The Lets Read Podcast - 312: THERE WAS SOMETHING EVIL IN THAT CAVE | 10 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 298

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about About Creepy Neighbors & Appalachia 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 Small Town Dicks

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Whoo-O-O-W-O-W-W-W. When I was nine years old, I came home from school one day to find my mom and my grandpa sitting at the kitchen table. They'd been waiting to give me some bad news, and that bad news was that my dad was missing. He and my uncle Lee had gone off on a weekend hunting trip, and were about half a mile into the woods east of Coreto,

when Dad realized that he'd left his grunter in his truck. And a grunter is basically just sort of a duck whistle, but it sounds like a buck's grunt. And after telling Uncle Lee to wait where he was, dad walked back to his truck, never to be seen again. Uncle Lee said that he waited about 20 to 30 minutes before he started to get worried, and then he made his way back to the truck.

But my dad was nowhere to be found. And by nightfall, Uncle Lee had every deputy from the McDowell County Sheriff's up in those hills trying to find my dad. The search effort lasted about two weeks, but after failing to find a single trace of him, the county sheriff called it off. Mom kept his name on the missing persons register for a long time, while the whole family and all of his friends pitched in to hire a private investigator. The guy was a retired police officer from Charleston, a good one too, but in the end, there was only one thing that he could tell my mom and grandpa that they hadn't already heard from the county sheriff. The most likely explanation was that for some reason, dad had walked through the woods until he came to a series of old mining pits near a town called cucumber. And then,

as their theory goes, dad walked into one of those mines, fell down a shaft, and his body had been laying in the bottom ever since. Yet during that initial search and rescue attempt, every mine shaft that could be safely explored had been mapped out by a team of caving specialists. In the tunnels that weren't safe, had teams of cadaver dog handlers dispatched to them. Dad's body wasn't found in any of them, though. That didn't mean that it wasn't there. The sheriff couldn't rule that out entirely, but there was something that he neglected to mention that mom later found from the PI that she hired. There was graffiti in one of the mine shafts. The private investigator said he didn't recognize any of the symbols or words, but they've been crudely daubed in a sort of spray paint about midway

through one of the tunnels, so he could only assume that the place was a hangout for local teens. And that's what led him to believe that the kids who tagged those tunnels might also know what happened to my dad. And despite his best efforts, he couldn't locate any of them. Uncle Lee tried to help as best he could and kept in close contact with the private investigator, but he took Dad's disappearance harder than anyone. Everyone kept telling him that it wasn't his fault, that it was no way that he could have known and that he did all the right things.

But he was never quite the same after Dad disappeared and no one could blame him. I didn't get the full story of what had happened until I was much older, but between the day he went missing and the day Mom had him declared legally deceased, there was a lot of hope and a lot of heartbreak. having my sister and I asking when his daddy coming home almost drove mom crazy with grief

but as we got older and we accepted that he was never coming back it got more and more easy to deal with until it just kind of faded into the background dad's disappearance was behind us but it was still there it was always there really by the time i was 22 my sister had moved over to morgan town for college and i was working full time at a fix-in shop in the Welsh, and I hadn't seen Uncle Lee in maybe four or five years by that point. He sent his birthday and holiday messages and would occasionally call Mom around the anniversary of Dad's disappearance, but other than that, he kept himself very distant, at least until the day when Mom said that he'd called and had asked to talk to me.

I was more than happy to see him for the first time in years, and I understood why Uncle Lee had kept his distance. He once told my mom that I reminded him of a younger version. of my dad and while some of those memories brought him a lot of joy, they brought him a lot of pain too. And because of that, I thought I wouldn't see much of Uncle Lee anymore and that brought me quite a bit of pain as well. Until you can imagine how happy I was when I'd heard that he wanted to meet up. I drove over to his place out near Philbert one Saturday around midday and what followed was what I can only describe as a two-person family reunion. We were both happy to see. We were both happy to see each other, and after spending all morning worrying that he'd be some depressive alcoholic,

it was a huge relief to see him very clear-eyed and on his feet. As we caught up, we shared some cold cuts and chow, along with a cold beer and the conversation sort of meandered around the subject of my dad until there was no avoiding him anymore. We talked about this and that, things he used to do and how much we missed him. And then out of nowhere, Uncle Lee had a proposal for him. He asked if I wanted to visit the site of my dad's disappearance, suggesting that it might provide a degree of closure. He said that he'd been up in those hills east of Coretta about half a dozen times, and

even though he'd never found so much as a trace of my dad, it helped alleviate the feeling of uselessness that had plagued him ever since. And at first it didn't sound like such a hot idea. I could appreciate why walking those hills helped Uncle Lee deal with the pain in law. But to me, meandering around the area my dad vanished from sounded like slow torture. I was just happy to be in touch with my uncle again, someone I could actually build a relationship with, because after my grandpa died, he was the only paternal figure I had left. Focusing on my dad like that, in a negative way, I mean, I couldn't see the benefit.

Yet slowly but surely, over the course of about a year or so, I came around to the idea that this might provide some much-needed closure. I've been visiting Uncle Lee every couple of weeks between the time we first got in touch and the day that I suggested that we'd drive up into the hills east of Corretta and then hike out to the place that he last saw my dad. He was happy to hear that I'd changed my mind, but it was very muted, for lack of a better word, kind of like he didn't want to show the emotion of how much it meant to him because he was worried that it'd scare me off. He didn't ask what had changed my mind, but if he did, I'd have told him that he'd have told him

that it came down to something as simple as this. If I started feeling too emotional, negatively emotional, I mean, we could always just turn around, walk back to my truck, and drive home. Nothing was keeping me there, and if walking those woods didn't provide any good feeling, at least I'd be able to say that I tried. Uncle Lee and I arranged to drive down the Coretta together on a Saturday morning in early May. To my relief, we somewhat shifted the focus away from my dad's disappearance and began to treating it like a regular old hike through the woods.

We'd uphold our long-standing tradition and take along a few beers and some cold cuts, and then if at any point I felt like talking about him or asking questions about my father, then we could cross that bridge once we came to it. I'll admit to feeling a little anxious as we drove alongside the creek and got closer to the back road we were good to park my truck on. But by the time we got to walk in and talk and I realized that patch of woods was no different than any other in West Virginia. I'd always considered that area around Coretta to be haunted. Not literally, of course, but it might as well have been like the ghost of my dad was

wandering those hills. I never wanted to go there as long as I lived, so to suddenly be there one day and realizing it was mostly all in my head, it was definitely good for me. But the word mostly is kind of carrying a lot of the weight in that sentence. And as much as it felt regular as anything to be walking through those woods with my uncle Lee, it was like there was still a piece of my dad out there hiding away someplace. Call it a memory, call it hope, but there was something, and I could feel it. And we kept on walking and talking till we got to Big Creek, and then after making ourselves comfortable on a flat rock at the edge of the creek, we had ourselves a little break. And I figured that marked the halfway point of our hike, so when we were done, I suggested that we head back

towards my truck. But Uncle Lee had another idea. He said that there was something he wanted to show me. And then after another mile or so of walking, we came to a rocky outcropping which overlooked the abandoned mines that I told you about earlier. I asked him if that was the place the private investigator had checked out all those years before and Uncle Lee said it was. And then after a sigh, he said that there was something he'd never told me and my mom. He told the sheriff all right, and he told the PI too. He just never had the heart to tell me or mom that the last time he'd seen my dad had been when he was walking in to one of those mine shafts.

So between noticing my dad was missing and informing the authorities, Uncle Lee said that he'd run all over the woods, calling out Dad's name, and trying to find him before the situation got serious. Uncle Lee said that he was never much of a tracker. he simply got lucky in heading in the right direction. He didn't think my dad had walked in the direction of those minds, but when he stood in that exact same spot that we were stood in, he saw a distant figure dressed exactly like my dad walking into one of the dark,

derelict tunnels. Uncle Lee said that he scrambled down the steep incline of the outcrop and then ran off in the direction of the mine shaft that he'd seen my dad walk into. But when he got there and walked inside with his flashlight in hand, there was no one there. When I asked Uncle Lee if he'd seen the same weird graffiti as the PI did, he said no, but that there was something about that old mine shaft that made him feel very uneasy. According to Uncle Lee, that's what had truly been haunting him for all these years. The idea that he'd seen his brother walk into a dark tunnel, then upon hearing his name

being called, had chosen to hide in the dark, pretending not to hear. And to him, that was the best-case scenario. The worst case was that something had happened to him in that old mind, something terrible that meant that he couldn't walk or talk anymore, even if he wanted to. I understood why such information had been withheld for me. The situation was bad enough, without piling more unsettling mystery on top of it. But still, I told Uncle Lee that I was glad that he'd shared the whole truth with me, even if it was as disturbing as it was painful.

And I figured after that it was time to leave, but Uncle Lee had another proposal for me, and one that I found impossible to turn down. He asked if I wanted to walk down to the mine with him, as it was something he himself did every so often as part of his attempt to exercise that area of the hills. And by that point, I couldn't think of a reason why we shouldn't. We'd already walked all that way,

and I had no idea if or when I'd return. And so not heading down to that mine seemed like it'd be a wasted opportunity. And if it worked for Lee in dispelling some of the heartache, then it might just work for me, too. And so I agreed, and off we went. Heading down the steep face of the outcrop was definitely not a smart move, so we walked around the edge of the mining pit a little bit to find a safer way down. At the bottom, all kinds of warning stuff.

science had been hammered into the dirt telling people to keep out, and that they'd be seriously injured if they tried exploring any of the old tunnels. I asked Uncle Lee if he thought that my dad had fallen down a mine shaft or had been the victim of a freak cave-in that had left him unable to respond to his cries. He didn't know for certain, but if that was the case, dad's body would have been found a long time ago. Whatever happened to him, it happened in that old mine. It just hadn't been properly explained yet. As we got closer and closer to the mine's entrance, which appeared as a jagged scar in the rock, it was like the air itself grew heavier.

