The Lets Read Podcast - 292: THE CHILD WHO MET THE DEVIL | 11 True Scary Stories | EP 279

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about creepy experiences as a child & trick or treating encounters HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt

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Same game, parlays, it's all fine You'll put a smile on your face Bet on the sports you love with that river sports book take a chance must be 19 plus available in ontario only please play responsibly if you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connects ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge I'm out. On Halloween night back in 1978, I was just 10 years old and I was getting ready to go trick-or-treating with my buddies from 5th grade. I remember being really excited because the year

before, my friends and I had gotten to run up and down the streets in total freedom, knocking on houses wherever we could. Now, it sounds crazy to think that we were allowed to go out at night at that age, almost totally unsupervised. But since we were going from door to door and being constantly greeted by adults giving us candy, I guess folks figured that it was just safe as could be. And it really was. We had the night to ourselves, running around like crazy and seeing all our elementary school friends in their costumes. Then, at one point, there was this big old candy

swap going on, where kids would swap their pixie sticks for dum-dums and their tootsie rolls for peanut butter cups like some big old candy stock exchange. It was magical, one of those childhood memories you carry with you for the rest of your life, and most importantly, nothing very untoward happened. And so as you can imagine, I was incredibly excited to do the whole thing again next year, and then incredibly disappointed when I found out it wasn't happening. The first year, so back in 77, I remember my parents saying something like, just make sure you're back before dark and don't go too far. But then the next year, in 78, my mom seemed way over-involved right from the get-go. She wanted to know who I'm going out with, where they live, what their parents' names were,

and if I know their phone numbers and all of that. She asked me a million questions to the point where it got very annoying, and then when I told her that I was heading out to meet my friends, she broke some very bad news. I wouldn't be leaving on my own, and I wouldn't be trick-or-treating with my fifth grade buddies. I'd be waiting for our neighbor, Mrs. Anderson, to stop by with a bunch of random neighborhood kids, and she was going to walk us up and down the block for like half an hour before dropping us off back home. And believe me when I say, I was devastated.

I kept asking why, what had changed, and why I couldn't go out with my friends. But all my mom would tell me was that if I didn't want to go with Mrs. Anderson, then I wasn't going trick-or-treating at all. I don't know if every kid's mom waited until the last goddamn moment to ruin their Halloween but mine did and I was on the verge of full-blown tears before I finally gave in. I was either going to suck it up or miss out on the big bag of candy in time with my friends so obviously I chose the candy. I remember finishing off my cowboy costume in a real stinker of a mood, then when Mrs. Anderson showed up to collect me, off I went. It was me, Mrs. Anderson, and three other random kids from the neighborhood,

one of which was Mrs. Anderson's kid, Billy. And at first, I was still in a very terrible mood because I wasn't with my friends, we were under strict supervision, and Mrs. Anderson said that we could only walk in a short loop up and down the street. All the other kids were in chaperone groups like that too, so it wasn't like it was just us, and although it wasn't as lame as I thought it was going to be, it still sucked compared to the chaos of the previous year. So, we're maybe 20 minutes into the adult-mandated trick-or-treating, and the adults have this thing organized so badly that there's congestion toward the end of the route. We're literally queuing at this one house in front of not one, but two other groups of trick-or-treaters, and as Mrs. Anderson and the lady

in front start talking to each other, her son sort of sidles up to me, points off into the distance and says, that kid's giving me the creeps. I look to see what he's pointing at and off in the distance there's a kid standing near the edge of the park where the old jungle gym was. He was close enough for us to see that he was wearing a mask, but he's not with any kind of group. And so we say, hey, what gives? That kid gets to walk around on his own, why not us? Looking back on it, it was kind of cold of us to just drop him like that, but we were kids, we didn't know any better. We saw a perceived injustice and we called it out. Even chimps and monkeys go crazy when they think something is unfair.

Anyway, we start yelling about this kid out there alone and Mrs. Anderson sees him too, so she starts saying something like, Hey, come back here right this instant, young man. You have to stay with your group. The kid just kind of stands there for a minute, not responding. And then Mrs. Anderson yells at him again, and he starts walking over to the groups of kids. Mrs. Anderson then says, which group are you with? And then starts asking all around to the adults something like, was this kid with you? But none of the adults seemed to

recognize his mask so each just sort of shook their heads when confused in the chaos. I remember looking at the kid and thinking how I was 99% sure that I hadn't seen him around that night. I'd been checking out everyone else's costumes and whatnot and I didn't remember this kid's green goblin mask anywhere. Also, it wasn't a green goblin mask like the villain from Spider-Man. It was just sort of a goblin that happened to be green. Maybe that inspired Spider-Man, I don't know. Now anyways, I'm looking at the kid's mask thinking, I don't remember seeing him around. But at the same time, something about him was just oddly familiar to me. I don't know if it was his shoes or his clothes or the way he carried himself,

but I'm pretty sure that I knew that kid from school. It turns out that I was 100% right on that one, but we'll get back to that later. So Mrs. Anderson is calling around towards all the other grown-ups asking if they're missing a kid, but I'm still watching the kid and trying to figure out why he seems so familiar. So Anderson isn't watching him, but I am. And that meant that I was still watching him when he slips away from Mrs. Anderson, walks right up to a kid in the group behind us that had just joined the line, and then pulls out a knife out of that candy bag that he had with him,

and just starts stabbing. Things were calm one minute, and chaos the next, and all I remember is running back to my house because I was only a block away. My dad came to the door, and as I ran inside, he ran outside because he could hear 50 kids all screaming and running with adults trying to corral them. I mean, it must look like a freaking disaster movie or something because some kids got blood on them, some of the adults had blood on them too. Just wild stuff for him to run out into with no context whatsoever. And I spent the rest of the night in my bedroom, scared out of my mind with my mom making sure that I wasn't freaking out too hard. And the rest of this I got from my dad so it's kind of second hand info.

I obviously saw the first stabbing happen up close and in my head I was thinking way more kids got hurt, maybe got killed too. But by some sheer miracle, no one died and only one one kid and one grown-up had to be taken to the hospital. And the grown-up only got hurt because they cut their hand on the knife while grabbing it off of the kid in the goblin mask who was doing the stabbing. It seems like we kind of dodged a bullet, right? That it could have been way worse? Well, it was way worse. And even now no one really knows any of what that kid says is true or not. It's become an enduring urban legend in the town that I grew up in though. And so the way it happened was that the kid started stabbing and then some grown up with brass balls ran up and immediately subdued the kid before he could hurt anyone else. The kid who got hurt

received only defensive wounds, as in cuts to their hand, wrists from trying to defend themselves, you know. But then, the cuts were only minor and it was like the kid was only trying to scare her, not really hurt her, but it just got out of control. That kind of fell in line with the kid's story, but like with that other thing about recognizing him, I'll get to that later. And so, this courageous grown-up pins the kid down, grabs the knife off of him, cutting themselves in the process,

and like some Christopher Nolan version of Scooby-Doo, they pull the mask off the kid to reveal who the mysterious villain truly is, only to discover that it was a kid named Leroy. Leroy wasn't this kid's real name, obviously, but I don't think it's my place to be spreading him or his family name around the internet over something he did when he was 12 or however old he was. But he sure as hell looked like a Leroy, so I guess that's what I'll call him. Anyway, this Leroy kid came from a very bad family. Mom was on drugs, didn't take care of him properly, and dad was never around. It's a real sad story and not Leroy's

fault at all, but he ended up with a reputation as being like the school stinky kid. But then, almost totally unbeknownst to us kids, Leroy's appearance at the trick-or-treating events surprised everyone, and not just because he pulled out a knife, but because by that point, Leroy had been an official missing person for almost two months. So at the start of the school year, Leroy didn't show up to school. The school's principal then reached out to the county sheriff who drove out to Leroy's family trailer to talk to his mom or her boyfriend. And both were high out of their minds, thought Leroy was at school, and raised all hell when the sheriff and his boys took them away in cuffs for child neglect. They had no idea Leroy was missing,

but word has it that his mom bawled her eyes out down at the department, and I guess whenever she sobered up, it hit her what a terrible mom she was, and at first, everyone blamed her and her no-good boyfriend for Leroy's disappearance. By the end of September, the sheriff had to scale back the search for him. The weather was getting colder, the nights were getting darker, and it was looking more and more like it was a search for Leroy's body rather than a search to find him alive. And that was doubly so by the time Halloween rolled around, because how the hell was a 12-year-old kid going to survive being homeless for the better part of two months?

Everyone was real shocked to hear how Leroy had just showed up out of nowhere. But what shocked them even more was the story he told the cops when they finally got around to interviewing him. Because when they asked him why he'd showed up with a knife and tried to stab somebody, he told them, the devil made me do it. And I'm guessing the cops figured that it was just an excuse at first. You know, kind of like that I don't like Mondays killer girl that it was blatantly just an attempt to disguise her total psychopathy.

