The Lets Read Podcast - 299: SOMETHING LURED HER INTO THE WOODS | 6 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 285

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about the last days of school & missing 411 cases 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

The End On the morning of June 25th, 1983, the Marshall family woke up bright and early and made their way towards Montana's Elkhorn Mountains. Kim Marshall, a member of the Capital City Radio Club, had been invited to attend a ham radio operator's picnic in Helena National Forest, which covers around a million acres west-central Montana. It was a fine Saturday morning with a clear blue summer sky and accompanying Kim that day was his four-year-old stepdaughter, Nylene. Nylene K. Marshall was only a few months shy for fifth birthday and

despite being a child of divorce was a happy and well-adjusted preschooler. Only Kim and Nylene were set on attending the operator's picnic that morning, but upon their arrival, Nyleen spotted several other children playing along a shallow water course known as Moppen Creek. Nyleen told her stepfather she wished to play with the other children, but unwilling to let his daughter play unsupervised, Kim declined. Moments later, a 13-year-old girl approached a hesitant Kim and proposed that she keep an eye on Nailene while he greeted his fellow radio enthusiasts. The teenager claimed that they had been catching frogs and offered to teach Nailene how to

do the same. Kim thanked the girl, told Nailene to go with her, and then headed off to meet with friends. He was under the impression that the teenage girl would keep a vigilant watch over his young stepdaughter, but he was wrong. Upon returning to Maupin Creek, Kim found the 13 year old girl who was supposed to have been watching Nailene, only to be told that she had gone missing. The girl told Nailene to stay by the creek, to focus on catching frogs and tadpoles and not to wander off, but it appears the little girl had taken no heed to this. What started as casual concern soon snowballed into abject panic, and as Kim began calling

out his stepdaughter's name, more and more of the picnic's attendees joined the search for four-year-old Nylene. Kim Marshall was horrified by his stepdaughter's sudden disappearance, but that horror only deepened when he became aware of the surrounding terrain. Moppen Creek was surrounded on all sides by dense forests, steep rocky cliffs, and deep, dark mine shafts that extended for miles underground. Fatal hazards awaited Nylene in all directions, causing the intensity of this search effort to ramp up dramatically. But when Kim asked a group of girls if they'd seen little Nylene, the answer they gave was

enough to send Kim into a full-blown panic attack. According to the girls, little Nylen had been spotted talking to an unfamiliar man in a purple jogging suit. One of them later told police that the man had been asking them to play what he called the shadow game, whereby the children would follow his shadow wherever he went. The older children, having been thoroughly indoctrinated on the dangers of strangers, refused the strange man's request. Yet little Nylene had not been so cynical.

After filing a missing persons report, Montana search and rescue teams mounted a large-scale search effort which spanned almost a thousand square miles. At its height, and in addition to the dozens of paid professionals, the search for four-year-old Nyleen boasted nearly 3,000 civilian volunteers. Helicopter search teams scoured the area from aerial vantage points, utilizing heat-seeking technology in the hopes of pinpointing Nyleen's location. Specialist canine teams were brought in to scour mineshafts, ravines, and watercourses, including that of Moppen Creek, where Nileen had been playing prior to her sudden disappearance. It's said that one dog, who traced the banks of the creek

after detecting Nileen's scent, came to an abrupt halt, and to many, this suggested something deeply chilling. That little Nylene had been suddenly and violently snatched from the ground before being carried off into the woods. Fearing foul play, the search and rescue teams ramped up their search efforts, scouring the surrounding hills and woodland for any sign of the missing girl. Yet just five days in, the region's weather took a severe turn for the worse, and officials had the search suspended until safe conditions returned.

Many of the civilian volunteers carried on in the absence of professionals, braving severe weather patterns in the hopes of bringing Nylene home. Yet sadly, on the tenth day of the search, the effort's most senior official called time on the search. Volunteers were outraged that search and rescue personnel could simply pack up and walk away, especially when there was every indication that little Nileen was still out there somewhere, lost and afraid. With standard search and rescue operating procedure often states that if you haven't found a warm body within 7 to 10 days, you're looking for a cold one.

I got kids of my own, said one civilian volunteer, who had tears in his eyes when he spoke to reporters. I feel for the mom. What's happened here is terrible. Just terrible. Over the months that followed, Nylene's face was displayed on billboards, milk cartons, and shopping bags. The number of an anonymous tip line was listed on all such postings, prompting tips to stream in from all over the world.

Sadly, none of these tips proved fruitful, and even fewer seemed genuine, but just over two years after Nylene's disappearance, one such phone call would cause shockwaves among the law enforcement community. On November 27th of 1985, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received an anonymous phone call from a man who made a terrifyingly shocking claim. The caller claimed to know for certain that Nylen had been abducted, and he knew this because he had been the one to take her. Authorities were exasperated.

The man seemed to possess intimate knowledge of Nyleen's disappearance, but it wasn't clear if he was genuine or was playing a very elaborate and cruel prank on those still searching for little Nylene. Two months later, the man mailed a typewritten letter to Child Find of America, a nonprofit organization that focuses on bringing home missing children. In the letter, the man repeated his claim that he'd abducted Nylene, but referred to her only by the name Kay. Authorities were still unsure that the man's claims were genuine, at least until they read one particular paragraph included in his letter which included several investigative details

which had not been made public. The letter's author was privy to things that non-law enforcement personnel would not have access to, said a Dane County detective, Kevin Hughes. After that, we had no choice but to consider his claims genuine and treat him as our prime suspect. The letter's author also claimed they had, and I quote, a nice invested income. This implied his passive income allowed him to live a mostly hermetic lifestyle by which he could dedicate himself to his lifelong passion, kidnapping children before raising them as his own.

The anonymous kidnapper, whose letters were postmarked from Madison, Wisconsin, then made the audacious claim that he enjoyed taking his victims on vacation. Apparently after arranging a fake passport for his young abductee, they traveled all over the United States together as well as to Canada and even the United Kingdom. He said he knew that Kay's family missed her, that he was aware he'd brought them great pain,

but in any event, he could not let Kay go. She was his property now. Just months later, Child Find of America received two more letters as well as an anonymous phone call, all from the same anonymous suspect that claimed to have abducted Nailene. His previous communications had been shocking, but these new ones chilled the blood of even the most hardened detective as they made the sickening claim that little Nylene was being abused. Tim Campbell, a detective with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, later spoke with

the press regarding what he'd seen, heard, and read. The suspect said that he was taking good care of Nailene, or Kay, whatever he was calling her, but then during the same phone call or letter, he made reference to things that we considered to be serious abuse. The FBI traced the calls to several phone booths, including one near a pharmacy in Edgerton, Wisconsin, yet the calls abruptly stopped after the phone booths were located and police began analyzing them for any potential forensic evidence. Five years later, with a search for Nylene still ongoing, the national syndicated TV

show Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on the missing girl. Somehow, the show's producers managed to obtain copies of the anonymous letters and aired excerpts of them on national TV, and they read as follows. Excerpt 1. I didn't want their person to try to get information from her. All I could tell them was that she was okay, and I hope that Child Find can get the following back to her family. I picked Kay up on the road in the Elkhorn Peak area between Helena and Boulder.

She was crying and frightened and as I held her, she was shaking and I decided that I would keep her and love her, and I took her home with me. I have a nice investment income and I can work from home so I care for her myself all the time. I teach her at home and I care for her myself all the time. I teach her at home and she likes to go with me when I travel. Her hair is short and curly now and she has really grown. She's about 45 inches and around 50 pounds. She has all four of her permanent upper and two of her lower incisors at this time and

she takes a bath and brushes her teeth every day. She eats well. Her favorite meal is pizza and cherry. Excerpt 2. She would gladly recount to you trips to San Francisco, New York, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Nashville, Chicago, Puerto Rico, or Canada. We were even in Britain for a month last year and she loved it. Nobody questions passports.

Excerpt 3. It is or where it comes from. Sick only that I get it from the bathroom every morning. It's actually a spoonful of my seed. It doesn't affect her physically. I have never touched her in any other way. She is a sweet little girl and it's because of how much I have grown to love her that I realize how much her family must miss her. But she is adjusted and seems happy. She trusts me and isn't afraid. We play a lot and she laughs when we clown around and she smiles and acts coy when I tease her. I love her and I have her. I love her, and I have her. I just can't let her go."

