The Lets Read Podcast - 325: I WILL NEVER WORK NIGHT SHIFT AGAIN | 7 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 310

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about working private security & night shift encounters HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by: - Aura Frames https://on.auraframes.com/READ. Promo Code READ

I'm going to be able to be. My name's Sean, and I'm from Ireland. To cut a long story short, I used to take part in amateur boxing fights, hoping to break into the professional circuit. But to keep protein on my plate in between bouts, I used to work for a private security firm and my home city of Dublin. I thought it'd all be on the doors, like being a bouncer, but as it turned out, there was more to private security than throwing drugs.

trunks out of bars. That was a lot of what the job consisted of. Don't get me wrong. But every so often, we got a job that was a bit out of the ordinary. For example, I had to guard a place of worship at one point because some absolute tools were camped out trying to intimidate the people going in and out. We got hired to guard a nursery once, too, if you can believe that, because some mental case had come around threatening the kids and the guard day couldn't get hold of them. But without a doubt, the most memorable and most unusual event I was ever asked to provide security for, was a funeral. But not just any funeral. It was for the boss of one of Dublin's biggest crime families.

I'm not joking. This was back in 1991, when I was just 23, and by that time, I'd gotten used to getting the occasional weird job. But when my boss told me that we were to guard a funeral one Friday morning in September, I couldn't help but ask him for more details. It wasn't just me either. Everyone had their questions about it. Then when our boss filled us in, we could barely believe our eyes. I doubt anyone listening to this would recognize the name,

but if you were alive in Dublin around then, and I said the Fitsies, then you're definitely going to know who I'm talking about. Anyway, Big Fits had kicked the bucket, as you know, and he was going in the ground that Friday morning. And since the family was quite easily the wildest in all of Ireland, and the big man's funeral needed many security guards. I believed it, too. A family that mental and violent, with all that booze and grief in them,

it'd probably look like a five-card Vegas fight night by the time the buffet opened up. At least, that was the joke we were all sharing at the time. We just didn't know how right we were. We were told we wouldn't be needed at the church service, only at the Fitz family home, since that's where the alcohol would start flowing properly. then on the morning of the funeral we arrived at around 11 at this big mansion on the outskirts of the city

I'd never seen anything like it in the flesh only on the television maybe but not up close it was like someone's dream home all castle on the outside with modern living on the inside they even had a maid that showed us around the place before the family got back from the church service and we had to put on our professional hats to keep the place secure the first black ring range rovers began turning up outside around half-11, and out came a steady stream of weeping older women supported by their sons and nephews. It looked a lot like any other funeral, I suppose. Only this one had outfits some people's whole salaries might not be able to cover. There was more Gucci and Prada than an Italian fashion show, and I couldn't tell which reflected the sun's

glare brighter, the fancy leather on their shoes, or the fancy watches on their wrists. Don't ever tell me crime doesn't pay. The mood was very tense at first, as you can imagine it would be among a family full of violent gangsters, possibly even murderers. But aside from that very large aspect of the job, it was much like any other funeral for the first couple of hours. In fact, one of the hardest jobs I had in those first few hours was refusing all the drinks the Fitz family was offering. They were a wild bunch, but they grieve like any other Irish family, which meant that after all the teary-eyed tributes and hugs among the bereaved, the party started.

By about two in the afternoon, spirits were high, music was thumping inside the house, and me and the lads were starting to wonder what we'd been worried about. We pictured some intra-family disagreements descending into mindless violence, but in reality, we were in more danger of getting hit on by drunk women in their 50s than being part of any sort of brawl. We had four more hours to keep guard, and these four hours seemed like they'd be some of the easiest we'd ever worked. But then, it happened.

The Holmes Back Garden was massive, and I mean truly massive. There was a big lawn, a football pitch, and tennis courts combo toward one side, and a big pond and a gazebo on the other. We had four fellows surrounding the house, myself included, then two inside, which we kept on cycling to give them a break from all the harassment at the hands of the menopausal cougars. I was round the front, talking to a fellow guard when we both suddenly hear the lad round the back talking over his radio. Someone had started banging on the backyard fence, pretty hard too.

And then the next thing, we hear him swear before all went quiet. We ran around back of the house to see what the issue was, and then arrived just in time to see a man wearing all black and a balaclava smash his way through the fence using a sledgehammer. He gave the fence one last bash to really open it up, and then in-streamed about a dozen identically dressed fellas, all carrying the likes of baseball bats, hammers, and clubs. Aside from the odd cosh or pair of brass knuckles we were carrying on the sly, none of us were armed well enough to defend against an attack like that. So instead, we focused on getting everyone inside and securing the home's back doors behind us.

But since one of those back doors was a big glass sliding one, you can imagine how well that went for us. The masked men simply smashed their way into the home as we were getting everyone either out the front or upstairs to safety. But that's where the second problem came in, because many of those inside didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. All they knew was that someone had turned up looking for a fight, so in their state of drunkenness, they were all well up for a school. scrap. They just didn't realize the attackers were armed until it was too late, but even then that didn't deter many. And what followed was a bloodbath. The men of the Fritz family put up a brave and brief defense, but they were all blind drunk and had nothing but their fists. One or two of them managed to land a punch or two, one of which knocked an attacker clean out.

But any time that happened, the gang of attackers would swarm, beat the defiant man until he was either screaming or silent, then they move on to the next. I suppose they did what they had to do in a way, making sure security had the space to evacuate all the women and kids to waiting cars or safe areas upstairs, but it was only a matter of minutes before the gang beat back any resistance and started making their way towards the stairs. At that point, it became a question of how to keep the gang of attackers from advancing up those steps. I was freaking out, thinking and there's no way we're going to be able to hold them off. But to my surprise, the Fitz family had already planned for such an event,

in that they'd stock their master bedroom with a couple of unconventional, but very effective defensive weapons. Big Fitz, before he died, had been quite the collector of martial antiquities, including a samurai sword, two Zulu short spears, and a broad sword said to it belonged to the king of Leinster. I didn't know this all at the time, obviously. The first I saw of them was when one of the grannies upstairs started handing them out to us. One minute, it was Lord of the Dance.

The next, it was Lord of the Rings. I'd never held a spear before, but there's a first time for everything in life, I guess. And the gang of attackers had absolutely rampaged through the home by the time we formed that final line of defense on the stairs. There were unconscious and severely injured people lying all over the kids. kitchen, including one of our security team, but the gang wanted more. Yet when they got to the stairs and saw what they were up against, they very understandably hesitated. I remember gripping the short spear, called an equa, and telling some Balaclava wearing scum bag that if he tried coming up the stairs, I was going to skewer him like a feckin

kebab. He looked just as shocked as I was to see a bloody Zulu short spear being pointed in his face. But that shock and awe worked majorly to our advantage, and no one fancied a piece of it. There's this standoff on the stairs with everyone screaming at each other. Then the next thing I know, the women and kids upstairs with us started throwing things down from the floor above at the gang of massed attackers. I'm talking stiletto heels, little marble statuettes, big glass ashtrays, anything heavier jagged enough to do some damage started raining down onto the attackers below. I remember seeing this one big ashtray land on this fellow's head, and he actually collapsed to the ground, even started shaking and twitching.

His pals started screeching, trying to wake him up, and then trying to drag him out towards the back garden, but those missiles kept coming. I suppose that's what saved us in the end. Having us forming that line of defensive was one thing, but we were still outnumbered and outgunned, so to speak. One swing of that sledgehammer would have smashed my spear. I know the gang could have taken us if they wanted to, not without a couple of serious injuries, but they'd have been able to do it if they really, really wanted to.

But it was those screaming harpies above and beside us that won the day. By the time the gang retreated to the back garden again, the Holmes hallway was just a mess of blood, broken glass, marble dust, and broken shoes. The gang had also started to smash things on their way out, probably as a final FIU to the FITS. but that was nothing compared to the damage they'd done to the men of the family. Like I said before, we might have done a job in protecting the more vulnerable members of the family, but those that had tried to fight back had been subjected to what I can only describe as a bloodbath. There were broken legs, broken arms, broken ribs, and fractured skulls.

People's teeth were smashed, their fingers were literally hanging off in places, and one guy's eye had popped out of the socket following a really severe skull fracture. We had to keep all the kids upstairs while the EMTs carried everyone outside. We could hide their eyes from the injuries, but trying to ensure they didn't hear the screams was basically impossible. They only died down when the small army of paramedics started pumping painkillers into the victims. But even then, what were screams became these terrible groans and moans as the wounded were ferried to waiting ambulances. The guard eye had been there for a while by the time the wounded were all taken to hospital. and I have expected everyone to give them the cold shoulder.

