big dog barking upstairs. And they asked her three things. Are your parents home? Can they hunt the deer that are on our property? And do your parents want to go hunting with them? She said yes, and that her parents were

home and went to get our dad. The weird thing is, is that there are never any deer on our land, and it's not deer season. My dad came down to talk to them, and they changed their story. Now they were saying they wanted to hunt turkeys on our property. We do sometimes have turkeys wandering around, but not today. They told our dad all about the many guns they had in their trunk and they said that they came from Alabama to hunt. Then they asked if they could hunt on what was clearly our neighbor's property. My dad sent them away, but they drove past our house a couple more times after that. I don't know if this is that strange in New England, but where I'm from, it definitely is. Also, it could just be my theater mind being overdramatic as always, but I thought I might give it a shot.

In worst case, I'd write a cool horror story based on this encounter. What do you think? I was 11 years old when this happened, currently a female, 24 years old, visiting my dad and stepmom over the summer in Saskatchewan, Canada. My dad worked long days during the week, so on her off day, he would plan for my stepmom to take my sister, 8 at the time, and me out for a day to bond with us as we didn't know her super well yet. She took us to get our nails done, to the mall, and on the way home we stopped at a McDonald's. We planned on eating inside the restaurant but it was very busy so my stepmom asked my sister and me to find a table and wait there while she went to the counter to order our food. I noticed this rough older looking woman, possibly in her 60s or 70s,

looking towards the table my sister and I were seated at. All I could remember was thinking she looked like a drugged out Susan Boyle. She appeared possibly homeless and addicted, so I didn't give her much thought, letting her do her own thing while I tried to talk to my sister about random stuff. Once my stepmom came back to the table, this woman was already approaching us and then stopped behind us. She just said hello, so we all kind of said hi back and tried to ignore her. She asked if we were my stepmom's daughters and my stepmom replied, they're my stepdaughters, trying to simply shut her down quickly. The lady said we were beautiful girls and began to walk towards the door.

She stopped one last time and asked, how old are they? And we had the impression that she was on her way out, so my stepmom just said, 11 and 8. And her eyes lit up. She looked at me with a strange expression. I've always wanted an 11-year-old. I'd buy her from you. That definitely crossed a line, so my stepmom finally told her that we were trying to eat lunch and asked her what she was even saying in a somewhat aggressive tone. The lady got one last look at me and then finally left. She definitely didn't have the money to buy me, even if I was for sale anyway, so I wasn't worried. The lady got one last look at me and then finally left. She definitely didn't have the money to buy me even if I was for sale anyway so I wasn't worried.

I think she was possibly on some drugs and not in her right mind. But knowing my shy self at 11 I wouldn't have known how to get rid of this lady if she tried to talk to us without my stepmom being there. We weren't super close then but I respected her a lot after that day for being ready to protect us, even in a minor of weeks ago. I was heading home from my friend's house one night at around 11.30pm. My friend lives about 25 minutes away and the fastest route home is through the back roads. I live in a small rural town.

Now anyway, I was driving home with one other car about 4 car lengths in front of me. I was about 5 minutes from my house when I saw the car's taillight suddenly break. Then the car sped off and turned onto a road where I couldn't see it anymore. I didn't think much of it. Maybe a raccoon ran out in front of them and they didn't want to hit it. As I reached the part of the road where the car had slammed onto its brakes, a man, a big man, probably over six feet tall in a black hoodie, jumped out in front of my car, flailing his arms and yelling at me. I swerved to the right to avoid hitting him and

looked in my rearview mirror, but at that point he was gone. This part of the road had houses, but where this man was there were none. No streetlight, no broken down car. I raced home and called my husband who was about two and a half hours away at an event and wouldn't be home until after midnight. I told him what happened and how the man just disappeared. I was terrified to get out of my car to walk into our house. He stayed on the phone with me until I got inside and immediately headed home. There have been a lot of weird break-ins around my area lately with people

trying to steal cars. I can't even imagine what would have happened if I stopped my car. Not that I ever would, I've seen way too many true crime documentaries at this point, and I avoid taking that way home now, and when I do, that's all I think about. Yesterday, I celebrated my birthday. I invited my ex-girlfriend, Emma, because we're still really close friends. She took the train to get to me, which takes about one and a half hours and requires changing trains twice. She left around midnight, so she should have been home at around 1.30 to 1.45 a.m. Shortly after 1 a.m., she texted me about a weird dude following her after striking up an upsetting conversation with her about, quote, whether she was gay.