In conjunction with the FBI and Unsolved Mysteries, they were able to confirm that all letters and phone calls received came from the same man. Initially, the veracity of the man's claims of travel was severely in doubt, as it made very little sense for a kidnapper to risk discovery and arrest. But suddenly, the multiple sightings of Nylene which originated from all over the country made perfect sense. If her kidnapper was indeed audacious enough to travel with her, then each and every sighting could have been perfectly genuine. If he is in fact traveling, the show's hosts said, that would account for

the sightings from one coast to another coast. The show's producers hoped the episodes airing would force a break in the case, and they didn't have to wait long. In August of 1991, just months after the Unsolved Mysteries episode aired, a 42 year old Montana man named Richard James Wilson turned himself into police and made a shocking claim. He claimed to have abducted, tortured, and murdered little Nylene Marshall, along with at least one other unnamed woman. Richard Wilson had a history of mental illness and made the confession after violating parole for a previous conviction of assault against a minor.

This obviously made him a prime suspect in Nylene's disappearance, and at first police were elated at the idea of having finally closed the case. But on further questioning, Wilson's answers were found wanting. The police took him to an area east of Clancy where Wilson's claimed to have disposed of Nylian's body. He claimed he'd tossed it down a mineshaft, but when asked to locate the specific place of disposal, Wilson appeared completely incapable. Not only did he lack knowledge of the surrounding terrain, but the mineshaft he claimed to have

used looked nothing like the description given in his confession. Law enforcement scoured the mineshaft anyways simply to eliminate it as a site of potential corpse disposal. Yet their suspicions were confirmed when the shaft was discovered to be derelict and empty. The Jefferson County Sheriff Tom Donne told journalists that Wilson's confession had to be, quote, taken with a grain of salt. He spoke of Wilson's mental illness, as well as his penchant for tall tales, before sharing news of his release due to lack of evidence. In 1995, after living in Japan for several years, the Marshall family

relocated to Mexico. Kim, Nylene's stepfather, had received a job transfer. So while he stayed behind in Japan with the children, Nylene's mother, Nancy, flew to Mexico City during the summer of 95 to look for potential houses. However, it was during this trip to Mexico that the Marshalls suffered another unexpected tragedy. One morning, a housekeeper at Nancy's hotel noticed it had been a few days since anyone cleaned her room.

She asked the hotel's manager to force open the door so they could perform a welfare check. What they found inside was heartbreaking. Nancy Marshall was dead. Although a Mexican coroner declared that Nancy died of natural causes, her husband and other family members were convinced that she was murdered. Kim hired a private investigator who flew down to Mexico City and conducted a thorough investigation of the events and circumstances surrounding his wife's demise. What they discovered was shocking.

The Mexican coroner who did Nancy's autopsy had declared that the exact causes of death were indeterminable. Kim's private investigator discovered quite the opposite. Nancy had been found bound and gagged in her hotel room while photographs showed her corpse to be a patchwork of cuts and contusions. Her wedding ring had been stolen, along with several other items of value, and there were signs that the lock on the door to her hotel room had been violently forced open. Following Kim Marshall's indignant appeals, Mexican authorities later changed the status of Nancy's case from undetermined to under investigation. He then demanded they

investigate Nancy's death as a possible homicide, at least until the US State Department stepped in to lend their counsel, and Kim found himself with an almost impossible choice to make. If he continued pressuring the Mexican government to pursue his wife's killers, there's a chance her body might never be released from their custody. But if he gave up and allowed Nancy's murder to remain unsolved, her body could be released from their custody. But if he gave up and allowed Nancy's murder to remain unsolved, her body could be released for a funeral and burial. Kim thought long and hard about it, and then just a few weeks later, Nancy Marshall's body was returned to the United States and was buried in the state of Texas following a short but heart-rending

eulogy from her husband. Around the same time Nancy was being laid to rest, a nurse at a New Orleans hospital claimed to have spotted Nylene whilst on the job. She recalled how a young woman calling herself Helena had arrived at the hospital while in labor. She arrived in the company of a much older man and at first appeared strained but in high spirits. However, in private she made a very shocking confession. The young woman told nurses

that she believed that her mother's name was Nylene and that she grew up in a different county and remembered very little of her childhood. When the man returned, nurses asked him for more information about the woman's identity and medical history. He made a series of rather suspicious excuses and then forcibly removed his much younger female companion from the nurse's care and departed the hospital with her. Naturally, the hospital's staff were severely perturbed by the interaction and prompted local law enforcement to investigate. The frightened young woman was tracked down to Oklahoma City, where police asked her to

submit a DNA sample. The DNA sample was cross-referenced with one of Nylene's biological father, but there was no discernible match between the two. More than 20 years later, sometime in 2018, the fine Nyleen Marshall Facebook page claimed that the businesses all over Wisconsin had received handwritten letters in relation to Nyleen's disappearance. A post on the group's page stated the letters were postmarked from Cincinnati, Ohio, with no return address, and were being investigated by law enforcement. My gut tells me she's deceased, Jefferson County Sheriff Craig Doolittle told Mountain

News back in 2017. Sheriff Doolittle saw law enforcement had returned many times to the site where Nylene vanished, but nothing significant has ever been found, and not one piece of evidence was ever recovered. Recently, the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children issued an age-progressed photo of Nailene showing her at 43 years old. Decades after her disappearance, authorities still receive calls with tips. Nailene remains widely discussed on crime sleuth websites and forums.

And for investigators, the case is still open. Doolittle says the issue is something that they have yet to put away. Many pray Nylene is out there alive and well, and according to the letters and phone calls, there's very high probability that's true. There will always be hope. No one should stop searching for her. She may be living her life as Kay, not remembering her past or that she was abducted. In which case, all we can hope for is that Nailene, or Kay, is enjoying some degree of peace. Born on August 25th of 1954 in the Swiss city of Basel, Bruno Manzer's childhood was one

of high hopes and great privilege. He grew up in a wealthy family and was a bright, free-thinking boy. Yet despite his parents' expectations of a career in medicine, young Bruno chose a different path. At age 19, Bruno was sentenced to three months in prison after refusing to partake in Switzerland's compulsory military service. Inspired by the non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi, he relished in his status as a political prisoner, and upon leaving prison, he wished only to live a simple and contented existence.

From 1973 to 1983, he worked as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps, busying himself with handicrafts, herbology, and speleology, which is the study of caves and the root of the worst word in the English language, spelunking. He learned how to make, bake, and lay his own bricks. He carved leather, kept bees, and even made his own clothes by weaving the wool of the sheep he tended. And for a long time this was enough to keep Bruno happy. But around the age of 30 he developed a deep and unshakable wanderlust.

In 1984 Bruno visited the Malaysian state of Terengganu where he joined an expedition to explore Gunung Mulu National Park, and it was here that he first learned of a nomadic tribe known as the Penang. Bruno later said he intended to find the deep essence of humanity from people who are still living close to their nature, and he set off in search of the tribe, but after a gastronomic encounter with an unripe palm heart, he found only food poisoning. Undeterred by his initial setbacks and following many subsequent attempts, Bruno finally found the Penan nomadic tribes near the headwaters of the Limbang River in May of 1984.

At first, the Penan people simply ignored him, being far too cautious of the crazy Ulaan Puti, or white person, to approach him. Yet after a while, the Peinan found themselves impressed with Bruno's resilience, and after proving he had no ill intentions, they eventually accepted him into their villages. During his time with the Peinan, Bruno mastered all manners of jungle survival skills. He familiarized himself with Panon culture, learned their language, and he was even accepted into the court of the Panon tribal leader, Chief Aloncega. Bruno wore a loincloth while hunting with the tribe's warriors, using a blowgun and

poisoned darts to bring down birds, primates, and even snakes when other sources of protein became scarce. Back in Switzerland, Bruno was mocked with the nickname Tarzan, with many saying that he'd finally gone and lost his mind. But among the Panon, he was known by the name Lucky Panon. Lucky Panon simply means, Penon Man. But make no mistake, this was the highest compliment they could have possibly bestowed upon him, having all but officially inducted him into the tribe.