But even though some of these people had been involved in criminality all their lives, and their whole motto was basically, don't talk to the guard eye, they had zero problem telling them absolutely everything about the masked gang's attack. I suppose when it suits them, criminals use the guard eye as a weapon like any other, not just to punish their enemies, but to identify them in cases where they've concealed their faces during an attack. But why attack a funeral like that, and who in their right mind would target a funeral of all things? Well, as far as I know, the answer's a pretty simple one. The attackers were a rival criminal family. The FITZ's had rubbed the wrong way one too many times, and the why is even

simpler, because they could. Our colleague that was wounded during the melee ended up needing about 30 stitches to put his head and face back together, and he never returned to work after that. I also heard something about the guy who was knocked unconscious with that big glass ashtray. He didn't report to the hospital straight away. He couldn't. But that meant the brain injury he'd receive got worse and worse until finally he showed up at A&E begging for help because he kept having seizures. Apparently the doctors asked him how he hurt his head, but then instead of just making something up, he goes to tell them exactly what had happened. He says he and his pals raided the fits his property, where he'd gotten a balk on the head, and he didn't remember

anything else. The doctors start doing brain scans, trying to work out the damage, then once they were done, the cops showed up and arrested him. His gang got him a lawyer who instructed him not to say another word regarding who was present at the raid. Then in the end, this poor guy was the only one to go down for what had happened, and all because that brain injury meant that he couldn't think properly anymore. His fellow gang members let it happen too, because he was no use to them out in the streets anymore, and he had two choices, keep his mouth shut and do his time, or they'd have him killed in prison to keep him quiet for good. That wasn't strictly the end of the whole affair either, and after about six months of calm, some of these rival gangsters started

turning up dead all over Dublin. Not all of them, mind you, just the ones that the Fitsas were sure had raided their house in the day of that funeral, and not long after the body started turning up, I handed in my notice. I came in to realize that some security firms, at least in Ireland, were Siamese twins with some of the country's crime families. There was just no separating them without at least one half dying a death. I asked my boss if that was the end of us working with families like the Fitsas, and he gave me an honest answer when he told me no. We worked for who pays and that was that. It's just that in our case, the people willing to pay the big bucks for security tended to need it for all the wrong reasons. I ended up signing onto a different firm

later on, one that dealt almost exclusively in providing security guards to the likes of HMV and Tesco. The pay wasn't as good, obviously, but it was a much quieter life, and I got to focus on my boxing much more, too, although my career never took off in the way that I'd hoped. That didn't bother me much, though, because I got to settle down, live a quiet, peaceful life, and start a family, all without having to worry about masked thugs attacking me and mine when we were at our weakest. I grew up in Modesto in the 1980s, and honestly, I fell in with a kind of bad crowd. I had a couple of friends end up in jail. I had a couple end up in the ground, too. But it was the ones that said enough is enough that I really admired. The ones that got out before the life we lived became an anchor around our necks. I decided to clean myself up, and since

driving was kind of my thing, I figured that I'd get a job at a cab company so I could earn an honest living while still driving around the city that I knew and loved. By 1991, I was 24, and I'd been taking fares around Modesto for almost two years. It was a hell of a job, let me tell you, and every so often, I got a real character in the back of my cab. Like this one time, I had this raspy-voiced little guy flagged me down, and when I asked him his story, it turned out he was Sonny Barger, a founding member of the Hells Angels. I asked why he wasn't on his bike, and he looks me dead in the eye through my rear view and says, because I've had 14 beers, five shots of tequila, and I'm too goddamn old to spend the night in jail.

I laughed my ass off with the guy, and he was a great tip or two, so shout out to the Hell's Angels, I guess. But not everyone was so cool or entertaining. In fact, I picked up one or two passengers in my time that got me in a hells' house. hell of a lot of trouble, and this is one of them. So it was August 2nd of 1991, around 8.30 at night, because the sun had just gone down, and I was driving down the avenue about to take the 108 toward downtown. It was a Friday, so I knew I was in for a busy night, and I was just about to take my turn, when I saw a girl standing at the side of the road sticking her thumb out to passing cars. My first thought was, it is not the time to be hitchhiking out here, because Friday's

and Saturdays always got a little crazier when the sun went down. So I pulled over next to her, honked my horn, and then when she came up to my driver's side, I didn't even get to ask where she was headed before she said something like, I don't got any money, sorry, I just really need a ride. And from the sound of her voice, how shaky it was, I could tell that she'd been crying. So rather than just drive off like some jerk,

I told her to hop in and that I'd give her a free ride. she responds with oh my god really thank you so much very grateful and that it sounds like she's going to start crying again so she hops in the back of my cab and she tells me that she wants to go to the airport i tell her my name then ask her what hers is and then as we're driving i start asking if she's okay and that i know you're not but asking what's wrong is too forward kind of way she tells me she's just ended things with her boyfriend of three years, and that she's headed to the airport to catch a plane to Florida, which was where her grandparents lived. I told her how sorry I was, but that she'd be surprised to know just how many young women like her I gave rides to on a weekly or sometimes even daily basis. It's a sad

fact of life that relationships sometimes fall apart, and when they do, someone usually pulls the old Hail Mary, full of grace, get me out of this goddamn place. And that's where yours truly comes in. She didn't laugh, but I didn't expect her to either. So after my dumb attempted humor, I started saying how happy I was to lend an ear if she wanted someone to talk to. She had to get herself together a little before she started talking, and she was a slow starter, too, just didn't know where to begin, I guess. But once she got going, she got going. So I shut up, let her talk, and listen to her story. She moved to California from the East Coast for college, met her boyfriend during her junior year,

then moved in with him after she graduated and needed a place to stay. She said when they met, he'd been the perfect gentleman. He'd supported her emotionally through those final two years of college, then financially for a while too after she graduated and was looking for a job. He'd always been kind and patient with her, but then over time, while she was still trying to find work, he started to change. He got less and less patient and more and more mean.

They never used to fight at all. then over time it got to the point they were fighting two or three times a week. She said the field she wanted to work in was very competitive, and then while she was working her butt off, sending out resumes and making calls, she wasn't having any luck. But then the longer that went on, the more impatient her boyfriend was getting, and over time it became this huge source of tension that she wasn't contributing at all. She said she was looking for waitress jobs and stuff right at the time they had their huge breakup fight,

by then her boyfriend wasn't interested he told her to pack her bags started throwing some of her stuff around then things started to escalate and the fight ended violently before she ran out of the house with her suitcase all packed my dad used to get violent with my mom before he walked out on her so as soon as she said that last thing i was ready to drive back to where she'd come from and give her ex and ass kicking before driving her back to the airport i told her i was sorry things ended that way then asked if she was all right, if she needed me to take her to the hospital first thing or anything like that. She said no, that he hadn't really hurt her, but then I asked if she wanted me to stop so she could call the cops. And for the first time, she gave me this immediate, desperate

reply of no. And that was the first warning sign right there, the thing that made me think that I might have seriously misjudged the situation in front of me. I told her that if he'd hit her or broke any of her stuff, then it was important to report that sort of stuff to the cops so that they at least had it on record. But she insisted I just drive her to the airport so she could leave to go with her grandparents. At the time, I understood the impulse, or at least I thought I did. The poor girl just went through something traumatic. She didn't want to hang around going over a play-by-play with a bunch of bozos. She just wanted to get away from it. But like I said, there was something about that no, that sounded a little too desperate. I asked if she did anything like

hit him back, and that's why she wasn't so focused on talking to the law. But I was also quick to reassure her that the cops would consider anything she did in self-defense to be just that, self-defense. She started saying how they wouldn't see it that way, but when I asked why not, she straight up snapped at me. She says, because they won't, all right? Now can you just take me to the airport? I'm begging you. She started off all cold and angry, but by the time she got to the I'm begging you part, she was back to sounding like a scared little girl again. I guess that tugged at my heartstrings enough for me to back down a little, just not quite enough for me to drop it all together. I kept quiet for a moment or two, gave her some time to

breathe, and suggested if her ex had done something like hit her, then the best revenge. would be having him spend a night in the cell. And then she muttered, that's not going to happen. I didn't see it for what it was, so I followed up with something like, Are you really going to let this piece of trash do you like this? That's when she said, with this heavy tone of voice that set the hairs on the back of my neck on end, he's not going to do anything to anyone anymore. Bingo.

Their fight had ended in violence all right, but not with this girl's ex smacking her around. It ended with her doing something to him. And the way she said that last thing about him not doing anything anymore, it made me think she'd done more than just slap him or whatever. I started saying something like, Miss, if you did something, something bad, I got to let you out of the cab,

otherwise you're making me an accessory to whatever's going on. I didn't know if that was 100% true at the time, but I'd heard it was, and that was enough for me, so that's what I said. I also added that if all she did was toss a lamp at him or something like that to keep him away from her, then whatever, I'd take her to the airport. But if she did something else, as she left him bleeding somehow in need of a hospital, then that was another story. As I waited for her answer, I heard her rustling around in the back.

My eyes darted up to the rearview, and I saw her reaching into her jacket seconds before I hear the distinct click of a handgun being armed. I've been robbed three times in two years by that point, so I knew that sound well enough to know that the girl I first thought was the innocent victim of domestic abuse had just pulled a gun on me in the back seat. I remember how the words, well there miss, there's no need to do anything rash. came out of my mouth without me even trying to speak. Then that same shaky, teary-eyed sound returned her a voice as she said, Just take me to the airport. I don't want to do anything to you, so please don't make me. I just want to get out of here.

