The Lets Read Podcast - 296: SOMETHING HAPPENED THAT DAY AT THE GAS STATION | Rain Ambience / 8 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 282

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about small towns & gas station 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: Monsters Among Us Podcast 

Hear all these stories anywhere you listen to podcasts on the Let's Read Podcast. Music In late August of 1996, when I was just 19 years old, I arrived home to find my mom sitting at the kitchen table. I'd been at a house party with my then-girlfriend the night before, and following one of my first real experiences with alcohol I wasn't feeling my best. I walked through the front door into a house so quiet that I thought my mom and sister were elsewhere, but when I walked into the kitchen I saw my mom just kind of sat there, very silent with a glass of wine in front of her.

It was so unexpected and I was so hungover that seeing her actually made me jump a little. But then, that feeling of surprise was quickly replaced by one of dread. Mom never drank in the daytime and she never just sat around the kitchen table, quiet like that, and so very likely I started to suspect that I might be in for some very bad news. She asked me to sit down and when I did, she told me that my dad was gone and that he wasn't coming back. I asked if gone she meant dead. When mom shook her head and told me no, he'd just left, I remember floating on an island

of relief for a moment before sinking back into a sea of shock. And once I was able, I followed up with a ton of questions asking how she knew, where he'd gone, when he'd left, and stuff like that. And the short answer to all of them was, she didn't know. And the harder she tried to come up with any substantial response, the more upset she got. He hadn't warned her, he hadn't left a note, he just packed a suitcase, got into his car, and then drove off to God knows where. The conversation ended with my mom crying and me hugging her while I told her everything was going to be okay. But as I unfortunately came to

discover, everything was not going to be okay. For the first two or three months, no one really talked about my dad leaving. There were routine calls and visits from relatives to check in on us, but the discussions focused on our welfare, not why dad had left or if he'd be back. Anything further than that, anything which rubbed up against the mystery of the whole situation, tended to upset mom to the point that she couldn't talk about it anymore, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel the same way. But then, after letting the shock fully wear off, all the pain and grief was replaced by a burning curiosity, and one which was only made worse by my Mom's deliberate and enduring

silence on the subject. She wasn't in denial or anything, and people grieve in different ways, but whenever I brought up the subject of my dad, she'd either start crying, or get super angry and start yelling stuff like, you don't talk to me about that piece of crap, he's dead to me. And I had no choice but to seek answers elsewhere, and since I strongly suspected that mom was hiding something from me, I did so with great intensity. My first move was to contact one of my dad's friends, his only real friend in fact, who I figured was the most likely to have knowledge of his whereabouts.

Dad was an only child, and both his parents died before he was 30, but he and his friend Carl had been close since their college days together, which is even longer than he'd known my mom. I thought if anyone knew where my dad was it'd be him, but when I called him, he said that my call was the first that he'd heard of it. He had no idea why my dad might have left, but he did know a few places that he might have gone. And one of those places was a small town up in the wilds of northern Canada, named Wrigley. I had managed to rule out the prospect that he'd stayed in Portland because he wasn't going to his job anymore.

I then tried his hometown of Lincoln City, but as far as I could tell, he wasn't there either. Then, and only then, did I consider traveling all the way up to Wrigley, the furthest of hometown of Lincoln City, but as far as I could tell, he wasn't there either. Then and only then did I consider traveling all the way up to Wrigley, the furthest of the three potential locations, because doing so would mean driving for 30 hours straight through some of the most remote areas of the Canadian wilderness. And Carl said my dad had spent a summer there back during his college years and frequently reminisced about it.

He'd also mentioned wanting to go back there one day, so according to Carl, there was a good chance that if he had indeed suffered some kind of sudden midlife crisis, he'd traveled up to Wrigley. Wrigley, which is just over 450 miles from the nearest big city, has a population of around 100, mostly First Nation citizens. It has one gas station, one medical clinic, and the nearest RCMP office is over 200 miles away. It is the very definition of a small town.

But to me, that was good news, because there'd be nowhere for my dad to hide. I was warned against any kind of winter travel because it can reach minus 60 up there during the winter months, and so instead I made sure to drive up in the summertime. I arrive in Wrigley on Wednesday, July 22nd of 1998, after three days of driving up from Portland. The nearest motel was over a hundred miles away, but since I was only planning on staying in town for around 48 hours at the most, I figured I could just sleep in my car. Which, inadvertently, brings me to my first stop in town. The gas station.

Wrigley's one gas station was staffed by a guy I remember named Winston. And Winston was a great guy, who looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, and we made small talk at first and he remarked about how rare it was to get any outsiders coming through. That gave me a golden opportunity to ask about my father, and so I did, while showing him the most recent photo that I could get my hands on. Winston didn't recognize him from the most recent photograph, but he did recognize someone in the second picture I showed him, which I fished out of all the possessions my dad

left behind. It showed a much younger, college-age version of my dad, along with a similarly aged woman. Both were dressed in hiking gear and were standing on either side of a large rock, pointing at what appeared to be some kind of mineral deposit running all the way through the center. Winston recognized it as Hunter's Rock, a landmark about 10 miles outside of town. It had been kind of famous back in the 80s because some geologists had come up from Vancouver to take a look at it, and local legends said that it was the spear of some ancient gargantuan hunter that had become embedded in the earth when they missed their intended target.

And this gave rise to rumors that Hunter's Rock was some kind of meteorite that had indeed buried itself deep into the earth after falling from the stars. The geologist's arrival caused quite a stir in town because while many were excited to learn the truth of the rock's origins, others believed applying such scientific rigor would be disrespectful to the beliefs of their ancestors. The rock turned out not to be any kind of meteorite, nor was it the gigantic spear of some titanic hunter of yore. But interestingly enough, the geologists estimated that it did extend deep into the earth, potentially for almost a mile, and

unless the area was actually some kind of extinct volcano, he had absolutely no clue how it had gotten there. I say all this because I was very interested to know why my dad had visited the place. I didn't remember him having any kind of interest in geology, but then again, he might have figured seeing that it was just something to do while he was in the area. But then, after Winston filled me in on Hunter's rock and I showed him the pictures one more time, he started staring intently at the girl in the second picture. He asked if I knew who she was and when I said no,

he asked if it was okay if he took the picture into the back while he made a phone call. He proceeds to tell me that with about 80% certainty the girl in the photograph was the same one that had gone missing back in the early 70s out near Great Bear Lake. He said that there were some people that I should check with to be 100% sure, but that her face was remarkably similar to the one that he'd seen on missing posters back when he was a kid. I then asked him who he needed to talk to, in order to be certain I mean, and he told me that I needed to visit the local government

office which was inside of the town's medical clinic. Since I arrived in the very late afternoon, the office would be closed until the following morning, so after Winston wished me luck in finding my dad, I took a walk around town and then headed back to my car. The next morning, I walked over to the gas station to get some coffee and breakfast and swapped small talk with Winston before heading over to the clinic. There, I met with Erwin, chief of the Petsokie First Nation, and while that sounded like an awfully grand title, First Nation, and while that sounded like an awfully grand title, he told me he felt like little more than a clerk at times and that his title was almost purely ceremonial. He was a welcoming and generous man and the moment I met him I just knew that he'd be

willing to help, but unfortunately Chief Erwin had some bad news to share with me. The chief, who operated out of an office of the size of a broom closet, was happy to welcome a rare visitor into town, and assuming I was some kind of tourist, offered to answer any and all questions I had. He even offered to set me up with a guide who'd take me around the area in an off-roader so I could see all of his tribal lands from the comfort of a passenger seat. But when I told him my story, as in that I was looking for my dad, his face softened. Then when I showed him the second picture, the one from what I assumed were his college days, I'll never forget how the chief reacted.

He went from happy and smiley to having a look so cold it almost scared me, and then he simply said, I think you and me should step into my office. Now it might sound morbid to some, but I was excited. He was clearly in possession of some valuable information, the exact thing that I'd driven more than 1500 miles for, but what he told me raised many more questions than it answered. Chief Irwin told me that the girl in the picture was named Susan Colvert and was a King's University graduate who disappeared in the summer of 1973. But then he pointed to my dad and told me that he'd been one of the potential suspects arrested by the RCMP

and that he'd been questioned in connection with Susan Culvert's disappearance not once, but twice. Obviously that was all very shocking, and again, this might make me sound like a kind of psycho, but it was progress. Solid progress for the first time in literally 18 months. Everywhere I'd gone, everyone I'd turned to, it had all been dead ends. So even if it was bad news that my dad had potentially been a murder suspect, it was still something solid to cling to, which gave me an idea on why he might have left us in the first place.

I mean, think about it. You're in college, you head up to Canada for a summer hiking vacation, you meet a girl, maybe fall in love, but that girl ends up going missing and you're one of the suspects. That'd be just about enough to screw anyone up for life. I mean provided you weren't the cause for her disappearance. So by that point it seemed highly probable that dad had made a late-life pilgrimage back to Wrigley to get answers about the girl he'd loved and lost.

