The Lets Read Podcast - 327: THAT THING IN THE BARN WAS NOT AN ANIMAL | 10 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 312

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Appalachia & farm horror storis 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

You know, In the late 80s, I worked on a remote cattle ranch in a certain U.S. state. As you can imagine, larger cattle ranches need round-the-clock security, and back then, that's how I made my living. It wasn't a glamorous job, and it usually wasn't very exciting, but I enjoyed it. During this incident, I was working night shifts. Previously, a worker who stayed in the on-site dorms had reported a trespasser on the grounds, but when security had investigated, they found no sign of anyone or anything. When I was doing my rounds that night, though, I was somewhat on alert because, in my experience,

when there's smoke, there's fire. I was patrolling the area near the cattle sheds with one of the ranch dogs. The cattle sheds at night could be a pretty eerie place. They weren't noisy, really. the cattle were mostly bedded down or resting. There was just a sense of energy and buzz that came from being in proximity to so many living things, especially at night. I don't know how to explain it.

I'm not a poet. The area just felt different. When I saw the man, I almost wasn't surprised. It's like I'd almost been expecting to see him. And to this day, I'm not sure what he was up to when I caught him. He was just kind of walking aimlessly around the area central to the cattle shed. Immediately it was obvious that he didn't belong, though, even from a distance. And how could I tell?

Well, the fellow was wearing some kind of wolf-skinned costume. I flicked on my flashlight and called out him, ready to release the dog if he ran. The guy just turned to face me. He stared down my flashlight, pointed right at him, didn't even squint. I came closer, hand resting on my gun holster. And the fellow looked me up and down like he was almost sighted. me up. I didn't like the look of him one bit. His wolf-skin costume wasn't some kind of cultural garb, nothing like that. Up close, you could see it with some kind of wolf rug or skin

that he was wearing for whatever reason. Other than that, he'd look like a typical, regular guy from our state. Maybe not regular. He was fairly tall, well-built, and the man looked muscular enough to be a challenge, though. I told the guy to identify himself and to state his reason for being on private property. He wasn't intimidated at all, it seemed. He stepped forward, his wolfskin costume parting just enough to show the wicked-looking blade that hung looped from his belt buckle. Now my dog began to growl. The guy stepped forward and I told him not to move, and then repeated my question. The man did stop there as I took my hand off my holster and instead moved to unleash the dog. Wolfman then threw his head back and let out

some actual honest-to-god howl. And this caused the dog to get spooked, which was not usual for the ranch dogs. He pulled his leash free from my grip and just started running off into the night. And in that moment, I genuinely felt my heart drop. Thanks, buddy. Now it's just me and Mr. Wolfman. I honestly can't tell if this was just some sort of strange, elaborate prank, so I was kind of laughing, but after howing like a goddamn movie monster, now he's just looking at me with some type of sneer. Then he starts laughing, and I'm the dumbest MFer in the world for daring to ask who he is. It suddenly struck me that this guy was definitely mentally unwell, and maybe I should radio for some backup, and obviously it's not a horror movie, so that's

exactly what I did. I spoke into the radio and told my colleagues to notify the cops and then get down here. I never took my eyes off of him either, and he didn't move a step. Just stood there, challenging me, it seemed like. Now bear in mind how extra crazy this whole thing felt, because the guy was wrapped in a wolfskin rug, with a wolf's head just sort of sitting atop his own. I asked him a third time who he was and what he was doing on the ranch, and I guess something about this third prompting triggered him to action, because that's when he charged me. This guy went from standing there like a malicious wolf-clad clown to barreling straight at me like a foalback. The guy was on me before I even had time to react and actually draw my weapon.

And I know, I know. You probably think that I was bad at my job or had slow reaction times, but you weren't there. It was so sudden and so surprising. I do replay the incident in my head sometimes, trying to figure out if I could have reacted differently, but I don't think so. The guy was unpredictable. This aggressive fella and people like that just behave exactly that way, unpredictably. He knocks me and sends me flying straight to the ground. Then this wolfman is on top of me, choking me out of all things.

The goddamn wolfskin head is just staring into my face like some kind of dumb Halloween costume. I bucked and writhed more affronted than anything else. And despite his size, I managed to throw the guy off. of me pretty easily. I guess our scuffle had woken up some of the nearby cattle because now a commotion was starting to come from the barns. It was the sound of distressed and bothered cows mooing and stirring with alarm, and I cannot begin to describe just how strange and unsettling the incident was in that moment. There's this guy who's just decided to invade the ranch wearing a wolfskin rug and he's attacking me, sure. And now the cows are all worked up and they're hollering and hooting. Then the dog, I

guess he got his courage back because suddenly the dog comes running back, barking as well. And this caused the wolfman to back up momentarily, sizing the dog up. I was scrabbling across the floor at this point just trying to get my bearings. The flashlight cast this very eerie beam on Wolfman, sending his wolf-clad silhouette across the barn wall. The dog was barking at him, and I kid you not, Wolfman was barking back, just howling and yapping at that darn dog like they were having some kind of. of argument. And the next thing I know, I hear shouts and running feet. One of my colleagues, his name is John, had shown up. And of course, he's more prepared than I was and he's armed

with a shotgun. And you'd think that seeing my shotgun-wielding buddy charging in, Wolfman would have backed down. Instead, it seemed like the commotion and action was only spurring him on, because he threw his head back and howls again. It was legitimately a full-throated howl. and it still sends chills down my back just thinking about how insane this guy was. I scrambled to my feet, ready to engage with this wolf guy. John wasn't hesitating, though. He ran straight in and cracked Wolfman straight in the head with the butt of the shotgun. No stumbling, no stuttering, just a perfect action movie clonk right to this guy's head.

This guy went down like a sack of potatoes, crumpled to the floor pretty much unconscious. and by the time I reached them, John was fastening this wolfman's wrists with a plastic tie that he had with him. And now, long story short, the cops got there, and so did the owners and one of the managers. It turns out Wolfman was the deadbeat brother of said manager. He'd gotten into town, got completely blind drunk, and then decided to pay his brother a visit. When he sobered up a little, he revealed it wasn't even intended to be a violent visit. We were supposed to just accept and understand the fact that somewhere between making that decision and him arriving, he'd acquired a thirst for violence, a wolfskin rug, and a huge

knife. It was a terrifying incident at the time, but I didn't mind the payoff and bonus that I got out of it, and nor did I mind that manager going out of his way to make sure that I got the best shifts in an actual pay raise. But I'll tell you what, though, even with Brother Wolfman crawling back to where he came from from the ranch. I still got a little unsettled when I was patrolling that area of the ranch at night. Seeing that lunatic charge me down in his wolfskin rug and hearing the whales of the cattle is a very sinister piece of imagery that honestly will stay with me forever.

My grandpa, Cyrus Foley, was a church-going man. When he was still in his teens, he served in France with the Marine Corps during World War I, fighting hand-to-hand with German soldiers among the trees and trenches of a land he could barely even point to on a map. He was just a boy when he sailed off to France, but he returned a man. and one who'd continue his life of service by joining the Haywood County Sheriff's Department here in western North Carolina. He said he saw the very worst of humanity out there in the mud, the blood, and the barbed wire. He said he saw the devil, too.

He saw him when the bravest soul he'd ever known ran out into no man's land to drag a wounded comrade to the safety of a shell crater, only to witness both men blown apart when that very same shellhole suffered another direct hit by German artillery. He also saw him whispering into the ears of good-hearted church-going country boys who started to enjoy the killing, just a little too much. He said that's when he realized there truly were these competing forces of good and evil in the world, and that both, not one or the other, plant their seeds in a man's mind.

