The Lets Read Podcast - 326: I EXPERIENCED SOMETHING TERRIFYING DURING A HORROR MOVIE | 10 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 311

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about dark family secrets & movie theatre 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: - Betterhelp

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. You know what I'm going to do. His name was Sean, and I met him on Tinder. I won't say it was love at first sight. It took a bit of cajuling from him to get me to agree to a date. He wasn't really my type. Kind of looked like he loved himself, a tall and buff guy.

I'm usually into slightly pudgier guys who, well, I'm sure you don't care about that. But trust me, fellas. Women who like normal guys. are out there. And Sean won me over with a sense of humor, his smooth talking and his absolute geekery. I'm a big Marvel fan, or, well, I was back then anyway, and I went to all the movies in the theater on opening weekend whenever possible. I was also really big into horror, especially the Conjuring universe, so Sean eventually won me over by inviting me to go with him to see the nun. Hey, the movies are a pretty easy place for a first date. If it's going badly, you can just sort of

shift away in your seat and ignore the other person for the duration of the film. He picked me up at a nearby Starbucks. Don't give random Tinder date to your address, people. And we drove to the theater. And honestly, he was great. Really charming, fun, and generally a good time. He knew his movies, too. A nerd in a sort of cute way, which is basically just to say that he's a nerd. Now, the one problem was, he was fairly pessimistic about the prospects for the nun. I'll give him this. He ended up being right. Man, that movie sucked. And let's not even mention the sequel, but this isn't about that.

Sean was certain that the first movie was going to suck, even though we were going on opening night, and he was promising me that he had something in mind that would make the experience way more memorable, quote-unquote. Well, here we go, I was thinking. He's going to make sure that we get seats in the back row, and I'm going to be in for an evening of dodging make-out attempts and groping hands. still I wasn't too dissuaded by the former at least if only that's what Sean had planned though we grabbed our tickets and some popcorn and even a hot dog

Sean was against the idea of buying a drink though according to him needing to leave the theater to use the bathroom ruined any movie I mean I guess I could buy that I did miss a key scene in the dark night thanks to a bathroom break but it is a bit psychotic with salty popcorn And sure enough, when he led us into the theater, he headed straight for the back row. We'd arrived very early for the showing, and it was one of those small-town theaters where you just kind of chose whatever seats were available. He led us down the aisle of the back row until we were basically in the middle looking down at the screen. It was a prime spot and fairness, and I was fine with a seating arrangement. We sat there making small talk, laughing at the ads, and then watching the trailers quietly, like good moviegoers. should. Then the lights dimmed. Sean finished his hot dog and he positioned the popcorn between us

and our hands brushed a couple of times as we shared the salted goodness. And I even felt a bit of a spark there. The movie started off not too bad. I was kind of enjoying it honestly. Taisa Farmiga can win me over very easily. But Sean, however, was not enjoying it. He kept nudging me, making whispered comments about how crappy it was and how it could use some extra scares. I mostly just ignored him because honestly I was enjoying it and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise. And then he told me to look down. At the same time, I felt something prodding into my side. Sean was sitting on my left, and other than an elderly couple at the end of the row on the right,

we had the whole line to ourselves. I looked down. Sean was holding the biggest hunting knife I had ever seen, and the tip of it was very slightly. pressed into my side. I remember his words like it was yesterday. Move, or call for help, or do anything, and the blade goes in. He said, just keep watching the movie.

And so we did. And throughout, he kept making goofy remarks and joking comments as if he didn't have a huge knife held against me. And I was absolutely trembling, terrified, and speechless with fear almost. At times I had to stifle back sobs as I replied to his inane jibes at the movie. At this point, I had no idea if he'd lose his mind in anger if I disagreed with him calling the movie garbage or something. I mean, it kind of was, and it got worse as it went on, but obviously I didn't really

care at that point. And at that point, I was just begging for it to be over. Scenarios were running through my head. What would happen when the credits rolled? Would he expect us to just walk out like nothing had happened? Would I be getting a blade to the gut? I understood now why he'd forbidden us from getting a soda. Not only could it have required me to get up,

but it would have improved the chances of me actually pissing myself in fear. I genuinely cannot express to you the terror of sitting there for 90 minutes with a blade gently pushing into the soft flesh of my stomach. I wanted to do something. I knew if I called out for help, he'd be able to gut me before I could receive so much as a look of concern from fellow moviegoers. And then, thank God, the movie was over. We sat there for a moment, and the credits were rolling, and the knife was still pressing into me. The theater lights went up, and that's when I saw it.

It was a literal prop knife. Now, before you think I'm some idiot, it was a professional-level movie prop, I'll be honest. He must have paid top dollar for it, and I could only tell because in the light I could see the official Rob Zombie's Halloween movie branding on the handle. I guess it explained how he held it steady enough that it felt like it could penetrate me at any moment, but never did. And Sean was grinning at me like he'd just given me the world's best treat. There, didn't I make a terrible movie a hell of a lot scarier?

He said. When he saw the absolute murderous rage on my face, I could tell he was genuinely surprised. This idiot, this moron idiot jackass, had genuinely believed that just because I was a horror fan, I'd be delighted and grateful at him causing me one of the worst hours of my entire life. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I know it was far too obscene to share on this channel,

and I also know it resulted in me throwing the rest of the popcorn straight in a smug, idiot face. And most of it was still untouched due to me fearing for my life. I stormed straight out of that movie theater, told the manager who was a friend of mine, and obviously was advised to call the cops. There was barely a charge in response, something to do with causing undue stress, but due to the stupid way the laws worked at the time, the low lighting didn't make the charge worse,

and the fact that it was an obvious toy made it harder to push for anything more serious. I did make sure to press charges, but he ended up getting off with some slap on the wrist. Thankfully, a very sympathetic judge granted me a restraining order, not that I think I had any danger of hearing from Sean again. And in his eyes, I was the crazy hysterical woman who couldn't handle being an actual horror fan, all because I wasn't cool with having to spend the duration of that movie thinking that I was going to get stabbed to death. And so, Sean, screw you. I hope the possessed doll of Annabel eats you in your sleep. This happened many years ago. This happened many years ago now.

It must have been 1997 because I was at a showing of scream with my then-girlfriend, and it was just past New Year's. The movie had been showing for a few weeks at this point, so it wasn't a very busy showing, perfect for a date night with a girl like Jennifer. And she often reacted to scary movies by getting handsy and grabby-holdy of me, if you know what I mean. And I'd learned some time ago that horror movies were a great way to get a bit of extra affection. Now, what can I say? We were first-year college students. Of course, we'd find any excuse to get our hands all over each other. And we weren't the only two people at the showing of scream that night

who would be making a lot of physical contact, although, of course, we just didn't know that yet. Now, we got some popcorn, we got some soda, tickets were clipped and seats were taken, trailers were watched as they are. And Drew Barrymore got grilled on her favorite scary movie. You know the scene. Everyone's seen the original screen by now. And things started kicking off during that scene where Randy, Billy, and Stu were in the video rental store.

And so if you're one of the three people who hasn't seen the original scream, it's a bit meta. It deconstructs the slasher movie genre a lot, and one character in particular, Randy. He's the narrative vehicle for doing all of that. I don't remember the exact details. I was making out with my girl at the time and failing to pay too much attention to the bits where people weren't getting murdered. But a person who was a few rows ahead of ours really didn't agree with something Randy said about the rules of horror movies. So much so, in fact, that he yelled out his disagreement at the screen. Now, you've got to remember, this was back in the 90s.

And back then, keeping your damn mouth shut was normal etiquette in movie theaters. Outside of very specific, obviously intended moments, you didn't just yell at movies. And you certainly don't provide angry, nerdy commentary to nobody in particular. because you disagreed with the writer. Well, this guy did, and we'll just call him Mitchell, although I have absolutely no idea what his name was, of course. He started yelling and hooting about the integrity of the horror genre. And that's when the guy next to him started screaming too.

Like I said, it was an empty movie theater. These two guys have been sitting next to each other, so I assume they were together. But later found out that no, they were strangers who decided they absolutely had to stick to their assigned seats. instead of sitting anywhere they wanted in the theater. The second guy, who I'll just call Steve, he wasn't screaming at the movie, though.

Steve was screaming at Mitchell for screaming at the movie. I don't remember the exact exchange, but I remember it well enough that I can make parts of it up for impact. Stuff like, dude, it's just a movie. Sit the F down and shut the F up, Steve yelled. Now, I should note at this point, Mitchell was still sitting down. and he was just kind of flailing his fists around and being very animated. Are you listening to this?

Mitchell yelled back at Steve, gesturing to the screen and then to Steve and then to the mostly empty movie theater. Jennifer had grabbed my arm and was kind of cowering down in her seat, hoping that we wouldn't get noticed by these weirdos. I'm trying to listen to the movie, Steve said, and this seemed to calm Mitchell down for a few minutes. Then something else since Scream set him off. God knows what it was, but I'd stop paying attention.

This time, though, Mitchell really did stand up and started yelling at the screen like the characters could fully hear him and react to him. He was actually genuinely offended at some opinion that one of the characters had about horror movies. Now, don't get me wrong, he wasn't delusional. He knew that there was a writer speaking through the characters, and he knew Wes Craven had directed the movie, so a lot of his ire was directed at poor old Wes. Now, rest in peace to the big man, one of the best horror directors of our time, by the way. He was still alive at the time of the story, obviously, and Mitchell was very angry at him for his disrespect of the horror genre. I've never seen anyone behave so stupidly or oblivious to this day.