That last point kind of circles back to why I was so suspicious mom was hiding something from me. She was so upset, and so angry at my dad, and it made me think that she knew something about this girl Susan, and that my dad's sudden disappearance might be connected to her own. Chief Irwin went on to tell me that Susan Culvert's remains had never been found, so no one had ever been charged in connection with her disappearance. But he also mentioned that her last known location was in the jaws of Great Bear Lake, out in what are known among the tribes as the Satu lands.

And that was where the Mounties had found her campsite, totally abandoned but also totally undisturbed. He took a good look at the more recent picture of my dad before telling me that he hadn't seen him, but the chief was also quick to add that if dad had been heading straight toward Hunter's Rock, there was no real reason for him to stop back in town, especially if it was a place that held the bad memories of being arrested. If he wanted to really look for the missing girl, or even if he just wanted to pay his respects at the place that she was last seen alive, it made sense that he went straight

up to the Great Bear Lake, at least if he was up there in Canada and not someplace else entirely. And the only issue was getting there. From Wrigley it was about a 200 mile drive to get to a place called Dilleen. And if you didn't have a decent 4x4, which obviously I didn't, then there was no point trying to make the drive. But even if I did have one, I was still looking at a 30 mile hike out into the marshlands through all kinds of crap and mosquitoes, yes they still have them up there, to the place Susan

Culvert's campsite was found. I could go through the process of hiring a 4x4, driving up to Deline, then hiking for three days through some pretty hellish terrain, and it could end up being for nothing. Granted, I considered it all a very noble pursuit, there was literally nothing more important to me than trying to find my dad and potentially bring him home. But like any great effort, the spirit was willing, yet the flesh was weak, and in my case my bank account was even weaker. I simply couldn't afford to extend my stay by another few days, as I'd already taken a whole week off of work, and had spent a ton of money on gas, motel rooms, and road food.

It was either throw in the towel, or call mom, and beg her to transfer some money into my account. I'd then have to call work, and risk getting fired after begging for a few extra days off, to call work and risk getting fired after begging for a few extra days off, when I'd already put my manager in a pretty bad bind by requesting a week off at relatively short notice. And calling it quits, and then maybe heading back at a later date, seemed like the logical course of action. Being up there in the Northwestern territories made me feel like I was close, you know what I mean?

So close that I could practically feel him up there with me somehow. Then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was no turning back, not unless I wanted to live with the regret of inaction for the rest of my goddamned life. But the thing that really sealed it was when Chief Irwin told me that Deline had an RCMP office

and how that was the place they'd questioned my dad after his friend Susan disappeared. They'd have records, written reports, everything I needed to get more information about what had happened to her and my dad. And with that in mind, I called work, and then I called my mom. Now getting the time off was easy, because I was just honest with my manager and told him what I was doing.

My dad had left, we were worried about him, so I was off looking for him in the hopes of bringing him home and, hell, maybe even saving his life too. And at that, my manager said, take all the time you need. Mom on the other hand was not so easy to convince. She didn't know where I was or what I was doing, so when I called her and informed her of the situation, she was not happy. At first, in light of what I was doing, she refused to wire me any money, and told me to return home immediately. I had to argue with her for about a half hour straight using the phone in the Wrigley gas station's office before she finally relented, and agreed to send me some money. I'd be lying if I said that it didn't get a little tearful at points, and I'll be forever

grateful to old Winston for giving me my privacy during that phone call. It was quite possibly one of the most intense I've ever had. I also owe Winston in another way, an even bigger one too, because it was he who agreed to drive me all the way up to Duleen near Great Bear Lake in exchange for nothing but gas money. And I guess he was pretty invested in my little story by that point, especially once I shared what I'd learned from Chief Irwin. But before we set off the next day, he told me that he wouldn't be following me out into

the marshes. I told him that I wasn't expecting him to, and how I wasn't 100% decided on whether or not I was headed that far anyway, but then he said something that sticks with me to the day I die. He asked, if your dad's out looking for the girl and you're out looking for him, who's going to end up looking for you? Do you ever think about that? And I remember those words, and I hadn't. I'd never even paid one single iota of thought towards that concept. But when I did, and the moments after Winston asked me, it chilled me to the bone.

On the drive up to Deline the next day, Winston managed to completely talk me out of walking 30 plus miles into the marshes. If my dad was out there, and he hadn't gone completely crazy, then he would have had at least some basic camping gear with him, whereas I didn't even have a tent, let alone enough camp food or the right footwear to make it through 30 miles of marshy wilderness and back, and so realistically, there was no going after my dad in the Sautou lands. What I could do was check in with the RCMP up in Deline, let them know about the situation with my dad, and then give them my contact details so they

could get in touch if there were any sightings of him. And maybe, just maybe, someone up there would be able to tell me more about why my dad was arrested in connection with his friend's disappearance. It took us about five hours to get up to Deline, and then when we arrived, Winston drove us straight over to the RCMP office which thankfully was right next to a grocery store. He said he'd pick us up some sodas and hot food, and then I headed into the office alone. The office was just a small reception area with a larger room behind it, and after looking through the open doorway, I traded greetings with a younger looking red-coated Mountie.

Constable Jacobs, who was around my age, seemed only too happy to help me. But when he realized that I had more than just a basic inquiry in mind, he told me to sit tight while he radioed the only other Mountian to lean a man named Mackenzie Not his real name and the need for the pseudonym will shortly become clear Mackenzie who was considerably older than his junior co-workers seemed far more equipped to help with inquiries of a historical nature And he did help He was a little frosty with me at first But after I told him the whole story about

looking for my father, he warmed up enough to talk to me. Mackenzie actually remembered the incident involving Susan Culver to my father because he'd been a junior constable way back in the 70s at the time of the investigation. He remembered my dad stumbling back into Deline on his own, he remembered how it was he who had reported Susan missing, and he also remembered how, following the initial round of questioning, the Mounties basically had no choice but to consider my dad as a suspect. Mackenzie hadn't been present for either interview, so all he knew was that my dad had somehow implicated himself, but that's all he knew.

They had all the files and reports on site, but McKenzie said he couldn't share them without the proper clearance, and that might only come after a lengthy Freedom of Information request. If he had showed me the files, he might actually lose his job, and as he put it, he hadn't worked just shy of his 30 years only to lose his pension after a little snafu like that. It was frustrating, but also strangely cathartic. I kinda hoped that they might just show me the files in the back room or something, but I guess that was purely wishful thinking on my part.

Filing out a FOIA request might take months, but to me, it was just another step on what had already been a long journey of tracking down my dad. I'd been searching for like 18 months by that point, and I sure as hell could have waited a little longer, and even though I'd traveled all that way, I knew I wasn't going home completely empty handed. Mackenzie and Constable Jacobs both promised to keep an eye out for my dad and even promised to call me if they had heard or saw anything out there in the jaws of the bear. And by that I mean the marshlands where Susan Culvert went missing.

And before I left Mackenzie asked what my plans were. I told him I was heading back to Wrigley and I would probably spend another night in my car before heading south in the morning. He wished me luck and I thanked him and then I walked outside to meet Winston near his truck. He picked us up some sandwiches, and then as we got on the road back to Wrigley, I gave him the lowdown on what the Malneys had told me. Winston said that he'd been keeping me in his prayers, hoping that I'd get my hands on those interview tapes sooner rather than later. I wouldn't say that I was a religious person, not by any stretch, but sometimes, just sometimes

I think Winston's prayers found someone's ears. Because that night, as I was trying to get as much rest as possible prior to my drive back south, I woke up to hear someone knocking on the glass of my car's window. Then when I looked outside and saw a distinctive red jacket, I realized who it was. It was Mackenzie, the Mountie from up in Deline. I lifted my seat up, opened my car door, and he asked if he could come sit in the passenger seat. I told him sure. Then when he climbed inside, I remembered that he reached into his pocket and produced a cassette tape with a scribbled label.

I couldn't read it right away. I had my internal lights switched off so I wouldn't kill my car's battery and be stuck out there. But I had a strong feeling it was something very specific. Something he definitely should not have been showing me. Mackenzie told me to turn on my car as tape player and so I did, and then after he slid the tape into the slot my suspicions were confirmed. It was the tape with my dad's first interview on it, the one from before he was arrested.

Since he wasn't considered a suspect during the first police interview, my dad was very forthcoming with certain pieces of information, and as it turned out, he and Susie, as he called her, were out camping near the marshlands when Susie got up in the night to go pee outside the tent. After Susie's exit woke him up, my dad had simply rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep. But just seconds later, he heard Susan Colvert scream. Dad said that he rushed to put his boots on, grabbed a flashlight, and then ran out into

the night to see what had scared Susan so badly, and that according to him, is when he saw... them. One of the interviewing Mounties asked my dad who they are, and my dad responds by saying that if he tells them, they'll think he's crazy. Dad then says something about how if he knew they were out there, he and Susie wouldn't have gone anywhere near the place, not in a million years. One of the Mounties then asked my dad where they took Susan Colvert and dad said he didn't know, but wherever it was he knew Susie was probably dead.