The man doesn't get a choice in that, but what he does get to choose is which one he waters every day. Water that good seed and great things can happen. Water the bad one. And, well, you get the idea. And that's why he went to church every Sunday, to water that seed of good, so it kept on growing and kept on bearing good fruit. Some weeks he'd stay for Sunday service and then head home with everyone else. Others, he'd spend many a long hour sitting in the pews,

eyes closed with his hands clasped in prayer, trying to figure out how in the world folks could be so damned rotten to one another. One time I was staying over at his place while mom and dad were having one of their fights, and he was telling me stories about his time as a deputy. He had stories that'd make you laugh till your sides hurt, and he had some real tear-jerkers, too. But then this one time, I asked Grandpa to tell me about some of the spookier or scarier things he'd seen as a deputy. I was older than, maybe 14 or 15, and being a grandson, I guess he didn't bother holding back on all the details. Because by the time he finished with this story, I just about had to kneel down to pick my jaw up off the floor.

Grandpa sighed back in late October of 1923, he went to bed one Sunday night feeling light as a feather. It had been a quiet week, the weekend weather had been nice but dry, and he'd eaten a Sunday, dinner fit for a king cooked by his new wife and my future grandma. As he drifted off to sleep, all felt right with the world. But when he woke up, he found himself in the middle of a crap storm of biblical proportions. So grandpa woke up at 5.30 in the morning, took a shower, and had some breakfast, and then drove over to the sheriff's office in Waynesville and the old beaten-up model tea the department gave him. He opens the place up for 7 a.m. sharp. Then he sat behind the front desk drinking his second cup of coffee when a man

from a little town called Woodrow comes stumbling through the door, having walked all the way down the 276 in his stockinged feet. Grandpa sigh said he could tell the man was drunk before he even opened his mouth, but he looked worse than drunk, because his big bloodshot eyes had this wide, frightened look about them like they'd seen something awful. The man staggers up to the front desk and tells Grandpa's side that he needs to lock him up. Then when my grandpa asks why, the man gets very agitated and begs to be locked up or shot, because he's just murdered his wife, an infant daughter. Now, my grandpa didn't know this man from Adam, and people say all kinds of crazy stuff when they're drunk, but that man sure looked like he'd done something awful. So without

putting any cuffs on him and without even locking the door, Grandpa sigh sits the man down in a cell, then calls the sheriff to let him know what he's heard. A few hours later, my grandpa sigh joined the sheriff and a handful of deputies and driving over to Woodrow to verify the man's claims. He might have been drunker than a possum in a moonshine jug, as they say, when he walked into that office, but the man was no liar. He'd hacked his wife and infant daughter to pieces as they slept in

each other's arms. The axe he used was lying just a few feet away. Grandpa said that you couldn't tell where mother ended and baby began. The sheriff and grandpa sighed and drove back to the office, and after sitting down with the murderers, they asked him why he did it. With the worst hangover of his entire life kicking in, and having not slept for all of 24 hours, the guy wasn't exactly lucid. But what he said commanded my grandpa's full and undivided attention. About two months before he hacked up his wife and daughter, the murderer, a man named Lenny McLean, was walking home from his job at a sawmill when he met a woman by the roadside. She called herself Lily Beth, and she was the most beautiful young woman McLean had ever seen. At first occasion, McLean and Lily Beth simply swapped smiles

as they passed one another. But then the second day, they got to talking, and the same could be said for the third and fourth and the fifth and so on. And by the time the weekend came, McLean couldn't keep his mind

off of Lily Beth, and he wanted nothing more than to get back to work on Monday so he could walk and talk with her again. This carries on for about a month or two, with McLean saying Lily Beth seemed to know him better

than he knew himself. She said things that made him feel like he was walking on air, things that made him think everything in life was going to be just fine, and that the only two people that mattered in the world were him and her. McLean said he realized that he was in love with her early on, but the more they walked and talked, the giddier and more lovesick he'd get when he was and wasn't around her. He said he tried to keep a hold of himself, that he knew it was wrong, but one day it just spilled out of him like a river breaking through a beaver dam.

He told Lily Beth that he loved her with all of his heart and soul, and that he wanted nothing more than to be with her for the rest of his life. But seeing as Lily Beth knew McLean was a married man, she told him that was impossible. The idea of simply abandoning both his wife and infant child was unthinkable, as with no means of providing for themselves, they'd either starve or end up in some kind of poorhouse. Back then, those places were riddled with all kinds of diseases and parasites. sights, certainly no place for a single woman in her newborn. No, if Lenny McLean and Lily Beth were

going to run away together, there was something that she insisted he do first, and that was to send his wife and newborn daughter to heaven. Lily Beth asked if they were free of sin, and when McLean told her they were, she said there'd be no better parting gift than paradise for all eternity. He said that At the time, it all made perfect sense to him, and that he thought of it like being a surgeon. He had to do something brief, bloody, and ugly. But it was something that would benefit all parties in the long term, especially his wife and baby girl, who would no doubt forgive him once they understood, and they would understand, because everyone was going to understand once they heard the full story.

He said it was like being drunk without whiskey, that Lily Beth twisted his mind until the thing. that shouldn't have made sense, seemed like the cleverest concept ever conceived. So that night, after arranging a place he'd meet Lily Beth after sending his wife and daughter to live with the Lord, Lenny took an axe from the woodshed around the back of his house, waited till they were asleep,

then hacked them the pieces. When he was done, McLean washed the blood off himself and changed his clothes, then ran off into the woods to meet Lily Beth at their pre-arranged meeting place. He's running through the trees, thinking about how happy he's going to be, with the memory of his family's hacked up bodies becoming an ever more distant memory for him. But when he gets to the romantic rendezvous, right when he was supposed to, Lily Beth is nowhere to be found. McLean doesn't just go wandering off, though.

He waits there for one hour, then two hours, calling out her name and wandering around. But then, just as the sun's starting to come up, he sees it. A little wooden statue no bigger than a child's doll, and it's sitting right there in the center of their meeting place. He said he walked over, picked it up, then when he saw it bore a strange resemblance to Lily Beth, he realized he'd been stood up in quite spectacular fashion. He didn't want to believe it at first.

I guess no one would. But as he walked back towards the crime scene, that had once been his home, reality took a bite out of him. He sat on his kitchen table, drank every drop of illegal home-brewed liquor he had stashed away, and this was back in Prohibition times, and then walked all the way into Waynesville to confess to his crimes. Once he was done talking, the sheriff told McLean he was officially under arrest, which naturally confused the man because he thought he already was. after that he slept for just shy of 24 hours on and off of course accounting for the nightmares in every couple of hours mclean would wake up screaming and then would only drift off back to sleep once he was done wailing his apologies to a wife and daughter who couldn't hear him it was terrible an unthinkable thing he'd done that previous night but he wasn't the only one to commit a heinous act around that same time just after midday one of the hayward

County deputies comes running into the office saying there's been a triple murder down in Willits. There was a little house on Canter Lane that was home to the Browning family, consisting of William, his wife, and their two sons. Well, one of the Browning's neighbors decided to stop by to check on them, as they hadn't seen hide nor hair of the Brownings all morning, and their two boys hadn't shown up to the local schoolhouse. She walks over to the property, then pushes her way past the front door, only to find herself greeted by a scene from a nightmare. Lying around the kitchen table in various states of mutilation were the bodies of William Browning's wife and two sons, all blown apart by buckshot. Deputies then stopped by Will Browning's

place of work, the Metzger Electric Company, only to find that he hadn't shown up that day. Then they searched the area surrounding his home, including a little place known as Moonshine Creek, and that's where they found him. Browning's body was blue. His eyes were open and bloodshot, and there was a thick stream of dried vomit running down his shirt. One hand still held on to the handle of the moonshine jug he'd filled his belly with, and in the other was a little wooden statue, no bigger than a child's doll.

