The Lets Read Podcast - 301: MY TERRIFYING ENCOUNTER WITH THE CARTEL | Rain Ambience / 17 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 287

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

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

The End Back in 1997, a man named Oseal Guillen took control of Mexico's Gulf cartel following the arrest of the organization's leader. The power vacuum left behind by his predecessor's capture sparked a violent turf war in which rival cartels faced off against each other as the Mexican military tried in vain to keep the peace. As the conflict raged on, the Gulf cartel began to suffer heavy losses to both men and material, and for a while they were dangerously close to being overwhelmed and annihilated.

But luckily, Osello Guillen had an ace up his sleeve, and that ace was a man named Arturo Guzman Desena. Desena was born into a poor working-class family in the Mexican city of Puebla on January 13th of 1976. Like many of his peers, Decena realized that his best chance of escaping economic hardship was to join the military. So on his 16th birthday, he volunteered to join the Mexican army. Decena proved a talented soldier.

So talented in fact that he was chosen to undergo selection for an elite group of airborne special forces known as the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE for short. After joining the unit, De Sena received training in both counterinsurgency tactics and the interdiction of narco-traffickers, and first saw action during the 1994 Chiapas uprising, in which more than 30 rebels were either killed or captured by De Sanna's squadron. His unit received praise for their decisive victory over the rebels, but some noticed an exceedingly chilling detail regarding the condition of the slain insurrectionists.

Once they'd been killed, and the shooting died down, the Senna and his men had apparently gathered up the bodies of the dead rebels, and then set about dissecting and mutilating their corpses. To his commanders, the desecration of rebel bodies was something that they could overlook due to the overall success of the operation, yet De Sena felt hideously underappreciated. Mexican special forces are paid slightly more than their regular army counterparts, but the amount still pales in comparison with what De Sena believed he was worth. He became more and more bitter, watching his superiors rake in millions of pesos in bribe money while he and his comrades

lived on crumbs. Then one day, De Sena received a home visit from two mysteriously well-dressed men. He was reportedly given a hundred thousand pesos, along with a piece of paper with a phone number written on it, and then was told, if you're willing to work, there's plenty more where that came from. Less than twenty-four hours later, De Sena was setting up a secret meeting with his potential new employer and when they met, he realized how they had all that money to burn. De Sena was being sought out to head up the golf cartel's brand new military wing, one

that would defend them from the incursions of both rival gangs and the Mexican authorities. At first, de Sena approached only his closest comrades and the GAFE and put forward a very simple proposition. Join his new unit, enjoy bountiful compensation, and continue hunting narco-traffickers. The only catch was, they'd be doing so on behalf of the Gulf cartel. And by that point, de Sena's former comrades are so jaded that working for the cartel seemed no different than working for the government.

Both were morally bankrupt, but only one had the money to pay them what they deserved. It's also believed that since a huge political shift was occurring around this time, many Mexican Special Forces soldiers believed they'd be held accountable for crimes they'd committed during the Chiapas uprising. And so, rather than risk having their service rewarded with prison time, they jumped ship and joined Arturo de Sena in his brand new unit. Within just a few months, de Senna had put together a group of thirteen exceptionally well-trained and viciously ferocious killers, all of whom have served with him in the GAFE.

They organized themselves in the exact same manner as their former special forces unit, allowing for the lightning-fast deployment of small but highly mobile teams of lightly armed but heavily motivated personnel. The SENA also employed the same military communication style as was employed in the GAFE, with members of the unit being referred to only by their call sign. In Mexico, the radio code for lower-level federales was WI or Yankee, meaning individual officers would be referred to as Yankee One or Yankee, meaning individual officers would be referred to as Yankee 1 or Yankee 2, etc. But higher ranking officers, those in charge of an entire

city or county, would be referred to by the radio code Z or Zeta. Seeing as he was the leader of this new paramilitary unit, the Sena was given the call sign Zeta 1, while his second in command was referred call sign Zeta 1, while his second-in-command was referred to as Zeta 2. Soon, every member of the unit had a Zeta call sign, which in turn gave rise to the name they're known by today, Los Zetas. At first, Los Zetas focused exclusively on helping Osiyo Giyin consolidate his position as the head of the Gulf Cartel, and they did so with surgical efficiency.

They castrated his rivals, skinned his enemies alive, and struck fear into the hearts of all who might challenge the cartel's dominance. As their victories mounted, so did their membership, as dozens of corrupt police officers, disgruntled special forces soldiers, and even handfuls of former US Army personnel sought to join their ranks. Yet the Zetas didn't allow just anyone into their organization. Applicants were required to possess a certain level of fitness and weapons training, and those who didn't impress the original 13 Zetas were subject to extreme psychological

torture to determine if they had what it takes. Those who passed were welcomed into a brotherhood, told that they were mentally and physically superior to other men and that wealth and prominence were theirs to be won by bloodshed. Over the decade that followed and despite dozens of their members being arrested or killed, Los Zetas grew more and more powerful. And by the year 2010, they both outnumbered and outclassed their parent organization. And after fearing that their pet monster had become too big to control, the cartel decided the Zetas needed a reminder of who was in charge. The situation came to a head when Cartel Lieutenant Samuel Borrego was shot by a CETA's member

after an argument over a drug trafficking corridor. The cartel demanded that the CETAs hand over the man's killer. Their response was to declare war. The Gulf cartel was almost completely unprepared for what followed. After several of their top figures were assassinated by crack teams of CETA's operators, the cartel deployed hundreds of their foot soldiers to the border towns of northern Tamalipas. The vehicles they drove were marked with acronyms and insignias such as CDG, XXX, or M3, all of which denoted them as belonging to the Gulf Cartel, and they

were armed to the teeth. But no matter how many gun trucks or machine pistol-toting sicarios they possessed, the cartel were in no position to weather the coming storm. Initially, the cartel deployed so many armed men to the streets of Reynosa that they believed the setas were too afraid to face them. Daylight came and went and not a shot was fired in anger. But as soon as the sun set, the Satas began their offensive. Using the cloak of darkness to negate the tactical advantage afforded by the cartel's heavy machine guns, the Satas operators used night-vision goggles and silenced

submachine guns to wreak havoc among the cartel's ranks. They sprang from the shadows at close quarters, executed well-rehearsed room clearance drills, and by dawn the city was awash with cartel blood. Following the capture of Brnoza, the city of Nuevo Laredo fell, and the border town of Matamoros in turn. Entire cities were paralyzed by the violence, but in the end Los Cetas emerged victorious. And by the summer of 2010 they controlled over 200 miles of the US-Mexican border territory, all of which was crucial to the illegal narcotics trade. In desperation, the Gulf

Cartel turned to their old rivals, the Sinaloa, and begged for their assistance. The cartel then split into two distinct groups, those who wished to make peace with Los Setas for the sake of their own survival, and those who wished to wipe them out. Many of those in the former group ended up joining the Setas, while those in the latter became little more than vassals for the Sinaloa and Mechoacan cartels, who formed an alliance due to their mutual fear of the Cetas. Nowadays, the Gulf Cartel still technically exists, but it has never fully recovered following its not-so-civil conflict with the group it had a hand in creating.

The capture of the northern Tamo-Lipas border corridor marked the end of Los Cetas' first major battle with the Gulf Cartel, but the war was not yet over. What remained of the cartel had retreated south to lick their wounds, and Los Cetas had yet to properly stamp their authority on the twin states of Tamo-Lipas and Nuevo León. properly stamp their authority on the twin states of Tamalipas and Nuevo Leon. In order to assert complete control over the region's illegal activities, the Cetacean leadership decreed that all criminal enterprises owed them taxes payable in either cash, material, or labor.

Many groups complied with the order, but not all were so quick to pay tribute to their new overlords. Given its proximity to the Texan border, the state of Tamalipas is home to dozens of criminal organizations who traffic in both narcotics and people. Many of these groups pledged fealty to the Los Cetas and began handing over exorbitant sums and taxes, while others seemed to view the CETAs as being beneath them, and began adopting identical tactics in an attempt to protect their fiefdoms.

In the city of San Fernando, gunmen aligned with the Gulf cartel ambushed a group of Los Cetas operators, and then strung their mutilated bodies from streetlights. The Cetas' response was nothing short of barbaric. On the night of August 22, 2010, a convoy of 73 Central American migrants were passing through Tamaulipas on their way to the United States border. When they reached the outskirts of San Fernando, they found a group of Los Cetas operators

had set up a roadblock, and after hijacking the migrants' vehicles at gunpoint, the Satas drove them out to a secluded ranch somewhere nearby. There, the migrants were forced out of their vehicles, marched into a warehouse, and told to kneel against a wall. Then one by one, they were shot, execution style, in the back of the head. Only one of the 72 migrants survived the execution, when the bullet meant to kill him somehow passed through his jowl without severing any major blood vessels.

The survivor then walked nearly 14 miles until he reached a checkpoint manned by Mexican Marines. At first, the authorities had their doubts regarding the veracity of the survivor's story, but after a group of Marines were dispatched to the ranch, they confirmed that the story was true. Authorities then asked the survivor to give them a complete account of his brief time in captivity, and this is what he told them. The 18-year-old Ecuadorian who called himself Luis had traveled from his home country of

Honduras and adjoined the migrant convoy once he reached Tamalipas. Following their sudden kidnap, he and his fellow migrants were held overnight in what appeared to be an abandoned rural house prior to being transported to the ranch in the morning. Then once they'd been forced inside the warehouse, each migrant was bound and blindfolded before being shoved up against a wall. Luis said a voice started calling out to them, telling them to lie down, be quiet, and not to scream. And that's when the shooting started.

Once everyone was dead, Luis said that he took off out of the warehouse and then walked all night until he saw a small light in the distance. There on the outskirts of a small town, he found the roadblock manned by Mexican marines. The news of the massacre hit headlines across Mexico. President Felipe Calderon sent his most profound condolences to the families of those affected, and said the murders were the result of the war between Los Cetas and the Gulf Cartel. Some speculated that the migrants were targeted because their traffickers were being financed by the Gulf Cartel, and that killing them was the Cetas' way of choking off the cartel's

profits, whereas others have suggested that the first San Fernando massacre was merely a dry run for the horrors that would follow. Mexican Federal Highway 101 is the largest and most important transportation system in the state of Tamoalipas. It extends from the border city of Matamoros to the state capital, Childa Victoria, and around March of 2011, Childad Victoria, and around March of 2011, locals began referring to it as El Camino de la Muerte, or the Road of Death. Those who traveled along the highway between 2010 and 2011 used to see burned out vehicles, shot up trucks on the side of the road, and dead bodies, often decapitated that the cartels would leave behind.

Others witnessed the Gulf cartel checkpoints installed from Padilla to San Fernando, which served as an early warning system for Ne'loseda's incursions into the area. And these incursions were frequent. Cadres of Ne'loseda's gunmen would sometimes drive into the area, mostly at night, to terrorize just about anyone they came across. They would rob people, kill people, violate their women, and then at one point, Los Etos started stealing entire busloads of innocents.

One driver claimed that after masked gunmen forced him to a stop, twelve of his passengers were pulled off, and then forced into a separate vehicle at gunpoint. One witness stated that the gunmen would point at certain passengers, all of whom happen to be young men, and say, you, you're coming with us. Once the Satis had taken their prisoners, the bus would then be ordered to leave. This horrifying variety of wholesale, seemingly random kidnapping happened time and time again throughout March of 2011. The families of those taken begged local authorities to act, and almost everyone was aware that

Los Cetas were the blame. Not only did authorities have no idea why the Cetas were dragging young men off of buses, they had no idea where they were taking them. Yet just a few weeks later, all of their questions were answered and the conclusions were nothing short of horrifying. On April 6th of 2011, local authorities were informed that a mass grave had been discovered just outside the city of San Fernando. A total of 59 sets of human remains were discovered over the days that followed,

many of which belonged to those who had been snatched off the buses in the weeks prior. Two days later, the Secretary General of Tamalipas announced the discovery of 13 more bodies, bringing the total body count to 72. But unlike the first San Fernando massacre, which had targeted Central American migrants, the bodies recovered from the mass graves were all belonging to Mexican citizens. On April 10th, four additional mass graves were uncovered, and then two days after, another set of graves were found, and this process repeated itself until June 7th of 2011, when a final death toll of 193 was announced.

