The Lets Read Podcast - 297: WE SHOULD HAVE RUN WHEN WE HAD THE CHANCE | 6 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 283

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about wrong turns & Halloween. 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: Soul

The End For our second anniversary, my boyfriend and I arranged a weekend stay at a luxury log cabin. We'd been going to the same coffee shop for a few months, when I accidentally knocked his iced latte all over him like a total klutz. Rob was so, so nice about it. Then the next time I bumped into him, I offered to pay his dry cleaning bill. He said he'd rather I'd paid him back by taking him out to dinner and since we totally had some chemistry between us, I accepted. And now cut to about two and a half years later and we're flying down to Nashville

to spend a few days with Rob's parents before heading off into the hills of Monroe County way out near the North Carolina state line. When he'd first suggested the idea over dinner, I was dead against it. Rob and his family loved all things outdoors related, and they were hardcore about it too. And so at first I was scared his cabin would be some one room hunting shack, and it'd be dinners of raw deer meat for all three nights. Now Rob assured me that that wasn't the case. Then when I was still skeptical, he showed me the website. The cabin he picked out looked incredible.

It was set onto a hillside with a large deck overlooking what looked like a stunning view. There was a fire pit, a hot tub for soaking under the stars, and that was just outside. The inside had an open floor plan with high vaulted ceilings and exposed wooden beams. There were also leather sofas, state-of-the-art appliances, and a whole kitchen complete with a farmhouse sink and breakfast nook. But I think the thing that really caught my eye was the old stone fireplace, because I could constantly picture me and Rob curling up together in front of it after a long hike through the woods.

And that's all after a couple showers in the bathroom that, I kid you not, had heated floors. I've never stayed in a hotel room that fancy, let alone a shack in the middle of butt-love and nowhere. So after seeing the cabin's website, I went from super skeptical to super excited. And we stayed four days with Rob's mom and dad, who are just the sweetest people ever, and then on Friday morning, we loaded up the rental car with our stuff and then got on the road towards a place called Coker Creek. Everything was going fine, and we even stopped in Chattanooga to grab some food because we were ahead of schedule.

But then, once we passed Coker Creek and turned onto the back roads to locate our cabin, our progress slowed down dramatically. This was back in the late 2000s, so while we did have an early model of GPS in the rental, it was about as useful as a glass hammer up in those forested hills. We had a sheet of printed directions and a paper map, but we first realized the directions were no good when we hit our first dead end with no luxury cabin in sight. And long story short, we retraced our path about four times. But each time we got deep into the woods, we got so disoriented that we ended up going around in circles before we finally found our way back to a highway

And from there we try again getting more and more frustrated each time Until finally we drove down a road that had a house at the end of it instead of just another dead end It was Rob's idea to stop and ask for directions The house looked old really old so we figured anyone inside had been living in the area for quite a while, in which case they probably knew of the cabin we were looking for. It was a small single-story home with faded peeling paint that might once have been white but had since become worn away to reveal spots of rotting wood. Missing sections of shingle caused the roof to sag in places while patches of

moss covered up whole sections of it. As we got out of the car and walked towards the porch we could see it was barely holding together. There were gaps in the floorboards, the banisters were splintering, and I remember as Rob put his boot up onto the first step the whole thing creaked so loudly that it could have doubled as a doorbell. The second the porch steps started creaking we heard movement from inside the house. All the windows were either shuttered or covered with cloth or newspaper so while we couldn't see inside the house we knew someone was home.

Rob knocked on the door expecting someone to answer right away because we were 99% sure that there was someone right on the other side of the door. But it took them until Rob politely asked if they could give us directions for them to acknowledge our presence. Only then did the door open just a crack and a woman of around 50 appeared in the gap. She was short, had a very thick accent, and didn't look remotely pleased to see us when she opened up and asked us what we wanted. Rob repeated that we were hoping to get some directions, but the woman told us that she couldn't help. Her husband

was off running errands, and he knew the area infinitely better than she did. So we could either get back into the rental car and try our luck with a maze of back roads again, or we could take a seat on the porch and wait patiently, and hope her husband planned on getting back before dark. The lady said that she didn't mind us waiting, and that she was sorry that she couldn't be of more help, so we thanked her, and then took a seat on an old porch swing after thoroughly dusting it off. We waited close to an hour, killing as much time as we could by reminiscing about the two years we'd been together. It was our way of staying positive.

There didn't seem to be any point in worrying or complaining as we were sure to find the cabin at some point. But then, at one point, I made a very rough comment about how we'd been sitting on this lady's porch for like half an hour and she didn't invite us inside. So much for southern hospitality, I said, and honestly it was mostly intended as sort of a joke. But then Rob stepped off the porch, took a look at the house, and then said something like, I guess they must really value their privacy,

and then motioned for me to come look at something. All four downstairs windows and all five upstairs windows were covered by either these grubby looking curtains, canvas sheets, or plain old newspaper. And as I looked at it, the house started to really give me the creeps, but I also knew exactly what Rob would say if I aired my thoughts. He'd say that these were just some poor simple folks who valued their privacy and their solitude. Sure, it was a world away from Manhattan, but these were good, salt of the earth people who'd probably be more than happy to help us, especially if it meant giving them back

their privacy. And so I just kept my mouth shut. I knew he was thinking a little of what I was thinking. I mean, he had to be. But it was either wait for some directions from that lady's husband, or potentially get lost in these backwoods for a fifth time and not be able to find a way back to that house to ask those directions. So we stayed put.

After just less than an hour of pacing back and forth and grabbing snacks from our car, we heard the sound of a vehicle coming up the road behind us. We were sitting on the old couple's porch swing when we heard it and the sound lifted our spirits immensely. If anyone knew where our luxury cabin was located, it was this pick-up driving Appalachian old-timer who'd probably been living here long before our cabin had ever even been built. And we stayed put until we saw the guy's truck coming up the trail, and then Rob got up and said something like, I better go make myself known.

He's gonna wonder whose car that is, referring to our rental." We stepped off the porch and then started waving at the oncoming truck as he jogged towards the rental, pointing and sort of gesticulating as if to say, that's ours and we come in peace. The truck stopped just shy of the rental as Rob kept walking towards it. Then, as an older man opened the door and stepped out of his cab, Rob began talking to him. He was wearing a denim shirt and a canvas jacket with jeans, boots, and a cap with some kind of logo on it, and appeared to be listening intently to Rob as he spoke. I remember being startled by the sudden sound of the lady's voice coming from my right, and she said, My husband's home.

With his wide, unsettling smile stretched across her face, it seemed. I remember looking at her for a moment, thinking, what are you up to? And then as I turned to look at Rob, I saw him suddenly back away from the lady's husband. He raised his arms and started shouting, No, no, no. And then the man aimed a pistol and shot him. I had no time to react, because right as Rob fell, I heard a screech coming from my right. The lady had burst from her front door with a hatchet in her hand and was rushing down the porch toward me. I ran the opposite way, jumping off the porch and then darting around the corner of the

house. The whole time I was thinking about the guy with the gun and how I needed to put solid objects between us to keep from being shot, and that's what I did. His wife was really no threat to me at all, and these days, it gets a kind of wry smile out of me whenever I think about that dumb bitch tripping as she followed me off their porch and crashing into the dirt with a very pathetic sounding grunt. But it took me a long, long time to be able to think of it that way. I knew the guy would be coming for me.

He just shot my boyfriend of two years in front of me, so there's no way he intended to let me get away. But the thing that made me feel like I could have sprinted for days was the thought of what he'd have in store for me if he caught me. My sister was something of a true crime aficionado, completely hooked on A&E and investigation discovery, so whenever I stopped by her place for a few glasses of wine after work, she'd inevitably regale me with the tales from the latest true crime show that she'd been watching. I won't go into too many gory details, but one of the things that really creeped me out

was when my sister told me something to the effect of, they kill the guy you're with right away so they can take their time with you. But my sister told me something to the effect of, they kill the guy you're with right away, so they can take their time with you. And that's all that was running through my mind as I sprinted through the trees, away from the house, away from the rental car, and away from Rob. I ran, and I ran, and I ran some more. I ran until my lungs hurt, until I could feel my pulse thumping in my head, until my thighs ached from the mindless terrifying exertion of running from my very life. I ran

further than I needed to, way further, having visions of some ex-marine sniper being able to pick me off through the trees and at distances I assumed were safe. I ran until I felt like I was about to pass out, and then when I stopped, I puked up all the water and snacks me and Rob had eaten. Our final meal together, and I hadn't even known it. I think I must have run for about a mile before I came to a road, and then after I followed that for a while, I saw a fire lookout which turned out to be road, and then after I followed that for a while, I saw a fire lookout which turned out to be empty, and after that I must have wandered through the

hills and woods for at least four or five hours before I came across any signs of civilization. It's strange to think about it now. I was so exhausted, and the situation was so surreal that I must have seemed unusually calm to the people whose doorstep I ended up on. I remember asking them politely too if I could please use their phone because my husband had just been shot. They thought I was talking about some kind of hunting accident or something, but when

I told them it had been murder, they naturally were very alarmed. They asked where it happened, if the shooter was headed this way, but I told them that I'd been walking for miles and had no idea how to get back to the house by road. I think if I had known Rob might still be alive, I'd have been much more frantic in my pursuit. Maybe I'd have wanted to go back, holding out hope that he could still be saved. But I had no hope. I saw where he'd been shot. I saw the way he fell. That man wanted him dead. Rob most probably flatlined by the time I stopped to puke. And so instead, I called

the cops, and then waited in those nice folks' home until they arrived. They asked me to show them where the house was on a map, and I said that I only knew the rough area, but I showed them as best I could. They searched for days, but the house was nothing but a smoldering ruin when they finally located it, and Rob's body was nowhere to be found. His parents kept him on the missing person's register for a few years in the hopes that if someone found his remains it'd make the identification process easier. But about 18 months ago Rob's mom and dad completed the process of having him declared legally dead.

We held out some degree of hope for a while, but at some point we had to face the facts. Rob wasn't ever coming home. He was gone. And he was gone forever. We held an official funeral for him the following month, and since I can't think of any other way to finish this, I'll just end with the eulogy that I read out at his funeral. Rob was more than just a partner. He was my best friend.

The person I could turn to for light when days seemed dark. He lived with a spirit that embraced every moment, that found beauty and meaning in small things. His kindness and generosity touched everyone he met, and his love made my life richer than I ever thought possible. Though our time together was cut far too short, I am grateful beyond words to have loved him and been loved by him. He's not just with us in memory.

He's in every laugh, in every act of kindness, in every adventure that we take in his honor. So thank you, Rob, for every precious moment. I will carry you with me, always. In April of 2016, my friend Tony and I were on our way to a birthday party in our hometown of Baton Rouge. It was the 23rd birthday of a mutual friend and to celebrate the occasion, her parents allowed her to throw a party at their house in Santa Maria. I remember being incredibly excited for the party. And part of the reason we were so excited was that Santa Maria is I remember being incredibly excited for the party.