Very little light was making its way down the tunnel, but I remember seeing splintered wooden beams jutting out at odd angles like broken teeth in the mouth of some great serpent. Neither myself nor Uncle Lee said a word as we approached the entrance, and the place was so quiet that the sound of our boots crunching into the gravel and slate seemed, unnaturally loud. I started to see things like discarded tools, a cracked lantern, a coil of frayed rope half buried in the dirt, things which suggested the mine had been abandoned in a hurry rather than in an organized or phased fashion. I asked Uncle Lee if he knew why the place had been abandoned in the first place, and he said that he'd heard rumors of flooding, but didn't know

for certain if they were true or not. The official explanation was that the company had simply gone out of business. But if that was true, why did the place look like it had been abandoned so hastily? And as we got within just a few feet of the mine's entrance, it was like the temperature dropped by a few degrees, and the darkness in front of me seemed to swallow up all the outside light after just a few feet. I figured Uncle Lee could sense my apprehension, because he started telling me how I didn't have to go inside if I didn't want to. All I had to do was say the word, and we could just leave. But like I said, there was no way I was going to just turn around and go home, not after we'd walked all that way. And so, slowly but surely, I started walking toward the entrance and

the rusted cage bars of the open gate beyond. I can recall the oddest things from the first few moments. I remember how it got even colder as I stepped into the shaft and how the air had both a smell and taste to it too. Just dust, metal, and mold all rolled into one. The light from outside disappeared quickly, but luckily, I had a tiny flashlight that I kept attached to my key ring. And so after sort of fumbling with it to free it from the ring, I held down the small button and suddenly I could see again. I say I could see again, but not by much. The light from the little key ring attachment was only enough to keep a few feet of darkness at bay, so my pace stayed slow as I tread deeper into the tunnel.

I took a few steps and then stopped, then, after taking a few more, I turned around to check if Uncle Lee was following me. But when I did, I saw something that made my blood turn to ice. Uncle Lee was standing near the cage gate, almost like a total silhouette by then, but there was just enough light for me to see that he held something in his hand. It was something that I knew that he had with him, but something he had no reason to produce in that moment. It was a gun, and the hand that he held it in was shaking. In the micro-seconds that followed me spotting the gun in his hand, part of me screamed out to reason with him, and there was a brief glimmer of hope when the thought occurred to me

that he produced that pistol for our own safety. But the way it trembled in his hand, the way he didn't say a single goddamn thing as I turned back to look at him, I got this feeling, sharp as a blade, that I wasn't safe at all. And so I ran. I ran down that tunnel with my tiny crappy flashlight as the first of Lee's gunshots rang out. The crack split the air behind me and the bang felt like it exploded my eardrums as I felt the bullet fly past me all in the same moment. And my adrenaline surged as I realized to not make myself an easy target, I had to turn my flashlight off. Then as I used my thumb off that button, I was just plunged into darkness. I'd never been so scared in my entire life. I didn't know it was

even possible to feel that level of terror. The only light came from Uncle Lee's shots as my lungs burned and my muscles began to scream, and any second I expected to either take a bullet or slam into a complete wall. As it turned out, I was headed for a wall, and the only thing that alerted me was seeing one of Lee's bullets ricochet off something metallic. I flicked on my flashlight for a second and saw the tunnel diverting into three different directions,

and I picked a path in a split second and then kept running. And only then I was out of Lee's sight that I could switch that little flashlight back on and start looking for a place to hide. As I ran into the diverting tunnel, The weak glow of the flashlight in my hand started to bounce off the much narrower walls, and I suddenly realized something had been written on them. At first I thought it was the graffiti the private investigator had mentioned,

but even while running at full speed, I saw it was unlike any variety I'd ever seen before. It looked like writing of some kind, smeared in black paint, and an entire section of the tunnel appeared covered in what had to be more than a thousand lines of it. I didn't even recognize the language, but for reasons you're already aware of, I also didn't have time to stop and study it. What I was really looking for was a place to hide, and I soon found one. Soon after I started to see all that weird script on the walls, I started to see a bunch of smaller and larger chambers leading off from the tunnel that I was running down. I picked one at random, lunged into it, and then tucked into the nearest corner to conceal myself from Lee's first. flashlight in case he pointed it into the chamber. I kept my breathing shallow, but my heart was

hammering against my rib cage, and I quickly realized my hiding place did nothing to dampen my terror. Sure, I was out of Lee's sight, at least temporarily, but more than anything, I realized I was trapped. I remembered how I tried to stay as quiet as possible, but for the first few minutes, which felt like hours, my ears rang non-stop from the tunnel having amplified that sound of Lee's shots. I wondered if my hearing would ever go back to normal, and imagine Lee being able to creep right up on me without me ever being able to hear him. It was almost a relief when I started to hear his voice, along with the sound of crunching gravel as his footsteps got closer and closer. I wasn't deaf, but I was still trapped, so what little relief I felt was

quickly drowned out by the raw terror of knowing that I was being hunted. Lee started calling on my name, telling me to come out, not trying to reason with me or make excuses for shooting at me, just telling me that I needed to come out because sooner or later he was going to find me. I couldn't move. The sound of my footsteps would have almost certainly alerted him to my location, so I had no other choice but to remain in place and stay quiet as possible. That part was surprisingly easy because, running all that way, with how unfit I was at the time, meant that it was more than happy to stay still and just catch my breath. When his footsteps got louder still, he suddenly pointed his flashlight down the tunnel my

hiding place was at. Staying still and quiet suddenly got a lot harder in that moment. I remember saying it over and over in my head, with my voice being clear. as a bell in my mind saying, don't come down here. Don't come down here. Please God, don't let him find me. And I guess God listened because instead of heading down the tunnel that I was in, he just kept on walking. I thought that might be my chance to make a run for it. If Lee was heading deeper into the mind, then maybe I could slip out behind him. But that glimmer of hope was quickly snuffed out when I remembered how loud my own footsteps would be and how he might not miss all of his

shots that time. And he technically had not missed all of his shots. I later found a bullet hole running through one of the flat pockets of my jacket. But like I was saying, I stayed dead still in that dark chamber, keeping my ears tuned for Lee's voice and footsteps. They were still ringing from the shots, and I could hear my heart pulsating into my ears, but it wasn't as bad as it had been previously. And I could hear almost every word Lee was saying as he can continued to hunt me down. His footsteps were slow and steady, and occasionally he mumbled something I couldn't quite make out. But then suddenly, his footsteps went from slow and rhythmic to sharp and quick with a scrape of gravel. And then there was silence. It sounded like

he suddenly turned around, like he'd heard something that had startled him, and he figured it was me trying to make a break for it. He stayed still for a few moments, a horrible silence hanging in the air, and then he said, I know you're here, Stanley. And hearing those words terrified me in ways I never thought possible. Because Stanley isn't my name. It was my dad's name. It was like my mind was on the verge of fracturing

from the combination of terror, confusion, and painful memory. Uncle Lee must have lost his goddamn mind. There was no other explanation for it, and the reality of what that meant for me was almost too much to handle. I wanted more than anything to try and reason with him, to appeal to a sense of kinship. We'd already lost one man in the family. There was no reason to lose another, especially not by his own hand.

But I also knew that there was a chance that that gamble would be the last I'd ever take. He'd already tried to kill me and there was nothing to say that he wouldn't try again. In the end, I resigned myself to just staying put and simply waiting until he came around the corner of my hiding place. I'd rush him and try to get control of that gun. Then whatever happened next, I could only help for the best. But as I listened to his footsteps become slow and steady again, waiting for them to get louder and louder before I saw his flashlight, we both heard the sound of something else moving in those tunnels. I couldn't tell you who it was. They didn't say a word and I didn't hear any additional footsteps. All I heard was what sounded like rocks

shifting someplace deeper in the tunnels, and then Lee started to speak. I couldn't make out what he was saying at first. He just stopped dead still and then started to mutter something under his breath. I had absolutely zero clue what was going on. I was scared out of my mind, but all I could do was stand there, still as a goddamn statue, and keep my ears tuned like my life depended on it. Because it did. And Lee just carried on muttering to himself, or at least it sounded like he was muttering to himself. And then out of nowhere, I felt this rush of warm air blow through the tunnels, like it was coming from deep down someplace. And it smelled like evil.

And when I say that it smelled like evil, I only used that word in place of death. I was about to write it smelled like death, but as someone unfortunate enough to have come across her, rotting deer carcass in high summer. It's not the same scent as what I smelled in that mine shaft that day. It wasn't that sort of sick smell of rotten decay that makes you want to either puke or run or both. It was something so foul it shouldn't exist by any natural law. It smelled like burning death. That's the only way I can truly sum it up, like something that can't exist here on the surface, something older than the mine itself. It had me covering my mouth and nose with my shirt because my first assumption was that it was

one of those toxic gases I once read about miners having to worry about, and I remember thinking, so this is why they had to abandon this god-forsaken place, as I kept my shirt clamped over my mouth and nose. And then suddenly, I hear Lee begin to yell something. I can't guarantee that these were his exact words, merely by recollection of them, but to my memory he said, He's here. I brought him. I did what you asked. He repeated himself a lot, said stuff in between like, please, or you got to believe me. But he said that first part over and over, and fits and rage with his screams getting louder and louder until I couldn't make the words out anymore. By the time his yells had degenerated into what sounded like screams of pain and terror, I made a run for it, in the hopes that he was.

suitably distracted. He wasn't anywhere near the tunnel I was in. I didn't even see his flashlight as I ran, but during the whole time that I was hurtling out of that tunnel at speeds, I was sure would end in me falling. I heard Lee's screams. I kept on hearing them as I ran out into the daylight, too. They were much fainter and had this eerie, echoey quality about them, but I could still hear them right up until they suddenly went silent. And I didn't look back, though. I didn't even consider it. I just kept on running towards the gentler slope would use to climb down into that pit. I'd then scaled it and then carried on running through the woods until my legs screamed out no more. The woods were quiet, but Uncle Lee's screams kept on

echoing around in my head, and I was overtaken by these contradictory feelings of trauma and this bizarre sense of victory. I'd made it out, but I couldn't enjoy that feeling because, for whatever reason, Uncle Lee, hadn't. When I couldn't run anymore, I began walking back to my truck,

and it took a long time before I spotted the glint of its metal bed through a thinning thicket of trees. My hands trembled as I reached for the door handle, and then after yanking it open, I slid into the driver's seat and just, Sort of sat there for a moment, staring at the windshield. I couldn't even process what had just happened to me, and I think I've already said this.