Grandpa's eye said the sheriff and his fellow deputies were already stretched in at this point. They had a couple of boys out in Woodrow watching over the McLean House, and then a couple of more down in Willits watching over the Browning House. Everyone knew they had one hell of a week coming up and that they'd be busy from dawn till dusk working the investigations. But little did they know. They had two more bodies just waiting to be found. A fisherman out near Lake Junaluska was walking along the shore

near where the Turnville bridge is today when he saw something bobbing up and down near the water's edge. He got a little closer, then realized what he was looking at. It was a body, and he didn't realize it at the time, but it was the corpse of one of his son's closest friends, a boy named Arlo McElmore. Within the hour, two deputies had been delegated to stand guard over the scene

while they tried to figure out what had happened, and the only thing that made sense was young Arlo, having taken a tumble from the bridge while he was either drunk or exhausted. There was always the chance he'd been pushed of course, course, so one of the deputies went up onto the bridge to look for signs of a struggle. He found something all right, but it wasn't any evidence of a fight or an attack. Sitting there on one of the thick wooden guardrails was a little wooden statue, just like the one found by McLean and the one in the hand of Old Will Browning, who'd gunned down his

family and filled his belly with bad moonshine. In the weeks that followed, the Haywood County Sheriff's Department, Grandpa's Eye included, worked tirelessly to try and piece together the events surrounding each grouping of murders. Arlo wasn't married, so assuming the presence of the little wooden statue meant that he, too, had taken a life before ending his own, folks started to wonder just who the unlucky party had been. But when they searched his residence, there was no wandering anymore. Arlo's sister, Mariana Macklemore, was lying in her brother's bed. Arlo had killed her, gutted her, and was halfway to skinning her.

corpse before he decided to just stop and walk out to Lake Junaluska. Then, whatever happened at that bridge, Arlo took a tumble off it and ended up breaking his neck. The deputies worked those cases for months, with barely any rest at all, until they finally came to the conclusion that there was nothing that could be done. Lenny McLean helped as best as he was able, told them everything he could about Lily Beth, until of course, he realized he knew next to nothing about her. Somehow, they had been talking for months almost daily, and he didn't know where she was from, the name of her family,

or where she lived around the time of the murders. Deputies then went door to door all over the country, asking folks if they knew anyone fitting Lily Beth's description of a red-haired beauty with piercing green eyes. The sheriff didn't think it'd be long before they found someone who remembered seeing a girl like that, but he was wrong. The only person in the whole of Haywood County that seemed aware of Lily Beth's existence was Lenny McLean,

or at least the only man living, of course. The idea that this mysterious Lilibeth had talked to not one, but three different men into murdering their families, was next to impossible. But considering they all happened on the same night, and that each man ran into one of those strange wooden statues, it was clear to all that each crime was connected in some way. Grandpa sigh said that the sheriff figured that it had to be a group of women, all working on a different man on a long con that ended in slaughter. But that left everyone asking, what was the con? Nothing appeared to be stolen from any of the crime scenes,

while Lenny McLean himself said Lily Beth hadn't asked him for a single red scent, not even one time. All these women seemed interested in, if in fact it was a group and not an individual, was talking McElmore, Browning, and McLean into murdering their loved ones. Because after that, they disappeared with only a single trace of them left behind, those little wooden statues. Now, naturally, the sheriff and his boys were very interested in catching up with the mysterious Lily Beth, but the district judge didn't give a good goddamn who she was. Lenny McLean swore on the Holy Bible that he and he alone had taken the lives of his wife and infant daughter.

So the judge decided that he and he alone would sit in the electric chair. McLean's attorney, his family, hell, even the sheriff all thought he could have qualified for an insanity defense. But since he never sought to do anything but confess to what he'd done, the judge had no choice but to hand down the only punishment that fit, the death penalty. But McLean didn't mind and he wanted to die. Then after many years sitting on death row, he got to. his wish. No one at the Haywood County Sheriff's Department ever did find anyone named

to Lily Beth living in the area, nor did they find anyone quite fitting her description either. And so naturally, it became something of a legend among sheriffs and deputies both passed and present. Then one day, my grandpa sighed up visiting an old-timer who used to be sheriff back when he was a boy, and he's talking to him about the three-family murders that happened back in October of 1923. This old sheriff wanted to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, start to finish, kind of like what I've done here. And then while he's telling the story, Grandpa Cyrus reaches into his pocket and pulls out

one of those little wooden statues. Since they had the other two locked up in evidence, he figured it wouldn't do any harm to take one for a wander, especially if it was wrapped up in a piece of cloth so no one could leave the fingerprints on it. but then when he handed the old sheriff the little wooden doll and that old timer unwrapped the cloth he studied it for a moment before his face dropped grandpa sighed said the old sheriff looked up at him ashen faced and then asked him to repeat the names of the men who'd murdered their families grandpa told him all three names then the old timer asked if he knew the maiden name of mclean's mother

Grandpa had talked to members of his mother's family in the aftermath of the murders, but he couldn't remember their family name. That's when the old-timer asked him, Was it McRae? Grandpa nodded. It had been McRae. And then when he asked the old-timer how he knew that, this is what he said. But when the old sheriff was just starting out as deputy,

so way back in the 1890s, he helped investigate the murder of a spinster who lived out in the sticks. The woman, who couldn't have been any older than 40, had been in Waynesville's selling bunches of flowers she picked. And then when she had enough money, she bought a bottle of whiskey from the town's general store and then drank it while wandering back home on foot. Next morning, someone found her near the dirt track that led to her home. She'd been stripped, robbed of her dignity and purity, and then shot through the eye. Seeing as he was still a deputy, the old sheriff was charged with going from door to door to see if he could find any witnesses. And then after almost three days of knocking on doors and getting no luck, he found someone who'd spotted something on the evening of the spinster's murder.

Three Waynesville men, all in their 20s and 30s, had been seen talking with the licked up spinster as she was walking out of town. The witness was able to name at least two of the men, while the third was identified by association. All three men were then rounded up for questioning, and for a while, it was looking like each one would be convicted and hanged. But by some unforeseen technicality, not one of them ever spent a single night inside a jail cell for what all were convinced they were guilty of. It was a terrible miscarriage of justice, so bad that each of the accused had to move their family out of Wainsville for fear of some reprisal. The sheriff then turned to my grandpa Cyrus, if he could guess the family names of those men accused.

Grandpa sighed said that he didn't need a second guess, and when he said Browning, McElmore, and McRae, the old-timer just nodded. Those men moved their families out of Waynesville, out of fear of reprisal, but when it came, it wasn't visited on them. It was visited on their grandsons.

Grandpa sighed then asked what it was about the little wooden doll that had brought all that back to him, because it was clear to him that that was the case from the change in the old-timers' expression. The old sheriff held the doll up to him, then pointed towards something Grandpa and his fellow deputies had always wondered about. One of its eyes was large and round, the other, a small, crudely worn pit. Grandpa always figured the dolls were supposed to be some kind of message, but he could never figure out what. Yet after that visit to the old sheriff, the message became clear. The dolls were the spinster, and this was her revenge.