And part of the reason we were so excited was that Santa Maria is home to some truly beautiful homes and therefore some incredible places to throw a party. The only trouble was neither of us knew the neighborhood very well. I was at the wheel while Tony was there in the passenger seat. He had his phone in his hand, trying to figure out exactly where we needed to go whilst being the in-car DJ for our pre-party tunes. And so while he was adept at picking bangers to get us all turned up, he wasn't the best navigator I could have asked for. Santa Maria is divided up into four distinct sections, and between them is

the Santa Maria Golf Course. We ended up finding the right one, but the real trouble came when we had to find the correct street. A text from a friend said that we wanted some number on Manchek, so we were looking for something like Manchek Road or a Manchek Avenue. But then, after turning on the Manchek Lake Drive, which we figured was the one we wanted, we were suddenly faced with Manshack Way Avenue, Manshack Trace Avenue, and Manshack Crossing Avenue. Four different streets, all named Manshack, meaning we had no idea which street the party was on.

I asked Tony to give one of our friends a call just to confirm the address, but when we finally managed to get a hold of someone, the music was too loud for us to get any coherent answer out of her. She said that she'd double check with our friend to get the right address and would call us back. But she didn't, and we ended up driving up and down Man Shacks trying to work out if it was the number they gave us at Man Shack Way or the same number on another Man Shack. if it was the number they gave us at Manshack Way or the same number on another Manshack. We tried looking for clues, things like cars lined up outside the house, groups of people chatting on the porch, or maybe this sort of faint thumping of bass in the distance. Things would have been easier if the party was actually inside, but part of the agreement to

use her parents' place was that the party be centered in the backyard and pool area. That way, the house wouldn't get trashed. But that also meant that both those numbered houses looked almost identical. They were all dark on the outside, neither had any obvious signs of activity, and both houses had a bunch of cars lined up outside. And so in the end, we decided to turn down the driveway on one of the Man Shack other places, and because we figured the worst thing that had happened is that we'd have a very confused homeowner tell us that it was the other one. And so I drove us up the driveway, stopped the car, then Tony and I sat there in silence for a moment.

I remember the silence, the total complete silence of being in that driveway, and how I got a really strong feeling that we were not at the right address. The house was dark, and the curtains seemed like they were drawn, but then suddenly a flicker of movement near the curtains started to catch our eye. We knew someone was home, but if this was where the party was out, I doubted that they had been hiding in a front room taking peeks out at cars in the driveway. I told Tony that I didn't think it was the place, but he insisted on knocking on the

door just to make sure. I told him I wasn't sure that was a good idea, then the last thing he said to me was, what's the worst that could happen? Before my windshield suddenly shattered. Shards of glass rained down on us as gunshots rang out, and I remember seeing flashes coming from the darkness of an upstairs window. I remember my heart thumping in my chest as my mind caught up to what was happening. Then the next thing, I was ducking down, hunching over and gasping for breath as the stark reality

hit me that we were being shot at. Time seemed like it was slowing down. I could feel each bullet smashing into the car, and I felt frozen with terror. Then suddenly, it was like I heard this voice in my head yelling, put the car in reverse, or you're both dead. As raw panic distilled into the need for action, I remember fumbling with that gear stick before quickly throwing the car into reverse. The tires spun slightly as I slammed my foot down on the pedal, causing the tires to squeal before a sudden jolt backwards.

I heard Tony yell something, but I couldn't make out what. I was too busy looking into the rear view to see if anyone was behind us. Then we put the car into drive and we sped off into the night, air rushing into the car from where the windshield was gone. I remember this mix of relief, but fear washing over me as we drove away from that danger. But I was still wired from all the adrenaline and I was halfway to shouting something like, oh my god, we made it. When I noticed, he'd been shot.

I pushed the car's engine to its absolute limits, speeding like a crazy person as the world outside became a blue of streetlights and shadows. And I remember looking over to Tony and seeing how pale he looked and how much pain he seemed to be in. And then the fear of losing him came crashing down on me like a wave. I kept yelling at him to hold on, that we were headed to a hospital and that we'd be there in no more than a few minutes, cause all I had to do was keep my foot down, stay on the interstate, and take the exit ramp as soon as we saw that Baton Rouge General.

I had no idea how many times Tony had been shot, and I figured that I might have been shot too, but I just couldn't do anything about it because I had to keep my eyes on the road while I was weaving in and out of traffic. And that was probably the worst part about the whole thing for me personally. The thought of how if I passed out at the wheel at those speeds, both of us would probably be dead. I thought I could feel blood in my stomach and legs because it was very warm and wet down there, but like I said, I couldn't look, or it'd be game over for the both of us.

I remember nearly crashing into another car as I swerved onto the exit ramp, and then nearly crashing a second time as I skidded into the parking lot of the hospital. I stopped almost right outside the doors, jumped out of the driver's side, and then ran around to Tony's side while calling out for help. I opened up his door, kind of hopeful because of how quick we made it, but when I saw Tony's face I panicked. He was white as a sheet.

He was struggling to breathe and there was blood everywhere, and his eyes looked almost glazed over like he was just minutes away from death. I kept yelling at him to stay with me, shaking his shoulder while telling him help was on the way. Then the next thing I know, there's a bunch of paramedics rushing over to get Tony out of the car and into the hospital. As they wheeled Tony away on a gurney, I mentioned how I thought I'd been shot. Remember I told you about feeling very warm and wet in my pants?

Well, it wasn't blood. It was piss. And while we were getting shot at, I straight up peed my pants and struggled with the shame of that for some time before I just came to terms with it. I had a Marine who served in Afghanistan tell me that some of his squad mates used to always need to pee real bad any time they got into a shootout. They'd be lying down someplace, like on their stomachs, shooting at the bad guys and this one Marine would roll onto his side, pull his wiener out, and then just start pissing

right there where he laid. The pisser said he'd rather show off his two-inch wonder to the rest of the squad than soak his underwear, and the Marine told me how not a single one of them considered him a coward. I met the guy in a group therapy session maybe six or seven months after that night, and when I mentioned the pissing myself thing, he just laughed. I was kind of offended at first, and he said he was just laughing at the idea that I considered myself a coward. He'd heard my story already, and he considered me one of the ballsy-est MFers he'd ever met. He told me I'd done the exact right thing, to the letter, in terms of going into action

mode and zooming to that hospital. Just being able to back out of a driveway while under fire was impressive to him, but not crashing on the way to the hospital was what made him think that I'd make a fine Marine if I ever wanted to take that path in life. And I managed to keep it together all the same and just told him, thanks dude, it means a lot. But when I got back to my car, I cried like a baby. And I mean ugly cried too, not some cool single tear rolling down my cheek like in an action movie hero situation. It didn't just mean a lot. That meant the entire world to me. And for the first time since

sitting in that hospital waiting room, I didn't feel like a total piece of trash. Oh, and speaking of the waiting room, I guess I kinda got diverted there for a minute or two and let me get back on track. Sitting in that waiting room felt like I was in another dimension. Time was slowing down, the place was full, and I never felt so alone. And I felt like I was trapped between wanting to hear some news about Tony and and dreading whatever the news might be. It was hellish, and I mean that in the truest sense of the world. If there is a hell, it probably feels a little like that waiting room in Baton Rouge, at

least before the fiery parts anyway. My mind kept replaying what had happened in that driveway and checking my phone became almost like a ritual, something to break up my thoughts while letting our friends know what had happened. I looked up every time the nurse walked in thinking, this is it, only for it not to be. They'd call someone else or just walk right through. Sometimes I felt like I was watching myself in a bad dream, a nightmare where everything smelled like antiseptic and the lights were so bright I felt like they were stinging my eyes.

After what felt like forever, a doctor stepped into the waiting room and finally called my name. He then sort of ushered me into a quiet section and gave me the news. And when he told me Tony was alive and that they were optimistic about his recovery, I never felt relief like it before. I had to put my head in my hands because I thought I was going to burst into tears, and then after pulling myself together, I listened as the doctor continued. He explained that although a bullet had entered Tony's chest, it had missed his heart, along

with all of his major arteries. However, the bullet did collapse a lung which is why he was struggling to breathe by the time we pulled him to the hospital's parking lot. And to fix it, the doctor performed a procedure that involved inserting a tube into Tony's chest which re-inflated his lung and allowed it to expand properly. The bullet also broke a rib, but while that would be very painful, it would heal over time. And the most important news though was that Tony was stabilized and had been moved into the intensive care unit where his pain would be managed and he could be monitored. He wasn't completely out of the woods yet though, but seeing how young, fit and healthy

he was, the prognosis was good. I could either go home and rest or stick around the hospital and I'd be able to see him in a couple of hours. I still had glass and blood all over me so I told the doctor I'd return in a few hours after a shower and a change of clothes. And at home I talked to a bunch of people who had been at the party, like mine and Tony's mutual friends, and I agreed to pick a few of them up on the way back to the hospital. We had to wait for almost an hour before we were allowed in, but when we were, two groups

of us went in to see him. One group of two and one group of three. I went in with our friend Cherry, and walking down the corridor to his ICU room was like the longest walk of our lives. I remember coming to the door and bracing myself for what I was about to see. I knew he was probably going to be okay, but it was still daunting as hell walking towards that door. And then when I walked into Tony's room, it was a very huge mix of emotions.

I was more relieved than I'd ever been in my whole life to see Tony alive, but he barely looked any better than he did when I first got him to the hospital. It was really shocking to see him in such a vulnerable position, but the thing that really sticks with me is just how happy Tony was to see us. He was still weak and couldn't move at all, but he had just enough energy after waking up from surgery to talk to us a little before the nurses shoot us out of the room, saying Tony needed his rest. But before we left, Tony and I had something of a moment together.

He told me I saved his life, but I told him he was wrong about that, dead wrong. It was he that had saved my life, because if I had driven to that party on my own, I have no doubt in my mind that whoever shot at us would have aimed for me and not him. He hadn't opened up his door yet so the lights in my car didn't switch on, but what Tony did have was his phone, on full brightness, held at chest height, which from the shooter's point of view probably lit him up like a Christmas tree. The guy was a terrible shot and only landed one direct hit on us, but I have no doubt that he used the light of Tony's phone as sort of a reference point on where to aim.

And if he hadn't been there, then it would have been me that took the shooter's one lucky shot, and then I definitely would have passed out on the way to the hospital if I wasn't killed instantly by that shot. And in so many words, he took the bullet that was meant for me. And Tony was in the hospital for just over a week and strangely enough, that was the same day the man who shot him pleaded no contest to charges of attempted manslaughter. I got downgraded after that instead of murder because apparently in the last year alone, this dude's house had been targeted in two home invasions by two different groups.