I couldn't feel happy that I made it either. Instead, it was just this numb sense of resignation that I had to drive home and report my own attempted murder to the county sheriff, along with a single word. Why? I could only manage to drive my truck as far as could. oretta before I had to stop. There was no way that I'd be able to drive safely given my condition, and it was the first place available to call the sheriff's department. My hands were still

shaking when I asked a motel receptionist if I could use their phone. I could tell that she was a little scared of me, on account of my appearance and demeanor, but she'd let me use their phone all the same. I didn't bother trying to keep the call private. I mean, I lowered my voice, but with a girl right there in front of me, there wasn't much that I could do to keep her from hearing. I told the dispatch lady that my uncle had tried to kill me at the abandoned mining pit north of cucumber, and how I thought that he had some kind of accident and was still inside. And I must have sounded real wigged out and distant, but they understood enough to send help. Two deputies showed up to the motel and a cruiser maybe ten to fifty minutes later, and I told

them everything. They wrote it all down, then they told me that they call me once they'd check out the mines. I drove home, took a shower, and tried to process everything that had happened, but there was no processing it. And even after all these years, I still haven't been able to. A few hours later, I got a call from one of the deputies. They found footprints and shell casings, but no Uncle Lee. And what followed was the exact same process as what happened after my dad went missing. At least, I imagine it all went down a similar way. The sheriff got search and rescue involved, who once again explored the mine as deep as it was safe to do so, and there was no sign of Uncle Lee anywhere. No blood, no body, no weapon. Only those shell casings lying

near the entrance from where he'd shot at me and I'd run. I told them all about the rush of warm air and how Lee had started to scream, he's here, I brought him, I did what you asked. And then after many weeks of investigating and consulting with experts, the county sheriff announced their conclusion, and this is what he told us. In mining, there are things called blowouts or gas blowouts. These events involve accidental releases of gases like methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, or carbon dioxide, all of which can build up in the mines and prove toxic at certain concentrations. They're caused by things like drilling, blasting, and sudden changes in pressure, and cause poison gases to rush out like tsunamis of toxic vapor. And it's one of those blowouts that the sheriff believed me and my uncle had been caught up in.

They explained that in all likelihood, Uncle Lee was hit with a kind of gas cocktail. tale, consisting for the most part of highly concentrated CO2, and this led to a kind of frightened disorientation, which ended up causing him to attack me in his confusion. Naturally, given the circumstances, the sheriff told me and mom that Lee had become the number one suspect in my dad's disappearance, in which there had almost certainly been some kind of foul play involved. There had been no activity in his bank account after he disappeared, which was probably the number one reason we all thought that he was gone, and hadn't just decided to vanish without a

trace. I mean, it was still possible that dad going missing had nothing to do with what Lee did later, but the sheriff himself said he was very interested in catching up with Lee so he could find out why he'd called me by my dad's name instead of my own. But, more than two decades have passed now, and not a trace of Uncle Lee or my dad has ever been found. After the sheriff and his search and rescue people search the mine, he ordered them all to steal it off with explosives to prevent others suffering the same tragic fate. But their opinion of what Lee's fate was, and my own opinion, differ greatly. I didn't make a fuss at the time, and I still don't. And when I'm writing now is the first word of objection I've ever committed to paper, let alone

voiced out loud. But I don't believe for a second that it was some rush of CO2 that made Uncle Lee started shooting at me. I told the sheriff back then over and over that the rush of warm air didn't happen as we were walking in. It happened as it was hiding, right before Lee started calling up for my dad, saying all that weird stuff and eventually screaming unintelligibly. But the sheriff and his experts acted like I got it all wrong. But I was so disoriented by the fear, the adrenaline, probably a dose of CO2 myself, that

I didn't really know what had happened to me. but I do know what happened to me and I know what happened to my uncle Lee too I just don't think I'm ready to actually say it I also don't think that I'll ever be ready to really say it because doing so feels like opening the door to some great and terrible darkness I just know that there's something out there

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too. You can hop into a session with just one click, perfect for busy schedules. And if you ever want to change therapists, you can do that any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash read. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com slash read. I grew up in small town, Illinois, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else's business. My sister and I were similar in age. She was five, I was seven, and we used to

play outside together a lot. We lived in the quiet streets, so Mom didn't mind us playing in the yard or wandering a little further, so long as we stayed close enough to hear her call us in. Now, looking back, I feel like the early 70s were a simpler time. At least to us, they were, a time when kids roamed free and nobody thought much of it. Across the street lived a man named Mr. Vrabblevsky. He was older, maybe in his 50s or 60s, with graying hair and those real thick glasses, the kind that seemed to magnify a person's eyes. He didn't talk much, but he'd wave if we saw him in his yard, messing with his garden or sitting on his porch. And to me and my sister, he was just the guy across the street. Nothing about him stood out as strange, and we didn't

have any reason to think otherwise. One summer, Mr. Vroblevsky and my mom got to talking, and he offered to take us off her hands for an hour to go get ice creams. The parlor wasn't far. It was just a few blocks over to a little place with a red and white awning where they sold soft serve in cones and little cups with sprinkles. My sister and I loved those parlor trips and so did our mom. I'm a father myself these days, so I know how great it can be to have even so much as an hour to just relax and recharge. It happened maybe once a week, sometimes more. He'd walk us there, buy us each a cone, and we'd sit on the bench outside the shop, eating while he kept an eye on us. Then, once we were done, he'd walk us back home. He never said much during those trips.

He didn't ask us questions or try to get us to talk. He'd just sit there looking around while we ate. I don't recall feeling scared or uncomfortable, and to me it was free ice cream from the nice old man from across the street, and my sister felt the same way. We were kids, and kids don't think too hard about stuff like that. Then one day, Mom told us that we were moving. I remember it happening very suddenly. Mom told us that we were moving to a fun new place, kind of, hyping the whole thing up for us. And then we packed up our things, loaded them into a truck, and just left. I remember the new place was an apartment in a bigger town about an hour away.

It had beige carpet and a balcony that we weren't allowed on for obvious reasons, or obvious if you're a parent, I guess. It was a nice apartment, and I didn't understand why we left. left. Mom didn't explain it. She just said that we were starting over and that was that. But even being seven years old, I remember wondering why we'd move from a nice house in the suburbs to an apartment in the city. I missed our old house, the yard, the quiet streets, and my sister did too. But we were more concerned about our new schools than the exact reasons for that move. And we ended up moving a second time and I think maybe a year later,

and that time it was back to a rented house in the suburbs. Years went by, and I was in my junior year of high school. Mom finally told us the truth about why we had moved away from where Mr. Vroblevsky used to take us for ice cream. What's crazy is that it was just a regular day, too. We were sitting in the living room, me, my sister, and my mom, when she brought it up out of nowhere. She turned the volume down on the television and asked if we remembered Mr. Vroblevsky, the older guy who used to take us for ice cream. Then, when my sister and I said yes, she told us that he was a registered SO.

As you can probably guess what the S.O. means and what it means to be registered for that, my sister and I were horrified. But we also wanted to know absolutely everything Mom had to tell us, including why the hell she had let us go get ice cream with him in the first place. And that's when she got emotional. because at the time she had no idea that this guy was some freak. You see, back then, there was no national database for people like that, and the only state that had one was California.

This was also before the cops are duty-bound to inform people that their neighbors are offenders, and way before you could bring this stuff up online and see a whole map of them wherever you are in America. Mom only found out the guy was this after someone in town came over to our house to let us know. Mr. Vroblevsky had been smart about those ice cream parlor trips. He always gave us the money and then told us to run ahead and grab our ice cream while he went to the general store across the street. That way, no one saw him directly interacting with us kids. It took a while before people realized what was happening.

I don't know how either, but when they did, the town basically sent someone over to the house to warn mom that we were in danger. her. She said she freaked out, not just for the obvious reasons either. The lady who came over told her, very boldly too, that the townspeople were planning on murdering Mr. Vroblevsky. They just had to come up with a way of doing it that wouldn't attract attention of the police. And the way mom tells that the lady basically said something like, hey, your kids might have been touched by that guy across the street, but don't worry. We're going to kill him and make it look like an accident. Have a good day. And that's why it all happened so fast,

why she didn't tell us anything. She was scared, not just for our own physical well-being, but for our mental well-being too. She didn't want us anywhere near that guy and she didn't want us to be anywhere near the house of the town's people finally dragged him out of his home and lynched him. She said that she asked a couple of probing questions in the weeks afterwards, stuff about him and what he did while walking to and from the ice cream parlor. But since nothing had ever happened to us, none of our answers raised any red flags, and to be honest, neither me or my sister even remembered those kinds of questions being asked. We were that innocent to the whole thing.

Hearing it years later hit me hard. I went quiet. My sister went quiet too, and we hadn't seen it coming. To us, he was just the ice cream guy. I don't think he ever did anything to us and, In fact, I'm 99.9% sure that he didn't. I've gone it over in my head a hundred times since Mom told us, and not counting any suppressed memories that I'm not even aware of.

I have zero memory of Mr. Vrabblevsky ever, and it makes me shudder just writing this trying to make a move on us. Those trips to the parlor, the walks there and back, sitting on that bench, nothing stands out as wrong, and my sister says the same thing. She doesn't remember anything weird. but she remembers how distant he was. We were lucky, I guess, but it's horrible to think that we were completely ignorant

to who he really was, not to mention the idea of what might have happened if we'd taken a couple more trips to that parlor with him. Mom never led us out of her sight much after that, and she got way stricter and way more protective, but I just figured it was because we were in a new place and a new city and all of that. And I used to wonder if there was any way we could have known,

but we didn't even know what all of that was, to be honest, back then. We didn't know to be afraid of a quiet guy who bought us ice cream. And, I mean, Mom didn't know either. Not at first, anyways. Small towns are supposed to be safe. That's what people say, right? They're places that you don't have to lock your car at night. And Mom grew up in the city, so she figured moving to a small town would mean that we were actually safe, but clearly she was wrong.

She felt really guilty about it for a long time. too, and I could tell. She'd got this new look whenever the subject came up, like she should have figured it out sooner, and nothing we could say ever really made her feel any better. And a few years back, I looked up that Mr. Robblevsky online. His name was still on the registry. He'd been convicted a few years before we moved into the house across the street, and I could have looked up more details, but I realized that I really didn't want to know them. Just seeing his name on that registry was enough. according to the website he was still alive and still in that same house i wondered if he tried taking

other kids for ice cream after he left sometime later i looked him up again i'm not even really sure why but i just did but when i did i found his name had been taken off that registry as according to the site that only happens if someone provides proof that the person has died and so i guess mr robleski is no longer with us and it's strange to think about now that little shop with the red and white awning doesn't feel innocent anymore and i can still picture it the sticky cones the hot pavement under my sneakers and i can still see him sitting there watching us eat our ice creams i don't know what he got out of taking us for ice cream i don't even know why he picked us up either maybe he didn't do anything because he couldn't or maybe he just didn't get the chance either way it's a shadow over those memories not a big one but it's there My sister and I talk about it sometimes. Not often, but every few years, something reminds us. And we agree that we're lucky.