In light of that, everyone over at the Haywood Sheriff's Department figured Lily Beth had to be one of the spinster's distant descendants, the granddaughter of a brother or sister she rarely saw that no one ever knew about. No one showed up to collect her body, and the only mourners at the spinster's funeral were folks from around Wainsville who'd heard her story. But that didn't mean she didn't have family. Family who'd eventually learn of her murder and the miscarriage of justice that followed then want to take revenge in the only way possible.

I'm from Sweden, and until recently, I helped run a small remote sheep farm. And without giving too many details to identify me, the farm I worked on reared sheep of a certain in-demand breed. Their wool is quite sought after, so even when this story occurred a few years back, the sheep were particularly valuable. The farm being quite remote meant we usually weren't bothered by people and could go about our business without much drama. What we weren't prepared for was a gang of organized criminals. They descended on our small family farm one day, looking to rob us of our livelihood. It's my family's farm and has been for many, many years. These days I no longer live or work there, but back then I had grown up around the farm. I went off to college in Nama,

and then came back and worked on the family farm for another six or so years until I eventually left. left. This incident occurred a few years before I left. The sheep were out grazing and I was on shepherd duty that day, just me and one of the farm dogs, Bruno. It was quiet and overcast afternoon with a bit of light rain drizzling down. Mostly I was just kind of killing time, waiting to load the sheep onto the truck and move them to the other field. I was scrolling through my phone, checking out whatever I was into back then and at one point I heard the sound of vehicles approaching. This was unusual. Nobody ever drove onto this part of the land except to help move the sheep. I was tucked under a tree, so I peered around and saw a truck pulling up to the gate.

What was this, I thought? Nobody should have been coming onto this land like that. I crouched down and watched as a man exited the truck and opened the gate. The truck backed into the field and another man got out. Immediately, I knew what was going on. Sheep rustlers. You hear warnings about this sort of thing, but it always sounds like something out of a movie. It's never supposed to happen to you. This is present-day Sweden, not Wild West Red Dead Redemption America.

Unfortunately for me, though, it was happening. And quickly, I grabbed Bruno's collar. I didn't want him to run out at the men and get himself hurt. Luckily, from where we were under the tree and in the bushes, we were pretty well hidden. The men hadn't seen us yet. They didn't appear to be looking around for a shepherd or anything. Normally the sheep wouldn't be under constant watch, but that day I just happened to be preparing to move them to another field.

We only had around 10 sheep in this herd at the time, but like I said, they were valuable. Still, I never imagined anyone would try to steal them, and certainly not like this. Now, I was pretty far away, but I thought that I recognized the truck as belonging to a pair of guys from the nearby town, cousins or something like that. They had a reputation for being troublemakers, always up to one scheme or another, and it seemed like their latest scheme was simple, steal our sheep and then profit, I guess. One thing I was certain of, there was no way that I was letting these idiots take our livelihood. Honestly, it was mostly because I was protective of the sheep and worried the guys would actually hurt them. I figured I was far enough away to make a phone call without them hearing me.

They'd left the truck engine idling, which helped mask the same. sound. I quickly called up the farmhouse, told my family what was happening, and asked them to call the police. Then I hung up, not wanting to risk making more noise. I was already worried about Bruno deciding to bark at the men. And at that point, they were trying to catch one of the sheep. They didn't seem to have much of a plan, just chasing the sheep around trying to grab it. Maybe they only planned to steal one or two. Someone else might have just let it go, but not me. I wasn't letting a single sheep get harmed that day, and I honestly would fight them to the death if I had to. The problem was, I'm not some big, tough fighter type.

I'm a fairly skinny guy, and I was pretty sure that I couldn't take one of them in a fight, let alone both. My only option was to convince them that I was more dangerous than they were. To do that, I had to stop worrying about Bruno getting hurt. I tied his leash around a low branch to keep him safely away from harm's way. I told Bruno to be a good boy and wait for me. Then I broke off another branch from the tree and made my move. I came charging out of the undergrowth, swinging the branch above my head, yelling every threat that I could think of,

how I was going to effing kill them, how they'd wish their mothers never gave birth to them, all of this sort of crazy nonsense. And these cousins looked up, pretty startled and clearly spooked by my oncoming charge. and that's when one of them reached into a waistband of his pants and pulled out a pistol. Of course, I just froze in absolute terror. I hadn't even considered the possibility that these idiots might actually have a gun.

I stopped in my tracks a few meters away and let the branch fall from my hands. And the cousins sort of just looked at each other, almost like, what the F are you actually doing here? They clearly hadn't thought their master planned through and definitely weren't expecting me. Their incompetence didn't matter much, though, when they were armed. They still had a major terrifying upper hand here, and the one with the gun kept it trained on me while the other came over and patted me down. Thankfully, I'd left my phone hidden with Bruno, and I hadn't thought about it much. I just didn't want it to get broken, and I was beginning to realize that I hadn't

thought about anything really much at all. I guess in that sense, me and the cousins weren't that different, really. And that thought sort of made me laugh in the moment. The cousin patting me down seemed unnerved by this and sort of stepped away, and we were at something of a stalemate. The gun-wielding cousin took control and roughly grabbed me, trying to force me to the ground. And that's when my survival instincts kicked in. Or maybe I lacked survival instincts. Either way, I charged the guy pointing the gun, who was so startled that he didn't react before I knocked him over, sending that gun bouncing across the ground. And that's when I realized that it actually felt suspiciously light. Was this idiot threatening me with some type of BB gun? Some type of toy? And I didn't have much time

to think about it because then both cousins were on top of me, kicking, punching, flailing. And they were surprisingly bad at fighting for two actual criminals. Still, I'm pretty sure that they would have overpowered me if Bruno hadn't somehow pulled free and come charging across that field, barking and snarling like some maniac. And that was too much for them, I guess. They abandoned that fight and ran back to the truck. The engine was still running, so they just peeled away, thankfully without hitting Bruno or any of the sheep. Those cousins were apprehended and questioned by the cops later that day. There were all sorts of legal complications, and the whole thing was a mess. In the aftermath, I beat myself up harder than those cousins ever did. I still

suffered nightmares and PTSD for my decision to just charge them and actually risk getting shot, even if it was probably just some BB gun. Facing down that danger, even for just a moment, stayed with me for years and eventually led me to leaving the farm for a much calmer and much more chill profession. This story's from way back before the Civil War, and straight from the hills of Berge. And although I've heard it more times than I can count, I'll be damned if it isn't a good one. You see, it's a tale about pride and wickedness, about beauty and goodness. and how sometimes the good Lord steps in when the devil gets too bold.

So gather around your phones or computers, or however y'all are listening, because this here's the tale of Isaac, the plantation owner's son, and Emmilu, the prettiest girl in all of Highland County. Highland County is tucked deep in the heart of what you might call central Appalachia, a place where the sun paints the hills gold in the morning time and where the moon seems to hang low over the haulers at night. Folks live simple back then, plowing their fields, tending to their livestock, and leaning on each other when times got tough. But even during the best of times, there was a shadow hanging

over them. The Grand Plantation and its wealthy owner, with his fields stretched wide behind it, worked by the slaves he owned. It was perched high on a ridge like a king looking down on his subjects. Down in the valley, though, lived humbler folks, including the family of Emmy Lou. a girl so lovely that she could hush a room just by stepping into it. Now, the plantation owner had a boy named Isaac, a tall, strapping young feller with dark hair and a smile that might just fool you if he didn't look too close. It was handsome, sure enough, but his heart was colder than a January frost. Growing up with silver spoons and fine horses, Isaac had never heard the word no without stomping his foot.