One group ended up going to prison and apparently one of the guys told our shooter that his homies were going to get him. So when we rolled up to his driveway in a car that he didn't recognize, he opened up on us before giving us a chance to identify ourselves. His attorneys said that he was so scared that he didn't want to take any chances, but even with it being his first conviction, the judge called him a danger to others and gave him three years in prison. I would have liked to have seen him given more time, but there was a period where

we thought that he might get no jail time, so having him get at least some time was a pretty huge relief. Tony has since made a full recovery, and has somehow managed to find it in his heart to forgive the guy who shot him. I guess that's the kind of grace that I should have expected from him. But for me, it's a hell of a lot harder to simply forgive and forget, not when both of us came so close to death. Sometimes, you just need a little pick-me-up in the afternoon to tackle your inbox or a sweet treat at the end of the day to make your evening brighter.

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Promo code R-E-A-D for 30% off. I've been a photographer all my life. When other kids were asking for video games or football boots for their birthdays, I wanted a disposable camera, and the process of getting the pictures developed seemed like nothing short of wizardry to me. My passion for photography stayed with me right through secondary school, which to my parents' infinite frustration I showed very little interest in. I understand why they were so stressed about my poor academic performance. I didn't enjoy getting bothered by teachers every day.

I just knew what I wanted to do with my life. And then after I left school at 16, I went off and did it. I interned with a professional photographer for a year, got a feel for the job, and then started freelancing for just about anyone who'd pay. It took a few years of building up a serious portfolio, but once I had one, along with the necessary experience, I was ready to apply for some serious jobs. The job market for photography can be interesting, to say the least, and without going into too much very lurid or tedious detail, there wasn't much out there that wasn't excessively seedy

or excessively boring. But there was one job that caught my eye, so much so that I positively jumped at the chance to apply for it. Overseas Photographer. For the Times. One of the most prestigious newspapers in British history. I applied, then had an interview so shaky that I was convinced that it had slipped through my fingers.

But somehow, someone saw some potential in me and got the call back with good news just a few days after. That job took me all over the call back with good news just a few days after. That job took me all over the world and it was incredible. But then every so often I get a chance to go somewhere a bit dicey. I went to Afghanistan in 2011, Iraq in 2012, then in January of 2014 I was asked if I wanted to go to Syria. And for those that need a brief primer, the Syrian Civil War kicked off in mid-2012, following a year of fiery protests and violent government crackdowns.

2013 was a year of escalation, with various armed rebel groups getting all kinds of foreign backing before taking the fight to government forces. But then 2014 marked a distinct shift in the landscape of that resistance. And before the end of 2013 it was mostly secular groups of pro-democracy rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army. But just after the new year, you started hearing all about these Islamist and Jihadi groups springing up, some of which were supposedly connected to al-Qaeda. Our team's job was to drive into Aleppo, hook up with our contact and the Free Syrian Army,

and then establish what relationship, if any, the FSA had with the Jihadis. We flew over to Turkey at the end of February, spent a few days in a city near the Syrian border, and then crossed over in early March. It was a whole different feeling to Iraq and Afghanistan because when I visited those countries, the fighting in both places has started to die down. Syria on the other hand was a live conflict, a war in progress. We didn't fly in on a military aircraft or cross the border after having our passports checked. We crossed into Syria without permission, with no safety net, and without any idea of

what would happen. And let me tell you, that felt very different. After driving into eastern Aleppo, we hooked up with our rebel contact in a place called Jabal Badro. The journalist I was with, Ben, had worked with Omar on a previous trip to Aleppo back in 2012, so for them it marked quite an emotional reunion. Ben had won over Omar and his unit of rebels by bringing them cartons of cigarettes and boxes of basic medicines, and he did the same thing when I was with them in 2014. Apparently handing out paracetamol and packets

of ciggies makes you very popular in a war zone, and so the week we spent with Omar's unit was as positive as it was productive. I picked up a bit of Arabic, partied with the rebels, and got at least half a dozen shots that I considered some of the best I'd ever taken. But that first week was little more than a climatization, both physically, Christ was a hot, and mentally. Because we planned on spending our second week with another group of rebels, who unlike Omar's group were much more connected with the Jihadi group known as Nusra Front. The NF, as I'll call them from now on for the sake of ease, were actually connected

to Al-Qaeda at one point, and their madman in chief was based in Iraq for a number of years. He was actually sent into Syria in 2011 with the goal of exploiting the chaos of the civil war to gain a foothold among the populace. But once he was there, and he got a taste of power, well he didn't quite fancy letting it go. The NF's madman in chief was just that, mental. But he wasn't stupid.

He knew that snatching journalists and cutting their heads off was a really bad look, and that if they wanted to keep getting their hands on the weapons that the US and EU were feeding to the larger, less scary-looking rebel groups, they better stay on their best behavior. Knowing we weren't going to be actively hunted was probably the only reason we felt even remotely safe traveling anywhere near NF-controlled areas. But even so, we had no desire to connect with the group, its leaders, or its fighters. The only trouble was, fate had other plans.

Finding your way around the city, especially if you don't know it all that well, can be difficult to the best of times. But then, imagine almost everything you use for reference, be it street signs, landmarks or places of business, are suddenly destroyed. All of a sudden, even people who knew Aleppo were having trouble finding their way around. I'm not just talking a few bullet holes or craters either. Entire streets have been leveled by airstrikes, and aside from all the debris, our drivers said it was the thin layer of dust on everything that really threw them off and made all the

winding streets of eastern Aleppo look the same. I'm sure you can see this coming a mile off already, but I'm a photographer, not a writer, so I'll just leave all that structuring to the professionals and just get on with my story. So on our way to meet up with this other, less frightening group of rebels, we took a wrong turn. We didn't even realize that we'd taken a wrong turn until the people we thought had been sent to meet us suddenly aimed their guns at us and ordered us to kneel.

We literally had no idea what was happening or who they were, so initially we thought it was this other group of pro-democracy rebels just being a bit over-cautious when it came to their security. They were all terrified of spies, everyone was. But later, we found out that we hadn't been rather rudely welcomed by some paranoid soon-to-be friends. We'd been taken prisoner by a different group. One with strong ties to both NF and another jihadi group that hadn't quite made a name for itself yet. Once it was clear that we'd been taken prisoner, our driver, who had been captured along with

us began immediately trying to negotiate our release. We figured all they wanted was money, and they were promised a ton. But according to the group's leader, a guy called Abu Khalid, they'd get a shed load more money by selling us to another much wealthier group of militants who operated out of a place called Raqqa. We asked what would happen to us there, but Abu Khalid said that he neither knew nor cared. All he cared about were the vast stacks of cash the Raqqa group was offering for any British or American prisoners. It was a grim moment, accepting we were probably going to be held hostage for a very long time.

Both me and Ben trusted both our governments and our employers to work towards securing our release, as well as that of our driver, Othman. And to us, it was just a matter of time before we were released, because at that stage of the war, it was all about matter of time before we were released, because at that stage of the war, it was all about getting backing or funding from outside the country. It made very little sense for any armed group to just kill us. In fact, we thought that we were more in danger of being caught and executed by government loyalists than any group of rebels, jihadists included. There was just too much money to be made ransoming off two British journalists.

So even though this mysterious group were willing to pay our captors 40,000 USD for the both of us, it was an investment they could make millions from. It must sound a bit mental to some people. I mean, it sounds mental to me just writing it all these years later, but being a prisoner wasn't all that bad. The group that took us prisoner just wanted to make some money, and they hated the government loyalists far more than they could ever hate us. So after a few days, our guards started to warm up to us a bit.

They had to feed us and keep us safe because this other jihadi group said that they wanted us alive and unharmed. But after a few days of being regular fixtures around the compound they occupied, they took our restraints off, invited us upstairs from the basement they were holding us in, and then basically just let us hang out. They told Othman, if your lot try and run, we'll kill you. But other than that, just behave yourselves. try and run, we'll kill you. But other than that, just behave yourselves." We could roughly converse with the Jihadi blokes in our crappy Arabic, but if we wanted any serious dialogue, we'd use our driver, Othman, as a translator. The

group holding us weren't frontline fighters. Their only job was to guard us, and seeing as they were actually pretty alright fellas, who'd just been sucked into the maelstrom of the country's civil war, we got talking about this and that. They were very, very curious about our lives back in London, and I am deadly serious when I say they must have asked us a thousand questions over the course of those nine days in captivity. They wanted to know what London was like, what kinds of things we ate back home, and what kinds of places we lived in. But Abu, who was clearly the most senior

guard among them, seemed particularly interested in what football teams we supported. Ben wasn't into football much, he went to a private school and was more into his rugby. But for me, my passions were photography first, then football second. And I had, still have, a particular love of my local side, Queens Park Rangers. I know I'm going to get stick from my fellow fans for this, but QPR aren't a big team, and assuming Abu only follows the top league, I didn't expect him to know them. But then, when I told him I was a QPR fan, his face lit up, and he launched into a massive speech to Othman, who was acting as our translator. I could recognize the odd word here and there, and he kept saying QPR in his accent over

and over, so I knew he was talking about the football club. But then Othman turns to me, and in so many words, this is what he said. Abou says he's a great admirer of your Moroccan attacking midfielder, Adel Therafd. And my jaw dropped. But Othman continued. Abdu says Therafd's contribution of 19 goals, 16 assists to QPR's 2011 season was a huge achievement for a player of his age. That he thoroughly deserved to win the championship's Player of the Season award. And you know what?

A boom was exactly right. As a die-hard QPR fan, I loved Adele, and I still do. He was absolutely phenomenal during that 2010 season, and I cheered for every single one of those 19 goals. Through Othman, I asked Abu if he remembered the goal Thurap scored on Boxing Day of 2010. Abu jumped up off the floor with this big smile on his face and started mimicking the exact movements of what came to be known as the Christmas Cracker. He intimidated Tarrap's cheeky back heel to trick one player, then mimed tapping the

ball through another player's legs before acting out the absolute rocket of a kick that even the goalkeeper's gloves couldn't put a stop to. I was in Raptures, or Taraptures you might say, and I asked if Abu remembered Tarapt running over and literally hugging some random QPR fans in celebration of his goal. And stuff like that was why he was so popular. He loved us and we loved him, and neither of us was afraid to show it. Abu did remember the hug, and then that was it. We launched into what must have been a two-hour conversation about football with almost everyone gathered around for the entertainment, and the whole thing was just crazy. There I was having an in-depth football talk with a man that had taken me hostage. It marked a sort of high point in our time in captivity because for a brief moment, it

was like we weren't prisoners anymore. It was like we were among friends and although I wasn't to know it at the time, I think it was that chat about Thirap that saved our lives. We spent another two days in Abu's compound, and those were probably the best two days we spent there. We were given generous portions when invited to sit and eat with the rest of the rebels, after which they shared cigarettes and sweets with us. Then after dinner, they had a hundred more questions for us about our lives back in London.