The discovery of so many corpses sent shockwaves through Mexican society and entire news cycles were dedicated to the investigation. But when the truth behind the Second Son Fernando Massacre emerged, it horrified even the most cynical of investigators. On June 11th of 2011, a reporter from the Houston Chronicle named Dane Schiller shared details of an interview he conducted with the supposed Zetas associate. He claimed to know where the kidnapped were being taken, but the truth was, it wasn't the Zetas that were killing them. They were killing each other.

Some said it was Zeta's novel method of recruitment. Others said it was nothing but a sick form of entertainment to the psychopathic cartel members. But after being dragged from their buses and transported to an unknown location, the kidnapped victims were forced into mortal combat with one another. They call it Mexico's next top hitman, the anonymous associate claimed. They give them knives, hammers, machetes, all kinds of things. Then they make them cut each other to pieces. I earn way more money with the Satas, but I know the kind of evil crap they do.

They like to brag about it. The Satas associate also claimed that on one occasion one of the unwilling victors of the forced gladiatorial combat completely lost his mind. The young man became completely detached from reality and didn't seem to believe what was happening was real. The Zaitas told him he was dreaming, and that in order to wake up he had to do exactly as they told him. The Zaitas then drove the young man towards San Fernando, put a gun in his hand, and then

pointed him in the direction of a Gulf cartel checkpoint. The young man walked forward, raised the pistol, and was immediately gunned down by the waiting secarios. Another cartel associate who was arrested in Texas around the same period claimed that gladiator fights had been arranged on the order of high-ranking Seda lieutenant named Miguel Trevino Morales. Yet he also claimed that not all the participants were unwilling. The Setas had instituted a policy of forced conscription around San Fernando as a means of weaponizing the Gulf's own support base against them, but they also accepted many volunteers into their ranks during that time.

them, but they also accepted many volunteers into their ranks during that time. This means that, for all intent and purpose, a terrified, pacifistic, kidnapped victim could have been forced to fight a highly motivated, highly psychopathic individual who wanted to prove their value to some of the most monstrous men in Mexico. In the aftermath, several Los Cetas lieutenants were apprehended by police including the mastermind of the original San Fernando massacre. The Mexican Attorney General offered a reward of 15 million US dollars for information leading to the capture of those responsible. And the information that flooded in led to the arrest of 82 people thought to be directly

and indirectly involved. 16 of those arrested were municipal police officers in San Fernando, and according to investigations, the officers protected Los Cetas and helped them covering up the killings. The fallout proved a massive hit to both the Cetas' structure and their strategic capabilities, but wounded animals often prove the most dangerous. The Grupo Royale Company runs a chain of casinos and entertainment venues in Monterrey, Mazatlan, and Los Cabos. And during the late summer of 2011, a group of armed Los Cetas men marched into the company's

Monterrey Casino and demanded a percentage of the monthly profits. The casino's manager told the men that they couldn't afford to pay protection money to Los Cetas as they already made a sizable monthly contribution to representatives from another organization, most likely the Golf Cartel. The manager advised that if they wanted a share of the protection money the casino paid, they should speak to the cartel. But the CETAs preferred action over dialogue. And just before 2pm on August 25th of 2011, 12 CETAs operatives

met for lunch at a restaurant on Gonzalitos Avenue, just a few blocks away from the Monterrey Casino. Over a few plates of cabrito, a regional specialty which involves charbroiling the entire unbutchered carcass of a goat, the operatives went over their plan and then got to work. About an hour later, the CETA's operators were spotted at a gas station in the neighborhood of Valle Verde, filling cans with gasoline. The station clerk said that they drove off without paying, but it was too frightened to call the police. 50 minutes later, a convoy of four vehicles pulled into the parking lot of the Monterrey Casino, and the nine heavily armed Satis operatives stormed its front entrance. In the aftermath, some survivors claimed that after forcing their way into the

casino, the Satis did not target any of its occupants claimed that after forcing their way into the casino, the CETAs did not target any of its occupants, and instead fired their weapons into the air in order to gain everyone's attention. The operatives then ordered everyone out of the casino before dousing the place with gasoline and setting it ablaze. However, not all the casino's visitors understood what was going on. Upon hearing the gunmen announce themselves as representatives of Los Cetas, a huge proportion of the casino's occupants assumed a massacre was about to take place.

They didn't wait around to hear what else the gunmen had to say. They simply ran off to find emergency exits or suitable hiding places. It's believed around 150 people attempted to hide themselves throughout the casino complex, but when they realized the Satis had merely set the place on fire before withdrawing, panic surged and the people stampeded. Around 100 of them made it out alive, but as the Monterrey Fire Department doused the flames and began attempting to rescue those trapped inside, they discovered 52 asphyxiated corpses strewn all over the building. Following a brief investigation, the firefighters announced that the casino's emergency exits had

been locked at the time of the raid, suggesting not only inside involvement but also that the Satas did indeed intend to inflict civilian casualties. In the span of just 190 seconds, the CETAs had inflicted a major blow to the Gulf Cartel's funding, as well as dooming 52 innocent people to death. Although the war between Los CETAs and the Gulf Cartel had been waging for months, the Monterrey Casino attack was the first time the conflict drew the attention of the international media. U.S. President at the time Barack Obama called the attack brutal and reprehensible, while

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it a deplorable act of violence. Global human rights charity Amnesty International demanded a detailed investigation of the incident and declared their solidarity with the families of the victims. The situation in Tomolipas has become a source of immense embarrassment for the Mexican government, both internationally and domestically. So to reestablish trust between the state and the people they were bound to serve, President Calderón ordered a surge in regional counter-narcotics operations.

In May of 2011, a battalion-sized task force of around 650 men, comprised mostly of Mexican marines and special forces, were sent to Tamalipas to combat the drug cartels. The task force was supported by police, military reservists, and civilian volunteers, and focused not only on physically combating CETAs and cartel gunmen, but also winning the hearts and minds of local civilians by providing them with health care, reconstruction services, and even free haircuts. Yet the one thing holding the project back was the one institution whose job it was to advance their cause.

Police corruption in Tomolipas was so endemic that in November of 2011, the municipal governor essentially suspended the entire force and allowed the Mexican Marine Corps to step in and enforce the law. Only then could the cleanup operation in Tomolipas really gain any traction. But once it did, the CETA's downfall was inevitable. Only then could the cleanup operation in Tamalipas really gain any traction. But once it did, the CETAS downfall was inevitable. By the beginning of 2012, Los CETAS were no longer the same elite fighting force that had gone to war with the Gulf Cartel two years earlier.

The quality of their leadership, manpower, and equipment had been seriously degraded, not only by the resistance of the cartels and their allies, but also by the continual operations of the Mexican marines. Throughout 2012, the marines constructed four additional operational bases in the state of Tamalipas, and they brought the hammer down on Los Cetas wherever they found them. On October 9th, the Mexican Navy confirmed that Zeta's supreme commander, Herberto Lascano, had been killed in a firefight with Mexican Marines near the Texan border. Lascano had the call sign Zeta 3, meaning he was one of the group's founding members, and his death was a huge blow to the organization's morale as well as its effectiveness.

The following year, a member of other Zeta lieutenants was apprehended or killed, and several of their armories were captured by the Marines. By the end of 2014, International Crisis Group researcher Daniel Herring stated that Los Satas were on their way out. The old networks have been disrupted, and the Satas have splintered, Herring said. They're now a series of smaller factions, with the primary competitors for power being the Hell Squadron, the old school Cetas, and the Cartel de Noresta. The rise of los Cetas may well have been followed by their abrupt downfall, but their influence

on the Mexico narco culture has been indelible. Back in the 90s, the cartels hadn't yet stooped to that kind of savagery that they engage in today. Instead, they used what could be referred to as codes of murder. For example, a bullet through the back of the head marked the dead man as a traitor, while a bullet through the temple made it clear that they'd been executed by a rival gang or cartel. Many believe that the first incident of cartel barbarism occurred in September of 2006,

when sicarios of la familia Michiocana threw several severed heads onto the dance floor of a Michiocana nightclub. But in reality, this incident was merely the first that received international attention, and the practice of beheading one's enemies was introduced many years earlier. As we've already discussed, the Cetas spent their first few years recruiting only former and serving special forces operators. But recruitment was not confined to those of Mexican birth, and as Los Cetas extended their reach into Guatemala in the late 90s, they found rich pickings among a group known as Los Caibiles.

The Caibiles are Guatemala's equivalent of the Green Beret. They specialize in counterinsurgency operations and jungle warfare tactics, and endure training which pushes recruits to mental and physical extremes. Those who earn the right to sleep are permitted to do so for only three hours, and before recruits are permitted to eat, they must run two miles in eight minutes or less while wearing full combat gear. Recruits are then given exactly thirty seconds to eat before their food trays are taken away from them.

During the final stages of training, recruits are flown deep into the jungle in the middle of the night, forced out of the helicopter wearing nothing but their underwear, and then given 24 hours to find their way back to base. Those that fail are forced to repeat the exercise over and over again until they either succeed or quit. But the cabiles aren't just famous for their rigorous style of training, they're also famous for near-lim limitless cruelty. Although the practice has since been banned among its recruits, an old ritual of the cabeles was to give the recruits a chicken to

take care of throughout their eight-week training schedule. These chickens were kept in a coop not far from the recruits' barracks, who were charged with feeding them, cleaning their coop, and most importantly, naming them. Towards the end of their training, the recruits were told to go out to the coop and collect their beloved chickens for inspection, and then one by one, the recruits were told to take tight hold of their feathered friends and bite their heads off. The chickens are then fed to the recruits as their first fresh meat in almost two months. As you can imagine, this kind of training breeds soldiers capable of unspeakable acts

of cold-blooded savagery, but that's exactly what their recruiters were looking for. The Guatemalan cabiles brought many of their traditions to the setas, but one of them was ritual beheading. Having cut their teeth during the Guatemalan Civil War, the Cabiles struck fear into the hearts of their enemies by displaying the decapitated heads of those they'd killed on operations. However, these heads wouldn't be displayed as trophies back at their base, they'd be strewn over some prominent landmark in their enemy's heartland as a warning. Being in the business of brutal intimidation, the CETAs adopted the Cabiles tactics and

from early 2000s onward, grisly executions such as beheading, flaying, or immolation became more and more commonplace. Every other cartel in Mexico was forced to adopt similar tactics in order to keep up with the CETAs' meteoric rise to power, such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, who in September of 2011 dumped over 30 bodies on a busy avenue in the state of Veracruz. What we are seeing in Mexico is a process of paramilitarization in which different groups seek to wipe out their rivals, said Mexican organized crime expert Eduardo Buscalia, shortly

after the Vera Cruz bodies were discovered. But without a shadow of a doubt, the organization which started this process of militarization was Los Cetas. The story of Los Cetas comes down to is that over the course of a decade, 13 disgruntled special forces soldiers rose to become the second most powerful narcotics traffickers in North America. They applied their elite, martial mentality to the most lucrative black market on the face of the earth, and in doing so, made the world a considerably more frightening place.

Yet the original thirteen Satas didn't just become multi-millionaires by killing hundreds, if not thousands of people, they made an indelible mark on contemporary culture. From the beheading of Danny Trejo's character in Breaking Bad, to the fully militarized cartel enemies in the latest Call of Duty games, the Satas had made their mark on society and changed the geopolitical landscape of the United States border territories forever. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Let's share our thoughts on the rise of workplace stress and how you can take this summer to focus on your wellness with small steps to manage your workday challenges.

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mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash read. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash read. So this started on one of those Meet New Friends apps. I'm not just a huge loser, I swear. I moved in my current city during the pandemic and have a work-from-home position, so it just hasn't been the prime circumstances for a social life. I matched with this random girl,

and we'll call her Annie. I can't remember if I saw her first or vice versa, and honestly, I was paying more attention to the profiles and the pictures, and she seemed okay. Spirituality came up somehow. I can't remember how this happened either and to be fair, it could have been either of us. I've recently been more seriously following Norse paganism, but it wasn't something I was seeking to explore with other people. It was mostly a private thing, not to mention my own beliefs are more metaphorical. But that doesn't mean I'm close to the experience entirely. So when she mentioned having an LGBTQ neurodivergent pagan femme coven, I was like, okay, wow, that's either very specific or very broad.