She had to be, because there was no way that she could survive what they were doing to her. Again, one of the Mounties asks who they are, and Dad explodes. He asks one of them, how do you guys not know? You live out here, and all this other unhinged sounding stuff. Like it's no wonder the Mounties assumed that he murdered Susan Culvert because he really did sound out of his god damned mind. The Mounties asked a few more questions, but with each answer my dad kept getting more and more agitated. He didn't know why they didn't take him too. They hadn't seen anyone following them over the previous few days, and he couldn't explain

why there wasn't a drop of Susan's blood anywhere despite my dad's claim that they were violently attacking Susan. And after that, the Mounties announced that they were terminating the interview and the tape went dead. When I asked McKenzie if he'd brought the second tape, he shook his head and told me it wasn't worth listening to. And based on what my dad had said during his first interview, the Mounties placed him under arrest on suspicion of Susan Culvert's murder.

Remember, my dad said that he knew for certain that she was dead, but then put him through a second round of questioning. But the reason it wasn't worth listening to is because my dad totally stonewalled the two Mounties asking him questions. When he figured that they might at least partially believe his story, my dad was very chatty. But then, once he realized that he was a murder suspect, he did the smart thing and didn't say another word until he was released due to lack of evidence. Mackenzie said that after he was released, my dad left town, but the search for Susan

Culvert continued for another 10 days. The search and rescue team found the campsite that she'd shared with my dad, but they didn't find any trace of the girl herself, no clothes, or blood, or human remains. The search effort was eventually called off, and many years later, her parents had her declared dead, for some sort of legal purpose, and she was taken off the missing persons register up there in Canada. But according to McKenzie, there was something in the files that caught his attention. At one point, towards the end of the search,

a dog from an RCMP's search team ran off and was never seen again, and the dog's disappearance sparked a whole new search and rescue operation, a kind of mini-search within the larger effort. Mounties searched high and low for this missing hound, as well as Susie Culvert, but neither of them were ever recovered. Mackenzie said the dog's disappearance was eventually put down to an operational hazard, and it was mourned and then replaced. But he thought that there was a lot more to it than just a dog getting a little overexcited and then drowning in a marsh. Remember, they never found Susan's body or the remains of that dog, in which case, where the hell did they go?

of that dog, in which case, where the hell did they go? McKenzie finished by saying that, in his opinion, my dad and Susie Culvert had come across some kind of gross site, either marijuana, opium poppies, or maybe both. And he was quick to add that he had absolutely no proof of that theory. But very little else explains some of the comments my dad made during that first interview. After I expressed my gratitude for bringing me the tape, Mackenzie left and left me to an uneasy sleep. It was weird hearing my dad that young though. He sounded a lot like me whenever I heard my own voice on tape.

But that's obviously not what stuck with me that night. It was what he'd said during that first interview, along with how he'd said it. Now driving back, I had these strange mixed feelings of sadness and fear. I'd never felt so close to finding my dad, and at the same time, he'd never felt so distant. All his life, he'd probably been dealing with the aftermath of what had happened up in the Northwest Territories, and I can't speak for my mom because I still don't know to what extent she knew all of this, but personally I had no idea. And that was almost two years ago, and at the time of writing, now this is in April of 2000, I'm still no closer to finding out the whole truth

about my dad's disappearance. But these days, I have a much better idea of where to look, and now that I can hold my own on a solo hiking trip, I think I'm just about ready to go looking for him. I'm planning on heading back up to Deline in the summertime sometime, possibly in June, and I'll be sure to write up everything I find. I don't know how many of you will actually read this, but I don't care. This is good for my sanity, and when I find out anything else, this will be the first place I post to.

I imagine that I'll be posting another blog in a few months, and if I don't, I either found my dad, or something else happened. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Have you ever heard a true paranormal story that terrified you so much that it stuck with you for years? Well Monsters Among Us podcast has thousands. Each week Monsters Among Us brings you chilling true stories from real people, sharing their eerie experiences with the paranormal.

From ghostly sightings to encounters with strange creatures, this show dives into the unknown and leaves you questioning everything you thought you knew. The tales are told in the Witness's own voice, from callers all around the world. Witnesses like Julie, who drove past a car accident only to realize a spirit had just joined her in her passenger seat. Or an anonymous caller who saw three strange entities in the woods moving in unison, then lost eight whole hours without any explanation. Or Mack from Mississippi, who broke his back when he fell out of his tree stand, only to

be nursed back to health by a sympathetic Sasquatch. Literally. These tales of the supernatural are carefully collected and curated by host Derek Hayes and shared in the form of audio recordings that get straight to the meat of each terrifying story. Derek cultivates an atmosphere that is equal parts spooky and nostalgic. Think Unsolved Mysteries meets Art Bell. The show is appropriate for all audiences and with a back catalog of nearly 500 episodes, it's ready to binge.

So whether you're a skeptic or a true believer, Monsters Among Us is the perfect podcast to fuel your fascination with the paranormal and send shivers down your spine. Listen to Monsters Among Us podcast now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last November, I turned off the highway into a two-pump gas station in the middle of nowhere at around 1.30 in the morning. I guess I was kind of zonked from how tired it was because as I drove my car up to the pump, everything seemed as normal as could be. My eyes were locked on the pump display as I filled my car up, trying my best to not

go a penny over 30 bucks, so it was only when I walked over to the kiosk to pay that I noticed something was off. The first thing that got my attention was how there was no one manning this kiosk. At first I just waited, thinking the employee was just taking a quick bathroom break or something of that nature, but then as I started to look around, I realized the driver of the car at the pump in front of me was nowhere to be seen either. They weren't in their car, and they weren't inside the convenience store, so my first thought was how the driver and the gas station attendant must have been both

in the back of the store, I guess. I got this momentary chill, thinking I might have interrupted a robbery or something, and I was suddenly very hesitant to knock on the glass or call for service. I remember turning to check out the car parked in front of me and thinking, if it's a Honda, then I'm getting out of here. But it looked to me like it was a 2011 3-series. Now if you don't know cars, Hondas are easy to steal. BMWs on the other hand not so much. And while that didn't completely preclude the possibility that there was a robbery in

progress, it reassured me enough that I started knocking on the glass and asking if there was anyone there. I knocked once, and then twice, and then after the third time, I knocked on the glass in as many minutes and it hit me that something highly unusual was clearly going on. My first thought was to try the door to the convenience store. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be locked, but when I pushed, the door swung right open for me. I walked up to be locked, but when I pushed, the door swung right open for me. I walked up to the counter calling out, hello?

The whole time. And then thinking there might have been some kind of medical emergency, I jumped the counter and took a look around the back of the store. There was a bathroom, and a storage room, and a small office, but all three were unlocked and empty. Then, and only then, did I realize that the entire gas station was completely deserted. I checked around the back just to be sure, but I figured that there'd be no one there, and then once I was 100% sure something seriously weird was going on, I pulled out my phone

and got ready to dial 911. I wasn't still 100% sure what to do, so I called out hello again, but much louder. And when that got no response, I called the cops. I could tell that, at first anyway, that the dispatcher thought that I was just some jerk customer who was angry my gas station attendant wasn't there when I needed them. But once I had properly explained that there was literally no one to be found anywhere on the premises or elsewhere, she started to take my call a little more seriously. She asked where I was and when I told her she asked if it looked like there had been a robbery.

I remember asking, how the hell would I know? But she explained that if there had been a robbery recently, an employee might still be hiding somewhere. And I felt this sort of twinge of frustration because like I said, I'd looked probably everywhere except the dumpster around the side of the gas station. And as I'm walking back from checking out the highway for signs of life, I just so happen to be passing it as the thought to open it popped into my head. I wanted to be able to say to the dispatcher, there, I even checked the station's dumpster,

there's definitely nobody here, ma'am. But when I opened the dumpster, there they were. I only caught a glimpse of what was inside before I dropped the lid of that dumpster and backed off like the thing was radioactive, but a glimpse was enough for me. There were two bodies in there, all bent out of shape with dark stains all over their clothes and one of them was almost certainly wearing a gas station uniform. I remember saying something like, oh Jesus, oh my God, pacing away from the dumpster in a state of total shock with the dispatcher in my ear. Sir? Sir, tell me what's going on, sir.

And I told her. They're in the dumpster. Jesus fucking Christ, they're in the goddamn dumpster. The cops arrived in about 10 to 15 minutes, and by then I'd run off near to the highway to puke up all the contents of my stomach. And I'd remembered that thing about preserving the integrity of crime scenes so in a wild panic I'd actually puked as I was running, then had to hold puke in my mouth for a few seconds before I puked even more out near the highway.

And after that, I just walked back and forth hitting my vape until I saw a cop car heading towards me down the highway, and then after talking to one of the officers for a few minutes, he told me I was free to leave. I looked the whole thing up online the first chance that I got later, but although I found a bunch of stories about a member of the public, yours truly, finding some bodies at a gas station, there was nothing that explained how or why those two people had been killed. Never since, I've always been extra careful while driving at night, both in the sense that I keep a very close eye on my fuel gauge and try to avoid any nocturnal pit stops, but also, if a gas station

looks a little too quiet, I'll avoid it altogether and just head to the next one. Without a doubt, the biggest scandal to ever hit my small Arkansas town was one summer. A 9th grade girl ended up in the hospital after being attacked while walking home from school. Whoever attacked her hadn't just beaten the crap out of her. They'd violated her to the point that she needed actual surgery to repair the damage. The doctor who performed the surgery broke down into tears during the press conference afterwards. It was his job to tell everyone the good news that the surgeries had been successful and

her life had been saved, and he still broke down into tears. Obviously, the next phase was trying to find the guy who did it. The victim's memory of the incident was hazy and she couldn't give a detailed description of her attacker, and so the whole town descended into this total state of paranoia trying to figure out who it was. State police were running the investigation while local cops were going door to door, or making visits to local schools to make appeals for information, and it was a very intense time.