We didn't end up hurt, not physically, but it's still just creepy to think about. Neither of us have been back to that town since we left, and I don't know if the ice cream shop is still there, and I don't think I'd want to see it if it was. It's better left in the past, along with Mr. Vroblevsky, and his quiet house across the street. My name is Mira, and I'm a postdoctoral research at UNC Chapel Hills Department of Anthropology. My research focuses on the intersection of cultural practices and social identity, with an emphasis on ethnographic methodologies and historical contextualization. Or, in plain English, I study how people's traditions and sense of belonging connect

by watching them closely and looking at their past. I've undertaken a lot of interesting projects in my time, and while most have been both enriching and satisfying, there's one that I frankly wish that I could forget. And that's not down to the subject matter, nor the people that I dealt with, as I cannot speak too highly of either, but rather a very particular encounter with a very particular woman while researching the kinship networks, ritual traditions, and sociocultural resilience of the Melungeon Appalachians. To cut a very, very long story short, the Melungeons are a mixed-race people who inhabit the area where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina intersect.

They're believed to have a blend of European, African, and Native American ancestries with origins tracing back to the late 18th century or earlier. The term Melungeon comes from the French word, Melange, meaning mixture, and was applied to those who lived in relative isolation in areas like Hawkins and Hancock counties in Tennessee, Lee County, and Virginia, and parts of Western North Carolina. The exact origins of the Melungeons remains hotly debated, with theories, ranging from shipwreck Portuguese sailors or lost colony survivors to unions between free peoples of color,

European settlers, and indigenous groups like the Cherokee or Seponi Native Americans. Genetic studies, such as those from the Journal of Genetic Genealogy, suggest many Melanians have roots in sub-Saharan Africa and northern Europe, possibly from early colonial interactions before strict racial laws had been established. physical traits like dark hair, light eyes, and the so-called malungeon bump on the head have been observed by researchers, though appearances are known to vary widely. Over time, many malungeons have assimilated into broader populations,

but these days it's common for their descendants to embrace their ancestry through groups like the Melungeon Heritage Association, who celebrate a complex identity that challenges what has traditionally been rigid, racial categories. Undertaking research into the malungeon seemed like an incredible opportunity. And in anthropology, it's rare to get one like that that doesn't come with a 14-hour flight in a phrase book. And I was overjoyed to receive the news my proposal had been accepted. But if I had known what I was going to encounter, there's no way in hell that I'd ever have honored it. And this is why. I remember driving along this winding Appalachian road.

my old sedan rattling over the gravel as I wondered if the old girl was finally going to give up before I made it to my destination. The latest thread that I'd pulled led me to a village called Hollow Ridge, a place that, depending on which one you studied, wasn't even on the map. Some accounts made the rather incredible claim that the town's population manifested an atypical aging process, one that ostensibly deviated from normative physiological expectations. Or to phrase it like the nice lady at the diner, I stopped at said, All that good mountain air means folks out there live a heck of a long time. My notebooks were full of dead ends, so I figured that there was no harm in chasing that one too. After hours of driving, Hollow Ridge finally came into view.

Clapboard houses sagged against the hillside, smoke curled from turn. chimneys while a few folks lingered on porches watching me roll in. I parked near a general store, grabbed my bag, and stepped out to breathe the air that smelled of damp earth and pine oil. A man in overalls nodded me from across the streets and I quietly nodded back, then headed inside the store. The store clerk, a wiry guy with graying hair, eyed me up with suspicion when I started asking questions about the village. I told him I was a genealogist, tracking Malunge and bloodlines, and he frowned, giving me another look of mistrust, and then pointed me toward a direct path leading up the ridge.

Folks up there don't take to outsiders, he said, and then told me, you better mind yourself. I thanked him, bought a Coke and a pack of gum, and then started walking toward the ridge. The path climbed up steep and cut through thick woods as my boots crunched on leaves and twigs, and it was tough going. But after maybe a mile or so, I came to a cluster of houses, smaller and older than the ones below. A woman sat in the porch shelling peas. She looked up, and her eyes were dark and steady as I introduced myself, and I said that I was researching family histories. She didn't smile. She just jerked her head toward the house behind her. Mama's inside, she told me. She's the one you want to talk to.

I stepped up under the porch, and the door creaked open before I could knock. Two men stood there, both tall with weathered skin and white hair, who looked as if though they might be brothers. They didn't invite me in, and they didn't ask me what I wanted either. They just stared until I took the initiative and explained why I was there. I kept it simple, and then the slightly shorter man who had a scar across his cheek told me, mom was 112 She don't talk much

Don't tire her out The other one nodded And then they stepped out of the doorway And beckoned me inside The house smelled of mildew and wood smoke With a dim living room lit by a single electric lamp In the corner

lying in a single bed was a woman Or at least what was left of one When I say that she was skeletal I mean that in the very sense of the word her skin was stretched so tight over her bones that it looked like the slightest touch would draw blood and while her eyes were sunk so far deep in their sockets that it made her look nothing short of ghostly her hair hung in these thin white strands and her hands rested like claws by her sides and her breathing sounded like her windpipe was lined with sandpaper i'd seen elderly folks before but she was

something else. And as I sat down on the stool, one of her sons dragged over for me, she exhibited no reaction to me whatsoever. Not a look, not a word, nothing. I started easy by asking her name. When she didn't respond, one of her sons whispered, Oh, neither. From behind me. I then asked where her people came from and she offered no answer, and her gaze remained locked on the near distance unblinking. I tried asking about her parents, her childhood, but still got nothing, and her sons hovered nearby, their arms crossed as they watched. She's weak, one of them eventually said,

Don't push her now. I told them that I understood, but my curiosity burned in my chest and a hundred and twelve-year-old who looked like she'd been starving for damn. decades, I had to know more. I leaned forward, keeping my voice soft as I asked her, "'Ma'am, how long have you lived for? And how have you lived so long? What's your secret?' For the first time she seemed to latch on to a word, and after her eyes widened and her lips parted, she turned to me with a look of fear on her face. And then, in a faint, raspy voice that barely above a whisper, she said,

It eats the years. And the strain of forcing out the words looked like it was killing her. And when she was done, her eyes rolled back, and her body jerked weakly as she began to gasp for air. Her sons rushed over, one yelling for me to get out while the other tended to his mother. I grabbed my bag and stumbled outside, heart hammering as the door slammed behind me. Then as I walked back down to the ridge line, the old woman's words echoed around my skull. What in the world did she mean by It Eats the Years? I wanted to go back.

I wanted that more than anything to just demand answers, but I knew better than to outstay my welcome in such an isolated place. The woman with the peace was gone. Her bowl abandoned as I started down the path with a son's cry of don't come back still ringing in my ears. When I got back to my car, I sat for a while, scribbling down every detail I could. The village felt different now, quieter and heavier, and as I drove off, I found myself checking my rearview mirror much more frequently than usual. That night I sat in my apartment, replaying the day's events over and over and over. my head. Oneida's face wouldn't leave me and neither would her words. I tried to sleep,

but the whole encounter just kept replaying in my mind. Then when I finally did get some sleep, I had the most vivid nightmare where it was me who was lying in that bed, more than a century old, crunching the words, it eats the years in the face of some terrified young researcher. In the next morning, I called a research fellow that I happened to be friends with. with, a folklorist who'd written whole studies on Appalachian myths and legends. I told him about Halla Ridge, about Oneida and what she'd said to me, and he went quiet for a few seconds. Then, after audibly clearing his throat, said that he'd heard a lot of rumors of a village

fitting that description. He'd never been able to confirm them because they never came with many details, just old folk tales about packs with the land. he told me such a find might end up being a great source of pride for me and that he was excited to read my paper when it was finished i thanked him but after i hung up i found myself even more unsettled than before as the days went by i found it impossible to think of anything else maybe it was the way my friend had hyped me up but i simply had to know more and so about a week later i drove back to that village parked my car and then walked down that path again

again. But when I arrived at the village and walked up the ridge line to where Oneida's home had been, no one was on the porches and the houses seemed empty. I reached Oneida's family home and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. However, upon finding that door was unlocked, my curiosity got the better of me and I pushed it open. The living room was empty. No lamp, no bed, no Oneida. I checked the other rooms, nothing, no furniture or signs of life. I walked back outside and called out, but I got nothing but silence, and it was like everyone vanished. In weeks went by, I found myself avoiding my research, but the question's still gnawed at me. What had anita meant by It Eats the Years?

It obviously couldn't be literal, right? It had to be a metaphor, but for what? And why did it look like it scared her so badly? I began digging into my books, cross-referencing Malungian folklore with anything I could find on Halle Ridge, but I had no luck. I then engaged with the university's archival resources, including those in the North Carolina Collection at Wilson's Special Collections Library, and it was there that I had a small but very significant breakthrough. One night, while elbow-deep in online research, I found an old journal scan dated from the 1700s that detailed a fur-trapper's account of what he called Hungry Hollow. The village he described Match Hollow Ridge to a tea, and while he didn't provide much detail

beyond the description, he stated very clearly that the place's unnatural temperament meant that he'd avoid a return visit no matter the cost. If you'd assumed my encounter with Oneida and her two sons failed to make it into my research paper, you'd be correct. I wanted more than anything to get to the bottom of what I'd seen and heard, but with nothing to reference outside of my own personal experience, doing so would have been fruitless at best and detrimental at worst. So instead of falling down a rabbit hole of a rather spurious nature, I decided that the best course of action was to simply try and forget about it. But I can't forget. And no matter how hard I try and rationalize what Oneida said to me, there's still something deeply unsettling about the way she acted while saying it.

I wouldn't save that I've spent a lot of time around the elderly or the senile, not as much as other researchers, but I feel capable of distinguishing the confusion and fright of slowly losing one's mind from the very tangible terror associated with things people believe are real. But on that day, and in Oneida's eyes, I saw real emotion and real fear, and I'm in no hurry whatsoever to encounter it again in the near or distant future. Hey everyone, I want to tell you about a podcast I think is mandatory listening for any true crime fan. It's called Small Town Dix. On Small Town Dix, the hosts sit down with real detectives to hear the stories of the cases that stayed with them long after the investigation ended. Cases that shape their careers and their lives.

These aren't dramatizations or secondhand retellings. These are firsthand accounts from the people who were in the room on the scene and solving the case. The show is hosted by Emmy-winning actress Yeardly Smith, yes, the voice of Lisa Simpson, alongside identical twin detectives Dan and Dave, and renowned cold case investigator Paul Holes, who developed the revolutionary DNA technology that helped catch the Golden State killer. Over the last 16 seasons, Small Town Dix has built a reputation for respectful, compelling storytelling, and offers an extremely rare, behind-the-scenes look at how investigations actually unfold. from the first lead to the final arrest and the emotional toll it takes on everyone involved.