But hey, why not? Maybe it'll be fun. And so we agreed to meet first before I went to the event. One weird thing that stuck out in our text conversation was that her partner was in some bizarre Scientology rehab. And at first I assumed this was a place where one recovers from Scientology, but I did ask her if her partner was a Scientologist and I didn't get an answer. We only met for an hour to have coffee.

I think more red flags would have popped up if we'd had more time, because the little things that went off on my radar were things that weren't that weird. Like there were explanations, or I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and my dumb self didn't ask again about the Scientology thing. I kept meaning to Google Scientology rehab, but kinda kept forgetting to do so. I've since googled it and can't find anything about a rehabilitation for ex-scientologists, so I wish I'd done that sooner. There were, however, other things that stuck out to me. They're relatively benign out of context, but putting everything together in retrospect

made me feel dumb. She wouldn't answer my direct questions about herself, and not for lack of asking. I'm the kind of person who is conscious of when the attention is all on me, so it made me uncomfortable and I didn't learn anything about her, really. Most of what she said had to do with her spiritual, quote-unquote, awakening. Her spiritual awakening itself sounded weird too. She said that she had a realization that she was like a lighthouse that was drawing people toward their personal enlightenment.

And okay, I did think this was weird, but she's from California, I don't know. And maybe that's normal, but I just chalked it up to her personal beliefs being whatever they were. Reincarnation came up, and reincarnation is a big part of paganism, although Asatru additionally focuses on your ancestors. She told me that she didn't think that she had any past lives and is a new soul, which doesn't make a lot of sense, but okay. Whatever, not my circus, not my monkeys.

And the vaguely supernatural element she placed on herself was strange, but I know a lot of people want to feel special, and that didn't mean that I had to believe it. At one point I told her about this random woman I met at the Pagan Festival who tried to con me. She wanted to charge me so I could be under her wing or whatever. I don't need someone to protect or guide me, so I declined. As I was telling the story, I could tell Annie was conflicted. Like she wanted to agree but didn't, and finally she said something blasé, like how it was

only inappropriate because the student chose the teacher. And so I clarified that I did not want a teacher, and her responses were very mirroring. And I'm not a moron. I was getting a weird sense that she wasn't being honest with me and that she was telling me things that I wanted to hear and told myself that she was probably just nervous. I have a strong personality. I'm very independent so I can understand if someone wouldn't want to go up against the things I said at our very first meeting.

I know I'm just dumb at this point, but I didn't want to be paranoid. And I don't trust people easily and I know that, so I was just trying to loosen up and be more chill. Well, that was a big mistake. And so I go to this thing. And immediately it's weird. Immediately. The second I step foot in that house, I'm uncomfortable.

It's filled with people and completely silent, and everyone is looking directly at me. I'm laughing, kinda saying hi, and no one is really responding. And here I am, awkwardly dropping my keys and phone while everyone is just sort of watching me. Eventually I take a seat on this short couch because there's no room in the large circle. It's a very small living room and there are like 20 people circled up. There's a cushion on the couch, so I sit on that. The leader starts talking, and as she's going on, I'm looking around at the people there and I was curious. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the leader trying to look at me. The girl sitting in front of me is partially blocking our

view of each other, so the leader is sort of leaning over to try and meet my gaze. Finally, I felt awkward enough to sort of shift over, so I was leaning against the arm of the couch. Staying perched on a cushion was uncomfortable by that point, so I shifted off and spread out a bit to be more comfortable. And the leader ended the speech with, so spread out, I guess. Which was clearly directed at me.

It was said with some humor though, so I wasn't really sure what to make of it. Everyone introduces themselves and is their own unique brand of neurodivergent. I'm ADHD, but I guess I don't subscribe to labels beyond the requirement to stay medicated. And I've been medicated since 2015, so this isn't a new diagnosis for me. This was the only question we got asked about ourselves beyond our name. The leader guides us through this meditation and people are making these weird breathing sounds and hums. I get it. It's spiritual, right?

Unfortunately, my ADHD bud couldn't focus to save my life and it's impossible for me to follow the guided meditation. I just don't understand. How can anyone with actual attention issues listen past trills and deep nose breathing? And so I'm sitting there with my eyes closed and barely paying attention because I just can't. But I do hear the leaders say that we should think about anything we'd want to ask her and need from her. and that got my attention.

What did I need to ask her? Other than where the snacks were, because I paid eight dollars and I don't see a single snack. Once the meditation ended, Annie and the leader walked around to give us material for an activity. Annie gave me two long pieces of twine and the leader gave me two sticks. As the leader was handing me the sticks, I asked her where the snacks were, and she says something like, in the kitchen, on the table, where snacks tend to be. I'm a dry, sarcastic person, so I thought it was her brand of humor, and I laughed and

played along, sort of, oh, right, I think I'll find them. And literally she was deadpan, unsmiling, and just says, mm-hmm, and then walked away. So, stupid me, thought that she might just be like that, and then I saw her laughing with the other girls and realized something was kind of off. As the activity commenced, she went back over to Amy and started stroking her back, and kissing her hair and giving me this creepy smile. Okay, that was weird, and it was so uncomfortable that I just wanted to get up and go right there but I couldn't.

Why? Because of the strange activity that we were doing. The activity was the last straw. They wanted us to think of something that we wanted to discard that brought us pain, and then they wanted us to feel how bad that thing made us feel as we slowly twisted the piece of twine around the stick. And that stuff I would only ever do with my therapist. Obviously people were emotionally melting down before long. I wasn't comfortable doing the activity for obvious reasons, so I sat there awkwardly

with the sticks and the string in my lap, and I was the only one not doing it and it was obvious. And because I wasn't doing it, I had the opportunity to watch Annie in the leader and it was chilling to say the least. Annie was doing some weird pyramid thing above her head with her arms. There were a lot of references to her as being a lighthouse and some sort of guiding figure throughout the meeting. She was the only one who wasn't doing the ritual other than the other leader, and they were both running it. And suddenly it occurred to me, as it probably did to you already, that Annie had been using this app just to bring people into their group. She was the only person

who seemed to know everyone, yet no one there knew each other. Even the name of the group now made sense. They weren't being specific. They were casting a wide net, and I had this big realization in a handful of seconds, and it made my stomach turn. So yeah, I was done. But I couldn't get up because people were sharing their experiences and stuff and pouring their hearts out, and this was the most effed up part about it in my opinion.

There's no reason to do a releasing ceremony that forces people to feel their trauma, especially at the very first meeting. It's also inherently manipulative because it requires people to let their guard down, and then they can save the day by showing people how to release that very same pain they just inflicted. But that isn't the fault of the people there, so I didn't want to disrespect them. People were sobbing on top of my shoes I left by the door. I had to wait for the best time to ask someone to pass them to me, and finally I got up and

told everyone that I had to go to the car and then just took off. I texted Annie and told her that I wouldn't be back and that I hoped that she found her people. Just make sure you're not her people. Be really careful of any spiritual ceremony or practice that demands vulnerability from you, especially directed by people who don't know you beyond a name. I just got back from a family vacation in Los Cabos, Mexico. We stayed in a beautiful western resort that overlooked the ocean, the kind of place where the sunsets are straight out of a postcard.

And my family had a routine. By around 9.30 everyone would head back to their rooms to wind down for the night. My parents' vacations have always been all about relaxation, and my older brother, who was working remotely during the trip, only ever just wanted to chill and get dinner by the end of his working day. But then, being a single guy in his early twenties, the appeal of having the bedtime of a retirement home was, and is, completely lost on me. I wanted to explore the nightlife, have some drinks, and meet new people.

Because he had to work, my brother, who was usually my wingman on trips like that, was on his best behavior, so I decided to venture out on my own. There was a bar around the corner from a hotel that looked pretty cool, so on the second night I ended up walking over there once my family had retired to their rooms. And that's where I befriended some of the locals and met Lance, a guy a few years older than me from San Diego who was in town for a cousin's wedding. Lance seemed like a pretty cool guy and we were both into college football so that gave us a lot to talk about right away.

After our first night hanging out we made it a nightly thing. I'd wait until my family went to bed, then I'd meet up with Lance and whoever else he was with for beers and some other things. Then, on the third night of the trip, Lance invited me to join him and his friends in downtown Los Cabos for some big party they'd been invited to. I had to turn him down because I'd promised my mom and dad that I'd do this thing with them the next morning and I didn't want to show up looking like a tub of crap. But I did so very reluctantly because the party was supposedly going to be off the chain.

And the next morning I woke up early and did the thing with my parents. We get along well so it was fun but there was still the thought in the back of my mind something like, damn, that party must have been something. But then that night, Lance invited me to a massive mansion his group had rented on Airbnb. It looked like something out of a Pablo Escobar movie, with infinity pools and sleek white decor. But when I got there, he told me something that sent a chill down my spine. Man, it's probably a good thing that you didn't come out to the party last night, he said. It got pretty scary.

He then proceeded to explain what had happened. The night before, one of his buddies was acting drunk and careless and went to take a piss outside some club that they were at because there was a wait for the bathrooms. He's then on his way back inside when a man approached him and offered him a bump of viella on a key. And without thinking, his buddy snorted it. But that's when the situation took a very dark turn. The man who appeared friendly at first suddenly demanded that he buy the entire bag for about a hundred bucks, and

Lance's friend refused, getting aggressive and belligerent, and things escalated quickly. The man started saying how he worked with the cartel, and then started following Lance's group from bar to bar. Lance said that they didn't think too much of it at first, but then the guy started snapping photos of them and making some phone calls. And before long, there were several other men tailing them, and their threats became more and more direct, and at one point the guy told them in English, if he doesn't pay, we're going to kidnap him and hang him from a bridge.

Then later, as they were walking to another bar, one of the men following lifted his shirt to reveal a 9mm pistol tucked in his waistband. Lance told me that he had no choice but to step in. He approached the men and tried to de-escalate the situation, keeping calm even as they insisted his friend had stolen from them and would pay with his life. Eventually Lance offered to take them to an ATM and pay $160 out of his own pocket just to end this whole ordeal, and the man handed him an empty bag as if it were some kind of receipt and then disappeared into the night. But it didn't end there.

Later that same night Lance was walking back when a woman came up to him, flirted briefly, and then yanked his $200 chain clean off of his neck after pointing a gun directly in his face. And he was stunned, and said that he just stood there as the girl disappeared into the crowd. And the worst part, his friend and the same guy who started the whole mess refused to take any responsibility. He didn't apologize or even offer to split the $160 Lance had paid to save him.

Instead, he had the nerve to blame Lance for getting involved. When Lance finished telling me the story I was pretty speechless. It was hard to believe how much he'd gone through in one night all because he was trying to do the right thing. And I told him straight up that I was relieved that I hadn't made it out that night. Who knows how much worse things could have gotten. And the whole experience was a true wake-up call for me. If there's one thing I've learned,

it's that you should never accept free drugs from strangers, as it's never free. It always comes with a price, and sometimes that price is your safety, or even your life. This started when I was at my childhood friend's apartment for what was supposed to be a fun little movie night. We hadn't hung out in a while and we were catching up. Her place was cozy, a little disorganized, and full of girly decor.

We were in our comfiest sweatpants about to watch princess movies, and her apartment isn't the most tidy. Things are a bit scattered around, but it's clean and so authentic, which always made me feel at home, and we decided on ordering pizza for dinner. She mentioned that Sherwood, someone I hadn't met yet, would bring the pizza over, and at first I was not happy to hear that. I thought that that meant that she had invited other friends, a boy, over to join us, which wasn't what I had in mind, but I was in for a surprise.