We'd never known anything like it either. Someone's getting a speeding ticket around here and it's all people are gossiping about for maybe weeks, wondering where they'd been speeding to or who they were speeding from. So to go from low crime to woe crime, well that was quite something. Everyone was praying the attacker would be found and that they'd be found fast. And then out of the blue, a local pastor walked into a 17 year old son's bedroom and shot him point blank in the head. It was his wife, the boy's mom, who called the sheriffs on him, and she was still there screaming bloody murder when the deputies showed up to arrest him.

The pastor didn't resist. He just let those boys cuff him, and then he walked with them to their cruiser and off he went. And down at the department, the guy made a full confession, told them the whole chain of events too. He and his boy had been talking and had come to a disagreement. The pastor then walked downstairs, took a pistol out of his gun safe, and then walked back upstairs and shot him.

He told them what gun he used, the caliber of the bullet, everything except why he did it. The deputies asked him over and over what it was he and his boy disagreed over and why it was so bad the pastor felt he had to shoot him afterwards. But no matter how many times they asked, no matter how many times they phrased the question or threw out guesses, the pastor wouldn't say what caused it. He simply repeated that he did it and asked to be taken to jail. Officially speaking, no one knows why the pastor killed his boy, just over a week after

that ninth-grader ended up in the hospital. But off the record, we all know why, and it's the reason the girl's attacker was never caught. The only thing that really remains a mystery to everyone is how the pastor found out, because outside of a straight-up confession, it's hard to imagine how a father might come to learn something like that from his own flesh and blood. There's a lot of speculation around here, some of it good-natured, a lot of it not so good-natured, but it also doesn't seem to bother people that they'll never know how

the pastor figured out his boy was the one that attacked that little 9th grade girl. Because however it happened, some folks around here are very much of the opinion that the pastor did the right thing in putting his boy down. On Thursday, April 16th of 1987, four-year-old Marlena Childress was playing with her toys out in her family's front yard. Marlena lived in Union City, Tennessee with her 22-year-old mother, Pamela Bailey, along with her stepfather, Johnny, and her four-month-old half-brother, Damon. Also, attending the house that day was Marlena's seven-year-old stepbrother, Jerry, who was present until he was picked up by his mother at around 3 in the afternoon. At around 3.30 p.m., with Marlena still playing in the front yard, her mother washed dishes

while watching her daughter through the large double-hung kitchen window. Pam looked down for mere moments, scrubbing and rinsing a few dishes until she heard the screech and skidding of car tires coming from the street outside. She looked up, and saw a red vehicle with Kentucky license plates speeding down the street and away from her home. At first, Pam simply shook her head and returned to her work, yet seconds later she was hit with a terrifying realization. She peered through the window again.

Then, as a choking panic erupted in her chest, she rushed outside into her front yard to find that little Marlena was nowhere to be seen. Following a frenzied search of the surrounding area, Pamela rushed to contact the police. She strongly suspected that her four-year-old daughter had just been abducted by someone driving a red car with Kentucky license plates specific to McCracken County in the state's far west. Not just because it was seen speeding down the street, but because someone driving the exact same vehicle had approached her daughter at a nearby gas station just hours before she went missing. After surrendering to

the kids' demands, Pam had taken Marlena and her brother Jerry to a nearby gas station to pick up some candy. After obtaining her sweet treats and in her excitement to return home, little Marlena had run out of the store following her mother's purchases with the goal of being the first back to the car. Pamela quickly followed her daughter out into the gas station's parking lot, calling out to her as she went only to find her staring up at a man she didn't recognize. The man leaned forward, towering over the frightened child and began talking to her,

but when confronted by Pamela, he excused himself and walked away. Pamela gently scolded little Marlena and told her not to go rushing off like that in public places. Then, as her tearful daughter apologized, Pam traced the strange man's path and saw him climbing into the driver's seat of a red car with McCracken County plates. Officers from the Union City Police Department rushed to apprehend their suspect and tracked him down to his old Kentucky home. He seemed surprised by their arrival, admitted to having talked to the little girl at the

gas station back in Tennessee, and even consented to a brief search of his home to confirm Marlena wasn't there. Police all but ruled him out as a suspect, and after extensive interviews with Marlena's stepfather as well as her biological father, they too were cleared of suspicion. The investigation continued for another six weeks, with police becoming more and more exasperated with the lack of progress, until one day, a deeply shocking confession rocked the local community. On June 8th of 1987, Pam was talking with a private investigator named Stan Cavness.

Cavness had been hired at the behest of Pam's family, who were frustrated with the tepid progress of investigating police. And one day, he and Pamela were conducting a tape-recorded interview. Pamela began talking about the day Marlena went missing, and how her misbehavior was becoming increasingly unmanageable. Marlena's behavior got worse and worse while Pam got more and more stressed. Then finally, after a bout of near-riotist misconduct, Pamela snapped, spun around, and struck her daughter on the back of the head. She hit with such force that little Marlena wobbled, took a tumble, then struck her head on the corner of a nearby table as she fell.

Pamela rushed to her daughter's aid, but was horrified to discover that smashing her temple against a pointed wooden corner had suddenly, and quite definitely, killed her. Pamela continued her confession, fully aware that she was being recorded, Pamela continued her confession, fully aware that she was being recorded, telling Cavness that once she realized Marlena was dead, she'd hidden her body in the trunk of her car. She then drove said vehicle to the nearby town of Martin where she contacted a family friend named P.L. Summers and arranged to meet him at a bridge on Campground Road. There, they carried the dead girl's corpse from the trunk of Pam's car and then tossed

it into Obion River. Investigator Stan Cabness was stunned. He asked Pamela to confirm that what she was saying was the truth, then when she nodded, he informed her of his obligation to inform the police. On the tape, a tearful Pamela states that she understands then Cavenas pushed a button and the recording ends. Cavenas immediately contacted the Union City Police Department with whom he had already been working closely with and informed them of Pamela's shocking confession. She was subsequently arrested on charges of second-degree murder, and a team of highly

trained police divers were sent to trawl the Obion for any trace of Marlena's remains. But this is where the case becomes as vexing as it is chilling. Tennessee's Obion River is a relatively slow-moving and meandering water course. Heavy rains can temporarily increase its speed and water level, particularly in the winter and spring when rainfall increases. But in its natural state, much of the Obayan consists of slow-moving waters, especially in the lower stretches where it flows at a much more leisurely pace as it approaches the Great Mississippi.

According to Pamela, she and her friend had tossed her late daughter's body into the water during the small hours of April 17th, a time when most of the spring rains had come and gone. This meant that by early June, a team of divers would most certainly have been able to recover any human remains that were tossed into the Obion just two months prior. But strangely, despite an intense search that spanned multiple days, not a single trace of Marlena's body could be found. Curious regarding the inconsistency in her story, homicide detectives visited Pamela whilst in custody and asked her to confirm the location of the dumping site.

It was here that Pamela once again shocked investigators by recanting her entire confession. Pamela explained that just days prior to the taped confession with Stan Kavnis, she'd been released from a psychiatric hospital. The stress of losing her daughter had been too much to bear, so after a brief stay under the care of medical professionals, she was released having been prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants. Pam then claimed that not only had she been high as a kite during the taped conversation with Cavness, but he'd heavily intimidated her prior to its recording, having used the

threat of the electric chair to coerce a confession. Police then asked her what involvement if any her friend P.L. Summers had in her daughter's disappearance, and Pam made yet another astonishing claim. Summers wasn't her friend. He'd been her lifelong abuser, and it was he that had abducted and murdered little Marlena. According to Pamela, Summers' interest in her would wax and wane. Sometimes he'd be a constant menace, demanding satisfaction whenever the mood took him. Other times, he'd leave her in peace for months on end. But he always came back for more.

Then one day, after Summer's called to arrange a date, she decided that enough was enough. Summer stopped by, but instead of giving in to him, Pamela fought off his advances and then threatened to call the police. Summer's response was to threaten Marlena's life, and then a few weeks later, there's a screech of tires while she's washing dishes and her little girl was gone. A decidedly puzzled pair of homicide detectives then paid a visit to P.L. Summer's at his home. There, they informed him of the accusations, and his reaction was incredulous. Summers categorically denied Pamela's shocking claim and retorted by painting her as a liar of pathological

proportions. He stated he and Pamela had shared a brief dalliance many years ago, and that he didn't even know that she had a daughter, let alone kidnapped and murdered her. Police then asked Summers if he had an alibi for the day of Marlena's abduction. He responded by listing several, all of which proved credible when cross-referenced by detectives. Police had no choice but to rule Summers out as a potential suspect, but here's where the story takes another unexpected turn. Just months later, P.L. Summers was arrested on charges of molesting a 9-year-old boy.

