The Lets Read Podcast - 293: THIS DOLL MADE SOMEONE DISAPPEAR | 5 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 280

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about creepy roommates & Halloween 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 Today's episode is sponsored by: - Betterhelp - Soul

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Thank you. One of my earliest childhood memories is going trick-or-treating around the neighborhood that I grew up in. I didn't have much of a costume because I only decided last minute that I wanted to join my big brother. I've been terrified at the idea of all these miniature monsters walking around outside, but that fear was gradually and eventually

outweighed by the promise of a huge haul of Halloween candy. My mom used some leftover monster makeup to paint my face like a skeleton, and then I wore a torn up trash bag like I was some kind of garbage ghoul. And I must have looked pretty silly compared to some of the other kids in their Batman and Superman costumes, but that didn't really bother me. All I was interested in was getting my fair share of candy, and boy was there lots of that. My brother was 13 at the time, so he agreed to escort 9-year-old me around the neighborhood with him and his friends from middle school. And I couldn't believe that I'd been so frightened by the whole thing because actually being out there, knocking on doors and showing off our costumes,

it was some of the most fun I'd ever had in my entire young life. People were giving us a ton of candy. And not just candy either, they were giving us all kinds of things. One house we knocked at, I think it was the town dentist, gave us all toothbrushes and then reveled in our looks of disappointment because they revealed that they were just kidding and gave us some real candy. Another place gave us all these miniature Charlie Brown comic books. But at one point, a man told me to open up my candy bag and then drop something small and white into it before walking off. I didn't realize Halloween was like Christmas, only spookier, and by the time me and my brother arrived back home, I think it had fast become my favorite holiday. The next thing I remember, our mom asked us to empty out our bags of candy at either ends of the kitchen table.

Her plan was to take maybe three quarters of what we'd gotten and put it somewhere safe so we couldn't eat ourselves into a diabetic coma. But shortly after emptying my bag onto the table, mom came over to divide up the spoils and took one look through my candy and then immediately started to freak out. She kept pointing at this one particular item and asking me, honey, where did you get this? Who gave this to you? Then when I told her I didn't know, she kept yelling at me to think harder, that I had to remember who put it in my bag. I remember getting upset and starting to cry, and then crying even harder when my mom picked up the phone and told the operator to put her through to the police, because in her words, this was an emergency.

Now 30 years before, back when my mom was around my age, all the kids in the town we grew up in went trick-or-treating on Halloween. One little girl went out with her friends, but didn't just come home with a bag full of candy. She returned home with a little white doll stitched out of cloth rags. The girl's mom didn't think anything of it and let her daughter keep the little white doll. But just a few days later, there was an incident in a public park. The girl's mom took her to the park someplace that had like a sand pit and a jungle gym, and while her kids were off playing with the other children, she strikes up a conversation with one of the other moms. The whole time, some guy had

been leaning on the fence surrounding the jungle gym. The lady figured that he must have been one of the kids' fathers, maybe even grandfathers, just watching along as his kids or grandkids played with all the others. But then, as the mom's looking on, she sees the guy get her daughter's attention, call her over towards the fence, and then starts talking to her. Again, this all appeared perfectly harmless. But then the mom watches as the guy who's wearing a long coat, hat, and a scarf, just covered up so his face is slightly obscured, reaches out and asks for her hand. The mom watches as her little girl gives the man her hand, and then when the guy leaned forward and appeared to start smelling her little girl's hand, she starts walking over to intervene.

She tells her kid to get away from the strange man, then starts asking him what his business is talking to children like that. The guy didn't say a word. He just turned around and walked off before the mom could actually confront him. Naturally, the mom wanted to know what the man had said to her little girl, but when she asked her, the answer she got back raised more questions than they answered. First off, the little girl said she couldn't understand what the man was saying to her, but when her mom asked how she knew to walk over and give the man her hand, all at his direction, she acted very confused and then said she didn't know. The girl also said that when he raised her hand to the man, he hadn't sniffed it like her mom thought he had. Instead, he'd said something to it.

Something which, again, the little girl couldn't understand. The girl's mom then asked if she knew the man from anywhere, like if she'd seen him around town. And the girl replied yes. It was the same man who'd given her the little white doll while she was trick-or-treating. As you can imagine, the mom was terrified, and in discovering the connection between the doll and that creepy man, she rushed to inform the police. The cops put out some APB on the guy, and almost every cop in town was out looking for him, but after no one caught sight of him, they figured that he'd been a

drifter that had skipped town at the first sight of trouble. None of the moms from the park recognized the guy, which, in a town our size, usually meant that he was not a towner. So when 48 hours went by, and there had been no sightings of the guy from either civilians or law enforcement, everyone just kind of figured the guy had moved on. It took just days before they realized how wrong they were. One morning, a young mom walked into her daughter's bedroom to wake her up for elementary school, only to find that she wasn't in her bed. She looked around the house a little, then when she realized her daughter was nowhere to be found, she alerted her husband, who in turn called the cops. And within 24 hours, almost every cop in the state was out looking for this missing girl. But while a whole army of cops and volunteers are out searching the fields and woods surrounding town,

a team of state police detectives performed a search of the girl's bedroom, I'm guessing to see if they could find any clues. Then guess what they found? Tucked into the missing girl's pillowcase, a little white doll, one that looked like it had been stitched out of old rags. The police then held a press conference asking if anyone else's kid was in possession of one of these little white dolls. Only one set of parents came forward saying their little girl also had returned home from trick-or-treating with a little white doll in her candy bag. And that little girl just so returned home from trick-or-treating with a little white doll in

her candy bag. And that little girl just so happened to be my mom's best friend. I bet you thought I was going to say that little girl was my mom, didn't you? I can't blame you. And so did I when I first heard that story from her. But even so, she was half traumatized by the whole thing because not only did her friend and her parents almost have a nervous breakdown out of fear, but they also ended up moving out of town because their kid just couldn't feel safe there anymore. Mom said that she and everyone at school was convinced the man would come back in the middle of the night and snatch her up out of bed just like he'd done with that missing girl, who, by the way, was never found.

No corpse or remains ever showed up anyplace. There were no credible witness sightings of her anywhere despite all the public appeals, and they didn't even find any articles of clothing or anything like that. It was like that little girl just vanished off the face of the earth, and that only gave credence to the theory propagated by local kids that the child snatcher had been some kind of boogeyman who targeted children with little white dolls on Halloween before eating them alive on the nights that followed. Obviously that's not what happened, but it also wasn't like adults could tell their kids the whole truth. All they could say was that the girl was lost and that everyone hoped she'd come home safe

one day. But no one believed that, not really anyway. In fact, a quick death would actually have been one of the more merciful options available given the circumstances of a grown man abducting a little girl from her bed at night. I mean, again, it's unlikely the guy crept inside and snatched the kid kicking and screaming from her bed. The dolls were to win the kid's trust, so when the time came they'd come quietly, not loudly. And go quietly she did because, as I said, no one found any trace of this girl or her abductor, and she was declared legally dead around the same time I graduated college. The town moved on, but no one forgot, especially the ones close to the whole thing, which

explained why my mom got so scared when she emptied my bag of candy onto the table and saw a little white doll stitched out of old rags lying among the chocolate bar and candy wrappers. As you can imagine, she too rushed to call 911 and after the cops got a hold of the little white doll, the whole town basically went into lockdown while they searched for the person that might have placed it in my bag. No kid was allowed to go anywhere alone for days and when the commotion died down, the cops said it was most likely some kind of copycat just looking to scare people. They figured it was probably some teenager who'd heard the story of the little white dolls along with that of the girl who went missing just

days after they were handed out. They didn't think they were seriously going to complete the copycat process and try to abduct any kids who received dolls. I wasn't the only one. But given the weight of police presence on the streets come November 1st, there was a good chance it was that and that alone which deterred the copycat from going through with it. I didn't hear the whole story until many years later, and while my dad thought the whole thing was dumb, and that it was just kids being kids, it had quite a heavy effect on my mom,

I guess because it brought back all those bad memories from her childhood. I mostly believe it was a copycat too, as in someone just playing a dumb prank. Because no one ever tried to snatch any of his kids who got the dolls, not even years later. But sometimes I wonder how much of a prank it really was. If the whole town didn't take the dolls seriously or the guy hadn't picked my candy bag to drop one into So that my mom didn't see it Would things have still happened the way they did? Or would have another kid have gone missing in the middle of the night

Snatched up by the man Who made the little white dolls? On Halloween night of 1977, the parents of 19-month-old Nima Louise Carter laid her down in her crib and kissed her goodnight. The Carters lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, a city of around 90,000 that serves as the seat of Comanche County. Developed on former reservation lands of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache peoples, Lawton was incorporated in 1901. It was named after Major General Henry Ware Lawton, who served in the Civil War, where he earned the Medal of Honor before being killed in action in the Philippine-American War. Lawton's landscape is typical of the Great Plains, with flat topography and gently rolling hills, while the area north of the city is marked by the Wichita Mountains. Although Lawton's economy is still largely dependent on Fort Sill, it has grown to encompass higher education, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing, the latter of which employed Nima's father, George Carter.