But when they asked more questions on who this devil was and how he met him, it became increasingly obvious that Leroy had been kidnapped and held by not one, but several different people. According to Leroy, he was playing outside one day when a man approached him claiming to be a friend of his father's. The guy asked if he wanted to meet him and of course Leroy says yes, but he also said how he wasn't comfortable just wandering off with a stranger. The guy says no problem, let me go get your dad, and then returns a half hour later, driving a van and telling Leroy that his dad is in the back. And little Leroy then approaches the back of the van, looks inside, and then before he even realizes it's empty, the guy shoved him into the back, closed and locked the door,

and then drove off with him, screaming to be let out. Leroy said the guy drove him somewhere, someplace he'd never seen before and had no idea how to get back to. He said he was forced into a windowless room, with nothing but a mattress and a bucket, and then kept there for so long and tortured so horribly that he lost track of time. He said he got so thirsty and hungry that it hurt, but when he begged for water, the man who took him gave him water that tasted bad and after that he felt weird, like he was tired but different and had dark spots in his memory. The cops asked why Leroy had told them that the devil made him do it, and he replied that although he didn't know if the man was the devil for sure, that's

what he called himself. He said the only time they really talked was when the devil took him out of the room one day to meet his helpers. Leroy said that he drank some of the bad-tasting water a while before, but was still feeling woozy when the devil took him out of his room and over towards a circular dining table. Sat around it were five or six men in cloth hoods, but the man who called himself the devil was wearing a larger wooden mask that had carved horns sprouting from the top. The man calling himself the devil then introduced the men as his helpers and told Leroy that he was to obey them just like he obeyed him. And that's when Leroy said that they gave him the mask and told him what they'd given him was very important.

They made him wear it, never letting him take it off all the way, not even when he ate and drank. Then, after what we know was almost two months in captivity, the man calling himself the Devil told Leroy that the only way to get the mask off was to make a human sacrifice. Leroy said that by that time, he was ready to do just about anything for a shot at freedom, so he did exactly as the Devil and his helpers asked him and attacked the trick-or-treating groups that I was a part of. He said one of Satan's helpers then walked him across the park to where our groups were trick-or-treating, gave him the bag with the knife in it, and then told him to do as he'd been told. Leroy said that the moment he killed a kid, any kid, the devil would then

transport him back in time to his mom's trailer and that it'd be like he'd never been taken at all. And that was all it took to get him close enough for us to see him and when Mrs. Anderson called him over, I guess he saw his chance right there. I don't know exactly what happened to old Leroy after that. As in, I don't know exactly where he is now or exactly how the legal process went after he was taken into custody. But I do know his mom and her boyfriend got into trouble for child endangerment and all of that. And then Leroy himself got taken to some kind of psych hospital slash kiddie prison, I guess. The doctors there said there was a whole bunch of things wrong with him, but he wasn't insane or delusional, and some of the marks

on his body were consistent with the methods of torture that he described to the cops. But the thing that really messed with people, and had this taking on urban legend status even after all these years, is the fact that the cops never recovered the mask. You see, after Leroy was taken down and the cops showed up, someone had already taken the mask off of him, I guess. I said a Scooby-Doo moment earlier, but it wasn't really like that. They always used to wait until everything was over and done with before taking off the bad guy's mask, right? Well, this was real life, so almost the second that they had Leroy pinned down, someone whips that thing off of him right

there and then to see who it is because why wouldn't you? But then by the time the cops got a crime scene set up and went looking for Leroy's green goblin mask that he was supposedly wearing, no one could find that anywhere. The cops started asking folks in the neighborhood to make sure that there isn't a kid who had picked up the mask by accident. But then when no one comes forward, they start going door to door in the neighborhood to make damn sure that there hasn't been a mistake. After all, Leroy said all his captors touched the mask at some point, sometimes with their bare hands, so the cops wanted to maybe check it for fingerprints or something like that.

And in fact, I think it was probably their only connection between Leroy and his supposed kidnappers. But no matter what they did, they couldn't recover the mask. And to some, it stands to reason that the person who took it did not want it to fall into the cop's hands. Which means that there's a whole bunch of people who think that, right as all the chaos was unfolding after Leroy stabbed a kid, someone who looks so normal that there's not a single witness to report them just sort of walks up, picks up the mask, and then walked off into the darkness, maybe appearing as another parent. And since no one was ever arrested or convicted of Leroy's kidnapping, those same folks who think

it's all some conspiracy hiding in plain sight, they believe his kidnappers are still out there, and that maybe they've been doing stuff like that for longer than we can imagine. Now we know Leroy was kidnapped, and we know he tried to stab a kid, but as for everything else, I guess a judge might just call it hearsay. But me personally, I don't know what to believe. Because from where I'm standing, much stranger things have happened and are still happening right now. I just know that what Leroy told the cops and the fact his mask was never found somehow scares the living hell out of me. 9 years ago, I admit a person that to this day, I still wish I never did.

I was an isolated, bullied, and depressed 8th grader, with the added state of being a plus-sized kid in a sports-centric town, and so basically, I was beaten and ridiculed on a daily basis. I couldn't make any new friends with my classmates, and all of my old friends from elementary school got placed in different classes, and nobody was in the same after-school groups as me anymore. We were also in a scout group but that disbanded before I got into middle school. I was also lonely that if someone talked to me without picking on me it made me happy. I had a Google Plus account, the only social media I could get access to at school that I kept hidden from my parents and that I would use to check out my favorite fandoms,

and hopefully use to make some new friends. One day I was on Google Plus in the computer lab, and I had commented under a piece of fan art of a character I liked. The person who made the post had replied to me not even a minute later. I remember getting very excited seeing that notification, my heart swelling up in excitement. The two of us spent the next ten minutes of my class talking to each other in the comments section, and we ended up replying so much we flooded a good portion of the comments with our talk. After I changed classes, I logged back into one of the Chromebooks that we had stored in the back of the class and saw that she actually messaged me.

Her name was Haley, at least she told me that was her name, but years later I'm not as sure that it was actually her name and in the message that I got, Haley told me that she was two years older than me and that we had a lot of things in common. I spent the rest of the school day on my phone not giving a damn about anything in my classes. We talked for the next week in our DMs until she suggested that we move to a private chat room. Later that day we created a private chat on an online messaging site and in our first conversation we initially just exchanged messages. Then Haley asked if we could also do a voice call. I told her I wasn't sure but she said that it would be easier to hold a conversation that way.

After she asked me several times, I eventually agreed. After an hour of talking, she then suggested that we video chat. I agreed, both to make sure that she was actually my age and also to put a face to the name. Haley turned on her camera and she did look to be about in the same age range as me. I don't know why, but that fact haunts me more than anything else. The fact that she looked so close to my age and easily smiled and spoke so kindly made me feel like I had nothing to fear, and this led me to quickly believe that I could trust her. We ended up talking for hours after that, with me practically on cloud nine the entire time having a friend. In the beginning of our friendship, things were going well.

We told each other about our schools, our likes, and gushed over our favorite series. We talked almost every day staying up late into the night, and we even exchanged some silly pictures of ourselves and shared memes back and forth. After we had been talking for about six months, Haley asked if I would like to meet her friends. At first, I was ecstatic. The thought of having some more friends excited me so much that I didn't think twice before saying yes. Haley invited me and I got to meet her other friends. I had a completely different feeling about these people compared to Haley though. Something about the chat room made me feel unsafe, even though they all seemed nice and Haley reassured me that I could trust them.

It felt like my instincts were trying to warn me, but I wasn't sure about what, so I just ignored it. Most of them were much older than me. In the chat with her main friends, there were six other people. Most of them were saying that they were 18 or 19, but two guys were distinctly in their 20s. I asked how they all met, and they said it was either on another social media site or from real life, but they wouldn't answer any more of my questions. I was a bit naive, so all the red flags that were popping up went completely over my head. The calls that I had with them were pure chaos, from constant loud talking to frequently talking over each other. The messages were even worse, as they frequently used curse words and brought

up topics that were not appropriate for a minor. I tried building genuine connections with them, but they acted dismissively toward me and seemed annoyed whenever I tried to join the conversation. Needless to say, I didn't like them very much. Haley, on the other hand, was all about them. She would pull the exact same habits, jokes, and use the same crude language as the others. They could say something incredibly problematic and she would laugh right along with them, And I was shocked by this version of Haley because she never acted like that when it was just the two of us. We still talked a lot but gradually she started spending more time with her other friends than with me. And at first I thought this was fine. But the more she ignored my messages or didn't pick up my calls, it started to bother me. And when I called Haley to confront her about blowing me off she went ballistic,

saying that I was being selfish and that I didn't want her talking to other friends because I was jealous and I explained that that wasn't true but she wouldn't listen and hung up to me. Haley then ghosted me for almost a month leaving me worried and upset over what I may have done. When she started talking to me again, I was so emotionally distraught that I cried during our first call, apologizing for what I said last time. She told me it was fine, that she just needed some time alone and that she would talk to me more. And she did, although not in the way that I had hoped. Haley began telling me that she had depression and that was the reason that she hadn't talked to me for a month. I didn't judge her telling me that she had depression and that was the reason that she

hadn't talked to me for a month. I didn't judge her and said that she could always come to me if she needed to talk and this led to her dumping her trauma on me nearly every day, talking about how awful her home life was, her strained relationship with her mother and how much she hated herself. I was also there to offer a listening ear and some kind words whenever Haley called or messaged me about it. This quickly became part of our routine. Almost daily in the middle of any conversation, she'd start complaining about something that happened during her day. If it wasn't that, it was about how ugly she thought that she was and how much she hated her life and how she wanted to end things, quote unquote.