An article from the Kentucky-based Paducah Sun, dated September 30th of 1987, states that a 65-year-old named P.. Sommers was arrested the previous afternoon on charges of aggravated battery. And what's more, Sommers was arrested after a traumatized child approached their parents. He wasn't caught at the scene. There wasn't some kind of sting. Sommers was visited at his home at around four hours after the attack. Sommers was visited at his home around four hours after the attack. Unless the nine-year-old he was accused of molesting had a photographic memory and a talent for articulating the finer details of a person's appearance, it's safe to say

that the police considered him a suspect due to his history of child abuse. As it turns out, there was some degree of truth to Pamela's frightful claims, but the fate of her daughter remained a deeply troubling mystery. Many police officers doubted Pam's story and others doubted her sanity, but all agreed that without a body or any other kind of solid evidence, the chance of getting a conviction was highly improbable. Free to move on with their life, Pamela Bailey found that she couldn't continue living in Union City and relocated to Mayfield, Kentucky around 40 miles northeast of her

childhood home. Two years later, sometime in early 1990, Pamela gave birth to a son that she named Casey, and for 12 long years they lived in peace and harmony. Then on April 22nd of 2002, just a few months after Casey's 12th birthday, Pamela told her young son that she had a surprise for him and asked him to put on a blindfold. Casey did as she was told before his mother led him out to the car and helped her son into the passenger seat. Six days prior marked the 15th anniversary of Marlena's disappearance. She would have been 19 years old had she been alive.

Pamela drove her son all the way to the mystery destination she picked out then carefully helped him from the passenger seat and let him off into the unknown. Casey kept asking if he could take off the blindfold yet. His mother told him no, that he had to wait until the right moment. He felt grass, soft and spongy under the soles of his sneakers, and then suddenly, his mother brought him to an abrupt halt and told him to take off his blindfold. When Casey did so, his first reaction was utter confusion. He believed his mother was taking him somewhere exciting or fun, potentially as a belated birthday present.

Instead, she'd taken him to a cemetery. Casey looked around, wondering what in the world his mother was thinking, when he suddenly spotted a clue to the purpose of their visit. Before him, a single word was etched into a small child-sized gravestone. Son, it said. Casey turned to see his mother brandishing a knife. He tried to run, but she grabbed his shirt, stabbing him once in the back of the neck and twice through the flesh atop his shoulder. Thankfully, Casey's quick thinking and decisive action saved his life. His dynamic movement meant the stab

wounds inflicted by his own mother were only relatively minor. He escaped, sought help, and then fully recovered following a brief stay in a hospital. Pamela was once again arrested on charges of harming one of her own children, but when questioned claimed that she had no memory of the event and must have blacked out for the duration. She was subsequently charged with attempted murder, but after a period of legal wrangling ended up pleading no contest to charges of second degree assault. She received a ten year prison sentence but was released after serving just two-thirds

of her time. And while she was in prison, police took the opportunity to reopen the investigation into the disappearance of Marlene Childress, but despite their best efforts, they were unable to make any solid progress in their investigation. Some detectives remained firm in their position that Pam, who had already admitted to harming one of her children, was responsible for Marlena's death. Others weren't so sure. According to one former homicide detective, there was a potentially credible sighting

of Marlena at a Memphis hair salon just six days after she went missing. Two hairstylists claimed that a girl, with a strong resemblance to Marlena had a Memphis hair salon just six days after she went missing. Two hairstylists claimed that a girl with a strong resemblance to Marlena was brought into their salon by two grown women who also appeared to be the guardian of a similarly aged boy. The women asked for the little girl's hair to be styled, but during the cut, the little girl kept sobbing and saying that she wanted her mother. The stylist claimed the women referred to the girl as Marlena, but thought very little of the encounter until they saw the girl's picture in a local newspaper.

At which point they seemed convinced that little Marlena and the sobbing child were one and the same. Following the reported sighting, Marlena's maternal grandfather drove all the way to Memphis to personally verify the story. Lawayde Strickland tracked down one of the women that had reportedly brought Marlena for a haircut, but after she was questioned by police, it was determined the little girl had not been his missing granddaughter. Yet in their haste to pursue more recent leads, investigators appear to have neglected what is arguably

their strongest avenue of investigation, the man in the red car. Despite having his name stricken from the list of potential suspects, the involvement of the mysterious driver with McCracken County plates has never been fully explored. Not only was his vehicle spotted speeding away from the scene of Marlena's abduction, but they just so happened to bump into one another in a gas station parking lot just hours before. Police seem to have assumed that since Marlena was sitting on the man's couch or at his kitchen table, she couldn't possibly have been present in the home, yet their search

appears to have been skin deep. The driver could have drugged Marlena to keep her quiet before secreting her away in a very discreet hiding place. Alternatively, he could have handed Marlena off to an accomplice in the hours between speeding away from her home and arriving back in McCracken County on the other side of the Kentucky-Tennessee state line. It's entirely possible that Pamela was in cahoots with this mystery driver and made a calculated decision to confuse and frustrate any subsequent investigation by claiming that

she had been her daughter's killer. But if that was the case, why arrange for her daughter to be abducted in the first place? If 22-year-old Pam believed that she was too young to be a full-time mother, she could have easily placed her daughter into adoptive care. But that would have come with a degree of stigma, a sense that she'd given up. However, a range for Marlena to go missing, especially if it happened during a brief lapse in her otherwise attentive care, that would leave Pam blameless. But what if Pam had a little more to gain than just her freedom? What if she lied about her daughter's fate in order to mask an immense personal gain?

What if Pamela Bailey sold her child? Between 1924 and 1960, a woman from Memphis named Georgia Tan stole and sold up to 5,000 different children. Operating under the cover of her position at the Tennessee Children's Home Society, Tan arranged for the children to be adopted in exchange for vast sums of cash. She performed no background checks on the people she sold children to, meaning there's a good chance that she deliberately sold children to people who would exploit their labor or exploit their labor or exploit their innocence. Tan charged anywhere from $700 to $10,000 and during a speech in 1944 had the

audacity to accuse other adoption agencies of trafficking vulnerable children for profit. Incredibly, one child stolen and sold by Georgia Tan grew up to be a household name. Born as Fred Phillips, the infant boy was sold to Kathleen and Richard Fleer sometime in early 1949 or 1950, who went on to settle in the state of Minnesota before renaming the boy Richard. The boy grew up an athlete, and by the early 1970s was well on his way to becoming the styling, profiling, limousine riding, jet flying, kiss stealing, wheeling and dealing son of a gun, Rick, the nature boy flair. The point is that even some

of America's most beloved public figures were once bought and sold as children. Sadly, Georgia Tann died of uterine cancer three days before the state filed charges against her, and thus escaped justice. But there's no evidence that the network she operated was effectively dismantled. It's estimated that Georgia Tann had made somewhere in the region of $120,000 from the sale of orphaned children, which in today's money is almost $1.2 million. An industry that profitable doesn't just disappear overnight, and it seems far too much of a coincidence that Tann's trafficking operation and Marlena's mysterious disappearance occurred

in the exact same state. It makes very little sense that Pam Bailey would be working in cahoots with the driver of the red car, only to then swiftly report him to the police. But what if the driver was a well-placed decoy, employed as part of a vast, historic human trafficking network that's existed for a hundred years? What if she felt so guilty and was so acutely aware of the evil that lurks in the shadows of our society that her ultimate gift to her twelve year old son was eternal, dreamless sleep? My name is Marco and I'm writing to you from Estonia. We have a really weird town here called Kardla, where a lot of weird, scary stuff happened back in the 80s, and I think your viewers would be interested in hearing about

it. I don't expect many of your American listeners to know where Estonia is, but that's not trying to clown on you guys as they say. If you put a gun to my head and ask me to point to the state of Idaho on a map, I'd tell you to pull the trigger and I'll never be convinced that Kalamazoo is a real place until I actually see it for myself. Now my point being is that my geography of far off places isn't all that great either. So allow me to explain where Estonia is and what we're all about. And to put it very simply, Estonia is situated in Russia's armpit. It's not so much the armpit part which makes that so bad

because if Estonia was situated in Margo Robbie's armpit, I think that would be fantastic. But instead, we're in Russia's armpit, with Little Latvia to our south and freaky Finland to our north. They're freaks and they know it, don't worry about calling them out on it. We're a reserved, independent and nature loving people.

By that I mean, we're a bunch of emotionally distant loners who love long hikes where we drink vodka and complain about the weather. Estonians are so terrible about talking about their feelings that if I asked, how are you, and you replied I'm good, thank you. I would consider that a deep heart to heart conversation. As if you have laid out your entire soul to me. If Estonia sounds kind of like a weird place, then my job is done, because it is a weird place.