He'd survived malaria, a near deadly snake bite, and had survived a mountain fall by hanging from a rope for just less than 24 hours. And it's quite clear that Bruno could handle himself in the jungle. But that makes what happened to him next all the more confounding. By the year 2000, Bruno had been taking prolonged trips into the rainforests of Southeast Asia for more than 15 years. He'd been heavily involved in anti-deforestation activism in the region, but had sadly made

many enemies in the process. Logging firms hated him, those in need of cheap timber hated him, and due to his very vocal accusations of corruption, Malaysian politicians sought to ban him from entering their country. Bruno was forced to turn his sights onto Indonesia, and in February of the year 2000, he found himself on the jungle paths of Kalimantan, Indonesia. Bruno was accompanied by a film crew from his foundation, the Brunermanzer Fund, as well as the organization's secretary, John Quensley.

There he split off from Quensley and the film crew and continued on his journey with another unarmed companion. The trip continued for two weeks, crossing mountains and rivers on foot and by boat, with only Reprieve being a few hours sleep in a canvas hammock. On May 18th, Bruno reached the Sarawak-Calimantan border, and he and his companion spent one final night there, with Bruno writing a brief message on a postcard to his girlfriend Charlotte, who'd remained back in Switzerland. After making him swear he'd see it delivered, Bruno gave the postcard to his companion, who later said that he seemed perfectly happy and healthy as they'd parted ways.

And then after that, Bruno walked off into the jungle, alone. After that, Bruno walked off into the jungle, alone. According to John Quensley, Bruno crossed the Sarawak-Kalimantan border on May 22nd. He was then sighted by a Penan friend, a man called Paliu, on May 25th. Paliu said Bruno was carrying a 30 kilogram backpack and was headed in the direction of a mountain named Bukit Batulawi. Bruno told Paliu that he intended to climb the mountain, but when asked if he wanted company or assistance, Bruno declined. Paliu wished him luck, and then bid him farewell.

But little did he know, it was the last time anyone would see Bruno. Alive. After failing to return to the Foundation's campsite in the Allotic time frame, John Quincy and the camera crew enlisted the help of the Panan tribesmen on finding him. They scoured the region surrounding the Limbang River, and even tracked down Bruno's final campsite before his attempt to climb Batulawi. They followed Bruno's machete cuts into the thick forest until the trail reached the swamp at the foot of Bukit Batu Lawi, but frustratingly there was no trace of him in the swamp going back from the swamp or a trace of anyone else coming into the area. Bruno's

foundation paid for a search-and-res helicopter, as well as a mountaineering team to circle the limestone pinnacles of the mountain. However, citing the extreme danger of doing so, none of the mountaineers were willing to scale the last hundred meters of steep limestone that formed the peak of Batulawi. Following their descent, the mountaineers concluded that if Bruno had attempted to scale the limestone peaks, there was a high probability he'd suffered some kind of tragic accident. And with that in mind, they made a second journey up Batu Lawi,

concentrating around the places Bruno might have landed should he have taken a nasty fall. Yet mysteriously, not a single scrape of Bruno's body, equipment or clothing could be found. The Mountaineers enlisted the help of two very experienced local guides and asked them to opine on where Bruno's body might have gotten to. They spent days searching various nooks and crannies, but after once again finding nothing, the local guides were majorly perplexed. In their opinion, if Bruno wasn't in the spots they predicted, then they had to rule out a mountaineering accident as the cause of his disappearance. If Bruno had climbed the mountain, he must have

made it down alive. There were simply no other explanations for why he was no longer there, at least no rational ones anyway. Upon being informed of Bruno's disappearance, his girlfriend Charlotte got in touch with the Foundation with a crucial development. In the final postcard that he wrote to her, the one posted prior to his mountain climb, Bruno had complained of both diarrhea and a broken rib. He also complained of suffering serious fatigue yet appeared resolute in his desire to accomplish something he neglected to detail in the postcard. Bruno appeared to be searching for something, something that had driven him into the jungles of Indonesia, alone. But what if the object of Bruno's search

had been the very thing that caused others to search for him in turn? And as the search grew more desperate, Bruno's distraught companions enlisted the help of psychics, fortune-tellers, and even tribal necromancers. In some cases, their exact predications differed dramatically, yet all agreed on one thing. Bruno was alive. Emboldened by their consultant's supposedly supernatural foresight, Bruno's foundation requested that the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs open up a formal inquiry into his disappearance. They agreed and yet another search party wandered into the jungle in the hopes of bringing Bruno home. But once again, and despite vast amounts of money and man hours being poured into the

search, their efforts were fruitless, and they returned empty handed. In November of 2001, Bruno was awarded the International Society for Human Rights Prize for Switzerland. It was an award that would have meant a great deal to a man who dedicated his life to indigenous rights. Yet just months later, he was awarded what he might have considered to be an even greater prize. In January of 2002, hundreds of Penan tribesmen gathered to perform a funeral ceremony known

as Atahwai. There, they paid tribute to the missing Bruno Manzer, celebrating both his life and his courage before bidding his eternal spirit farewell. Tribal chieftains referred to him as Laki Tawang, or the one who became lost, as speaking the names of the recently deceased is a great taboo in Penang culture. After subsequent expeditions failed to uncover any trace of Bruno, a civil court in Baselstadt declared him legally dead on March 10th of 2005. Five years later, and to mark the 10th anniversary of his disappearance,

a memorial service was held for him in Basel's Elizabethan Church, roughly 500 people were in attendance. No one called him Tarzan anymore, and only a handful of people referred to him as Bruno. Out of respect, he was Laki Tawang, a man who lost his heart to the jungles of Southeast Asia, only later to lose his life. I went to high school with a boy named Ashley. Ash had blonde curly hair, a little bit of an overbite, and was ever so slightly overweight. He could look quite slow sometimes, staring glassy-eyed and slack-jawed at the blackboard each morning during reception period, but in reality, Ash was pretty sharp. His grades were good, he went to chess club in years 7 and 8, and then he was actually

on the debate team for a while before things went pear-shaped for him at school. Because unfortunately, as well as being one of the cleverest lads in our year group, Ash was also a complete weirdo. To give you an idea of just how weird Ash was, I was once told that he had a deathly phobia of vinegar. Three lads in my year group told me in the dinner hall at lunchtime one day, but since they were laughing when they told me I didn't believe them and very foolishly decided to test out their claim. A few minutes later, Ash walked over with his dinner tray and then sat a few chairs

down for me. Then after getting his attention, I flicked a bottle of vinegar in his direction, causing a few drops of it to land on the jacket of his school uniform. At first he seemed just a bit confused and looked at me like, have you gone mental? And I was half expecting to see the lads that had told me that he was scared of vinegar to be pissing themselves laughing like, you gullible twat. But when I looked over, they were horrified. On a split second later, the whole dining room hears this ear-splitting screech.

Ash jumps up so hard his chair falls over, and then he goes running out the dining hall with literal tears in his eyes. He'd realized it was vinegar that I'd flicked on him, and his reaction was to completely freak out. Ash was a bit weird, but also a bit of a prankster. And so when he jumped up and ran out screaming like he did, most kids assumed that it was just some kind of joke. However, when we later found out his reaction was genuine, Ash solidified his reputation as being, to put it nicely, an absolute fruit loop. I actually got into a bit of trouble over the vinegar flicking incident,

but nothing too serious and Ash accepted my apology so there were no hard feelings. He continued to put in a good performance at school and he got to be quite outgoing for a while and would sometimes come and play football with us on the school's astroturf. But then, the school held a business studies fair and, although that might sound like the most innocuous thing imaginable, it pulled us all on the road. To disaster. So right as we were about to pick our exam subjects, our school started teaching business studies as a GCSE. They tried it one year, but hardly anyone signed up, so the next year they put on a little fare in an attempt to drum up interest. Now I won't bore you with all the

little details, but the main event was a talk from some prominent local businessman, and he spoke at length about the need for free thinking and innovation, as well as the raw desire to go out and make our fortune in the world. I think it just went in one ear and out the other for a lot of us, but in Ashley's case he took it to heart. He started buying blank CDs, burning people's album requests onto it, and then reselling them for like a one quid profit per unit. It started with just a few, enough to buy himself some sweets from the school tuck shop, but then after a while, even some of the teachers were buying bootleg CDs from him, and he'd sell maybe 10 to 15 a day. Well, as some of you are probably screaming at the screen right now, this was extremely