After laying their young daughter down to sleep, the Carters retired to their own bedroom to get some well-deserved rest, but upon waking the next morning, they discovered they'd stepped out of their dreams and into every parent's worst nightmare. Little Nima's crib was empty, and she was nowhere to be found. After contacting the police, officers were dispatched to the Carters' home, where statements were taken and a search was performed. The officers primarily wished to identify the method by which Nima's adductor had gained entry to the Carter family home, but after a thorough analysis of the house, they came to a deeply chilling conclusion. Since Nima's bedroom windows had apparently remained locked during the night of her abduction,

and the possibility of forced entry had been ruled out, officers were faced with the horrifying possibility that Nima's abductor had surreptitiously entered the home during daylight hours before hiding in her bedroom closet until her parents were asleep. Then, and only then, would they have been able to carry little Nima out of the house without ever alerting her adoring parents. Nima's abduction sent shockwaves through the local community, with police encouraging members of the public to be on the lookout for signs of suspicious activity. No one could fathom why someone would want to abduct a 19-month-old child, but it seemed inconceivable that the suspect's intentions were murderous.

The entirety of the search effort that followed hinged on the possibility that little Nima was still alive, and that someone was holding her with the intention of transporting her out of state. But the reality was far more horrifying. Around a month after Nima's abduction, a group of schoolchildren were exploring an abandoned house around four blocks away from where the Carter family lived. The house had been heavily vandalized, its insides a mess of broken glass and rough graffiti. But whoever had once owned the home had left most

of its furnishings behind. As the kids explored the house, their curiosity drove them to open cabinets and closets and cupboards, all in the hopes of uncovering some long-lost loot. Yet until they wandered into the home's dilapidated kitchen, their finds were all trash and no trinkets. Suddenly one of the kids noted the home's fridge and wondered aloud if there was any food inside. With ghoulish inquisitiveness, the boy's friends encouraged him to open the appliance's door. The boy did as they willed him, approached the fridge and then swung open the door. But instead of being greeted by the sight of rotten vegetables and maggot-ridden meat, what instead of being greeted by the sight of rotten vegetables

and maggot-ridden meat, what the children saw that day would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Lying on one of the fridge's bare glass shelves was the suffocated, decomposing body of little Nima Carter. Lawton has always been something of a rough and ready place, and was no stranger to petty and sometimes violent crime. But the abduction of children in the middle of the night was unheard of, or at least almost unheard of. Just the previous year, on April 8th of 1976, twin sisters Mary and Tina Carpenter were abducted in broad daylight while they watched TV in their grandmother's house. According to the report, a friend of the Carpenter twins unlatched the living room door before coaxing the two girls outside. The two three-year-olds followed, but were soon met by 16-year-old Jacqueline M. Rubidoux, who began dragging the girls down the street. In phone calls to the police, witnesses claimed the Carpenter twins were crying

and trying to free themselves from Rubidoux's grip. They urged the police to hurry, but by the time officers arrived at the scene, Rubidoux and her two victims were nowhere to be found. Several years later, in an interview with local law enforcement, a 10-year-old Tina Carpenter said, she took us to a house. It was white, near railroad tracks. There were broken furniture inside. When we got in there, she took us to the refrigerator and told us to get in. She said her aunt will be there to get us out and take us for ice cream later. The Carpenter twins did as they were

told, too terrified of Rubidoux to risk her ire. But once inside, Rubidoux simply slammed the door closed and ran away. Two days later, a group of children were playing in a deserted house when they heard weak groans coming from a grungy refrigerator. An 11-year-old girl named Kathy Ford and another neighborhood child bravely opened the refrigerator door, and Tina Carpenter tumbled out, exhausted, terrified, but alive. Miraculously, Tina had survived by breathing through a tiny hole in the refrigerator. Her twin sister, on the other hand, was not so fortunate and passed away as a result of prolonged asphyxiation. When police questioned Kathy Ford,

she claimed to have immediately asked the exhausted Tina, who locked you in the fridge? Tina's reply was almost instantaneous and used the 16-year-old Rubidoux's nickname when she stated, Jackie Boo. Rubidoux, who happened to be Kathy Ford's babysitter on account of being friends with her aunt, instantly became the target of a police investigation. Yet under the assumption that three-year-old Tina would prove an unreliable witness, a lack of physical evidence left the authorities desperate for a straight-up confession, and without it, the investigation quickly stalled.

In the end, the police had no choice but to release Jackie Rubido without charge, but the news was met with apprehension and unease from those in the local community. People were scared. Real scared, recalled Ray Anderson, investigator for the Comanche County District Attorney. They were asking themselves, how could this happen? Why would someone target such a young and innocent child like that? Folks were going out and buying guns, new locks for their doors, fitting bars to their kids' windows. You could feel how scared they were. Following her arrest and release, Jackie maintained a quiet, unassuming presence around town, and somehow she managed to claw back enough of her reputation that folks began hiring her to babysit for them again.

By the fall of 1977, she was a regular babysitter for the Carters, the young Native American couple who led active weekend social lives and was well acquainted with their infant daughter, Nima. She was also their first choice of babysitter during the period an intruder lifted Nima from her crib, and with the windows locked, crept down the hallway of the tiny Lawton home, past her sleeping parents, and out through the front door. I remember the next morning like it was yesterday, Nima's father George later recalled. It was one of those cool, crisp Oklahoma mornings, a day I might have otherwise enjoyed immensely. Instead, he and his wife were condemned to endure the worst nightmare of young parents everywhere. Someone had snatched their infant child. George later said his heart raced so bad

that he thought he was having a heart attack and that in her panic, his wife Rose began frantically searching the most irrational of places. She ran between kitchen cabinets, closets, and the family doghouse. She even checked underneath the house and in the field behind the backyard fence. But little Lima was nowhere to be found. During the initial phases of the investigation, and given the high percentage of parental involvement in missing child cases, detectives had no choice but to consider George and Rose, Lima's own parents, as preliminary suspects.

Naturally, we called them in for questioning, recalled Cecil Davidson, a retired Lawton police detective who worked the case. They agreed to take lie detector tests and each passed with flying colors. Once the parents were ruled out as suspects, almost everyone fell under the net of suspicion, including neighborhood babysitters Joy Smith and Jacqueline Rubideau. It's amazing that it took us that long to put it together, recalled Davidson, but someone eventually remembered that Jackie Rubideau had been implicated in an almost identical crime not even a year before, and after that, it was all eyes on her. When Detective Davidson finally confronted Rubidoux regarding Nima Carter's

abduction and murder, her response was cagey, to say the least. Rubidoux claimed that she was playing bingo the night Nima disappeared, and at first, her alibi seemed airtight. But as Davidson continued to question her, he began to doubt Rubidoux's innocence. She was very quiet, Davidson recalled. She never looked you in the eyes. Her gaze was always somewhere else or looking at the ground. She would always get real close to telling you something critical, and then she'd back right off like she was scared to incriminate herself.

In light of this, Detective Davidson remains almost convinced of Rubidoux's guilt, but laments the case's lack of closure. We could never get her to confess, he later said. The frustrating part was we had no physical evidence. No fingerprints, no footprints, no hair, no blood, nothing. The only thing I think we really had was this odd response I got from her about bingo. She was very angry about the fact that everybody got to play bingo while she would get stuck babysitting, Davidson explained, and to this day I'm convinced Jackie Rubidoux murdered Nima, but the district attorney never felt that we had enough to prosecute. Detective Davidson might be unshakable in his belief, but not everyone is convinced Jackie Rubidoux abducted and murdered little Nima Carter, including her own father, George.

Two months prior to Nima's abduction, the Carters found their dog poisoned. A few days later, they returned home to discover it was trashed by vandals. I find it hard to think all those events were mere coincidence, George said. The Jackie Rubido we knew. No, it just doesn't add up. I never sensed that about her. Whenever Jackie came over, Nima would run up to her and give her a big hug. But several years ago I saw an interview with Jackie in a newspaper and she said that she was on drugs that time in her life. Was it someone we knew? George was asked. I think so, someone who was familiar with our house, but I've never been fully convinced it was Jackie.