It's always been a weird place, because you have to be weird if you want to survive. Especially when you're a tiny country trapped between the twin titans of Europe and Asia. But from what I understand, things got even weirder when the communists took over. Estonia was communist from the 1940s until 1991, and we tried our best to resist the Russians but there were too many of them, and after they installed Estonian Communists as our government, they started to ethnically cleanse us from our own country. They sent out lots of people to Siberia for a variety of crimes, some real, some imagined, whilst importing native Russians to try

and change the demographics. We went from 97% native Estonian to only 62% native Estonian by 1989, and everyone either worked in the factories or was enlisted into the army, and we became second-class citizens in our own country. The secret police was everywhere, you couldn't even go to the beach without permission, and if you were caught watching anything but Russian TV, it was just like that guy in parks and rec saying, straight to jail. It was a terrible time for us.

A time of hatred and paranoia, and the closer we got to independence, the more frustrated and volatile people became. And none more so than in a small coastal town known as Kardla. Kardla is the only town on the small island of Hjelma, which lies in the Baltic Sea. Most of the people there make their money from either fishing or tourism because there's a big nature reserve in the center of the island. But the third of Kardla's major industries is what's referred to in English as wrecking. Wrecking is basically when a team of divers strips a sunken shipwreck of anything valuable,

and while it's not nearly as common as it used to be for coastal communities around the world, the waters around Hiuma were a hot spot for naval combat between Germany and Russia during World War II. There's a lot of money to be made in bringing back military salvage, but the practice caused a huge rift between Kardla's wreckers and its fishermen. The fishermen all said that disturbing the drowned sailors' final resting places would bring bad omens to Kardla, but then, especially during communist times, people were encouraged to dismiss such silly superstitions as relics of an oppressive past.

The government then paid much better wages for wrecking than fishing, which further widened the rift between those two groups. And for a prolonged period, I'm talking many years, there was a general feeling in town that something bad would eventually happen. Either because of the hatred between the wreckers and the fishermen, because of the bad luck that the latter was bringing, or because of a third reason, the curse of the Hyuma witches. Now, I don't believe in this kind of thing, but it's worth mentioning because a lot of people around Hyuma do believe in it, and as we all know, believing

can make a regular person do some very strange things. There's a local legend which says Hyuma used to be home to a coven of witches, witches who would cast spells, shape shift, or summon storms, especially to sink ships or cause bad luck to unwanted visitors. One story claims that many hundreds of years ago, a fisherman insulted a group of witches and they cursed his family. His descendants were then plagued by misfortune for generations, and since many of Cardla's fishing families were descended from this very same family, the witch's curse was often alluded to following the sudden and tragic loss of a local fishing vessel. Again, I don't believe in witches

or giants or any stuff like that, but I do believe it's legends like that which contributed to what you might call Cardless psychic earthquake. That might sound a little woo-woo to some, but I don't use the term in any kind of supernatural sense. What I mean is all that tension in the region was like the fault lines in an earthquake zone. It kept building up and building up and when it finally got released, it was very bad. It all happened in the space of just one week, back in September of 1989. There's another reason I compare this to an earthquake, and that's how there was one big earthquake

then a handful of psychic aftershocks which followed, almost like echoes of the original incident. The first incident, the earthquake if you will, took place when a girl named Dasha Batrova blew up a Russian cafe by flooding the kitchens with gas and then igniting it. The explosion took place towards the end of service on a Saturday evening, so the restaurant was packed and the kitchen staff was in the dining area enjoying some hard-earned vodka after work. And by the time they smelled the gas, it was too late. And when all was said and done, 14 people ended up in a hospital, some with life-threatening

injuries, and five more ended up in the morgue. The authorities were quick to blame anti-Russian sentiment and were ready to use it as an excuse to arrest dissident Estonians, who were suspected of raising support for an independence movement. But when it was discovered that the perpetrator was none other than a 16-year-old Russian cocktail waitress, everyone in Kradlo was stunned. Dasha had no history of violent or destructive behavior. By all accounts, she was quiet, fairly popular, and she did well in school. But what caused a well-behaved, unassuming schoolgirl to suddenly want to blow herself

up and take as many people as possible with her? Police were still trying to figure out what the hell had happened, when just two days later a Russian fishing boat worker swerved his car into a line of school children all waiting for the bus to school. He was blackout drunk at 7.30 in the morning and witnesses said it looked like he deliberately swerved into the kids after putting his foot down on the accelerator. The drunk must have knocked himself out after slamming into a wall because he stayed in his driver's seat until the police showed up to drag him out of it.

But when they did, he was laughing. Everyone saw it too. The police, the medics, all the members of the public running around trying to save the kids' lives. They all saw it clear as day. Because when the drunk saw what he'd done, he started laughing so hard that you'd have thought that he was about to piss his pants. As they dragged him to the police car, the drunk was shouting, on din, dva, tri, chitaire,

which is Russian numbers counting from one to four. He was counting the number of children that he hit that weren't moving or crying or screaming. He was counting the ones that were dead. As you can imagine, the residents of Kardla were in a state of shock. Within just three days, they had the restaurant explosion, then the four dead school children, and with many more injured. And the local medical clinic was completely full, so many of the kids had to be taken to the mainland for proper treatment.

It was so shocking to people that it almost felt like a war had started. It felt like we were under attack from some unknowable force from the outside. But after the incident with the kids, people told themselves in typical Estonian fashion, well, now things can't get any worse, so it's all uphill from here. But then, things did get worse. There was a big funeral and vigil held for the school kids who lost their lives the morning that drunk decided to smash into them. Everyone in Kardla was in attendance, at least almost everyone. Because almost everyone being in the streets then walking to the cemetery together had made it very easy to figure out who was and who wasn't there.

And the more people started to notice that one particular family was missing, the more they started to ask questions, and the more they started to become concerned. A small group of people then went to check in on the absent family, only to make a truly terrible discovery. A boy of just eleven had convinced his little sister of around seven to join him in murdering their mother and father. They woke up early, then while their parents were still in bed, they crept downstairs to

their kitchen and retrieved a pair of very sharp kitchen knives. Then they walked back upstairs, into the parents' bedroom, then cut both their throats while they were still sleeping. Obviously, people don't just die if you cut their throats, especially if you don't get all the major blood vessels. So instead of pumping out blood so fast that they were too weak to move or scream, the kids' parents tried frantically to both stop the bleeding and to stop their children from attacking them.

But sadly, their efforts were in vain. They found the mother's corpse in the bathroom and the dad's in the kitchen downstairs. He passed out and died trying to reach the phone to call 03, which back then was the Soviet emergency number specifically for medical emergencies. And this marked the third incident of multiple murders within just a week. Then instead of telling each other, cheer up, things can't get any worse, people began to wonder what the next thing would be. They went from shocked and saddened, but still stoic, to almost a full-on panic descending on their town.

People wouldn't let their kids go to school. They'd refuse to go to work or do anything remotely dangerous. It was like people were convinced that there was some kind of curse on the town, which there obviously wasn't. But that didn't matter, because if people believe something, they truly believe it, then they can act in all kinds of ways you never expect them to. The wreckers started to throw back some of the more valuable and precious things they'd

kept from the great sunken graveyards they'd made their money from. They threw back metals, trinkets, all kinds of things, and in the middle of the night, some men walked out of their houses and tossed their trophies in the cardless harbor and watched them sink to the bottom, all in hopes that it would put the dead sailors' angry spirits to rest. Some of the fishermen, on the other hand, left offerings in the woods for the witches of Hiuma, who they firmly believed were behind all the horrifying goings-ons. It was like the vast majority of the people in town all fell victim to the sudden, all-consuming collective madness, one that made them lash out at each other and act in all kinds of

bizarre ways. They kept waiting and waiting for the next terrible thing to happen, but thankfully for them, the psychic storm hovering over the town had finally abated. Again, I don't use that term in the literal sense, but to me, it's the only term that actually broaches on what happened during that one week back in 1989. Cardla went from years and years without so much as a common assault, and then during the space of just seven days, a dozen people all lost their lives in a series of senselessly violent acts. It's almost enough to make a person believe in restless spirits or ancient, wiccan curses.

But if you ask me, what's to blame is something that's in our programming as biological machines, lines of code we've been running since the days we lived in caves and the shadows cast monsters on the walls during long and uncertain nights. My name's Laura, I'm in my 30s and I'm from Leeds in the north of England. Now I heard you take submissions from viewers so I'd like to send mine in. I used to work morning shifts in a petrol station when I was at Loughborough Uni. Any day I had afternoon lectures, I'd get up at 5 o'clock in the morning, work from 6 till 12, then I'd get the bus to Uni in time for my 1 o'clock lectures. It was quite a good gig, really. After the morning rush, the last three hours or so were

usually quite quiet, and if the boss wasn't around, I could sometimes get away with just chilling in the office and reading a book in between serving customers. One morning, a Tuesday it was, a man walked into the petrol station who had to be in maybe his 40s or 50s. His appearance grabbed my attention right away because when I looked up from my book, I saw that he was the spitting image of Mark Bullin from the cover of T-Rex's album Unicorn. My dad, God rest his soul, was a big T-Rex fan, and I used to flick through all of his old LPs when I was a kid.