I didn't ask her anything else. I wanted to. Good Lord, I wanted to. But I valued my life far more than I valued getting any more answers. I figured there might be a chance. there was a dude out there someplace, lying on his kitchen floor bleeding to death with a bullet in his gut. Maybe a scumbag who hit his girl did deserve to suffer a little, but I don't believe in the death penalty. I wanted to know more than anything if some poor son of a bitch

was crawling around in a pile of his own blood and poop, because God knows I'd want someone to call me an ambulance if I'd heard about it. I did end up calling someone, but that came later, and I guess I should just get on with a story, so I just drove, not saying a goddamn word, because I was terrified and I'm not afraid to say it. This girl had all but admitted to shooting a man, and I had this creeping feeling she might do it again if it meant not being able to get to her grandparents. That's even if there were any grandparents, because if that were me, I'd be thinking more about some place in South America than heading the Florida. I drove her all the way to the airport not saying a word. Then when we got close to the little drop-off point, the girl told me to

stop the car and that she'd walk the rest of the way. I did as she asked. Stop the car and the darkness away from the crowd of people getting in and out of cars, and then she asked me to turn off the engine and hand over my keys. I figured she wasn't about to shoot me, not close enough to all those people for them to hear the gunshots, so at first I said, I can't do that, miss. I got to make a living. But then, in a way that made my blood run cold as ice in my veins, I think she showed me the real her for a second. I'd kind of half turned my head as I told her I didn't want to give her my keys, and I was about to tell her how I wouldn't say a word to anybody, when she stuck the barrel of that

gun right in my face. And when I say she stuck it in my face, I don't mean she just pointed it at me. I mean, she shoved the muzzle into the skin of my temple so hard it hurt. and then told me, give me your keys. I had one last bit of resistance in me, one last appeal to her good nature, and I tried to tell her, I can't just take away a man's means of making money.

How am I supposed to feed my kids if I can't drive my cab? I didn't have any kids at the time, but I've said it just about anything to keep a hold of my keys because I wasn't kidding when I said I needed them to make a living. But she didn't even let me get past you can't. Before she exploded about how I wasn't allowed to tell her anything, how all men were the same thinking they could control every woman, and how this one wasn't going to let that happen. She then repeated that I was to give her my keys, or I wouldn't be going home to see my non-existent kids that night, or any night for that matter. I'm not stupid. I knew the best thing to do from there on out was to shut the F up and do as she told me.

So I handed over my keys, watched her climb out of my cab before she dragged her suitcase out behind her, and then as she walked off towards the terminal with that same poor-mey attitude she'd had when I first saw her. I waited till she was out of sight, then rushed towards the terminal to where the pay phones were, and then called 911 looking over my shoulder the whole time. I knew there might be airport security inside the terminal, but I also knew the girl would not be too happy to see me there, and I didn't want to risk getting shot when I could just call the cops from outside the building. I wasn't going anywhere. That girl had my keys, so I had to just sit outside the terminal and wait for the cops to show up. But by the time they did, the girl had put herself on the first flight to the Bahamas or wherever she went,

having obviously gotten rid of that gun somehow, but not my car keys. I had to get some help jump-starting my cab just to get home. then my cab was basically out of action until the company could get a new key shipped to them. But I had my life, and man did that feel like something special after having that crazy bitch in my backseat. If you're someone who always leaves shopping to the last minute, you totally get the panic of empty shelves and dwindling ideas, which is why Aura Frames is such a fantastic choice. It offers a thoughtful, personal gift that'll really show you care.

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Terms and conditions apply. Back in 1999, I was a scrappy 18-year-old kid from Ruffalo. rural Ontario, and since I didn't like the idea of working at a mill or driving a plow, I decided to join the Army. Enlisting wasn't too complicated back then, but it wasn't a cakewalk either. I walked into the Recruitment Center in Kingston, then a couple of corporals asked about my fitness, my grades, and why I wanted to join. I gave them some stock answer about wanting to serve my country, but really, I just wanted to get the hell away from Hanover. Two years later, I was a private with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, stationed in Edmonton.

It was early autumn, and I was in the mess hall scarfing down a late breakfast after a run when someone yelled out to crank up the volume on the TV. The screen showed the Twin Towers in New York. Smoke was pouring out of a hole in one of them, then a few minutes later, the second plane hit. The room went dead quiet. Dudes forgot that they were even eating. Then we watched, totally stunned as the towers collapsed, and ash-covered people ran through ash-covered streets. Over the next few hours, the news kept replaying the planes,

the fire and the chaos, and the mess hall filled up with guys just glued to the TV. We all knew it, even before the COs started briefing us, war was coming, and it was going to be bad. The world we'd trained for, all the peacekeeping missions and Cold War cleanup was gone. We were headed to Afghanistan, and it wasn't going to be some UN mission handing out blankets either. It was going to be ugly, and we'd be in thick of it.

I feel this mix of dread and excitement, like history was about to drop the puck for us. But in 2002, the itch to do more than patrol and train got me thinking about JTF2, Canadian Special Operations Forces, the real deal. If I wanted to guarantee a spot in frontline operations in Afghanistan, that was the ticket. Getting into JTF2 was the toughest thing I've ever done. I was in decent shape, but decent just didn't cut it with how brutal that selection process was. They dragged us out to the backwoods of Ontario for a month of hell. We got barely any sleep and were subjected to a constant mix of rock marches or navigation drills in the dark.

but the worst were the psych test designed to mess with your head. The directing staff would scream at you, starve you, anything to push you towards quitting. I saw good soldiers, tough as nails, break down and walk away. I didn't crack, but I came close. After that came specialized training, close quarters combat, advanced weapons, parachuting, the works. It took a further year before I was badged in as a JTF2 operator, but when I was, It was the proudest moment of my entire life. By the time I deployed to Afghanistan in 2003, I felt ready for anything.

We piled into a Hercules out of Trenton, with a cargo hold stuffed with gear and guys from JTF2. Then we all tried to catch a few hours of sleep to make the long-haul flight go faster. The plane droned on for what felt like forever, and we stopped to refuel somewhere in Europe before landing at Kabul International. When we stepped off the ramp, we saw mountains standing tall against the horizon, and the city sprawled out in front of us in a cloud of dust. And then, and only then, did it actually feel real. Me and my unit ended up being based at Camp Julian near Kabul, a dusty compound ringed with Hesco barriers and razor wire.

Inside, it was all tense, conixes, and the constant hum of generators. We needed those jenny's, too, because the heat was brutal. It had to be like 40 C in the shade sometimes, and the dust got into everything, your rifle, your nostrils, and other less mentionable places, too. Afghanistan itself seemed like a kind of paradox to me. He had those beautiful mountains and green valleys and all that rich history, but they had nothing to show for it, just blown out villages and kids begging for pens. The people were tough. I mean, they had to be to survive decades of war, but many were kind of. kind and welcoming and would offer us chai or flatbread with glimmers of hope in their eyes,

thinking that maybe this time things were going to be different. But as you might know, they weren't. As JTF2 operations were high tempo and high stakes, we weren't doing foot patrols or handing out aid. We were hunting bad guys, mainly al-Qaeda, but sometimes Taliban too. Direct action missions were the core. We'd roll out in GMVs or on foot with NVGs moving silently through villages where barking dogs could blow your cover. Then we'd perform night raids on Al-Qaeda safe houses, kicking indoors, clearing brooms, and grabbing high-value targets like bomb makers or commanders. Other times we'd do recon, lying up in the hills for days watching insurgents through optics, then calling in airstrikes when the time was right. We'd also sometimes work with

our counterparts and the seals and Delta sharing intel or hidden compounds together. And every op was a gamble. We were up against IEDs, ambushes, or sometimes just bad intel that could turn a clean snatch into a fatal firefight. The adrenaline was addictive, but the weight of what we were doing wore us down and sometimes seemed like the more you tried to change Afghanistan, the more it only changed you instead. A few months after the coalition went into Iraq, so late 2003, my guys and I were hauled up at a compound on the outskirts of Kabul when we got news of a job. Our CEO said that we'd be linking up with a CIA outfit called Task Force Saber 7 for a joint operation that involved hitting the suspected hideout of an al-Qaeda bomb maker. We'd done these

kinds of ops before, snatched the target, grabbed the intel, in and out, and JTF2 doesn't mess around, so I figured these CIA boys would be pros, just like the SEALs or Delta we'd run in with before. The name Task Force Sabre 7 sounded legit, like something straight out of the Tom Clancy novel. So we geared up, checked our C-8s, and then rolled out expecting a tight operation. We met Saber 7 at a rendezvous point just outside the village in the early morning hours. But right away, something felled off. The task force wasn't what any of us had expected. Instead of a slick crew of American spooks,

it was three Americans and a mob of 15 Afghans, all kidded out and mismatched gear like they'd raided one of Cabo's many weapons markets. The guy in charge, a loud mouth calling himself Jack, strutted around in sunglasses and a U.S. Army uniform, and talked like he was auditioning for a Hollywood war movie. He threw around terms like HVT and Intel stream with this kind of forced bravado, but we could see it for the performance it was, and the Afghans under him looked more like hired muscle than a disciplined unit.

They were twitchy, gripping their AKs like they were just itching to use them, so I had a bad feeling about them from the get-go. Some of us figured that they might prove us wrong, work their magic, and bag their guy, but the op was a crap show from the start. We were supposed to sweep the village methodically, house by house, looking for bomb-making materials, things like wires, chemicals, the usual signatures. But Jack and his boys treated it like a free-for-all. He barked orders at his Afghans in a kind of pigeon Persian,

and then they stormed into mud-walled homes, kicking over furniture while screaming at families. We've been trained to keep civilians calm, to de-escalate high-tension situations, but Jack's unit was doing the opposite. I saw one of his guys smash an old man's face with a rifle butt for no reason other than he was slow to do as commanded, and stuff like that is considered a serious infraction. But Jack didn't blink. He just kept yelling about bombs, the Taliban, and bin Laden. It was chaos, and it was clear he didn't know how to run a proper search.