However, after about an hour of chatting, Abu asked if we could have a word in private, and by private he meant me, him, and of course, Othman. We walked over to a quiet corner, and through our driver turned translator, I asked him if there was any news on the hostage transfer. I made it clear that I wasn't making any demands on him, I was just anxious about being in the dark regarding when and where we'd be transported. Abu looked at Othman, then at me. Then after a sigh and a moment of thought he started feeding his reply to Othman for translation,

and as I watched him talk I watched the color slowly drain from Othman's face. He turned to me and more or less this is what he said. Abou says he is hesitant to sell us to the group in Raqqa. Othman said, and initially I thought it was because Abou thought that he was being stiffed. And the idea of selling us to the other group for pittance so that in turn could make millions had probably left a pretty bad taste in his mouth, and that's not what was bothering him. He said he could live with the prospect of selling us to someone who'd eventually release us, but that's not what this other group intended to do.

This other group went by a few different names at the time. The Mujahideen Shura Council, the Army of the Victorious, the Congregation of Monotheism and Jihad. But the name they'd been given in the months that followed is one that'll live in infamy. ISIS. The group that wanted to buy us were just months away from officially renaming themselves the Islamic State. And the reason they wanted us alive is because they wanted to decapitate us, film it, and then turn our executions into sleek propaganda videos that'd end up online. And by the time Othman finished telling me that, that is, everything except their ensuing

change of name, I must have looked as pale as he was. I then begged Abu not to sell us to those people, that we could guarantee them tens of thousands of pounds if they ransomed us instead of selling us on. He told us it was too late, and that ISIS were already on their way to collect us. They'd be at the swap location a few miles outside of Aleppo in less than 48 hours, and if we weren't there to collect, there'd be trouble. And by then, Othman had taken over in terms of leading the discussion, and after a few more minutes of talking, he gave me the gist of what had been said. Abu was going to escort us back to our contact, Omar, and then tell his bosses and the ISIS guys that we'd managed to escape during attack by the government soldiers.

And he only had two conditions. The first was that we got the hell out of Aleppo immediately. If his bosses got wind of the fact that he'd just let us go, he was a dead man, so that was non-negotiable. The second thing, however, was that I gave him the little QPR supporters club card that I kept in my wallet, and so he could have something to remember me by. I gave it to him in a heartbeat. Then just a few hours later, we were on the move again, back towards Omar's group, who

we'd spent our first couple of days with. Forty-eight hours later, around the same time we should have been handed over to our ISIS executioners, we were waiting in Hatay airport for our Istanbul transfer, and then after that, we were headed home. Ben ended up writing the story he'd been asked to write, and he used plenty of my pictures too. But he made no mention of the kidnapping in his story, and the pictures I took of us and our hostage takers have never seen the light of day.

I wanted Ben to be able to thank Abu in his story, but we knew that wouldn't be possible without putting his safety at risk. Following a prolonged and intense battle, the Syrian army retook full control of Aleppo in December 2016. Syrian state media then announced that they had fully secured the city after an evacuation deal for the remaining rebel fighters and civilians was reached, meaning there was a slim chance that Abu managed to get out alive. I know he technically wasn't on the right side of that conflict, as they say, but if you knew it, I don't think you could call any group from that conflict the good guys

and not choke on those words. I don't know what else he did during the war, but Abu saved our lives and for that, I'll be forever grateful. I sometimes wonder if he's still alive and if he ever made it out of Syria. So if you just so happen to hear this, Habu, and you're anywhere near Loftus Road, then reach out so we can go to a game together and talk about football and peace instead of war. The early 1980s was one hell of a time to be a crime reporter in Southeast Florida. I moved down from South Carolina in the spring of 1980 and in doing so, almost doubled my

salary from $17,000 to $31,000 a year, which for an entry-level reporter was crazy big money back then. I wasn't even working for any of the major Miami papers either. I was working for a smaller, much more localized publication you might know, The Pinecrest Pioneer. It's a very morbid fact of journalism that if it bleeds, it leads. And the paper circulation had been up ever since the drug violence in Miami started spilling out into the suburbs. It could be really gruesome stuff too.

We're talking gang reprisals, random killings, even bombings, hence why my new salary was so good. But the thing you start to notice after a while of covering this kind of gruesome thing is the corrosive effect it has on wider society. It's like something gets into the water supply or infects the collective consciousness and, for a time, it seemed almost every other person in Pinecrest was up to no good. And I think that, for me personally, the clearest example of this involved what I like to call, the biggest story I never wrote. On Saturday, October 31st of 1981, there was a party at one of the big houses over on Marquesa

Drive. A wealthy boat salesman had allowed his 17-year-old daughter to throw a Halloween costume party in their backyard. She invited all her friends. They had the night of their lives, then around midnight, the boat salesman pulled the plug and then politely called time on the party. Everyone filed out into the streets outside and then slowly but surely all the girls' friends began to safely make their way home, all except one.

The next morning, the parents of a girl named Christine Parks reported her missing to the Miami-Dade Police Department and initially the prognosis was not good. All the houses on Marquesa Drive, as well as the streets that surrounded it, are all built onto a kind of artificial canal which allows the homeowners to dock their boats right next to their backyards. The police quickly theorized that, since some of the girls had snuck alcohol into the party, Kristen had walked off on her own, fallen into the water, and drowned. Some had their doubts because no one had heard any yelling or splashing,

but still the cops dragged the canal for any human remains, if only to be able to rule it out as a possibility. But no human remains were ever found. Three days into the search, and with law enforcement becoming increasingly desperate, a trucker was driving past the lake at the top of the South Dixie Highway when he saw a half-naked girl staggering out of a patch of trees near the side of the road. He stopped his truck, jumped out, then after using his jacket to give the girl some dignity, he asked what she was doing out there all alone with half her clothes on. The trucker later said that the girl seemed drunk, and that she didn't remember where

she was or how she'd got there, and the only thing she remembered was her name, Kristen Parks. As you can imagine, Kristen's family were elated to see that she had returned alive, but she was not returned unharmed. Following a thorough medical examination it was determined that Kristin had been drugged, abducted, then repeatedly and brutally violated over the course of the next 48 hours. Then instead of killing her, her abductors drugged her one final time, then drove her out to the South Dixie Highway in the middle of the night and dumped her in a wooded area.

Kristen had been relatively calm and stable while under the drug's residual effects, but once she sobered up it was a different story entirely. The trauma of what she'd experienced over those past few days was simply too much for her young mind to handle, and from what I understand, she suffered a total nervous breakdown. She withdrew from school, stopped seeing friends, and despite undergoing a rather radical course of medication and therapy, Kristen remained mentally and emotionally crippled by the horrors she glimpsed through the hazy mists of her memory.

But what made things a thousand times worse was the fact that the search for her attackers very quickly ground to a halt. The investigation's lack of progress was greeted with fear and concern by Pinecrest citizens, and some were extremely vocal in their demands for justice. But none more so than the boat salesman whose home the party took place in. This is the point where I have to change some names to protect both you and I from some pretty nasty lawsuits I imagine. And from what I understand, our boat salesman is still a very litigious man, and I'd hate

to see you be punished for doing me the service of reading this out loud. So instead of referring to him by his real name, I'll just call him by another. Mr. Stone. And Stone had personally offered up to $10,000 reward to anyone who helped bring Kristen's attackers to justice, and had even offered to hire a private investigator to expedite the process. With regards to the second point, Kristen's family declined his charity, but Mr. Stone remained highly and publicly vocal in his demands for justice, and he even put up a billboard outside his showroom for a while begging the public for further information.

When we met at a charity auction in the spring of 1982, it was him that actually suggested that I start investigating the whole thing, and he offered his full cooperation in the hopes that my reporting contributed to catching Kristen Park's abductors. I couldn't work the case full time. I still had other assignments to complete, but my editor gave me full permission to work on it whenever and wherever I could, provided he got the first option to publish it. The police had never arrested or charged anyone with Kristen's abduction, but they'd still questioned a handful of suspects in relation to the incident.

The first was a young man Kristen had supposedly been dating, who had reacted badly when she broke up with him. He too had been at the party, but thanks to various alibis, he was ruled out as a suspect. The second person questioned was a security guard hired by Mr. Stone to ensure the partygoers stayed away from the canal at the rear of the house. The security guard said that at one point during the evening, Kristen had approached him to begin a conversation. The guard claimed Kristen showed signs of intoxication, so fearing that someone had smuggled alcohol into the party, which they had, he went to inform Mr. Stone.

Stone instructed the security guard to head back outside, find the source of the alcohol, and then confiscate it. But when the guard returned outside, Kristen Parks was nowhere to be seen. Assuming she'd simply run off to hide among the throng of dancing teenagers, the guard simply carried on doing his job, trying to figure out where the booze was coming from. He didn't see Kristen again that evening, and it wasn't until the next morning that he learned that she was missing. The third person the cops questioned, and who for a while was considered their prime suspect, was an ex-con who lived on a construction

site out on Mashta Island. Mashta is one of South Florida's most affluent neighborhoods, and with most of the homes there offering more than 10,000 square feet with high-end amenities such as gourmet kitchens, wine vaults, and spacious outdoor areas. Which raised the question, what was an unemployed ex-con doing living out there? Well, the ex-con, a man named Frank Jeffers, had taken to squatting among the bones of a half-built home and, due to some pretty tight legal loopholes, the authorities were

unable to effectively remove him. Somehow, Jeffers had managed to get his hands on a small boat, which he used to sail over to the wealthier neighborhoods on the edges of Pinecrest, before absconding after committing petty acts of theft and vandalism. Jeffers had been arrested around half a dozen times, mainly for things like trespassing or harassment. But that's not what he earned a conviction for. You see, about 20 years earlier, Jeffers was arrested after abducting his neighbor's 14-year-old daughter.

He bundled her into his car while she was on her way home from school, and if it wasn't for several witnesses reporting the license plate of the car, there's no telling what Jeffers would have done to that girl. The cops pulled him over as he tried driving the girl down into the Everglades. Then he spent 16 years in prison on charges of aggravated kidnapping after he tried and failed to fight the case. Well now Jeffers was out, and apparently he was up to his old tricks again. It was Mr. Stone who turned the cops' attention on to Jeffers in the first place.