Mitchell was screeching about the hypocrisy on display. I don't think it even made sense with what the movie was actually saying. He just decided that Scream was taking pot shots at his beloved horror genre, and nothing anyone could say. say or do was going to change his mind. That's what I assumed anyway, and I whispered that to Jennifer. Well, look, she whispered back. Now Mitchell was a big guy. From a few rows back, anyway, he appeared to be around six feet and nearly 300 pounds of fat and muscle. And then Steve stood up and squared up to him. Now, Steve was not a tall muscular powerhouse at all. He was five foot six, if that, and he was one of those thin, pasty dudes you see a lot of on YouTube these

days, with long hair and a white t-shirts, you know the type I mean. But good God, Steve squared up to Mitchell like he was stone-cold Steve Austin. He had the confidence of a man who knew, unquestionably, that he could kick this other guy's ass, and if it came to it, he would. So Steve reaches out and pokes Mitchell in the chest and says something like, just shut the F up and Sit down, buddy. Do us all a favor. Some of us are trying to watch the movie. Me and Jennifer were paying attention now. I grab a handful of popcorn. Jennifer whispers to me asking to take bets on what's going to happen next, and I tell her I think Mitchell is going to back down. But I was wrong. I was very, very wrong. Instead, this Mitchell guy led out what I guess

was intended to be a roar, but his voice cracked mid-growl so it was kind of like, And then he just grabs Steve's outreached finger, and with an actual audible crack, snaps his finger backwards. We're all just staring at this completely shell-shocked. Steve takes a few steps back into the aisle, and he's staring at his finger bent backwards, and then back up at Mitchell. Even in the dark of the theater, I see a look pass over Steve's face that even to this day makes my stomach sink. It was the look of a man who realized that he just made a very big mistake. You see, that confident I'd got this guy I'd imagined Steve has in that moment, he obviously didn't exist.

I guess he thought Mitchell would have fallen for it and backed down, but not so much. Remember how I'd also assumed Mitchell was an unfit kind of slob? Who knows if I was right about that? But this guy had heft, and he threw himself at Steve, just full-on charged into him, him in the aisle like a goddamn bull. Slam Steve straight into the floor so hard that we actually heard another crack. And then Mitchell was pounding, punching, pummeling him. His fat fists were flying.

Blood was literally coming from Steve's mouth as Mitchell was just wailing on him, continuing to shriek and yell about the movie, about horror, about disrespect, all sorts of incoherent crap that made him sound like the obvious violent nut job that he clearly was. Of course, being a hot-blooded 18-year-old male, I wasn't just going to sit there and watch this guy get destroyed just for telling Mitchell to shut up, and despite Jennifer begging me not to get involved, I started to make my way down the aisle in the semi-darkness.

Now again, I was taking my time a little, hoping another savior might show up in the meantime, and thankfully she did. Out of nowhere, vaulting over chairs like some Olympian, this woman came sprinting out of left field, shocking all of us, except Mitchell, of course, who was too busy beating on Steve to notice her. The woman, I'm just going to call her Venus, took advantage of Mitchell's obliviousness. A few feet away, I saw her stop. Then she took a running kick, knocking Mitchell clear off of Steve and sending him rolling down the aisle a few feet. Barely even pausing to leap over Steve, Venus then whipped something from her belt. I heard the sound of a spray can, and Mitchell's

screams changed dramatically. Turns out our savior was an off-duty homicide detective at the theater with her husband to enjoy a romantic date night together. Mitchell got a face full of mace, a boots worth of broken ribs, and a handcuffing in the form of plastic ties that Venus kept on her person while off-duty just in case situations like this arose. She later joked that she never expected to actually have to perform an off-duty arrest. Steve was fine, except for for a few broken teeth. And as for what happened after to Mitchell, Steve, and this Venus character, I can only guess. We missed the end of the movie, obviously, and we were all offered refunds and comp tickets

for any showing or movie of our choice. Someone tells me they didn't extend this offer to Mitchell, though. Now, I scored points with Jennifer for at least intending to be a hero, but I'll leave that up to you to decide how that manifested. Now, this was all 30 years ago now, but I scored. still think on it from time to time. I hope Steve, Venus, and her husband are all doing well if they're actually still around. Jennifer and I ultimately didn't stay together, but we are still Facebook friends and she seems to be doing good. To this day, though, I've still never watched

the second half of Scream. I decided to leave the rest of the movie up to my imagination because sometimes fiction can never compete with the insanity that is reality. Growing up, I thought my uncle Ray was the coolest guy in the world. He was my dad's younger brother by four years, and while dad was a straight-laced detective, with the Santa Monica Police Department, Uncle Ray ran a surf shack down on the beach. He wasn't a loser, not by any stretch. That surf shack was a brick-and-mortar business with half a dozen employees and a six-figure turnover.

But Dad still looked at Ray like he was his wayward kid brother, even if he did love him to death. He had a beach house down there on the shore, and we'd drive over there a few times every summer to hang out with Ray and his girlfriend Nina. But then one summer, we were all packed up and ready to head down to the beach when my dad suddenly told us Uncle Ray was busy, and we had to wait for another time to go see him. We could still head down to the beach, just not to raise, and while I remember being disappointed in the moment, I think I'd forgotten about it as soon as my toes hit the sand. I was only seven back then, so still very innocent, and the sudden change of plan didn't strike me at all as suspicious. But what I did notice was how different mom and dad seemed to be acting and how much they talked and hushed tones while me and my brother played in the sand. I didn't question it. I was too busy

building sandcastles and all that. But then the next day, Mom and Dad sat me and my little brother down on the couch and told us that Uncle Ray had been in a car accident and had gone to heaven. I won't tug on your heartstrings too bad going into all the details, but the loss of Uncle Ray had me sad for a long time. But like all things of that nature, the grief subsided over time and life went on. I grew up, graduated, got a job, then was living up in Oxnard with a girl that I've been dating for a few years when we drove back down to Santa Monica to visit my parents. We hit the road, had dinner with my parents, and then we were on her way back up to Oxnard when my girlfriend got very quiet and mopey. I asked if she was okay and she said,

said, yeah. She just got a little weirded out sometimes whenever she was near that part of the PCH. And they asked why, and this is what she told me. 20 years before, her mom's old high school friend went to stay in a log cabin with her boyfriend of many years. She told my girlfriend's mom all about it, where it was, how long she was going for, and when she was expected to return. So when that date comes and goes and there was no sign of her friend, my girlfriend's mom starts to get worried. And she wasn't the only one either. The girl's parents called the cops, told them where their daughter had been, and who with, and then asked them to go looking for her. A few days later, they got the bad news. A car belonging to their daughter's boyfriend had been found, having been deliberately

driven off the road. He was inside, dead from a broken neck while she was in the trunk, cut up and wrapped in plastic. The cops never figured out how or why the girl had been killed, or why her boyfriend had driven his car off the road. But his prints were all over the plastic wraps, so the conclusion seemed obvious. My girlfriend said her mom took the news really hard. She met the guy a bunch of times, and he seemed like a really sweet dude. She used to get emotional sometimes while driving down that spot in the highway, too. I guess being where it happened was just a little too much for her. I'm listening to the story, something like, damn, that's terrible. And then my girlfriend said the girl's name sort of something like poor nina hell of a way to go and i think that i must

have driven for maybe a minute or two before i respond wait a second did you just say nina when my girlfriend confirmed two thoughts flashed through my head the first was the memory of uncle ray having a girlfriend named nina and the second was remembering how he died in a car accident but But no one had ever said anything about it being on purpose. I asked my girlfriend as she remembered the name of the boyfriend, the one that had driven off the road, and I remember how when I did, this sort of panicked feeling started rising up in my chest. The only thing that kept it in check was this little voice in my head saying stuff like,

it's just a coincidence. This is pattern recognition gone wrong. There are plenty of Nina's around and you're freaking out over nothing. But as soon as my girlfriend spoke next, that reassuring voice got up and walked out like a rock star at a bad interview. And she says, I think it was like Ron or Rick or something. And then I asked, was it Ray? And she spun around in her seat saying, yeah, yeah, it was Ray. Did you hear about this already?

I didn't say anything in reply. I guess because I realized I had to concentrate on the road instead of the chaos unfolding in my head. Then the next chance I got, I pulled over to the side of the road, asked my girlfriend to wait in the car, and then got out and called my mom and dad on my cell phone. It was almost nine by then, so mom was in bed and dad was up watching TV, so it was him that answered the phone. He could tell something was wrong just from the way that I was talking, so right as I'm asking if Mama's asleep or just to be. Dosing, Dad interrupted, saying, just tell me what's going on.

I remember pausing to gather my thoughts and then just asked him, Dad, how did Uncle Ray die? And he told me, you know how it was a car accident. But then I asked him if it was really just an accident or if something else had happened. It was his turn to pause, like he was sort of gathering his thoughts, and then all he said was Come by the house tomorrow. I'll explain everything. And I felt weirdly numb getting back into the car,

and although my girlfriend basically demanded to know what was going on, I couldn't find the words to tell her until we were back home and safely off the road. I had this irrational fear that unless I kept myself together on the road, I'd end up dying in a car accident too, like some inescapable loop from some overcomplicated horror movie. But obviously that didn't happen. We got home safe. I grabbed a beer out of the fridge. Then me and my girlfriend had a teary heart to heart where I explained everything,

including the part where my dad had all but confirmed my tears with that I'll explain everything line. She kept saying sorry, like it was her fault for telling me. But it wasn't her fault. It was Ray's. I could barely sleep that night and when I did manage to drift off, I had this ultra-vivid nightmare where my dad took me into the garage and showed me Ray's body. I woke up before I opened the coffin, but it was enough to have me splashing my face in the bathroom's sink while I waited for the shakes to subside. A few hours later, I was back on the highway, driving down to Santa Monica to talk to Mom and Dad. I expected things to get ugly, emotionally speaking, and boy did they ever.