And that last part freaked me out the most. I was worried because we lived in different states and I couldn't help her in person. Every time she became self-deprecating, I would say otherwise, giving her compliments and words of affirmation for so long that my throat started to hurt and felt raw from talking. And then, just as quickly as she'd bring it up, she'd drop that conversation and we'd just continue on like before. Haley also began calling for long periods of time and messaging me late into the night. Phone calls would stretch on for hours and her texts would come in until about 3 or 4 in the morning. The problem was, it was mainly her just talking now. During every phone call,

she'd take over the conversation. If I didn't respond to her messages quickly enough, she'd just span me with multiple texts faster than I could read them, and when I tried to end the conversations, Haley would chastise me for wanting to leave, reminding me that not long ago, I had wanted her attention, and she basically would guilt trip me into staying, and it seemed to work. Even if I had lost interest in our talks or didn't want her messaging me during class, I still let her talk and replied. At least I still had her attention, and she still wanted to be my friend. And this cycle went on for two years, and it left me feeling more anxious and exhausted than anything else.

It felt like we had nothing in common anymore. She would either ghost me for a week or spend the entire weekend texting me non-stop. The topics about her self-worth also got worse. They escalated to her messaging me goodbye or I can't live like this anymore. And then not responding to any of my messages or calls. She would also send me pictures of her marking herself, describing how it felt, and the sight of those messages would send me into panic attacks and I would end up in tears each time. The group chat with her other friends also got worse. Arguments broke out frequently,

drama and gossip spread like wildfire, and people were blocked and unblocked almost every few days. I hated talking to them and they began ganging up on me in messages and Haley was often the first to make rude jokes about me and they would all laugh. I grew sick of it and stopped messaging and calling both Haley and her friends despite her begging me not to. One late night while the group was arguing over text, I hit my breaking point. I was tired of all the drama and being treated like crap, so I messaged the group chat, telling them that I had enough, and privately messaged Haley that I needed a break. Then I left both chat rooms, blocked everyone, deleted my messaging account, and removed the site from my computer's history. And once it was all over, I felt like I had been freed from some kind of prison,

and all I could do was cry in relief and euphoria that it was finally over. I later found out that all of the pictures Haley had sent me were stock images and photoshopped. After doing a bit of digging into her background, I learned that many of these things just didn't add up. She was actually a lot older than she had originally told me, at least six or seven or eight years older, and this meant that when we first met when I was 14, she must have been well over 20 years old. Many things from our interactions still haunt me, especially the pictures of her marks and her scathing, self-deprecating messages. For almost three months, I had nightmares about Hayley getting back in contact with me and what she might say or do. I have much better friends now, and I am absolutely certain that I will never have to hear from Hayley again,

but sometimes I still wonder who that woman really was, and what it was about me that she found so interesting. Hopefully, I'll never find out. You can't rely on blind faith to get the pregnancy support you deserve. Ritual's Essential Prenatal Multivitamin is the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Get 25% off when you visit ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug

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Ritual doesn't just have your back. They have the receipts. Get 25% off at ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. My name is Martin, and I've been listening to your YouTube videos since the summer, and since Halloween is coming up, I thought now would be as good a time as ever to share something personal with you. I say personal, but it didn't strictly happen to me. It happened to my dad. But as you can imagine, having something terrible happen to my dad was something I took extremely personally.

I grew up in High Wycombe, a town of less than 100,000 people that sits on the northwestern edges of London. I feel like I got the best of both worlds growing up because London is only about half an hour away by train, but High Wycombe is surrounded by countryside and parks, so it's not nearly as fast-paced as life in the capital. London has quite a lot of crime, relatively speaking anyways, whereas High Wickham is the kind of place where, if there's even so much as a burglary, the whole town is shocked. That kind of thing makes me feel lucky to have been brought up there, because the violence and apathy of the big city hasn't yet permeated their way into the country. Then, back in 2018, something happened on Halloween night that made everyone think those days of innocent tranquility were over. Just like everywhere else in the UK, kids in High Wycombe are exposed to a lot of American culture via movies and TV programs. So when it comes to late October,

they want to dress up, have a Halloween party, and go trick-or-treating. I say that thing about American culture because my parents were always fond of telling me that when they were kids, there was no such thing as trick-or-treating, and everyone looked forward to bonfire night instead, which is only a few days later on, remember, remember, the 5th of November. Anyway, so come Halloween night, there are quite a few trick-or-treaters roaming the dark, rainy streets of High Wycombe,

terrorizing pensioners with demands for Haribo. But I only got a brief glimpse of them because I was headed to a Halloween get-together over at a friend's house. It was a weeknight, a Wednesday if I remember correctly, so although I couldn't stay out too late, I was 17 at the time and had sixth form in the morning, I was excited to sneak a few beers in my mate's back garden. His parents were really chill like that. As long as we didn't take the piss and get too loud, then we were fine to have a few cans. I got there at about five after I'd arrived home from school and changed while my mate's parents said that we'd all have to make our way home by eleven. But then after a few hours of

light drinking and hanging out my mate's mom came out into the back garden to tell me that my mom had just been on the phone. I asked if everything was okay and my mate's mom came out into the back garden to tell me that my mom had just been on the phone. I asked if everything was okay, and my mate's mom said they had to go home right away. I asked why, and my mate's mom said that she didn't know, only that my own mother had called her, asking to make sure that I was on my way home immediately. I remember one of my mates being like, uh oh, what have you gotten done now? And the implication being that I was in trouble somehow. I was actually convinced that was the

case myself and as I walked back home, I was racking my brain trying to figure out exactly what I'd done to warrant having my evening interrupted like that. I arrived back home, just about ready to face the music, but after unlocking the door and walking inside, things didn't go anywhere near how I expected them to. Usually speaking, if I was in trouble, the first thing that I'd hear when walking through the door is, Andrew, me and your mom would like a word with you. And that was generally the sign that I was about to get a bollocking, and it was usually my dad who'd deliver that stern opening address. But that night, on Halloween night back in 2018,

it was my mom who had called me into the front room and she didn't sound angry at all. She sounded terrified. It feels weird looking back on it now because at the time I just knew something had happened to my dad. He should have been home when I got back at around 10pm but he wasn't. And then the fact that my mom seemed so upset over something I just picked up on it right away. Before she could even say anything else I walked into the front room and asked,

Where's dad? And she just replied, Dad's in the hospital. Then she told me to sit down. I asked, is he going to die? And my mom said no. But that something had happened that meant that he probably is going to be scarred for life. I was extremely relieved to hear that he wasn't going to die, and I had this weird feeling that whatever came next would be fine. I know that sounds weird, maybe a little bit callous, but it was like, no matter what my mom said next, at least he's not dead.

It might be some life-changing injury, but at least I'm not going to lose him. That kind of emotional whiplash definitely helped me put things into perspective. But what happened to my dad was absolutely atrocious, and something I find chillingly disturbing even nearly six years later. While I was at my mate's house, chilling in his back garden, quite literally with it being October, my mom and dad had been receiving a steady stream of trick-or-treaters. The majority of them came between about six and seven. Then as it got closer to eight o'clock the knocks on the door were getting fewer and further between. About quarter to eight mom and dad got one last knock

at the door. Mom said that she remembered telling my dad how they were almost out of sweets to hand out and how next year he should buy more. Dad gets up, walks to the door, then opens it up. But instead of seeing a group of kids in fancy dress calling out trick or treat, there's just one grown-up standing there with some kind of white ghost mask on. My dad takes one look at this bloke and says something like, you're having a laugh, aren't you, mate? And the bloke doesn't say anything in response. Instead, he started to unscrew a bottle of what my dad said looked like pink lucasade. My dad said he sort of knew that it must have been some kind

of prank and he had a feeling the bloke was about to try and give him a lucasade shower. So when he launched the liquid at my dad, he darted behind our door so that the liquid landed and hit him on the face and on the part of his foot that wasn't covered by a slipper. The guy with the bottle then legged it really fast away and my dad said that he thought it was weird to not hear any kind of laughter or anything like that. And this is also in the age of smartphones, so my dad also expected to maybe see someone filming the whole thing from the street, but there was no one there. Some rando had literally walked up our drive, all alone, thrown Lucozade onto my dad and then

just ran off. But that confusion only lasted a few short seconds for my father, because just moments after that pink liquid touched his skin, it started to burn. Mom said that she just heard my dad suddenly yelping like he was in loads of pain, and when she ran out to see what was happening, a patch of skin on the side of his face was blistering and bleeding. Neither of them had any idea what was going on until the ambulance was on their way, at which point my dad started realizing that whatever was in that lad's bottle was not leukosade, and that it was some kind of corrosive acid. Mom said that he was shouting at her to grab some baking soda or bleach because he thought that he could neutralize the chemical reaction,

but Mom was on the phone to the ambulance when that happened, and when she asked the lady on the phone if that's what she should do, the woman gave her clear instructions not to try and neutralize it, or it might make things worse. They still didn't know what kind of substance the guy had thrown on to my dad, so until they did, they were to just wait until medical professionals had arrived before they started treatment. Dad was in agony by the time

they arrived, but he still had enough about him to tell my mom to wait at home so I wouldn't arrive back to an empty house and then potentially see something on the news. We were allowed to visit him the next day before he went into surgery for a skin graft, and seeing my dad like that was really hard on both me and my mom. He was full of strong painkillers so despite his injuries he seemed to be feeling quite perky and the irony wasn't lost on us that it was him telling us to stop worrying and that everything would be fine instead of us providing him with any comfort. His skin graft operation went really well, and from where the burn was on his face, you can't really tell he's even scarred unless you look really carefully in