There was no grid pattern, no coordination. He'd point at random houses, claiming Siggint had mrs. mark them as hot. But when we checked, all we'd find were blankets and cooking pots. It honestly seemed like things couldn't get any worse, but then somehow they did. Jack's Afghans started dragging people out of their homes and then lining them up in the dirt. I heard screams from a house down the street when I got there. Edema's two American guys were beating a shopkeeper, demanding he confessed to being Al-Qaeda. The guy didn't even speak English, but Jack was right there minutes later, egging them on and saying stuff like,

Break them. He knows where the bombs are. But there was no evidence, no bomb making equipment, just a terrified old man begging and pleading in the dirt. I pulled my sergeant aside and said something about how the task force didn't seem like they knew what they were doing. He nodded, tight-lift, but we had our orders. We kept moving, but I felt sick, like we were complicit just by being there. the raid eventually wrapped up but we found nothing no bomb maker no explosives all we'd done was tear that village apart then as we were prepping to exville a couple of edema's afghans came over grinning like they'd won a prize one of them pulled out a cloth bundle and unwrapped it inside were dried shriveled pieces of

human flesh fingers ears and other parts i couldn't identify they said it was from a woman they'd caught, claiming she was al-Qaeda or Taliban. And I wanted to puke. These weren't soldiers. These were murderers and butchers. My team stood there, stunned into silence, as the Afghans laughed and passed the bundle around like some trophy. I looked at Jack, half expecting him to shut it down, but he just smirked and said something about how that was part of their war, not ours. Back at base, my sergeant lost it. He got in Jack's face, calling him out for letting his men run wild, and for letting them take body parts as trophies.

But Jack just shrugged, cold as ice, and said something about how he was just helping them clean house. I've seen some cold mother-effers in my time, but the way that Jack guy acted was next level. My sergeant stormed off, radioed our CEO, and told him we were done with those Sabre 7 clowns. We figured the CEO would come down on us heavily since they were CIA, but he came back saying that he couldn't get a straight answer on who they were.

He called an American officer in Kabul, who swore the CIA had no record of any Task Force Saber 7, and the Pentagon didn't know either. It was like Edema and his crew had materialized at a thin air. And we started quietly asking around trying to find out who the hell Jack really was, but nobody had any answers. Some of the American guys we worked with said that he's been floating around Kabul since 2001,

peddling fake Al-Qaeda videos and claiming he was hunting bin Laden. But it wasn't until mid-2004 that we started hearing whispers about what Jack was really up to. After that Fubar raid with the so-called task force, we kept our distance from them. But then one day, the rumors started swirling. Jack wasn't some wannabe operator,

he was running a private torture prison. The Afghan police raided his compound in July, and when the truth came out, it was worse than we could have ever imagined. He'd set up shop in a two-story house in Kabul, a non-descript place you'd walk past without a second glance, but inside, it was a living nightmare. They'd turn it into their own private black site,

was zero oversight and no rules. They called it a mission to hunt al-Qaeda, but in reality, it was more like something out of a cheap splatter movie. Jack Adima was arrested, and so were his two sidekicks. One guy, Brent Bennett, was a former paratrooper, but the other guy, Ed Carballo, was literally just a journalist, former CNN and National Geographic, too, who'd attached himself to Adema's fake unit so he could see some action.

And their scam was terrifying and simple. They'd grab Afghans off the street, just regular folks like shopkeepers, farmers, anyone they decided was a quote-unquote terrorist. Then they dragged them back to their makeshift torture prison before interrogating them. Those that gave false confessions were then handed over to the Americans, most likely in exchange for some kind of bounty and continued military assistance. Eight guys were found when the cops busted in, some hanging from their feet, others bound and hooded, all of them beaten to hell.

The place had makeshift cells, chains on the walls, with all the blood and feces everywhere, and I heard that it stunk to high hell. Adema claimed he was interrogating high-value targets for Intel and Bin Laden, but it was all bull crap. Most of those poor guys were just locals caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Afghan government said it was a straight-up war crime, and they were right, too. Adema's crew used methods that were medieval, like hanging guys. upside down for hours, sometimes days, until their bodies just sort of gave out. Other prisoners said their heads were held underwater while Adima and his Afghans screamed

questions they couldn't answer. Sleep deprivation was another favorite of theirs. They'd keep the lights on, blast music, and shake their prisoners awake every time they passed out. There were reports of starvation, too. Guys left without food or water for days in order to break their will. Jack, whose real name was Jonathan, denied everything in court claiming he never burned anyone with cigarettes, poured boiling water on them, or pulled out their toenails to extract confessions. But the survivors told a different story. They talked about being shackled in stress positions and the constant threat of beatings, or worse, if they didn't confess.

Jack and his boys weren't interrogating anyone. They were torturing people for fun. I remember hearing about the raid on his place from one of our intel guys. Afghan police found bloodstains, ropes, and hoods, stuff like that that looked like it belonged in a horror movie. The prisoners, some of whom were barely alive when they were found, told the court that Adema's crew treated them like animals, how that it even taunted and laughed at them as they begged and screamed for mercy.

Adema had the nerve to say that he was working for the Pentagon, but it was all lies. The U.S. military had taken just one single solitary detainee from him back in 2002 or 2003, and it held the guy for a month before realizing he was a nobody. And after that, they cut him off. He'd conned everyone, from Northern Alliance warlords to journalists, into thinking he was legit, and everyone had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. Sometimes I think back to that raid that he tricked us into joining them on and the dried body parts as Afghans showed us.

I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a one-off and Jack Adema had encouraged it. And then I wondered how much more suffering he inflicted before he was caught. He was sentenced to 10 years in September of 2004, and I get a real sense of satisfaction when I hear that news. But it didn't erase the guilt of having worked with him, even if it was, for just a couple of hours. He ran that house of horrors for literally years, ruined some people's lives,

and then walked away with a pardon from President Karzai in 2007. I know he ended up dying of AIDS in Mexico in 2012, and while the circumstances surrounding his death are really shady, I know for certain he never fully paid for what he did, and it's things like that which make me wish I was a religious man. But if by some slim miracle there really is a place people like that are punished when they die, then I know he's going to get far worse down there than he ever. dished out up here.

diners here in Minnesota, and of all the strange incidents in my career, this was the most frightening. I wasn't at the diner the night it happened, but two of my employees were. It was a small spot just off the highway, opened 24 hours, and surrounded by a field, some woods, and a very lonely stretch of road. Jenny and Mike had both been there for years when it happened, but after that night they both quit and didn't tell anyone but the cops what had happened. All I had to piece together was the security footage and a few vague hints from the police, and years later, I still think about what I saw and what I'll never figure out. I remember it being one of those brutal winter nights, the kind where the wind must have been rattling the diner like it was trying to get inside for a bowl of hot

dish. Mike was our cook, a solid worker in his 40s with a wife and two kids who worked the night shift for the extra cash. Jenny was the waitress, a single mom in her 20s who was sharp as a knife and great with crowd control on her busier nights. They were reliable, the kind of employees you could trust, but who could handle themselves, too. But that night, something walked into the diner that nothing could have prepared them for. I was at home sleeping when a phone call woke me up.

The moment they said it was the police, it was like half a dozen espressoes hit me all at once, and I listened as they said there had been an incident at the diner and how they needed access to the office so they could review the security tape. They didn't elaborate. They just said that it was bad and that Mike and Jenny were involved. I dragged myself out of bed and my stomach was all knotted up with worry, and then I drove through the snow with my head spinning with questions.

Was it a robbery? Two groups of drunk customers who had started a brawl? Was it something more serious? By the time I got there, I had a whole bunch of different theories already laid out, but what I saw on that tape was something a whole lot worse than anything I'd expected. When I arrived at the diner, an officer in uniform was waiting for me, and then I led him to a cramped back office with an old beat-up TV and a dusty VHS player. He said he'd needed to take the tape with him as evidence,

but he also asked if we could watch it first, just so he had a better idea of what had taken place. I said, sure, rewound the tapes at the time he requested, 2.30 a.m. and then after I pressed play, it came alive on the screen. It was quiet out front, with Mike in the kitchen scrubbing down the counters and Jenny out front wiping down tables in the dim light. Then the door swung open, and two men walked in. They were maybe late 20s or early 30s, dressed in faded jeans and thick jackets, but it wasn't their coats that sent my nerves on edge.

It was their faces. One had a tattoo on his neck that ran up onto his face. and the other had these cold, very hollow eyes that didn't seem to blink. They acted calm at first, like they were just a couple of drifters who wanted a burger. They slid on the stools at the counter and Jenny took their order. Mike cooked with his back to them, then Jenny brought the plates out. They kept to themselves while they ate, heads down, and not doing much talking. I kept hoping that they'd finish and leave, only obviously they didn't.

out of nowhere the one with a face tattoo reached into his hoodie and pulls out a handgun the other followed drawing his own before they each aimed at mike and jenny who froze mid-motion like deer caught in headlights jenny's eyes went wide and her face went slack her mouth was wide open like a scream was just stuck in her throat mike's hands jerked up trembling so bad that i could even see it in that terrible footage and the two men didn't rush. With their guns, they motioned for Mike and Jenny to come out from behind the counter. They stumbled forward on shaky legs, with Jenny clutching the edge of the counter for a second before letting go. The two men then herded them to the back toward the walk-in fridge, and I figured they'd lock them inside before raiding the register in the safe. But instead, after shoving Mike and Jenny inside, they stepped in after them and pulled the heavy door shut behind them. The camera stayed on that closed door, and it stayed closed for five, then ten, then 20 solid minutes. And I had to fast forward the tape a bunch of times, starting and stopping,

but still the door stayed closed as my mind started to tick over, asking questions like, why go inside with them? And what the hell are they doing in there? I pictured Mike and Jenny in that freezing cold walk-in. Thirty-seven minutes is a long time to be trapped. with two armed strangers in a box you can't escape, and the longer I watched, the worse that feeling of dread got in me. My mind started trying to fill in the blanks. Maybe they were threatening them while holding the guns to their heads, making them do things so unthinkable I can't even name them. The walk-in was big, but only by fridge standards. There was barely room for four people standing up. Were they standing there, shivering, too scared to do anything

but what they were being told. But the tape gives me no clues. Finally, exactly 37 minutes after the door to the walk-in closed behind them, it opened up again. The two men stepped out, completely relaxed, like they just finished a bathroom break. The one with a face tattoo tugged his hoodie straight while the other scanned the room with those two empty eyes of his. And then they strolled back through the diner, not even glancing at the safe back in the office or cash register stuffed with Bill. They didn't take a damn thing, not a dime, not a burger, nothing. They headed for the door, moving casually, like they'd done what was the most normal thing in the world.