Mom was already crying when I got there, and the first thing she did was give me a big hug and tell me she was sorry that they never told me the truth. Obviously, I already had an idea of what that truth was, but hearing all the details was still one of the most chilling and disturbing experiences of my whole life. Dad said all the same stuff my girlfriend had, that Ray and Nina had gone to some log cabin for the weekend. He was supposed to return on Monday morning, but then Monday afternoon, he called Dad from the road. Dad said he sounded mad, that he was ranting and raving about something, but nothing he said made any sense. He mentioned that something happened in the cabin, but Dad couldn't get the details

out of him, and then all of a sudden, Ray just hung up. Dad said he figured that he called through the road because he could hear traffic in the background of the call. Then later on, he tried calling Ray at home, but he didn't pick up the phone. He called him the next morning, too, but still got no answer, which was the same day that we were supposed to head over to Ray's to spend a day at the beach. But then, literally, a half hour before we were set to leave for Ray's, Dad spots a car out front. He walks outside, and it's two detectives from the local police department, guys that he knew personally. And that's when they told him that Ray had been found and that it wasn't good news. Dad didn't work homicide, and even if he did, there's no way he'd have been on that case.

But he still got all the info from his fellow detectives, and it was all those extras. details that changed the whole thing from something they might talk to me about some day to something they'd never willingly bring up with me at all. The first thing that really got Dad's attention was when the homicide detectives traced Ray's movements the cabin he and Nina had been staying in, which was up near Redwood Deck, part of a collection of five whose rental costs made their owners a lot of money. The cabins were in a nice sleepy patch of Redwoods up near the falls, but they were never quiet, and apart from a couple of weeks during the June gloom, the cabins were fully booked

almost all year round. But then, during the weekend Ray and Nina were staying there, a weekend in September, all four of the other cabins were empty. The detectives found out when they tried to find witnesses staying in other cabins, people who could testify to Ray's behavior or state of mind around the time of Nina's murder. They'd also heard about how popular the cabins were, so imagine their surprise when they found no bookings at any of the other cabins. They hadn't been closed for the weekend. They hadn't been reserved. There was just no bookings.

None except Nina and Uncle Ray. This led to homicide detectives questioning the owners of the cabins extensively, but there was no indication they were involved. The next things that didn't add up for the homicide detectives was how, on the day Ray and Nina were due to drive back to Santa Barbara, where they were living at the time, and just up the highway. away from Santa Monica, they'd stopped at a gas station just hours before Ray called my dad ranting and raving. Only, the clerk remembered them acting perfectly normal. Ray pumped some gas,

Nina bought a soda, and then they left together like nothing whatsoever was wrong. But then somehow, and some place over the next 20 miles or so, Ray pulls over, chops Nina into little bits and then wraps her in plastic before throwing her in the trunk of his car. The detectives couldn't work out if Ray murdered Nina before or after that creepy phone call he made to his dad, but they know that not long after the call was made, he went and drove himself off the road after unfastening a seatbelt. Or at least, that's what appeared to have happened according to the scene. I remember my dad telling me all this with mom sitting next to him holding his hand. He was always a really strong, stern kind of guy, but telling me that story was

the only time I ever saw him well up with tears. It wasn't just the sadness of it all either. It was the frustration of not knowing why, of having all those unanswered questions about the cabins, raised state of mind, and what he'd said during that phone call. Because the phone call he made during the day of the murder was something that scared the crap out of my dad. Obviously, once they learned about the call, the detectives wanted to know what Ray had said to my dad, but all he had to tell them was nothing. They asked him to clarify, and my dad told them pretty much what he told me. It was just words. Dad said that not a single thing that he said made any sense, that it was all just random words. He said he concentrated as best he could, trying to work

out what he was saying, but then he got this weird sinking feeling when he realized Ray had just gone nuts. He kept telling Ray to calm him at home in a couple of hours to see if he was okay, but he never picked up, and that was the start of everything. I remember how by the time Dad had finished, I just felt kind of numb. I rolled a few tears when my mom and dad cried, but that was just because of seeing how upset they were. I felt numb because I had been thinking about it throughout the whole sleepless night prior,

so maybe 15 hours straight. I'd questioned it, accepted it, and then questioned it some more before accepting it all over again. So when the time came to hearing all the gruesome, gritty details, I was just sort of resigned to it all, I guess. Mom and Dad kept apologizing too,

for keeping the truth from me for so long, as well as, in a more general sense, that things had to happen that way in the first place. I reassured them in every sense possible, saying I understood why they did with the, they did, because how the hell could you ever expect a younger person to process something like that? But that didn't seem to do much for them. I guess it was all that emotional spilling out after years and years of pretending everything was okay and not being able to talk about it openly.

We were all emotionally wrecked by the time it came for me to drive back. Then when I got home, I told my girlfriend how it had been my uncle who'd most likely murdered her mom's high school friend. And as you can imagine, that made for quite the talk, and we talked about it a lot. I guess that's the thing that helped me more than anything. All the free therapy got from being with someone who genuinely gave a damn about me, so much so that she never told her mom what she knew, at least not when we were together. Then over time, we just sort of moved past it. We broke up a few years later, totally unrelated, but I think about her a lot still. and how she helped me get past one of the single worst events of my entire adult and child life.

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I was a little kid when this happened. I lived in a small town in England, and we didn't have a cinema for quite a while. So when one opened, it was a novelty, and my mom would take me a lot. It's different now, and it's been expanded, but back then there were five screens, three larger ones, and then two small ones down towards the end of the building, and down a long corridor. And then a thinner corridor spanned off from that leading to the two bathrooms, men's and women's. So I forget which film we were there to see, but this was before the film started. I needed to use the bathroom, but I had a drink and popcorn and I didn't want to take them into

the bathroom with me. Mum was chatting to a friend who worked at the cinema, so I was just hanging out at the start of the corridor leading to the bathrooms, waiting impatiently. Just to clarify, though, I was maybe seven here. So hanging around outside the bathroom, didn't make me look like a weirdo. I'm there waiting for mum to show up, eating little bits of popcorn while I wait when I see him. A huge tall guy in a long waxed raincoat.

I'm not sure if they're popular in the States, but here when I was a kid, they were called yuppie coats in my area. Very dark green long raincoats made of thick canvas materials. I guess rich people originally wore them, but now they were just typical outdoor coats. So this guy was wearing that

and had longish hair, and he looked maybe in his 50s or older, and, now I'll just reiterate here. This was back in the 90s, so it was before the popularity of gender fluidity and non-binary identities and whatnot. If you were trans, then you dressed often as a requirement for gender affirming treatment as the gender you wanted to be. Not my words, just trying to explain it, and the point is, this was a man. He was not making any attempts to appear as anything but a man. he walked straight down the bathroom corridor and into the ladies' toilets. I knew something felt very wrong about this, so I kept watching the door and thankfully mum showed up seconds later. I told her what I'd seen and she immediately went to get a

cinema employee. During this time, I did not move from my spot looking down the corridor. If this man had left the ladies' room, I would have seen him. So Mum gets back with the female cinema employee who goes into the bathroom, and she comes to her. comes out a few minutes later, looking at me strangely. There was no tall, hefty guy in a raincoat here. In fact, there was nobody in the bathroom at all. It was entirely empty. She asked me if maybe I'd been mistaken and he'd gone into the men's. I said I didn't think so. She knocked on the men's and then called in and when there was no answer, opened the door, and the men's bathroom was empty, too. She asked me if there was any chance that the man had left the bathroom in the meantime,

and I assured her that it was totally, utterly impossible, and I meant it. I don't know for sure what happened that day. What I do know is that I 100% definitely saw a large man go into the ladies' bathroom, and then the bathroom was empty the next time someone went into it. I am certain that he didn't leave through the door, or realize that he'd gone into the wrong bathroom and switched to the men's. I was watching intently because the whole thing obviously creep me out. What I do know, though, is that a couple of years later, the part of the ceiling of the cinema collapsed while people were in one of the screens watching a movie. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but it turned out there was a huge amount of space at the top of the building that spanned most of the area, and that it hadn't been

constructed very well, apparently, since it eventually collapsed. I know I saw a large, creepy-looking guy go into that bathroom, and I know he then disappeared. My theory is that he somehow knew how to get into the crawl space through a ceiling vent and then went off and did something. What and why I don't know. It's either that or my local cinema, which is still there to this day, albeit very much refurbished and higher quality, with a fixed ceiling, is haunted by the ghost of a large man who hangs around the bathrooms.