So if you're ready for a true crime podcast that trades sensationalism for substance, check out Smalltown Dix. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts or at smalltowndicks.com. When I was in middle school, we had these new neighbors that had moved in next door to us. I remember my mom talking like two saints had just moved in because they had two adopted kids, and that was seen as a very Christian thing to do. But almost immediately after they moved in, people started realizing how strange they were. One Saturday afternoon, the new neighbor lady came over to our house.

I answered the door and she talked to our mom, but I overheard their conversation. The lady said that she wanted to apologize for the noise because her kids were always screaming and crying and she hoped it wasn't bothering us. I remember being confused because I hadn't heard anyone screaming or crying and neither had my mom. We'd seen their two kids outside sometimes, but they were always very quiet. My mom nodded politely and said something like, it's no trouble. And then the lady left. We didn't think much of it at the time. It was just odd.

But then a few weeks later, everything changed. I remember it was a Sunday, and my dad was home working in the garage, and I was inside probably messing around with my Atari when he came running into the house. He says something like, did you hear that? But I hadn't heard a thing. He then put on his boots and told me to stay put and then rushed out of the house. I later found out that he'd heard screaming from next door, from our new neighbor's place. and when he got there, he found the lady hysterical,

yelling that she'd found her younger kid, the boy, unresponsive on the ground. My dad stayed over there until the cop showed up, and an ambulance came too, but it didn't take long for word to spread through the neighborhood that the little boy had passed away. At first, it seemed like nothing more than some horrible accident. The lady said the kid had fallen

and had hit his head very hard on the concrete, patio out back. But then the next day, more police showed up, not just the regular ones, but unmarked cars, too. They put up yellow tape around the house and started questioning people in the surrounding homes, and suddenly, it didn't seem like such a tragic accident anymore. When someone let it slip that they didn't think the kid had fallen, rumors started flying. People thought the lady had beaten him to death and tried to make it look like an accident. I overheard my parents talking about it that night in the kitchen. Mom was shaken, saying that she couldn't believe something like that happened right across the street from us.

My dad just stayed quiet, which was somehow even eerier than hearing my mom all shaken up. The police were in and out of the neighbor's house for days. They came to the news vans and reporters started knocking on the doors asking if we knew anything about the family next door. My parents told me not to talk to them, so I didn't, and instead, I listened. Bits and pieces came out through the neighborhood grapevine and the local news, and slowly but surely, it emerged that the lady murdered her adopted son. After she hit him so hard, his skull cracked, she panicked and dragged him outside, and then staged it to look like he tripped.

The autopsy proved that it wasn't an accident. The kid had bruises and scars all over him, and it's been going on for a while. Then the story got even darker when people started digging into the family's past. Turns out, they'd moved to our street because they'd been run out of their last neighborhood. Neighbors from their old place, about an hour's drive away, had reported them to child protective services multiple times. There were stories of the kids showing up with bruises, of yelling, heard through the walls, and the couple dodging questions about where the kids even came from. This was the 1980s, before the Internet, before you could just Google someone's history.

Back then, if you move far away enough, you could bury your past, and that's what they'd done. Or at least they'd tried to do that. And the cops kept investigating them, and the biggest bombshell dropped during the murder charge. Those kids, the boy who died and the girl still living, weren't even legally identified. adopted. The couple hadn't gone through an agency or court. They'd purchased them. That's the word that the news used and it stuck with me. Purchased, like they were a car or a piece of furniture. No one knew exactly where the kids came from. Some said there was some shady deal with a desperate mother and others said it was worse, like human trafficking. The police couldn't pin down the

details because the couple wouldn't talk, but it was clear that those kids were never theirs, not in any real sense. The husband didn't get charged with the murder, but he went down for something else. Neglect or accessory, I can't remember exactly. But that lady, she got life. The trial was quick, and by the time it wrapped up,

the family had been gone from the house for months. It sat empty for a while, the grass growing long with the windows all dark and just about as close to a haunted house as it's possible to get if you ask me. eventually someone else moved in and life went back to normal but i never forgot and i don't think anyone else did either looking back it's scary to think how close it all was that house was right there 50 feet from mine and i'd ridden my bike past it a hundred times i'd seen those kids in the yard how they

seemed quiet but normal and never thought twice about it my parents didn't either and no one did The neighborhood was quiet, boring even, until one day, it just suddenly wasn't. And the whole thing lasted maybe four or five months from the day they moved in to the day the cops dragged them off. And it doesn't seem that long ago now that I look back on it, but it definitely left its mark on me. I was just a kid, barely a teenager, and I watched a murder investigation unfold across the street. And years later, I'd think about how easy it was for them to hide back then. there were no online records no instant background checks you could just pack up move to a new town and start over like nothing happened and they almost got away with it too if the lady hadn't killed that boy

if my dad hadn't heard her screaming who knows how long they could have kept going and just thinking about it makes me feel sick those kids never stood a chance the boy didn't make it and the girl wherever she ended up has to carry those memories with her all because two people thought that they could buy children and treat them like trash. It's a terrible story, no way around it, and I really don't tell it often. Most people don't even want to hear something this terrible. But it's real. It happened, and it was my first lesson that the world wasn't as safe or simple as it looked from the bedroom window of a middle school-aged kid. Among the shadowy hollers of 19th century rural Tennessee,

a series of terrifying occurrences would come to etch themselves into American folklore as some of the most sinister ever recorded. It was a force of malevolent social. palpable, so relentless, that acclaimed a life, drove a family to the brink of madness, and left a legacy of fear that lingers in the air of Robertson County to this day. But the force in question was no mere ghost story whispered around campfires. She was a woman who actually existed, and over time her deeds and devilry would earn her the nickname, the bell witch.

This is not a tale of vague apparitions or spurious sighting. this is the true account of a presence so vile it defied explanation and a nightmare that clawed its way into reality and refused to let go. The Bell family, consisting of John Sr., his wife Lucy and their nine children, had settled into their sprawling farmstead in 1804 and have since carved out a life of relative comfort amid the untamed beauty of the Tennessee frontier. For more than a decade, their days were marked by the rhythm of toil and harvest. the creek of wagon wheels and the laughter of their many children.

But in the summer of 1817, everything changed. I began with a knock on the cabin walls, sharp and insistent, like knuckles wrapping on the other side of the grave. The family dismissed it, claiming the sound was the result of wind on a loose branch or perhaps a restless animal. But then came the scratches, clawing at the windows as if something begged to be allowed inside.

Night after night the sounds grew louder, more deliberate, until the bells could no longer deny them. John Bell, Sr., a hardy no-nonsense farmer with a dour demeanor, was the first to glimpse their vile visitor in the flesh. While walking through his cornfield one sweltering afternoon, he suddenly froze as a grotesque creature, seemingly materialized before his eyes. He saw a dog-like beast, with the head of a rabbit, its eyes glinting with a fiendish and unnatural hunger. In an instant, he shouldered and fired his musket, but as the shot echoed across the field, the canine creature vanished in a thin air, leaving only the stench of sulfur and a creeping dread in its wake. That night, the knocking returned, fiercer and angrier than before, as if the beast had followed John's senior home. The children began to see things, too.

Betsy, John's youngest daughter, wept as she described a girl in a green dress, swinging from an oak tree, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. While Drury, one of his sons, swore a bird of monstrous size had flown down and perched itself atop the family barn, before staring at him with eyes that burn like fire and brimstone. And over time, the disturbances escalated with a ferocity that turned the bells family cabin into a crucible of terror. Furniture shook violently, while bed covers were ripped from sleeping bodies by invisible hands. Chains routed across the floorboards, dragged by no discernible force, and the sightings of strange animals continued unabated. Then came the voices. They were mere

whispers at first, hissing through the walls, followed by a raspy, guttural tone that seemed to claw its way up from the deepest circles of hell. I am Kate, they declared. Suddenly things started to make sense to old John Bell. Kate Bats had been the name of a deceased local woman rumored to have once cursed him over a land dispute. Yet whether it truly was her spirit or something far older masquerading in her name, no one could say.

However, what was clear was that the spirit spoke with clarity that chilled the Bell family's blood, mocking them, revealing their deepest secrets, and taunting them with hints of horror yet to come. Little Betsy Bell, who was just 12 years old at the time, became Kate's favored target, as the witch poured her wrath upon her with a cruelty that defies comprehension. Invisible fists pummeled her fragile frame, leaving bruises and welts that bloom like dark flowers across her skin. Her hair was yanked into knots so tight that it drew blood, with her their screams, swallowed by the night, as the witch's ethereal voice cackled in delight. You'll never know peace, it snarled, pinning her to the bed with a weight no human could lift.

The family watched, helpless, as Betsy's bright spirit withered under the relentless assault. Her eyes grew hollow, and her voice was reduced to a mere whimper, as the witch continued to deny her any rest. Neighbors flocked to the farm, drawn by tales of the disturbances, only to flee in terror as the witch turned its malice on them. It twisted up their insides, causing unimaginable pain, while hurling objects and shrieking curses that echoed through the trees. The witch might have targeted his children for particularly cruel torment, but it was the family's patriarch, John Sr., who bore the brunt of the witch's ultimate vendetta. She vowed to destroy him. She vowed to destroy him, and she pursued her goal with a sadistic and satanic zeal. His health unraveled as the

haunting intensified. His tongue was swelled inexplicably, choking off his words. His face twitched with spasms that contorted into a mask of agony, while his limbs seized as if controlled by some cruel and malevolent mistress. The witch taunted him endlessly, her voice of venomous hiss in his ears, I'll take your life, John Bell, and I'll dance on your grave. Eventually, on December 20th of 1820, after three years of relentless torment, John Sr.'s body finally failed him. He was found lifeless in his bed, having passed in his sleep with a vial of strange, foul-smelling liquid beside him. The family later confirmed it was poison, supposedly fed to him by the witch. The state of Tennessee recorded John's death.

is the only one officially attributed to a supernatural entity, a grim testament to the power of old Kate Bats, as well as the entity with which she'd compacted. Even Andrew Jackson, the fearless general and future president, proved unable to withstand the bell witch's fury. In 1819, he and his men camped on the Bell family's farm, eager to confront whatever entity inhabited the place. But as the wagon approached its wheels locked in explicit,

in the air filled with a deafening hair-raising shriek. I'd rather face the British Army than spend another night here, Jackson reportedly declared, fleeing before dawn with his troops in tow. If a man of his conviction was left quaking before the witch, what hoped did a family of simple farmers have against it? The witch's reign of terror didn't end with John's death. It lingered tormenting Betsy and the surviving bells until 1821, when it abruptly announced its departure,

but not without promising to return after seven years. And true to its word, it reappears in 1828, shaking beds and whispering threats to Lucy and the remaining children before vanishing again. It vowed another return in 1935, 107 years later, and although no widespread haunting materialized, locals and atoms insist the entity never truly left. Strange lights flicker in the woods, disembodied screams pierce the silence of the night, and the Bell Witch Cave, a limestone hollow near the original farm,

still undulates with an energy that drives visitors to the brink of sanity. Upon visiting the Bell Witch Cave, full-hearted visitors are greeted by what amounts to a gaping maw as jagged walls glistening with slime and damp, while the air remains thick with a cloying and deeply unsettling stench. Those who brave its depths report footsteps echoing where no one walks, growls, rumbling from the shadows, and a suffocating sense of being watched. In 1986, two reporters from the Tennessean planned to spend a night inside, armed with skepticism and flashlights. Yet staff writer, David Gerard, and staff photographer Bill Wilson lasted mere hours before bolting, driven out by guttural noises that swelled into a roll. a sound no cave should make.