illegal, and it wasn't long before Ash was called into the head teacher's office for abolishing. What he was doing was obviously wrong, but from what I heard, the way the school handled it was ridiculously harsh. I think the school feared some kind of lawsuit and wanted to make an extreme example of Ash to stop other kids from starting up illegal side businesses. Because when it came to his punishment, it seemed way out of proportion. Instead of giving him a slap on the wrist and telling him not to do it again, Ash was suspended for two weeks, given four Saturday detentions in a row,

and had to write a thousand-word essay on why what he was doing was wrong. This was an insanely harsh punishment as it stood, but what totally wrecked Ash's head was the fact that less than a week before, he'd been encouraged to be innovative, free-thinking, and entrepreneurial. Granted the guest speaker at the business studies fair didn't mean start pirating music and selling bootleg CDs to everyone, but Ash was almost 15 and everyone does daft, harmless things at that age, really. He should have gotten a slap on the wrist, maybe one round of regular detention at best, but for some reason, they came down on him like a ton of bricks. The whole experience must have had a profound effect on him because after that, he was never

the same. His grades dropped dramatically, and he became increasingly antisocial, and he became the focal point of a number of minor scandals. He got caught smoking behind the school gym one lunchtime and then another time teachers found a can of lager in his bag and he'd also loudly argue with teachers pretty regularly and till I think even his parents got involved and began posing punishments at home. till I think even his parents got involved and began posing punishments at home. And during his last year of secondary school, which is 10th grade in the United States, Ash's behavior started to level off. His exams were coming up, so I think that's what had him knuckling down a bit in terms

of his academic performance. But at the same time, he was still this seething ball of resentment, who despised almost everyone and everything. Cut to early April, about six weeks before exams, and we got a special announcement in assembly come Monday morning. Someone had been stealing crates from the school dinner hall, and it was costing the school money, because the catering companies expected the crates back, and the company was charging the school a premium for each one that was missing.

The head teacher announced that although they didn't yet know who was doing it, they'd inevitably find the culprit and they'd be severely punished. But I remember everyone being incredibly confused of all the things to steal why steal wooden fruit and vegetable crates, and in any case, who was the crate thief? And this went on for weeks and there wasn't much the school could do about it. They bought a special wheelie bin to put all the empty crates in, but whoever was stealing them started coming to school with an allen key where they just unlocked the wheelie bin and steal more crates.

Everyone knew it was happening, but it was probably the most boring mystery in the history of time, so nobody really gave a toss apart from the school. But then one morning I solved at least half of the missing crate mystery all on my own. Our school had a breakfast club and in the run up to the exams, I had decided that I'd start going to get some extra revision in with a bacon buddy and a cup of tea. And Ash was almost always there first. In fact, the one time I arrived bang on 7 o'clock, he was sitting on one of the benches outside the dining hall, looking like he'd beaten me to it by at least five to ten minutes. Because no one really gave a toss about the crates going missing, I didn't devote too

much thought to it either. But later that morning, when Ash reached into his blazer pocket to fish for change, I saw what looked an awful lot like an allen key in his fist before he quickly dropped it back into the pocket. On the way out of breakfast club, I caught up with Ash and quietly asked him why he had an Allen key in his pocket. He tried to deny it at first, but when I asked if it was him stealing all the crates from the school bins, his smile told me all I needed to know.

I swore I wouldn't tell anyone it was him, but then I had to ask why steal crates meant for the dinner hall's catering company to ask why steal crates meant for the dinner hall's catering company, and why steal so many that it required a special mention during that weekly assembly. Ash just gave me a sly wink and told me, you'll see, and then walked away. I remember telling only one of my mates about it, only after swearing him to secrecy on his mom's life. And then when I told him Ash was stealing the crates, he says, is that it? I thought you were about to tell me something like life or death.

He was perplexed as to why the whole thing even interested me in the first place, but when I explained how Ash wasn't just stealing crates, he was planning to do something with them, my friends started to understand my fascination. We thought that there was a good chance it was some kind of money making scheme, but then having him say, you'll see, didn't make much sense if that was the case. If he was just selling the crates, what was there to see? We didn't find out what he meant until the last day of

school, but if I'd even gotten so much of an inkling as to what he was planning, I'd have gone to every length to stop it. So the last day of school was Friday, the 25th of May, and as you can imagine we expected a great deal of high drinks. There'd be pranks, water balloons, everyone would be signing each other's shirts and whatnot. But what we didn't expect was to turn up to school and see a huge wooden behemoth standing proudly on the sports field. The sports field was way out behind the back of the school where the dinner hall was near the front, and so when I arrived at school I didn't see what many others did that morning until much later in the day.

The first thing I personally noticed was that Ash wasn't at the breakfast club, but that didn't mean anything to me at the time. It was only later on that I heard rumors of a big pile of wooden planks on the sports field, but it wasn't until lunchtime that me and my mates were able to walk down to the field to see what was going on. It wasn't just a big pile of wood. It was a big pile of wooden crates. And when I say big, I mean really big.

It was at least two or three times as tall as me, maybe 13 to 14 feet high, and it was even wider at the base. It looked like a giant rough pyramid, then as people got closer, they started to smell the fumes. It was a bonfire. A massive bonfire made entirely of wooden fruit and veg crates, and by the smell, someone had poured a lot of petrol all over it, or at least some kind of flammable liquid to aid in its ignition. There was just a handful of curious kids standing around by the time we got there, but in the minutes that followed, the situation escalated dramatically. Within just 10 to 15 minutes, the corral surrounding the bonfire swelled from about a dozen to

between 200 and 250 kids. News of the bonfire had spread like wildfire, excuse the pun, and I think our school's teachers were too busy trying to put out other, more metaphorical fires because as I said earlier, prank season was in full effect. Everyone was so excited for some riotous act of rebellion on the last day of school, and when ash delivered, they flocked to the sports field at the first available opportunity. By about 1240, half the school had encircled the bonfire in the expectation that someone was going to light it.

And before long, someone did. I don't know who had the lighter on them, but someone did. And then seconds later, a kid in year ten was approaching the bonfire with it along with a rolled up bit of paper to act as kindling. He approached the pile of acrid smelling crates to the cries of, do it, set it on fire. And then after a bit of theatrical nervousness, the kid lit the paper, leaned down, and then started trying to set the pile ablaze. There were a few moments of doubt, and then a cheer as we all saw a rush of flame in the

core of the pile. The next thing, there was a flash, and a bang. And then the crowd surged backwards. I remember how at first the sound of the explosion caused most of the girls present to start screaming hysterically. I mean, obviously the boys are screaming too, but it's the ear-splitting sound of the girls that really stuck with me at the time. There were crates flying through the air, pieces of shattered wood flying even higher,

and some of these pieces were actually on fire too, so they'd leave these trails of smoke in the air as they flew and fell. It was pure chaos, and naturally kids were scared so they were screaming. But then I also remember the distinct movement when the screams of terror were replaced by the screams of pain. I had been a few rows back as people gathered round the bonfire so I'd quite literally had a meat shield of other kids in front of me when the explosion happened. So when it did happen, it sent all kinds of sharp wooden splinters into the kids in the front row, as well as a bunch of the kids in the second row too. The result was almost 20 to 30 students, all lying among the grass, surrounding what by then was a blazing inferno, and almost

all of them had suffered horrific injuries. Everyone had white shirts on because since it was summer, almost everyone had left their blazers in their lockers. So imagine all that blood, against all that shredded white linen, and how much more pronounced it was compared to if we'd been wearing our own clothes. Kids had suffered cuts from flying debris, burns from errant embers, and the shock of the blast itself. One girl's hair was almost completely singed away and she was shrieking in pain from the

burns to her ears and scalp. What had once been a joyous atmosphere had been transformed in a split second into one of blood, smoke, and terror. It was like something from a nightmare. But it was real. And for some of us, the reality of it kicked on sooner rather than later. Sometimes when I ponder on the nature of humanity I remember how some kids reacted after the explosion. A lot of kids ran all how some kids reacted after the explosion.