the right light. But that was only one part of the puzzle solved. The other part was why the effing hell he'd been targeted in the first place. It kills me to even have to type it out, but the police never caught who threw acid at my dad. But I think that it might have something to do with another acid attack that had happened just the previous year. Don't sue me if I get this bit wrong because it's all from memory but it 100% happened and there's news articles about it out there and if you're interested you can read more about it. But to my memory, this is what happened. Some guy drove up from London to square up against a local guy, I think from a

beef that started on social media, I guess. The Londoner then tracked the local lad down to a park and was carrying a bottle of acid when he confronted him. Now this is the part that really sends me. The local lad, suspecting that there was acid in the bottle, basically karate kicked the bottle out of his hand as soon as he unscrewed the cap. But then the acid went flying into a woman sitting on a bench nearby, and when she realized what was happening, she was rushed to the hospital. My dad was okay, he got his skin grafted, spent about a week in hospital recovering and then got sent home. This poor woman, on the other hand, ended up getting a skin infection which then

killed her. That could have been my dad. It could have very easily have been my dad under the exact same circumstances. I don't know how the poor woman ended up with a skin infection, but she did. It seems like just the luck of the draw, almost. She lost her life because some absolute scrote decided to use acid as a weapon one day. She was rushed to hospital, operated on, all the same stuff as my father, but she lost her life and he didn't. And just writing that out makes me feel so lucky that I could cry. The woman who died was a mother of three. Her kids must have been absolutely beyond heartbroken, plus horrified that it was bloody acid and the subsequent infection that had killed their mom. Why didn't that happen to me? Why them and not us? I'm not saying I think my dad should have died or anything.

No one should have to go before their time like that, especially not in such a horrible way. But the thing that really plays in my mind these days is just that, why them and not us? Another reason I was inspired to write this is the fact that another acid attack happened in London just the other day. I heard it was two schoolgirls that got a throne on them, most likely by a boy that had been rejected after asking one of them out. I support calls for tougher sentences for acid attackers, but it also makes me think, like, how many more times is this going to happen? And in my darker moments, I don't think it'll ever stop. I have this sick feeling that acid attacks are just part of our life now. That if you piss someone off big enough,

they won't just beat you up or want to fight or anything else like that. They'll just buy some acid off the internet and throw it in your face. Because with something like that, if you live the rest of your life with horrible scarring, you're considered one of the lucky ones, because the unlucky ones, like that poor woman sitting on the bench that day, don't get to walk away with their lives intact. So rest in peace to her and to my dad. I love you, and I'm glad you're still here. So this isn't necessarily a scary story in the traditional sense of the word. It's more so to enlighten you on what we as troops had to deal with and some of the things that affect us negatively.

More of the psychological side of things, I suppose. For context, I was in the Air Force for 10 years, from 2013 to 2023, so quite a while. I was working in aircraft maintenance, which makes you think, oh, you're just working on aircraft, you don't see anything crazy. I understand the thought process, but you're wrong. If you know, you know. Security forces understand too. Apes together strong. The physical effects of being in the military with a laborious job are pretty awful on their own. You have an abnormal amount of wear and

tear being inflicted on your body that seems to age you expeditiously. Military years are equivalent to dog years. You can be in your twenties and you have all the bodily pains of an elderly person. Your joints tear themselves apart like two forks shredding pulled pork. Your bones feel stiff. Your muscles are knotted and strained constantly. Your hearing fades out, only to be replaced by the shrill, high-pitched ringing that drives you mad. Freedom rings every day when you have military-grade tinnitus. You're always tired, exhausted even,

but you push through because the mission takes priority. I'm 29 and I feel like a dying 87-year-old. All of that is bad enough, sure, but the more taboo side of things that is scarcely talked about is the mental side of it. The military beats you down in every context. To start off, you're shipped away to a place you've never been, with people you don't know, and for many of us, it's our first time away from home. You're taken out of everything you've ever known, put in a place where you're screamed at constantly, you're sleep deprived, you're physically exhausted, and you're constantly on edge. Looking back, boot camp wasn't bad, I'd definitely do it again, but in that time, it's a lot. I'll skip over the part about tech school, A school, or whatever the other branches call it. You're just there training for a few months learning your job, not too much

to report there. For me, it all started to go downhill when I got my first duty station. I always heard jokes and saw memes about what it was like being a woman in the military and I laughed. I thought that that could never happen to me. Call me delusional, but my toxic trait is thinking that bad things that happen to other people won't happen to me, and I've been wrong every single time. Four months into being stationed there, I had a breakup with my boyfriend of a year and a half. He told me that his dad died, ghosted for six weeks, and then reappeared. It turned out his dad was, and still is, very much alive.

He just found another girl to cheat with. And so, John, if you're reading this, I hope you get hit on the ankle with a razor scooter. Lying about someone dying just to cheat is honestly disgusting. Pro tip, stay away from douchey military guys, ladies. Now obviously, I was devastated. I had what thought was a good relationship with my co-workers, so when they noticed my change in behavior and asked what was going on, of course I told them. I trusted these people. I thought that we were friends, but boy was I wrong. One co-worker, a short, probably 5'5", I'm 5'9", fat, pictured Danny DeVito as the penguin, greasy, chain-smoking Hispanic guy

decided that this was his chance to jump at the opportunity to shoot his shot, so to speak. Now I understand everyone's preferences are different, so don't come for me, but he is not what I would ever find attractive. I don't mind the height difference, so don't come for me. But he is not what I would ever find attractive. I don't mind the height difference. I don't really care about that. But the rest, no thank you. Anyway, he started off by making remarks that I chose to ignore or laugh off. Saying things like,

Your uniform fits you so well. And I would say, Yeah, ABUs are great. Because while they're ugly, they're pretty flattering even if you're slim and mostly shapeless like I am. And he would make comments on my body, my hair, how hot I looked whenever I was covered in grime that came from the engine exhaust. I could easily ignore all of that because it's relatively hard to make me uncomfortable. But then he started texting me things like, I bet you look so sexy naked, and God it would be amazing to see you riding me, etc. So I finally

blew up at him, telling him that there's no chance in the world that I'd ever be with him. He disgusts me, and to not text me unless it's work related. And I thought that was that. It was not. He was best friends with my supervisor and the other airmen in my shop. My supervisor refused to train me and pin paperwork on me, and my co-workers ostracized me, and they were rude. And so for the next four months, I only had one co-worker on another shift that ever helped train me, and we ended up asking leadership for permission to pursue a relationship as he had a line number for a staff sergeant, and a lot up asking leadership for permission to pursue a relationship as he had a line number for staff sergeant, and a lot of things happened prior to that, but it's not really all too

important. Anyway, leadership, commander, chief, first sergeant, all gave their blessings and told us to keep it professional and on a need-to-know basis. Cool. All was well. While Creepy Coworker had suspicions that I was dating that coworker, I'll call him S. And so Creepy Coworker enlisted the help of his cohorts and ended up on a mission to ruin my life. And for months, they'd follow me around in their cars, follow me from place to place, taking pictures of me and where I was, Joe Goldberg style. I went to leadership about the stalking and I was told, this is a very serious accusation and would require us to get local police involved. Are you sure that's what you want to do? But it was said with the not so subtle undertone of, we're not going to be doing that.

And so I dropped it. It continued for a while after that. I was constantly on edge, paranoid, anxious, always scared scared because I didn't know if they'd try something physical. I couldn't escape. I had nightmares, I had visual hallucinations when I was home alone and I was just in a constant state of fear. I wasn't sleeping, I was barely eating and I only left to go to work. I didn't even go outside if I didn't have to. I honestly wanted to take my own life because I just didn't know what else to do. I've been trying and trying to get someone to do something, but as one of the only three females in my unit, it was very much the good old boys club, so no one cared. And the final breaking point for me was when we were doing a job on the jet and I was replacing a valve. It's in a tight area, as most places on the jet. A creepy co-worker then shimmeries his way into the tight space under the guise of holding the duct so I can put the clamps on the valve.

This space I was in requires you to basically be what we call nut-to-butt, if you need a second set of hands. And so there he was, behind me, nut to butt, and I can feel his arousal. I finish the job, and then I go to the bathroom and just cry. After that, I just walked into the chief's office and told him what happened. First shirt comes in, and we all have to talk. We were in ISO back shop, and all creepy coworker and my dirtbag supervisor had ever talked about this how bad they wanted to go back to the flight line. And what did leadership do? They sent them to the flight line. They essentially rewarded them for their behavior.