His family had been unfortunate enough to have several run-ins with the man, including one incident in which he'd scared the heck out of Stone's then 16-year-old daughter while she was sunbathing. Jeffers had been making a nuisance of himself ever since his release from prison, and by the spring of 82, he constituted the cop's most likely suspect in Kristen Park's abduction. He was questioned on several separate occasions, and his alibis for his whereabouts on the night of the abduction were apparently shaky at best, but lack of solid evidence connecting

him to the crime shielded him from arrest or charges. It seemed only a matter of time before police would be able to gather sufficient evidence against him. However, following a break-in at a Pine Crest boating goods store, police attempted to place Jeffers under arrest, but when they rolled up on his half-completed squat, he opened fire on them with a.45 caliber handgun. And as you can imagine, the cops were less than thrilled that Jeffers had suddenly decided to go out with a bang. But still, they obliged him. And following a hail of bullets and buckshot, the number one suspect in Kristen's abduction

and assault was no more. I spoke with Mr. Stone following Jeffers death and while he expressed regret that the case's number one suspect would never see true justice, he said there were far worse ways for something like that to turn out, and to be honest, I was inclined to agree with him. After covering serious crimes all around Florida and South Carolina for a full five years, I knew damn well that when it comes to child predators, the risk of re-offending never truly goes away. Jeffers' death at the hands of police might not have been true justice, but it was a kind

of justice all the same, and to the people of Pinecrest, it was like a great weight had been lifted off their shoulders. It seemed like Jeffers had gone and written the end of my article for me, going out in a blaze of inglory, to coin a word. I thought all I needed to do was tie up a few loose ends in terms of some of the info I'd gathered. Then I'd write an article so complete and in-depth that when I turned it into my editor, I might as well staple a raised request to the front cover.

But then, those loose ends turned out to be like a loose thread in a knitted sweater, and the more I tugged at him, the more the whole goddamn story, as I knew it, started to unravel before my very eyes. Jeffers had two alibis for the night of Kristen's abduction. To get around, he either had to drive his boat or walk, which is how he ended up drunk out of his mind walking past his neighbor's house on the night of the abduction. By his own admission, Frank Jeffers had been, and I quote, singing drunk, and had been wailing so loud as he walked past his neighbor's place that his neighbor had come to his window to shoot him a very disapproving look.

And Jeffers claimed that they locked eyes long enough for him to flip his neighbor the bird, and then after yelling at him to go fornicate with himself, so to speak, the neighbor closed his curtains and presumably went back to sleep. But then, when the cops went to question this neighbor regarding the exchange, he claimed it never happened. No one had any reason to doubt the man. He might have disliked Jeffers, but sure not enough to perjure himself in a court of law, right? Yet it was this particular point of interest that first made me realize that all was not as it seemed.

I heard from one officer, who shall remain nameless obviously, that the neighbor had altered his story once he realized Jeffers freedom was on the line. At first he said he heard Jeffers returning home, but later he changed his story to say he assumed it was Jeffers returning home, but that he never actually laid eyes on him. He hadn't gotten out of bed, and he certainly hadn't shut his curtains after Jeffers had flipped him the bird. Everyone kind of knew the guy was lying. I believe cops when they say that they get a sense for lying, because I developed the

exact same thing over the years. But if the guy truly was out of his mind and he hated Jeffers that much that he was willing to perjure himself, then there wasn't much that they could do to stop him, especially when he made such a convenient scapegoat. The second of Jeffers two alibis came from a bar that he went to late that night, a little place down near Cape Florida Beach named Buddies, and the cops had approached the bar's sole proprietor who promptly handed over copies of the night's security camera footage. Yet when it came to entering the footage into evidence, they decided it wasn't clear enough

of an image of Jeffers and refused to enter it. But then, instead of returning the bar owner's property to him, they neglected to do so. I found that out when I went to talk to him and since it had just been a blank VHS tape, the guy wasn't exactly ready to lawyer up over it. But he was still pissed about it and used it as a jumping off point to complain about the cops to me for around 10 minutes straight. And I just let him talk, and then I tried to steer the conversation back in the direction

of the security camera footage. And it turns out, he had the original tape on site and was more than willing to show it to me. Now bear in mind, this was back in 1982. So even the most cutting edge security camera footage was still very fuzzy compared to the kind of crystal clear images you kids can shoot today. But Frank Jeffers wasn't exactly inconspicuous. He liked bright colors, only ever wore a wife beater, swimming shorts, and a pair of sandals,

and had a streak of bleach blonde hair, kinda like a messy mohawk. I guess his fashion sense was part of the reason that he was so easy to ID when it came to all of his petty crimes, and when the owner of Buddies showed me his security camera footage from that night, there was Frank, clear as day. You couldn't see his face, and I suppose in theory it could have been someone who just so happened to look and dress like him. I'd never personally met the guy, but from how he'd been described I was confident you

could have shown that footage to just about anyone who knew him, and they'd say, that's Frank Jeffers. And there's no question that it was him. In fact, just about the only question I had at all was how the hell didn't the footage pass for a positive ID? And to get an answer, I ended up getting in touch with one of the cops who took part in the investigation prior to Jeffers death. He told me that, on the advice of some hotshot attorney they had gotten in touch with, they'd

been told the footage was unusable. In the eyes of the law, if it didn't display any prominent facial features, scars or tattoos, then it couldn't be used by Jeffers' future defense attorneys, and therefore did not constitute an alibi worth taking seriously. I remember telling him how, if that were me on a jury, I'd have no problem considering it some solid evidence if the man himself was stood there right in front of me, with that same streak of blonde hair matching the one on the videotape.

But the cop I spoke to just shook his head and told me it was out of his hands. And on the advice of that hot shot attorney, the higher-ups had declared the tape wasn't a sufficient alibi and that Jeffers was to remain the case's primary suspect. And to me this seemed like a huge mistake, so I was very curious to know who this wise attorney character was. The cop made a phone call, then told me the attorney had been recommended by none other than Mr. Stone.

I knew the cops weren't interested in reviewing the tape, but Mr. Stone sure would be, especially if it was his attorney that had made such an error of judgment. I didn't hesitate to contact him, but when I did, he acted in a similarly obtuse manner as the police department. He thanked me for my concern, but advised me to trust in the counsel of his attorney. Jeffers had been the most likely suspect and now he was dead. Case closed. I asked if he'd seen the security camera footage from the bar out near Cape Florida Beach and he hadn't.

But then when I told him that I was strongly considering the possibility that Kristen Park's attacker hadn't been Jeffers and that the real one was still out there somewhere, Mr. Stone suddenly snapped at me. I remember him asking, just who the hell do you think you are, buddy? Then in a roundabout way he accused me of trying to piggyback on a tragedy that furthered my career. I told him that was the last thing I was trying to do, and how the only thing that mattered to me was finding Kristen's attacker before he hurt anyone else. Mr. Stone then replied that if that truly was the case, then I'd respect the opinions

and judgments of those more qualified than I. Anything less would no doubt only increase the pain and suffering of those affected. The last thing I asked him, before he hung up on me, was if he'd at least come and view the security camera footage for himself. And after that, the phone line went dead. What Stone said, about only increasing pain and suffering, rattled around my mind for the next couple of days, and I really struggled with the possibility that, deep down, my motivations really were entirely

selfish. I figured that in his mind, having the Parks family believe Jeffers was Kristen's attacker gave them a degree of closure, and me convincing them otherwise was simply unacceptable to Mr. Stone, who no doubt wanted the whole morbid chapter of his life to be over and done with. But to me, bringing the real attacker to justice was the greatest gift anyone could possibly bestow upon them. The Parks family didn't need a sense of justice. They needed real justice, and with each passing day it looked more and more like it was up

to me to provide it. I never reached out to Kristen before, I didn't think that I really needed to. But in coming up against such a solid brick wall, I figured that I had no other choice but to explore every possible avenue of investigation. Kristen had obviously been interviewed extensively in the aftermath of her ordeal, but I needed to make certain that the cops hadn't missed anything, and so I called her parents and asked if I could talk to her. As I've already mentioned, Kristen had a great deal of difficulty recovering from her

ordeal so her parents weren't too keen on her talking to a reporter, especially not one from such a minor publication. But after a long and heartfelt talk with Kristen's father, Patrick, he invited me over to his home to talk with his daughter. At first, Kristen told me very little that I didn't know already, and anything that was new was irrelevant enough for me to understand why it had been left out of the reports. The only thing that she'd mentioned that I felt was worth noting down was that one of her attackers smelled like cinnamon.

And this little detail had not been in any of the police reports. But when I asked Kristen why she'd failed to mention this before, she told me that she had, on numerous occasions in fact, and had no idea why it hadn't been in any of the reports. And that's not the only thing that somehow hadn't made its way into the police reports. I asked if she was 100% certain that it was her attacker who smelled like cinnamon, and not just some kind of ambient scent in the place that she was kept, like an air freshener or something.

Kristen told me that she'd never been so sure of anything in her life. She'd been mostly blindfolded but was certain that while it was two men who abducted her, only one of them ever violated her, and every time he did, Kristen smelled sweet cinnamon on the man's breath. Before leaving, I thanked Kristen for her time and thanked her father for arranging the meeting. The detail about the cinnamon on her attacker's breath was entirely new information to me, and I wondered just what else I was yet to discover. It turns out the next big detail was just around the corner.

Almost everyone in Pinecrest was familiar with Mr. Stone and his daughter, but I'd been investigating the abduction for almost eight months before I realized that she wasn't an only child. Stone, who had hosted the party, had two children, a 17 year old daughter and a 19 year old son, and while his daughter was a popular and high-achieving high school junior, his son had not been blessed with intelligence or social skills. Stone's son, who I guess I'll just call junior, had been diagnosed with learning difficulties at a young age and was

transferred to a dedicated special ed school. But that is just about all anyone knew about young Junior. He was rarely seen outside the family home and when he was, he was always in the company of either his mother or some kind of caretaker. Kids who met him said he was weird and that he mostly stayed up in his bedroom watching horror movies and reading comic books. I asked a few of the kids who were at the party if Junior had come downstairs at all or had tried to mingle with the partygoers.

Most said no, that they didn't even know that the Stones had a son. But two kids said they had seen an older boy at one point, not wearing a costume and talking to one of Stone's security people. I then got in touch with a cop from Miami-Dade Police Department, the one who told me about Stone's attorney ruling out Jeffers Alibi. He said Junior hadn't been questioned at all regarding the events of that evening, and that as far as the police department knew, he'd been up in his bedroom the whole time. You see what I was saying about how things just started to unravel. I had kids saying Junior had been at the party, if only for a brief period, but then the police

department told me point blank that he hadn't come downstairs all night. I asked them how they could be so sure of that and you know what the cop told me? Because Mr. Stone told us. The next time I called Stone marked the last time we ever spoke. We weren't on great terms after our last phone call, the one where he'd advised me to, in so many words, stop asking questions. So when I called him that last time, he wasn't exactly pleased to hear from me. He picked up the phone, I announced myself, and then when I asked to talk to Junior, he hung up the phone.