And honestly, I don't know which theory I prefer. I grew up in Greater Manchester in a single-parent family. It had always been me and my mom, so I never knew any different. As much as I sometimes get a bit sad that other girls had dads at home, I love my mom more than anything and I was grateful for her. As I got older, mom would tell me things about my dad, what he was like, what he enjoyed, and eventually how he died. I was still very young when she told me, young enough for her to have to really explain what she meant, saying, Daddy and his friends were in a sailboat on the sea, and a big wave came and knocked them off the boat. then daddy and his friends went underwater and that's when the angels came down and took them to heaven because it's nicer in heaven than it is on the bottom of the sea and it might sound a bit grim

but years later when i was watching sponge bob i used to think the sea doesn't look all that bad actually heaven must be brilliant but kids just say and think the funniest things don't they now heavy sarcasm is implied there and so yeah that's how i grew up basically Mom told me early enough for me to just get used to it, I suppose, so it didn't ever fill me with the angst or become the source of too much sadness for me. But then came the day when Mom told me the truth, and I'll be honest. That did change everything. As I've already touched on, Mom used to sometimes tell me about Dad,

but only good things, only ever the good things. He loved football. He loved a good Indian takeaway, and he'd worked for a building for a memorandum. ever since he'd left school at 16. He sounded like a nice guy. He always looked after Mum, and he definitely never did anything like hit her or cheat on her. But when she was pregnant with me, he went on a lad's holiday to Spain to enjoy the last of his freedom before I was born, and took a faithful boating trip. He went a little too far out to sea, the weather took a turn,

and that was that. Only, that wasn't that, because Mum only ever told me half the story. I was 23 when she asked me the question that kicked it all off, and I think I knew from the moment she asked me that something bad was coming. I was over at hers for a cup of tea and a ketchup when she asked me out of the blue. If there were things that I'd never told you about your dad, would you want to know them? I asked her what kind of thing she was talking about and immediately suspecting that it was less than wholesome stuff purely from the tone of her voice, and she told me that dad sometimes did stuff that she didn't approve of. She'd been wondering if I'd only wanted to know the good parts about my dad or the whole truth, like who he really was as a man.

She wouldn't think any less of me if I said no, but the offer was on the table. And of course I said yes. Of course I wanted to know the full picture. People are complicated and sometimes good people make bad decisions. I'm also not one to say something very moose. moody and pretentious like some truths are better off buried because i don't believe that at all and i'm glad she told me the truth for the most part anyway but i could never have been ready for what she was about to say and so i wasn't exactly a planned pregnancy you see mom and dad had loved each other

and knew they wanted kids and they were also very happy in their relationship so it was basically inevitable but when mom gave dad the news that she'd missed her period it hit him quite hard. He didn't take it hard, and from what Mom tells me, he was as happy as he was excited, but he definitely had this moment of, ah, crap, I need to get my life together. Mom said he wasn't the best at work, a good lad, but no one you'd consider for a promotion, so it looked like it was going to be quite a while before he got any serious money coming in. He got his head down and worked really hard, but Mom said that you could tell he was getting frustrated because he knew it would be a hard road.

But then, he comes home from the football one day with a spring in his step, and when Mum asks him what schemes he's got going, he gives her the old, never you mind. Mum said he acted like that for weeks, too, acting like he was the cock of the walk, smartest man in England. And then one day, that man disappeared. Not literally, of course, that came later, but the cheerful, smiley, happy-go-lucky version of Dad just disappeared.

Mom said he was acting like something terrible had happened. I mean, that level of sort of grief almost. She'd catch him staring off into space, eyes all wide and scared like something terrible is following him around. She'd ask him what was the matter, but he'd just sort of lie and tell her everything was fine, even though it was blatantly not. He stayed like that for about a week, didn't improve at all.

And then out of the blue, he tells Mum that he and his mate are going to Spain for that Lad's holiday, I mentioned, you know, to enjoy the last of his freedom. Mum's a bit surprised, but she thought that she understood his thought process. He was just mega-stressed about having me on the way and he needed some time to relax, so she just let him do his thing, and he flew out to Spain with his friend. And he was only supposed to be gone a week. But then a week went by, he didn't come home, and Mom started to get worried.

She got in touch with the police, and after telling them where Dad had gone, They reached out to the Spanish police who went out looking for him. The Spanish police then found that dad wasn't at any of the places he'd told Mom he was going. But while there was evidence of him entering the country using his passport, there was no evidence that he'd left. That at least narrowed things down a bit for them, so they started checking things like hospitals and jails in the area, just in case something had happened.

But they didn't find Dad anywhere. Mom said that she had to wait another week or so before she got the news and when came, she was devastated. A boat had washed up on a beach somewhere in southern Spain, and inside it were half a dozen empty sports bags and the bodies of two dead Englishmen, my dad, and his friend. Mum said two police liaison officers came to talk to her about it, the kind that come round to give you bad news.

They told her how dad and his friend had been shot at close range while out on a rented motorboat, which had then washed up on the beach after drifting at sea for some days. Neither the English or Spanish police knew exactly why Dad and his mate had been murdered, but they reckoned it probably had something to do with the cocaine residue they found in some of those empty sports bags. Mum was stunned, because not only was it unlike Dad to have anything to do with drugs, but the cocaine must have been the thing he'd been so excited about,

the thing that he thought was going to make him a load of money. It was a lot to handle, as you can imagine. Mum didn't think things could get any worse, but they did. It took a couple of weeks, but they got much, much worse. About a week after those two liaison officers popped around to talk to Mom, they called her back with some very unwelcome news. Greater Manchester Police had obtained a warrant to search our house, top to bottom, because they suspected Dad was involved in a murder that had happened before he himself was killed.

And Mom said the stress was so bad that she thought she might miscarry. She didn't, thank God, but it was that bad. All these policemen walking around the house, searching every nook and cranny for God knows what, it was awful for her, and it took ages before the police could tell her exactly what was going on. But when they did, it was even worse than she'd ever could have imagined. So around about the time Mom found that she was pregnant with me, Dad went into overdrive trying to bring more money in. Mum said that he looked into all sorts of stuff, all legal, of course,

but then he met a guy in a kebab house named Muzzi. Muzzy was short for Mustafa, and although Mustafa had moved from Turkey to Manchester many years before, he was an active figure in the local Turkish community and kept lots of contact with his relatives back home. Dad used to stop by his kebab shop sometimes after going to watch the football. And being the nice friendly guy that he was, especially after a few pints, Dad and Muzzy used to talk a lot.

He must have mentioned my mom being pregnant too and how he needed money because it was Muzzy who told him that if he could get him $10,000 in cash, he could turn it into a quarter of a million quid in just over a month. We knew all this because Dad texted his maid about it, the one who was killed with him. and the Spanish police got access to all the messages because they recovered his phone from the body. Anyway, Dad texted his mate asking if he's got five grand lying around to go halves with him on Muzzy's little investment plan. My dad's mate was obviously mega-sceptical about the whole thing.

Like my dad, he needed time to get that amount of cash together, and he wanted to meet Muzzy to discuss it before they handed it over. But after they did meet to talk it out, it was full steam ahead. Apparently, Muzzy had mates in the Turkish mafia who smuggled all kinds of illegal stuff into the UK. At the time, the British border authorities were stopping loads of their shipments coming through bigger ports, but that made it easier to smuggle smaller shipments of things like cannabis resin through smaller UK ports.

Through his mafia connections, the 10 grand in cash would buy a pretty sizable, but not easily detectable amount of product. That would then reach like 20 times the amount of cash once it would be. was sold to street dealers in the UK. All Muzzy wanted was a 50 grand handler's fee from the sales for getting everything up and running. And then my dad and his mate would have 100,000 pounds each, a pretty life-changing amount of money at that time. And so Dad and his mate get the money to Muzzy, he gets it to his mates in the Turkish mafia, and then everyone has to wait while the wheels are in motion. One week goes by, then two, and all the while Dad and his mate are getting

more and more excited. And then one day, Muzzy calls, but the news isn't good. The shipment, their shipment, was gone. He didn't get into too much detail. The ship had come in, the cargo had been unloaded, and then out of nowhere, a load of police swarmed the shipping container, and the product had been seized. There was nothing that could be done. The money was gone, but neither my dad nor his mate believed a single word of it. Muzzy had been going on for months about how it was a sure thing, how his mates in the Turkish mafia had been smuggling millions of pounds worth of cannabis resin without so much as a sniff from the police or border control. Then, the one time it's their money on the block, their shipment just gets jumped on.

According to the text messages between Dad and his friend, Dad had asked Mussey for proof the shipment had been seized. They couldn't exactly phone up and ask about the shipment container, but what they could do to make sure Muzzy was telling the truth, was call of the police and ask if a particular person had been arrested and held, because they've got to share that information with families of people or even reporters. Dad asked Muzzy, who brought the container in, and if they'd been arrested, but Muzzy claimed not to know any names aside from his mates in the mafia, and he's not giving those up for anything. He said if they confront another $10,000, they can try again, but aside from that, were out of luck. Personally, I think it was the last bit that really drove out around the bend.

He was absolutely convinced that Muzzy had robbed him, so all the offer of a second roll of dice was sort of like, I think you're that stupid that I reckon I can milk another $10,000 out of you. And he and his friend were furious. So they hatched a plan to get their $10K back from Muzzy. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very sophisticated plan, as all it involved was tying him up in a shed, and essentially torturing him until he confessed what he'd done. They told him that they were up for trying another shipment, only double this time to recoup their losses. Muzzy says okay, then agrees to meet them somewhere to pick up the cash,

and that's where Dad snatches him. He and his mate then tortured Mufaso with cigarette lighters, burning his bound hands and feet, but Muzzy wouldn't confess. They kept going, beating him up and burning him, and he gave them his bank details so they could take whatever money was in his account, but he still wouldn't confess to scamming them. The police don't know exactly what happened next, but Dad didn't end up taking any money, and Muzzy's body was found a few weeks later, so we think Muzzy died somehow while being

tortured, and Dad was forced to dispose of his body. That's why they didn't touch his account, because emptying it would point the finger of suspicion at them if Muzzy's body was ever actually found. After that, Dad and his friend made a drastic decision. They were going to fly over to southern Spain, to a place where you could buy cocaine being smuggled in from Colombia, then get the train from there to Madrid, to Barcelona, and then to Paris, so they could get the ferry from Dover to Calais and avoid the much stricter airline security.