George, whose wife Rose Carter died in 2000, is plagued by the haunting reality that no one was ever charged with his infant daughter's murder. He claimed the passage of a long three decades had helped ease his pain a little, but as he so poetically phrased it, quote, unanswered questions still burn within. In the initial aftermath of her murder, detectives became convinced they'd positively identified Nima's killer in their suspect, Jackie Rubido. Yet, they too have been left with a sense of unfulfilled justice. My wife and I lived for years with the what-ifs, said George Carter, who is now an active member of his local church. Nima cried that night when we put her down to sleep, and we never got up to check on her. We figured that we didn't want to spoil her, that she would eventually go to sleep, he continued. And now I think that person who took her was already in her room,

probably hiding in the closet. What if we had opened the closet? What if we had gotten up to check her that night? What if we brought her in to sleep with us? What if? What if we had gotten up to check her that night? What if we brought her into sleep with us? What if? What if? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I'd love to hear your take on why looking after our mental health matters and how you think people's perceptions of therapy have changed over time. Mental health awareness is definitely on the rise, but there's still some work to do, as a recent survey found that 26% of Americans

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BetterHelp is a super convenient and affordable online therapy platform that's helped over 5 million people around the globe. Also, you can change your therapist whenever you want, and it won't cost you a dime. We're all better with help. Visit BetterHelp.com slash read today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash read. My name is Katarina, I'm 21, and I'm kind of from all over, but I'm currently living in Langley Park, Maryland with my boyfriend. I've been watching your videos since forever, and I love your voice so much,

and it helps me get to sleep most nights, but I always found myself hoping that I'd never have a reason to write to you. It always struck me as a little tasteless and voyeuristic that I was vicariously experiencing other people's traumas, but like I read in one story, I suppose it serves as a kind of therapy. If it wasn't for their horrible experiences and taking the time to write it all down, I wouldn't be able to have listened to all the stories I had. And that's why it made me feel a bit guilty for enjoying your channel so much while also praying that I never suffered anything similar. Well, I did. And so now I'm sending this in to you. And what I'm studying at the University of Maryland is kind of unconventional, but that's totally irrelevant to the story. The only thing that's important to know is that because I chose it at the very last minute, I didn't exactly get my first choice of accommodation. I knew that I'd have to live

with a roommate, and while the university could guarantee that she'd at least be female, I had no way of knowing if we'd be a good fit or not. I actually prayed the roomie that I ended up with would be a good match, and at first, I thought my prayers were answered. The first time I met Aubrey, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. She had strawberry blonde hair, bright brown eyes, and it was blatantly obvious from her clothes and possessions that her favorite color was pink. The first words out of my mouth were, oh my god, pink is my favorite color too. And when she squealed and hugged me, I just knew that we were going to be best friends.

She was super nice to me and she asked about my background and she said that she loved my accent, which is like uber messed up, which made me feel super welcome too. Living with Aubrey proved just as much fun as I thought it was going to be, and while she certainly liked a party, she helped ensure that our apartment was a peaceful place of study and relaxation. She was fun, and unlike a lot of other college girls, she was definitely education oriented, as opposed to socially oriented, which was the exact kindoriented, as opposed to socially-oriented, which was the exact kind of lifestyle I wanted to avoid. But we still needed to relax after a long week, so every Friday or Saturday, depending on when we were each free, we'd get our hands on a bottle of wine and then

practice being wine moms over some episodes of Gilmore Girls or Grey's Anatomy. That became something of a routine for us, but we always had to fit our wine mom sessions around Aubrey's weekend meetups with her boyfriend. Aubrey's boyfriend, Nick, seemed like a really great guy, and I didn't really expect anything less from a girl like Aubrey. She gave off such soft vibes, and he totally matched them by being ultra-sweet to Aubrey,

as well as super nice and gentlemanly with me, too. It got to the point where I was very grateful that I'd been placed with someone so nice. I'd heard some real horror stories about psychos making the lives of their roommates a living hell, and I genuinely thought that I'd dodged that bullet. But little did I know, moving into that on-campus apartment meant that I was about to become the star of my very own horror movie. And so like I said, Aubrey and I had our regular wine mom nights at least once every two weeks or so.

We decided to start watching that show, only murderers in the building, so I was super excited to sit down and get tipsy and watch the first couple of episodes with her. We talk about it all week, and Aubrey herself had seemed super up for it, but then literally just hours before we were due to crack open another bottle of white wine that somebody was able to get us, she hits me with the bad news. Her boyfriend had his schedule messed up at the last minute and he was away the following weekend so it was either rearrange or have a date night that night or not see each other for like two weeks. I totally understood

her situation so I told her to go see her boyfriend and we could just arrange to watch our show another time. She thanked me, gave me a big hug and then ran off to get ready for her date night. Aubrey said her boyfriend was coming to pick her up at around 7 so around 6.30 I ordered some sushi from this good sushi place off campus and then waited to line my stomach with a little before I started that drinking. Now around 7 Aubrey said her boyfriend was running a little late so we each had a small glass before her boyfriend called to announce that he was outside. She gave me another hug, told me to have fun watching whatever then she headed out for what I assumed would be the whole night.

I finished my first glass of wine then headed back into our kitchen to grab another. I'd eaten maybe half my sushi platters, so I was ready for a larger glass. Then after fixing one, I went back to watch some more Gilmore Girls, tipsily singing along with their theme tune in a way that I'm glad no one was around to see or hear. I finished off the first glass, watching Rory fretting over her Yale application then poured myself another. It was just a few sips into that third glass and I started to feel a bit sick. I thought I'd just eaten too much sushi and that it wasn't mixing well with the wine, but if that was the case then all I had to do was slow down a bit and let it digest a little before going back to drinking. I expected

that feeling of nausea to subside within maybe 10 to 15 minutes, but by that point, I felt way, way worse, and not just nauseous either. I felt really woozy and even shaky too. It got to the point where I thought that maybe I'd eaten some bad sushi or that I was maybe just reacting badly to the alcohol. I'd had that happen before, not with sushi but with something else and in the end, I decided that the solution was to just make myself puke. Not the most glamorous or attractive solution but at least that first time, it had worked like a charm. It still was kind of gross afterwards but I think doing so meant that I dodged a bout of food poisoning perhaps, because afterwards I slept it off and felt fine when I woke up in the morning.

I went to the bathroom, stuck my fingers down my throat, and puked up a ton of half-digested sushi and wine. It was vile, but I figured it was just a matter of time before I started feeling better, now that I'd gotten it out of my system. Thankfully, I did feel a little bit better, but the wine and nause that I'd gotten it out of my system. Thankfully, I did feel a little bit better, but the wine and nausea had really taken it out of me, and I felt super sleepy, but having had a very long and tiring week, I didn't think too much of it and decided to take a nap for a few hours. And after that, if I felt better, I could order some more food maybe that wasn't poisoning me than perhaps finish off that wine if I felt up to it. I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and went to bed at around 8.30

p.m. with my alarm set to go off two hours from then. Just after 10 p.m. I thought I just woke up naturally, and when I saw my phone said 10.03, I rolled over and figured that I'd catnap for the remaining 20 minutes or so. But then I heard voices coming from the hallway outside. It was Aubrey and her boyfriend Nick, but instead of heading to the kitchen or the TV room or to Aubrey's bedroom, they stopped outside mine and started whispering to each other. At first, I didn't find that very alarming. I didn't expect them to come back to the apartment for any reason, but I figured they had a perfectly good reason too. I mean, they were being quiet. They must have known that I was in my bedroom trying to sleep, so I actually felt super

appreciative that they were trying to keep the noise down. But then, I heard what they were saying, and it made me feel sick in a whole other kind of way. At first I heard Nick asking Aubrey in a very serious way if she was sure. He kept asking over and over, are you sure? Are you sure though? Aubrey listen to me, are you sure? And she was saying something like, yes I'm sure, she was drinking I left, and half the bottle is gone now. I was still feeling kind of groggy, so at first it didn't click why Aubrey was talking about me drinking. But then, as the conversation started to unfold, I started to get why I'd been feeling not only sick, but sleepy too. Nick asked Aubrey if she put all of something in the bottle and Aubrey said yes. Nick then asked if she was sure that I drank at least half the bottle and again,

Aubrey said yes. She said we'd only shared a small glass each before she'd slipped it in the bottle. She promised I'd be passed out, that I wouldn't wake up, and that if they did it properly, then no one would ever find out. And that was when I realized what they were talking about. I just still didn't quite believe it yet. Never before had I experienced a moment where I thought, this cannot be happening, this has to be a nightmare. But I had one right then. I didn't pinch myself, but I had this distinct memory of telling myself, this is real, how that terrified me beyond anything I'd ever been through before. I heard Aubrey and Nick

talking a little more, but I couldn't make out what they were saying until I heard them say, I love you to each other. I heard I love you, then Nick's much deeper voice softly saying, I love you too, and then my bedroom door handle started to turn. I sat up in bed, too tired and stunned to do anything but watch as my door started to open. It was still dark so they couldn't see me sat up in bed, and then after Nick asked, should I turn the light on? He flicked the switch and they saw that I was awake. They froze, just like I was, but unlike them I had tears in my eyes. That level of betrayal, that level of deception and predatory behavior, it wasn't just terrifying, it was heartbreaking. There was a time when I thought

Aubrey and I might be friends forever, you know, a long, long time, in a way that adults talk about their old college friends with this boundless affection. But all her warmness, the way she made me feel so welcome, it was all a lie. And after what seemed like much longer, but was probably maybe only a second of staring at one another, Nick says, hey, how's it going? If that sounds like it might have been like a regular greeting, it wasn't. It was awkward, drawn out, which is why I typed out the words the way I did just then. He was clearly caught completely off guard, and as he stepped back away from the light switch, Aubrey stepped past him and into the room. She told me they just wanted to check on me, that it wasn't like me to go to bed early

and that they just wanted to make sure I was okay. Aubrey also tried to put on a very normal front, but she too had clearly not expected me to be awake. I told her I was fine, that I was just tired after a long day and that I'd like to be left alone so I could get some sleep. I wanted to confront them, I wanted them more than anything but right at the front of my mind was the thought of what they might do if they got scared that I might call the cops. It didn't feel like the right thing to do in the moment because every fiber of my being was screaming out for me to run, to fight, to hide, whatever it took to get the hell away from them.