Then they slipped out, climbed into a dark car parked just out of frame, and vanished into the snowy night. I sat there with a police officer standing next to me, and I remember my hands being clammy and how my heart thudded hard and fast in my chest. They didn't steal anything. They held two people at gunpoint for over half an hour in a freezing walk-in and walked away empty-handed. Or at least, that was what it looked like on the surface. But why? What did they do to Mike and Jenny in there?

And the tape rolled on. About 15 minutes later, one of our regulars shuffled in, a trucker who always came in for coffee at odd hours. He looked around at the empty diner with his coat all dusted with. with snow, and then after a few minutes of waiting around, he wandered behind the counter, probably wondering where the hell everyone was. He did the same thing in the back, just sort of wandered around shyly for a few minutes, and then after maybe 10 to 15 minutes of checking absolutely everywhere, but the walk-in, he cracked it open and looked inside.

You could see the exact moment that he saw something inside the walk-in because he pulls backwards. You couldn't see his face on the camera really at first, but As he walked away, another camera caught his expression, and he obviously looked like he'd seen a ghost. Back in the dining area, he fumbled for his phone and started calling someone, 9-1-1, but right after, he darted to the grills and shut them off so the place wouldn't burn down, bless his heart. And after that, he kept pacing as he talked on his phone, throwing these nervous glances at the fridge with his shoulders hunched like he expected something to, I don't know, burst out.

of it. And two cops showed up minutes later. They talked to the regular, then after approaching the fridge, one of the officers nudged the door open with his boot. It looked like he'd yelled something with a gesture, like a sort of come-out motion, and then Jenny staggered out. Her hands were plastered over her eyes, and she was shaking so hard that one of the officers had to support her as she came out. Mike followed soon after, his own hands pressed tight against his face, but he moved differently, slower, like he wasn't so sure about leaving the walk-in. Suddenly, as the cops were guiding him away, Mike kind of twisted back away from them. Then, with his face covered with one hand, he reached for the door and tried to walk back inside.

The cops yanked him backwards away from it, but Mike was trying to get back in the walk-in like his life depended on it. As the cops dealt with Mike's weird outburst, Jenny collapsed into a booth and curled up into a ball with her hands still shielding her face. A few minutes later, the cops seemed to talk Mike down, and they were able to walk him to a booth and sit him down. The cops then tried talking to them, kneeling and gesturing as they did, but it didn't look like they got anything. Mike and Jenny just stayed all catatonic with their hands over their eyes,

like they'd seen something so awful they couldn't bear to look at anything else. It was chilling, watching them break apart without a word, and it was almost like whatever happened in that fridge had terrified them beyond belief. A little while later, a couple of EMTs rushed in. They talked to Mike and Jenny for a while, then walked them both to an ambulance. But even when they were outside, Jenny and Mike kept their hands clamped over their faces. One cop stayed behind, scribbling down notes, and then I saw myself on the tape bursting in, coat half-buttoned with my face, very tense and worried.

and when the tape cut off, I felt sick. I remember turning to the detective and demanding to know what had happened in that walk-in, but he just shrugged. Mike and Jenny were in shock, and they weren't talking yet. There were no obvious injuries either, so apparently my guess was as good as his. The men hadn't beaten them or cut them, but whatever they did do, it had shattered them psychologically. The officer told me that they were digging for answers,

but that was all they knew so far. After locking up behind me, I left the diner in a kind of horrified days. Mike and Jenny were my people. I cared about them, and hearing they'd gone through something so terrible had my heart breaking in my chest. I tried seeing them at the hospital the next morning, but the staff turned me away. Then I tried calling their homes in the days afterwards, but neither wanted to talk to me. Then one at a time, over the weeks that followed, They each quit the diner. I heard Mike later moved to California, abandoning his wife and kids. She told me he was a wreck in the days before he left, not talking at all, barely sleeping or eating, and then one day, poof, it was gone.

Jenny fled to a farm in Iowa with family and tried to piece herself together. Her mom later told me she was doing much better, but she'd still only talk in short, clipped sentences. The police report was a dead end too and only referred to what had happened as an incident with no specifics to speak of. And the diner changed after that. The staff at the other branches started gossiping about it being some kind of gang thing. Others swore it was some kind of twisted game, like they'd heard him for fun. One cook even muttered about some kind of government conspiracy, but obviously I brushed that off.

No one knew what was happening to Jenny and Mike except Jenny and Mike. But the not knowing just made it worse. Customers stopped coming at night, scared off by the rumors, and I couldn't blame them. I hated being there, too, standing in a place where something so terrible it obviously happened. I added a night guard, triple-checked the cameras, and had panic buttons installed, but it felt like an empty gesture. The damage had already been done. And time dragged on.

We hired new staff, and the night customs slowly trickled back, but I never forgot. I'd drive by at night, see the neon sign flickering away and wondered who those men were. Sometimes I'd watch that tape back on my home computer and let those 37 minutes just roll by. And sometimes it went fast and other times it felt like an eternity. Were they still out there planning something else? And what was it they did in the first place that broke Mike and Jenny so badly? Eventually I stopped watching the tape and taught myself to stop asking questions too because these days I feel like I'm better off not knowing.

parachute regiment for just shy of 10 years before I was discharged on medical grounds. I was gutted at the time, but then once it sank in, I was pleasantly surprised by how many options I had available to me. I remember many years before a friend's dad told me, all you'll be able to do when you leave the army is drive lorries and kill people. But he was wrong. I got offers from some big-name private military contractors almost straight away, who promised me good money once I'd passed their much less demanding medical exams. But I also got a few handy suggestions from some old paratrooper friends. One guy was over in the States consulting on TV shows,

like teaching actors how to shoot and move like they'd been trained in all of that. And he said the hours were horrible, but the money was great, and I was seriously considering flying out to meet him. But then I spoke to another old friend of mine who had a very different but very interesting proposition. He was working in CPP, or close personal protection, which is the fancy term for working as a bodyguard. He'd found a job with a high-profile London-based company who provided bodyguards to some of the world's biggest stars during domestic and sometimes overseas visits.

In so many words, he got to travel around the globe with some of the world's biggest celebrities living a life of absolute luxury outside of his working hours. Not every job was like that, of course. Even after just 18 months, he'd already been to the Maldives, Singapore, and St. Lucia twice. They fast-tracked ex-military guys thanks to their discipline, training, and expertise, so I already had a foot in the door. Then a couple of months later, during my first assignment, I was like a duck to water. It wasn't as big of a buzz as being a paratrooper, but it scratched a lot of the same itches in terms of executing plans, staying switched on and putting on a show of force.

It felt natural. I was good at it, and I've been doing it ever since. But I won't lie. At first it seemed like proper basic work compared to soldiering. Teenage girls might make a lot of noise, and this might come as a bit of a shock to some of you, but they're simply not as dangerous as the Taliban. And while the mega fans can be slippery and quite disturbing with some of their delusions, they don't mean the subject of their obsession any harm. They're also terrified when they see a load of ex-army bodyguards, marching towards them, demanding they step back or vacate the area.

So for a long time, I didn't feel very threatened by anybody. But that changed with this one job I worked, when I got a nasty lesson in the kinds of people I should be prepared to deal with. So for every high-profile job we did, there'd be an extensive risk mitigation meeting, and if we were providing services for a touring musical artists, we had to have those meetings on each individual stop of the tour. Each city brought a different landscape of risks, and while those risks took on many different forms,

the most unpredictable, and therefore the most difficult to deal with, were the people. Like I said, the vast majority of fans who wanted to breach our security court and were only hoping to meet their idols. And when we caught them, they'd inevitably just apologize and cooperate with us. One guy cried, thanked us for not beating him up, and then called his mom asking her to pick him up from the venue. But unfortunately for us, they weren't all like that. So during those risk mitigation meetings, our bosses would often put together profiles of certain persons of interest. These mostly included the type of person mentioned above who, while irritating and unpredictable, were ultimately harmless. Every so often, though, you got a different breed of superfan, the kind of person whose obsession was about as far from amusing or endearing as it was possible to get.