I don't know how solid a plan that was, but it obviously didn't. go down for my dad like that because after meeting someone out at sea on this little rented motorboat, he and his friend either got double crossed right there or had their cocaine stolen when they were on their way back to land. The empty bags with the cocaine residue makes me think that it was the second one that they got intercepted somehow. Because of the people they bought from one of them dead, why toss empty bags into their boat? It doesn't add up. I think they were found by someone else, someone who either preys in the small boats that do dodgy deals in the straits of Gibraltar or someone they'd really, really pissed off, i.e. the Turks. You see, Muzzy was innocent.

The police were able to confirm that a shipment of cannabis had been seized at Falmouth Harbor, so Muzzy wasn't lying, and my dad had tortured him for nothing. I just picture these Turkish gangsters already annoyed that their shipment got seized and then one of their associates gets kidnapped and tortured. You wouldn't give a toss if his death was accidental. You'd want the people responsible dead. No one knows exactly how they tracked my dad and his mate down, but when there's two English guys wandering around southern Spain asking around to buy cocaine, I suppose it doesn't take long for word to reach the wrong ears. I wrestled with the truth for quite a while afterwards because obviously, hearing all that changed the way that I thought about my dad.

I don't hate him. I still love him even though I've never met him, but I do think he was stupid. I know he did what he did out of love for me and my mom, and there's a small part of me that loves and respects him for that. But a much bigger part of me wishes he'd stuck to something much safer and much more legal. Because if he had, I'd still have a dad. When I was in college in the mid-2000s, I joined the A.V. Club. One of the many A.V. club activities involved having an every other week movie night.

where a chosen curator would show two movies on the projector in our auditorium and give a little speech about their choices afterwards. I guess the main purpose was to familiarize ourselves with the equipment, which was kind of the point of the club. But I think for most of us, A.V. Club came second to movie club. I know it was my highlight anyway, at least until it wasn't. The A.V. Club president was called John Weiss, and we've been friends since elementary school.

our parents were friends he and i were friends and our friends were friends and i won't lie i love john you know the rapper little dicky that guy reminds me so much of john especially in his show dave john was smart hilarious and growing up he was sort of like a brother to me and yeah you can kind of see where this is going can't you to me he was like my brother from another mother to him he was relegated to a certain zone for friends and i had absolutely no idea Just no clue whatsoever that he had feelings for me. I know people don't often believe when we say this, and maybe in a lot of cases it's true, but here I genuinely did not. In fact, not to rub salt in the wound, but I was pretty sure that he was gay.

I mean, the first movie that he showed at A.V. Club was Listomania, for Christ's sake, in a double feature with Schindler's List to give me an idea of his sense of humor. In fact, I was so sure that he was gay that I had a running joke. with my close friend Tommy that John had a crush on him. It was one of those jokes where you say it because you have a crush on that person. And it turns out that Tommy reciprocated and we got together and despite him being a jock and me being an AV club geek, we soon became blah blah college hottest freshman couple. It turns out Tommy reciprocated and we got together. And despite him being a jock and me being an AV club geek, we soon became blah blah, blah college hottest freshman

couple. Now anyway, AV Movie Club went well for like a year or more. Things with John and the rest of the gang went well as well, and things with Tommy went great. I've been kind of a wallflower in high school, a theater kid but a behind the scenes type, a bit of a plain Jane who wasn't into things like makeup or fashion, etc. In college, I guess I kind of blossomed. And hell was I going to make the most of it with my jock boyfriend who looked like a superhero but was as nerdy as me. And what I mean is, we made love a lot. No, I'm sorry, TMI, but this is relevant, I promise. A.V. Movie Club was always on a Friday.

In this case, it was April Friday the 13th. Unlucky for some, huh? And it was John's turn to host again. He set up the projector and took the stage. He told us that in the spirit of Friday the 13th, we were going to be watching Friday the 13th Part 5, which according to him was the best one. But first, we were going to watch an indie horror movie that he'd been very lucky to acquire.

I forget exactly what he implied, but it was enough to have all of us excited. And without further ado, John returned to the projector at the back, dimmed the lights, and rolled the movie. It began with shaky handy-cam footage of someone walking through the undergrowth. You could hear loud, eerie breathing. And then an 80s-looking title card briefly appeared. It said, Heart Eater. I could feel a strange ringing in my ears. Something about what was happening on screen was making me deeply uncomfortable.

The dorm building was familiar. Very familiar. It was Tommy's dorm. But wait, of course it was familiar. This was an indie horror film filmed on campus. We'd recognize everything we saw, obviously. The creeper with the camera crunched his way around the back of the building. There was a light snowfall in the ground so I could tell that this had been filmed back in

February. This was very indie. No boom mic, no sound crew, just the built-in mic on what I was sure was the AV Club camcorder. And I felt a sinking feeling as that camera creep began to approach a certain ground floor window. Somehow I'd known this was coming, though. I even knew exactly when this had been filmed and what was soon to happen. What I didn't know was just how much had been captured on camera. Still breathing heavily, camera creeps snuck up to Tommy's window. Back then, we were young, dumb, and horny, and sometimes when the mood took us, we'd be all over each other without being 100% careful about her privacy. The window in Tommy's room looked out into the woods anyhow and nobody ever went back there. And what I'm saying is, the day this

heart eater movie had been filmed, Tommy and I had begun to get carried away, getting hot and heavy, without making sure that the curtains were closed. I won't describe the ten-minute scene that we were forced to sit through. I am grateful that the filmmaker masked our identities by using some kind of film distortion technique to make our faces look inhuman, like it was part of the narrative. It painted a clear picture that the fornicating couple were in some way the villains here, despite the presence of the camera creep,

breathing heavily and struggling to hold the camera steady as he focused on us. Unfortunately, the film. filmmaker did not show the same approach to anonymity towards our bodies as he did our faces. Everything was on display. Next to me, I could feel Tommy tensing, getting ready to leap up and throw hands. I pressed his thigh, and I shook my head. See, here was the problem. Nobody else knew it was us.

By this point, obviously I'd started to suspect that the filmmaker, camera creep, was actually John. But he'd blurred our faces. He'd stylized the shot so you couldn't identify. Tommy's room, or even if you could, nobody at A.V. Club would have been in his dorm room anyway as far as I knew. I doubted any of them even knew which dorm building he stayed in. So, if we said anything at all, we'd basically be revealing to everyone that this adult film on display was us. I knew how the scene ended because I remembered that day. Tommy had been

convinced that he heard someone outside the window and had dived but naked to challenge that intruder. And now I got to see it from camera creep's perspective. He'd been filming through the corner of the window, clearly pretty well hidden, and as soon as he sensed Tommy reacting, he began to run into the forest. Then, to give him credit, he did make this scene pretty tense and eerie. He filmed from behind a tree as Tommy digitally altered to look like some kind of inhuman glitch being pulled shut the curtains. I could feel Tommy shaking with rage, beside me. But what could we do? I didn't want these people to know it was my naked body they've been watching in this art house indie horror, nor did Tommy, thankfully. Instead, we just sat there

through the final scene. In it, camera creep filmed himself in the mirror. It was John, of course, I could tell, but he wore one of those blank faceless mass. There was no dialogue in the movie. Instead, he put the camera down and, in lipstick, wrote on the mirror that his heart had been eaten. Then he removed his shirt to show an admittedly impressive fake wound where his heart should have been. He reached up and touched the wound, then the mask and began to remove it. Once the mask was gone, it revealed his face was all glitchy like ours had been, cut to black, end credits comprising a handful of names that were completely fabricated. Honestly, for a terrible college art house horror movie, it wouldn't have been that bad.

The AV Movie Club gave it a bunch of awkward applause. The problem was, only myself, Tommy, and John. I hoped it was just us three anyway, knew that it was in fact a revenge film for an unrequitted crush that this guy must have harbored towards me for who knew how long. It was pretty easy to work out the motive from the name of the movie and the plot. The only way to challenge this would be to out ourselves to everyone else. So for that, That night, instead of revealing John for the creep that he was, we just sat there and watched Friday the 13th Part 5 with the rest of the gang and pretended that the most horrifying, surreal, creepy experience of our lives hadn't just taken place. But don't worry, there was a final act. Neither Tommy nor I planned to let it go.

And so that night, we slipped away, quietly depriving John of the confrontation he'd likely been gearing up for. You can decide for yourself if we did the right thing. I know we didn't handle it like adults, and I won't pretend we did, but I also don't regret it, not even a little. What we did was simple. We acted like we had no idea what he was talking about. Every time John brought up the footage or tried to gauge our reactions, we just sort of blinked, confused.

He started acting like a dog that expected to get kicked every time someone walked by, but that kick never came. We kept showing up to A.V. Club like nothing happened. And nearly a year went by. We figured that was enough time to convince him that the storm had passed, that nothing was coming. And that's when we made our move. And by then we were sophomores. The club had grown, packed with new freshman faces, and eventually it was my turn to host a screening night.

I picked two long slow burn films that would run late into the night. long enough that when John walked home to his off-campus apartment, he didn't live in the dorms anymore. It would be well past midnight. Tommy and I lived in the opposite directions, so we had built-in alibis, and even if John had suspected something, what was he going to say? That he was being targeted because of something he'd filmed illegally over a year ago? What we did wasn't direct.