When she truthfully answered that no, she's just trans, hoping he would go away if she was friendly enough, he went on about why she was trans even though she knew it was satanic. He also told her that he'd already noticed her on the train that same morning, which just strikes me as especially creepy. She got off at a stop intending to wait for her subway home, but he got off with her and wouldn't leave her alone. The next subway to her place wouldn't come for another 25 minutes and the stop was completely deserted. She sent me multiple anxious voice messages until she eventually called me, borderline crying and panicking, saying that she had run away from the station and was now lost,

with little idea where she was, even less than an idea of how to get home, and her phone was at 8% battery. She didn't have any money to call a cab either. She couldn't go back to the station because this guy was presumably still there, and he had followed her when she had tried to take the next train to the direction that she had come from in an attempt to get away from him. I advised her to call the police, which she did. They apparently came and took her statement and left again, leaving her there on the outskirts of a big city with still no idea how to get home. I told her to use Google Maps to try and get home and try to save some battery, but to update me periodically. She called me again a few minutes later,

saying that she was 45 minutes on foot from home, but had thankfully managed to reach her mother, who was coming to pick her up from where she was, and I stayed on the line with Emma until her mom got there. And I'm so angry. Emma already struggles with severe anxiety and agoraphobia. The fact that she managed to make it to my birthday party is an achievement for her. And this was not going to help at all. I had history this period which definitely wasn't my favorite and my teacher for this class was a bald white guy and an old looking man with blue eyes and he seemed old and frail but had a mouth on him. I won't say his name for privacy reasons. He was weirdly really nice to

all of his female students, always giving them compliments and calling them a good girl. I don't think of it as something weird until I heard countless girls sharing things about what he would say to them. He'd act really weird and flirtatious with the young female students and talk to them as if he weren't their teacher. Most girls felt really uncomfortable while being in the room with him and even nervous. He had this aura that was off and it made the whole classroom feel sort of eerie. It would be very awkward listening to him talk with his students and hearing it would make your skin crawl. You're such a bad girl, he'd say. Doesn't it just sound wrong? Let me know if I'm overreaching here. Now one day, he just disappeared and was never seen again. People flooded their social medias with different

theories on why he was gone. Some of them were outrageous but could be true. But it turns out, he was a predator and had assaulted many girls in our school and he was actually arrested soon after and apparently never seen again. More girls came out with more stories about it, sharing their experiences, and I saw this as a relief because most of the time he'd make all of his students feel uncomfortable anyways, including myself, but really, good riddance is all I can say. It began the summer before I entered high school in 2018 with innocent messages on Facebook. I never understood why he continued to message me.

And after a couple of days of him texting six to seven times in a row without reply, he stated that he was 26, from my hometown but stationed elsewhere in the army, and had plans to find a young wife to cherish. I made it clear that I was 14 and uninterested and then blocked his account. The next day he made another account calling me baby girl and telling me that I was what he wanted in a wife. This wasn't the first time that I had dealt with an older man interested in me. Naively, I just muted the chat and moved on with my life. I stopped thinking about him, enjoyed my summer, and then started high school.

Everything was going great until the packages started to arrive. First, a necklace with his name on it, and then one shaped like a heart. They had receipts and were expensive. I was terrified that he had found my address so I showed my mom everything. My mom tried to return the gifts. I'm not sure why that was her reaction but he refused. Showing my mom the messages was the first time I had actually read any of them. They were weird and some were about eloping with me when I turned 16.

My mom found out that he went to the high school with both my older siblings. My sister recalled him as a weird anime nerd, and he was friendly towards my brother, also an anime nerd. I ended up blocking a few more accounts and tried to ignore what I thought wasn't that serious of a situation, and after this we never spoke of him again. One afternoon in November of my freshman year I was in my gym class with friends when I received a call with no ID. My friends told me to pick up, thinking it was a telemarketer or spam that we could mess with. We all heard something along the lines of, I'm waiting outside the gym for when you get done with class. We thought it was another friend pranking us and laughed and moved on.

After class I had this weird gut feeling and tried to leave through the visitor's doors, but the coach told me it wasn't permitted. I walked out and there he was. He grabbed me by the throat, jammed his mouth against mine, and told me he was disappointed I wasn't wearing the jewelry that he had got me and then walked away. I sprinted to my theater teacher, the only teacher I trusted, and cried for the rest of the day until convincing my brother to pick me up. I blame the tears on the recent passing of my grandpa. I kept receiving CDs, mixtapes.

He wrote many songs about me, bracelets and cards until COVID began, but I never saw him in person again after that day. A few weeks ago, me, a 23-year-old female, and a friend, a 24-year-old female, planned to go to an event together since we only had free time after work, and we decided to get an Uber so we wouldn't take too long to arrive and could enjoy more. The first half of the ride was really normal. It seemed like a normal, polite dude. But as soon as we got to the highway, his attitude seemed to change, and he seemed a lot more irritated. Me and my friend didn't pay much attention, though, and just kind of kept chatting between us. Our attention was drawn when he started shouting with another driver.