A lot of kids ran all the way back to the main school, some because they were scared and others because they wanted to inform teachers who would in turn summon emergency services. I think both options have their merits and I don't blame anyone who ran because they were scared because I was there and it was one of the most horrifically frightening scenes I've ever witnessed. But not everyone ran. I remember standing there probably gopping at the aftermath in complete horror when one kid, David Oakes, ran past me and towards the fire. He stopped, turned back and shouted, give me an effing hand will you, and then carried on towards the fire to help drag

victims of the explosion away from it. And I snapped out of my daze and followed David, and then helped him drag or carry those who couldn't walk away from the fire. Their shirts and pants had been ripped and there was blood all over the grass and one kid named Stuart had a huge splinter sticking out of his leg. He wailed in agony whenever we tried to move him, but we didn't have a choice. It was that, or burn to death, that the fire started spreading across the grass. Not long after, the first teachers arrived with first aid kits in hand, and the teachers started directing us on how to best care for the injured before the ambulances arrived. It was an incredible display of bravery and mental fortitude, one I'll remember for as

long as I live, but the atmosphere very quickly turned from compassion towards those affected to anger towards those responsible. Ash had decided to stay in bed for that last day of school. After hearing about the bonfire explosion, his parents came home early from work and were about to rush to school to see if he was okay when they suddenly realized that he was in bed. At first, upon seeing that he was fine, they must have been relieved. I can only imagine their reaction when they realized Ash staying in bed all day meant

that he'd most likely stayed up all night, and that the bonfire had no doubt been built and then soaked in petrol during that same period. As you can imagine, the parents of wounded children wanted heads to roll, so it was only a matter of days before Ash was questioned and then arrested by police on suspicion of arson and GBH. We were convinced that he was going to get sent to prison or something. But not only did he never admit to building the bonfire, but the police didn't have a scrap of evidence that he was the one responsible.

Everything hinged on Ash admitting it, then when he didn't, the police had no choice but to let him go. They did everything they could to try and get CCTV footage of him doing just about anything. Stealing crates, building the bonfire. I heard they even canvassed petrol stations in the hopes of catching him buying petrol. I imagine they tried a ton of other stuff too, but none of it worked. And although most are 90% sure that it was him that built that bonfire, 99.9% in my case, Ash was never punished for it.

There was only the lingering suspicion that he was responsible, but even then, he can't share all the blame. Ash didn't set that bonfire aflame. He didn't even have to hand anyone a lighter either. He simply planned it, built it, and then trusted that a bunch of naive, excitable children wouldn't be able to help themselves once they saw it. And he was right. The Leah Roberts was born on July 23rd of 1976 in Durham, North Carolina. She was described as a talkative, easygoing young woman with a thick Carolina accent and a deep love for music. By the age of 23 Leah was living a comfortable existence in Raleigh, North Carolina with her longtime friend and roommate, Nicole.

But her young life had been irreparably marred by tragedy. When she was just 17, Leah's father was diagnosed with a long-term respiratory illness. Then just three years later, her mother unexpectedly died of heart disease. Leah took some time off of school to recuperate from the deep and sudden grief, but upon her return in the fall of 1998, she was almost killed in a freak automobile accident. She suffered a punctured lung and shattered femur, and needed a metal rod inserted throughout the entire length of the bone. Finally in 1999, Leah's dying father slipped away during the night.

She subsequently withdrew from classes again, which gave her time to help organize her father's upcoming funeral and divide his estate. But it was during this time, and potentially as a result of her grief, that Leah became increasingly interested in philosophy and spirituality. Her passion for the twin topics continued to grow, then despite returning to college in the fall of 99, she spent far more time pursuing her newfound passions than studying for her degree. She kept her grades up and kept the partying to a minimum, but then, just months before she was due to graduate, she dropped out.

Her friends and family were flabbergasted, but to Leah it made perfect sense. Her friends and family were flabbergasted, but to Leah it made perfect sense. She didn't want her degree, she wanted to travel, and if the previous few years had taught her anything it was never to waste a moment. Yet unfortunately, Leah's newfound sense of wanderlust would ultimately be her undoing. On March 9th of the year 2000, Leah and her sister Kara shared a lengthy telephone call. They made plans to babysit together the following day and then also agreed to visit the homes of some mutual friends over the days that followed. Yet mysteriously, these were promises that Leah would never honor.

That very same evening, she packed some clothes, grabbed her house cat, Bea, and then embarked on a 3,000 mile solo road trip across the United States. The next day, when Leah failed to arrive for their babysitting appointment, Kara simply assumed her sister had changed her mind. Leah was still feeling the loss of her father so the change of plans caused no offense. It took until March 13th for Kara to realize something was wrong, and when she did, she drove over to her sister's apartment to check on her. Finding the front door unlocked, Kara began to search Leah's apartment, and then upon

entering her bedroom, she found a notebook with the words, Read me, scrawled on the cover. Kara picked it up, opened it, and found a handwritten note along with $3,000 cash. And the note was addressed to her roommate and read as follows. Nicole, this is to cover bills for a while as I'm gone. Remember everyone is together in thoughts and prayers and time passes quickly. Have faith in me, yourself. Help Shep with Easter at Lotta House for a fun for the children. Give Peter my laptop. Give everyone my love. See you soon. Tell Kara don't worry, even though she will. Leah. PS. They are ready to bake cookies in the freezer.

Underneath the main body of text, Leah appeared to have scrawled several additional messages. April 23rd, one read, On the road. No, I'm not sad. I'm the opposite. Remember Jack Kerouac? Tell Nikki I meant to come, but I had no choice. The second read, she'll understand. The third additional message gave a friend permission to stay in her room should she

ever visit Raleigh, but quite evidently it wasn't of nearly as much interest as the first two. One of Leah's favorite authors was Jack Kerouac, and she had a particular love of his work Dharma Burns. According to a close friend, she particularly enjoyed the part where Kerouac spends the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in rural Washington state. Kara, who had been granted power of attorney over Leah, used it to obtain her sister's bank records.

They showed that Leah was traveling towards Washington via the southwest and west coast. She was recreating Kerouac's journey. Kara soon discovered that Leah spent the night of March 10th in Lebanon, Tennessee, then had made it to Brooks, Oregon by March 13th. Nine days later, two trail runners jogging in Washington's Whatcom County made a strange discovery as they progressed along a trail. As they ran, they noticed an article of clothing hanging from a tree. A further search uncovered a second piece of clothing before their attention was drawn to a white vehicle,

which lay heavily damaged at the bottom of a roadside embankment. The 1993 Jeep Cherokee was sitting along the left side of Canyon Creek Road, a little over 30 miles east of Bellingham. The exterior was heavily damaged, the windows were shattered, and the front of the Jeep was crumpled, which suggested a violent frontal collision. The ground surrounding the Jeep was strewn with clothing and loose personal belongings, including a guitar, passport, driver's license, checkbook, and several CDs.

Several blankets were draped over the car's broken windows, suggesting someone had been using it for shelter from the elements. But when the two concerned joggers yelled out for the driver, only silence greeted them. An accident investigator who later arrived at the scene estimated that the Jeep must have been traveling at around 30 to 40 mph to have sustained that level of exterior damage. It also flipped over several times before coming to arrest at the thicket of downed trees, upright and parallel to the road. The investigator went on to state that anyone present in the car during such a crash would have been seriously

injured if not killed. Yet detectives were unable to find any evidence that someone was inside the car at the time of the crash. There were no traces of hair or blood, the seatbelt was not strained, and there was no damage consistent with someone hitting their head against the wheel or windshield. For all intent and purpose, it was as if the driver had simply evaporated while at the wheel of their car. Having been reported missing several days earlier, it was soon discovered that the owner of the Jeep had been none other than Leah Roberts. Security camera footage from a gas station back in Brooks showed her peering out of the

window as a clerk rang her up, as if concerned that she was being followed. But the veracity of this theory has never been established. In the days that followed the Jeep's discovery, two search and rescue teams combed the area around it using dogs and a helicopter, but unfortunately they found no trace of Leah or her missing house cat. Search and rescue experts strongly doubted that Leah had wandered off and perished in the woods. Not just because that the car was so close to the road, but because she had been in a state of moderate to severe injury following the crash.

They too cited the lack of blood or seatbelt strain, with one official even theorizing that Leah had deliberately crashed the vehicle while not at the wheel in order to use it as a makeshift shelter. To him, that was the scariest scenario of all, because quite rightly, it suggested that she wasn't in a right mind. It doesn't surprise me that she would go off and try to find herself, Leah's brother Heath said in the days following her disappearance. I was concerned about her, but I wasn't very worried until we got the phone call that they had found her car.