But that feeling of being outnumbered, of knowing that I was already vulnerable from how woozy and tired I was, I knew that there was no other option than to be as non-confrontational as possible. I tried my best to put on a happy face and pretend everything was normal, because I knew my safety hinged on them believing they'd gotten away with trying to roofie me. I didn't feel even remotely safe until I saw the worried look leave Aubrey's eyes and she smiled. She said she and Nick had stopped by to grab some of her clothes because she was staying overnight at his place and then told me to call her if I needed anything. I thanked her, asked her to turn the light back off on her way out and then she and Nick left the apartment, with me huddled under my blankets, hand over my mouth and trying not to let them hear me cry. I was young, naive and scared for my life and while

the logical thing would have been to call the cops, I was focused on finding someone that I could stay with, who could come and get me out of there immediately. Which is how I ended up calling the guy who ended up becoming my current boyfriend. We'd been hanging out, not quite dating, not quite being just friends. I liked him and I trusted him enough to call him for help, but I also didn't want to tell him what I suspected was happening either. I just told him it was an emergency, I needed help and I needed it to arrive faster than the cops would. He then drove over, half carried me to his car and then stayed at his place that night without him having any clue what was happening. He later said that he figured that

I was just drunk and upset about something and only found out what was happening when I called the cops in his apartment. When I mentioned that I suspected my roommate and her boyfriend had drugged me, his jaw dropped and I remember him just pacing back and forth in disbelief. The dispatcher recommended that I go to the hospital if I was still feeling nauseous, and I later learned that the major danger involved passing out and then choking on your own vomit. But I told her that I didn't think that was necessary, and that I'd managed to purge what was in my stomach before whatever it was managed to take its full effect, I think. And then the dispatcher then asked if I was able to meet a pair of police officers back

at the apartment. I told her yes. She gave me a little info on what to expect and then me and my current boyfriend drove back over to the place that I'd just been drugged. Driving away, I'd been terrified. But driving back felt different. I hoped with all my heart that Aubrey and Nick had been stupid enough to return to that apartment because that way I might get to see them in cuffs for what they'd done to me. But that was wishful thinking on my part because when we walked inside, they were nowhere to be found. But neither was the bottle of wine that I'd been drinking from. The two cops we met up with had been very interested in getting their hands on it, but Aubrey and Nick had been smart enough to leave with it.

They had suspected that I had known what they were doing, and like any truly devious criminals, they tried their best to hide the evidence. But the evidence they couldn't hide, at least, that it was way too late to hide, was the evidence in my blood and urine. I thought I had them, because I knew whatever they'd slipped me was certain to show up on a drug test if I got one fast enough. I told the cops that's what I was planning to do, but one took me aside and broke some very horrifying truth to me. Without direct surveillance of the kitchen and without the tainted wine and bottle as evidence, there was very little chance that my case would even make it to me. Without direct surveillance of the kitchen and without the tainted wine and bottle as evidence, there was very little chance that my case would even make it to trial. They could go search Aubrey's room. They could go search Nick's stuff too. But if they suspected

that I might be onto them, the chances of the cops finding anything was extremely slim. They had already successfully disposed of one piece of that evidence, so it was unlikely that they'd leave others just lying around for police to find. The cop told me that the single best piece of advice that he could give me was to find somewhere else to stay, move my stuff out, and never associate myself with Aubrey again. I was horrified. I couldn't believe a cop would take such a cynical approach to enforcing the law, but looking back on it, he was entirely correct. I insisted that he and his partner search Aubrey's room for any trace of roofies or maybe GHB or whatever it was they gave me, but they found nothing, just like that one cop said they wouldn't. I later heard that the cops had

searched Nick's place too, and since he fully cooperated during the search, he had more than likely scrubbed his apartment of anything remotely incriminating. And that was one of the worst parts of the whole ordeal, knowing that we were going to get away with what they did, and how it probably wasn't the first time they tried to do something like that. Aubrey didn't come back to campus this year, at least it's been weeks, and I haven't seen her around yet, so I'm assuming that she dropped out for some reason. And that's fine by me. I hope she's gone for good.

And if she has, I can say with absolute certainty that this year, campus is a much, much safer place without Aubrey and Nick being around. To be continued... I'd missed the window to write this up and send it over to you. It's a story about a childhood friend of mine named Kevin and how we eventually lost touch, and since that story starts on Halloween night of 1993, it's something I often think about at this time of year. It's kind of sad in parts, but I find scary stories are like that sometimes because that thing that's so terrible and terrifying, it often has consequences, and rarely do they make for happy endings. Kevin and I lived on Deason Avenue on opposite sides of the East Jerusalem Baptist Church and were friends all throughout elementary school.

And then once we graduated to middle school, we had a solid four-kid friend group that consisted of me, Kevin, and a kid named Toby who lived on Frederick Street, and then Todd, whose parents ran the seafood place up on East Hardy Street. We were practically inseparable, in school and at home, but especially on Saturday nights, and that includes the night of October 30th of 1993. We were planning on some trick-or-treating the following night, but just like every Saturday, we walked around to each other's homes until the whole crew was assembled. We usually just walk around the neighborhood until we've found somewhere to hang out,

which was usually the ballpark of Rebecca Avenue or some of the derelict housing plots near Alcorn. But that night, since it was the night before Halloween, we had something a little different in mind. We were talking about which places in Hattiesburg we believed were haunted. There was Vernon Dahmer's old place, no relation to Jeffrey, who was murdered by the Klan back in the 60s for being a civil rights activist. His house isn't there anymore, it's just a derelict plot, but lots of folks said that they'd felt an eerie presence around the place, and others even heard weird sounds. But since Vernon's place was at least five or six miles out of town, we weren't about to try and walk out there on a Saturday night. We also had the old train yard, which was supposedly haunted, and the old Hattiesburg

Cemetery was also an obvious choice for some guaranteed spookiness. But at some point, someone brought up the old derelict house at the end of Elizabeth Avenue. The old plantation-style two-story home, with its wraparound veranda, tall columns, and large shuttered windows, had been abandoned for as long as I could remember. I don't think it was ever part of an actual plantation. I think it was more of a case that its owner wanted it to look as grand as possible, and it must have been quite a place back when it was still occupied. But by 1993, it was nothing but a crumbling, termite-infested ramshackle ruin,

and it looked spooky as hell though. Unlike the old Dahmer place of the Hattiesburg Cemetery, we hadn't actually heard any rumors that the abandoned house was haunted, and maybe that's what attracted us to it in the first place. I mean, the place looked like it should have been haunted, so in our minds it pretty much was. But that also gave us a free pass to avoid visiting any of the places we'd actually heard were haunted. Sort of like, we're not pussies, we're just very lazy. And so we walk all the way down Deason Avenue across Gulfport Street and then we're walking down Elizabeth Avenue discussing what might have happened to result in the home being completely abandoned. I remember Todd suggesting that the

family patriarch had gone insane, slaughtered his family, and that the home's bloody history meant that it couldn't be resold. Toby then suggested that some kind of tragic accident had resulted in restless spirits being anchored to the place, and that's why it couldn't be resold. We danced around a couple of other theories, but the reality was that none of us really knew why that old house on Elizabeth Avenue was abandoned. All we knew was that the chances of encountering spectral activity there had to be lower than at the train yard or cemetery, and that in all likelihood, nothing bad would happen hanging out there. But we could not have been more wrong. On the way down the street, we'd been full of boyish bravado, as they say. But once we arrived at the end of Elizabeth Avenue and saw that the old house was looming there before us, none of us felt quite so adventurous anymore. We talked

about exploring it, finding ghosts or maybe even buried treasure or some kind of dark family secret, but once we were face to face with it, no one felt like going inside. I remember thinking how the old plantation house didn't look nearly so spooky in the daytime, and that even though I knew in my gut that there was nothing in there but dust and cobwebs, I still couldn't bring myself to venture inside. We all just kind of stood there, murmuring to each other about how dangerous it kind of looked, and then suddenly, Todd dared me to go inside. I remember saying something like, alone? No way man, you must be crazy to think I'm going there on my own. Todd then dared Toby to go inside, and he said pretty much the same thing. But then when he dared Kevin to go inside, even for just a minute, Kevin replied with, and what are you going to give me if I do? Todd thought for a moment, but Kevin clearly had something in mind already.