And then that very same chief decided to slide into my DMs to try to solicit intimate activity in exchange for favors and money. Great, another person who's meant to help guide you is a creep. I'd responded with, Chief, you're older than my father and you look like Mr. Bean, and if you contact me with this again, I'll make sure your wife and your four children know all about it. He blocked me, and all of a sudden all of the reports I'd made magically disappeared. Later on, when S, my boyfriend, became financially, mentally, and physically abusive, that got swept under the rug too. I guess people just randomly have fractured orbital bones and bruises of hands around their necks. Silly me. And at no point at that time in my life did I feel safe, and again, I was very much on the verge of taking my own life. In December of 2015,

I went on my first deployment. I was so excited to just get the hell away from that place. I went, never having had flight line experience, but very willing to learn, and my supervisor there immediately was horrible to me, and I didn't know why until years later. That entire deployment was honestly pretty awful. While there, I met what would be another obsessed stalker in the future, but a much less threatening one. The only things that kept me sane that deployment were watching all of the jets take off, fully loaded, coming back empty, and all of the different aircraft from different countries I'd normally not see. The Antonov AN-225 being one of those. Rest in peace, big guy. The most stunning sunrises I've ever seen, and all of the kind, gorgeous Aussie men. Y'all are beautiful and so fun.

I get back from my deployment and things are okay for a while. I enter the E-4 mafia and life as a senior airman was just a fun time mostly. I go to the flight line. I'm scared that I'll see dirtbag supervisor and creepy co-worker, but they're in the other AMU. My deployment supervisor was my new supervisor, and remember, he hates me. Everyone excluded me and treated me as if I were a leper. I didn't know why until I finally got so frustrated and asked, and they told me that while creepy coworker and dirtbag supervisor were in the shop, they'd said that I can't take a joke, that I'd falsely accused them of harassment and stalking, and that I was a dumb bitch with an attitude.

Eventually, I disproved that and the shop became like a family to me. Okay, so all the perks of me being a woman are pretty much all explained. Now, moving on to the next section. In the military, it's often joked that you're not a person, you're just a number. And as far as I've seen in my time, that mostly rings true. I've seen someone fall off of a stand with an engine panel, referred to as a kneecap, and hit his head on the concrete. They asked if the kneecap was okay, meanwhile he was bleeding and ended up having a concussion. I've broken fingers, sliced up my arms, received many shocks and burns, concussions, etc. myself. Your physical and mental health

typically doesn't matter to big brass. Their concern is the mission, the statistics. Knowing you're essentially nothing to anyone, a replaceable asset, it's very humbling. I'd finally had the big mentee bee as the kids call it nowadays and I broke down and I finally called mental health because I was really going to take my own life this time. I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to wait for an off-base therapist for months. In the meantime, I spoke to my new chief about not going on this final deployment because I honestly was not in the place for it. My dad was basically on his deathbed and I'd been dealing with these ideations and that several other NCOs

wanted my slot. He said, you're not an anomaly, you're not special, you're going. He also just generally didn't like you if you were white, so whatever. Anyway, I went on that last deployment and I met my best friend. I had the worst time, yet also the most fulfilling time. I got into the gym after having COVID and losing a ton of weight, and I still had pneumonia, and that sucked. But I hit new PRs, I got muscular, and I had my best friend, and I was the trusted cat lady. We're not supposed to touch animals, but screw that. I love all of my deployment kitties. When I got back from that deployment, I got thrown on antidepressants. Turns out, they're ones they usually give people an inpatient to keep them catatonic,

and I was on the highest dose. Needless to say, I no longer felt safe to work on aircraft because I'd be putting people's lives at risk, and I no longer felt safe being alone because if I got it in my head to actually do it, I would, just off myself. The only thing at the time that had ever stopped me was the fear of not knowing what happens after we die. I'm very traumatized by religion and I strayed away, so now I don't really know where I stand. And then my dad got COVID again, long COVID this time, and he ended up being on life support for over six months.

I'm receiving calls from my mom saying that he may not make it through the night every other day, and I was feeling unsafe in my relationship. I thought he was going to kill me. I really know how to pick them, I guess. I was on a different antidepressant. I was drinking literally every day just to cope, and I had to be everywhere dealing with everything all at once. I was tired. I was drinking literally every day just to cope, and I had to be everywhere dealing with everything all at once. I was tired. I was done.

They wanted me to PCS to another country. They tried to push, even though on paper I wasn't even allowed. I also didn't want to be across the globe having to spend $3,000 plus to fly back for what I thought would be my dad's inevitable funeral. I signed a form denying retainability because I knew in my soul that I didn't have another six years in me just to keep an assignment that I'd once loved to go on. I lost my line number for tech, E6, but I wasn't too upset. I'm sure that there were other people that deserved that spot, and I had my airmen, which I lovingly referred to as my kids. They were and are some of that spot and I had my airmen, which I lovingly referred to as my kids. They were and are some of the best people I know. I love those guys. They're in my

family and my best friends. They're smart, funny, genuine, loyal, and driven young men and I would do anything for them. They made my job easier and I was like a rabid attack dog trying to keep those goobers safe and away from all the BS. Watching them grow up, climb in rank, become masters at their job, seeing them through their struggles. God, I'm just so proud of them, and they deserve every good thing that comes their way. They made my last two and a half years the best that I've had in my life. And I'm sorry if this is all over the place, I just have completely untreated terrible ADHD. And on the topic of taking my own life and mental health, this is the leading cause of death in the military during maritime periods. We're burnout, we're taken for granted, we're

numbers, slaves to the mission. Talking about your mental health is considered taboo, and seeking out mental health used to lead to repercussions that were pretty much a fast track to getting kicked out. Over the ten years I was in, I can't count how many times people had taken their lives at one base that we had. Several of them were my good friends too, and one of them was my own troop. In a couple of weeks, it'll be four years. He'd been having some marital problems, dealing with a cheating, abusive wife who was also causing him financial strain. He was also better when he decided to divorce her, based on my advice, but she weaseled her way back in.

And when you love someone, you just give them too many chances. You'd think being in aircraft maintenance, you wouldn't be seeing any dead bodies. Well, you're wrong. My troop and I had been working weekend duty mids, Friday to Monday, 2300 to 0700 for a few months. It was the best time. Then they got rid of the permanent weekend duty shift, so we went to regular mid shift. One Sunday afternoon I get a call from my supervisor asking if I'd heard from my troop and I said no and I tried to call with no answer. So I checked online and it said that it was active. I'd seen a meme about dying that he'd captioned, God I wish that were me.

And I got a terrible feeling so I messaged him and tried to call him multiple times, and no answer each time. I report this to my supervisor, and I'm asked to be a runner and do a wellness check. I speed over a knock, and there's no answer. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in. The house is quiet, almost deafeningly quiet. And there, in his gaming room, he sat in his chair, slumped over. He'd taken his own life, a gunshot to the head. I can remember vividly the blood spatter and brain matter on the walls,

the dried tears on his face, the fact that brain matter smells vaguely like cotton candy, sickly sweet, as they say. I don't know why, but it does does and I called my supervisor and the police. I made my reports with the police, I went home and I just sat and cried. I had to go into work that night as I was the only NCO and when I got to work my other troops asked where he was and I'd said he had something come up and he won't be in tonight. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone until the next of kin was notified, so I sent them out to the line and I stayed inside and just cried behind my desk.

That morning the commander announced it to everyone. That one was met by mutual shock and sadness, while one of the first ones was literally being joked about. People joking around that someone had taken their own life. Yeah, that shocked me just as much as I'm sure it shocks you. The second instance where I'd seen a body was my second deployment in 2017-2018. Now being in the Middle East, at night it gets very dark. We didn't have stadium lights on the flight line at that time, and they didn't have enough space for all the U-2s to be in the hangar tents.

If you know what the U-2 Dragon Lady is, you know it's a small matte black aircraft with relatively low, thin, flexible wings. Anyway, on deployments, we have what are referred to as TCNs, Third Country Nationals, doing contracted work for us, such as cooking, maintenance, shuttle drivers, etc. And we have a speed limit while on the flight line and near aircraft, and they don't ever remember that. This particular TCN was driving a small little van that can be best described as a clown car. It's very short and has fold-down seats in the middle, and you can fit

at least 10 people in it. So he's driving, it's a nightmare, we're working across the taxiway, probably 170 plus feet, and he's speeding. Only problem is, there's a U2 sitting right in his pathway. The little van lights were bright, and they're also too low to catch the wing. Well, before I can even yell for him to stop, he goes right under the wing, taking the top of the van off in the process. I sprint over and after seeing what I was reacting to, so does a co-worker. I was hopeful that he'd ducked and he'd be fine, but as I reached the van, I learned that wasn't the case, and the front seat was his body, while on the back was his head. I've seen cleanly dissected heads thanks to the UT's anthropology research facility, affectionately referred to as the body farm,

but this, this was different. It's not clean. It's stringy. It's messy. The dangly bits of flesh, tendons, and torn muscle. The sickly pink-yellow of bones and cartilage. The small hole that is your trachea. The blood still pumping out. The look on his face, eyes, and mouth open as I'm sure realization hit far too late. God, what a way to die.

As horrifying as it was, it was almost like a sick fascination. We make our steps with the poor Aussie security forces and we go back to work. That U-2 had its first direct confirmed kill. Now this story is already too long and it has too many side quests so I'll just bring it to an end here. The military, even in merry time, can be a scary place. You experience a ton of trauma, you still get PTSD, your body figuratively disintegrates, and you see a lot of things. You go through a lot. They also don't tell you what it's like when you get out. Like you and your service don't really matter suddenly. How, for me at least, your entire adult life as you'd known it is over. You lose your family, you lose the structure, you lose your pride in your job, and you lose your sense of purpose.