Sherwood turned out to be just our delivery guy for the night. He wasn't joining us, and when he got to the apartment there was this sort of awkward air about him. He was obviously nervous, fumbling a bit with the pizza boxes and not quite making eye contact. My friend introduced us quickly and it was clear from her overly thankful demeanor that Sherwood did a lot more for her than just fetch dinner. After handing us the pizza, there was this brief moment of forced small talk. My friend was super nice to him despite his awkwardness, and he wasn't the best conversationalist

and seemed really out of place. And then Sherwood asked for my number. I was in a tough spot because our mutual friend was sitting right there, so I just gave it to him. And yeah, we chatted for maybe five minutes before my friend gave him a cue to leave with something like, well thanks so much for dropping this off. And he seemed to get the hint. We both gave him a hug before my friend said something like, drive safe, giving him another kind of cue to leave. When I asked my friend what that was all about, she basically explained that Sherwood was her unpaid

personal assistant. He did her grocery shopping, he dropped off pizza, and he did all this other stuff. I think Sherwood was just a really lonely guy desperate for interaction, especially female interaction. My friend and I were both young and immature back then and we were about 23, but I think we both knew something was seriously wrong with Sherwood. It was a little hard to articulate because we couldn't point out exactly what his problem was. Sherwood started a group chat with my friend and I, and he just sent a meme or two maybe every week, and it felt like he was trying to stay relevant without being intrusive.

Maybe he was used to being sidelined or even blocked by every other girl in the past, and it felt like he was trying to make me remember him but also carefully trying not to give me a reason to block him too. I can't speak on his behalf, and that's just what it felt like. Sherwood also offered help with errands. The first time I said, uh, thanks for asking, but no, and he asked every weekend after that. One day I made the mistake of accepting his help, and I knew better. I had recently found a great deal for a new washing machine on Craigslist, but I had no idea how to pick it up and install it, and when I mentioned it in the chat, Sherwood

excitedly volunteered to take care of the whole thing. He handled the whole pickup and installation like a total champ, which saved me so much hassle. I tried to pay him for his efforts because I wanted to show appreciation, but he wouldn't accept any money. I insisted, and eventually he suggested that I could repay him by joining him for a hike. What? Okay, well, I was uneasy about that, and it felt a bit too personal and almost like I could be mistaken for a date, but Sherwood framed it as nothing more than a friendly outing, like a transaction

to balance out the favor, and I agreed to the hike. I rationalized it by telling myself it was a fair trade for installing the washing machine and that it was genuinely a form of payment, especially since I didn't think that he had too many friends. This hike felt like maybe a way for him to have some companionship, and I thought that it might be a nice way of helping him, and part of me was still uneasy about spending time with him in such an isolated setting. The day of the hike, Shirtwood picked this trail that was nearby, and I had been there

before and it's gorgeous. As we walked along together he chatted about ordinary things like work, the weather, and his hobbies. Everything seemed normal until he suggested we go off the main path to see something special he wanted to share. Like, what could that even mean? We reached the secluded spot, and there, my god, was a dead body. My heart pounded so violently as Sherwood stood there, so eerily calm and nonchalant.

The casualness in his demeanor made me feel even more uneasy. It felt like he wasn't just showing me a dead body, but also revealing this darker side of himself. It smelled bad, but not like in the movies. I didn't know how long it had been there. Not a biologist, but my guess is that it smelled a lot worse before, but now it had gone down, I guess. And at that moment I mumbled some excuse about needing to get back quickly and started walking

briskly towards the main path. I was urging Sherwood to follow me, and I thought maybe this was some twisted mind game, like a way to intimidate me or show that he wasn't just some harmless little boy. Maybe he was trying to send a message that said, you should know that I'm familiar with things like this. Oh, there's another possibility. Maybe he just wanted me to think about him more. Sometimes when I talk to people I feel like they only notice me for the time that we're together and then they won't think of me again until the next time we meet. It's possible Sherwood felt that way with me and maybe he thought showing me a dead

body would make him feel less forgettable. I have no idea. I had a million thoughts going through my head. But on the surface, he seemed oblivious to how insane this was. And as we walked back together, I was in full fight or flight mode, instinctively looking around to see if there were some other hikers or rangers, anyone who would make me feel like I wasn't alone in this. The moment I spotted someone else on the trail, I called out.

Not to expose Sherwood, but just asking for directions back to the parking area. I wanted to make sure Sherwood and I wouldn't be left alone together, and I asked this gentleman to walk us back to the parking lot. I wasn't going to take no for an answer, and I kept pretending like I was confused about his directions and eventually he just agreed to walk us out there. Getting help from that guy was my way of re-anchoring myself to safety and reality while I was still under the shock of this nightmare of what Sherwood had shown me.

We got to the parking area, and there I called my friends and told her that I was with Sherwood, and I suggested that he could drop me off with her and that we'd be there in 20 minutes. And Sherwood seemed to agree. That was my way of making sure that if anything happened, it was on the record that Sherwood was the last person to have been with me. Also, I immediately texted my friend what had happened to get that on record too. When I got to her apartment, we said thanks to Sherwood and kindly told him to go away. I had already told her through text, but then I started going into all the detail.

The fact that the body had insects, the fact that the face was decomposing but still recognizable, and her reaction was obviously pure horror. Not just about the dead body, but also how nonchalantly Sherwood had treated this whole situation. She confessed that she always sensed something was off about him even though she never imagined anything this disturbing. We both agreed that we needed to remove Sherwood from our lives, and she admitted that she felt stuck and that she became too reliant on Sherwood to just fire him cold turkey.

We planned out how we would do it. It was this gradual phasing out plan. We would limit our interactions to times when others were present, and we would slowly reduce our responses to his texts. I would never ask for his help again, and my friend would ask for less and less help. Sherwood kept texting during weekends offering to run errands or asking if we needed anything, to which my friend would reply, I'm trying to work on being more independent, but you've really been such a help. And eventually as my friend started dating someone new, she introduced Sherwood to her

boyfriend, and Sherwood never contacted her after that. Internally freaking out, I called the cops that same night and reported the incident, but it was a while before we heard any news about it. At least a full month later, a news report confirmed discovering a dead body in that area of the woods where Sherwood had taken me hiking. They made an arrest, but not of Sherwood, but of this other guy that Sherwood followed on Instagram.

I have no idea if Sherwood was connected to this murder. But now, reflecting on everything about that nightmare a while later, I think there's one clear moral of this story. Trust your instincts. Last year, my sister and I and my nieces traveled to northern Mexico to seek asylum in the United States. The bus rumbled along the highway as we finally neared Montemoros. It had taken us months to get there from Honduras. All we wanted was safety, a chance to live without fear. It was just after 730 when it happened when out of nowhere I heard the shots. And at first I didn't really understand. I thought the noise was firecrackers or something of that

nature and then I saw them. Trucks swarming around us, cutting us off from every direction. As we got closer the sound of their gunfire was deafening and panic spread like wildfire through the bus. I held my breath as armed masked men in military uniforms forced their way inside and one of the men yelled identification and everyone on the bus began searching for theirs. My heart pounded as I fumbled for my papers praying that they wouldn't hurt anyone but they weren't there to check IDs. They were hunting for us. They were hunting for migrants.

They dragged me off the bus along with many others, including my niece who cried as she was let off outside. Mexican cartels go after Honduran migrants because they're easy targets. Since migrants are often on the move without much protection, cartels take advantage by extorting them, forcing them to work, smuggling drugs, or pulling them into their operations. It's all about preying on people in a very tough spot. And after the men took us, they split us up. I was crammed into a truck with my niece and others while my sister and her older daughter

was shoved into another vehicle. I couldn't even process what was happening. all I could think about was staying alive. For four days we were held captive. The kidnappers took my phone, my cash, even my shoes. They shoved us into a ranch house so packed with other migrants that sometimes there wasn't even space to sit down. We didn't have any food or water, and rats and cockroaches crawled all around us, and every moment stretched on endlessly.

For my sister, her situation was even worse. Her youngest daughter had been separated from her and the kidnappers threatened her life in order to intimidate her. They called our family back in Honduras, demanding thousands of dollars in ransom. Pay, or you'll never see her again, I remember them saying. My sister told me later how helpless she felt. She couldn't stop imagining the worst. Her little girl terrified, alone, or worse. Back in Honduras, our relatives scrambled to gather money. My brother-in-law organized the quick sale of his and my sister's house, but they also had to borrow

from people to raise the full ransom amount. The kidnappers wanted the money sent to bank accounts that we later realized were in Peru, and in the end we paid them about $7,000 USD. In the end, we paid them about $7,000 USD. On the fifth day, our kidnappers loaded all of us back onto a bus, and I didn't know what was happening, and I was convinced that they were going to kill us and dump us somewhere. Instead, they drove us to a parking lot near the border and left us there, and I remember one of them saying, wait here, they'll come for you. And then after that, they drove off and disappeared. Around ten minutes later the authorities arrived, and they told us later that they had found

us after an anonymous call, and they also said that the massive manhunt launched after our kidnapping forced the captors to release us. Even as we were freed I couldn't stop thinking about the others. The ranch where I was held still had dozens of migrants crammed inside. In my nightmares, I can still hear their voices and their cries. And now me, my sister, and my nieces are safe in the United States, but that fear still lingers on. We fled Honduras to escape danger, only to face something just as terrible on the journey.

All we wanted was a chance to live without fear, and yet, for so many like us, that dream remains just out of reach. I was 16 and I had met this kid down the street from my house. He said that he saw me around and that we should hang out, and I figured why not, so I gave him my number and told him to hit me up. The next week comes around and I get a text from him asking if I wanted to play basketball, and of course I did. He asked if I smoked weed, and I did, and asked me to bring some, which isn't out of the ordinary for teenagers. I brought a couple of friends since we were going to play sports, and to be honest, I was really stoned by the time I got there.

It was a little out of our neighborhood, but it wasn't a bad hood, so I wasn't bothered, and I was an idiot for that. It was a gang who ambushed us as soon as we got out of the car. They violently beat me and my two friends, and I got it the worst. There were three of them on each of us.

They stabbed my best friend, not very badly though, and they choked me unconscious, held a gun to my head and pistol whipped me. They ran my pockets and got my cell phone and wallet, and I swear at one point I actually did die because I literally soiled myself when I went unconscious, and I was drenched in my own blood. My nose was broken, both eyes swelled shut later, and they had to wake me up because I drove a stick shift and nobody could drive my car. My attacker literally had to resuscitate me and ordered for me to leave, and I stopped

at a gas station because I had soiled my pants and I couldn't see with blood in my eyes. And as soon as I got in, the clerk's jaw dropped. Where's the bathroom, I remember saying, and he pointed the direction. I cleaned up the best I could and then drove home. I got home, called the cops, and showered. And the cops obviously thought it was my fault for being an idiot. Nonetheless, an undercover showed up and knew exactly who robbed me because we lived on

the same street, two blocks apart. It turns out, they had turned him informant and had reneged on the deal and robbed the buyers in the controlled buy. I told them how violent they were and swore that they would kill someone. I did a photo line up, but they all looked the same to me, so there was really no case. And two months later, the cops knocked on the door. My mom was super pro cop and told me that I was asleep in my room and turned them loose on me.

And they woke me up and held up a photo and said, who's this? How would I know I've never seen this person before? You called this person from your cell phone. The cell phone I reported stolen and a violent robbery to the police? And they looked stunned and stupid. They beat me almost to death. You should probably go read the police report. And they apologized and explained that my cell phone had been used to set up a robbery

and the person in the photo had been shot to death. I told you guys they'd killed the next guy. And they came in blazing glory and left in shame. I have PTSD from all of this now and have kept tabs on my assailant for 17 years. I have no ability to really trust anybody and not even those closest to me. When I was younger, every summer and nearly every New Year, my family would pack the car and set off on a road trip to visit our relatives in Mexico. It was a tradition, one filled with excitement, snacks, and long hours on the road. Those trips always felt like an adventure.

We never had any problems, at least until one particular trip we went on when I was eight years old. As usual, we left our home in North Texas at around 6 p.m. The plan was the same as always, drive through the night and arrive at our destination by the morning. Around 2 a.m. we crossed the border into Mexico, but that's when things took a very strange turn. Driving on the long, empty stretch of freeway in the middle of the desert was nothing unusual. It was pitch black outside except for the twinkling stars above and the occasional silhouette of a cactus. The road was desolate and other cars were few and far between.