He said that he'd go inside, up into a bedroom or down into a basement and bring back something to prove that he'd been there. And in return, he wanted at least half of Todd's candy haul from that following night on Halloween. Todd said something like no way, and I even thought that that was a little much of a hard bargain, but eventually, they settled on this. For every minute that Kevin spent out of our sight, anywhere in the house, he got one fistful of candy from Todd's trick-or-treating bag the next day. And Kevin said that he wanted a souvenir from the place anyway, something to prove that he was the bravest of all of us. But we were all convinced that he wouldn't last more than two or three minutes, with Todd being perhaps the most confident of all of us that he wouldn't have to give up more than

maybe a few fistfuls of candy. We watched Kevin walk off through the overgrown grass towards the steps of the porch, which creaked as he climbed them, before he walked toward the home's open threshold. I remember the door had been completely taken off the hinges, so there was nothing but an ominous black orifice waiting for him. And when he reached it, Kevin looked back at Todd and told him to be ready to count the minutes. Todd then checked his watch and gave Kevin the thumbs up, And then after flicking on the cigarette lighter that he'd borrowed from Toby, Kevin crept into the darkness. To say that first minute was tense would be the understatement of the century. I remember half expecting Kevin to suddenly scream and then come running out of the house yelling at us to just scram. And I also remember thinking how that would

be an incredible way to prank us. But running out too soon would mean forfeiting a whole bunch of Todd's candy. But I guess that if he did weigh it up in his head, he figured getting his hands on more candy was a superior outcome to scaring the living crap out of us. Because when it hit the end of that first minute, there was no sign of him. When the second minute ended, then the third, and then the fourth, and none of us had heard so much as a peep from Kevin, I remember Toby looking at Todd and saying something like, if he keeps this up, you're not going to have any candy left after all that trick-or-treating tomorrow. And Todd actually started to panic, because five or six handfuls was going to be quite a lot of candy and they hadn't yet negotiated if fistfuls meant two fistfuls or just the one etc etc and by the time

Kevin had been in that house for a full five minutes Todd marched around halfway through the grass towards the house and yelled something out like all right Kevin you made your point you got your candy now come on out. I was expected Kevin to just appear from around the door frame right then and there and show us how he just tricked us into thinking that he'd been lost in the bowels of the basement or something. When really, he'd been standing feet away from us, probably stifling laughter while listening to Todd getting increasingly frustrated. But after Todd called out for him to come out and give it up, the entire house stayed quiet.

Quiet as the grave. And Toby started to laugh very nervously, telling Todd that Kevin was going to stay in there so long that Todd would be practically working for him during trick-or-treating the following night. I laughed, but Todd didn't find it very funny, and yelled out again for Kevin to come outside before the spiders started climbing up the leg of his pants. And the idea of that sure would have motivated me to skip out of there at full speed, but Kevin didn't make a sound. It was like he couldn't even hear us at all. We were coming up to ten minutes when the mood shifted from nervous excitement to minor concern.

And by then, all three of us were much closer to the old plantation's house, and were all calling out Kevin's name in the hopes that he'd come out if he'd heard all of us calling him, and not just one of us. And we started to sound scared, too. I remember Toby's voice kind of trembling as he called out one time and how his fear was almost infectious. We called out a little longer and then Todd suddenly announced that he'd have to go inside and actually look for Kev. I think Toby knew as well as I did that it wasn't about the candy anymore. We were just scared for our friend by that point.

Todd started up the steps with me and Toby reluctantly following but when he finally got within a few feet of the open doorway we started to hear movement from within inside. Todd called out again, Kevin is that you? But when we got no response, that fear came back tenfold. We started backing up, half expecting some rotten, stinking monster thing to come lurching out into the moonlight with Kevin's blood on its claws and teeth. Whatever it was moved very slow, without urgency, just these slow, steady footsteps as it came closer and closer to the door. We kept on walking backward, getting ready to run, but then suddenly, who steps out into the moonlight but Kevin. We all breathe this huge sigh of relief because he was walking fine, not running, and he had no signs of any wounds or injuries either. And Todd says, what the hell dude, you scared the crap out of us. And I was waiting on Kevin to just burst out laughing before calling all of us a

bunch of scaredy cats. He'd secured at least seven or six handfuls of Todd's candy and managed to have all of us on the verge of wetting our pants. If that was me, I'd be doing a victory lap of the place's overgrown front yard, but Kevin didn't do anything like that. Instead, he just walked right past us, across the grass, and then started walking back down Elizabeth Avenue, with me and the others asking him, Kevin, Kevin, where are you going, dude? Todd, Toby, and I all just kind of stood there looking at each other for a moment, as if to ask what the hell's gotten into him, and then we followed him up the street asking what had happened inside that house. Like I said, we hadn't heard so much as a mouse's fart up there,

and it had been complete silence the whole time, so we wanted to know what Kevin had been doing for so long. He also wasn't acting scared either. At least he wasn't running. He was just walking away like he was tired and wanted to go home. Toby and I ran around the front of him because he wouldn't respond to a word we were saying. And we say,

Hello? Kevin, what's going on? What happened in there? It was only then that I saw how Kevin had tears in his eyes. Both Toby and I were saying, Dude, what the hell? What's going on with you? And then Toby tried to physically get him to stop, but I remember how Kevin, instead of stopping, went from all calm to furiously violent as he shoved Toby off of him and screamed, get the hell away from me.

He screamed it so loud his voice broke, like it started as a roar and ended in some kind of squeal, and we were so stunned that we stopped dead in our tracks and just let him walk on for a second before we carried on following him. No one knew what to say at first. It was kind of scary to see him freak out like that in the first place, but as we carried on following Kevin up the avenue, we started calling after him again. We asked him to stop, asked him to talk to us, and then asked him to at least slow down a little bit. But again, he completely ignored us until it was Todd's turn to jog ahead of him in an attempt to block his path. Kevin tried to avoid Todd by walking around him without saying a word, but then Todd stepped in front of him again.

Kevin started swinging. Todd leaned back so hard to avoid the punches that he fell on his ass, and then me and Toby ran over trying to separate them, and Kevin started swinging on us too. He started screaming, Don't touch me! Keep away from me! Again, his voice was cracking like he was fighting back tears. And all the time I'd known him, I'd never known Kevin to act like that.

He looked crazy. His eyes were wild, his face was red, and he was serious about hurting us if we got too close. I mean, he moved on Todd so fast that he fell on his butt, and if me and Toby hadn't have blocked off when we did, then we'd probably end up fighting him. We wanted nothing more than for him to just tell us what had happened in that house, but if he didn't want to tell us, then there'd be no getting him to do it, I guess. We just had no choice but to let him go. I mean, he had nowhere else to go but home, so after Todd got to his feet, we let Kevin walk on a while before he turned off in the direction of his house and disappeared from view. Toby, Todd, and I then walked back towards their houses because I didn't

want to follow Kevin back in the direction that he was going just in case he saw me following him and decided that he wanted to just beat me up, I guess. I was pretty badly shaken up from still seeing him like that in the first place, so I walked with Toby and Todd for a while while we tried to work out what had happened back in that old plantation house. Toby was convinced that Kevin had seen some kind of ghost or spirit because, to him, nothing else explained why he was so scared. But Todd didn't buy it. He thought Kevin had seen something. Something scary enough for him to react the way that he did, but it couldn't have been a ghost. Because as he put it, ghosts aren't real. He figured it might have been maybe a dead body, an old blood stain, or even like a man-sized cage in the basement. It was

something creepy enough to scare the crap out of him, but there's no way that Kevin saw a ghost then just walked out of the building without telling us. It had disturbed him very deeply, but I guess it wasn't a threat. It seems ridiculous all these years later, but at no point did any of us even think to go back and take a look around that house ourselves. You know, so we could actually know for ourselves what Kevin had seen. But we were just kids, man. Just scared young kids and all we wanted to do was just go home and hope Kevin would just tell us what had happened the following evening when we went out trick-or-treating. The next day, I remember calling Kevin's house to see if I could talk to him. His mom answered the phone and she sounded just fine at first.

But when I asked if I could talk to Kevin, she said that he was feeling under the weather and couldn't come to the phone. I asked if he was okay and she said yes, but that he was upstairs taking a nap after complaining of feeling very sick. I remember pausing for a few moments, so long that Kevin's mom asked if I was still there, and only then did I find it in myself to ask her if he'd been acting strange when he returned home the previous night. It was her turn to pause, just long enough to let me know that her answer wasn't as natural as she wanted it to sound, and then told me no, Kevin had been just fine. He just woke up that morning feeling a little worse for wear. She wasn't lying, but she wasn't quite telling the truth either.

She was covering for him. Understandably so, she was his mom, but why? Before I hung up, Kevin's mom said that she had no reason to believe he wasn't coming trick-or-treating with us, and that she'd get him to call me back whenever he woke up from his nap. I waited, and waited, but got no call from Kevin so I decided to just call him a second time. And that's when I got the news that he was still feeling under the weather and wouldn't be coming out trick-or-treating with us. I was devastated, but not so much because he wasn't heading out with us.

It was more because I knew that whatever happened was still affecting him, and in a deep enough way that he turned down the opportunity to grab as much candy as he could carry. Trick-or-treating was huge for all of us, so for Kevin to miss it was a big deal, and Todd and Toby knew that too. It was almost impossible to enjoy ourselves out there, though. So much so that we ended up heading over to Kev's house to give him a share of our candy. We were desperate to see him, desperate to make sure that he was at least kind a week before I got a chance to get him on the phone, and I asked but one time if he wanted to talk about what had happened back in that house. He told me word for word that if I ever asked about it again, he wouldn't be my friend anymore.