As a youngan, he'd chase the other kids with sticks, stealing their marbles or apples just to watch them cry. Then as he got older, they got worse. He'd swipe goods from the market or general store, knowing his daddy would pay off the trouble, while folks whispered about the dark things he'd done to the slaves on the plantation, things too ugly to speak plain. Then there was Emmylou. She was a sight, hair like spun gold falling in waves down her back, and eyes bluer than the sky after a rain.

But it weren't just her looks that made folks fall in love with her. It was her heart. Emmy Lou had one as big as the mountains, always lending a hand where it was needed. She had a voice with sweet as bird's song, and she'd hum hymns while working, making you feel like all was right with the world. She'd towed baskets of bread to the hungry,

stitch up torn britches for the poor, and sit by the bedside of the sick till they mended. Her folks lived in a little capital, near a meadow, and it's there that this tale takes a dark and dreadful turn. One day, Isaac took a notion he wanted Emmy Lou for his own. So he dressed in his best coat, he proudly rode his black horse down to her cabin, he found Emmy Lou on the porch, mending a quilt when he swaggered up. He wished her good morning, tipping his hat with that sly grin of his, and then after telling her she was the prettiest girl in the whole county, he asked her for her hand

in marriage. Emmy Lou looked up, her needle pausing mid-stitch, and said she had no idea she felt that way. Isaac confirmed so, then added that not only would every girl for miles around kill to be in her shoes, but saying yes would guarantee her a life of luxury up in that big plantation house. But Emmy Lou wasn't swayed by fancy words or promises. She set her quilt down and met his eyes square, then told him that while she was flat, she didn't love him, and she couldn't marry a man she didn't love.

Isaac's face went red as a rooster's comb. He repeated how he was the son of the richest man in Highland County and that she was throwing away a life most would beg for. Emmy Lou said maybe that was so, but she still wouldn't wed for less than true love. That just about done it. Isaac reared up like a bear stung by a bee, hollering about how she'd lived to regret turning them down. Then he stormed off, leaving nothing but fury and scattered chickens behind him.

Isaac wasn't the kind to let a slight go unanswered. He brooded up in that big old plantation house, his anger festering like a sore. Then over the next days that followed, he hatched a plan blacker than coal. He knew Emmy Lou loved picking flowers in the meadows near a cabin, a peaceful spot hemmed in by trees with wildflowers of every color. She'd go there near every day, basket swinging as she sang to herself, and that's where Isaac decided he'd get her. He'd sneak up on her, take her by force, and then slit her throat to hush her up. Then to cover his tracks, he'd leave a few strands of cotton staple on her body, pointing

the blame at one of his daddy's slaves. It was a devil's scheme, born of pure spite and poisonous pride, and young Isaac intended to follow through with it. So, one sunny morning, Emmy Lou set out for the meadow with her empty basket, ready to be filled with flowers. But what she didn't know was that Isaac was watching up on the ridge with a heart all filled up with hate. Then once she was out of sight, he slipped down all quiet, keeping his distance as he tailed Emmy Lou towards the meadows. Since the weather was looking good that morning, the meadows must have made for quite a picture. Bees buzzing, birds chirping, and Emmy Luce singing floating on the breeze.

I picture her wandering among the blooms, picking daisies and black-eyed Susan's with gentle fingers before tucking them into her basket. But then there was Isaac, crouched low, waiting for the right moment as he stalked her from the tree line. But just as he tensed to spring, the sky above them turn gray. Then, from what must have seemed like out of nowhere, A dark cloud passed over them, and a low rumble growled through the hollow. It was a flash thunderstorm, the kind that sweeps in fast and fierce. The wind picked up, whipping the grass as lightning split the sky. Then when the thunder boomed, shaking the ground, Emmy Lou glanced up with worry.

She knew those storms. All of us do round these parts, how they drench you to the bone if you don't take cover. So quick as a flash, she gathered her. flowers and ran for home while Isaac cursed under his breath. He'd waited patiently, and now the storm was stealing his chance. He vowed to get Emmy Lou another day, but fate had other plans. Come morning time, the storm had come and gone, leaving the air cool and the ground slick. Then out near the meadow, a peddler was trudging along the road when he spied something odd lying by the wayside. At first he reckoned it was a fallen log or maybe a dead critter, but as he drew near,

his stomach turned over. It was Isaac, or at least what was left of him. His body was blackened and twisted. His clothes burned clean off, and the stink of charred flesh hung so heavy in the air that it was enough to sour a dead man's ale. Lightning had struck him dead. The peddler crossed himself as he muttered a prayer, then high-tailed it to the nearest farm to spread the word. Word spread through the county faster than a greyhound on the hunt. Folks gathered in the town square, buzzing like bees about the news of Isaac's death. Some folks said they always knew he'd meet a bad end, that he was rotten to the core. Others said it was a guardian angel, looking out for Emmy Lou, as word of Isaac's intent to

wed her had spread through town. Emmy Lou herself stayed hush. Some said that there was relief in her eyes, but also a touch of sorrow. She'd been spared, but it was a heavy thing for a soul like hers to bear. Before long, life settled back to its regular rhythm, but Isaac and Emmy Lou's tale grew roots. Folks would tell it around the fire, pass it down like an heirloom, and use it to scare their kids into good behavior. Mind Isaac, they'd say, who thought he could take what he pleased, but the Lord sent a bolt from the blue to set things right.

Emmy Lou lived a long and happy life, marrying a good man who loved her true, and she bore sons who bore their father's strength, but also carried her kindness too. She moved on, but she never forgot that day in the meadow, and some say she believed to her last breath that a higher power had stepped in to save her. So there's your story,

straight from those old hills of Appalachia. pride and cruelty will lead you to ruin but goodness and faith will always see you through the Lord's watching and sometimes his justice can be as swift as lightning When I was a teenager, when I was a teenage boy, I live with my sister, parents, and grandfather as neighbors to a large farm. farm. My father was the foreman of the farm, so my family lived in a property on the grounds. This is a pretty upsetting story, and sharing it is hard, but I want people to understand. I'm not sure what I want them to understand. There's a lot that goes on in my head around this. There's the way people can change, and it's not their fault, I guess. I also want people to

understand how dangerous farms can be. If you don't know what a threshing machine is, is basically a machine that can sort and clean grain. They come in varying sizes, and they typically involve the grain being tossed inside a hatch into a set of rollers. These rollers are usually bladed and separate the grain from the stock, be it wheat, corn, rice, etc. The farm we lived on had a number of threshing machines for the grain, and that's all you really need to know for backstory.

None of us knew Papa was getting sick, least of all Papa. And it came without warning. It was the sickness of the brain, and you don't often get warned with something like that. Dementia, they call it. But it was like a curse from the devil himself, honestly. One day he was fine, and then the next, he wasn't so fine anymore. Papa had been slowing down in his old age, that much was true, but he still liked to go and walks around the farm grounds.

That day I was with him. We were just talking casually about how school was going on and such, and the thresher machines were whirring nearby, so I don't think Papa could really hear me. It was just nice to talk to someone. Then Papa just froze and began pointing at me. He said something like I was there to kill him. He said that he wouldn't let himself be taken by me. I thought he was joking, although it was very out of character for Papa.

He was a very serious, sedated man, though. And this was a sudden, violent outburst of screaming. and I barely had time to consider it before Papa grabbed me by the wrist and began dragging me toward the machinery. He was surprisingly strong for an old man, and I wasn't weak either, as a teenage guy who lived on a farm, but I didn't want to hurt Papa by struggling too much or knocking him back. That's why I initially underestimated him and was taken aback by his old man's strength as he yanked me towards the Thresher machines.