I always found myself transfixed by Mark Bullin's face. He was such a beautiful man when he was alive, but the guy that walked into the petrol station looked like his evil twin or something. He had the same mop of dark curly hair, the same dark tired looking eyes, but he had much sharper features and looked extremely gaunt, like a skeleton that someone had paper-machè'd a thin layer of wet tissue paper on. He was dressed that part too, with a sheepskin coat on, a bright pink t-shirt, and what looked like blue bell-bottom jeans on.

That would have been a solid outfit too if it wasn't for the sorry state of his clothes that they were in. Instead of them making him look good, even if it was a very vintage kind of good, they just made him look weird, smelly, and creepy. I usually didn't concern myself with people's appearances much. It was a petrol station, not a nightclub. So even Dracula could walk in, fangs all bloody with his cape blowing in the wind, and I wouldn't say a word if he just paid for his fuel and left.

And then, under the circumstances I think I'd rather it was Dracula who walked in that day, as opposed to Mark Bullan's evil twin. He grabbed a pint of milk from the fridge section, walked up to the counter, and asked for X amount of fuel on whatever pump it was. I took his money, gave him his change, and then thanked him for his custom. Ninety-nine times out of ten, a bloke would just say, Cheers, love, and then off they'd go. But evil Bullins stayed by the counter, looked at me and then said, you're a pretty young lady aren't you? To say my skin crawled would have been the understatement of the century. I'm not great at taking compliments as it is, which I know is a

big me problem, but when the compliments come as greasy and creepily spoken as Evil Bullens, it knocks me pretty sick. And I do mean creepily spoken as evil bollins. It knocks me pretty sick. And I do mean creepily spoken, too. It wasn't just some throwaway compliments as he was walking out. He drew out the very before pretty like, You're a very pretty young lady, aren't you? And the aren't you was all squeaky. Like he was talking to a kid or something.

And I get that we had a big generation gap between us, but I was a grown woman, not a child. Now even back then, I knew better than to talk back to a stranger like that, and it's not worth the risk. So instead of being lippy with him, I said, thank you, in a polite but very reserved way, and then stepped away from the counter to make it look like I had work to do in the stockroom. It was a trick that I had used once or twice, a gesture that said, I'd love to stop and chat but duty calls, and for the most part, the men attempting to flirt with me took the hint and made their way back to their cars.

But an evil Bullens case, I turned my back on him and immediately asked, Where are you going? With his pleasant smiles I could manage, I turned back and I was about to tell him I was off into the storage room to carry on my stock count, always a solid excuse, when he said, Don't walk away from me. I'm trying to talk to you. There was just a hint of aggression creeping into his voice when he said it too, just enough

to get me thinking, uh oh, this guy's gonna be a problem, isn't he? I started explaining that as much as I'd like to stop and chat, I had work to do. My exact words were I'm on the clock, to which he replied, well I'm a customer, and then started telling me how he didn't often get to talk to a girl as pretty as me, so he wanted to make the most of it. I tried telling him that as much as I appreciated the compliment, I'd get into trouble with my boss if I didn't complete my assigned workload. Evil Bolin just waved away my concerns and then told me,

I'll deal with your boss if he complains. Then, just as I was about to reply, he told me, I wish I was as pretty as you. I know some of you might be thinking I'm a bit full of myself, dropping the word pretty a lot, but it was verbatim what he was saying to me. I'm not just using this whole thing to drop a not-so-subtle humble brag, and also I'm bad at handling compliments as it is, but for a grown man to say I wish I was as pretty as you in this slimy, lecherous way was just this whole new level of cringe for me. And in response, the only thing that came to mind for me was to say something about

how inappropriate that was in a professional setting. And while I was sure his intentions were pure, self-preservative flattery by the way, I didn't appreciate him commenting on my appearance. And the guy just laughed like this short chuckle and snort and then asked me, don't you like being pretty? And for the first time in our conversation I couldn't think of a response, either professional or heartfelt. I just wanted to run into the stockroom, slam the door and kick the crap out of a few cardboard boxes while pretending that they were evil Bullens' ball sack.

But I was scared that if I did, he might follow me. So instead I tried my best to stand my ground and repeated that I didn't appreciate his tone or his question, and I then told him that if he didn't leave the premises, I'd call the police. A little bit more of that aggression crept into his voice, and he asked me, What, you really gonna call the bloody police just cause someone called you pretty? Are you taking the piss? I didn't even want to engage with him, so I just asked him to leave and added some preemptive thanks to make my point.

There was a bit more to and fro with him saying how he was a customer and wasn't going to leave, and then when I pulled out my phone as if to say, I really am about to call 999, he says this, you know if I looked like you, I'd just stay at home all day without a stitch of clothing on, just staring at myself in the mirror. And to this day, that's still one of the most skin-crawlingly creepy things a man has ever said to me, and at the time, I was so angry I could have screamed. But I tried my very best to keep my cool, and just asked him to leave again.

Bollensiebel twins started going off on what about how I needed to learn to take compliments, and then said he wished he got half the amount of attention that I did, which was just a bizarre thing to say because he didn't even know me. I just kept asking him to leave on repeat, assuming it was just a matter of time before he ran out of steam and did leave. They kept going. And going. And going. They started saying something about how depressed I'd be when I got older and lost my looks.

How once they'd been taken away from me, I'd be nothing but a pathetic, undesirable waste of oxygen, and I'd end up sticking my head in an oven. This guy was off his rocker and that comment really pushed me closer to the edge in terms of just snapping and screaming at him. But I just gripped my teeth and repeated myself for the umpteenth time that he needed to leave. And that's when he said, if you don't want the attention, if you don't like being pretty, then I can make you not so pretty if you want." And the threat immediately silenced me, but it didn't paralyze me.

And the second after he said that, I brought up on my phone that I had dialed the police, and then I asked for them. The guy did like a sort of fake, outraged laugh, but then his voice changed almost completely. It went from a sort of sneer to a very deep, guttural growl. He said if I had such a big effing problem being pretty, he could come over the counter and smash my face in until I didn't look like a person anymore. He said my friends and family wouldn't recognize me when he was done, and I could forget about any kind strangers calling me pretty because I'd be as ugly on the outside as I was on

the inside. And by the time I'd been connected to the police, there was a tremor in my voice as I started telling the operator what was happening. It was probably one of the more stressful experiences of my entire life, to be honest, because while I was watching Bolin's Evil Twin to make sure he didn't jump over the counter and while I couldn't help but hear all the horrific stuff he was saying, I had to concentrate on giving all the necessary info to the police. It was like total cerebral overload, and the more stressed I got, the more upset I got. I remember how the bloke said something like, I'd love to cut your face off and wear it.

I'd stare at myself in the mirror and bang on wearing your effin' knickers while I pretend that I'm you. I heard that, then the operator said, police are on their way, and then I just lost it. I started screaming at that guy, telling him how the police are on their way, how he was gonna get nicked if he didn't screw off while he still had the chance. And only then did he start making his way towards the door, but while he did, he had a load of stuff about how he'd be back the next day to teach me a lesson in manners, and all this other stuff he never followed up on, thank God. The police were there in minutes.

I showed them the CCTV footage and as soon as I did, one of the officers instantly recognized the man who had been harassing me. He said his name was Charles, or Chaz, but that he sometimes told people his name was Alexi Bowie. And I said that he hadn't told people his name was Alexi Bowie, and I said that he hadn't told me his name. He'd just gone off on one after I didn't giggle and curtsy when he gave me a compliment. And apparently, this was something Chaz did a lot.

According to one of the coppers, Leicestershire police had already received several complaints regarding Chaz's habit of harassing lone women, especially ones that were working and couldn't otherwise just walk away from him. It was like his thing, and according to one of the officers, he was just weeks away from being arrested and charged. They were still waiting to get the go-ahead from the CPS, but when they did, Chaz was probably going to prison for a few months at the very least. I couldn't have asked for a better outcome,

and I think they actually went through with what they said because I never saw that Chaz again. Not around the petrol station, not around town, anywhere. I don't know the guy's actual full name, so I've never been able to look it up to find out how much time he actually got, if any, but the fact that I never saw him around the garage again was a good indicator that he'd finally got what he deserved. I used to work nights at a gas station called North Star Mart out near a place called Foster in rural Virginia. I used to drive up from Gloucester, get there at around 10pm, and then work all through the night until 6am whenm. when my boss,

a dude named Judd, came over to relieve me. Judd lived right next door to the gas station in a big old house that he claimed that he built himself. There was no way that he built that whole thing on his own, but he was far too nice for me to call him out on it, so I just let it be. He was a great boss too. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Not many folks can say that they had a boss who had done almost anything to keep him safe, but I can, and it makes me feel a little guilty sometimes that I don't head up there to visit him more. But I don't like driving around Foster anymore. I don't like going anywhere near the place, and by the end of this story I

think you're going to understand why. I worked at the North Star for nine months and three weeks, working anything from two to five nights a week, depending on how busy I was at school. Not a single customer, and all the time I worked there, ever gave me a single ounce of trouble. It was one of the best jobs I ever had in that respect. It was always a little busier on weekends, but during weeknights I'd sometimes serve only two or three customers

a night and spend the rest of my time watching movies on my iPod, back when that was like a revolutionary thing to do. Judd was really chill like that. He didn't give me a bunch of cleaning tasks, and he didn't give me any busy work at all actually, and he only ever had one rule. If anyone ever showed up late at night acting weird in any way, I was to call him right away. It didn't matter if the call woke him and his wife up from the sweetest dreams they'd ever had, if anyone was acting sketch, Judd wanted to know about it.