No questions, no comments, just click, and the line went dead. And that was the early summer of 82, and I didn't give up on the case, not by any stretch, but that call marked the point at which my progress started rapidly slowing down. Without Stone's support and with the police department quickly losing patience with me, it seemed like I had little choice but to put the entire project on the back burner. I had other fish to fry. Not necessarily bigger ones, but I was a reporter, not a cop. Investigations didn't pay the bills, writing articles did, so I wrote articles on other stuff and let Kristen Park's abduction case slowly fade into the background.

Now cut to late October of 1982, a full year after the Park's abduction, and with it being Halloween time, I was thinking about it a lot. Halloween that year was a Sunday, my one true day off from work, and I spent the evening shaking homemade rum runners and pondering over the case. Officially speaking, it was closed, but I knew Kristen's attacker was still out there, and befitting the season, it haunted me like a restless spirit. I remember heading to bed that night and realizing that it was the very first time a story had gotten away from me. I imagine myself coming up to 60 years old, still obsessed with this one lingering unsolved

case. I'm actually laughing as I type this because my personal prophecy ended up coming true, all except for one little detail. I don't consider it unsolved anymore and what I didn't realize back then on Halloween night of 1982 was that it wouldn't even be 24 hours before I solved the mystery, and not only figure out who abducted Kristen Parks, but why. On Monday, November 1st, I was at the Pinecrest Cash & Carry picking up a few groceries after work. I'd been thinking about the Parkes case here and there, but with it being a work day, I had much more of my mind on the stuff that I'd been working on that day.

I remember grabbing a little hamburger helper, because I wasn't much of a cook back then, along with a few other items before heading over to the registers. Now I got in line, then when I looked up, I saw the lady in front of me was one of Mr. Stone's housekeepers, who I'd met once or twice while visiting him at home. We exchanged greetings, then as we were chatting my eyes wandered to the groceries that she had lined up on the little conveyor belt. But along with an assortment of cleaning items, there was a whole bunch of Halloween candy and I correctly assumed that the bags had been heavily discounted due to the end of spooky season.

But the thing that really got my attention was how there had been at least five or six bags of the same candy and that particular candy was atomic fireballs. I remember saying to Inessa, Stone's housekeeper, that someone must have really liked those candies. I remember them from when I was a kid, but I never did like that name, Fireballs. Having my mouth burn just wasn't what I was looking for in a candy, so I never paid any interest in them on account of their name alone. And that's half the reason that I made the comment in the first place, just wondering

which little psycho liked the idea of sucking on an atomic fireball instead of maybe a Jolly Rancher or Lemonhead. Anessa looked at me, kind of chuckled a little, then told me that they were all for Mr. Stone's son, Junior, that he loved those candies more than anything, and that they probably helped some dentist buy himself a boat to go with his vacation house down in Key West. And by that point, Anessa was packing her purchases into her paper bags and just as she picked up the last bag of fireballs, she takes a look at the bag and then at me and says something like, ugh, cinnamon. There was a very, very brief moment, maybe only a millisecond where I thought to myself,

huh? I never knew they were cinnamon flavored. And then, everything dropped like the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. Cinnamon, the exact same scent Kristen Parks had smelled on her attacker whenever he violated her. Cinnamon, the favored candy of Stone's son, who lived his life watching splatter films in a windowless room on the third floor and was seen talking to the security guard who just so happened to be the last person to see her talk to Kristen Parks at that party.

Frank Jeffers didn't have a van. He also didn't have a place to hold a teenage girl prisoner for a few days either. Not somewhere secure, like a storage unit, which is exactly where Kristen believed that she was being held. But Mr. Stone, who suddenly didn't seem so excited on seeking justice for Kristen when the investigation suddenly involved his family. He had the means to purchase or rent just about anything, and maybe, just maybe, had the money and the will to buy his socially inept son a little private time with

a young friend of his sister's that had caught his eye. Back then, as I put it all together, it almost seemed too crazy to even contemplate. Stone was a pillar of this community, someone who was either respected, admired, or loved. To even entertain the idea that he was a cold-blooded psychopath who facilitated the abduction and violation of an underage girl, it seemed like sheer madness. But then the more I thought about it, the more it started to make all the sense in the world. The gathering hadn't been a Halloween party at all. It had been a teenage meat market from which Junior could select his victim.

The next chance I got, I told my editor that I wanted to talk to him, and through a series of oddly specific hypotheticals, I told him what I was thinking and how I'd arrived at that position. As you can imagine, he stared at me slack-jawed for half the time I talked, especially towards the end when I got to all the stuff about Junior, or more specifically, how he should have been the number one suspect but was never even questioned. My editor thought about it for maybe 15 to 20 seconds then told me that as long as I could write it in a way that didn't get us sued into oblivion, then he'd get it checked over by the paper's legal department then out onto the presses.

If all we were doing was asking the right questions we'd be protected by the First Amendment and there was nothing Stone could do about it. But as we came to find out, that wasn't entirely true. A few days later I was about a third of my way through the article when my editor called me into his office and showed me a draft copy of the next morning's paper. Right in the middle two pages of the paper, Mr. Stone had bought a full page ad for his boat showroom and another page to exclusively advertise his new Sea-Doo range of jet skis. Stone had signed a 24-month-long advertising deal with his employers, one worth almost

$100,000. He knew that, with that amount of money at stake, there was no way in hell that the paper's owner would run a negative story about him, and as a result, my editor told me that we'd have to kill the junior story. That might sound weird, but I wasn't surprised. Seeing that giant ad almost knocked me off my goddamn feet, but I remember thinking, of course he bought an ad. Of course he did.

He had all the power in the world, and I was just a goddamn scribe for a crappy small town newspaper. If I pushed things any further, I'd probably end up with a pair of cement shoes or something. So instead of potentially risking my life, as well as my job, I opted for survival and killed that story.

I remember an old black and white movie that I saw once when I was a kid. I can't remember what it was about, but some beautiful broad was crying to some bogey wannabe and how unfair and unjust the world is. In response, the bogey wannabe said something like, that's the way the world works, kid. Always has. Always has. Always will. When I first heard that, I didn't believe it was true. But I feel like the whole process of growing up and becoming an adult is finding out that

it is, and that a truer statement has never been spoken. Just prior to 10pm on Saturday, October 30th of 1993, three men walked through the doors of a single story red brick bar named The Rising Sun. The Rising Sun is situated in the Northern Irish village of Greysteel, a Catholic majority town of just over a thousand people which lies on the northwestern coasts of County Londonderry. That evening, the bar was hosting a Halloween party for the town's residents, with a great number of them donning creepy costumes before descending on the rising sun to drink and dance till the wee small hours of the morning.

When the three men walked into the bar, they were wearing matching dark blue boiler suits, with only their mouths and eyes visible underneath coal-black balaclavas. Their sudden presence was barely noted by the bar's occupants, who believed their outfits were little more than costumes. But the men had not arrived to enjoy the party. They had not brought joy or revelry. Instead, they brought only death. Just seven days earlier, two delivery men drove a Blue Ford Escort into Belfast from

nearby Ardoyne. They parked just around the corner from Frizzle's Fish Soup on the Shank Hill Road. Then after retrieving a heavy gym bag from their trunk, they began carrying it towards the fishmongers. Seeing as it was shortly after 1pm on a Saturday when the two delivery men arrived, the fishmongers were extremely busy. So busy in fact, one of the delivery men, Thomas Begley, had to wade through the crowd of customers alone, having hoisted the gym bag into both arms. His plan was to place the delivery on the refrigerated counter in front of him, but

the five pound bag did not contain even an ounce of seafood. Because Thomas Begley and his companion Sean Kelly were not couriers of perishable goods, they were members of the Irish Republic Army's Belfast Brigade, and instead of fish, the bag Begley was carrying contained a highly volatile homemade bomb. Begley's plan had been to place the bomb onto the counter, announce that it contained an explosive device, and then order the fishmonger's proprietor and customers to make a swift exit. The civilians on the ground floor of the shop were not his intended target, and in reality, the bomb was intended for those on the shop's second floor. You see, that afternoon, the second floor of Frizzle's Fish Shop was the location of

a meeting between leaders of the IRA's arch-rivals, the Ulster Defense Association. Formed in September of 1971, and intended as a kind of parent organization to various armed militant groups who remained loyal to the British Crown, the UDA's twin goals were to defend Northern Ireland's Protestant population and to combat what was referred to as the militant republicanism of its IRA enemies. According to intelligence provided to Begley and Kelly, some of the most high-ranked UDA officials in the country would be packed into an upstairs room on that dreary Saturday afternoon, meaning just one well-placed bomb could potentially wipe out their entire leadership.

But despite the IRA's meticulous planning, they got two things horribly wrong. The first was that the UDA's meeting had ended hours earlier, and the second floor of the fishmongers was completely unoccupied. The UDA's leadership made a habit of disseminating false information, even among its lower-ranking operatives, to ensure their movements and whereabouts were difficult to track. As far as most people knew, their meeting was due to commence at around 1pm, but in reality it started around 10am, meaning that by 1 o'clock that afternoon, not a single member of the UDA's inner council was present when the two IRA operatives arrived with their

bomb. But this was only the lesser of the IRA's two mistakes that day. The primary one was enlisting the help of a Catholic bomb maker with extremely subpar bomb making skills. As Sean Kelly waited near the fishmonger's door, his role being to shepherd customers off the premises, Thomas Begley hoisted the gym bag onto a refrigerated counter in front of him. Once he'd set it down, Begley planned to announce that he had a bomb and that all innocent civilians should vacate the area. But Begley didn't even get a chance to speak. The moment he set the explosives hold all down onto the

fishmonger's counter, the bomb inside of it suffered a catastrophic malfunction and detonated prematurely. Begley was killed instantly. In fact, he was practically vaporized by the five pounds of explosives the device employed, but sadly he was not the only one to lose his life. 63 year old John Frizzle, the fishmonger's owner, was also killed instantly when Begley's bomb exploded, along with his 29 year old daughter Sharon and 13 year old Leanne Moray. The IRA did indeed assassinate a member of the Ulster Defense Association that day, in the form of 27 year old Michael Morrison, who just so happened to have stopped by to pick up some fish. Michael Morrison, who just so happened to have stopped by to pick up some fish. Yet their bomb also killed his partner, Evelyn Baird, along with their seven-year-old daughter,

Michelle. 63-year-old George Williams also died in the blast along with his wife, Jillian, while 38-year-old Wilma McKee was crushed to death when the force of the blast caused the old building to collapse into a pile of rubble. In total, almost 60 people were injured by shattered masonry and flying glass. Then over the next several hours, broken bodies and bloodied survivors alike were dragged from the debris by a mixture of emergency services and frantic volunteers. In the aftermath of what became known as the Schankeil Road bombing, there was an outpouring of ferocious indignation from Belfast Protestant community.