It was a short, powerful burst of sound that reverberated from the back of the cave and hit us like a slap, Gerard later wrote. It was not a metallic screech or the howl of wind. It was a vocal, loud, high-pitched scream, and we looked at each other, got through that gate, and quickly left the cave behind us. Of course, logically speaking, we frightened ourselves with our imaginations, Gerard continued, or somebody, someone very much alive. and human frightened us for fun and profit. Those are the reasonable explanations.

But on the night in question, with my scalp tingling and my hair rising, our fear seemed reasonable, common sense. Gerard and Wilson seemed convinced that what they'd encountered was real, but was it actually the bell witch? And if so, what exactly is she? And many theories abound. Some call it Kate Bats' vengeful spirit, others a poltergeist fueled by Betsy Bell's adolescent turmoil. Yet some believe a demon, masquerading as some kind of spirit is to blame. Science offers tepid explanations. Heavy metal poisoning might well account for John's symptoms, while mass hysteria seems to amplify and explain the rest. Yet such scientific theories fall flat against the hundreds of witnesses, from neighbors to

clergy to President Jackson himself, who saw, heard, and felt the Belle Witch's wrathful presence. And surely no such hoax could sustain such terror for decades, nor would one be capable of leaving such a lasting scar on such a close-knit community. Today, the Bell family farm is long gone, but the Witch's Cave remains a pilgrimage site for thrill-seekers and paranormal investigators alike. Every creek of the trees, every unexplained shadow, carries the echo of old Kate Bat's mysterious malice. Locals speak of her in hushed tones, wary of invoking her name lest she turn her gaze their way. The bell witch is no campfire tale to be shrugged off at dawn. It's a wound in the fabric of reality, a reminder that some evils don't fade. They simply

wait for its next victim. And in the stillness of the Tennessee night, when the wind dies and the darkness presses close, you might hear it. A faint knock, scratch, or whisper, which promises that the tale of the bell witch is far from over. When I was a kid, my parents worked in movies, which meant they traveled a lot, and so sometimes I'd live with my grandma for months at a time. She was a quiet woman, always up early, and I liked those quiet mornings with her. But right after I started fourth grade, something strange started happening. at our house. It started when grandma began noticing that when she got home from work,

the receiver of the corded push-button phone next to her bed was always off the base. This was one of those old 80s-style phones with a coiled cord and a heavy handset, and she'd come home to find it either dangling, resting on the table, or some variation of not hanging up. She started blaming me for it, saying that I must have been using it after school, and even though I swore on my innocence, she'd say things like, well, who else could have been, sweetie? And this went on for a few weeks. She'd come home, check the phone, and mention it almost every time it was off the hook. And it drove me crazy.

I had no reason to touch that phone. I didn't call anyone and no one called me. She wasn't mad at first. She just said that it bugged her. But after it continued to happen, she started getting irritated and asking why I was telling such silly little lies. I started to wonder if I was forgetting something, maybe just absent-mindedly knocking it off without realizing it whenever I jumped up on her bed to see if her car was coming down the driveway. But at the same time, I knew I wasn't.

It was heavy as hell, so I'd have heard it falling. One afternoon, I got home earlier than usual. To understand why this baffled us so much, you kind of need to understand the layout of the house a little. So bear with me while I paint a picture for you. It was a small house with the front door opening up directly onto the living room, and from there you could see the dining room, the kitchen doorway, and the stairs leading to the bedrooms. Up on the second floor, my grandma's room was on the left, mine on the right, and there was a small bathroom at the end. The windows up there were all narrow, the kind that you crank open with screens that hadn't been replaced in years. They were too small for anyone to climb through, and even if someone ultra skinny did somehow shove them,

through in order to get in, getting out again without falling and breaking their legs would have been basically impossible. So as soon as I walked through the front door that day, I heard two distinct footsteps coming from my grandma's bedroom. They weren't loud, but they were clear, two thuds like someone shifting their weight on the hardwood floor. I dropped my school bag by the door and walked up the stairs, expecting to see my grandma under the assumption that She, too, had gotten to finish early that afternoon. And the hallway was short, maybe 10 feet, so it took me only maybe a few seconds to get to her room. But when I stepped inside, there was no one there.

And I'll never forget that feeling of creeping anxiety that I felt when I realized that something was clearly off. I had 100% heard footsteps. There was no disputing that. But when I walked into Grandma's room, the bed was made, the curtains were still, and nothing looked out of place, nothing except the phone. Just like usual, the receiver was off the base and lying on the floor, while the cord was pulled as far as it could go without plugging from the wall. It wasn't tangled or coiled up like it would be if it had just fallen.

It looked deliberate, like it had been placed there carefully. And I stood there for a moment, staring at it, not being able to figure out how it got that way. Later, I tried to recreate it myself. I shook the bedside table, tipped the phone over, and even knocked the receiver off with my hand. Every time, they'd either stayed on the table or fell close to it, the cord curling up naturally.

And the only way I could get it to land like I found it, stretched out flat on the floor, was to pick it up, pull the cord tight, and set it down on purpose. And even then, I had to hold it for a second to keep it from sliding back. there was no way that it happened by accident. After running my little test, I picked up the receiver and hung it back on the base. But then the second I did, the phone rang. And I remember getting a major jump scare from how loud it was,

which kind of makes me chuckle to think about today, but that's just about the only thing that does. Everything else is just weird. Now, anyway, I answered the phone and was my grandma. I guess I sounded nervous, so she asked what was wrong. wrong and I just lied and said that I was fine. And then she explained how she'd called a few minutes earlier, right before I got home, I figured, and someone had picked up the phone. And whoever it was didn't say anything. Just held the line for a little while until Grandma hung up. She'd been

trying to call back ever since, but the line was busy. She thought the person who picked up her first call was me, and knowing it wasn't, had that feeling of anxiety creeping back. I told her what happened, how I'd just gotten home and heard footsteps and how it wasn't me they answered her first call. Grandma kind of paused and then said that she was coming home as quickly as she could. She told me to leave the room, told me that she was going to call the police and then hung up. When Grandma said that she was calling 911, I thought this weird mix of relief and dread. Relief because I wasn't going to be alone in the house much longer, but dread because, well, What if I was never alone in the home?

I backed out of her room, keeping my eyes on the phone like it might jump off the hook again if I turned away. The hallway felt narrower than usual, and every creek of the floor under my sneakers made me flinch. I made it downstairs and stood in the living room right by the front door so I could bolt if I needed to. The house was dead quiet now. No footsteps, no hum of the fridge, just an eerie silence like everything was holding to. holding its breath. I kept glancing up the stairs, half expecting to see a shadow move across the wall, but it was just the same dim lights spilling out of Grandma's doorway. Maybe ten minutes later, I heard sirens, and they started faint and then got louder until red and blue flashing

lights were entering through the living room curtains. Grandma's car pulled into the driveway maybe only a minute after the police cruiser did, and I opened the front door before anyone could knock. Two officers stepped out, then Grandma, too. Her coat still half long with the look of worry on her face, and she thanked the two cops, ran over to me, and then pulled me into a hug and asked if I was okay. I nodded, but my throat felt way too dry to say much. One of the cops came over and asked me to explain what had happened, so I told him about the footsteps. The phone stretched out on the floor and Grandma's call. He listened and then told us to stay put while he and his partner her checked the house. Grandma and I sat on the couch, her arm around me as the officers went

upstairs. I could hear their boots on the hardwood, very deliberate and heavy, exactly like those two soft thuds that I'd heard earlier. The tall one called down after a minute saying it was clear, but they wanted us to come up and see if anything looked off. We climbed the stairs together, grandma holding my hand tighter than usual, and her room looked the same as I'd left it. The phone was back on its holder, the bed still made, and the curtains were hanging fine, and the officers asked if anything was missing, but Grandma shook her head. I remember how one of the cops crouched by the phone just sort of squinting at the cord. He asked me if I was certain that it was stretched out flat, and I nodded, and he picked up the receiver, letting it dangle. It swung a little, and then settled

with the cord, coiled up near the table, just like in my test. He said, Huh, weird, and then put it back on the stand. They checked my bedroom room next and then the bathroom, and even cranked open one of those narrow windows to see if the screen was loose. Everything was fine. No footprints, no scratches, no sign that anyone had been there. One of the cops just shrugged and said that it might have been a prank call or someone messing with a line, but that didn't explain the footsteps, or were the phone being off the hook every day.

They told us to lock up tight and call if anything else happened, and then they left. Grandma made us some tea for our nerves, and then we just sat at the dining room table trying to reassure ourselves. I remember how she said, maybe it's the house settling, but a voice didn't sound convinced, and I didn't buy it either. Houses don't settle in two quick thuds, and they don't pick up phones either. That night I slept in a room on a pile of blankets that she spread out on the floor, next to her bed. Neither of us wanted to be alone. The phone stayed quiet, but I kept waking up, staring at it in the dark, waiting for it to ring, or be even worse, move. But it didn't. In the next morning, Grandma decided that we'd figure out what was going on ourselves.