So I didn't. I resisted the temptation for as long as I knew him, but Kev was never the same kid. He walked into that house as one guy and came out as a different one, and for the life of us, no one could figure out why. Todd and Toby and I were too scared to head back into the house on Elizabeth Avenue for fear of the same thing happening to us. Kevin had also told the two guys the same thing he told me, that he didn't want to talk about it under pain of excommunication. So they ended up biting their tongues about it too. That wasn't the end of the story though and we didn't think it was any coincidence that the old plantation house on Elizabeth Avenue ended up getting demolished not even six months after Kevin walked into it. And that was the closest I ever came to breaking my promise

and asking what he saw in there because that demolition day really was the last chance to see for ourselves. And again, there wasn't any way in hell that I was going in there alone, not even in the daytime. And maybe I should have asked, but I just didn't want to lose a friend as old as Kevin, even though he was a little different from the kid I knew before. Kevin and his family stayed in Hattiesburg for about another year, long enough to graduate 8th grade and then he told us one day that he was moving away. Kev moved up to Jacksonville, apparently because his mom wanted to be closer to her parents during their old age, and we tried to keep in touch with him, but we always seemed way more interested in continuing the friendship than he did.

Like we'd ask him on the phone if he ever wanted to come back and visit us, and he'd always say, I don't know, I'll have to see what my mom has to say. He was just never very enthusiastic about it, and eventually, Toby and Todd and I just kind of took that hint. And before long, we lost touch for good, and many years later, I found a Facebook account on what I thought was his name, but it had no picture attached to the profile, so there was no way of me really knowing for sure. I sent a friend request, but it was never accepted,

and I guess Kevin just didn't use it all that much. I hoped that he'd accept it one day, maybe get my number off of somebody and give me a call, but about ten years back, we got some bad news. Kevin had passed. A drug overdose, heroin, they said, and he hadn't even hit 40 yet. And at that funeral, we heard from folks who knew him up in Jackson that he'd been struggling with addiction for years. None of us had any idea, but it really hit home when we heard people say that he begged almost everyone for money whenever he was broke. He never begged any of us and hell, I probably would have given him all the money he

needed just to talk to him after all those years but he didn't reach out. Even in his worst desperation he never came back to Hattiesburg. I think that has everything to do with what he saw in that house on Elizabeth Avenue on the night before Halloween all those years before. At the funeral, I ended up getting the phone number of Kev's old narcotics anonymous sponsor. He was the guy who probably knew Kev the best up in Jackson as he spent a great deal of time with him in the years leading up to his death. He talked about his addiction at the funeral and the guy told me that if I ever wanted to see a few less depressing anecdotes regarding Kev's last few years, I should give him a call. Well, I did give him a call, but it was only to ask him if Kev had ever mentioned the night of

October 30th, way back when we were young. And more specifically, what happened in the house. He told me no. But Kevin had never mentioned it, not even once. And he and Kev had talked about all kinds of things from his childhood, even mentioned us a couple of times. I thanked the guy, hung up the phone and cried not because I didn't get to find out Kev's terrible secret but because I realized guarding it so hard might have just ended up killing him

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Promo code R-E-A-D for 30% off. Back in the summer of 2008, I was 20 years old, living with my mom, and I was getting really bloody sick of it. My mom and I had always gotten along very well, but it was around that time that our lifestyles became totally incompatible, and it started to put a bit of strain on our relationship. I remember buying a copy of our local newspapers, looking through the listings, and then coming to a bit of a depressing realization. If I wanted to stay in the area, in a flat that was actually nice, it was going to take a huge chunk out of my monthly earnings. That was doable, but only just, so if I wanted to have any kind of disposable income, I was going to have to search for a potential flatmate. And that is when I thought of Andrew. Andrew had been hanging around with me and my close circle of friends for about a year.

A mutual friend had introduced us, and since we shared a lot of common interests, he became a regular feature on our nights out and pub sessions. He always seemed like an alright lad to me, definitely a bit weird, but we were all a bit weird in our own way. And by the time I started looking for flats, Andrew was sleeping on a mutual friend's bedroom floor after being kicked out of his mom and stepdad's house. We asked him why he'd been kicked out and he told us it was because of a fight that he'd had with his stepdad. They'd gotten into a heated discussion. They'd squared up to one another, then, as Andrew put it, he battered him. This fit right into the evil step-parent stereotype for us,

and since most of our social circle were children of divorce, not only did we never question it, but we also kind of applauded it. We thought that he was hard as nails for taking on a stepdad like that, so our mutual friend had zero problem giving Andrew a place to stay, even if that meant sharing a bedroom, and I had no problem vouching for him so he could get a job working for the same company I was. He had some income, and he needed a place to stay, so to me, Andrew was the natural choice to be my new flatmate. I asked him what he thought, and as he could imagine, he was buzzing at the idea of having his own place. He didn't have any money to cover

his half of the deposit, but I told him that didn't matter. All he needed to do was give me half the rent at the end of every month and I'd cover bills and council tax until he got more hours at the bar that I'd found him a job at. And then, once he could afford it, he could fork over more money for the bills, etc. And we agreed on a handshake that this was the arrangement and then I placed some calls to prospective landlords and eventually found us a decent place in the exact area that I was hoping for. The first month of living with Andrew was actually awesome. It was the first time both of us had lived in our very own apartment so we were both buzzing for the first week or so but then after falling into the routine of living with

Andrew I couldn't see any problems on the horizon. He paid his share of the rent on time, he tidied up after himself, and he kept the noise down in his room whenever I needed to sleep. And then aside from that, he was pretty good fun to chill with. We'd like the same kind of movies, the same kind of music, and the same kind of food, so there wasn't really anything for us to disagree about. This obviously suited me down to the ground, and I felt like a proper big brain having picked the smartest choice for a flatmate. But then, I started to notice that things weren't quite as they seemed. So the only major difference between mine and Andrew's job was that I used to work much later than him. He'd finish at around 2 in the morning whereas my place stayed open

till 5 a.m. Sometimes Andrew would pop by for a drink and to spend his tips but most times he went straight home which is what happened the night that I came home and found one of his weekly pay slips on the table. I know it's not cricket for a man to look at another man's pay stub but it was right there on the table as I sat down to eat my post-work meal. And I thought that I had a good idea of the hours that he was getting, so the figure on the payslip should have been somewhere in the region of maybe 150 to 200. But instead of anything near to that amount, the figure said, and I'll always remember this, 37 pounds and 38 pence. I remember that figure because I stared at that payslip in utter disbelief for a good few minutes, wondering

where he was getting his money from. He was spending like an absolute sailor and although he made a pretty penny in tips, it wasn't enough to go throwing it around like he was. But then by far the most confusing part for me was he'd be out four times that previous week, the week the slip was dated for, and each time he was dressed for work and didn't say anything to me about not going to work before he headed out. Like if he had been hanging around the flat on the days that he should have been working, it'd have cottoned on to the fact that he wasn't working enough to cover the rent. But he'd gone out four times, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and each time he'd been wearing his black work shirt

and dress shoes. I didn't want to confront him about it. I mean, I shouldn't have been looking at his payslip to begin with, but I also couldn't help but worry that he might not have his share of rent come the end of the month. But then, when the end of the month came, and he had all the money, I forgot all about it. Could have been a mistake on the company payroll, or maybe he made the hours up the following week. Either way, we had the rent, so I wasn't fussed about it. But looking back on it, that was the first big sign that something was wrong. The next big sign that Andrew wasn't the good guy we all thought he was, was when he started going out with a girl named Julia. Now Julia, not her actual name, but she was a nice girl, quite shy and reserved, but very pretty.