A thorough search of the Jeep found $2,500 tucked in a pair of jeans, along with a wooden ornate box containing a ticket for a 2.10pm showing of the movie American Beauty, which took place at the Bellis Fair Mall on the day that she arrived in Oregon. Yet what was of most concern to Leah's family and friends was the discovery of her mother's engagement ring, which appeared to have been abandoned along with her Jeep. Those close to Leah knew that ring was her most precious earthly possession, the one thing she treasured over all others. If she believed that she was leaving her Jeep never to return, those close to her had absolutely

no doubt that Leah would have taken it with her. Its presence in the Jeep suggested Leah had every intention of returning to collect it, in which case, what prevented her from doing so? As Washington-based law enforcement agencies put out appeals for public information, several very credible sightings were reported. An unidentified man informed detectives that he and his wife had met a young woman matching Leah's description at a gas station in Everett, about 70 miles south of Bellingham. The man went on to state that the woman seemed severely disoriented and made the rather alarming declaration that she didn't know who she was or where she lived. Naturally,

detectives believed the man was trying to be of some help and began asking him additional questions regarding the bizarre encounter. However, after exhibiting an inability to answer their questions, the man hung up on the detectives and they were unable to re-establish contact due to the nature of their anonymous tip line. This is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Leah's missing persons case. The detectives might well have spoken to someone with intimate knowledge of her whereabouts, but who might have been deliberately trying to deceive them. On March 21st of the year 2000, Leah's two siblings, Heath and Kara, drove over to Washington

State to help search for her. Their first port of call was the Bellis Faire Mall, the place Leah had caught a screening of American Beauty in the hopes that someone there might recognize her. No one from the theater remembered her face, but in a restaurant called Elephant and Castle, employees said they'd spotted Leah at the bar on March 13th, happily chatting with other patrons. The day after Heath and Kara returned to North Carolina, one of the men who spoke to Leah at the restaurant heard the news about her disappearance and reached out to detectives. The man, who has never been publicly named, described her as very friendly and talkative,

but that ultimately he'd watched her leave the restaurant alone. Missing person detectives later tracked down another of the bar's patrons who also described Leah as being warm and friendly. He also recalled conversing with her regarding Jack Kerouac, and now he tied into her reasons for visiting Washington State. However, contrary to what the first witness said, the second patron claimed Leah left the restaurant with a man she'd referred to as Barry. The man then gave such a detailed description of Barry that authorities arranged for him to meet with a sketch artist, who created a composite drawing of the case's primary

person of interest. However, detectives were never able to verify that Barry ever existed, and found it deeply suspicious that the story of the bar's second patron directly contradicted that of the first. When pressed about the inconsistencies between the two stories, the behavior of the second patron became very odd, enough that investigators began to wonder if Barry was simply a fabrication designed to mislead them. After searching Leah's car, detectives asked Carrow what she wanted them to do with the vehicle.

She told them to keep it, hoping that technological advances might yield more evidence in the future. In 2006, her decision paid off. When Detectives Jamie Collins and Alan Smith reviewed the case file, they realized the Jeep had not been searched as thoroughly as they previously thought. Although the interior was processed for blood, hair, and fibers, no one had thought to explore underneath the hood of the car for any evidence. When they opened up the hood, they found that the cover had been removed from the starter relay.

And without the cover, someone could turn the ignition on and simply push on the starter relay, which would allow the Jeep to accelerate into the embankment on its own without anyone inside the vehicle. They also found unidentified fingerprints under the hood of the car. It appeared as though the Jeep had been tampered with, and that it would have taken someone with the knowledge of a mechanic in order to do that level of tampering to the vehicle, said Detective Smith, knowing all too well that his conclusion opened up terrifying new dimensions in the case.

There was one person of interest who had such an experience, the man who said he watched Leah leave with Barry. This man, who had relocated to Canada by the time of the investigation, had previously served in the military and had extensive experience as an auto mechanic. It took two years to obtain fingerprints from Canadian authorities, but when they finally got them, they were disappointed to learn that there was no match. Then in the spring of 2010, authorities obtained a DNA sample from an undisclosed item in Leah's car.

They were in the process of comparing that DNA to the person of interest in 2011, but the results of this test are unknown as to date there have been no public updates in the case. Leah's missing posters, which once plastered the state of Washington, are now weathered and tattered, her smile now a whispered story of laughter and love. The search is over, but for those who knew Leah best, hope remains a fragile flame dancing in the heart's quiet corner, refusing to be extinguished. Because somewhere out there, beyond the reach of answers, was the silent promise that they'd never give up hope of bringing Leah home alive. In the summer before my senior year of high school, I got involved with a guy from school

named Sean. Our friend groups had kind of merged that summer, and two of our mutual friends were dating, but what we had was very much a situationship, and at first he seemed to understand that. Now I know that might sound cruel to basically tell him, I like you, just not enough to be my boyfriend, but we had senior year coming up, the single most important year of high school, so I didn't want any distractions once school started up again. And like I said, he seemed to totally respect that at first.

But when it came to going back to school, it was clear that he had no intentions of letting things go. At first we kept things professional, and neither of us entertained the idea of hooking up again. I could tell that he wanted to, and I'd be lying if I said his feelings were not reciprocated. But that was just the problem. Sean seemed like the perfect distraction, and at the time when I needed one like a hole in my head. But then when it came to the holidays, he made me a very attractive offer. He claimed that he was handling his emotions, respected my desire to focus on school, but thought that we might be able to hook up again over winter break.

And having him be that into me was very flattering, I won't kid you. And so I figured, if he could continue to remain professional once school started up again, hey, why not? All of my other friends were either finding festive flings or hooking up with their boyfriends, so a little company over the holidays was very welcome. But as it turns out, I made a huge error of judgment in thinking Sean could remain mature about it. We ended up going on a few dates around Christmas and New Year's and they were great, but not long before we were due to head back to school, he asked if we could have a little talk. I knew what it was going to be about, and so the prospect filled me with this kind of

dread, but I figured then would be as good a time as any to set him straight regarding our relationship, or lack thereof. But Sean was persistent. He agreed that school should take priority for me, but suggested that we could undertake study sessions together so we could see each other while school was still in session. Now don't get me wrong, that sounded like a wonderful date idea, but it would be just that, a date, and since being together would not be conducive with concentration, it was a no from me on that one. Sean suggested that if I ended up getting into NYU, he could move to NYC so we could

pursue a relationship there. I know it wasn't the craziest idea in the world, but the idea of him packing up his whole life for my sake was just way too much pressure. It just wasn't an idea I wanted to entertain. We were too young to let our stupid crush dictate the course of our lives, but Sean didn't feel that way at all, and unfortunately we went on to have a huge falling out over it. The discussion kept going around in circles it seemed, and the more it did, the more it

frustrated me. I kept telling him I need to leave before I say something I regret, and he didn't let me leave, so I ended up saying something that I went on to regret. I said something, and he said something. Things got pretty heated, and then we both very angrily agreed to call it quits. It wasn't the way I wanted to end things with him, but he made any kind of amicable split completely impossible.

He'd gone from down for something casual to thinking that we were soulmates in six months, and so on the advice of a friend, I decided to go no contact. But then, since we both went to the same high school, it was much easier said than done. We didn't have any classes together, which I thanked God for at the time, but it was inevitable that we'd bump into each other in the corridors. And when we did, it was awkward as hell. He tried to get my attention a few times, but I knew that it wouldn't do him any good. I'd said my piece, and I had nothing left to add.

And the sooner that he got over me and moved on, the better, I thought. Acknowledging him wouldn't have done either of us any favors, so I kept my eyes forward, kept walking, and prayed that he'd finally see some sense and stop trying to talk to me. But he didn't. Instead, Sean decided to start coming over to my family's home to try and speak with me face to face. And that only happened but one time, because when I realized it was Sean at the door, I

told him he had exactly one minute to make himself disappear before my dad got to know what had been going on. He said that he wasn't leaving until we agreed to sit down and talk, so I stayed true to my word and told my dad that a guy from school was harassing me. He marched out toward the front door and I couldn't watch at first, so I just stayed in the TV room and sat down on the couch with my head in my hands like this cannot be happening right now. I have no idea what was said at first and I'm not sure I want to, but the moment my

mother and I heard my dad yelling, are you crazy, get the hell off my property, we knew things were about to go south, quickly. The next thing, we heard my dad get real angry, and then the sounds of a struggle, so my mom and I ran outside to see my dad basically dragging Sean back up our driveway with a hand around his throat. He wasn't choking him, and Sean was trying to struggle against him, but my dad was way bigger and had no problem manhandling Sean off the property.