He turned to us and said he was going to pull over. I tried objecting, but he ignored and pulled over anyway. He reached out for the glove compartment and pulled out a gun. It's important to note that guns are illegal in my country. We were just watching this unfold with held breaths, and when the other guy drove away, we let out a sigh of relief. But then, we were still stuck in a car with a crazy dude with a gun. And after that, he went back to driving and apologized to us, saying that the

guy was tailgating him. I let out and, oh, got it. And he kept talking. That guy's lucky that you two girls are here or else I would have followed him and shot him in the face. Sleazy idiot. I look over at my friend and she's in shock and paralyzed. I'm in shock too but trying to keep my cool because the last thing I want is to get him annoyed at us. If he was willing to shoot that guy for tailgating, I didn't want to know what he would do to us if I said the wrong thing. No, it's okay, I understand. I say trying to appease him. These guys need to be taught a lesson. He continued while I just agreed with my head. I did that before, you know. You just trap the guy in an empty street and when he leaves, the car, bang. Did he just admit to murder? Was the only thing running through my mind,

but I managed to keep calm and just agreed with him the rest of the way. He did deliver us in the right place with no more incidents, and I waited a few weeks to report this since he had my home address and wouldn't be hard to figure out who reported him. Nobody showed up in my home with a gun, thankfully, at least until now, and an Uber has answered my report saying that they started an investigation and I hope this guy doesn't do this to anyone else. So, I'm a 19-year-old male and my family moved into a nice house some months ago, back in November 2021. We had planned moving for years and basically already secured the house for us when the pre-owners, who apparently went to school with my parents in the 90s, were still living in it. We got the house sometime around the summer of 2021, but had to wait a few months for them to actually pack all their stuff

and move out entirely as their new house couldn't be finished in time because of COVID. I was pretty happy when we finally moved in, since my parents basically gave the entire basin to me, because it wasn't like we were going to store anything anyways. We moved from a 70 meter squared flat to an almost 200 meter squared, don't know the exact numbers but probably three times the size but I'm just guessing, house with three floors and all of that. I was really impressed because we lived pretty poor for my country, in Germany, and up to this point I had to share a room with my 6 year younger brother for as long as I can

remember. And as you can probably guess, I had no way to fill all the space with my stuff. Basically just set up my PC and my desk in the corner of one room with my bed and a wardrobe in the other end of the room. This was the room the furthest from the emergency exit, as my family called it. Basically just an old wood shed embedded into the ground, which the pre-owner made accessible from the inside the house by removing a wall and putting new steel bars between the basement and the shed. It freaked me out the moment I first saw it. There are all sorts of bugs and spiders crawling in there and it smells like no one has cleaned it in there since the house was built. A really,

really heavy, dusty smell comes up every time you move a wood piece even by an inch. On the other side of the shed's door is our yard, directly accessible by a small fence. Usually because of my very impulsive dog, no one tries to go near the fence as he'll storm the window and bark at the slightest gush, like a bird pooping on my car and the poop making a splash or some random pedestrians walking by like five meters away. No idea how he hears these things, I usually just run after my dog to the window just to discover what it was afterwards. For the last few weeks, however, I've been woken up several times by a weird squeaky noise at night.

Up until earlier today, I have no idea where this noise was coming from. Then my dad opened the emergency exit door from outside and I immediately felt uncomfortable. This was the noise I heard all the time. When I confronted my mother about it, as she could be the only one going through that door, my dad works night shift 25 minutes drive from home and my brother is away on school trips since today this morning, she said that she would never go through that shed. She, quote, couldn't even climb in or out without breaking her legs. I went with that answer as I would probably hear the door connecting our basement with the rest of the house too

if she were to go in or out through the door. I confronted my girlfriend who stayed at my place for the weekend, and I remember hearing the noise clearly but at that point I just assumed that one of my family members were sneaking out or something so I kept quiet. She said she didn't hear anything. I told myself that I had probably just imagined or dreamt it, like those dreams that repeat every now and then. At this point I'm feeling very uncomfortable and paranoid about the situation. When it got to evening today I showered and got ready for bed but wasn't really tired so I stayed on my phone for a few hours up to around 1am just watching TikTok and doing Duolingo.

Then I heard the noise again. Somehow my dog had not heard it and my family has never heard it and my girlfriend has never heard it, and my girlfriend has never heard it either, and I'm just lying in bed not knowing what to do. But I decided not to be a coward, so I open the WhatsApp chat with my girlfriend and start recording with the flash on in the low quality WhatsApp video because I was panicking and thought that I'd be more likely to send it directly to her if I had to confront someone. I ended up with a three minute video of me slowly scanning every inch of my basement with the camera first and I thought that they would 100% be able to spot me with a camera with a flash on so I armed myself with a

sort of makeshift weapon from a chain and an old lock. Now fast forward two incredibly long minutes I look like an incredibly paranoid idiot and end up sending the video to my girlfriend by accident. I can't remove it because she is very insecure and a deleted message in the middle of the night would certainly bring up more problems than just sending it. I'm sorry for the long post, I just had to put this somewhere. I don't know where else to turn to, as no one would believe me and I don't think it's a mental problem as I've been fairly mentally stable my whole life with no family history of mental illness. I just don't know where to turn with this as it is really messing with me right now. I'm definitely going to call off work tomorrow and look further into this. I can't set up a camera as my old phone's camera only works when unlocked and the screen would definitely be visible in case of an actual intruder. I don't know how they would react in such a situation but I sure am not going to find

out. I've heard stories of people living in other people's houses without them knowing and I'm pretty sure that's probably what I'm dealing with. But if I told this to anyone else they would tell me that I'm just imagining things or that I'm going crazy. And I hope that maybe you guys can give me some advice on how to proceed. To be continued... Be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data located anywhere you listen to podcasts

links in the description below thanks so much friends and i'll see you again soon