I'd seen her around, but had never really spoke to her, outside of serving her a drink, until she and Andrew started seeing each other. But then I was waiting in the queue at the 24 hour McDonald's, looking to get a bit of food after work, when who should walk in after her own shift had finished but Julia. She knew me from being Andrew's flatmate, so we got chatting about this and that and the other. But during our first small talk-oriented conversation, she mentioned something that pricked my ears up. For some reason, even though Andrew was just a low-level barback at the place that he worked, Julia seemed to think that he was an assistant manager. It came up when she said something like, well, I know Andrew's just gotten that AM job at

the Drexel Lounge, so we haven't had a chance to see each other in a few weeks. I remember saying something like, uh, okay, yeah, sorry to hear that, and then I move the conversation on. What I should have done in retrospect is tell Julia that, no, Andrew isn't an assistant manager and he's not been busy. He's been lazing around the flat on his three days off a week. But to be honest, learning that Andrew had told Julia that he was an assistant manager took me totally by surprise. I knew it was a lie. There was no way Andrew had been promoted to assistant manager on 20 something hours a week, especially not after having worked there for all of three to four months. I just didn't want her to find out that it was a lie from me. And that probably sounded incredibly selfish, keeping Julia in the dark

like that so I could avoid being the one to break the news to her, but I was also still very much Andrew's friend at this point, so I also wanted to give him a chance to do the right thing. Which, looking back on it, was about as pointless as a screen door on a submarine, as they say. I won't go into the entire exchange because it'd take about ten pages to get it all down on paper, but the long and the short of it was this. Andrew had lied to Julia through his bloody teeth as well and all just to impress her into sleeping with him. Then, when he couldn't be arsed to see her anymore, he fobbed her off with lies about being busy with all his new training and responsibilities. He'd taken poor little Julia, who'd never have said boo to a goose, and then pumped and dumped her. And what's worse,

he was bloody proud of it too. And I was horrified. Now I know that might sound a bit snowflakey, but I really was. I had no idea Andrew was capable of something so manipulative. But when I expressed even the slightest disapproval, he acted like I was threatening to call the police or something. He says, that's what everyone does. You tell a few fibs to impress them, she's not going to be impressed if I tell her I'm a freaking barback, is she? I understand that twisted logic, but what I didn't understand is why he felt so comfortable lying about something

that Julia was bound to learn the truth about eventually. And to my amazement, the idea that Julia might visit him at work seemed genuinely novel to Andrew, and for just the briefest of moments, I saw this flicker of fear in his eyes. But then, he sort of pulled himself together, shrugged off what he was saying, and told me that she'd never found out because of X, Y, and Z reasons. The main being that his wasn't the kind of bar that she liked to drink in. I remember dying to be like, unless I bloody well tell her. But as much as this just sounds cowardly in retrospect, I just didn't want the smoke with my new flatmate.

He'd been a prick, but I still don't think it was entirely my responsibility to go righting wrongs when I firmly believed the karmic wheel would eventually come spinning around to smash him in the face. And so, I kept my mouth shut about it. At least, for a while, I did. Remember I said Andrew was a decent flatmate, and that he always cleaned up after himself and kept the place looking decent? Well that didn't last more than about four months because slowly but surely his hygiene standards started to slip. I won't go into all the boring stuff about him leaving dishes out and what not so I'll just cut to the part when I realized why Andrew had never, ever brought a girl back to his flat. I'd never been in his room, I'd never needed to, and since his door was further down the corridor than mine, I never got a look in while walking past either. I'd seen the room when we first moved in, but after that, I'd just never needed to.

There was a bit of bro code going on, like young men who live together learn very quickly not to just barge into each other's bedrooms. And that's why I hadn't even had a peep in his bedroom in almost 150 days at this point. So when I finally did take a look into Andrew's room, my jaw hit the floor. I was quite naive in that when I first became aware of Andrew's casual relationship with the truth, I thought, nah, he wouldn't try and lie to me like that. But shock and horror, he did, and sometimes he did so in the twattiest of ways. Like one day when I couldn't find my iPhone charger plug and I asked if he'd borrowed it. He swore up and down that he hadn't touched it. And so just on a whim, I decided to check his bedroom just in case he'd quote unquote borrowed it and then forgotten to replace it.

I literally thought to myself as I was walking down the corridor, I wonder what he's done with the place. But when I opened that door, I swear I was almost knocked off my feet. The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was disgusting in there, and I suddenly realized where some of our cups and plates had gone. They'd been in his bedroom, scattered around the place with scraps of moldy food left on them, and they'd been there for weeks. There were piles of stinking clothes all over the place, his mirror literally had splatter marks on it from and they'd been there for weeks. There were piles of stinking clothes all over the place, his mirror literally had splatter marks on it from where he'd been popping zits, and I saw a not entirely empty bottle of beer that had been there so long,

the dregs in the bottom had gone moldy. And those boys and girls were just a few of the stomach-churning delights that I got to witness as I cautiously tread through Andrew's room, treating each suspiciously stiff-looking sock like it was an actual friggin' landmine. I found my iPhone charger's plug. He had taken it, but instead of texting him, saying something like, you prick, you took it, my mind was so blown seeing how he lived that it knocked me for six. I couldn't believe that he lived like that, and I couldn't believe that I'd been sleeping in the next room over completely none the wiser. I thought Andrew not bringing girls back was, I don't know, like a sign of respect or something. We talked about not being a party house, so I thought that that was him holding up his end of

the bargain. But it wasn't that. It was because his room was an effing pig sty. In fact, I take that back. It's an insult to pigs. It was more like it was a rubbish dump. If he wanted to have his room like that, fine, but as I said earlier, the issue was that his lack of hygiene was encroaching on the rest of the flat. But then, when I brought this up with him, it caused a bit of an argument. He thought that I was being majorly uptight, explained that he was exhausted and I shouldn't start having a go at him over a few unwashed plates in the sink. I didn't even bring up the state of his room. I didn't want the argument to escalate any further than it had. I'd started to

think there might actually be something wrong with Andrew. Something he maybe needed help with, and as his friend, that's all I really wanted. But still, the incident marked the beginning of a strain that never ended, but rather got worse, and worse, and worse. Again, I won't bore you with each little chapter in the breakdown of our friendship. You've already heard most of the significant stuff anyways. But when things came to a head, they came to a head in a big way. We'd moved in together during early August of 2008, and by February of 2009, we were barely talking to each other. Andrew had only contributed half of what he'd promised for February's rent,

leaving me no choice but to spot him the rest until he'd promised for February's rent, leaving me no choice but to spot him the rest until he got paid at his new job, which he'd only been forced to seek out after most likely getting sacked from his first job, but that's a story for another day. I wasn't angry that I had to spot him. I was angry because he knew that if I didn't, we'd both get kicked out of that flat, not just him. He knew I had no choice, and so he took full advantage of it. I'm not saying that was scary, I'm just saying you can understand why. By early February, mine and Andrew's friendship was teetering on knife's edge, and then one Wednesday night, it was coming up to about 2am, went into my bar walks Andrew's new colleagues.

I noticed their slug and lettuce uniforms and rightly assumed that they were his fellow bar staff coming in for a drink after work. They walked up to the bar, I went over to serve them, then once their order was assembled and I told them the price, one of them asked, Hey, you're Ralph, right? Aren't you? I nodded, at which point the same girl said, oh, we work with Andrew. But despite me still wanting payment, no one so much as budged to grab a card, a banknote from their purses or wallets. I was like, okay, good for you, but I still need payment for these drinks. And when I said that, the Slug and Lettuce staff started acting all confused. They told me Andrew had said that if they came into my bar and found me in particular, I'd give them free drinks.

All I did was roll my eyes and tell them something like, it sounds just like Andrew, all talk and it's all bollocks. Because I was just so over his stupid petty lies to people. But me talking badly of him seemed to cause some deep offense in Andrew's new colleagues. They didn't say anything. They just kind of looked at each other, paid for the drinks, and then off they went. But then a few rounds later, and maybe an hour had gone by, I went over to serve them a second time. I brought them their drinks and that time had no trouble getting the payment. But as I was ringing them up, one of the girls asked me if I liked living with Andrew.

I was just very honest with them, told them I wasn't loving it, but said nothing more than that. Then once again, they acted like some grave offense had been committed. The same girl told me, you should be more grateful for what he's done for you. Which honestly made me laugh out loud because what the bloody hell had he been telling them? Well, it turns out, Andrew had been telling them an awful lot about me, and not a single word of it was true. Andrew had told his new colleagues that it was him that had rescued me from being homeless. He'd also claimed that it was him, and not me, that was taking care of most of the bills,

and that I couldn't work more than 30 hours a week because I had chronic fatigue syndrome. And because of this chronic fatigue, Andrew had told his colleagues about how I had trouble cleaning up after myself, and that he spent a great deal of time making sure that I had a nice clean place to live. And so in their view, me expressing anything but eternal gratitude to Andrew was grossly offensive and extremely unappreciative. They told me all that in a very accusatory fashion, as in they thought that they were going to give me a proper telling off and I was going to be all ashamed of myself for being an ingrate. But that's not how things went down, and instead of just having a go at them, I told my manager I was heading out for a quick smoke before closing. I wasn't that busy by then, and then asked the girl who had done most of the accusation to come outside for a polite word. Looking back on it, I think she had her own doubts about Andrew. If that was me and I thought the disrespectful ingrate of a flatmate was just going to defame

my colleague, I'd never have given them the time of day. But she came outside and actually heard me out, and while I explained how almost everything she had been told was a lie, I broke down everything for her in intimate detail too. But at the end of the day, it was all just words. Me saying that, no, Andrew didn't work part-time for a homelessness charity, was very confusing for her. It was a case of a he-said-she-said situation and without going away to actually fact-check all of the things he'd said, all I'd done was leave her in a sort of a he said she said situation and without going away to actually fact check all of the things he'd said, all I'd done was leave her in a sort of haze of confusion. The thing that really drove the point home and made her realize just what a liar Andrew was, was seeing

a photograph of his bedroom. I'd been talking to my mom about Andrew's situation, not necessarily just complaining about him either, like I genuinely wanted her advice. Andrew had been really annoying to me, but he was still a friend, and his behavior seemed way beyond just laziness or arrogance, like I thought there was genuinely something wrong with him that it was up to his close friends to maybe do something about it. I brought up his bedroom, and like everyone else I mentioned it to, they simply did not believe it was as bad as I said it was until I showed them. I had taken a picture of his room to show my mom how I was not in fact exaggerating the situation, and that Andrew's room wasb, I felt that I had very little choice but to show her the picture, if only to salvage my own reputation among a group of potentially regular customers, I guess. Needless to say, she was horrified.