We found a local message board and posted under a throwaway account, and we said that there was a guy who, had been creeping around campus, trying to lure girls into his car. We described John in vague but recognizable detail. We gave a location, a time, and we said that we were planning to confront him and needed backup. We said to wear a mask, so nobody could identify each other, and we said that we'd be there, too. Well, we weren't. We stayed far away. There was a chance no one would show up. There was a chance someone would go too far, and yes, sometimes I still think about that, about how we dangled something like bait, but we didn't lie. John was a predator. We just gave the facts

and let other people's anger do the rest. The next day, words spread fast. John had been followed, cornered and humiliated, stripped and tied to a lamp post, wallet gone, phone smashed. No serious injuries, but enough to make a point. Campus police ruled it to mugging. John didn't offer much detail, probably because he had no way of knowing who was behind it. Or maybe he did and just couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. And we never talked about it again. What John did to us was despicable, but the way we handled it, maybe that was too. Maybe we became something else in the process. Villains in a story nobody else ever heard. And do I regret it? Not entirely. There's still a part of me that thinks justice was done, even if it came wearing a different

face. In the small city of Amstetten in Lower Austria, there stands a gray three-story building consisting of a regular family home and an attached apartment building. It's a rather odd structure to perceive, a combination of old and new that sit in subtle contrast with one another. But for its owner, the structure constituted his life's work. The owner, a retired electrical engineer had the apartment building constructed in 1978 and even included a rooftop garden for the third floor apartment.

Tenets reported him being reserved and polite yet, He was also exceptionally strict, and of the many rules the building's owner enforced, the strictest of all was that which forbade tenants from entering the building's basement. You see, the owner of the building was a man named Joseph Fritzel, and he had a dark, dark secret. Joseph Fritzel was born in Amstetten on April 9th of 1935. His father, Joseph's senior, abandoned his young family when Joseph was just four years old. Then five years later, his older brother was killed in action fighting for the Germans during World War II. This left Maria, his mother, to raise little Joseph alone, who later claimed that she was both physically and emotionally abusive.

At 18, Joseph began attending the H.T.L. Technical College, graduating in 1956 with a degree in electrical engineering. And it was also around this time that he married a 17-year-old girl named Rose Marie. Over the years that followed, Joseph and Rosemarie would go on to have three sons and four daughters, including Elizabeth, who was born April 6th of 1966. But just one year after the baby girl's birth, her father began to exhibit some shocking changes in his behavior. In 1967, Fritzel began stalking a 24-year-old nurse in the nearby city of a city of a city of lens. He kept his distance for a while, hiding in plain sight among crowded city streets. But then one day, having discovered the woman's husband was away from home, he broke into her

house, held a knife to her throat, and then violated her. Fritzel was also said to be a suspect in the assault of another 20-year-old woman, as well as a case of indecent exposure reported around the same time. He was arrested, then put on trial for his crimes, but shockingly, An Austrian judge sentenced him to a mere 18 months in prison, of which Fritzel only served 12. Following his release from prison, Fritzel was employed by an Amstetten construction firm, and then later worked as a traveling salesman. Unsurprisingly, his shockingly short prison sentence had done nothing to reform him, and in 1977 he did something unthinkable,

and began physically abusing his 11-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. And this abuse continued for six long years. Then after completing her compulsory education at the age of 16, Elizabeth began a vocational course which focused on the food and beverage industry. This required Fritzel to grant his daughter more and more freedom. Freedom she thoroughly took advantage of. As just a few months after beginning the course, she fled to the Austrian capital of Vienna in the company of a friend.

Sadly, since Elizabeth was seen, still 16 and not legally an adult in the eyes of the law, she was returned to her family after being tracked down by federal police. Some believe that, as a way of averting another escape attempt, Elizabeth's return prompted her authoritarian father to become more lenient. But if that was indeed his new approach, it was nothing but a ploy. By the summer of 1984, a now 18-year-old Elizabeth had completed her vocational course and had been offered in nearby Linz. Fritzel knew that he was going to lose her, that there was no way in hell his daughter turned victim would volunteer to stay, and so he got to work. For months, Fritzel began working

on a not-so-secret project in the basement of his home. He undertook such projects so often that it appears not even Elizabeth had any suspicion of his plans. Then on August 28th of 1984, For Fritzel asked her for assistance in carrying a door down into the basement. Elizabeth obliged her father, then after picking up one end of the door, she helped him carry it into a small windowless room that looked almost like a makeshift prison cell. She began to panic and asked if she could exit the basement. Her father responded by clamping an ether-soaked towel over her face before sealing her prison cell closed with the very same door she helped to carry.

Once she realized her teenage daughter was missing, Rose Marie Fritzel filed a missing person's report with the local police department. Detectives opened an investigation into Elizabeth's disappearance, but just over a month later, Fritzel approached law enforcement with a handwritten letter. Purported to be from Elizabeth, the letter had been postmarked in the town just less than a hundred miles away, and explained that she was tired of living with her family. confirmed to have been written in the girl's handwriting, the letter also explained that any attempt to find her would result in her fleeing the country. Fritzel told police that he believed his daughter had joined some kind of new-age cult. In reality, she had been forced to write the letter whilst being held in her father's basement. Over the next two decades, Fritzel entered

the basement on an almost daily basis, supplying his daughter with food and other essentials before violating her repeatedly. Since Fritzel made no attempt to use contraceptive devices, Elizabeth gave birth to a total of seven children throughout the 24 years of her captivity. One passed away not long after childbirth, but three of them, Lisa, Monica, and Alexander, were allowed to live with Fritzel and his wife following the approval of local child protective services. This was only possible due to Fritzel's previous conviction being expunged, as at the

time, even despicable crimes like violation of others were stricken from the record after 25 years. Fritzel explained to the authorities, who were already under the impression that Elizabeth had joined a cult, that she simply did not wish to raise her own children. To confirm they were fit parents, the authorities sent out social workers on several different occasions, but not a single one saw or heard anything suspicious, and after a few months, the visit ceased. In 1994, and following the birth of his fourth child by incest, Fritzel decided to enlarge the underground cell housing his now 28-year-old daughter and their first three children. He put Elizabeth and the children to work, making them dig out soil with their bare hands

until more than 200 square feet had been added to their lodgings. It's also believed their work was incentivized by the additions of amenities such as a CD player, then later a television with an integrated video cassette player. Fritzel then installed a refrigerator and hot plate in the basement so that Elizabeth could cook and feed their children at her leisure. He also charged her with the children's education and punished her failures by shutting off their power or refusing to bring them food. On one such occasion, Elizabeth threatened an escape attempt.

Fritzel responded by saying that if any such attempt took place, he would flood the basement with carbon monoxide and suffocate them. He later claimed to have electrified the door to their cell, and that any attempts to free themselves would result in sudden and fatal electric shocks. This was later determined to be untrue. Fritzel had rigged up no such fatal mechanisms, yet the prospect terrified Elizabeth, and along with their captive children,

Kirsten, Stephan, and Felix, such threats ensured their continual compliance. As you can imagine, Fritzel spent a considerable amount of time in the company of his captive second family, but he did so without drawing suspicion through what one social worker described as a plausible explanation. Fritzel told his wife and tenants that the basement constituted his office, and since he drew up plans for devices intended for use by multi-million dollar manufacturing companies, his work had to be kept secret from potential corporate spies. In order to maintain the ruse, Fritzel went so far as to create what was ostensibly an active workshop in his basement

and concealed the entrance to Elizabeth's living quarters behind a total of eight electronically locked doors. These doors could only be opened using a remote control Fritzel carried on his person, giving Fritzel much-needed peace of mind, but that didn't mean there weren't a couple of close calls. One night, one of Fritzel's tenants claimed to have heard a noise coming from the, basement. Fritzel promised to investigate, then returned saying that he'd fix some faulty pipes and that the tenant wouldn't be hearing any more noises. For 24 years, Fritzel kept his second family a deep, dark secret, and the level of security he employed gave him no reason to suspect his scheme would come to light. Until one day, something happened that changed everything.

On the morning of April 19, 2008, Fritzel entered the basement to find that Kirsten, his eldest daughter from Elizabeth, had become severely ill. Elizabeth begged her father to allow Kirsten to be taken to the hospital. Fearful that she might die, he agreed. Elizabeth then helped him carry Kirsten upstairs, whereupon she saw the outside world for the first time in her young life. The girl was then taken to the hospital by ambulance after. her mother was forced back into their cell. At Amstetten, Kirsten was discovered to be suffering

from a life-threatening kidney infection. Yet while Fritzel tried his best to explain the events leading up to her illness, doctors began noticing glaring inconsistencies in a story. For example, Fritzel didn't seem to know how many children he had. He also presented doctors with a note written by Kirsten's mother, Elizabeth, after claiming to have severed all contact with her. The police were alerted, and on April 21st of 2008, they broadcasted a public appeal for information regarding Elizabeth and her whereabouts. Fritzel once again asserted that Elizabeth had run off to join a cult, and went so far as to name the cult and gave police a description of their practices. Yet when officers contacted and acclaimed expert on the occult, Manfred Wolfert, he claimed that he had no knowledge of any such organization, fictional, or, or otherwise. Yet when officers contacted an acclaimed expert on the occult, Manfred

Volfart, he claimed no knowledge of any such organization, fictional, or otherwise. Yet on the contrary, and after examining letters supposedly written by Elizabeth, he had noticed some rather familiar indicators regarding her writing. Firstly, and despite being a woman in her late 20s, Elizabeth seemed to possess the vocabulary of someone three times her age. Secondly, there seemed to be a pattern of unusually large spaces between every third or fourth word, suggesting the girl had taken her pen off the page to listen out for someone's dictation. In other words, someone had either forced Elizabeth to write the letter or had a great deal of say in what was written.