Of course, it didn't help that he was yelling and screaming about how I was trying to kill him and how he would stop me. By the time I realized Paa had the strength of a man possessed, we were over by the Thresher machines. Paul was screaming about how he wouldn't let me take him, how I was an agent of destruction. He was yelling all sorts of scary things that in the moment I just didn't understand. Looking back later, the event would simply just make me sad. And right then, though, it was downright terrifying. I tried to pull away from Paul. It scared me to notice how close we were to the thresher's now. One false move in either Papa or I get a limb caught or worse.

I was conscious of my feet slipping against the ground as Papa tried to manhandle me. All the while, he was screaming. His voice was sounding more terrified now, like a part of him was aware of what he was doing and how bad of an idea it was. We were so close to the Threshers that grain of wheat were pinging against me, and I knew I needed to get Paul away from those machines. I also knew that there was a real and genuine danger to my life if I didn't fight back. I was so worried about hurting the old man, though.

I cried out, hoping someone else might see what was going on and step in. Why were the machines running without anyone supervising? In reality, the whole thing had played out in a matter of seconds. I just couldn't see that people were coming over to help. All I knew was that in the immediate moment, I was in severe danger of having my head forced into that thresher by my grandfather. Now, Paw continued to scream about how he couldn't let me hurt him. He had to stop me. I was so close to the thresher that I could smell the oil.

The din of the machine was filling my head, and dust and grit were making my eyes water I could hardly see. I was going to die. Papa was going to die. Maybe both of us. With a Herculane effort, I grabbed Papa around the waist and lifted him up off the ground. I still have no idea how I was strong enough. Paw was an old man, but he wasn't small or frail. Not yet at this point, anyway.

And I think it was like one of those stories you hear about with mothers lifting cars off their small children, only it was me lifting Paw away from that thresher machine. And by now I become more concerned with the old man falling into the, machine than the idea of him forcing me in. I just wanted to get my paw pot to safety and we could work out why he was screaming and trying to kill me later. Paw did not like being manhandled though, especially in his delusion that I was an aggressor trying to kill him. He thrashed in my arms, and I toppled backwards. Now quickly, I let go of paw and spun around, grabbing the side of the thresher machine and halting myself just inches from the spinning rotating blades. And holy F,

I had no time to relax, though. Pa grabbed my head from behind. He was trying to force my face into that thresher. Pa screamed in my ear. He yelled something about how I'd regret what I'd done, that I wouldn't take him, too. I could feel the hot air from the machine against my cheek. The thresher was like some hungry, violent animal beneath me, and I suddenly remember that the machine shared its name with some type of shark.

Both of them were out for blood in that moment. and that's what crossed my mind, and that's what made me say no, screaming it. I kicked back from that thresher, sending Papa flying, and I no longer had the luxury of worrying about bruises or scrapes. I needed to get both of us away from that machine. Thankfully, Paa stumbled backward, and I grabbed him again. I dragged him along the ground away from the thresher. I was shouting at him now, shouting that it was me, his grandson, shouting for him to get a grip

on himself. People were finally running over, too. My dad, grabbing both of us in an embrace of generations at that point, and then things were just sort of this whirling blur of action. My sudden spike and adrenaline fizzled out then, and I just collapsed to the ground. Already I could see, paw, had started to wander, looking confused. The expression on his face in that moment broke my heart, because that's when I knew. I knew what had gone wrong. I knew what had happened in his brain and that everything would change for him from here on in. He had a number of other lucid moments after this, but to me, this was one of the last times I saw Papa. He became something different after that. It's rare for dementia to suddenly manifest into

violent moments like that, and from what we could gather, Paul believed that I was an enemy soldier from his time in the military. It's hard to be sure, though, because he was never really there after that. Paw sadly had to go into a home because of that manifested violence, and I found it very hard to visit him in there. I could remember the man he used to be, but I could also remember the man he'd been that day on the farm, when my own flesh and blood was trying to murder me, because he saw me as a stranger. On January 18th of the year 1970, two freshmen from West Virginia University decided to hitchhike back to their dorms after catching a showing of Oliver in central Morgantown. During the movie's intermission,

Merid Mallorick and Karen Farrell bumped into two fellow WVU students, Paulette Burns, and her boyfriend, Clarence Lewis. The group chatted in the movie theater's lobby while buying snacks, then sat together for the remainder of the showing. Following the film's conclusion, the four students walked in the direction of Willie Street,

but upon spotting a cream-colored sedan driving down the street towards them, either Married or Karen stuck out their thumb. The sedan stopped. Then Paulette and her boyfriend watched as the two girls climbed into the car's three-seater frontal compartment. They thought they'd see the two girls back at the campus dorms. But neither Married nor Karen would ever be seen alive again.

Paulette Burns might have been a college freshman, but she was not naive. She knew hitchhiking came with an inherent, risk. So when she arrived back at the WVU dorms and discovered neither married nor Karen were anywhere to be found, she started to grow concerned. She asked around the dorms, check the girls' rooms again, and then after another hour or so passed, she contacted law enforcement to report the two girls missing. Paulette was convinced something was wrong, but the officers down at the Morgantown Police Department didn't quite share her sense of urgency. The two girls

had only been gone a matter of hours, and while Paulette's concern was touching, it was perhaps a little premature. The officers down at the department's new college kids, especially those situated near the Appalachian Trail, were prone to bouts of spontaneous adventure, and in all likelihood, Merritt and Karen would return to their dorms within 24 to 48 hours. But they were sadly and painfully wrong. After a few days went by, and the girls had yet to reappear at their WVU dormitory, Paulette called the police again. Only then did they act on her report. Officers reached out to the girls' dorm mates and parents to gather information on them

before issuing a public appeal for information regarding their whereabouts. Photographs of the two girls were released, along with details of their last-known sightings, but frustratingly nobody came forward. forward. Six long weeks went by before the first break in the case, but when it came, it didn't bode well for the missing girl's safety. Because when a kid was walking along the US 119, picking up trash as part of a cleanup program, he found Merritt's purse lying among the foliage. A few weeks later, on April 8th of 1970, the West Virginia State Police received an anonymous letter postmarked in Cumberland, Maryland

just two days prior. It read as follows. Gentlemen, I have some information on the whereabouts of the bodies of the two missing West Virginia University co-eds, Merrid Mallorick and Karen Farrell. Follow directions very carefully, to the nth degree, and you cannot fail to find them.

Proceed 25 miles directly south from the southern line of Morgantown. This will bring you to a wooded forest land, Enter into the forest exactly one mile. There are the bodies. 25 plus 1 equals 26 miles total. We'll reveal myself when the bodies are located. The letter was signed with nothing but a crudely drawn triangle.

Just a few days later, while the police were still investigating the anonymous letter, they received a second. Many believe it was prompted by the publishing of the first letter in a local newspaper, and just like the initial correspondence, it was postmarked in Maryland and signed with nothing but a triangle. Gentlemen, it read. I saw the article in this morning's newspaper concerning my previous letter on the missing two co-eds. If you reread my first letter carefully, you will see the directions were specific, directly south from the city, meaning the southern limit of Morgantown, West Virginia.

Straight south 25 miles, you will come to a four. forest woodland. Enter in one mile south, fanning out you will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brush. Look carefully. The animals are now on the move. Do trust this will help you out with exact location. We'll still identify myself when bodies are located. Sincerely, Triangle. Once the public was made aware of the letter's contents, widespread outcry prompted West Virginia's governor to order a search based on the directions they contained. This search yielded items such as marred sunglasses, along with Karen's purse and driver's license, which were found scattered between 50 and 75 meters off the road.