I figured that was fair enough. The gas station was Judd's whole life. It was his retirement plan, so if it went up in flames, well, you see where I'm going with this. So even though it felt slightly emasculating, as in I felt like I could take care of the station myself, I agreed to give Judd a call every time there was any disturbances. When he first told me about his little golden rule, I'd be lying if I said that it didn't make me a little nervous, I guess. It suggested that there were a lot of weird people who came by the gas station at night,

but that couldn't have been further from the truth. Like I said, nine whole months and not a single instance of weird or disturbing behavior, and then one night, it happened. I was in the back office one night, splitting my attention between security monitors and a copy of The Dark Knight Rises, when I suddenly saw a lone figure approaching the gas station. We had three cameras, one facing the pumps, one facing the approach to the store, and a third which allowed me to watch the inside of the store from the back office.

I can see the guy walking towards the store, past the pumps and then into the view of the second camera, but then instead of walking into the store like literally everybody else, he stops dead outside the door. He's right in the view of the second camera so I'm looking at this guy fairly close up and he looked like a perfectly regular rural Virginian dad type. He looked like he had work boots on, some faded jeans, and a baseball cap with some kind of hunting or fishing logo on it. Literally the most unremarkable looking guy that could ever walk through our door. But his behavior most definitely got my attention. I guess it's not entirely true that nothing weird ever happened because there was one

previous occasion where I called Judd in the middle of the night. Some crazy lady was screaming like a demon out near the pumps. It was a Saturday, and it had to be maybe 4 to 4.30 in the morning, but just like Judd said, I gave him a call at his house. I told him about the lady and how her screaming was freaking me out. He asked for a description, I gave him one, and then he tells me, Oh, that's just Rhonda, liquored up on payday. She'll head home once she's tired herself out.

And then you know what? She did. She eventually stopped screaming and then just kinda walked off, like she was done with that night's performance Anyway, the guy in the sporting goods cab stopped dead and just stood there in front of the camera not moving a muscle Not nearly as freaky as screaming like a banshee, but still weird nonetheless. I Figured he was I don't know taking a moment to think or something But then as I'm watching him, his head starts slowly moving, turning his neck until he's staring into the camera lens.

I know it was just an illusion, but it felt like he was staring directly at me, and that was easily one of the most unnerving sensations I've ever experienced. Once the guy's behavior reached a concerning level of weird, I grabbed the phone and called Judd. I didn't even feel emasculated doing it either. Whatever that guy's problem was, it wasn't meth. It was something way scarier than that. Judd picked up the phone, then once again he asked me to describe the person acting

weird. I started describing the guy, and then the next thing, Judd slams the phone down. I look back at the screen and the guy has disappeared from view, but he's not in the store either, something, where the hell has he gone? But at the same time, I'm also thinking, why did Judd just slam that phone down on me? He told me to call him if something weird started to happen, and the first time he sounded sleepy but pretty calm, so I was wondering what was so different about that time, when I suddenly see him on the monitors.

Judd was running towards the gas station in nothing but his boxer shorts and a wife beater, and he was carrying a shotgun in his hands. He burst into the store and asks me where he is. Then when I say the guy just disappeared, and that I think he just walked off, Judd runs past me into the office to check the monitors. I'm freaking out too because what the hell is he carrying that shotgun for? But no matter how many times I asked him what's going on, he kept silencing me and telling me that I needed to concentrate as he ran back to the security footage to get a look at the guy's face.

I watched him, rewinding the footage until he finally found what he was looking for, and when he did, I watched Judd turn completely pale. Whoever it was, Judd was terrified of him. So terrified that he felt the need to come running over with a shotgun to protect me, and then that scared the hell out of me too. Judd sent me home that night after calling the cops, and the next day he called to say that he'd understand if I didn't want to come back to work. I asked just one time if he could tell me who the man was, and Judd paused and then repeated the part about understanding if I didn't want to come back.

I thanked him for the job, wished him luck, and then just hung up. Like I said earlier, I still feel guilty about not going up to see him more. He was a great guy and a great boss, but without knowing who that guy was, without knowing why Judd was so scared of him, I couldn't put myself in the position of working for him anymore. I didn't want to die for some stupid gas station job, no matter how cool my boss was. And if there was a guy out there who scared the hell out of one of the toughest sons of bitches I'd ever known, then what chance in hell did I have. Back when I was in my senior year of high school, I used to work weekends at a rural

gas station here in my home state of Nebraska. I worked second shift every Saturday and Sunday, so 2pm to around 9pm, and early one summer's afternoon I set off to work with nothing but a few wispy clouds and a clear blue sky. Now call me sentimental, but I love driving around Nebraska. I don't think there's any place quite like it. You hit the highway from some small town and it's like the whole world stretches out in front of you for as far as the eye can see. There's an almost unbroken skyline, only occasionally interrupted by a windmill, a barn, or a cluster

of trees. It can look pretty as a picture on a sunny day, and up until that point, May had brought only sunshine and showers. But as I drove along the highway that afternoon and looked off into the distance, I saw some really scary looking storm clouds rolling in. The general rule is that most storm clouds look much scarier than they actually are, especially when there's that big wall of angry-looking clouds facing you down like something straight out of the Bible. But most of the time, you get a little rain, you get a little wind, and nothing much else to worry

about. However, on this occasion, something told me it was going to be a bad one. By the time I got to the gas station, the storm warnings were being sounded over by local radio stations. My coworker and I normally did a quick handover, but since we got the storm warnings, we both had a hell of a lot more work on our hands. We had to lock all the windows, then either secure all of our outdoor fixtures or drag them inside, and then we had to inspect the pumps and all that kind of stuff before shutting off the fuel completely.

My coworker went off to fuel up the generator just in case we lost power, as I went off to assemble a bunch of flashlights and batteries. And we obviously can't use candles with it being being a gas station, so it was a major priority. We already had our designated shelter lined up, the station's office, so after ensuring the first aid kit was fully stocked, we kept the radio tuned up and our ears wide open for weather alerts and other announcements. We figured people would stay home, and we'd be in for a pretty turbulent but relatively lonely shift. But we were wrong. One by one, three cars rolled into the front over the course of about an hour, two driven by single people and the other containing a mom and her two young daughters.

Wherever they'd been, the path home led directly through the storm, so instead of risking their lives they came to us and begged for shelter. And we couldn't say no to them. We weren't exactly equipped to shelter that many people, especially not overnight, but there was just no turning them away under these circumstances. We let everybody help themselves to drinks and snacks if they were hungry, mainly to try and calm their nerves as the incoming storm got worse and worse. And boy oh boy, did it get worse.

We all stayed relatively calm until we heard the tornado sirens going off. I'm pretty sure all the grownups there had heard the sound before, but it scared the hell out of the younger woman's two daughters who started screaming and crying and begging their mom to take them home. Then when stuff started flying off of our roof, a piece of debris hit one of their cars and the sound of the alarm made the kids cry even harder. The poor things just didn't understand what was happening. It only took a few more moments of stuff falling off of our roof before we knew that we had

to find shelter in the station's office. There was just enough room to fit everyone and thankfully, with the office shielding us from the sound of the sirens and the howling winds, the two little girls started to calm down a little. But when something flew across the parking lot and smashed through the big plate glass window and made a sound like a freaking bomb exploding. And the sound scared the hell out of me and a co-worker and by that point we were kind of expecting it.

But the two little girls nearly lost their minds. They must have thought the whole building was coming down and so did one of the single drivers because as the girls started shrieking, she had some kind of panic attack and tried to run back to her car. Once we realized what she was trying to do, my coworker lunged at her, telling her how going outside meant absolute death, and she wouldn't listen. She tried to fight my coworker, screaming and flailing, and it took me and the other single driver to subdue her. The little

girls were screeching so hard they could barely breathe, watching as she struggled a little more and then burst into tears. Then and only then did she stop struggling, as she cried and told us over and over again that she was sorry. We rode out the storm together for the next few hours and I remember how the thing that really united us and kept us from getting too frightened was the goal of keeping those two little girls from screaming themselves unconscious. I worked so hard at keeping them calm and reassuring them that we were all going to

be just fine. But sometimes when I think about it, I think we were all trying to reassure ourselves too, and talking to them little girls like we were was sort of projecting, I think. Eventually the sounds of the winds died down and after about an hour or so, it looked like it was safe for everyone to make a move. We walked into the store to find it absolutely trashed, and so much stuff had blown in that it was impossible to determine what exactly had smashed the window and made that explosion sound. Glass, snacks, magazines, and debris were just everywhere, and we had to tread very

carefully over it all to keep from falling on the carpet of shards. The folks thanked us before they got into their cars, especially the young mom, who thanked the other two drivers for helping keep her daughters calm when she too was almost losing her mind. After that, everyone except me and my coworker went their separate ways, leaving me and him like what in the hell did we just go through? Hey friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1pm EST.

And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9pm EST. Thanks so much friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.