She'd called in sick to work, and we spent the day just rigging up a little test. She had this old tape recorder from when my dad was a kid, one of those big old clunky things with a microphone, and we set it up in a room aimed directly at the phone, and the plan was pretty simple. Leave it running while we went out for a while and then see if it recorded anything. I wasn't sure to do anything useful. I mean, what we really needed was a video camera, but it felt better than just sitting around and waiting for the next weird thing to happen. We drove to the diner a few blocks away, ate pancakes, neither of us finished, and came back

after about an hour. The house looked the same. The front door was locked. and the windows were shut, but my stomach tied itself into knots as we climbed the stairs and entered her room. Grandma then hit stop on the recorder, rewound the tape, and press play. At first we didn't hear anything. It was just static in the faint hum of the house. Grandma started fast-forwarding the tape and stopped it every so often, then about 20 minutes in, after yet more silence we each heard distinctive thuds, clear as anything, like someone was stepping across the floor.

Grandma's grip tightened on my shoulder as we listened, and then a few seconds later, we heard a soft click, which was almost certainly the sound of the phone lifting off the base. But after that, there was nothing. No breathing, no voices, just dead air until the tape hissed to a stop. And I remember each of us looking at the recorder and then at each other, then, grandma said, that's it. We're getting out of here. She didn't call the police again. She said they'd just tell us the same thing as last time. And instead, she packed up a bag for both of us and we drove to my aunt's place about an hour away. And I didn't argue. I didn't want to spend another

minute in that house. A few days later, Grandma got a call from her neighbor, Mr. Haxell, who had been keeping an eye on the house. He said that he'd gone to water the plan. and found the phone off the hook again, cord stretched out flat on the floor. And nothing else was touched. No broken locks, open windows, just the phone. And Grandma thanked him, hung up, and then politely informed him

his services were no longer required. I don't know what he said in response, but before she hung up, Grandma made it clear to old Mr. Haxell that he wasn't going to go into her house anymore. She didn't explain why, and I guess Mr. Haxel must have found that, very confusing, maybe even kind of rude. And I asked Grandma why she didn't tell him about the phone

or the thuds, and she said that she didn't want to scare him. We stayed with my aunt for the rest of that school year. Grandma sold the house a few months later, and she let some realtor handle all of it and never stepped foot in that place ever again. The new owners didn't mention anything strange, at least not that we heard. Maybe it stopped, maybe it didn't. The years later, I asked grandma if she ever figured out what it was. She just shook her head and said that she didn't want to think about it. I don't either, but as much as I wish it could, that doesn't stop me. I don't know who was in that house with us, but I know it wasn't me knocking that receiver off. I know it wasn't grandma either, and since I don't believe in ghosts or anything like that, I can only assume it was

one of her neighbors. I sometimes wonder how they got in, but those thoughts are always quickly overridden by a much more frightening idea, that one of our neighbors had unwillingly made us part of some sick fantasy, that thankfully they never had the chance to realize. When I was eight years old, our neighbor robbed my dad at gunpoint. It happened on a Tuesday evening in late October. My dad had just gotten home from work and was unloading groceries from the car. I was inside watching TV when I heard a loud bang. At first I thought it was the screen door slamming shut, but then I heard my dad yelling.

I ran to the window and saw a man point. a gun in my dad's chest, and I could tell right away that it was our neighbor, who lived about three houses down the street. He took my dad's wallet and the car keys and then ran off into the woods behind her house. My dad stumbled inside, pale and shaking, and then called the police. The cops caught my neighbor later that night. They found him hiding in a shed about a mile away, still carrying the gun and my dad's stolen stuff. He'd been drinking and needed money for more booze. And that's what the police told us anyway. He went to prison for armed robbery, and for a while, things felt safer.

I didn't have to see his rusted pickup truck parked down the street. I didn't hear his dog barking in nothing all night. But I didn't find any peace because the memory of that night stuck with me. I kept picturing that gun. The way it looked under the porch light to my dad's hands shook after he raised them into the air. And five years later, when I was 13, that neighbor got out. out. And I found out because I saw that same rusted pickup truck parked in his driveway one afternoon when I got off the school bus. I remember how my stomach twisted up into knots before I ran inside

and told my dad, and he was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and his paper and then when I told him, he looked tired but not surprised. He said that neighbor had served his time and had every right to come back to his own home. And I didn't care about his rights. All I could think about was that gun and how close he'd been to pulling the trigger and taking my only surviving parent away from me. My mother passed away from a rare form of cancer when I was still a baby. The first night after that neighbor got back, I couldn't sleep. Every creek in that house made me jump and I kept checking the locks on the windows. My dad noticed that I was on edge and tried to calm me down, and he told me that neighbor wasn't stupid enough to try anything again,

not with the police keeping an eye on him. He also added that people can change. and we had to give him a chance. I nodded, but I didn't believe it. All I could picture was him with wild eyes in the way he waved that gun like he'd already made up his mind to kill my dad. And the nightmares started soon after. I'd dream about him breaking into our home,

the gun in this hand, only this time my dad wasn't there to stop him. I'd wake up sweating, my heart pounding, and lie there staring at the ceiling until I saw daylight at my window. And it went on like that for a week, and then months, and I'm pretty sure it took a heavy toll on my health. I stopped riding my bike past his house and took the long way around the block to avoid even

looking at it. I hated feeling so scared at the time, and there didn't seem to be anything I could do to shake it. And then neighbors stayed in that house for two more years. I suggested that we moved, but Dad said that we couldn't afford it. I don't know what he did all day, probably nothing, since his truck barely moved. But then one spring, when I was 15, I noticed a for-sale sign in his yard. A few weeks later, the truck was gone and the house sat empty, and it felt like a small miracle, like God had answered one of my many, many prayers.

My dad said that he heard that guy moved to another state, maybe to live with family, and I didn't care where he went as long as he was gone. The nightmares didn't stop right away. They got less frequent, and eventually, I found that I could walk by that house without my chest tightening and my leg. screaming at me to run. It's still there, down the road, and it doesn't feel like his anymore.

But the thing that really bothers me is that, even though he's out of our lives, there's still a little portion of the memory that he'll forever occupy, and I find myself wanting more than anything to just forget. When I was in fifth grade, this new family moved into the trailer near our house. My grandpa owned it and rented out to them, and seeing as they had two kids that were roughly mine in my brother's age, we were both really excited to meet them. There was Jessica, who was my age, and her little brother, Jack, who was nine, same as my brother. And they seemed okay at first. Jessica was friendly, and we got along fine.

Jack was a different story altogether, though, but I'll get to that later. Their dad was a very strange guy. He'd buy old furniture, chairs, tables, whatever he could get his hands on, and then he'd stack it up with trash in his backyard and just set it all on fire. And it happens so often that I stopped noticing the smell of smoke, and when they finally moved out, they left behind a pile of charred junk, blackened wood, and just twisted metal frames. And their trailer was a mess, too, with oil stains smeared across the floors and walls. One time I went inside to find Jessica.

Her dad was there, shirtless, sitting in a stained chair with a beer in his hand. And he just looks up at me, and his eyes are hard and cold, and I froze. I didn't say anything I just turned around, walked out, and never went back. And before things went bad, the four of us, me, Jessica, Jack, and my brother used to ride our bikes together. Jessica was nice and easy to talk to, and we'd race down the dirt path behind the trailer, kicking up dust and laughing when one of us almost wiped out. Jack tagged along, but like I said, he was a totally different story to his sister. He'd show up to our house half-dressed, no shirt, sometimes no shoes.

and snot was always smeared across his face, and he'd wipe it with his arm like it didn't bother him. My mom caught him peeing in her flower bed more than once, and she'd yell at him that he'd just sort of grin and run off. And one time he grabbed the tassels on my bike and yank them as I was riding, which almost caused me to fall off. I was mad, but we just kept letting him hang around. He was Jessica's brother, and she was our friend, but then there was the time with the bow and arrow. I didn't even know Jack had it until he showed up at her house carrying it. It wasn't a toy, and it certainly didn't look like one either. His dad hunted deer with it for real, and I guess he'd been showing Jack how to use it,

which is how he'd found out where it was kept. We were in the yard messing around when Jack pulled the string back and aimed it right at my brother's head. The arrow was knocked, the tip sharp enough to kill. My little brother didn't move. He just stood there with his eyes wide. I screamed to Jack to stop, and he laughed like it was some game. He didn't shoot, but he didn't lower it right away either. My mom came running out and saw what was happening and just lost it.

She grabbed my brother and me and dragged us inside and then told us that we weren't allowed to play with them anymore. Jessica and Jack kept coming over after that, knocking on the door, calling out our names, and we'd just sit inside and stay quiet waiting for them to leave. Jessica would ask why we weren't coming out, and her voice just sounded very small and confused, and Jack would bang harder, just yelling out nonsense. It made us both cry, and it went on for weeks until they finally stopped. Years later, Jack and Jessica popped into my head randomly.

The trailer was gone by then. Grandpa had hauled it off after the mess they left. But I couldn't shake the memory of that pocket, a burnt furniture, their dad's blank stare, and look in Jack's eyes when he aimed that drawn-back bow at my little brother. I wondered what it was like for Jessica and Jack living in that place. Their parents just didn't seem to care much. Jack was wild for sure, but maybe he didn't have a chance to be anything else. No one was wiping his nose or telling him not to pee in flowers, and Jessica was different, but she was stuck there too. And while reminiscing, I remember

how one night I woke up to a sound outside my window. It was late. The house was dark and still as I pulled back the curtain on my bedroom window, I saw someone moving near the trees, someone too small to be an adult. I squinted and I thought I saw Jack's messy hair in his skinny frame. He was just standing there staring at the house and then I blinked and it was gone. Maybe it was a dream, or maybe I'd imagined it. But I locked my windows that night and it was a little. It was a little bit. It took me a long time before I finally got back to sleep. And looking back on everything, I feel bad for them. Jessica was a good friend, and Jack, while, seeming like a total psycho, was clearly just a messed-up kid without good parents.

Their dad scared me, and I don't even really remember seeing the mom around. I don't know where they went after they left, but back then, all I knew was the fear of that arrow, and the sound of their knocks fading away and the uneasy quiet that settled over our house when they were finally. Gone. My name is Sarah. I'm 24 and I live with my roommate, Emma, in an apartment, Emma, in an apartment and I live with my roommate, Emma, in an apartment and the suburbs of Atlanta. We're both very safety conscious, which is why we've decked out our place with a ringed peephole camera and a digital lock on our door. We thought that we were being smart, proactive really. But none of that prepared us for our neighbor, David. About three months

ago, the sweet little family across the hall moved out and David moved in. The first time we saw him, we couldn't believe our eyes. He was hauling in boxes upon boxes of anime figuratively. Marines, Star Wars, posters, lightsabers, the works. Emma and I are both very nerdy people ourselves, so a few days after the moving trucks left, we decided to be good neighbors. We put together a Welcome to the Neighborhood Gift Basket, some homemade Red Dead Redemption, two cookies, seasonal candles, and stuff like that. We knocked on his door, smiled, and handed it over.