It's like you died and came back lost. The loneliness that comes with it, I genuinely can't put into words to make you understand unless you've been there. It's been almost a year since then and I still feel that way. You're never prepared for that. I regret getting out sometimes. A lot, actually. And as horrible as the military has been in my time, it's also been amazing. Giving me people who are my chosen family that I'll share a bond with until we die.

One has, and I miss him more than anything. It was the best worst decision I've ever made in my life, and I'm sure others out there will have worse experiences than me, and I'm sure others out there will have better experiences. But if you've never been in the military, you don't have the right to discount our struggles and PTSD just because you haven't been in an active war zone. Every branch deals with the same BS in general. Did you know that many products for pregnant women do not have their own clinical trials for safety or efficacy?

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Get 25% off when you visit ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The single most frightening, confusing, and traumatizing thing that's ever happened to me happened on Halloween night of 1999. My mates and I had just started year 7, which in America is equivalent to 6th grade, starting at 11 and finishing at 12. Starting secondary school was exciting, but it also meant that we were quickly reaching the point where it was no longer acceptable to go trick-or-treating.

I don't know what it's like in America, but around here, if a load of kids walk up your drive dressed like minions, of course you're going to give them a mini Mars bar or seven. But if a bunch of surly-looking almost teenagers, complete with pimples and mini-staches, start banging on someone's door, demanding chocolate under threat of vandalism, they'd be lucky to leave with broken teeth, let alone rotten ones. Now with that in mind, we knew it was the case of one last blowout, then jack it in for good in hopes of transitioning to Halloween costume parties with beers and ciggies and, most importantly, girls. But before all that, we could have one more night of wholesome costume fun and ensure a sweets haul that'll last us till Christmas if we rationed it properly.

And so, in March of 1999, you might remember, The Matrix came out. I don't need to explain what the Matrix is, so I won't, and nor will I have to explain why a bunch of 11-year-old boys thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. So when it came to Halloween costumes, we decided to just be the Matrix. And not one of us either, but all of us. But then, because we didn't all have the making of a Matrix costume, two of us just wore school uniforms, black ties, and sunglasses, at night, by the way, blind as bats. And then two of us wore leather jackets and sunglasses, myself included, while the fifth lad, whose sister was into all that goth music,

was the only one who did the full Monty. We looked stupid, like two members of the village people and their security guards, but then the fifth lad, Jamie, he actually looked the bee's knees now that I look back on it. He had the long leather trench coat, extra long since he borrowed it from his older sister. He had the little sunglasses, like the ones Morpheus actually wears, and he had his hair all slicked back with hair gel too, with some army boots, black jeans, and a black t-shirt on to complete the look. He actually looked fantastic to be honest, but he also stood out like a sore thumb walking around neighborhoods where kids were dressed as Woody or Buzz from Toy Story. And so we start knocking on these houses and we

either get pensioners asking what the bloody hell are you lot dressed as or young blokes laughing when they instantly recognize what we were supposed to be. It was a really good laugh actually and we made our way up and down the streets near where we lived until eventually we ran out of houses to knock at. It was only about half seven by that time and none of us had to be back inside until ten at the earliest so we still had ages to kill and very little to do. But then Jamie had an idea. Instead of just going home we could walk down a road a bit and cross over the dual carriageway and then knock at some houses in the neighborhood across from us. We all agreed that was a good idea, because who wouldn't want more mini chocolate bars? There was just one small problem. We'd have to pass the Homewood Estate. Homewood is probably one of the roughest areas of Bradford.

That's not to say that the vast majority of people who live there aren't friendly and welcoming, because 99% of the time, you can walk and drive around the area and not get even an ounce of trouble. It's just never been the safest place to be after dark, especially not for a group of 11-year-olds dressed like debt collectors on their way to a rave. But then, we had ourselves a little plan. Instead of walking down one of the larger roads past the estate, we'd walk through the alley near the train tracks, which would minimize our exposure to the estate while passing it to get to the other neighborhood. Now, sorry for the logistical briefing there, but I'm just giving you an idea of why we thought it was a good plan to go walking down an alleyway after dark while dressed like a German industrial band.

We thought that we wouldn't run into any of the bad lads who lived on the estate, but little did we know, they were hanging out in the one place we didn't want to bump into them. So about halfway down the alleyway, there's a blind 90 degree turn, then you can't really see much at the end of the alley either. We thought that gave us cover, and it did, but it also meant that we couldn't see what was around either bend. We round the first one, and there's no one there, so we think brilliant, we're in the free and clear. But then we round the second corner, and we run into half a dozen of the very people we hoped not to run into. I didn't know all the lads' names, but I do remember three of them. The main two were the Hand twins. Francis and Anthony Hand were both boxers and had the reputations to match. They'd been in trouble with

the police, mainly because they loved to fight, but they were partial to just about any kind of crime you can imagine. So robbing a few costumed kids of their suites was really nothing to them, especially since we were considered fair game. And by that I mean of a certain age and male, so not too shameful to rob and possibly slap around some kids like us for a bit. And so the second we round the corner, there's obviously this massive uh-oh moment for us, but the hand twins and company just burst out laughing. They obviously knew what we were dressed as. Everyone of a certain age did because the Matrix was bloody massive at the time, but they weren't exactly the type to go giving us compliments on how much effort we put into our various costumes. Instead, they saw fit

to try and humiliate us. They were laughing their heads off, shouting stuff like, these dickheads think they're in the bloody Matrix, and we tried our best to just ignore them, which was stupid really because when lads like that sense any kind of weakness, you're well and truly buggered. And so despite trying to just walk around them, they were in no mood to simply let us pass. It started when they noticed our bags of sweets, at which point one of the hand twins started saying something like, look boys, they brought us all their sweets. And they started trying to grab one of our lads bags of sweets saying something like, you're too old to be dressing up like that and too fat to be

eating those sweets. Which to be fair, he probably was. But just because we couldn't fight back didn't mean we were about to just let ourselves be bullied. So one of them trying to rob our mate's bag of sweets but our mate saying no get off me you wanker. He's not throwing punches or anything but the confrontation was exactly what the hand twins and company were looking for. So as soon as there's a bit of argy-bargy the hands and friends spread out along the street so we couldn't pass at all. We didn't all shout run or anything but there was this very recognizable moment where we all just kind of looked at each other thinking, we're in trouble

here. Then when the first one of us turned around and ran back down the alley, the rest of us followed. But so did the hand twins, who with their boys behind them went chasing us like the clappers of hell. We ran like lads possessed, and since we were running down a blind entry, there was only one way we could all run. But then, once we rounded the corner and sprinted to the end of the alleyway, there was no plan on where we were all running to. Two of the lads ran left, probably with the intention of running backwards towards our neighborhood, but the other three of us ran right. This was definitely not a good idea, as we'd have to walk back the way we came if we wanted to get home, but in the moment,

all we were thinking was run, run, run, so I just acted on instinct and ran right with my two mates. After the turn, we were faced with quite a long straight road with a wall on one side and trees on the other. I happened to notice that to our right, where the trees were, there quite a long straight road with a wall on one side and trees on the other. I happened to notice that to our right, where the trees were, there was a little gap in a chain link fence and on instinct, I just ran for it. I didn't really know what was on the other side. It all looked abandoned and overgrown, but I thought in that case, it'd be a good place to hide. I thought my mates would follow me because being the faster runner I'd managed to overtake them by the time that I'd spotted the chain link fence. I thought they'd see me spotting a hiding place and would be right on my tail but the hand twins and company were much

closer than I first thought. If they'd have done the same as me and run for the fence they'd have been slowed down trying to force their way through the gap and the hand twins gang would have caught up with them. But then, being at the front, I didn't know that. So after bursting through the fence and looking over my shoulder, my first thoughts were this weird mix of, oh no, I'm alone, and oh thank god because it didn't look like anyone was following me. Through the metal gates of whatever abandoned plot I was on, I saw my mates running past, then what looked like all of the hand twins crew, so there was this wash of relief that passed over

me. I didn't stop running though, I was still scared out of my wits and wanted to find a hiding place. So that's what I did, and it basically involved sitting in a bush that had a view of the front entrance so I could be hidden whilst being aware of my surroundings. If this had happened a few years later, we'd have all had mobiles to call each other on, but it was 1999, and I know people had mobiles back then, but not five working class 11 year olds from Bradford. And so instead of being able to do some information gathering I had no choice but to sit there in my leather jacket with my bag of sweets and just wait until I thought the coast was suitably clear. I'm not sure how long I waited

but it felt like a long time then just as I started to think yeah I might be safe to run home I saw someone walking on the other side of the metal gate toward where the gap in the fence was. Obviously, I froze in place, not being able to see who it was, just knowing someone was there, and that it might have been one of the lads chasing us. But then I remember thinking, if it was one of the lads chasing us, then why are they walking? They seemed to be walking quite calmly too, not even a brisk walk or jog to suggest that they had any urgency around them whatsoever. I started to think, it's okay, this is probably just some dog walker.

Then just as I was about to climb out of the bush I'd secreted myself in, I heard something that turned my blood to ice. It was the sound of the chain link fence rattling. Someone was forcing their way in. I couldn't see who it was straight away. There were a few trees blocking my view of that portion of the fence, but I think I knew deep down that it must have been one of that hand crew because I didn't even have to see them to know that I'd had to get back into the bush, crouch down and pray that no one found me. I then watched as a lad called Fernsy stepped out from behind the trees. I didn't know him personally, I just knew him by that nickname, Fernsy. He didn't know me either, and although we'd seen each other around town, we'd never spoken a word in exchange.