I was in that half-asleep, half-awake state that kids are often in during long car rides, faintly aware of my surroundings as I drifted in and out of consciousness. And that's when I heard my mom speak up, and her voice low but tense. Miguel, my father, the car behind us, has been following us since we left Laredo. My dad glanced in the rearview mirror and shrugged it off before saying something like, a lot of cars use this road. It's probably just heading to Reynosa or another town. My mom didn't seem convinced and she kept glancing back. I could feel her unease and it made me nervous too. My siblings and I, now fully awake, became fixated on this mysterious car.

We peeked through the gaps in the luggage piled high in the rear of the car trying to get a better look, and it was hard to tell, much in the dark, but those headlights stayed stubbornly behind us, mile after mile. I remember how nervous we all got when my mom said, He's getting closer. And this time, her voice was sharp with fear. We turned again to watch and sure enough, the car was inching closer to ours. Too close.

The headlights blazed, glaring into our car like an interrogation lamp. He's too close, Miguel. My mom said firmly, her voice rising slightly. My dad didn't panic, but I could see his grip tighten on the wheel. He didn't slow down, didn't stop, and didn't speed up either. He just kept driving steadily. And the car behind us followed, unwavering. The tension in the car was suffocating, and for the next thirty minutes the car behind

us played a sort of cruel game. It would back up just enough to give us a false sense of relief, only to speed up and press its blinding headlights right against our car again. It felt intentional, like the driver knew how terrified we were and was enjoying it, and I held my breath every time it got closer, my heart pounding in my chest. Then, up ahead, my mom spotted something. A police car parked on the side of the road. Pull over, Miguel.

Right in front of the police. Do it now. She commanded. Without hesitation, my dad complied, pulling our car to a stop directly in front of the parked police cruiser. The mysterious car didn't stop. It sped past us, disappearing into the darkness ahead. The policeman approached our car, looking understandably confused, and my mom wasted

no time explaining, her words tumbling out in a sort of frantic rush. She described how the car had been following us, tailgating us, and behaving aggressively, and the officer did take her seriously. He explained that robbers and carjackings were common on those deserted highways, especially in the dead of night. Gangs and criminals often targeted unsuspecting travelers. And hearing this sent chills down my spine. I clutched my seatbelt tighter as my mom's fears were validated. And to reassure us, the officer offered to drive behind us for a while to ensure that we were safe.

We gratefully accepted his help, feeling a wave of relief as the cruiser pulled out behind us. And ten minutes later, our relief turned to dread. There on the side of the road was the car. The same car that had been following us for miles. It was parked in the shadows, almost like it was waiting. My mom's breath caught and my dad tensed. None of us said a word, and we all knew that we had narrowly escaped something far worse

that night. The police cruiser stayed behind us for the next stretch of the journey and eventually the tension in the car eased. But that image of the car waiting in the darkness has stayed with me ever since. And to this day, I wonder what would have happened if my mom hadn't spotted that police car in time. My boyfriend and I live in a big party city so we're pretty used to strange neighbors and odd people. But one month ago we had a really unsettling encounter. We just got the full context today.

We live in a subunit of a larger house and our landlord and one other person live in the other units of the house and we noticed that our landlord had brought a few different dates over to the house. We didn't mind, and we weren't surprised when a girl was walking around the property. Last month we went to sleep at about midnight and woke up 30 minutes later to knocks at the door. I told my boyfriend not to open it, but he said it was the girl that we saw earlier. I still felt very uneasy about the situation, so I

put my clothes on and grabbed my keys and picked up our dog in case I had to run out the back door. I then go stand in the hallway next to the front door so I can hear the conversation, but she can't see me. She sounds very drunk and she tells my boyfriend that she's my landlord's fiance. I am somewhat confused by this because of our landlord's other dates. However, she starts talking about how we're good tenants and mentions personal details about us, so we assume that she actually is his fiancé. She asked my boyfriend for a lighter for a cigarette, and we expect this to be the end of the interaction, but she then tells my boyfriend that our landlord is at a hotel cheating on her right now.

My boyfriend responds with, oh wow. And then she started flirting with my boyfriend. She invited him to come swim in our landlord's pool with her, and he declined. Now I'm starting to get less scared and more annoyed with this chick. She's rambling about a bunch of different topics and basically holding my boyfriend hostage. And finally she gets to our neighbors. She starts going on some racist rant about them, using slurs that I have literally never

heard in real life because they're that bad. And at this point, I'm pretty sick of this woman so I step into the door frame and tell her that we have to wake up early. She was clearly shocked by me showing up and this is when her face changes. She glares at me and suddenly we aren't good tenants anymore and she calls us white trash for not taking our garbage bins out in time for trash day. She screams that she's going to get us evicted if we don't get on her good side and at this point we just close the door in her face.

We had a really long discussion about whether or not we should complain to our landlord about her, and we assumed that he actually was dating this girl and that she just happened to be crazy. She probably caught him cheating and was trying to sleep with my boyfriend for revenge or something but realized that wasn't going to happen. Eventually we decided to text him. He apologized for the situation but was very vague. He doesn't mention that she is not his fiance and that he'll remove her.

And we assume that this is the end of it. For the last month she's been blasting music, banging on the walls, taking things out of the shed and coming into our section of the backyard in the middle of the night. I was absolutely terrified the first week and couldn't sleep at all. I would stay up all night listening to sounds and staring in her back window to see if she was in our yard and eventually I just kinda got used to it. Our landlord had basically vanished. We hadn't seen him for the entire month until today.

And today my boyfriend is walking our dog when he sees our landlord back on his porch, and our landlord finally tells us the full story. He went on a few dates with this woman and she seemed totally normal. Eventually, they go back to his section of the house and when he wakes up, she's behaving much differently. He asks her to head out while he's at work and he comes back and she's still there. And it turns out that this is what she does. She goes home with men and invades their home until they get her lawfully evicted.

My landlord went to a different property for a month while he worked on a case to get her evicted. We found out that she got served an eviction warning the same day that she came to our house and that's why she was flirting with my boyfriend in an attempt to squat in our home. And that's why she was so angry when she found out that I lived there too. My landlord actually negotiated a way to get her out of the house a few days early. He bought her a one-way flight to another state, so if you live in the Midwest, watch out. She's coming coming north and I'm very thankful that it's over here Last year, my boyfriend and I took a trip to Mexico to celebrate our anniversary.

Now we speak a fair amount of Spanish, enough to get around comfortably and have been enjoying the trip so far. We started in Playa del Carmen and then moved to Cancun, hoping for better beaches with less seaweed. We relied on taxis to get around including the hour long ride from Playa to Cancun and everything had run smoothly up to that point. On our anniversary we spent the day exploring, soaking up the sun and enjoying the local vibe before heading back to our hotel to freshen up for a special evening. We decided to try a place called Toro Rojo, famous for their super nachos and as a nacho

lover I was beyond excited. According to Google Maps it wasn't far so we decided to walk. We set off, full of anticipation, but after walking around 45 minutes along a bustling highway, I checked my phone again and realized that we still had over an hour to go on foot. The distance seemed much longer than expected. And frustrated and hungry, we decided to just hail a taxi to save some time because those nachos and daiquiris were calling my name. A taxi pulled over, and then we hopped in and told the driver that we wanted to go to

Toro Rojo. He claimed that he didn't know where it was, so we handed him my phone with Google Maps open. The directions were simple. Drive straight, take a U-turn and the restaurant would be on the left. He started driving, and I kept an eye on the map from over his shoulder to ensure that we stayed on track. And as we finally approached that U-turn, the driver didn't slow down. Instead, he passed it. I figured maybe he wasn't familiar with the

exact spot and gave him the benefit of the doubt and then he passed another U-turn. And another. And by now alarm bells are going off in my head. I grabbed my boyfriend's phone and, discreetly typed, he keeps missing the U-turns. Tell him it's the other way. My boyfriend calmly told the driver in Spanish, it's the other way, and the driver ignored him and picked up some speed, now going about, I think, 20 miles over the speed limit. And my heart was racing, and I could barely breathe.

The driver muttered something like, my English is not good, which made no sense since we were speaking Spanish. And my boyfriend tried again, this time firmer, saying something like, here is fine. And the driver didn't stop. My boyfriend raised his voice and started shouting something in Spanish, and finally the driver slowed down. I remember, as soon as the car stopped, I leapt out and by that point I was shaking with fear.

The driver demanded thirty dollars USD, an absurd amount for such a short ride, but my boyfriend handed it over without hesitation, just wanting the situation to end. We sprinted in the opposite direction, our hearts pounding, and when we checked Google Maps we realized the driver had taken us nine miles outside of Cancun, leaving us stranded like twelve miles from our hotel. And it was pitch black, with nothing around us but trees and empty road. It was 11pm and our cash was almost gone since the driver had taken most of it.

And desperate I called my parents, who stayed on the phone with us while we walked toward the nearest hotel. It was over an hour on foot. Being in that kind of pitch darkness it was terrifying and every sound made me jump. At one point a red Mini Cooper appeared out of nowhere, slowly following us, and the windows rolled down but the driver didn't say anything. My boyfriend, already on edge, banged on the side of the car and yelled some sort of expletive, I'm not really sure, and the car sped off. Not long after we encountered two stray dogs ahead of us,

and my boyfriend whispered, why they aren't friendly, and picked up a couple of rocks just in case, and it broke my heart. Being pre-vet, I adored animals, but safety came first, obviously, and luckily the dogs were sweet and only wanted attention and we pet them briefly before getting back on the move. Then as if the night couldn't get any worse, a truck pulled up alongside of us. The driver asked if we needed a taxi but it was clearly an unmarked car and we just waved him off, but he didn't drive away. Suddenly those stray dogs sprinted toward the truck, barking ferociously, their demeanor completely changing. Without

hesitation, we turned and ran the other way, trusting those dogs' instincts. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we reached a hotel where we managed to get a taxi back to our hotel safely. We were physically and emotionally drained, and while we made it out unharmed, the experience left us very shaken. I don't know if we were just lucky or if something more sinister was at play, but it's left me very reluctant to visit that part of Mexico again. This is my story about being stalked. Dealing with this has been difficult and throughout the ordeal I felt out of control, so I'm sharing this to gain control over my story. Several years ago I moved abroad to begin the two year study course. When I arrived

at my apartment I met three of my roommates. Sam was funny and sarcastic while Bella and Poppy were both nice sorority type girls. We decided to go out for dinner and offered to invite our fourth roommate into room 1C next to mine. Sam warned me not to invite her, saying that she was odd, and I was worried because I didn't want to live with a bunch of caddy girls, and how they were fighting in less than a day was weird, and I just smiled and told Sam that she just made a bad first impression and I would invite her to get to know her better. Sam grumbled as I left the kitchen, approaching the door next to mine.

I knocked and the door opened. A short petite girl with long brown hair and a childlike face stuck her head out. I introduced myself and invited her to dinner. The girl's face lifted at my invitation as she nodded in agreement. Our excitement about the new school year kept us lively as we arrived at the restaurant. I decided to befriend the girl in room 1C since we were sharing a bathroom. I learned that her name was Nellie and we were the same age, from the same state and in the same program. I ordered a Jack and Coke as

Nellie leaned into me and asked if I actually drank alcohol. I nodded, thinking her question was a bit odd and we were both in our twenties, of course I'd drink. Nellie focused her attention on me while we ate, and as I got to know Nellie I felt kind of bad for her. She was born in Sri Lanka, but immigrated as a kid and since she had an accent and lisp, I assumed that she was probably bullied. Nellie was different from me.

She was shy and claimed not to have any hobbies or friends, but I figured that since we were in the same program, I could befriend her, and I asked if she wanted to sit with me in class since she happily agreed. I felt content knowing that I was befriending her, like I was sort of doing a good deed. Now my first two weeks abroad went smoothly. I got used to my surroundings, made friends, and got along with my roommates. Sam, Bella, Poppy, and I would often cook and eat dinner together while chatting about our days.

Nellie and I got along, but she was socially awkward. I made it my goal to befriend her, which was easy because we sat together in lecture every day. We even opened our bedroom doors in unison. I would open my door, then Nellie would open hers and ask me where I was going. One day I left my room to go grocery shopping when Nellie's door opened and she asked me to join. I agreed, and she hurriedly put on her sandals and neon pink coat.