As police decided to reopen the now-decade's old investigation into a, Elizabeth Fritzel's disappearance, Fritzel returned to the basement and tried to calm his terrified daughter. Elizabeth seemed convinced that little Kirsten would pass away and demanded to be at her child's bedside in order to comfort her. It's here that Fritzel made his first, but ultimately fatal error in his despicably evil scheme, in that he believed that he could come between a mother and her child. Many believe grave threats were exchanged, that a usual placid Elizabeth became vicious in the face of her father's denials. It's unclear exactly what was said during the exchange, but what we do know is that on April 26th of 2008, he released Elizabeth and their two sons,

Stefan and Felix, and then brought them upstairs to join the rest of the family. Elizabeth headed straight for the hospital and possibly in the hopes of containing the situation, Fritzel followed. But once he was there and following a tip-off from suspicious doctors, police detained both Fritzel and his daughter, then took them away for questioning. At the police station, Elizabeth issued officers with a shocking prerequisite to her cooperation. She would only answer their questions if they could guarantee that under no circumstances whatsoever, would she ever have to lay eyes on her father ever again. Then, and only then, did she begin to tell the story of her 24 years in captivity. Perhaps one of the worst details officers heard that day was Elizabeth's explanation of how

her father would violate her in the presence of their children. He would show them adult entertainment using the video cassette player, then would force Elizabeth to reenact what they saw on screen while the children watched nearby. Fritzel was swiftly arrested before his family members were taken into care. Then the following night, investigators gained access to the underground prison cell using the secret keyless entry code, gazing in horror at the construction's crude sophistication. On April 29, two days after Fritzel was taken into custody, DNA evidence confirmed him as the biological father of Elizabeth's children.

Her mother claimed no knowledge whatsoever of her kidnap or detention. Police believed Fritzel had been planning to fake his daughter's rescue from the fictitious cult he'd blamed her disappearance on. But pursuant to the agreement that she would never have to see her father again, Elizabeth gave a videotaped testimony on July 11th, categorically disproving any such claim. Prior to his trial, Fritzel claimed every intimate interaction with his daughter was entirely consensual. but he still knew what he was doing was wrong. An extract from a communication with his lawyer read, I always knew during the whole 24 years that what I was doing was not right,

and then I must have been crazy to do such a thing, yet it became a normal occurrence to lead a second life in the basement of my house. Regarding his treatment of the family he had with his wife, Fritzel stated, I am not the beast the media make me out to be. Then, with the regards to his treatment of Elizabeth and her children in the cellar, Lee explained that he brought her flowers, as well as books and toys for the children in what he referred to as the bunker. Fritzel also mentioned watching movies with his second family, but conveniently failed to specify their content. When asked why he'd chosen

to imprison Elizabeth, Fritzel was frank in his explanation that she did not adhere to any rules once she became a teenager. That's why I had to do something, he said. I had to create a place where I could keep Elizabeth by force if necessary, away from the outside world. Fritzel also implied that the emphasis on discipline following the Germans' annexation of Austria, which occurred when he was just a toddler, heavily influenced his authoritarian views regarding obedience to the family patriarch. When asked about his mother, Fritzel spoke at length saying she was the best woman in the world, and, as strict as it was necessary to be with a boy of his nature.

He did, however, claim his mother used to beat him until he was, quote, lying in a pool of blood on the floor. It left me feeling totally humiliated and weak, he explained. My mother was a servant, and she used to work hard all of her life. I never had a kiss from her, and I never cuddled, although I wanted it. I wanted her to be good to me. But she called me a demon, a criminal, and a no-good. I had a horrible fear of her. Naturally, investigators believe that Fritzel's relationship with his mother explained his maladaptation

and what he told them thus far was merely the tip of the iceberg. In 1959, Fritzel and Rosemary had been married for almost two years when Fritzel's mother asked to move in with them. She was getting older and needed her son's help and caring for herself, so initially Fritzel played the part of the dutiful son. He moved her into his attic, kept her comfy for a while. while, but over time, his treatment of her began to change. He began talking back to her and ignoring her requests, becoming more and more insolent as time went by. Until one day, his mother realized he was enacting a slow but terrible revenge. Fritzel fed his mother less and less food and allowed her less sunlight until eventually she was too weak to move. He bricked up

her window and formed their neighbors she'd passed away, then gleefully told her own mother that the world outside thought she was dead. She was his first prisoner, the first woman he'd exercised complete and under control over, and when she passed away in 1980, it's believed she remained a prisoner in the attic for up to 12 years straight. In a report by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Adelaide Kastner, who conducted extensive interviews with Fritzel, he described how his subject believed his pathological behavior was innate, as in he was born bad. Fittzel claimed to have always harbored evil thoughts, but that the plan to imprison Elizabeth came to him while he was serving his prison sentence back in 1967.

He believed it would be a way of containing his, quote, evil side, saying, I was born to hurt women, and I held myself back for a relatively long time. I could have behaved a lot worse than just locking up my own dog. daughter. Dr. Castner swiftly diagnosed Fritzel as having a severe combined personality disorder and recommended he received psychiatric care for the remainder of his natural life. Finally, on March 19th of 2009, after a harrowing four-day trial, Fritzel pleaded guilty to the charges of the murder by negligence of his infant son and grandson Michael, as well as decades of enslavement, incest, violation, coercion, and false imprisonment.

He was sentenced to life in prison, but has recently been moved from a high-security psychiatric unit to a irregular prison, whereby he can live out the rest of his life in relative comfort. According to a statement from an Austrian court, the now 89-year-old Fritzel no longer poses the same level of danger that required him to be kept in a secure psychiatric unit. They added that due to progressive dementia and physical frailty, he is, quote, no longer likely to commit a criminal offense with serious consequences. But can a man such as Joseph Fritzel truly be anything other than a clear and present danger to those around him,

or will those like him always pose an imminent and irredeemable threat to the most vulnerable in society? So some years ago, I worked as a cleaner at a local reasonably large theater in my city. Things weren't as bad back then as they are now, but holy gosh darn, even back. Even back before the old Rona, theater goers were just filthy animals. And sometimes it was fine, but on an average Friday night showing, I'd spend hours cleaning up copious amounts of popcorn, spilled soda, candy, and chocolate wrappers, melted chocolate bars, all sorts. And sometimes it would be things that we didn't even sell.

I once found a seat stuck together by a full, untouched bologna sandwich. And I swear I'd watch the theater goers head into the movie, and there would be more food to clean up than they took with them in the first place. And that was the good times. You don't even know with the amount of vile, unspeakable things that I had to scrub away with the aid of rubber gloves, a hard bristled brush, an industrial strength detergent. Let's just say, people are disgusting, yo. I guess it came as a shock at first, because my mama raised me right and good

and taught me to clean up after my own damn self. And we also grew up poor, and me and my mom. mother and younger brother Tyrell, so if I bought a hot dog, then I was damn well going to eat that hot dog, not just squash it into a cup holder. Now, believe it or not, though, the disgusting hygiene and cleanliness of others isn't the point of the scary story. It's about one night when I was working very late. I think it was a midnight showing of hereditary. Midnight showings at our theater actually meant that it hit midnight around the halfway point, so by the time the movie was done and everyone had filed out, I was there to clean up close to 2 a.m.

Thankfully, it didn't seem too chaotic. I went about my business with my trash bag, my little grabby claw, and my bucket on wheels filled with the usual equipment. And so movie theaters get lit up after a movie's been shown, right? Well, in our movie theater anyways, after a midnight showing, they just kind of kept the lights dim. I guess they were just too cheap to give the poor cleaning girl full clear vision, who knows. But I was cool with it. I'd caught the tail end of the movie and it gave me the spook, so I was kind of enjoying the atmosphere of a half-lit movie theater as I went about cleaning up. Then movement caught my eye. Something sort of skittering across the aisle near the front, from one row to the other side. And I'd say this like a spider, but it was the size

of a human being, like someone had rapidly crawled from one side of row C to the other. uh anyone there i called out praying to the lord above that there wouldn't be a reply and there wasn't of course there must have been my imagination i guess so i just went back to cleaning and then no mistaking it rustling from near isle e the sound of popcorn crunching underfoot and i'd know that sound anywhere what the hell should i do i thought I had no idea who was left in that theater that late at night, and for all I knew, it was just me and our old-ass manager. I heard a sound from across the theater. It was hard to tell in the gloom, but it looked like someone had thrown a soda cup across the room. Then, while my gaze was pointed in that direction, a shadow darted over the seats near the front of the screen. More crunching sounds, and then suddenly silence.

I began to creep slowly as I could toward the exit door, and for a moment I thought I'd screwed myself when my shoe got stuck on some sticky soda spill, and I grabbed the sheet shaking it somewhat. It was silence, and I made it almost to the exit, and then I heard more skittering lower down the room. I stayed very still, waiting, pretending like I'd left. A shape crawled along the aisle, and this time I was. I saw them very clearly. It was a person, a thin, emaciated-looking person dragging themselves commando-style across the aisle. Oh, hell no. Hell to the no. I wasn't sticking around for this.