He had no reason to hate me, no reason to want to kick the shite out of me and rob my sweets, but that didn't stop him from chasing me, and for some reason, that scared me even more than the prospect of getting the crap beaten out of me. But even scarier was seeing him start to actively and methodically hunt for me. I didn't think anyone had seen me dart through the chain link fence, otherwise surely they'd have immediately chased me. But as it turns out, someone had seen me, and they were in no rush to come back. I didn't know Holmwood all that well, you see, and they knew something I didn't. Fernsey didn't say anything as he stalked closer and closer to the bush I was in. He couldn't see me, but by the time he got within a few feet, he bolted it and ran as fast as I could out the back of the bush.

I ran and ran, thinking there'd be some kind of way out ahead of me, but there wasn't. There was only this big brick wall at the back of whatever abandoned plot I was on and the only chance I had of scaling it was to climb a tree that was off to my right then hop over the wall after darting along one of its branches and so I ran and when I got there I dropped my bag of sweets and started to climb, but it wasn't fast enough. I was just about to scramble up a low branch I'd managed to grab onto when I just felt this pair of hands take hold of my leg. Fernsy pulled me down so hard that I grazed my hands on the branch and was dragged out of my grip and as I fell, I landed so awkwardly that I felt this shooting pain go through my ankle before

I collapsed to the floor. I don't know if I genuinely thought that me being hurt would deter Fernse from beating me up or if that was just pure wishful thinking on my part, but it didn't make a blind bit of difference. I kept saying to him stuff like, no stop I think I broke my ankle but it was like he wasn't listening at all he just started kicking me over and over again aiming for my head but sometimes getting my chest and shoulder and my arm which I was using to cover my head

he just kept kicking me and kicking me until in the end I made one final attempt to beg him to stop, which unfortunately meant that he had a nice little window to land a full force kick right in my face. I don't think I was knocked out, but I was definitely stunned. The pain that shot through my nose and mouth was like nothing I'd ever felt before and all I could do was lie there, holding my face and head while groaning for him to stop. I don't think it could get any worse. I mean, I was scared that he might kill me or something, mostly by accident in one of those, it was only

a prank that turns deadly. But aside from that, I really didn't think I had much else to worry about. But then, Fernsey started trying to pull my pants down. And that's how I know I wasn't knocked out, because I felt it. And when I did, I started to scream in a way I didn't know I was capable of. I actually didn't know what he was planning at the time. I was too young and naive to think boys were in any danger of that. I just thought that he wanted to humiliate me even further by making me walk back home in the nude. And with that in mind, it was my turn to attack him. Although to be fair, my attempt was laughably ineffective. However, what throwing punches and kicking out at him did do was ensure that I bought myself just enough time for the hand twins to show up. At first, this was terrifying to me, as it looked like Fernsey now had backup to finish whatever humiliation he was planning. But in some weird twist of fate, it was those hand twins who saved me from what was about to happen.

They started laughing at Fernsie. Not with him, but at him. And all because he'd got my pants halfway down, and just in case I haven't made it clear already, I'm a boy, not a girl. And they were asking him what he was planning, like sort of making fun of him, calling him gay and stuff like that, and they got him to stop immediately, but then instead of trying to strip me, he started kicking the crap out of me again. The Hand twins were like, whoa, what are you doing? Because they could see

with the state I was already in, and they just wanted to scare us and rob us of our sweets, not bloody kill us. One of the brothers, I think his name was Francis, then started slapping Fernsie around, saying how he hated bullies, which is ironic because that's the exact thing they were doing to us, it seemed like. They didn't let me leave with my sweets, but they did let me pull my pants up and leave, which to be honest was all I really wanted to do anyway. I never told anyone what Fernssey tried to do, and if you're probably wondering why I haven't used many names is because I still want a little bit of anonymity in all of this. As for Fernsey, I don't think that matters anymore because he's no longer with us.

Seven years after that incident, Fernsey was stabbed to death on a quiet street after a car with four lads hit him at 50 miles an hour. People just thought it was some kind of gang beef, but the way they killed him makes me think it was something a bit more personal, and that perhaps I wasn't the only one that Fernsey had tried to do something terrible to. Terrible too. I have lived in the same neighborhood for many years, and this is also true for many others here. Even if we don't all speak to each other, we often recognize people, at least by sight. A year ago, I passed a man near my house whom I had never seen before.

I noticed him because he had a rather unusual appearance, about 50 years old, tall, thin, with an emaciated face, dressed in a suit and tie. From the look of his face, he didn't seem to be in good health. At first, I thought nothing of it. However, over the past year, I've noticed that there are times, sometimes for extended periods, when he appears wherever I am. And to give an example, last Wednesday I went to the pharmacy and he was behind me, also going in. On Thursday I went to a neighboring town to do some shopping and saw him in the street. On Friday as I left my house to go to the gym, he was in front of my house and walked part of the way with me before taking another street. And this sort of thing can go on for several days in a row and then stop, only to resume after some time. He is always in a suit and tie, as if he were going to work, but

I see him at all times, weekdays, weeknights, mornings, afternoons, and evenings. I don't know exactly where he lives, but I know he isn't from my immediate vicinity and I had never seen him speaking to anyone in the street. Yes, I know it could be all a coincidence, and it most likely is, but I admit, it's starting to make me wonder. It's giving me a feeling of being followed, though I may be overreacting. Has anything like this or a strange feeling towards someone ever happened to any of you? I recently went on a date with a guy from my school who I met on a dating app. He seemed very sweet and charming over text, so I agreed to go on a date with him, especially after two friends mentioned that they knew him from a class and said he was generally a funny guy. We attend a small but prestigious university which

also reassured me that he would be normal. He was supposed to meet me at 6pm for a picnic but ended up picking me up at 8.30. He had texted me to reschedule to 8 and ended up showing up at that time. He drove me to his apartment and although I felt uncomfortable I agreed to go in because of everything that I thought I knew about him. The apartment was dimly lit, with only one candle and a small glowing light on the floor which didn't add much illumination. It was a multi-bedroom apartment that he lived in alone which made it even more unusual. We talked and ate some food and he seemed nervous and uneasy for most of it. Suddenly he shifted the conversation to our deepest darkest secrets and asked if I had ever

seriously thought about killing someone. When I said no, he made up a story about being in the navy and having to bomb a ship, killing five people. When I was unsure of how to respond, he brushed it off as a joke and then said that he had seriously thought about killing someone else, his ex's current boyfriend. At this point, I was extremely uncomfortable and wanted to leave, and he agreed to drive me home. Before we left, he said he wanted to show me something and pulled out a rifle, which he pointed in my direction. When I got startled, he remained eerily calm and said that he had gotten it for hunting, but couldn't imagine killing an animal. We left and made it back to my friend's place safely.

Everyone I've told has been shocked by how the date went, and I can't shake the feeling that there was something deeply wrong with this guy. Something more sinister. Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated. Did you know that many products for pregnant women do not have their own clinical trials for safety or efficacy? That's because pregnant women are often excluded from clinical studies. Ritual is aiming to set a new standard with their essential prenatatal Multivitamin. It's the number one best-selling prenatal and the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Moms taking Essential Prenatal had a lower overall cortisol level during pregnancy than those taking a leading prenatal. Plus, it's designed to be gentle on the stomach.

Ritual doesn't just have your back. They have the receipts. Get 25% off at ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. I recently read a story on Let's Not Meet that brought back old memories of my dad's crazy ex-girlfriend, and this took place when I was around 8 or 9 years old,

so I guess it would have been around the year 1997. My parents have gotten divorced several years prior, so me and my little sister, two years younger, used to stay with our dad every weekend. One day he introduced us to his new girlfriend, Rachel, who was a tall blonde woman that had apparently won some kind of beauty pageant or something. I remember those first months of getting to know Rachel as fun. She seemed like a nice lady. I also think my initial impression of her was helped by the fact that she had a rather cuddly gray parrot and a pet raven that could talk, which of course made my younger self quite ecstatic. But after a while, things started

to change. I began to notice that she could be a bit odd at times, saying weird things or acting a bit strangely. We started seeing her less frequently when staying with our dad, and then one day, he told us that they broke up and that we wouldn't be seeing her anymore. He also told us that we shouldn't talk to her or go home with her if she showed up at school. Not long after that, Rachel really started harassing my father. She would randomly turn up at places that we went to visit during weekends, trying to talk to us. She called him non-stop on the phone when we were at home, crying, making threats.