I walked through the aisle, Nellie silently following close behind me. Eventually I found everything I needed, but Nellie said that she wasn't buying anything, and after I paid for everything we began to exit the store and the alarms went off. I stopped to show the security guard my receipt and he looked in my bags, confirming that I had not stolen anything. I didn't think much of this instant, but when I stood at the front of the store with Nellie for the fourth time as my bags were searched by security, a thought crept into my mind. The alarms never rang when I was alone or with friends, they only rang when I was with

Nellie. I shook my head and Nellie couldn't be stealing. I was with her the whole time. She was a perfectly nice, normal girl and I was rude for even thinking anything contrary. The harmony in the apartment only lasted two weeks. One morning I shuffled into the bathroom and saw that the toilet was completely filled with two or three rolls of dry, unraveled toilet paper spilled onto the floor. However, what concerned me the most was the huge wad of hair that sat directly on top of the toilet

paper. I knew then that it was Nellie who had done this. She was the only person with a bathroom key and her hair color was a match. I tried to think of any reason that Nellie would do this. Maybe she clogged the toilet then stuffed it with the toilet paper to hide her business, but that didn't explain the wad of hair. I couldn't harp on the issue, though, so I made a maintenance request to have someone unclog the toilet, and when I came home from class, the toilet was unclogged. I studied for two hours before going back to the bathroom. I was annoyed when I found the toilet clogged again. Toilet paper, hair, and all.

And this obviously wasn't a mistake anymore, and now we were out of toilet paper. I knew I had to say something, but I didn't want to directly confront Nellie about this sort of awkward topic, so I sent a very passive, non-aggressive message. Hey, if something goes wrong with the toilet, can you make a maintenance request right away, please? I sent the message, can you make a maintenance request right away, please?" I sent the message, careful not to make it accusatory. I didn't want there to be tension with Nellie, especially since she still sat with me in class.

Nellie never acknowledged the situation. She still opened her door with mine, hung out with me, and sat with me in class. And for the next two months I just dealt with the constant toilet paper and torn out hair. I tried sending more texts, but it didn't help. Nellie would clog the toilet, I'd make a maintenance request, a staff member would clean Nellie's mess, and then she would just do it again. Eventually after twelve clogged toilets I was so annoyed that I decided to confront Nellie.

Nellie, I know you're clogging the toilet and you need to stop. If you do it again, I'm going to report you." And I pressed send as I walked to class. I decided that I wouldn't sit with Nellie anymore. I had different friends to sit with who didn't clog my toilet, and as I sat down with Reagan and Charlotte, I felt bad seeing Nellie sit across the lecture hall, and I promised myself that I'd still be friends with her and that everything would be fine. I was happy that the holiday break was soon and that Nellie never addressed me not sitting with her. My message had worked. Nellie stopped clogging the toilet,

and we were still friends. But I came home one day in early December, and my nose scrunched and disgust. There was a sickly sweet rotten yogurt-like smell coming from Nellie's room. I didn't want to confront Nellie so soon after messaging her about the toilet, so for two weeks I avoided the problem. I didn't address the issue until two weeks later when all of our food started to rot almost immediately after buying it. Bella, Sam, and Poppy were complaining about how maintenance hadn't found the source of what was causing our food to rot when I brought up the horrible smell and an accompanying

fly infestation. The girls went to go smell the hallway outside of Nellie's room and returned a minute later, coughing and gagging. We posited about what may be causing the smell when Sam brought up seeing Nellie at 2am, skipping through the woods. Sam was heading back from the club and Nellie was skipping around like a possessed doll, according to Sam. And as we spoke, Nellie entered the kitchen and everyone fell quiet. Sam bluntly asked Nellie what the smell in her room was and Nellie just silently shrugged

her shoulders. Annoyed by this, Sam stood up and grabbed Nellie's arm, guiding her into the hallway as the rest of us followed, covering our noses with our sleeves. Nellie claimed not to smell anything, but her eyes were darting rapidly between the three of us. Sam made a sarcastic comment toward Nellie as we returned to the kitchen without Nellie. Sam was a bit harsh and part of me felt bad for Nellie. At least Christmas would be relaxing. I spent two weeks at a friend's house with her family for Christmas and they were all welcoming

so I didn't miss home too much. My friend knew about Nellie, so she bought me scented candles for Christmas. When I returned to the apartment I felt rested and equipped the face of the new year. My January exams were online and pretty easy, so I was surprised when Nellie texted me asking if I would cheat with her on the final exam. I politely declined, and she asked if I would go to lunch the next day. I had no plans, so I accepted her invitation. I spent a lot of time with her, but she never actually spoke much. So, despite everything, I wanted to get to know her better. Once we were at the restaurant,

I racked my brain for things I could talk with Nellie about. Attempting to break the awkward silence, I asked her what her favorite show was. Nellie told me that she loves to watch Sophia the First. And I was confused. Sophia the First is a Disney toddler show that came out when we were teens. Why was she watching a show for toddlers in her twenties? I didn't know how to expand on what she said so I changed the topic and asked what her favorite hobby was. Nellie giggled and said, I do this a lot actually. I listen to you through the walls.

They're so thin. I barely put my ear against it and I hear you talk to your parents every day." I tried not to look horrified as I sat there confused and a little scared. Nellie started laughing. You're like a mother, but I'm an aunt and we're sisters together. I smiled awkwardly and nodded and I had no clue how to respond to that. In a desperate attempt to change topics, I asked her about her childhood in Sri Lanka. Nellie slammed her fist on the table,

sending my rice flying off the plate. Nellie yelled that she was not from Sri Lanka, and I apologized, even though she definitely told me that she was from Sri Lanka. Nellie began to laugh again. I have plans for us tonight. We'll go to the graveyard and walk around. You'll be scared, but I'll have fun with you. Nellie's eyes were opened incredibly wide and her mouth seemed to open more than usual. She was scaring me and I didn't want to be rude, so I said that I'd invite our other roommates too. At that, Nellie let go of her fork and quickly moved her hand onto mine, and she insisted

that we had to go alone. I pulled my hand back, attempting to hide my grimace and stuttered out a very disingenuous maybe. Nellie leaned back slowly, rolling her head from one side to the other and mumbled about how fun it will be. The rest of our lunch was silent. When we got back to the apartment I said goodbye to her and went into my room. I didn't call my parents that night.

I went to bed early, hoping to quell my anxiety and get some much needed rest. The next day I did laundry, went shopping and by 2pm I was meal prepping for the week. I jumped when Nellie asked me to go to the movies with her. I hadn't heard her come into the kitchen, but there she stood, her head down and eyes turned up staring at me. I declined her request, but she repeated her question. I politely declined once again, trying to offset her bizarre vibe, and Nellie didn't respond and retreated back to her room and then left for the movies.

An hour later I went to the bathroom and when I opened the door I gagged immediately. The smell was bad, but the sight was worse. The walls, floors, door, sink, and toilet were covered in smeared poop and blood. I could see distinct handprints. I closed the door, tried not to puke, and I was shocked that Nellie had done this, but my shock turned into anger as I messaged Nellie. What you did is weird and disgusting. You need to clean it.

I'm going to report you. I pressed send. I no longer cared about being friends with Nellie. And it felt gross so I went to our shower room next to the bathroom, but Nellie ruined that too. There was toilet paper shoved in the shower drain and wads of toilet paper crusted onto the walls. And I was livid at this point, but I had to wait until Monday to report her so I laid down to take a nap. Two hours later I was awoken by Nellie slamming the front door. I heard her footsteps until

her feet were visible through the crack under my door. I expected her to knock, but she didn't. Instead, Nellie began to continuously chirp like a bird. She briefly paused then began twisting my doorknob in unison with her chirps. I stood there, unnerved as Nellie did this for five minutes. Then Nellie began to rapidly knock on my door and call my phone. Seven times she called, hung up, and then called again while rapidly still knocking. Nellie then began ramming her body into my door over and over. The shock of it made me stumble back onto my bed. Then as suddenly as it started, Nellie stopped, her feet still visible under my door.

My phone buzzed and I slowly unlocked it, staring down in horror at Nellie's text. The cockroach screamed. Why do this to me? Because you couldn't be positive in a negative situation, the doctor said. The doctor pulls off the cockroach's legs and it cries. The doctor has no choice. The cockroach must be killed and its family taken away. You are the funny cockroach."

I was terrified as Nellie began to knock and chirp. I was scared to call the cops because I was on a visa and if they didn't believe me I could be deported for making a false report. I texted Poppy and Bella who had heard everything. Nellie stood there for an hour straight, occasionally pushing her fingers through the cracks under my door. When Bella's boyfriend arrived, his presence scared Nellie away. We met up and talked about what had happened before going to bed, and that night I barely

slept as I was too scared. I awoke the next day anxious about the previous night's events. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't that bad. However, as I peeked into the bathroom, its condition suggested otherwise. Charlotte and Reagan were skipping class, so I sat alone. I saw Nellie under the room, bypass her regular seat, weave through the aisles and inspect each row as she passed. I sank in my chair as she got closer, horrified by the realization that she was searching

for me, and with the last night's memories fresh in my mind, I frozen fear when Nellie found me and robotically bent down to meet my eye line as she sat next to me with her mouth twisted in a very sinister smile. I did nothing as she sat next to me, too scared to move and worried that any tiny shift may cause her to attack. When the professor dismissed us I shot up, frantically packing my things. Nellie asked where I was going and I lied to her, saying I was going to the cafe. I didn't want her to know where I was.

So I went home for lunch, and as I stood in the kitchen, the door opened. You weren't at the cafe. Nellie's eyes darted up to me, and she was looking at a knife on the table. I apologized and told Nellie my plans had changed. My heart raced as I asked her if she liked the lecture, and Nellie didn't respond. She just stared at me, head tilted and mouth agape, and I asked her again, but she still didn't answer. I faced her, afraid that she'd used that knife on me, and she glared so intently that

her veins were protruding, and she stood there for ten minutes before leaving. Later on I walked to the library and froze as I saw Nellie's pink jacket behind me. I turned to see Nellie staring at me with vacant eyes, and she followed me into the library up to the third floor and then sat directly behind me. With her threat still fresh in my mind I moved to a different spot, but Nellie followed me. I tried again, but she still followed. I was scared to be isolated in a library with her, so I decided to leave. I quickly weaved through the bookshelves,

desperately trying to reach the lobby, but Nellie matched my pace. I was nearing a heart attack when I ran into my guardian angel, Sam. Nellie's following me. I blurted it out. Sam looked at Nellie, who had stopped five feet behind me. Sam nonchalantly told Nellie to f off, and I was surprised when Nellie did just that. After Sam and I spoke for a bit, my phone buzzed, and it was Nellie inviting me to the graveyard that night. She told me that I'd be smart to move out, and she was right. I needed to report Nellie and move out.

It wasn't safe for me to live in that apartment anymore, I just needed to get away. I went to Reagan's apartment, as she was the closest person I had to family while I was abroad, and she gave me refuge while listening to me retell the last forty-eight miserable hours of my life. She assured me that I could stay with her and as I held back tears my phone buzzed. Sam texted that she needed help and to go to the apartment ASAP. I was hesitant to go back in there but I couldn't just abandon Sam, so I grabbed my stuff and told Regan that I'd be back soon. I walked to my apartment and stared up at it, feeling a lot like the priest in that exorcist movie.

When I got to my door I was immediately greeted by three roommates distraught faces. I followed them into the apartment and my eyes grew wide as Sam pushed open the kitchen door to reveal a very demonic sight. Huge amounts of congealed red and orange liquid pulled across the floor leading beneath our table where a small bird lay dead with its wings outstretched and its head missing. I felt sick. The windows don't open, so it didn't get in here by itself. Nellie had either found this bird and brought it into the kitchen, or she killed and decapitated

a living bird and then put it in the kitchen. I didn't like either of those options. I assured my roommates that I would report Nellie that night, and that's exactly what I did. I spoke to the school safety board and things moved fast. I discovered that Nellie had lied to us about her name and age. Officials in hazmat suits came to clean the kitchen and Nellie's room. The board had me send them photos of myself daily in case Nellie killed me and they had

to identify me, and I quickly moved out and since Nellie avoided the other girls, they decided to stay. I declined to submit Nellie for expulsion because I felt bad for her and thought that moving would stop her obsession with me, but I was incredibly misguided. I was happy that my new roommates were normal, and no Nellie incidents had happened for two weeks. I did have a large uptick in random daily Facebook and Instagram follower requests from blank profile users, and I knew who was behind this, but I was avoiding any Nellie related

thoughts. I was having night terrors and the more I thought about her the worse they got. I blocked another user as I sat down with Regan and Charlotte in an almost empty lecture hall. Charlotte nudged me as Nellie entered the room, bypassing her usual seat. I felt myself freeze up as she entered our row and began walking toward me, staring at me with her dead eyes. Don't sit next to me, I said, shocked by my bravery. Nellie responded by sitting ten seats down from me, not breaking eye contact, and I considered

that a win. After class I went home and then walked to the store. I forgot to grab a cart so I quickly turned around to fetch one and ran into someone standing directly behind me. It was Nellie. Did she follow me from my apartment? Does she know where I live now? My heart stopped as I backed into another aisle and Nellie followed.