This suggested someone had purposely left them there in the hopes that they wouldn't be found, as opposed to simply tossing them from a car window. Obviously, law enforcement found the letters mention of the girl's bodies to be extremely discouraging. but just two days following the governor's mandated search, their worst fears were confirmed. On April 16th, the bodies of Merid Mallorick and Karen Farrell were found 11 miles south of Morgantown, not the 26, as stated in the letters. Both had been decapitated. The girl's bodies had been placed on top of each other. The body on the bottom was face up and the body on the top was faced down,

while both wore the same clothes they were wearing when they vanished. They were also covered with flat rocks thought to have been brought over from a nearby creek bed. These rocks have since been described as having the appearance of tombstones. There was also a fallen tree on top of the bodies, but it was unclear whether its placement had been purposeful. Due to the advanced state of decomposition in which the remains were found, it was impossible to determine if the girls had been violated prior to death. However, since their clothes appeared untampered with, a pack of cigarettes tucked into the waistband of married's jeans was still there, this was deemed improbable.

However, not only were the girls severed heads missing, the necklaces each girl had been wearing at the time of their abduction was also unaccounted for, as well as either a fur hat or fur gloves that one of them had been wearing. In the days it followed, two more letters signed only with triangles were dispatched. One went to the West Virginia State Police, the other was addressed to the parents of the late Merid Mallorick. Each gave directions to the location of the girl's severed heads. A third letter, dated April 21st, was sent to Morgantown Police. It read as follows. The heads can be found from the position of the bodies by striking out 10 degrees southwest for the first head, and approximately 10 degrees southeast for the second, roughly one mile.

You are already seven-tenths of that mile. They are within the mine entrance, if you can call it an entrance, considering its condition. They are buried not over one foot in depth. The ones responsible for the murders scattered some of the girls' personal effects over the general area, creating a pattern of confusion, making it difficult for you to pinpoint any exact location. My first two letters triggered your intensive search. Don't give up now. Sincerely.

triangle. A final letter was dated April 28th and was sent to Merritt's parents. I have sent three letters to the Morgantown State Police Department concerning your daughter Merritt. The first and second were taken with some seriousness and instituted a search which was successful in locating two bodies minus the heads which were needed for other purposes. All of a sudden the police have been complaining about an error in the mileage stated in my second letter. After one has driven in an oval pattern for 26 miles under the weather condition of January and under the involved circumstances, it is impossible to make about an 18-mile error in the precise location of the bodies. Nevertheless, they were found south of

Morgan Town, as stated in the letter, even to that which was called a logging lane or old mine road, in my opinion, both the same. Police believe the author of the Triangle Letters was their primary suspect in the murders of Meredith and Karen, and it's clear that the early stages of the investigation were centered around this theory. However, following it through analysis of one of the letters, police were able to trace the letters back to three members of a small religious cult, known as the Psychic Science Church. When they confronted the movement's leader, Reverend Richard Hoover,

he claimed the ability to convene with spirits from another realm and that the information in the letters had been provided by these same spirits. Officers were stunned. Not only were the letters little more than a distasteful hoax, but the author offered no apologies for them whatsoever. After the identity of the triangle letters author was discovered, and the psychic science church was cleared of any involvement in the girl's murders, the investigation slowed to a crawl.

But then years later, in 1976, a man named Eugene Closson shocked the nation by confessing to the murders. Closson had lived in the nearby town of Point Marion for most of his life. He was also convicted of abusing children, and at the time of his confession, was residing in a New Jersey prison for related offenses. When he first contacted the West Virginia State Police, he claimed that he was having nightmares based on his memories of the murders. Then following a lengthy interview, he wrote a 35-page confession after passing a polygraph test. However, it was during this polygraph test that Claussen displayed a complete lack of knowledge regarding the intimate details of the case. Then, in his confession letter, he made a number of incorrect statements,

such as claiming he'd laid the girl's lifeless body side by side, or that he forced them into the backseat of his car rather than the front as confirmed by Paulette Burns. There was also another significant problem with Claussen's confession. He claimed to have violated both girls at least four to six times each, yet it was soon discovered that Claussen suffered a condition known as Kleinfelter syndrome, a chromosonal abnormality resulting in an XXY genome rather than the regular XY. Kleinfelter syndrome results in severe genital dysfunction, with medical professionals claiming that Claussen's condition,

was so acute that would be physically impossible for him to violate anyone just once, let alone consecutively. Yet just when it seems like Clausen's claims were of no importance, one of his assertions actually advanced the investigation. When asked where he'd disposed of the girl's severed heads, Closson claimed he'd thrown them into a crevice at an old school yard. Police performed a thorough search only to discover that Claussen was once again fabricating information. However, after analyzing a bird's nest in the area, police found human hairs which were a visual match for that of Karen and Merritt. These hairs had no roots attached, leading investigators to believe they were cut and not pulled from the heads of the victims. Someone hadn't just cut the girl's heads off. They'd given them a haircut, too.

Clawson was officially charged with the murders of Merritt Mallorick and Karen Farrell, but by the date of his trial, he'd reversed himself completely. Since he passed a polygraph, it's clear that, at least at one point, Claussen was firm in the belief of his own guilt. Yet following his conviction in the court of law, he launched a successful appeal based on the grounds he'd knowingly made false statements during the trial. At his 1980 retrial, Closson claimed he'd issued. shoot a false confession as a way of escaping charges levied against him in New Jersey. But once again,

he was found guilty. Closson continued to profess his innocence until his death in 2009 and received a degree of vindication when, in 2006, the investigation into Merritt and Karen's murders were reopened by the West Virginia State Police. Closson was never fully exonerated for the murders, but if he didn't kill Merritt and Karen, who did? In December of 1970, William Bernard Hacker was arrested in Baltimore on suspicion of beheading a man named Herbert Coben. Following Coben's decapitation, Hacker drove his severed head into a rural area and then placed it under a flat rock near a creek. Born in 1896, Hacker's family had moved to West Virginia when he was still in grade school, and he'd briefly worked at Wirton Mine, less than a mile from where Merritt and Karen's bodies were found.

Between the years 1921 and 1952, there were a series of unsolved decapitations in areas Hacker resided. He was eventually arrested and imprisoned for one such beheading in 1952, only to be released 14 years later in the year 1966. The same year Hacker was released, another unsolved beheading took place. Two similar crimes occurred the following year, with another taking place in 1969. It should also be noted that once Hacker was in prison for the murder of Herb Coben in 1970, the spate of mysterious decapitation suddenly ceased.

Another name on the police list of potential suspects was John Brennan Crutchley. Crutchley's father worked for a company who owned the land where Merritt and Karen's bodies were found, and not only was Crutchley on school break in January of 1970, but his older sister was enrolled at WVU. Crutchley would later be convicted of kidnapping, violating and draining the blood of a 19-year-old Floridian girl named Laura Murphy, who would have died of blood loss within just a few short hours if she hadn't managed to escape Crutchley's clutches when she did. To this day, no concrete evidence ties Crutchley to Morgantown on the date of the murders,

but he did have a reason to be there, and it's a deeply shocking one. Some have alleged that in early 1970, John Crutchley was conducting an intimate romantic relationship with his own sister. Since that relationship had to be kept secret, neither Crutchley nor his sister would announce or admit that a visit had taken place. But if one had, and Crutchley's sister decided to put an end to their unnatural affair, is it possible that a scorned and furious young psychopath would choose to direct his wrath to two helpless hitchhikers?