It was fairly obvious the fellow that I'm about to tell you about was dealing with some severe mental illness. And maybe he's gotten help for it and turned his life around, and I truly hope he has. But we'll just call him Walker. Walker the Stocker. So we're at the meeting, and one of our bosses brings up Walker the Stocker's PowerPoint profile, which includes his name, his picture, his criminal history, and a few screenshots of his blogs and social media pages. He seemed quite the character, with his numerous facial piercings and his bush of rainbow-colored curly hair. Someone joked that he looked like a clown, but there wasn't much to laugh outside of his appearance. Walker was well and truly obsessed with the client we were guarding,

and not even the kind obsessed where it's all worship and adoration. He was a very negative kind of obsession, as he seemed fixated on doing our client harm. Walker the stalkers seemed to think that our client was his wife. wife. He also believed that her relationship with another prominent artist amounted to cheating, and for that, she deserved punishment to use his words, not mine. I won't repeat any of the graphic stuff he said. It was disgusting, truly stomach churning, and it's been so long that I'd never been able to quote any of it correctly anyway. But just take it from me. I'd seen and heard a thing or two during my time in the army, and the things this guy posted on his blog were truly

some of the worst things I'd ever seen written, and that was before we got the credible threats he'd posted regarding our client's tour stopping in his home city. They were some of the most urgent threats to life I'd ever seen on the job, and I instantly understood why he was being considered our high priority. This guy had uploaded pictures of himself wearing what amounted to a ninja costume, along with the weapons he was planning on using to get to our client. He had pepper spray, a stun gun, a pair of gloves with steel knuckles, and about half a dozen knives of varying shapes and sizes. He also boasted about getting his hands on the building plans for the venue our client was performing at, which seriously threw a spanner in the works for us in terms of our

security plants. If someone's going to hang around the stage entrance trying to get an autograph, that's one thing. But if some seriously determined individuals fixated on gaining access to a venue, it can be very difficult to stop them without the right amount of manpower. but in those kinds of cases, it doesn't hurt to call in the cavalry. I'm pretty certain this is the same in other countries, too, but here in the UK, issuing credible threats of violence to a person is against the law. This meant we could contact the local police force, share our person of interest, online threats with them,

and more often than not, they'd nip any threat in the bud on our behalf. We couldn't do this on every occasion, not even when the threats were credible, but since we had our person of interest, name, address, and an idea of his criminal history, we were able to point the police right at him. And this meant that he was likely going to spend the night of our client's performance in a cell. They're not exactly the proudest moments of our career, just picking up the phone and calling the police instead of doing any work ourselves. But if it works, it works, so that's what we

did. More often than not, within a few hours of making our complaint, we get a call back from the police saying that the person has been dealt with. Most of the time that meant having a quiet chat with them and warning them that they could be arrested for harassment. Other times, the threats were so graphic that they'd be taken into custody and charged with malicious communication. But in this case, when we got our call back regarding Walker the stalker, we were told he'd flown his coop. Police gained access to his property that afternoon after he failed to answer the door. Walker wasn't there and his neighbors said they'd seen him leaving that morning, wearing his all-black clothing and carrying a large sports bag.

If that was true, there was a good chance Walker the Stalker was already in the vicinity of the venue and was simply waiting for the right time to strike. Hearing this sent me and my team into overdrive for a couple of hours. We scoured the surrounding area, performed a full sweep of the venue, and secured all the entrances and exits to ensure nothing had been disabled, damaged, or otherwise tampered with. I hope you're starting to understand what I mean when I say those stalker types could be a proper pain in the arse. All that work just for one single person and we still weren't 100% satisfied once we were finished. In the end, we had to just do our best, stick to our security plan, remember our drills, and then just hope for the best.

But then surprisingly, the entire evening went off without a hitch. We got the client to the venue, ensured a tertiary ring of security in addition to the venue's own staff and security, and then once all was said and done, we got her back to the hotel, safe and sound. Me and two other guys had agreed to do an all-nighter to keep the client's hotel floor secure. I've been on since midday, but I fancied the overtime along with some of that fancy hotel room service for supper. The client in her cruise rooms were situated along a VIP corridor, one of the building's top floors. One man was posted on either side in a small landing area with a chair and a locked door.

Then the third would patrol the corridor in the wider hotel to ensure everything was as it should be. Since the concert had come and gone without incident, we thought we'd probably be in for a quiet night, and for the most part we were. But it only takes one hot minute for everything to change, and that night was no exception. It was around half-past two in the morning when my call colleague who was patrolling the hotel's perimeter gave us a call over the radio. He'd spotted a car parked in an industrial estate across the street from the hotel. He'd said he'd go and check it out and then report back on what he'd found. Then a few minutes later, he radioed us again saying that the

car looked empty and it was kind of giving him bad vibes. Me and my colleague inside started getting a bit antsy, and I started to suspect our night wasn't going to be so quiet after all. Next, our colleague radio to say that there was a lump in the back seat, covered in blankets, and it looked like a person was sleeping under them. I immediately start thinking that it's our person of interest, either hiding after spotting my colleague's approach, or getting a few hours of sleep before moving on the hotel in the pre-dawn hours. So, when my colleague starts walking away from the vehicle, I suggest just tapping on the glass to make sure it's not Walker the stalker and just some overnight driver on a long journey getting a few hours.

of kip so they're safe for the drive again. And right as I suggest that, the lift dings open in front of me and a member of hotel staff walks out pushing a trolley. I saw a younger man in his hotel uniform with close-cropped hair, so I waved him past as I listened intently to my earpiece awaiting my colleague's response. The young man kind of nodded nervously, then carried on pushing what looked like a laundry trolley towards the VIP corridor. A second or two later, My colleagues started telling us how he suddenly didn't think it was a person anymore. He didn't know what it was under those blankets, but it hadn't so much as twitched when he'd knocked as hard as he could on the rear passenger window. He was also so close that it didn't look so much like the shape of a sleeping person anymore, meaning the car wasn't occupied.

It was empty. So right away we're in a bad situation because we had an empty, unaccounted-for vehicle within what we called our primary ring of security. We had an unknown element in the area, meaning that we had to switch on and stay focused. Then right as I'm putting my game face on, I noticed something about the trolley-pushing member of hotel staff in front of me. Naturally, having pushed his laundry trolley over to the door, he was now trying to access the VIP corridor using his key card, only the key card wasn't working. I wasn't too concerned at first. I know for myself that kind of tech isn't always reliable, but what I did notice, was this young member of staff's switch to a second key card and then would look like a third,

all to have them rejected by the little scanner. I start watching him get more and more frustrated and more and more nervous before asking him if he needed any help. It wasn't a genuine offer, just something to make him turn and look at me, and then when he did, he looked scared out of his mind. I was just about to ask him if he was a wee bit star-struck at the idea of meeting a big celebrity. Again, not a genuine sentiment, just something to engage him so I'd get the measure of the man, and that's when I realized who it was.

His hair was short, very short, but poorly shorn, almost like he'd done it to himself with very little experience. And then once I'd piece that little detail together, I recognized his face. He'd cut his hair short, and he'd taken out his facial piercings too. But I recognized who it was. It was Walker the stalker and full hotel uniform, and he was standing right in front of me. In the UK, it is highly illegal for personal protection officers to carry any kind of lethal weapon. It's also very illegal for us to carry non-lethal options, too, so carrying things like stun guns, pepper spray, or batons, are going to land you with a criminal record. I'm sure a lot of you are going to be tearing your hair out at the mere description asking,

then how are you supposed to defend yourselves? Well, firstly, bulletproof and stab-proof vests are an option we regularly employ, and since we're not allowed to carry weapons, there's a heavy emphasis on martial arts training, particularly judo and jujitsu. But there are certain products which exist in a kind of legal loophole, things that are specifically designed to circumvent the rather strict U.K. laws regarding self-defense. And one such item was the non-toxic dye spray that I had on a key chain, in my pocket. It operates in an identical manner as pepper spray, but instead of deterring your

attacker via a shower of stinging vapor, it basically involves spraying a non-toxic, fast- degrading paint in their eyes to temporarily blind them. I've used it once before, and it was just as effective as I thought it was going to be. But like a lot of the stuff like that, it's only effective when it works, and whether or not it works depends on who you're using it on, as well as the situation at hand. For example, when I realized it was Walker the Stalker in front of me, having shaved his head and removed his piercings, I told him to stop what he was doing, step back into the lift and leave before I call the police. But Walker the Stalker didn't like that idea, and he attempted

to argue his case with a zombie knife he'd clearly hidden in the laundry trolley he'd somehow acquired. I don't know if the terms made it over to the United States yet or anywhere else, but here in the UK, the term zombie knife refers to large knives or miniature machetes that are often curved, spiked, or otherwise unconventionally shaped. Walker the stalker produces one, charges me with it, but I'm ready to deploy my dye spray, and when I did, I unleashed a powerful stream of it right into his angry little face. The reaction was instant. It was blinded, which he clearly found unpleasant, but it only made him angrier.

On top of that, he knew exactly where I was, too, so as he recommenced his charge and I tried to get out of the way, the landing proved too narrow, and he connected with a swing of his knife. If it wasn't for my stab vest, I would 100% be a dead man right now, because the blade connected with my chest, but slid down the fabric of the vest after cutting through my shirt. But what made me doubly fortunate was that Walker's first strike had thrown him completely off balance. This gave me an ample opportunity to subdue him, but Walker was slippery. He managed to twist out of the hold I was trying to put him in and bring up that zombie knife again. Under any other circumstances, it wouldn't have been an issue because I had him from the back, but the curved

section of the blade was long enough to reach back and cut into my forehead. Another swing, and he could have had my eye out, so I shoved him forward, backed away, then keyed the emergency button on my radio to silently call in all available assistance. I had a colleague come running down from the opposite end of the hallway, which in turn alerted the light sleepers on the VIP corridor that something was going on. He came running like a bat out of hell, and all the corridor behind him started to fill up with frightened VIPs. But there were a few grim seconds there where I was alone with a very blind, but still very dangerous stalker. He was screaming and waving the zombie knife around, but the fact that he was temporarily blinded meant that he kept swinging at nothing

and then retreating from nothing and again and again. This was obviously very good for me, but his erratic swings in the shape of the knife meant rushing him would be a huge risk without someone else present. Luckily, my colleague was at my side in mere seconds, and after hurling a potted plant at the blinded walker, we were able to tackle and subdue him while isolating the arm that he was carrying the blade with. Hotel security was there to assist within minutes, and the police were there a short while after that. Walker the stalker was taken into custody, and while everyone was a bit shaken, it all amounted to a job well done. But what's never been properly explained to any of us

was how he got his hands on that hotel uniform, as well as the key cards he was using to access various spaces. Walker didn't talk to the police. He didn't enter a plea at his trial either, and he refused to leave his cell to attend to his sentencing hearing. He never said a single word to anyone about anything, and the only clues to his motivations were the things he'd posted online. Obviously, he put a lot of time and effort into his little plan. Touring artists post their dates 18 months in advance sometimes, giving creeps like Walker plenty of time to craft their little schemes.