I walked to another aisle but Nellie followed me matching my pace until I went to another aisle and she began to run. I ran away terrified and Nellie only stopped when I got to the security desk. Security offered to call the police but I declined and gave them my email to send me the footage of Nellie chasing me. I had to report Nellie, but since I still had class that day I decided to report her the next day. Two hours later as I waited for Regan to walk with me to class, I caught Nellie staring

at me across the street, but she didn't approach me and walked with a crowd toward campus. Minutes later, Regan found me and we were headed to class together. I walked beside Regan, past the buildings and alleyways, and till a rock caught in my shoe and I bent down to fix it. Regan switched to the right side of me to look at a billboard and when I removed the rock we began walking again. I turned my head to speak when Nellie jumped out of an alleyway and on to Reagan. Her hands were outstretched and clasped around Reagan's neck and words cannot explain how

terrified I was. Nellie let go immediately, and Regan grabbed my arm, walking forward. Nellie began walking shoulder to shoulder with me, her head turned sideways at an unnatural angle. The look in her eyes was not human. Regan told me to run, and we bolted across the street. Nellie paused, but walked away, traffic stopping her from crossing. We stopped and Reagan leaned against the fence as I bent over and covered my mouth trying not to vomit. And after a while we continued our walk to class in silence, and we made it to the lobby and headed for the staircase but Nellie stood at the bottom of it. I won't let her walk behind me," I said, voice shaking.

Regan nodded and we followed a large crowd after Nellie walked upstairs, only to find her holding the door open for everyone. Nellie stared at me through the crowd until everyone but Regan and I had passed through. It's okay, you can go first," Regan said while smiling at Nellie. I was shocked at how composed she was, even more shocked that Nellie listened. When we sat down in class, Nellie tried to sit behind me, but someone was saving the seat for his friends, so Nellie left. I didn't pay any attention that lecture. I sat there shocked and terrified while Reagan hunched over low in her seat,

rubbing her neck. I felt horrible for bringing Reagan into this Nellie crap, and I knew then that Nellie needed to be expelled no matter what. The next day I reported Nellie to the Student Safety Board and they raised the issue to the Disciplinary Board. I submitted a lengthy report detailing everything Nellie had done. I included Reagan, Bella, Poppy, and Sam as witnesses and gave photographic evidence of the threats, the calls, the smeared poop and blood, clogged showers and toilets, and the stalking.

Next week I met with the disciplinary board to go over their conclusions. They informed me that they had reviewed my report, met with Nellie to give her a copy of my report, discussed my accusations, and had come to a conclusion. They acknowledged that everything I reported was factual, but they didn't think that Nellie had any malicious intent, so they would grant a no-contact order but Nellie wouldn't be expelled. I was completely perplexed by their conclusion and asked them what Nellie had said about

all of this, but they refused to tell me anything, and I was at a loss for words. I couldn't believe Nellie was given my full report, knew everything that I said, and knew the witnesses' names, and the school put us all in danger essentially. Yet they wouldn't allow me to know if Nellie had even denied her actions. And I was devastated. I felt my mind go numb, and I knew at that moment that they didn't care. They were going to prioritize a predator, and so with no other options I agreed to the no contact order.

The worker tried to get me to sign a non-disclosure agreement so that I wouldn't speak about what Nellie did to me or how the school dealt with my case, but I refused to sign it. The next day I received an email notification and confirmation that Nellie had agreed to the no contact order, but I knew that meant nothing. Nellie wouldn't get help and would never stop stalking me. And my sophomore year was plagued by a relentless pattern of Nellie stalking me from place to place, sitting next to me in class, standing next to me in hallways, and staring at me daily. Her actions were so unnerving

and obvious that multiple strangers warned me about her. I reported these incidents every time they occurred and the school always responded by stating that they would remind Nellie of the no contact order and they never took any further steps to help me. In sophomore year, Nellie found other roommates, and in them, new victims. She was evicted from an off campus apartment, and her new roommates, who once sat with her, began to sit far away from Nellie, and they looked terrified. They looked just like me. Having incidents happen weekly, and having to see Nellie daily made it impossible for

me to move on. I was always in flight to freeze mode, terrified by what Nellie had done and still might do to me. I became a sunken in, miserable and defeated version of myself. I wanted revenge, a natural result of the boiling rage I felt, now at a constant simmer after Nellie was coddled by a university that failed to shell out even a minor consequence for the terror that she imposed on me. I wanted Nellie to suffer in the exact way that she made me suffer.

I know if I had just grown a pair, at any point in those early months I likely could have saved myself and others from suffering. Nellie was likely stalking me from the moment I met her. I just hadn't realized it, and it weighs heavily on me to know that I played a large part in my own suffering. No matter what I write, I can't begin to recreate the evil that radiated off of Nellie. I have daily night terrors. I don't go into new situations.

I don't speak to new situations. I don't speak to new people and I don't make new friends. I'm not nice to strangers because I don't want to invite something like this into my life again. Revenge came on graduation day when Nellie's name didn't appear in the book of graduates. She had failed second year, but despite everything, I couldn't help but think that I was a bad person for being content with Nellie failing. Maybe I was just happy that I could finally move on. I'm a recent arrival to this rural area in eastern nowhere, about 15 miles from the city give or take.

There's woods in all directions, neighbors about a quarter mile on either path, which spells beloved isolation to me. And hey, it suits me just fine. Plenty of space to work on my hobby. I'm a bit of a car guy, big on refurbishing and flipping junkers into semi-desirable products. And that said, I do run a Craigslist ad showcasing and selling the lesser models, whereas the better ones I work based on commission through an official website, and it's how I make a living.

The town down the way earns me some decent sum, good spending and drinking money, but the real money is in the city. It's funny how the townies are more likely to use Craigslist ads than the city folk who are more than likely to use my actual website. They're the ones that push the more expensive cars, the ones that pay the bills. Craigslist was more or less a side hustle. Still, maybe it was just a chance or whatever, but you'd be shocked how well Craigslist worked in my case. Still, you'd think a guy like me in this remote place would have been more careful. And the thing about being in a remote area, it kind of has a way of boomeranging you in the face.

This guy had a way of making your skin want to fly off your bones. It didn't help that his junker was beyond redemption. I mean, how he got that thing here was beyond me, though he didn't come alone and let's be clear, that van pretty much spoke for itself. I told him as clearly as I could that this car was no good. I'd take it off his hands for a generous hundred bucks just for the parts and scrap. I figured if I lowballed the guy he'd just shrug it off and leave. Yet his tune somehow changed entirely the second I told him that I'd scrap it down.

He told me he'd pay me fifty bucks to get rid of it, and he gave me the cash there and then and left. Kind of suspicious really. Business was good, but occasionally I did hit dry spells here and there. This was the first job of the month and it was the second week in. It was doubtful whether or not this piece of crap would yield any decent parts, but at least the steel would count for something or other. Had a decent stockpile of the crap out back under a tarp, almost near a ton. Could sell that when the price went back up, and hopefully it wouldn't rust a crap by then.

Still it does beg the question just what it was about these creeps that stayed with me after they were gone. The inside of the car smelled like it hadn't seen a human in well over a decade and for all I know, it actually hadn't. The engine would barely start and the trunk wouldn't even open. And for all I knew there was a body in there. Windshield smashed in, not street legal, tires balding in several spots, no taillights, and for real, it's a miracle that this thing even made it here.

I can't begrudge a man for trying to get rid of it. That night, I was appraising prices when I heard the crash inside the garage. I kept that place locked down nice and tight in the dead of night so there's nobody getting in, and my very own fortress of solitude, not even the night stalker could break in there. And then it just sort of hits me. Those rednecks.

They're back. They must be. There are things in life a person doesn't want to see, of which I'm sure you can name off the top of your heads, but what I'm talking about are the things that you don't know what until it's right there in front of you, grinning like a personified shit show as its reality pours out right before you in stark, undesirable facts. The cops are gonna be a bit, and like I said earlier about isolation boomeranging around and hitting you in the face, yeah, so I figured if I just lay low and...

Oh, you're gonna be kidding me. So much for laying low till the cops get here. Now, I can't speak for these guys, but I'm sure their code does not permit witnesses. According to these cops, though, there's a lot to be said about an isolated home in the middle of nowhere that specializes in fixing cars. It's a lucrative business. The cash is bound to be buried under a floorboard or two. A score to be made for sure, even though the majority of the cash is in credit.

Now, this ain't the 90s after all, but I guess these backwood dopes are a little behind the times. And kudos, I guess, for planning that dude in the trunk. How or why they came to the conclusion that I had a cache of treasure in the garage is beyond me. In the end, they stole a bunch of tools, my radio and a TV, and nothing of a lot of value. Certainly nothing worth killing a man over. I gave a decent description of the guy that I could see along with the van, and my guess

though is that the van is well out of Dodge by now. But who can say for sure? Either way, as of the time of me telling you all of this, those idiots are still on the loose and me... well, I'm buying a gun. This happened to me about five years ago and even now I get chills just thinking about it. I was renting a small house in a quiet neighborhood at the time. It wasn't anything fancy, but it was cozy, affordable, and had a lot of character. The only thing I didn't love was the crawlspace under the house.

The access door to it was in the laundry room, a square wooden hatch flush with a door. It was locked from the outside and I had never had any reason to open it, and I figured it was just pipes, cobwebs, and the usual creepy crawlspace stuff. One evening I came home late from work, and it had been a stressful day and all I wanted was to shower and collapse into bed. As I stepped inside, I noticed something strange. My laundry room light was on. I was sure that I had turned it off that morning, but I chalked it up to being absent-minded

in my rush to turn it off again. That night I woke up at around 2 a.m. to a very faint noise, and at first I thought it was just the wind, but as I lay there, I realized that it was coming from the laundry room, a sort of soft, rhythmic thumping sound. My heart started to race, and I debated whether to get up and check it, or just stay in bed and hope it stopped. Curiosity got the better of me so I grabbed my phone for light and tiptoed to the laundry room.

When I opened the door, everything was quiet. But then I saw it. The hatch to the crawlspace was slightly ajar, and my stomach dropped. I distinctly remembered it being locked and there was no way that I could have accidentally opened it. Trying to stay calm, I convinced myself that it might be an animal that had somehow gotten in. I shut the hatch tightly and placed a heavy box of detergent on top of it before going back to bed. The next day, I called the landlord to ask if there were any pest issues I should know about and he seemed surprised and said no one had reported anything like that before.

Still he promised to send someone over to check it out. That night I double checked the hatch and even put a chair on top of it for good measure. I didn't hear any noises and I started to feel a little chilly for being so freaked out, but around 3am I woke up to the sound of my bedroom door creaking open. I froze. My bedroom door doesn't creak unless you push it slowly, and I knew I had closed it before bed. I stayed as still as I could, barely breathing, as I heard soft footsteps shuffle into the room. My phone was on the nightstand just out of reach, and the footsteps stopped right next to my bed. I could feel someone's presence, their quiet breathing in the dark. Summoning every ounce of courage I had, I grabbed my phone, turned on the flashlight and swung it toward the intruder.

There was the man, crouched on the floor, his face pale and gaunt, his eyes wide and unblinking. He looked just as startled as I was. I screamed and bolted out of the room, running outside to the neighbor's house. I banged on their door until they let me in and they called the police. When the officers arrived they found the man still in my house hiding in that crawl space. He had a small mattress, some food wrappers and a collection of random items that he must have taken from my house.