I'm just going to back out real slowly. I called out into the darkness. But a voice spoke back. I have no idea what she said. It was in a language that I honestly couldn't really tell what it was, and it didn't sound threatening, though, almost scared. I called out asking if the person was okay, but no reply. But I could hear them moving around, and it sounded like they were getting closer, and I didn't like that. My plan was to leave and call the cops. But then that figure, the person, fully leaped over the seats,

hurtling forward over the next aisle, too, leaping straight for me. They were yelling something, something I couldn't. understand, but they didn't sound scared anymore. I kind of froze, not sure which direction to go. Wright would lead me to the aisle and let me leave the theater. But in the half-darkness, this figure charging at me, leaping over chairs, I was not thinking straight. When she was just an aisle away, I saw that she was some Caucasian girl, looked like a teenager. She had short, Filthy blonde hair, her face was dirty, and she had ketchup and mustard smeared around her mouth. This young white lady had been crawling around eating the vile leftovers off the theater floor.

It's funny how your mind acts in a pinch, because my immediate thought was pity for this hungry, emaciated teenager. And like I said, I grew up poor and I sympathized. But my moment of empathy caused me to freeze, and she leaped over the final eye. aisle and was on top of me. I don't think she wanted to hurt me. I think she just hadn't understood me and wanted to make sure that she could escape without me somehow restraining her. But still, she threw me back against the seat hard and I heard my spine even crack in a way that made me wince. Now, don't worry, I'm fine. It was just kind of like cracking a knuckle as it turns out. And then this chick was sort of shaking me, spit flying onto my face. She's kind of yelling,

sort of begging in whatever language she was talking in, and so I did the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed her head with both my hands and turned her face toward a whole pile of popcorn on the floor and just yelled, eat it, hoping that she'd get the point that I was just going to let her. And she did. She jumped off of me, went toward that popcorn,

and just began pouring it into her own face. Now, this psycho had scared me, but I didn't have it in my heart to get some teenage runaway busted by the cops. And maybe this was a dumb idea. But you hear about young girls running away like this for a good reason and then end up being sent back to places that ruin them forever. So I let her eat for a minute and then just kind of poked her gently with my trash grabber claw. Hey, you got to go.

I told her, gesturing at the exit door at the back which led outside. She starts shaking her head and just kept shoveling that popcorn into her mouth. Boss is going to be here any minute. You got to go. I said, gesturing again, hoping she understood enough English to at least comprehend what I was saying. And I guess she did, because she takes one final scoop of popcorn and then just starts running towards the exit door. And it was only later that I realized how much damn danger I just put myself in and how potentially stupid I'd been to. in that moment. I never told anyone about this incident, but I had nightmares about it for weeks. Only in those nightmares, she wasn't some harmless girl from Eastern Europe or wherever she was

from. She was a demon crawling between the aisles, eating its way through the seats. I'm pretty sure I even saw her again once. It was a couple of years later, shortly before I left the theater to move on to bigger, better things. And she was there on, I guess, a date? The guy she was with, he didn't look like a good kind of person, not at all. And I guess you shouldn't just judge a book by its cover, but he gave me really bad vibes. And to this day, I wonder if he was someone that she met on the streets or someone she'd been sent back home to. All I know is cleaning movie theaters at night can be a freaking terrifying thing. I see the TikToks and the YouTube shorts of the way people leave things and I just sort of laugh because, girls, if that's as bad as it

gets for you, then you're lucky. Because I learn that day, sometimes there's more to be afraid of than finding a squished hot dog in your theater aisle. just a quick story for you here i found you through a podcast and saw you took submissions on this youtube so i thought i issued you a quick email a couple of years back after the lockdowns here in the uk had lifted and everyone was desperate to get back to the movie theaters again my family and i decided to go so the hubby and i decided that we let our kids pick the movie never again though they pick this crap called Shazam, Furry of the Gods or something, which was a sequel to a movie that we hadn't seen in the Batman series or something like that. However, they were absolutely adamant that it was

the new Captain Marvel movie. Needless to say, it was not, so they were restless and angry right from the get-go. At the time, my boy was eight and my girl was six. I'm guessing my family weren't the only ones bored by the movie because, close to the front, a group of teens were being fairly obnoxious, using their phones and just generally being a bit rowdy. Normally, I'm the first to criticize their behavior, but this movie was so bad and so hard to follow that I'm not sure that I really could blame them too much. There was a woman up front, closer to them, who seemed to be there with a guy. I can't tell if he was her adult son or if she was just a cougar, but I think it was the latter.

Now, anyways, in fairness, the teens were close to her than they were to us, and maybe she was a really big fan of this Shazam character, and this was her most awaited film of the year. Now, I still think that she could have just tried asking those teens to pipe down and put their phones away, though. Instead, and kid you not, she jumped up from her seat, vaulted over into the next aisle, and then walked up behind the boys, screaming, shut up, and then proceeds to grab one of the team's phones. He swung around in his seat, and I guess something in the woman's eyes spooked him because he began frantically apologizing. This teenage boy was terrified of this Karen. Honestly, I didn't blame him. She was pretty intimidating. And Karen was having none of it.

She flung the boy's phone down and from the sound she stamped on it. One of his friends, a bigger kid, started squaring up to the Karen and began climbing over the seat. And that's when she reached into her handbag that she'd been carrying and pulled out what looked like a long wooden brush. And with this big swing, she clocked this kid straight in the jaw with a goddamn back scrubber or something. She's hit him so hard that the stick literally broke, and the brushhead part when flying off into the dark auditorium. At that point, chaos ensued. Kids were wailing, adults were screaming. The adult son slash Karen's boy toy was rushing over to try and de-escalate the situation.

And I just simply grabbed my family, ushered them into the foyer, and told ushered them, the cinema employees that a woman was going mad in there and had just assaulted a kid with a weapon. There was no way that I was sticking around to witness what played out. We fled from the movie theater and drove home. And I saw on the local paper the next day that an altercation had occurred in that cinema and I was never able to find any more about it. I'm guessing she was rich and paid the kid off for something like that to keep it out of the court or I don't know, but it was an absolutely terrifying thing to witness. Horrible. Yes, but on the plus side, at least we didn't have to sit through the rest of that movie.

show in the movie was the silence of the lambs. I didn't know much about it, and I hadn't read the book. All I knew was that my buddy had told me that it was gnarly and that we had to go. And then when the time came, he canceled on me an hour before the movie started and I just decided to go by myself. There wasn't an empty seat in the house, though. The commercials had started as I made my way down the aisle and squeezed along the row to my seat. A few mutters and mumbles from the moviegoers, I squished past, and then I finally just jumped into my seat. Now, the guy next me was wearing a very thick old coat, and what I actually recognized to be a tribly,

even though it was spring and the theater was fairly stuffy. I apologized for bumping into him, and I thought that I heard some sort of grunt or belch or whatever, gross. And so I just sat there, and my God, the guy's body odor was not pleasant. I took a deep inhale of my popcorn and hoped that, that would help, and by the time the movie started it it got easier to just ignore the guy. Now, Silence of the Lamb starts off as a very tense movie and only gets more tense from there. Occasionally, I felt my theater neighbor's shoulder brush against mine and kind of

nudge him back over to the left. I couldn't hear any snoring, but I was sure that I could feel the occasional vibration of a snore at least. And in the end, as the movie got more and more terrifying and gripping, the act of nudging the guy off my shoulder became kind of instinct. I ate my popcorn and nachos, finished my soda, and I somehow made it through the whole movie without needing to get up and use the bathroom, which was great because imagine how many people would have made angry in the crowded theater. And that's why when the movie ended and I was stuck there in the middle of the center aisle, surrounded on all sides by crowds, I decided to just wait it out. I watched all the credits until the lights started to go up and it looked like I had a clear path to the right from which I could actually exit. but that's when I noticed something. The guy next to me was still there.

I didn't want to just leave him there asleep, and it would kind of suck if he missed the entire movie, too. So I gave him on the tap of the shoulder saying, Hey, buddy, you okay? Now, I'm sure you, let's read, listeners, have worked out the twist here. As I gently nudged his shoulder, the man, or should I say his body,

slumped over to the left, and his hat fell off. In the rising lights of the theater, I could see it now. This dude was dead. D-E-A-D, absolutely stone-cold dead. I don't mean he'd drop dead in the last ten minutes either. I mean, I'd clearly been sitting next to a corpse for the entire showing of that movie. So how did he make a sound? Why was I sure that I could hear and feel him?

Now, cops kind of explained this to me later, and when I first saw, nudged him, I'd likely just cause some gas to escape his body. And during the point of decomposition he was at, the body starts to bloat with gas, which could have caused the vibration and the occasional feeling of him moving. I never did get to find out exactly what happened to the guy. They were able to tell me enough that the cause of death wasn't suspicious, so I just kind of replied with natural causes. And the cop looks a bit weird and says that he can't really say anymore. And for a while, that kind of bothered me. How can you die in a non-suspicious manner, but not of natural causes? And that kind of stuck with me. This old guy had gone to that

theater alone, likely taken some kind of overdose, and allowed himself to just sort of drift off peacefully in his sleep. What he took, I don't know, because fatal overdoses are usually messy, painful and ugly, but clearly he got hold of something that let him die peacefully during the previous showing of the Silence of the Lambs. It always bothered me how he wasn't discovered by a theater employee in between the showings. He'd possibly been sitting there for three showings of that damn movie and nobody noticed but me. I mean, it wasn't the cleanest theater, but good God, did they not even check the screens between showings? And the final thing that bothers me is, why did he choose the silence of the lambs as the final thing he ever saw?

It's not exactly a nice movie to just sort of slip away to. Maybe it was the only movie showing that was relatively empty when he got there, which would have been that afternoon, I guess. Maybe there was something in the film he related to, or maybe he was simply haunted by his own lambs that he needed to silence. 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 month. Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.