But how he'd managed to find the exact hotel our client was staying in was tradecraft even professionals like me could admire, even if we did so begrudgingly. And if his keycard scheme had worked, God knows how he managed to program them, he might have made it all the way to a VIP room completely unchecked. Because again, radically changing his appearance prior to striking was a deviously impressive bit of deception. I feel like this is best ended by circling back to my point about how just one single person can cause an awful lot of trouble for an awful lot of people.

I suppose I should take a bit of comfort in that, because if that wasn't the case, people like me would be out of a job. But it still sends shivers down my spine, knowing there's many more out there, just like Walker, and not all of them are going to fail. On the evening of April 26, 2013, a 25-year-old mother of one named Jessica Herringa, was working the late-night shift at the Exxon Gas Station on Sternberg Road in Norton Shores, Michigan. The small, unassuming station was a familiar stop for locals, and Jessica, known for her warm smile and dedication to her job, was working alone.

At the time, such working practices were a common occurrence at the Exxon. Norton Shores has a very low crime rate when compared with the rest of the state, and with the nearby Fruitford Police Department being just a few minutes to drive away, the Exxon employees felt safe enough to work alone and unarmed, Jessica included. Just prior to 11, one of the station's regulars pulled his car into the forecourt, turned off the engine, and then walked inside to make a purchase. Upon entering, he saw no one at the counter, and under the assumption the clerk was taking a bathroom break, he decided to wait. But when minutes went by and nothing but an eerie silence could be heard from the back of the store, he began to grow concerned. Seeing as he was warmly familiar with the gas station and at staff, and after suspecting, he was warmly familiar with the gas station and at staff, and after suspecting, an emergency was going on, the regular customer decided to step behind the counter and take a look around. In the back of the store, he found Jessica hearing his purse, her jacket and other personal

belongings, but no Jessica. After calling out her name a few times and walking around the store to make sure she wasn't close by, the station's regular called the cops. Minutes later, an officer arrived from the nearby department and began inspecting the gas station. There were no signs of any struggle, which suggested Jessica had simply walked out of the store for some reason, possibly with the contents of the cash register. But when the officer opened it up, all $400 and changed sat there neat and untouched. The same could be said for the station safe, but if nothing in the store had been touched and all of Jessica's belongings had been left behind, then where was she? Jessica was more than just a gas station clerk. She was a devoted mother to her beloved

three-year-old son, Zevin, and was engaged to her doting fiancée, Dakota Quail Dyer. She was described by friends and family as kind-hearted and ambitious, and dreamed of becoming an accountant while paying her way through college. As you can imagine, this made her a very popular figure among Norton Shores' residence, so her sudden disappearance sent shockwaves through a close-knit community unaccustomed to such chilling and unexpected events. Her family, particularly her mother, Shelly Herringa, were devastated. I know she's out there and I know she's waiting for us to find her.

She told one local journalist, I just want my baby back. It's like a nightmare that you don't wake up from. You just want answers. Dakota Quailed Dyer, Jessica's fiancé, also spoke to local media at a vigil held in the aftermath of her disappearance. I just want her to come home. I miss her. And our son misses her, he said. Every day is hard and we're not giving up.

She's out there somewhere. The Norton Shores Police Department launched an immediate investigation, but to their frustrations, the lack of physical evidence at the scene posed significant challenges. As we've mentioned, there were no signs of a struggle inside the gas station. But shockingly, police found a complete absence of interior surveillance cameras at the property, meaning none of the footage could explain what happened to Jessica. They were stunned, but when asked why they'd chosen not to cover the interior of the building, its owner said they didn't think such intense surveillance was required.

Obviously, it was far too late to do anything but reprimand their naivety, but it proved a shocking level of ineptitude that made the investigation infinitely more difficult. Instead of relying on security camera footage, police turned to other methods of tracking Jessica's movements. A canine unit was deployed to track her scent, But the trail ended abruptly, suggesting that she may have been taken away in a vehicle. A small spot of blood was then found outside the station's back door, and when this was confirmed to be a match for Jessica, it proved a worrying indication of potentially fatal foul play.

The police then conducted interviews with customers and employees alike, and were once again shocked to learn that a young female had been left to work alone and was therefore extremely vulnerable to late-night predators. With the lack of solid evidence, police prepared themselves for the difficult job ahead, but as days turned into weeks, the investigation ground to a complete standstill. Extensive searches of the surrounding area were conducted, including wooded regions and nearby lakes, but despite numerous civilian volunteers joining law enforcement in their efforts, no trace of Jessica was ever found.

In an inspiring display of community spirit, the people of Norton Shores' rallied together, organizing vigils, distributing flyers, and plastering the city with missing person posters. Local media covered the case relentlessly, and Jessica's story gained the attention of national TV shows like Disappeared. Yet with no witnesses to attest to what had happened, and no significant leads, the case grew cold, leaving Jessica's family in an agonizing limbo, unsure if she was alive or dead. For nearly three years, the question of what happened to Jessica was a haunting puzzle that weighed heavily on the people of Norton Shores. But in 2016, a seemingly unrelated incident provided the spark that would reignite her case.

On April 16th, a 16-year-old girl reported being the victim of a terrifying abduction attempt in Muskegon County. She described being approached by a man in a silver minivan, who then tried luring her into his vehicle. Her quick thinking allowed her to escape, and she was able to provide police with her. critical details, including a description of the suspect in his van. The girl's report led investigators to a man named Jeffrey Willis, a 46-year-old factory worker, but despite having no criminal history to speak of, Mr. Willis was far from innocent. During a search of Willis's

home and silver Chrysler minivan, police officers unearth the frightening amount of highly disturbing evidence. Not only did Willis's van match descriptions from witnesses, who reported seeing a similar vehicle near the Exxon Station on the night Jessica disappeared, but its contents were enough to chill the blood of even the most veteran officer. Handcuffs, ropes, chains, and leather restraints proved merely the tip of the iceberg. Willis claimed all these items were perfectly legal, as were the handgun, the insulin, the Viagra, and the plastic gloves police discovered. But what was not so easy to explain was the folder on Willis'

his laptop that he'd simply titled VIX. Upon opening the folder, digital forensics experts noticed the two subfolders, one titled JLH and the other titled R.B. Then, after opening the R.B. folder, experts found photographs of a woman named Rebecca Bletch. On Sunday, June 29th of 2014, a fellow jogger discovered Rebecca's lifeless body on a regular route, less than a mile from her home near Muskegon County's automobile road. And while she was originally thought to be the victim of a hit and run, investigators soon discovered that Becky had been shot three times in the back of the head.

Rebecca's loved ones were devastated by her murder, but they held out hope that justice would one day come. Willis's arrest and the seizure of his laptop marked the end of that weight. Not only did Willis's Vicks folder contain a multitude of photographs that Rebecca herself uploaded to social media, but it also contained thousands of torture and snuff videos, revealing a disturbing and deeply seated obsession with violent fantasies. But perhaps even more disturbing was a small detail regarding the folder titled J-L-H, because in addition to containing dozens of photographs depicting Jessica Herringa,

the date of its creation was April 26, 2013, the very same day that Jessica disappeared. Naturally, Jeff Willis became the prime suspect in Jessica's disappearance, as in addition to what was found on his laptop, surveillance footage from a nearby business captured his silver minivan speeding away from the Sternberg Road Exxon at around 11 p.m. on the night in question. Additionally, a police sketch created from descriptions of a suspicious man spotted near the station that night bore a striking resemblance to Willis. While it was later uncovered that the suspect had a lengthy history of harassing vulnerable females at their places of work, witnesses who had earlier reported nothing suspicious on the night of Jessica's disappearance later recalled Willis as a regular customer at the Exxon.

Moe saw nothing but bothersome attempts at flirtation, but it made Jessica's disappearance. Jessica feel deeply uneasy all the same. Finally, on September 20th of 2016, Jeff Willis was officially charged with Jessica hearing as kidnap and murder. Prosecutors accused him of abducting her from the gas station before transporting her to his grandfather's vacant house. There, Jessica was subjected to a series of sadistic brutalities before she was executed with the same 357 torus found in Willis's van.