And before some of you go asking, well, how did she know it was actually Andrew's room? Well, let's just say there are a few solid indicators that it was definitely his room. Well, let's just say there are a few solid indicators that it was definitely his room. For example, Andrew was a big Metallica fan and there was a big black album poster on his wall. Andrew also smoked drum rolling tobacco at the time and at least a dozen of the distinct blue packets could be seen strewn around his room. And if you knew Andrew and saw that photo, you just knew that that was his bedroom bedroom and for the girl that had done the accusing it was deeply shocking for her. I mean it'd be shocking for anyone to find out that loads of what they've been told is a complete lie but this girl seemed way worse than just surprised. She seemed well and truly devastated. I remember before she left she asked me one more time if I

knew for certain Andrew didn't volunteer with a homelessness charity which was where he supposedly met and rescued me. I told her I was really really sorry to be the bearer of bad news but that Andrew wasn't at all like she thought he was. I didn't think he was evil or a terrible person but he clearly had issues with lying, and unfortunately, she'd been his latest victim, and in more ways than one. Now, if you're assuming that little revelation session would be the final nail in the coffin of mine and Andrew's friendship, well, you'd be right. He was only two weeks into his new job, and everyone he worked with now knew that he was a liar, and not just any liar, a very prolific one too. Then, since it

was me that had spilled the beans, it caused such a big fight that we almost came to blows. It was probably one of the most interesting interactions I ever had with Andrew, because I realized that he had told so many lies that he actually lost track of what he'd said to who. Again, I won't bore you by typing out the entire exchange, but there was a point that I realized that he'd almost completely lost track of his lies, but instead of having any kind of come-to-Jesus moment, realizing he was exposed just made Andrew angrier and angrier. As I said, we never came to fighting, but it certainly bloody looked like we would for a hot minute.

About a week after that big fight I came home from work to discover that Andrew had gone out but had left his keys in the flat. And by then he owed me hundreds of pounds in rent and with my name the only one on the lease there was absolutely zero incentive for me to just let him back in. I told him to go stay with his mom. And long story, but that whole getting kicked out situation had been another lie, and that when he had the money he owed me, he would come and collect his stuff following an amicable exchange. He actually got his mom to call me up at some point, basically to beg for his stuff back on his behalf, but after telling her the whole truth, she took my side and agreed that Andrew needed to pay me what I was owed. I actually told her on the phone I'll happily just pawn all of his stuff to get some money back,

but I'd rather just box things off like gentlemen and not have to lug his gear to cash converters. And you know what she said? That's fair enough, Ralph. I'll get Andrew to give you a call. But he never did phone me back because Andrew had some much more pressing issues at hand. I had no idea that those issues even existed until much later on, so instead of telling now, I think I'll keep you in the dark until we reach the climax of our little story here, which I'll share with you now.

So one night, I get ready to leave for work and as I walk out into the street outside my flat, I see a car's headlights flash on. I didn't think anything of it, not right away. But then, as I walked away from the car toward the main road where my bus stop was, I saw the lights behind me getting brighter and brighter, and I realized the car wasn't trying to pass me in the street. I realized that it was coming up directly behind me, and it was moving fast, too. Thankfully, the penny dropped before it was too late for me to do anything, and I was able to simply jump back onto someone's front path as the car went speeding past me on the pavement. It only narrowly missed slamming into a lamppost and at first it was almost inconceivable that the car had actually tried to run me over. I just thought it was some overly aggressive driver in a

terrible mood or something, but then I recognized who was in the driver's seat. It was Andrew. He got out of the driver's seat, with the car still mounted on the pavement with its engine running and then walked around to the boot to open it. And by then I'm shouting, are you for real? You just tried to run me over, yeah? Are you mental? Andrew doesn't say anything. He just opens up the car boot, takes out a golf club of some description, and then starts walking up our neighbor's path toward me. I have this real obnoxious moment when I realized he actually wanted to do me some serious damage. The only method I had of defending myself was to pull out the little penknife attached to my bartender's friend, which was barely an inch long, and wave

it around like a mental person in the hopes that it would deter him. It did, a little bit, but since he had about three foot of swing to that golf club, he knew that he had the advantage. And so as he got closer, he started trying to bash my head in with it. All the screaming immediately alerted the owner of the home and as we're sort of back and forth dueling on their pathway, they came out to tell us to stop. But Andrew did not immediately stop and he got at least one good strike at me which hit me in the ribs before the homeowner's cry of, the police are on their way, finally got him to relent. He ran to his car, sped off and left me trembling in the woman's pathway, apologizing to her for the unexpected fight.

When she found out what had happened, her reaction was next to saintly. She asked if I wanted to come in for a cup of tea while we waited for the police, and that's just what I did after calling into work to let them know that I'd be late clocking in. I thought Andrew wanted to bash me because I'd exposed his web of lies, and in a way, that's exactly what had happened. But the thing that had made him angry enough to try and kill me wasn't so much that I'd exposed him, it was the reaction of others that he'd lied to, and in particular the reaction of the female colleague who'd accused me of ingratitude. Again, I didn't find this out until maybe two or three months after he locked himself out of the flat, but by then, everyone knew what I'm about to tell you.

It was practically talk of the town. So I can't speak for every country's legal system, but here in the UK, we have a crime under the statute titled, Violation by Deception. but here in the UK, we have a crime under the statute titled violation by deception. They don't use the word violation, I'm just using it in place of another word you probably wouldn't be able to say, but I'm sure you can all work out which one I'm talking about. Anyways, the law states that, and I'm just going to copy and paste this here, violation by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator deceives the victim into participating in carnal acts that they would otherwise not have consented had they not been deceived. Deception

can occur in many forms such as illusory perceptions, false statements, and false actions. It all sounds very cut and dry. You lie to get laid, and you've committed violation by deception. But at least under English law, the criteria to achieve a conviction is, and I'm quoting legal manual here, very narrow. Essentially, the prosecution has to prove that the victim would not have slept with the perpetrator if they hadn't deceived them. So, for example, if a man refuses to pay a prostitute after he's slept with her, that doesn't fall under violation by deception. But trick someone into thinking you're a completely different person to the one you are, and that could well earn a conviction. Well, Andrew had been sleeping with a female colleague who'd initially accused me, hence why she was so eager to defend her new lover.

But once she realized that almost everything he told her was a lie, she was quite naturally devastated. At first she didn't think that there was any way of getting back at him because she was totally unaware of the whole VBD law. But little did Andrew know, but his new Belle was a student at Sheffield Uni, and one of her housemates, and all around best friends, was a third year law student. After a heart to heart about what a scumbag Andrew was, the girl's friend informed her of the whole VBD thing, and she now had some actual legal recourse to get back at him, and use it she did.

Andrew was angry that I'd pulled the wool away from everyone's eyes, but the thing that made him want to kill me was the fact that telling the truth was going to potentially result in a prison sentence of up to ten years. Andrew was arrested, released on bail, then the whole thing went to trial about six months later. By then, he was living with his biological dad outside the city, so no one saw him around town for the duration of the ordeal. Everyone hoped the girl and her lawyers would be able to land a conviction and I remember reading about the trial on social media later and thinking Andrew might actually go to prison for what he'd done. But unfortunately, because Andrew pled guilty at his plea hearing and in light of him being a first-time offender,

he ended up walking away with nothing more than a suspended prison sentence of two years. Everyone who knew about the situation was devastated, but Andrew didn't get away scot-free. With his reputation now ruined, he was forced to move away and although a mutual friend of ours keeps up with him from time to time, we know next to nothing about where he is or what he's doing. This is mainly because I tell this mutual friend that I don't want to know, but that doesn't stop me from thinking about Andrew from time to time. I came to learn that telling so many lies in the way that Andrew did is a sure sign of sociopathy. Or in other words, Andrew had a serious case of what you might call main character syndrome. And that's why he felt so comfortable

lying because other people didn't matter to him. Even if individuals found out he was lying, there was no real loss to him because he didn't care what they thought of him in the first place. However, it's also common for people like that to highly prize their overall reputation. After all, if no one trusts you to begin with, there's no one to fool. So having me expose him and in such a way that meant there were legal ramifications, that makes people like Andrew murderous. I sometimes wonder if wherever Andrew went, he repeated that whole process of lying and manipulating people. And I know it sounds a bit callous, but I kind of hope he has.

I hope he's completely rebuilt his life, even if it's a duplicitous house of cards, because that means he's actually moved on. And I hope that because the alternative is that he still hates me, he still gets angry thinking about me exposing him, and he's going to just wait until things have blown over, well and truly, before coming back to get his final and bloody revenge. To be continued... 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. Thank you.