It usually didn't stop us until we pulled the plug. Years later, I found out that she even threatened to kill me and my sister on several occasions and that dad got a restraining order. Rachel also keyed my dad's car, broke into his company to trash it, and stole a lot of money that he never got back. She even started writing threatening letters to my mother. My parents have always been good friends ever since the divorce and it all culminated with a letter from the authorities. A letter accusing my dad of being a child abuser. I still vividly remember how mom sat us down in our room, holding the letter,

a deep look of concern on her face, asking if dad had ever touched us inappropriately, which of course he never has. It later turned out it was Rachel who had falsely accused him of such in an attempt to prevent him from seeing us. I remember feeling really angry and upset that she had gone to such lengths. The last memory I have of Rachel was a few weeks before Christmas. We were staying at my dad's place over the weekend. It was a two-story apartment complex with a large window spanning an entire wall, floor to ceiling, and living room where we had just sat down to watch TV. Next to the window there was a glass door leading onto a stone patio

bordering a lawn that ended with a tall hedge, and on this particular day the outdoor lights had been switched off, which means it was pitch black outside as the intro to Superman started playing. A while into the episode I suddenly heard a strange sharp noise coming from the window. It sounded like something was clawing on the glass in an attempt to get in. The sofa I was sitting on was placed right in front of the window so I had my back toward it when I slowly turned around to look over my shoulder, heart thumping in my chest, hair standing on end as if I was being watched, but all that came into view was pitch black darkness lurking behind my own reflection. By this point, Dad had also heard the sound and gotten up to turn on the patio lights. When the outside suddenly flooded with light, I found myself staring in the face of a smiling blonde woman peering into our living room. And need I tell you that I screamed. Both my sister and I flew up from the couch like it had been scorched with fire and ran behind our dad. When I looked toward the window

again, I saw Rachel with both of her hands up against the glass, tightly cupped beside her face as she was trying to look inside. The patio door was right next to her. I tugged on dad's shirt and whispered if the door was locked when she reached toward the handle. That millisecond of doubt flashed across my dad's face. It still haunts me to this day. Rachel truly looked like a mad woman as she furiously jerked on the handle in an attempt to get in, briefly pausing to peer through the glass down again. I remember thinking dad looked oddly calm as he ushered us around a corner wall, telling us to stay out of sight as he walked toward the patio door.

We begged him not to go outside, thinking that she could have a knife hidden somewhere. So we opened up a small crack with the door, firmly holding on to the handle and asked what the hell she was doing in his backyard. She tried to get him to let her in, putting on a big smile, tossing her hair, but dad obviously wouldn't budge, telling her to leave or he would call the cops, to which she eventually conceded leaving a bunch of Christmas presents behind. When Rachel was out of sight from the window, dad went out to make sure that she was gone, picking up what she had left behind on his way back. None of us wanted anything to do with the presents. Something just felt really off about them,

and so they ended up just still fully wrapped in the trash. This was some years ago when I was living in a different city. I hadn't really been on my own all that long, and my housing situation fell apart apart at the last minute so I had to scramble to figure it out. Meaning, you guessed it, random roommates. Now the year before I'd had a random roommate that was the most amazing person and ended up becoming a great friend so I figured this might be the same. It was not. But that's actually not the focus of this story. Now enter the roommates. Ben, who I did actually know a bit from the previous year and was becoming friends with.

Tom and Mike. Now, this was the first couple of days after move-in we all hung out to get to know each other better. But Tom and Mike hadn't fully moved in yet. It was a big old house separated by floor and the top level locked at the stairs. Now this is important to note. Ben and I lived upstairs with Tom and Mike downstairs. I've always been paranoid and definitely have good reason to be so when I'm home all doors are locked. So when I leave all doors are locked and I sleep with my bedroom locked. I was home alone with Ben at work and Tom and Mike sort

of in and out moving stuff in. I'll note here that both had a lot of expensive stuff like in the five figure range. Well, I was watching something on my laptop in my room, bedroom locked and both entrances to my part of the house locked. I started hearing a lot of noise coming from downstairs, sounding like doors and cupboards open, furniture moving, etc. and figuring it's just Tom or Mike, until I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I was technically supposed to be somewhere at that time, which they knew, but it had been cancelled last minute, so no one would have known that I was home and they had no reason to come upstairs when they knew that both of us were supposed to be gone. That was when I got panicky, hearing them come closer and closer to the top of

the stairs. I've never sat so still and then the knob began to jiggle. I could hear it clearly as my room was closest to the entryway. At this point, I'm on with 911 whispering that someone is in my house without giving away that I'm there to whoever it was. The house was super close to downtown and cops arrived in mere minutes, but that was the longest of my life at that moment. The downstairs was completely ransacked, like something out of a movie. It was so surreal to see. They'd taken over $20,000 in electronics. Honestly, I don't remember the exact amount. Just about that, I think.

Broken furniture and plates and stuff, and even ripped through the mattresses. It turned out Tom and Mike had left a door unlocked when moving, and this would not be the last time before I fled this house. They were gone before the cops showed, so I'd spend the next several months afraid that they'd come back though it would turn out to be the least of my future worries. So I'm glad I always lock my doors. Considering the way downstairs looked I don't know what they would have done to me and to whoever was on the other side of that thankfully locked door Let's not meet. I'm a 29-year-old woman.

I lived in a big city all my life, but at the beginning of April, I moved to a medium-sized town about one hour from that big city, along with my sister and our four pets. This happened after a month of living here. My sister was preparing for her final presentation for her arts undergraduate which was going to be shown in the city, so she had to spend the whole day there to make her preparations. I was left home alone with our cats and dogs, so in the early evening I decided to go for a long walk with my two dogs. I walked for like an hour, but about five away from our home as we were headed back,

I saw a man knocking on the door about a block away. I thought he looked a bit weird because he would knock on the door, look around and then knock on the door and then look around again, but he didn't look dangerous so I just kept walking since I had to pass by him to take the street that would take me to my home. When I was about 10 meters away he looked my way and started walking towards me. He was tall and slender and was carrying what looked like a box of candy. He asked me if I had any coins to spare and I told him, sorry mate, I

only have dog's poopy bags, have a good one. And I was ready to keep walking when he saw one of my tattoos and stopped me. Now for context, I obviously have tattoos. I'm not heavily tattooed, but I have several on my arms and legs, and since I was wearing shorts, the ones on my legs were visible. The specific one he was looking at is of a ghost woman in a traditional Japanese style. As he stopped me, he said, that's a really cool tattoo. Would you give it to me? I just laughed uncomfortably thinking he was joking, but he was dead serious, just staring unblinking at my tattoo. He then continued talking.

No, so you're just going to let the maggots eat it? That's such a shame. It would be better if a person ate it. At this point, he raised his face and looked me straight in the eye with a very flat smile that seemed to be an attempt to be friendly, but only made me feel even more uncomfortable. He then asked me for my name, and not wanting to antagonize him, I gave him a fake one, and let's just say it was Regina. He then asked me if I lived in town, to which I also lied and said that I was from the big city, just visiting. He then told me that he used to live in that city too. He lived on the streets downtown. He told me he used to rap in buses to get money, and just out of the blue started rapping about me, still looking me straight in the eye. He rapped about how I was very pretty, how amazing my tattoos were and in

his rap he said my name was Lorena. I corrected him and said my name was Regina and not Lorena and since I had a suspicion that he realized that I had given him a fake name and was testing me, he just smiled and nodded. He then asked me if I'd given him my number. I said that me and my dogs had to go home, that we were expected. He pointed at a butcher shop a block away and told me that we could sit over there while I gave him my number, that it wouldn't take long, but I told him that I couldn't, that the one waiting for me at home was my boyfriend but I was lying again since I was home alone. And his smile faded a bit and he just said, well that sucks. I wish him a good evening and turned around to leave only for him

to drop to his knees and grab my leg with both of his hands. He started caressing my tattoo while whispering, it really is a goddamn cool tattoo. My dogs are pretty friendly and they were very calm during this whole exchange but when he grabbed my leg they started growling. I pulled my leg out of his hand, wished him a good evening again and just walked away as fast as I could. I took a longer way home to make sure he didn't follow me and once home I took a shower and scrubbed my leg really well since I felt gross after all of that. So a kind of scary thing just happened to me a couple hours ago and I'm still kind of shaken up about it. A woman was knocking at my door and when I answered she said she heard a child screaming and an older male yelling. She told me it was super loud and she heard an older man saying something along the lines of, people are looking for you now.

I live in a duplex with my boyfriend and dog and we live on the main floor and we have a neighbor who lives by himself in the upstairs unit. We have absolutely no children, and I also found it odd because moments before this I was in my shared laundry room that you have access from the backyard, with the back door open, and I always do that to let my dog out in the backyard, and I heard absolutely nothing. The way she was talking and the look on her face seemed really genuine, so I was trying to assure her that we had no children and she probably just heard one of the neighbor's kids. We live close to the city in a populated area so there's lots of kids and they scream when they're playing all the time. We just kept going in circles. I didn't have any children in the home and she most likely had the wrong house. I even offered her to peek over my fence and check the yard,

but otherwise that was all I could do. But when I'd say these things she'd just stare with this accusatory look in silence and then start again on what she'd heard. And that's when she began to suddenly force herself through the doorway, like a foot or a hand. By this point our upstairs neighbor and my boyfriend heard what was going on and joined me in at the door. She just refused to accept my explanations and eventually fully got herself into the doorway. She clearly wasn't going to leave, so that's when I called the police. She stood in that doorway until they arrived. After the cops talked with her and asked us questions, we found out that she admitted to using meth earlier that morning,

so they told us that she was just experiencing hallucinations due to coming down from that. But they had to keep telling her, you're free to go, and she very hesitantly left. She kept turning around and looking at the house, so the cops even hollered out, let's just do a quick check to make her believe that they searched the house. I know this could have been so much worse and isn't the craziest thing on this subreddit by any means but I'm still so nervous that she'll come back and I can't stop checking the windows. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1pm EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9pm EST.

Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.