The lock on the hatch had been tampered with and from the looks of it he had been living under my house for at least a few days, maybe even longer. And the scariest part, the police said that they found a notebook with detailed notes about me. He had written down my daily routine, when I left for work, when I came home, even what I wore. And there were also a list of plans, though they wouldn't tell me what was on that. I moved out the next week and

stayed with my friends until I found a new place, and to this day I have no idea how he got in or how long he had been watching me before I noticed that something was wrong. This happened a couple of summers ago during a road trip my boyfriend and I took while vacationing in Mexico. We were driving along a remote rural road on the Yucatan Peninsula, far from the main highways after spending the morning exploring a cenote. We were fairly familiar with the area, having visited the region a few times before and typically, the only people we'd see out there were locals and small pickups or the occasional tourists.

That day was beautiful, sunny and warm and perfect for a road trip. We were cruising along when we spotted a man stepping out of the jungle and waving us down frantically. My boyfriend slowed the car and rolled down the window to see what was going on while I stayed in the passenger seat. And from the moment we stopped I'd got a very odd vibe. The man looked to be in his late 40s or early 50s, but he was wearing clothes that didn't quite fit the weather. A heavy dusty flannel shirt over khaki pants and scuffed boots. He was pale, clean shaven with messy hair and glasses that magnified his intense gaze. And what stood out most though was how calm and almost mechanical he sounded when he explained his situation.

In an accent that sounded European, he started explaining how his car battery had died, apparently because he'd been listening to the radio while fishing, and asked if we could give him a jumpstart. Wanting to help in believing in road karma, we agreed, but the whole situation just felt very off. He said his car was just down a small side road a little further ahead, and he began walking and we slowly followed in the car. My boyfriend and I joked nervously about him leading us into the jungle to rob or kill us, but beneath the humor we were both very uneasy. After about 150 meters or so, we turned onto a very narrow, overgrown dirt path, barely

visible from the main road. The jungle loomed large on both sides of us, and the path opened up into a small clearing where his car was parked. It was an older beige sedan, completely unsuited for the rough roads in this area. The trunk was oddly opened, with a blanket draped over it and the hood was already popped. My boyfriend got out to grab our jumper cables, where I slid into the driver's seat, keeping the engine running. The man stayed near my boyfriend, chatting casually about how his fishing buddy had left earlier, but something about his tone just felt very off.

His friendliness seemed forced, and he hovered awkwardly, watching as my boyfriend connected the cables. I couldn't shake my unease and discreetly scan the car for anything I could use as a weapon, telling myself that I was overreacting but unwilling to let my guard down. When the car finally started, the man got out and thanked us but his demeanor was unnervingly intense. My boyfriend quickly unhooked the cables, tossed them into the backseat without bothering to pack them away and climbed into the car.

The moment his door closed I reversed back down the narrow path, branches scraping the sides of our car as I maneuvered out. The man stood there, watching us the entire time. Once we were back on the main road we both felt a wave of relief. My boyfriend admitted that the man's behavior had made him uncomfortable too, and we couldn't help but question the situation. Where was his fishing gear? Why was his car parked in such an out of the way spot,

and was his battery even dead to begin with? We never knew for sure, but I can't shake the feeling that staying alert and acting quickly may have saved us from something far worse. A few years ago, I, a 35 year old male, had a terrifying experience that still haunts me today. I was living in a busy city at the time and I had just finished a late shift at work. It was around 10pm and I was walking home through the quieter side streets of my neighborhood. I'm someone who's always been somewhat cautious so I was alert, keeping an eye out for any unusual activity. As I walked down the street, I noticed a guy about 20 feet behind me.

At first, I didn't think much of it. He seemed just like another person walking the same route, but something about his movements caught my attention. He wasn't walking in a normal manner. He was clearly trying to keep his distance, but his pace matched mine, no matter how fast or slow I went. And after a few blocks I decided to take a detour. I turned onto a side street that was a little less populated, hoping that he wouldn't follow.

I checked over my shoulder and sure enough, he was still there. And it's hard to describe, but I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My instincts told me something wasn't right. I crossed the street, hoping that that would throw him off, but he crossed too without hesitation. I thought, okay, this is weird now, and I had to make a decision. I wasn't that far from home, but something about this guy's persistence made me uncomfortable. I decided to stop at a nearby 24-7 convenience

store to try and lose him. The store was empty, save for the cashier who barely looked up from their phone. I quickly grabbed a drink and stood by the door hoping to see if this guy would pass by. He didn't. He stopped right outside the store and at this point I could see his face clearly through the glass and he was staring directly at me. I panicked and ran back into the aisles trying to calm down, and I could hear his footsteps growing louder as he approached the door. I couldn't stay any longer. I tried to pay, but I was so rattled that I couldn't focus on anything.

The cashier just stared at me, probably wondering why I looked so frantic. I threw the drink on the counter, paid quickly, and bolted out the door. I ran down another street, not wanting to look back, but knowing that I had to. I didn't see him for a while, but my heart slowly started to calm down. But as I turned the corner to my street, I saw him again, standing at the far end of the block. It was like he had been waiting there the whole time. I wasn't sure what to do next. I considered calling the police, but he hadn't really done anything illegal, just sort of followed me for a while, and I didn't want to overreact. But I also couldn't shake the feeling that this

wasn't a coincidence. He was still standing there, watching me, and now he was closer. I took a deep breath, checked both ways, and made a beeline for my apartment building, not daring to look back until I was inside. When I got to the apartment, I locked the door and stayed there, staring out the window for what felt like hours. I didn't see him again after that night, but the whole experience left me unsettled for weeks. I never felt comfortable walking home alone late at night after that, even though I've lived in the city my entire life. for weeks. I never felt comfortable walking home alone late at night after that, even though I've lived in the city my entire life. I still wonder if I was just being paranoid,

but there was something off about the way he followed me. It felt intentional, and it left me with a gut feeling I couldn't shake. I was born in Moscow, Russia in the early 90s, but my brother was born in 1980 and this is his story. I was about 7-8 years old and me along with my friends were the absolute biggest idiots in terms of doing dangerous stuff. We would make smoke bombs, fireworks, etc. out of anything that we found and did tons of stupid other stuff. Russia in the late 80s resembled the post-apocalyptic wasteland that you see in movies in a lot of places,

mainly because there was really no law and order, so no one cared. You were able to buy crazy things off the streets. My father was once offered an old rocket launcher. And with this, parents often just let their kids sort of screw around in these places, so we would do other stupid stuff in these abandoned buildings. Well, one day, we were messing around when one of my friends noticed someone lurking nearby. We didn't really care, we were used to seeing weird stuff, but after a bit we noticed the person was not really moving, just sort of stood there.

When he noticed we had seen him, the man slowly walked into view. A large bald man, black coat, a nice one, likely an import, which was expensive at the time, and American sneakers, also very expensive. He didn't really greet us or anything, but must have seen me looking in his shoes because he just said, like, my shoes? More if you want them. Come on. Now a few things really unnerved any of us, but this dude definitely did. If you know anything about Russia and that era, this dude looked like someone you did not want to mess with.

The kicker though, once he turned around, my friend noticed that he had a gun in his pants. And the second he saw that, he just yelled gun in his pants, and the second he saw that he just yelled gun and booked it and we all just sort of scattered. I just heard the guy loudly curse and didn't see him again. And now if the story ended here it would have been just a creepy encounter, but some time later we were no longer allowed to play in that area. I found out much later that they had found another child beaten to death with a rock in that building shortly after our experience.

And to be honest, as a kid I never really thought much about this until my parents told me about the death, at which point the dots connected and I realized what we potentially ran away from. Way back in the late spring of 2017, my family and I went on a vacation to Cancun, fulfilling a long-held dream of visiting Mexico. We were eager to experience the country's stunning landscapes and rich history, vibrant culture, and, of course, its incredible food. While much of our trip was as magical as we'd hoped, one incident on our first day left a deep and lasting scar on our memories of the place.

We planned a visit to the iconic Chichen Itza Pyramids, a must-see landmark that's a bit of a drive from Cancun's bustling hotel zone. And to make the journey easier, we rented a car, relying on Google Maps to guide us. The drive started early in the morning and the route took us down a long, very isolated road. At first nothing seemed unusual. It was quiet and serene with the sunrise casting a golden glow over the landscape, but as we continued our day took a dark turn. Out of nowhere a group of men in uniforms flagged us down.

They were federal police officers, clearly identifiable by their uniforms with Yucatan insignias. Since Chichen Itza is in the neighboring state of Yucatan, we assumed that this might be a checkpoint near the state border. However, things quickly became unsettling. The officers informed us that everyone in the car should have been wearing seatbelts. In Colombia, where we're from, it's typically only for the driver and front passenger to buckle up, so we hadn't realized that we were really breaking any rules.

They said the violation would result in a fine, but the conversation soon shifted into a very disturbing direction. They asked us where we were from and when we entered Colombia, their demeanor turned hostile. They ordered my father out of the car and led him to a spot out of our sight. At the same time, they made derogatory remarks about Colombians, calling us criminals and claiming we were responsible for many of the crimes in Yucatan. The hostility in their tone and the fact that they were heavily armed sent a wave of panic

through us. It didn't help that the road was completely deserted, except for a few passing cars that the officers ignored, with the isolation making our fears much worse. Minutes passed, though it felt like hours before my father returned. He looked shaken, but composed, and once we were back in the car and driving away he explained what had happened. The officers had questioned him aggressively asking who he was, what his job was, and whether anyone knew he was in Mexico.

They let him go only after he gave them money, a bribe to avoid escalating the situation. As we continued our drive, an overwhelming thought lingered in the car. Those men could have harmed us or worse, and no one would have known. And the encounter felt far more sinister than a routine case of police corruption. Their threats and behaviors left us deeply unsettled and incredibly grateful that the situation hadn't turned out worse. Thankfully, the rest of our trip in Mexico was wonderful. We explored its beautiful sights, enjoyed its food, and met many warm and welcoming

people. However, that bitter experience on the first day remains etched in our memory, a stark reminder of how quickly things can take a terrifying turn. I was a child, between five years old to ten, and I remember bits and pieces, but some of it is what I recall my mother telling me years ago. My mom had a friend we grew up with, Donna. Donna and her daughter came over to hang out with my sister and I numerous times, having sleepovers and the like. One time, Donna was fighting with her boyfriend and I guess had fled to our house during the breakup, or maybe she was already over when her ex freaked out. Either way, I remember being hurried into my sister's room by Donna, along with my

sister's and Donna's daughter. Donna flipped my sister's full-size bed on its side and had us lay down against the wall with the mattress and box frame leaning against the wall above us and then moved the dresser to the door. I closed my eyes and covered my ears because I was still afraid of the dark and my sister kept crying, and this is the last I remember of the night. My mother told me that apparently Donna barricaded us in my sister's room because of her ex, Fred, and him having showed up unexpectedly looking for her.

My mother went to defuse the situation and explained that Donna wasn't here, we hadn't heard from her and go somewhere else. Fred went to his car and came out with some sort of shotgun while my mom fled back inside locking the door. Fred let one shot go as she went in the door, peppering my mom's back with pellets in the front of our house. I guess very shortly after the police arrived and subdued Fred without a fight. I'm not sure how long it took or what happened between her being shot and the police showing up, but I know we lived right down the block from the police station and my mom had called when she saw Fred get there before she

ever confronted him. My mom's boyfriend who worked nights rushed home and was checking on my sister and I as my father. My parents were split co-parenting, shows up. My mom's boyfriend who worked nights rushed home and was checking on my sister and I as my father. My parents were split co-parenting, shows up. Apparently my mom didn't get to properly explain what happened in the phone call with my dad so all he got from it was boyfriend shooting near kids and came over. My dad punched my mom's boyfriend in the face, putting him out cold before being told that he wasn't the shooter.

My dad and her boyfriend had never had issues prior and didn't after when my dad found out her boyfriend left work and rushed over to check on us first. But yeah, my mom told me the truth about that night about a year before she passed away. She died with pellets still in her neck and back from that night that caused chronic pain, but for reasons beyond my understanding were not treatable. 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.