It was honestly mortifying in the extreme, but a part of me was kind of glad things had come to a head, because at least after that it would be over, right? Well Sean let me know that that wasn't going to happen by saying that he was going to do something to me at school before spring break. My dad said something about him not coming to the house anymore or he'd really give Sean an ass whooping, but then he responded by saying something like, Oh yeah? Well you can't protect her at school, can you?

It was enough to make my mom gasp, because in a way, Sean was exactly right. He just didn't count on my dad getting him suspended for that week of school before spring break. My dad called up our high school, had a long talk with our principal, and the end result was that Sean would be suspended for those final few days of school. He figured that that might give me some peace of mind, and for a while I guess it did. I felt way more at ease at school. I wasn't looking over my shoulder every five minutes, but I still wasn't completely relaxed. And that's because I knew that there was nothing anyone could do to stop Sean showing up on

the last day of school. Outside school, I mean, because he basically knew exactly where I'd be and when. And this weighed on my mind the whole week. And then on Friday, the last day of school before spring break, I approached a guy named Ryan and asked if he could do me a huge favor. I knew Ryan from math and we talked a little here and there, but we didn't consider each other friends by any stretch. He asked me what was up and after gathering my thoughts, I asked if he could give me a ride home from school.

Now at the time, a girl asking a guy for a ride home had become sort of a byword for I like you, and since I was anxious over the Shawn situation, I was very quick to let Ryan know that my request was only that, a request for a ride home and nothing more. I know for a fact that I was giving off major panicky vibes because he had this big frown on his face before he asked me what was going on. And he was just being polite. He knew what had happened with Sean and my dad, and really everyone knew, and I guess he just wanted to hear it for himself.

But if he didn't, well, I sure told him. After that he said he was game to drive me just about anywhere and said to meet him at the back of his locker come the end of school so he could walk me to my car. And I felt this wave of utter relief wash over me, and then after thanking him from the very bottom of my heart, I went about my day feeling like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I usually walked home, a route that Sean was very familiar with, so if he wanted to confront me, I had no doubt that's where he'd do it.

Schools seemed like there'd be too many people around for such a potentially embarrassing confrontation, so getting a ride home seemed like it eliminated that possibility entirely. But let me assure you, seemed as doing an assload of heavy lifting in that sentence. A few hours later, come the end of school, I met Ryan at his locker and we made our way towards the student parking lot. As we walked I thanked him profusely for a second time and then said how if he knew the kind of favor he was doing me, he'd be charging me airline prices to ride in that passenger seat. Again, I think Ryan knew exactly what kind of favor he was doing for me because news

about the fight between Sean and my dad swept through school like the September sniffles, but he chose not to make a big deal out of it, which I thought was really sweet of him. I remember this feeling of almost weightlessness, the impression that everything was going to be fine because there really were good people still out there. And then a split second later, I heard the rev of an engine and the screech of tires. I turned back to see a silver sedan roaring through the parking lot in our direction. It was coming at us almost impossibly fast, and there was a split second where I really did think, holy crap, this is it.

I'm gonna die. But then the next moment, I was hurtling to the left and hitting the asphalt so hard that I felt a surge of pain shoot through my shoulder. I fell between two cars, both of which protected me from the silver sedan as it smashed into them. Ryan, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Upon seeing the silver sedan speeding towards us, Ryan's first thought was to shove me out of the way.

But in doing so, he made sure that it was far too late to get his own self out of the way, but in doing so he made sure that was far too late to get his own self out of its path. I didn't actually see it happen but I later heard the car hit him so hard that he went flying through the air before landing in this just heap. But at that moment all I was interested in was getting as far away from it as possible, either because it was about to take another charge at me or the driver was about to get out of it and finish the job by hand. As I tried to stand, the driver slammed the car into reverse. I couldn't put any weight on my left arm at all, so it took me longer than it normally

would have to find my feet, and this gave the driver time to reverse, get a decent run-up, and then drive at me once more in the hopes of inflicting some kind of extreme physical trauma. I just made it to my feet before I slammed into the rear of the car to my left, but by that time I was mobile enough to jump back away from that danger zone. I remember how after the smash I looked into the driver's side of the car to see who it was, but in my heart I already knew. I knew who was driving that car from the second I saw it speeding at us. It was Sean, and he'd come to kill me.

I just ran faster than I'd ever had before in my life and luckily because of how the parking lot was set up, Sean had to navigate around the blocks of parked cars while I was quite easily able to get the hell out of there by running through the smaller gaps. After that, I'm pretty sure that he took off with the police looking for him, whereas I ended up at the school nurse, before being taken to the hospital. And the doctors at the hospital had a bunch of questions for me, and so did the cops,

but all I wanted to know was one thing, and that's how Ryan was doing. It took a while to get a solid answer on that, but when I did, I wept with relief. He was alive, barely, but he'd managed to hang on. And it was me that had been the target of Sean's attack, and I'd walked away with nothing but a broken arm. Ryan on the other hand had a fractured skull, broken ribs, a pelvic fracture, and even a bunch of herniated discs in his spine which, I've heard, can be incredibly painful. That was the hit that I should have taken, and that's not to say that I would have been

as fortunate as Ryan in surviving such unfortunate injuries. I owed him my life, and now I'm set to spend the rest of it with him in holy matrimony. We ended up meeting for drinks a few years after we both graduated because I wanted to catch up and buy some cocktails for the man that saved my life. That became a regular thing, and now I'm all set to become Mrs. Ryan in the summer. Checking on Ryan turned out to be one of the best decisions I'd ever made, but as far as Sean's doing, I couldn't give a rat's ass, and I hope his time in prison was hell on earth.

He got 15 years for attempted murder, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was released before then, but honestly, I don't know if that was the case or not. I haven't checked because I don't care, and I don't worry about ever bumping into Sean either because if he ever chooses to show up at my family's house, it'll be the last thing he ever does. The last day of school before Christmas was always something I looked forward to as a kid. I loved Christmas in general, and it goes without saying that I looked forward to the day itself a lot more, but I enjoyed the school Christmas party nonetheless.

There would be a Christmas disco and a buffet, party hats and Christmas crackers, even a few games like Pass the Parcel and Musical Chairs, all soundtracked by classic Christmas pop songs by the likes of Slade and Wham. And things got slightly different as we got older and progressed into secondary school. There were no more Christmas parties in the afternoons and the buffet with party bags was relegated to a few pigs and blankets on your plate come lunchtime, but there was still a very festive atmosphere around the school. Some teachers wore Christmas jumpers and were much more laid back than usual.

Others phoned it in completely and just let us watch an hour's worth of A Muppet's Christmas Carol, or in the case of our history teacher in 2003, the entire first hour of Saving Private Ryan. But then, in that same year of 2003, the last day of school before the Christmas holidays turned out to be anything but festive and joyful. I remember it being a Friday in December of 2003, and this might sound like a bit of a time warp to some of you, but I distinctly remember my mates and I

being really excited to play Call of Duty. See, the original game, back when it was a World War II shooter, came out in the autumn of 2003, and that was the same year our history teacher showed us a bit of Saving Private Ryan, even though we were in year 8 and the film was a 15, which was very cool of him. So, as you can imagine, my mates and I were mega hyped about playing a cutting edge FPS

set during that period of history, and it was all we'd been talking about for weeks. After lunch, spirits were still high as we sat in geography class as the teacher had yet again opted to just put a film on and wasn't fussed about us talking amongst ourselves. My friend Nick and I were gabbing away about Call of Duty and our desk was on the right hand side of the classroom next to some windows which overlooked the school's main courtyard from the second floor. That meant that as I was talking to Nick, I could the school's main courtyard from the second floor. That meant that as I was talking to Nick, I could see over his shoulder and into the empty courtyard.