But he just mumbled an awkward thank you and barely made any eye contact, and that was that? We were kind of disappointed, but not everyone is an extrovert, right? And we figured it be kind of nice to have a quiet neighbor for once, even if it was a little antisocial. But it didn't take long for things to get weird. At first, it was innocent enough. Annoying, but innocent. David started popping out of his apartment every time he'd heard one of us in the hallway, like he'd been waiting by the door. He'd ask us how we were, or if we had any spare sugar or toilet paper or a screwdriver he could borrow. You name it, he'd think it up and ask for it. Sometimes he'd knock on our door and ask if we watch his apartment for an hour while he ran errands,

as in he wanted us to hang out in his apartment until we came back. And we just politely say no, but it didn't seem to register. He'd just nod and shuffle back to his place only to ask again a few days later. Emma started joking that he was our third roommate, but I could tell that she was pretty creeped out too. Then about a month after he moved in, everything just went off the rails. It was a Saturday night, and we'd been out late partying near the Brave Stadium, and we stumbled home at around 3 a.m., a little drunk but otherwise in control of ourselves, only to freeze when we hit the landing between our apartment and Davids. And there he was, sitting cross-legged on the landing like some kind of yogi. As soon as he saw us, his face lit up, and then he stood up. He stood up,

before awkwardly asking where we'd been. When we told him, he said that he'd been worried sick and how in the future we needed to tell him if we were going out for the night. We were too stunned to process it at first, and then Emma almost burst out laughing, but despite managing to stifle it, David realized that she was laughing at him. His cheeks went red and we brushed past him into our apartment. But the next morning, when we checked the ringed footage, neither of us were laughing anymore. After we'd gone inside, David hadn't left. He'd sat back down in the hallway, facing our door, and stayed there for hours.

The timestamp showed him sitting there, either staring at our apartment door, or rocking back and forth staring at the floor until nearly six in the morning. It was like that scene from paranormal activity where he's speeding up the footage, but the person is barely moving. It was creepy as hell. We called the cops, but they were useless. They only said that we could contact them if he made a direct threat or tried to get into our apartment. But since it's a shared space, they couldn't do anything about him lurking on the landing outside of our door.

We're pretty sure the complex said something to him, though. We logged a complaint with them, too, because for the first five days, it was radio silence. No knocks, no creepy hallway chats. All his creepy behavior stopped for a while. We started to relax thinking maybe he'd gotten the hint, but we were so, so wrong about that. A few weeks after his little ceasefire, right when we figured it was all over, he'd lost it completely. He was out there all the time sitting outside our door, pacing the hallway, watching us and mumbling creepy stuff under his breath. Emma started leaving for work an hour early just to avoid him, sneaking out like she's escaping a prison.

I worked from home, so I was basically trapped. Every time I cracked the door to grab a package or take out the trash, there he was, waiting. He'd yell something like, hey, you look nice today. Or, why don't you come hang out with me? Just innocent-sounding stuff if you were just listening in. But there was an implication. And then whenever no one was within earshot, he'd say stuff like this one time when he told me, in so many words, if you don't come over to my apartment, I'll kill you both while you sleep.

Nice and quiet, no one will hear a thing. I was so goddamn angry, but I was so stunned by the sudden upgrade to his threats that I didn't know what to say and reply. I just speedwalked back into our apartment, shut the door and locked it, and then cried until Emma got home from work. It was a total nightmare for the longest time. He started leaving notes, handwritten love letters taped on our door, or slipped under the bottom, even stuck to our cars in the parking lot sometimes. They were totally unhinged, too. One said, I want you both to be my wives. And the idea of Emma being my sister wife would have been funny if it wasn't such a tangible and terrifying threat. And another one got graphic, stuff I can't

even repeat here, these fantasies that made me want to gag. We noticed that, said he put up his own ring doorbell after a while, angled, so it was clearly watching our door. Every time we'd leave and come back, there was a new note waiting, and we realized that he'd only installed the camera so he could figure out when we were gone. Missed you today, one note said, but the worst was, you're so beautiful when you sleep. Our bedroom windows faced the back of the building, and we were on the third floor. We figured no way he could see in, but... Then one night, I woke up at 2 a.m. to a faint scratching sound.

I crept to the window, scared out of my mind, and peeked through the blinds. And I swear I saw a shadow move, like some dark figure on the edges of the streetlight below. And I told myself it was just a trick of the light, but I was so scared that I barely slept that night. We called the police again about David's threats, but since the only thing we had in writing were his quote-unquote nice notes, they said their hands were tied. The best they could do was advise us to get a restraining order, like that's some magic fix that you can get overnight. Even if we did, how long would that take?

And what was he going to do in the meantime? In the end, we broke our lease to just get the hell out of there and secure our own safety. It cost us a ton of money, and that hurt in its own way. But after literally one night apiece in this Airbnb we rented as like an interim apartment, it started to feel like a loss worth swallowing. We got a new place together and someplace the neighbors weren't psychos and lived happily ever after until Emma moved out to go live with her boyfriend, now husband.

We're still good friends, but we've never forgotten living next to David and I don't think we ever will. I lived in a basement apartment. It was small, a damp space with one window near my bed directly under the house upstairs. When I first moved in, a very nice lady, who will remain nameless, lived above me with her two kids and her boyfriend, Ryan. Now, back then, things were fine. Ryan was always an angry drunk, but she acted as a buffer and kept him in check. But two years into me living there, she left him and took the kids, and after that, it was just me and Ryan. And it felt like I had been thrown to the wolves.

Ryan had always been hostile. Early on, after my friends left, I made a mistake. I tossed an Amazon box in his recycling bin without breaking it down. But instead of a simple, hey, don't do that, he texted me, You stupid effing C word, you put this in my trash and didn't even break it down. And that wasn't the first time that he talked to me like that. It was just the loudest. A year and a half before, I told him to never speak to me again and blocked his number,

and it didn't stop him. Parking there was an absolute nightmare. I've been at that place for three years and only got worse. I worked nights, so I was stuck with whatever spots were. left when I got home. And one night after midnight, I pulled into the driveway behind Ryan's car. I figured that he wouldn't need to leave that late, and I'd move mine by 7 a.m. so he wasn't blocked. But I was wrong. At 12.30 a.m., just as I got into bed, he starts screaming my name and pounding on the door. See word this. Get out here, you see word. And I dragged myself outside and move the car.

And he followed me, ranting and calling me all sorts of terrible things. raised his hand like he was going to hit me. I stared him down and said, oh, we're going to hit me now, Ryan. Going to hit a woman, huh? And he just sort of sneered, you're not a woman, you're, and he goes on to say more expletives. And I just went back inside my heart racing. And that was when I started planning to move. October was the goal, but the area was expensive and I couldn't make it happen fast enough. And then one day, it changed. everything. Ryan had a 19-year-old daughter who split time between his place and her moms. She didn't stay there often, but her bedroom was right above mine. Her window was always

open. Mine usually wasn't. Basement air was stale, but I dealt with it. That day I cracked my window for some air and I had my TV on, volume at maybe 24, and I lived there long enough to know that 30 was the limit before it bothered anyone upstairs. My friend used to text me if it got too loud, but with the windows open, yeah, Brian's daughter probably heard it too. She'd stomped on the floor before when she thought I was loud, and I'd ignore it mostly. This time, I'd had enough of the disrespect. I stepped outside and called up to her window. Hey, if you thought I was too loud, close your window.

She exploded, saying, listen, it's quiet hours, you effing loser, who lives in our basement. And we never even spoken before. I tried to stay calm. She was just a kid, but I yelled back that she was disrespectful. But she kept screaming at me just like her dad. And I snapped. Oh, you just feel like your dad, huh? And went inside.

In the next morning at 7.30 a.m. I woke up to Ryan hammering on my door. It sounded like he was trying to break it down, screaming terrible things. You effing, you called my daughter a... He roared. All this insane stuff. and I grabbed my phone, hands shaking and started recording, and his fists slammed the wood, the frame rattling. Open the door, he screamed. I stayed silent, frozen, and he kept going,

screaming these threats. I called the police, but they didn't do anything. They said it was a civil matter since he didn't actually hit me. He didn't stop, though. Later, as I unloaded groceries from my car, he leaned out of his window and yelled, Yeah, keep moving, you fat F and C. word. I'm sorry to keep using that, but that seems to be a theme with the way he would talk to me. It was genuinely insane. And I decided that I'd move at the end of August, not October. I couldn't stay there. And that night after the grocery incident, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The house was quiet, but it didn't feel right. My window was still cracked open, and I hadn't closed it after the fight with his daughter. At around 2 a.m., I heard something, a faint scrape.

like metal on glass. I sat up, straining to listen, and it came again, sharper from the window. I crept over, peering out into the darkness, but there was nothing, just the empty backyard in the silhouette of Ryan's house looming above. And then I saw it, a glint, quick and small, like a blade catching the moonlight, and my blood turned to ice. I slammed the window shut, locked it, and backed away. Was he out there?

I couldn't tell, but I didn't sleep that night. At 4 a.m. I heard footsteps upstairs, very heavy and very deliberate, pacing right above my bed. Ryan's daughter wasn't there that night. I'd seen her leave earlier, and it was just him. Morning came slow. I checked the window. Scratches marked the glass, very thin and very jagged, like someone had dragged something sharp across it. I packed faster after that, throwing clothes into bags, counting the days until August ended, but the nights got worse. One night, I could hear breathing, low, steady, and right outside the window. I didn't look, though. I couldn't.

I turned the TV on, volume at 10, and just to drown it out. It stopped after an hour, but I still didn't sleep. And the next day I found a note slipped under my door. No words, just a crude drawing of a stick figure with a knife in its chest. And my hand shook as I crumpled it up. I called the police again, and they came, looked at it, and said they'd talk to him. But I could tell they really didn't care. And in the end, I made it out.

By the last day of August, I loaded my final box into my car and drove away from that basement apartment, leaving Ryan and his rage behind. I found a new place. A small, quiet unit on the second floor of a building with no shared walls and no looming houses above me. The first night I slept with the window open, letting the cool air drift in and heard nothing but the hum of distant traffic. And for the first time in years I felt that tension unwind from my shoulders. I unpacked slowly and settled in and reclaimed the peace that had been stolen from me. Ryan was gone from my life and I was finally free.

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