One prominent member of the UDA, Billy the Twister McQuiston, told a British journalist that, and I quote, anybody on the Shankill Road that day, from a Boy Scout to a granny, would have gone out and retaliated if you'd given them a gun. Even though the IRA's plan of attack had sought to minimize civilian casualties, its disastrous execution meant most people saw the bombing as a despicable and indiscriminate attack on Protestant civilians. Rather than a targeted assassination of the UDA's command and control element, Shandkill's Protestant community believed the bomb had worked exactly as intended. But UDA chieftain, mad dog Johnny Adair, knew different.

Adair knew that he and his fellow inner circle had been the bombing's true target, but as the commander of sectarian militants, community tensions were his bread and butter and he wasn't about to let a good crisis go to waste. That night as he departed his home in a personal vehicle, mad dog Adair was stopped by Northern Irish police officers and when asked where he was going, Adair simply replied, I'm away to plan a mass murder. Detaining him meant signing the death warrants of many of their fellow officers, so the police officers allowed Adair to go about his business, knowing all too well that killing was his

business and business was good. At Adair's behest, the UDA's leadership ordered immediate reprisals. Just hours after the bombing, the UDA claimed responsibility for the fatal shooting of a Catholic delivery driver after he was lured to a bogus call on the outskirts of Belfast. Then on October 26th, the UDA murdered two additional Catholic civilians in a machine gun attack on a Belfast council building that saw five others seriously wounded. Both attacks satisfied the UDA leadership's desire for vengeance, but the attacks true purpose was to serve as a distraction. Make British security

services believe that their target was Belfast Catholics and the redistribution of security forces would leave more provincial targets much more vulnerable. Targets like the Rising Sun bar, lounge, and Restaurant over in Greysteel County, Londonderry. When it was discovered that the Rising Sun was throwing a Halloween party on Saturday, October 30th, the UDA leadership ordered the commander of their Londonderry brigade, Billy McFarland, to plan and execute an attack. McFarland called three of his top henchmen, Stephen Irwin, Jeffrey Deany, and Torrens Knight, then arranged to meet them at a safe house near the target.

They met on October 27th after making the safe house their base of operations, began planning out their attack on the rising sun, they even performed a reconnaissance mission, and stopped by the bar for drinks one night to scout out entrances, exits, and optimal firing positions. It's chilling to think about, just a few nights before the attack, the bar patrons shared drinks with the same men that, just a few nights later, would return to murder them. Finally, on the evening of October 30th, 1993, Erwin, Deanie, and Knight traveled by car

to the rising sun with a fourth man driving ahead of them as a scout. When the scout observed that the Halloween party was in full swing, he gave the nod to the UDA kill team who parked their stolen Opal cadet outside the bar and then walked inside wearing boiler suits and balaclavas. When three men walked inside armed with an assault rifle, a 12 gauge shotgun, and a semi-automatic pistol, some partygoers believed it was nothing more than a practical joke. One or two of them laughed at the sight of the men, dressed in their matching boiler suits, poorly fitting masks, and old replica firearms.

But while they might have been old, their weapons were most certainly not mere replicas, and as more and more of the bar's patrons realized what was happening, they fell silent. When Stephen Irwin, armed with a Czech AK variant known as the VZ-58, saw the terror in his victim's eyes. He smiled. Then after raising his rifle he screamed trick or treat before he began shooting. Jeff Deeney, armed with a 9mm handgun, fired a single bullet at a woman trying to flee before his weapon jammed, and he spent the remainder of the attack trying to clear the stoppage but was not calm or cool-handed enough to do so. Torren's knight, armed with the shotgun, guarded the entrance while the shooting was taking place

and was the only one not to fire his weapon in anger. Steven Irwin, on the other hand, fired a total of sixty steel-jacketed bullets at the partygoers from his fully automatic assault rifle. It took just over two seconds to spray the interior of the rising sun with exactly 30 rounds of 7.62 ammunition, with each round traveling at over 700 meters per second. They chewed through the wooden frames of tables and chairs, punched fist-sized holes through human bodies, and sent glass splinters exploding across the room at speeds that caused them to become embedded in the unfortunate patron's flesh. When Erwin's rifle magazine ran dry and his rifle ceased to fire, a grim silence returned

to the interior of the rising sun, broken only by the groans of the gravely wounded. Erwin's torrent of hellfire had been devastating, but the bar's terrified occupants believed the shooting was over. They began slowly emerging from their hiding places, only to see Irwin replacing his empty magazine with a full one. One woman began begging Irwin not to begin shooting again. He simply ignored her, continued to reload his weapon, then sent the first of his new bullets through her skull.

People scrambled for cover as Erwin once again began spraying the room's occupants at random, and again it took mere seconds for him to send an astonishing amount of lead ripping and tearing through fixtures and figures alike. When Irwin's second magazine ran out, survivors heard him laughing as he surveyed the death and destruction he'd wrought. Irwin was still cackling as he walked outside, climbing into their stolen car and escaped with his fellow gunmen.

The first emergency services to arrive on the scene later described it as a living hell. Dead and dying patrons were scattered across the dance floor while entire sections of the floor had become glittering puddles of blood and broken glass. Eight people had been killed outright, while nineteen were treated in a hospital for serious injuries. Six of the dead were Catholics while, ironically ironically two of them were Protestants. The deceased were identified as Karen Thompson, age 19, and Stephen Mullen, age 20. Also among the dead were Moira Duddy, 59, and Joseph McDermott, 60. The others included James Moore, age 81,

John Moyn, age 50, John Burns, age 54, and Victor Montgomery, age 76. The following day, the Ulster Defense Association claimed responsibility for the massacre, referred to it as a raid, and stated that the murders were, quote, the continuation of our threats against the nationalist electorate that would pay a heavy price for last Saturday's slaughter of nine Protestants. A UDA member from West Belfast claimed their gunman, quote, had information that senior IRA men drank in the rising sun. Unfortunately, they were not there on Halloween, but our boys acted on the briefing they had been given. The UDA's public relations wing acted with the same dour professionalism synonymous with the Troubles, but behind the scenes there was sickening jubilation.

The gunmen were welcomed home as heroes, with Stephen Irwin being particularly boastful of his wanton act of savagery. He gloated that he'd executed a Catholic woman who'd begged him not to end her life, proud that he exhibited the same lack of mercy as those who destroyed frizzles, fishmongers. Thanks to the British security service having heavily infiltrated both Catholic and Protestant paramilitary groups, identifying the gunmen was remarkably simple. Since they were boasting of their involvement, the names of the gunmen made their way from pub to club until they reached the ears of

British informants. Over the weeks that followed, Stephen Irwin, Jeffrey Daney, and Torrens Knight were hunted down and arrested, then taken into custody by Northern Ireland's police service. During his first appearance on the stand, Torrens Knight was filmed laughing, taunting, and shouting abuse at the victims' relatives before being led from the courthouse by bailiffs. Jeffrey Deeney remained silent. But Stephen Irwin, responsible for the vast majority of injuries and deaths, called his crimes, and I quote, payback, before adding that he'd had no remorse. And finally, in February of 1995, all three men were sentenced to life imprisonment for

their involvement in what became known as the Greysteel Massacre. Torrance Knight then received an additional life sentence for his involvement in the Cattle Rock killings, in which three innocent Catholics were shot and killed by UDA gunmen. All three men should have spent the rest of their lives in prison. But because of clauses in the peace deal known as the Good Friday Agreement, Irwin, Deeney, and Knight were released in the year 2000, less than five full years into their supposedly lifelong prison terms. The Good Friday Agreement saw the release of many such dangerous prisoners on both sides

of the political and religious divides. Michael Stone, infamous for his grenade and gun attack at the funeral of a slain IRA man, saw freedom long before his sentence was up, as did Patrick McGee, who attempted to assassinate the British Prime Minister in the 1984 Brighton Hotel bombing. But another prisoner to win his freedom thanks to the agreement was Sean Kelly, the sole survivor of the IRA bomb team who prematurely detonated their device in the fishmongers on the Shankeel Road, all in the name of progress. Alan Gillis, a poet and native son of Belfast, wrote a poem of the same title, Progress, and it reads as follows.

They say that for years Belfast was backwards, and it's great now to see some progress. So I guess we can look forward to taking boxes from the earth. I guess that ambulances will leave the dying back amidst the rubble, to be explosively healed. Given time, 100,000 particles of glass will create impossible patterns in the air before coalescing into the clarity of a window, through which a reassembled head will look out and admire the shy young man taking his bomb from the building and driving home. Hi, let's read. I'm a long time listener who happens to be very active in the comments section of your videos.

I never had a reason to write to you before, but that all changed last October after a group of neighborhood kids decided to harass me, gaslight me, and otherwise make my life a living hell. I also want to take the opportunity to issue trigger warnings for poor mental health, pathogen anxiety, gang stalking, and interactions with cops. Sometimes I really wish you'd do better and make an effort to protect your audience by issuing the appropriate trigger warnings, but I guess no one's perfect. First off, sorry but not sorry here.

I hate Halloween. Because if there was ever a day of the year that exemplifies all that's wrong with modern day America, it's October 31st. To me it represents the absolute peak of our vapid, disposable culture. A time of year when corporate fat cats make millions off of morons buying masks they're only going to wear for a few hours. Now don't get me wrong, I love candy just as much as the next guy, but turning the whole thing into a giant capitalist circle jerk disgusts me more and more each year.

I hate Halloween, but that doesn't mean that I don't tolerate it. But then, by tolerate, I mean I don't sit out on my step with a bucket full of rocks ready to hurl them at any kids who step into my driveway. I don't leave a bowl of candy out for the little brats who, by the way, almost always come from rich families who don't need to be extorting food from these less fortunate than them. But I do leave a sign out front saying, no trick or treating, no exceptions, so they know not to knock on my door. The sign worked in 2021, and it also worked as intended in 2022, which by the way they shouldn't have been out, but last year a group of kids decided to completely ignore

it and came walking up my driveway to knock on my door. When I heard someone knocking I assumed it couldn't possibly be trick-or-treaters, so when I opened the door and saw a bunch of kids wearing cheap, full-body Marvel hero costumes I was not pleased. First off, they looked way too old to be trick-or-treating. The kid in the Iron Man costume looked like he was 12, 13 at the most, and when they all said trick or treat in unison, it sounded so entitled that it made me want to barf. I looked down at the kid who was attempting to look like Tony Stark and told him that

his costume wasn't even lore accurate. He looked at me kind of funny and asked what I was talking about so I told him that the circle on the Iron Man's chest is called the Arc Reactor. It's supposed to be yellow. The fact that it's blue in those dumb Corpo Fest movies is a stylistic choice. They made it a vibranium core to sell more Black Panther tickets, when traditionally, the reactor has been depicted as yellow or gold to signify different technological iterations. And by the time I was finished, all four kids were looking at me like I was speaking another

language, so I just stepped back inside and told them to buzz off and then slammed the door in their faces. I deal with a lot of generalized anxiety and pathogen control is a huge trigger for me, so just that minor interaction had me feeling extremely uneasy as I went and sat back down in my computer chair. But no sooner had I sat down than I had heard someone knocking at my door for a second time. I knew who it was, there was no way it could have been anyone but those kids again, so I stomped back towards my front door, opened it up, and then lo and behold, it was the

trashy Marvel kids in their cringey costumes. When I asked what they wanted this time, the kid in the Iron Man costume told me, you know we got a tricky now, right? And that alone infuriated me. But as he and his little friend started to laugh at how angry they'd made me, I just exploded. I yelled that if they came anywhere near my house again I'd be contacting their parents and then for the second time in what felt like as many minutes, I slammed the door in their faces.