I'm mostly paying attention to him and the courtyard is deserted because classes were in session so there was nothing to distract me while we were talking. But then suddenly, a man I didn't recognize walked into the empty courtyard wearing a dark jumper, jeans, and what looked like work boots. I say I didn't recognize him, but the school had all kinds of ground staff and visitors coming through every day, so it wasn't like the sudden appearance of someone new was going to alarm me, and I carried on talking to Nick after diverting my gaze for only a moment.

But then, instead of just walking across the courtyard to wherever he was going, the man stopped and began looking around like he was lost. Again, that behavior wasn't anything I found particularly alarming. People unfamiliar with new places often do stuff like that, don't they? But then instead of taking a look around and then heading off in whatever direction he was headed, the guy just kind of stopped, looked up toward the sky, and then started just sort of staring at it. My attention was diverted from Nick for a second time, but unlike the first time, I gave the guy such a confused look that Nick turned to see what I was looking at.

We both looked at the guy for a few moments like, what the bloody hell is he doing? And Nick then made a joke about a seagull doing a well-aimed poo, and we sang, I'm dreaming of a shite Christmas, and to our teacher told us to stop swearing. I honestly thought the fella would have moved on by the time we'd been told to shut up, but when I looked out the window, he was still there, staring at the cloudy gray sky like he was hypnotized by it,

or could see something no one else could. The spot where the guy was standing was surrounded by buildings like the teacher's lounge, the modern languages block, and the geography block, which was where me and Nick were. Then as we're looking at him, wondering what the guy's problem was, a French teacher named Miss Hamilton walked out of the teacher's lounge and did a proper double take at the guy still staring at the sky. Nick and I were in stitches at this again because Hamilton was a dour woman, if ever there was one, and seeing that dourness directed at someone other than us was somehow very satisfying. Most likely under the assumption that this guy was supposed to be there, Miss Hamilton

tried walking straight past him and at first the bloke didn't seem to notice that she was there. But then suddenly, he spun his head around to look at her and everything changed in an instant. His eyes lit up, and as he aggressively turned towards Mrs. Hamilton, she stopped dead in her tracks, and the man then raised something above his head, and although I couldn't see exactly what it was, Mrs. Hamilton certainly could. The sight of it caused her to back up a few steps before she turned around and legged

it back towards the teacher's lounge as fast as her legs could carry her. And the strange man followed, not quite as fast as her but still just meters behind and in a split second. Nick and I went from laughing and joking to, oh no, this is serious. Nick didn't watch the whole thing unfold. He turned back towards our geography teacher and was shouting, "'Sir, sir, someone's chasing Miss Hamilton." But I saw the whole thing.

Hamilton only made it back into the teacher's lounge by maybe half a yard before the man chasing her started bashing at the door with something I didn't realize was some kind of hammer or mallet. But by then, our geography teacher had seen what was happening, and after telling us all to stay put and not look out the windows, he ran out of our classroom and ran downstairs to lock the door to the whole geography block. He told us this once he returned, so we all felt a lot safer. But it was obviously still the matter of the guy walking around trying to attack people with his hammer,

and so our teacher pulled out his mobile and called the police. He'd already told us to stay away from the windows, but no one listened to him. I remember at one point the guy looked up at our classroom windows right at us, and the look in his eyes was so freaky that one of the girls actually squealed in fright before she backed away from the window. I don't blame her for screaming either because not only was there a look in this guy's eyes like he completely lost his mind, but he looked deformed. He had swellings around his eyes and cheekbones.

Things I now realize were the results of someone hitting him in the face somewhere else while trying to defend themselves. But at the same time, his face was so effed up and his hair was all wild and bedhead-like too that it looked like our school had been invaded by some kind of hammer-wielding, hills-have-eyes mutant. Our geography teacher, a guy called Mr. Griffiths, told us all again to get back away from the window, and then when we ignored him, he literally roared at everyone to get out of the classroom and wait in the corridors. I say this in half jest, but I honestly don't know which freaked us out more at the time. Some random bloke with a hammer having a violent mental breakdown, or seeing a meek,

gentle-hearted geography teacher like Mr. Griffiths suddenly scream at us like that. It was so scary because it showed how frightened he was, and a display of fear and authority like that ramped up the anxiety levels by a good couple of notches. We did as he told us, went out into the corridor and waited there while trying not to freak out too much. We could hear Mr. Griffiths talking to the police, asking them to be as quick as they could because the man would most likely attack the next person he saw. Apparently our teachers were all calling each other on their mobiles and telling each other

to keep everyone inside, so at least for a couple of minutes we all had the impression that although the situation was severe, our teachers had it under control. But that only meant that when chaos returned, the fear was so palpable you could practically taste it. Like I said, we were standing in the corridor of the geography block, which was only quite small, with two classrooms on the ground floor and the two on the first. There was also an open L-shaped stairway heading down so we were able to hear anything that happened down there. So when we heard the sound of hammering,

then a smash of glass, it took us seconds to realize what was going on. The guy with the hammer couldn't smash his way through the block's main door, but he could smash his way through one of the windows, climb through the empty frame, and then make his way to us through the classroom's unlocked door. And to say that caused panic would be a major understatement. We screamed back into the classroom telling Mr. Griffiths what we'd heard downstairs, and he immediately burst into action. He told the 999 operators that the situation was becoming increasingly urgent, and then

directed some of the boys in our class to clear the room before shoving his much larger and heavier desk in front of the door to act as a barricade. Another lad had the idea to shove the wooden doorstop underneath the door to provide some extra security, but other kids still piled desks and chairs onto Mr. Griffith's own in a mad panic, while others cowered in the corner or looked for windows to open as routes of escape. It was probably the single most terrifying experience of my life, just waiting for some hammer-wielding maniac to make his way up the stairs into our classroom. Little did I know, it was about to get so

much worse. As we heard someone reach the top of the stairs outside the door, everyone went quiet. Seconds later, we saw the man's face as he peered through the little perspex window in the door and one of the girls began to scream again. His eyes were just horrifying. His gaze looked hollow, like all sense of reason had completely evaporated. He didn't speak. He didn't smile. He looked at us all for a few minutes and then started trying to open the door.

This prompted more screams from my classmates and remember we're all only 12 and 13 years old so we were really scared and completely out of our wits and in no frame of mind to put up a fight. The man tried with all of his might to open the door to that classroom but thankfully he failed. The barricade was just too strong and no matter how much he shoved or kicked, the door simply would not budge an inch. In his frustration, he started smashing the door with his hammer or mallet or whatever it was, and while this caused more screams from the girls, I remember feeling this muted

sense of relief. No matter what was about to happen, there was no way it was happening in our classroom, and although it was scary, we were safe. The guy hammered on the door a few more minutes and he managed to bash out the glass before attempting to reach for the doorknob. Obviously that was no use to him, and after a bit more hammering, I remember Mr. Griffith looking out the window and shouting, the police are here children, everything's gonna be fine, this man's not going to be with us very

much longer. And he was right. Mr. Griffiths had seen four or five police officers running across the courtyard, and after they entered the geography block via the same route as the hammer man, they baited him downstairs and used a stun gun to subdue and arrest him. We had to stay locked down in that classroom for another hour and then the head teacher announced that the hammer man was safely off school grounds and we were free to come out. What followed was total chaos because it was announced that any kid whose parents could collect them from school reception were free to leave as and when their parents arrived.

This meant that almost every kid in the school was ringing their mom or dad, begging for lifts from those whose parents weren't too busy to come and collect them. It was easily the most unschool-like atmosphere I had ever experienced while in education, and I just never have imagined that not being a good thing, if that makes sense. Something really and truly terrible had happened, and the fact that no one on school grounds was seriously hurt is nothing shy of a miracle in my book. It turns out the bloke with the hammer had bashed one other person before heading towards our school to look for soft targets.

Apparently it was a complete mental breakdown. He had been a regular tradesman with a wife and a baby on the way, and then one day he just snapped and went on a hammer-bashing spree that ended in a school just a few days before Christmas. It's scary to think someone can just go crazy like that and even scarier to think that they'll target children when in that state of mind. He was close too, very close, and God knows what would have happened if he'd been able to force his way into our classroom that day.

But that's exactly why I consider his failure to be my very own Christmas miracle. 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.