The gun's serial number was partially filed off, but forensic analysts were easily able to link it to Willis through a series of DNA tests, while the JLH file on his computer, along with the bondage equipment and snuff videos police recovered, painted a chilling picture of a monster who meticulously planned his murders. In a shocking turn of events, Willis's cousin, a former correctional officer by the name of Kevin Bloom, admitted he'd help dispose of Jessica's body after being shown her remains in his cousin's basement. And it was Bloom's latent cooperation that proved critical to the case against his cousin. In May of 2018, Willis was tried for Jessica's murder, although it should be noted that he was already serving life without parole for his 2017 conviction for the killing of Rebecca

Bletch. However, in Jessica's case, the prosecution faced a unique challenge. Since Jessica, his body has never been found. It became a no-body murder case, which legal experts everywhere agree are notoriously difficult to prove, but at least the sheer volume of circumstantial evidence was positively overwhelming. Willis's silver minivan, his Vicks folder, along with the surveillance footage and witness testimony, all pointed to his irrefutable guilt. But on top of that, one of Willis's coworkers testified that he actually boasted of his knowledge of corpse disposal following a lengthy period of research, something the jury found very damning indeed. Willis' defense team argued that the lack of physical evidence, such as Jessica's DNA

being found in his residence or on his clothing, created substantial reasonable doubt. They also suggested alternative theories to explain Jessica's disappearance, including the possibility that she'd vanished voluntarily due to dissatisfaction with her job, been relationships. However, the jury found the prosecution's case so compelling that it took just an hour and a half of deliberation to find Willis guilty of kidnapping and first-degree murder. The news that he'd been sentenced to life in prison was met with tears of relief from Jessica's family who had endured years of pain and uncertainty. Yet despite the conviction, one agonizing question remained. Where was Jessica's body?

Kevin Bloom, who pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact, claimed he helped Willis bury her in a wooded area near Sheridan and Lakedon Roads. He led police to several locations, but to their disappointment, extensive searches, including excavations and cadaver dog sweeps, yielded no results. Having clearly expected his cousin to rat him out, Willis had the foresight to dig up Jessica's remains before moving them to a second location. After that, all Bloom's. could do was give the police's best guesses, and after compiling a list of potential burial

sites, over a dozen were investigated from rural properties to abandoned lots, but sadly, Jessica's remains were never found. Shelly Hearinga, Jessica's mother, had spoken publicly about the pain of not knowing where her daughter is, but has vowed to continue the search. Local volunteers have also refused to give up the ghost, and driven by a collective desire to bring Jessica Home have since organized efforts to comb through potential burial sites. Jessica's disappearance not only had a profound impact on the residents of Norton Shores, but it also exposed the glaring vulnerabilities and workplace safety for late-night workers. In response, Michigan lawmakers signed the Jessica Hearing Act into law in 2016,

which mandates enhanced safety measures for gas stations and convenience stores, such as requiring multiple employees on late shifts, installing panic buttons, and ensuring full 24-7 surveillance. The local community also continues to honor Jessica through annual vigils and fundraisers for her son, Zeven, who is being raised by his father and grandmother in the wake of her loss. Jessica's murder robbed Norton Shores of its innocence

and serves as a reminder of how devastating violent crime can be. But it also gives us many reasons to be hopeful. Whether it be the courage of the 16-year-old who escaped a similarly grisly fate, the dedication of investigators, or the resilience of Jessica's family, there are many such examples of good people pushing back against the darkness. But Jessica's absence, and the failure to bring home her remains, leave an open wound. Jeff Willis, now serving multiple life sentences, remains completely unrepentant, and has offered no further clues to Jessica's whereabouts.

Perhaps one day he will, but until then, the memory of the incident remains a somber chapter in Norton Shore's history. It's a testament to the pain of unresolved loss, but it's also a testament to the strength of those who refuse to give up. I've been working as a security guard at this factory complex in Detroit for about six months now. It's not the best job, but it pays okay and keeps the bills covered. I sit most of the time watching cameras, making sure nobody's sneaking around where they don't belong. It's quiet most nights, just me and a bunch of empty buildings.

I've been doing the overnight shift, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. since I started. It's rough on sleep, but I manage. The factory is an old place, used to make auto parts back in the day. Most of it's empty now, just a few buildings still running. And in night, it's all shadows and echoes, with rats scurrying around sometimes. I start my shift checking the doors, making sure they're locked up tight, and then I settle into the security office, sipping coffee and watching the camera feeds. Every couple of hours, I do a walk around, shine my flashlight into the dark corners, and to be honest, it's boring, but it's money. But one night, though, everything went bad.

It was cold, Michigan cold, the kind that gets into your bones, and I was on my third cup of coffee feeling tired because I hadn't slept good the day before. And I was staring at the screens when I saw something on camera three, out by the back loading dock. It looked like a shadow moving, quick, sneaky, and I'd lean closer, squinting, but it was too dark to tell. I remember thinking at first that it could have been nothing, but I saw it again, darting across the feet.

And I just kind of sighed, grab my flashlight and my jacket and headed out. The factory is a maze at night, big old buildings with alleys between them. I shine my light around, checking the loading dock, The door was shut, no sign of anyone breaking in, and then I walked over to the fence and saw it was intact with no holes. I figured maybe it was just wind blowing trash around and I was about to head back when I heard something, like a snicker, real quiet. I froze, listening hard, and then out of the shadows, they came at me.

There were four or five of them, all wearing masks like Halloween or something like that, and they were younger. I could tell by how they moved, very jumpy and full of energy, like kids hyped up on sugar. One of them shoved me hard, and I stumbled back, almost dropping my flashlight, and before I could even really work out what was happening, another one of them punched me in the gut so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I doubled over gasping, and then they were all on me, hitting and kicking like a pack of wild animals. I tried to fight back, even swung my flashlight at one of them, but they were too fast. Someone grabbed it and tossed it away before another kid punched me in the face, and I felt my nose crack, and I could feel blood starting to

come down. I could taste it in my sinuses. I tried to yell, but they kept hitting me, knocking me off my feet over and over. Someone kicked my legs out, and I went down hard, pain shooting through my knees and hands as I hit the gravel, but they didn't stop there. Kicks landed on my ribs, my back, my arms. I curled up trying to cover my head, but it didn't do much good. The pain was everywhere, and I could hear them laughing, loud and crazy like it was some type of game. It was sick the way they enjoyed it. They acted like kids, but mean ones, the kind that had to pull wings off of flies just to watch them squirm. And that scared me more than the pain. The way they didn't care, the way they seemed to like it.

And this went on for what felt like hours, though, it couldn't have been. And finally, one of them smashed me in the head, and that's really when everything went black. Just a sudden nothing, like someone flipped a switch. And when I woke up, it was still dark and still cold. I was laying on the ground, my face pressed into the gravel, my head was pounding and my mouth still tasted like blood. I tried to move, but my whole body screamed at me. My ribs felt like they were burning and my hands wouldn't work right and I spat out blood

and some pieces of my teeth. They'd mess me up bad. I didn't know how long I'd been out. Those kids were gone, no sign of them. My clothes were torn and my shoes were missing. I must have taken them. Air Jordans, 96. I felt for my wallet and it was still in my pocket.

I guess they didn't want money, just wanted to hurt me. I got to my feet, slow and shaky, dizzy as hell, and every step hurt, but I leaned against the wall and started stumbling back to the office. I kept tripping, my legs weak, my ribs stabbing me with every breath, but finally I made it to the security office, fell into the chair and grabbed the phone. My hands were shaking so bad I could hardly do. dial 911. I mumbled something about being attacked, gave them the address, and then I just sat there, waiting, trying not to pass out again. The paramedics showed up pretty quickly. The lights

were flashing and they loaded me onto a stretcher, and they asked me what happened, but my jaw hurt way too much to even really talk at that point. They took me to the hospital and I spent a few days there, all bandaged up. Doc said that I had broken ribs, a concussion, fractures in my fingers, and a busted-up face. They even pulled out some teeth and gave me some painkillers and said that I was lucky that it wasn't worse. But I didn't feel very lucky, though. The cops came by while I was resting, two of them, one older guy and one younger. They asked me to describe the attackers, but I didn't have much to give. Masks covered their faces and it was dark. I told them they were young, fast, laughing like maniacs, but that was it. They wrote it down and said they'd look

into it, but I don't think I ever heard from them again. I guess I knew they wouldn't find those kids. There are too many shadows in Detroit to hide in, and after a few days they let me go home. I was still hurting, and I couldn't do much but sit around. Couldn't work, that's for sure. I had two kids depending on me, and I didn't know how I was going to pay those bills. My daughter, she's eight, cried when she saw me all banged up. My son, 12, tried to act tough, but I could tell he was shook. I told them that I had an accident at work and didn't want them to be scared knowing the actual truth. My sister helped out, coming over with food and changing my bandages, and she's a nurse, so she didn't know what to do. I hated needing her like that, though,

but I couldn't manage alone. Getting out of bed was a fight every day. My ribs ached, my hands didn't grip right with those broken fingers, and I felt useless, like I couldn't even take care of myself, let alone my kids. I kept thinking about that night over and over. Why'd they do it? Just for kicks? I never heard nobody, and I only was just doing my job. It just didn't make any sense. My boss called and said that they were sorry it happened, said they'd add more security, maybe another guard, and it didn't make me feel much better. The other guards, when I finally went back, clapped me on the shoulder and said that they were glad I was okay, but I saw the worry in their eyes. Nobody wanted to think it could be them next. The cops never caught those kids and probably never will.

And it tears me up to think that they got away clean and I'm stuck with these scars. It just ain't right, but what can I do? Life ain't fair, I guess. And I'm more careful now, always looking around expecting trouble. And maybe that's good. Keeps me sharp. But it also showed me how quick things can go bad and how you can't always stop it. I just keep going, for my kids, for myself, and I guess there ain't no other choice. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST.

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