I was almost shaking with anger by the time that I got back to my computer because the level of entitlement in those brats was just off the scale. They had completely ignored my no trick or treating sign. In fact, I feel like there's a good chance that the sign was the only reason they knocked on my door in the first place. They were lucky I'm not the kind of person to call or talk to the cops for any reason, otherwise I'd have been dialing 911 and giving their description to the dispatcher. But being the decent and private person that I am, I don't ever call or talk to the police. I tried calming myself

down a little with breathing exercises and then tried playing a little Overwatch in hopes that that might mellow me out. But then, we're talking no more than five or ten minutes later, I hear someone knocking on my door for a third time. I recall being totally unable to stop myself from letting out a sort of screech of frustration as I marched towards the front door, and when I swung it open, with a face that probably looked like thunder, I saw a very alarmed looking lady and a group of kids, and when I yelled at them, asking if they were blind and couldn't see my sign, they told me there was no sign.

I kinda scooted past the grown up lady so I could see my porch fully, then when I saw that there was no sign I felt like I was about to pass out. Those evil Marvel kids had stolen it, I think. And I screamed at the kids and the lady to get the hell off of my property and then walk back into my house and close the door. I had to take a seat on my stairs for fear of hitting my head if I passed out, and then decided if I didn't take something I was probably going to have a really bad night in terms of my anxiety. They always make me feel a little drowsy, but they're super fast

acting and they always hit the spot when I need it. And I took one, put up a fresh sign saying no trick or treaters, but this time in my window so no one could steal it, and then went on with my evening in peace. But that peace probably only lasted an hour. I had just started my second playthrough of one of my more favorite games when through the wall of sound my headphones provided I heard funk, funk, funk, and like one hollow bang and then two more in quick succession. The first scared the living hell out of me, but the second and third sounds sounded almost familiar and I had an immediate idea of what had just happened.

And lo and behold, on the outside of the window pane where I placed my no trick or treaters sign three broken eggs were dripping down the glass. And I was so angry that I was almost completely dissociating. I remember seeing the eggs then the next thing I remember I was in the fetal position in my bathtub pretty much with the knuckles on my right hand all swollen and bloody. I took a second pill, and then took a shower, and then put some salve on my knuckle before I decided to just take a nap. If I hadn't calmed down by the time my alarm went off, then I'd just call it quits on the

whole day and then take enough melatonin and doxy to knock myself out for the whole night. And that was around seven, and when I woke up at around nine I felt much calmer, so I figured I'd just go play some more Overwatch to take my mind off of things. Before that I needed to eat, so I got dressed, walked downstairs, and went into my kitchen to get myself some snacks. None of the lights were on in my house, and I prefer low light or darkness when I first wake up to prevent sensory overload, so I figured that it must have looked like I'd gone out or had headed to bed for the night, because no sooner had I lined up some bread

slices ready for the PB&J than I heard the distinct sound of someone softly stepping on the loose paving slab around the side of my house. The guys I hired didn't level the foundations of the driveway properly so around the side, near the gate leading to my backyard, there was this one loose slab of stone that rocked and knocked whenever you stood on it. Even if you stood on it very lightly, there would still be this sort of soft dunk sound and that's the exact sound I heard, coming through my open kitchen window.

My first reaction was to sneak back upstairs to my bedroom, where I planned on hiding until whoever it was had finished whatever they were doing. I didn't mind losing some stuff to some unhoused folks in a home robbery, but I was terrified that whoever it was might want to assault me, or do something terrible, which would only add to the mountain of trauma I'm already burdened with. But then, and excuse the potential for over description here, but as I got to the bottom of my stairs, something caught my eye through the unfrosted portion of my front door's glass panel.

It's mostly frosted, but there are small strips around the outside that are fully transparent. I glanced towards the door as I reached the bottom of the stairs, but I didn't see a white crime van parked at the end of my driveway, or more unhoused folks making their way towards my door. And instead, I saw a group of kids dressed in regular clothes who looked an awful lot like the Marvel kids who had knocked on my door just a few hours earlier, around the same heights. It wasn't some home invader creeping around the back of my house.

It was one of the trick-or-treaters, no doubt, come to do some additional tricking in my backyard. I slipped on my sneakers and headed towards the back door in my kitchen, which led out into the backyard. I waited a few seconds, hand on the doorknob, and then flung it open as fast as I could, rushing out into the backyard to be greeted by none other than the Iron Man Kid. And I don't think I have the words to describe the kind of satisfaction I felt when I saw the look of pure terror in his beady rat's eyes. It was glorious, and I felt like an avenging angel as I slammed my body into him

as he tried to escape. He had only one way to run, but since I caught him by surprise, I was able to cut him off in a very effective manner. I'd never been much of a fighter, and I never played any sports in high school at all, so I didn't know the first thing about tackling or taking anybody down. But let me tell you, throwing all 243 pounds of myself at this kid as hard as I could manage, that sure as hell did the trick. He smashed into the wood fencing at the side of my house so hard he basically slid down it afterwards before trying to find his feet again. I say tried because you can bet your ass that I didn't let him, and when he tried to scream

I found myself instinctually going for his throat and mouth to stifle his cries. And he was so much shorter than me and so much weaker that it almost seemed way too easy to just snatch him up like that. And then one by one I wrapped both my hands around his throat and squeezed. The way it cut off all of his breath and completely silenced him was nothing short of exquisite I might add. But as I squeezed, and squeezed, lifting him off the ground and feeling his little legs kicking out underneath him, I realized that if I squeezed any harder I'd be in danger

of crushing his neck and outright killing him. I didn't want to kill him, I just wanted to scare the kid. And since I happen to know the difference between choking his breath and choking his artery, don't ask how I know this, I decided to mess with him a little bit. I loosened up my overall grip on his neck but focused my grip on either side of his larynx which had the effect of slowing down the blood supply to his brain. And that's all I had to do was count to five and the kid went from flailing around like a fish out of water to limp as a wet noodle. I shouldn't have laughed, but my god did his dumb little face look hilarious as he started to snore. His eyelids were half

open and his eyes were rolling into their sockets as I laid him down and started dragging him further into my backyard. The kid woke up again by the time we reached the grass, but he was so woozy and light-headed that not only did he have no clue what was happening, but he didn't seem to know where he was either. He said a name, Brian or Ryan or something, thinking maybe it was his friend and not me who was dragging him across the grass, I think. But when I stopped dragging him and he turned to look, I got to enjoy a second look of pure, pant-wetting fear in his beady little eyes. He managed to stammer out something I please don't, before I started to approach him. Then as he rolled over and tried to get up and run off with his back to me, I took an arm around his throat and began to choke him again.

I have to reiterate at this point I'm not a bad guy, so at no point did I actually plan on killing this kid, but having said that, it was still a lot of fun making him think that I was going to do so. And as I squeezed in just the right spot on his neck I told him those were the final few moments of his life. Then just as he really started to buck and roll around, he went limp again and then I laid him back down in the grass. I kind of wish that I had the presence of mind to get it all on camera because I think I'd have watched it back a hundred times

by now, just laughing at how darkly humorous this all really was. I'd have sent the kid and his family a copy of the recording too, just so they can see the moment that I laid him down in the turf and began stroking his hair. I wasn't trying to be creepy about it, and I didn't do it because it excited me, not in the way that you're probably thinking. I did it because that time, it really did look like he was just sleeping, and he made that weird snoring sound even louder than the first time. A few seconds later, when he woke up for a second time, he was just as confused and groggy

as the first. Then right as he looked at me, almost to ask, who are you, I told him, You're dead, kid. Welcome to hell. And at that moment, he peed his pants. The kid straight up peed his pants right there in front of me as tears started to well up in his eyes and he starts to hyperventilate. I had to smack him, full force across the face to stop him from going into shock, I think.

And this kid must have been 12 or 13 at the minimum. And that's a man in some cultures, and there he was, balling his eyes out like a little baby, just because he got choked out a couple of times for retribution. his eyes out like a little baby just because he got choked out a couple of times for retribution. And I think his memories started to come back to him in that moment because he started blubbering I'm sorry, I'm so sorry in between his little sobs. I had the presence of mind not to say anything at all for a moment. I just drank in the image before me thinking, I did this. I took control.

And I hadn't felt real pride like that in so long, and I could have done so much more to that kid, but I decided enough was enough and it was time to let him leave. Just not without a little warning first. I told him by sneaking onto my property he was lucky that I hadn't killed him. I also told him I had a right to peace and privacy. And so whatever conflict we had ended there and then because I wasn't about to call a bunch of brain-dead cops for the sake of some dumb kid. But in return, I expected the same from him.

He was going to keep his mother-effing-mouth shut, and if he didn't, if I got so much as a whiff that he told another living soul of what had happened that night, I was going to saw through his mom's neck with a hacksaw after violating her in front of him. And then, when I was done with her, I was going to do the exact same thing to his dad only in reverse. I told him I didn't care if I went to jail or whatnot, that my life was a living hell and I'd be better off getting all that free medical care than having to pay for it myself. And I asked him if he understood and he nodded his head and then off he went.

Scampering into the night was piss running down his legs and I could smell it. Well, long story short, the kid did tell someone and I've had the cops harassing me all year. And all because that little jerk couldn't keep his mouth shut and take his punishment like a man instead of sniveling like a little boy about to vandalize my backyard. I told the cops my truth, which was how some dumb kid had tried breaking into my house and that all I'd done was teach him how that wasn't a good idea. I did acknowledge that I grabbed him, dragged him around a little bit and shoved him off my property, but I did leave out some of the parts, which I'm sure you can all agree is that he completely deserved. And I think that's only fair though, because the kid said nothing about throwing eggs in my window or stealing my sign, he

left out that little part. And you have to ask yourself, which is worse, criminal damage and theft of property, or a little rough and tumble with a kid that I did an effing favor for in teaching him a lesson. He had no right to be on my property, he had no right to steal my stuff, he effed around, and he found out. And if I do end up getting arrested over this, maybe I should follow through with my little promise to baby Tony Stark. Maybe I'll find out where he lives, where mommy and daddy lay their heads and show him how some people are not to be messed with.

And I'll be damned happy to submit a follow-up from jail. 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.