Another suspect, and what became known as the WVU co-ed murders, was a man named Eddie Slaughter. Slaughter had worked as a janitor at WVU's Westchester Hall, the very same dorm Merritt and Karen had been staying in, but he had quit in early 1970 for undisclosed reasons. Then in early April, just a few weeks after the girls were murdered, a woman filed a report with a Morgantown police regarding a frightening encounter at a Westchester service station. station. She'd been waiting in line when a strange man began offering her a ride. The woman refused, but somehow was convinced to wait in the man's car until her friends arrived. The man proceeded to make her extremely uncomfortable, especially once he became fixated on her fur coat and

hat. He claimed he liked to touch furry things, and then raised a hand towards her. The woman promptly fled from his car, then reported the interaction to police. But since it occurred prior to the discovery of Merritt and Karen's bodies, officers were unable to see the connection between the strange man's love of fur and the furry items of clothing missing from the two girls' bodies. Following the girl's disappearance, law enforcement tracked down the man's employer. Not only did they discover his name was Edward Slaughter, but Mr. Slaughter had called in sick on the morning of January 18th the very same day Merritt and Karen went missing. In the hopes of connecting him to the triangle murders, officers then visited Slaughter's place of residence to

obtain a sample of his handwriting. But a comparison showed there were few similarities between Slaughter's handwriting and that which was present on the triangle letters. This caused them to prematurely dismiss Slaughter as a suspect. Then by the time they realized that letters had been written by the psychic science church, the number of potential suspects were so vast that Slaughter was never revisited. Around the same time, slaughter was being reconsidered as a suspect, police once again appealed to the public for information. Shortly after, they received a call regarding a man named Ronnie Bird, a Morgantown resident with a reputation for lighting fires and hurting animals. Officers from the local police department decided to pay him a visit, and while Bird was initially

cordial with them, he lost his temper when they asked what kind of car he was driving back in early 1970. The question had exposed a convenient gap in bird's otherwise flawless recollection. Then after becoming argumentative, he demanded the two officers vacate his residence. The two men complied, thanking him as they made their way towards the door. But on the way out, one of the officers glanced at a framed photograph hanging from Bird's wall, only to realize he recognized its subject. The man in the photograph was Eddie Slaughter. and Ronnie Byrd was his nephew. Was slaughter directly responsible for Merritt and Carrance's disappearance,

or did his own flesh and blood bring them to him in the hopes of winning his approval? The aforementioned individuals constitute just a fraction of the complete list of suspects, and the sheer number of them made the search for the girl's killer much more difficult. Yet according to some, the investigation was even further hampered by West Virginia's own government. During April of 1971, a West Virginia state trooper named Preston B. Gooden claimed his employers at the Department of Public Safety had, and I quote, lied about department activity in reference to the murders of Merritt and Karen. Trooper Gooden also claimed he could provide documentary evidence that this was the case,

adding that a representative of the state governor was interfering in the case for political reasons. One such example he gave was the case of Sergeant Robert L. Mazingo, who was transferred to a different regional office after insisting the wrong leads were being followed. Trooper Gooden also claimed that Sergeant Mazingo was quickly advancing an investigation into the car bombing of a vehicle owned by Montengalia County Prosecutor, Joseph Lared Jr. Mr. Loretta had been conducting a vigorous campaign against gambling and vice in his home county when a professionally wired car bomb exploded in his own driveway. He underwent surgery to treat severe wounds to his right leg and right arm, and thankfully survived his injuries, but his right hand was rendered permanently disabled.

Mr. Loretta continued to practice law, but declined to run for re-election. Trooper Gooden, on the other hand, was promptly dismissed as a West Virginia State Trooper. Six years later, Trooper Gooden sued the West Virginia Department of Public Safety on the grounds his dismissal violated his First Amendment rights. The court heard how Gooden had been charged with insubordination after alleging the department's promotional system was, and I quote, geared to who you hunt and fish with or who you know rather than on merit. Gooden also alleged there was, quote, a system that permits an officer to associate with known racketeers and still reach a rank of leadership, and that the department reflects a system that still is not learned that professional police work in politics do not mix.

A judge later determined that Trooper Gooden's constitutional rights had indeed been violated, and it's believed that he was awarded a sizable settlement as a result. But perhaps the reason the state governor Arch Alfred Moore reacted so ruthlessly to accusations of corruption is because they were true. In 1990, and following an extensive federal investigation, Moore pleaded guilty to five felonies, including mail fraud, tax fraud, extortion, and obstruction of justice. justice. Not only had he accepted illegal payments and extorted over half a million dollars from the Maven Energy Corporation, he'd conspired to derail investigations into his own

corruption. This may well have included the car bombing Sergeant Mazingo had been investigating and quite possibly the murders of Merritt Mallorick and Karen Farrell. More was punished with a $3.2 million fine and sentenced to just less than six years in prison. He ended up paying less than the quarter of his fine, and he served just two years before serving out the remaining four months of his vastly reduced sentence at his home in Glendale, West Virginia. As a result of his conviction, Moore was banned from practicing law on the state, and during the final years of his life, he fought vehemently to be reinstated. I followed the advice that I got, and it was not the right advice, he said, referring to his decision to cheats, lie, and steal from

the people he purported to serve. Being a lawyer is someone. something I always wanted to be. It's what I was, and what I am. Thankfully, Moore's attempts were unsuccessful, but any links he might have had to the murders of Merrid Mallorick and Karen Farrell were never established. Paul Closson might have died with a conviction hanging over him, but it's quite clear that he was not Merritt and Karen's murderer. Yet whether or not it was hacker, slaughter, Crutchley, or Bird who took their lives seems almost irrelevant at this point. The world will always be full. of monsters, people who lure the innocent into maligned traps, but we've already established

popular systems by which they can be caught, captured, or even killed. The final four words of the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance read, and Justice for All. Yet when charlatans dawn mass of virtue and corrupt those systems with a slow poison of self-service, there is justice for none. Because there is no fighting the monsters without, unless we first vanquish those. within. Within. This happened. This happened some years back.

I used to walk my dog out in the Somerset country. where there are a lot of orchards. It's cider country after all. There was a large orchard near me where I'd take my Labrador Retriever as part of one of our regular walks. A public footpath ran through the orchard, so while it was privately owned property, like a lot of the Somerset countryside, it was okay to just wander around. This meant it was usually a pretty populated dog walking spot. I would often meet other walkers in and around those long, seemingly never-ending avenues of apple trees. Not always, though. Sometimes the orchard would be completely empty, especially on more dreary, overcast days. And that's what this day was like. Classic British weather,

cold and just a bit rainy. Usually on days like this, I wouldn't see many other dog walkers, and that day was no exception. So it was just me and Ben, my dog, strolling through the trees. The air was misted with this sort of rain, and the atmosphere was really breathtaking. even despite the crappy weather. Ben was running ahead through the lines of trees, and I saw movement and called out to him just to keep him in sight. The movement I'd seen wasn't Ben, though. Ben came trotting out from behind me, emerging from the orchard. He wagged his tail and I pet him. Movement up ahead amongst the trees I saw. Was there another dog walker out? I couldn't explain why, but I was beginning to feel very unsettled. I never felt unsettled.

I walked Ben almost most days and sometimes in the dark. Maybe it was my own failing, but I never really got spooked. That day, though, something was giving me bad feelings. Up ahead along the row of darkening apple trees, a figure stepped into the gap. He was quite some distance from me, but I could make out that it seemed to be a man in a long coat. Something about him made me feel even more uncomfortable. I couldn't put my finger on it as he stepped forward, and the man began walking. toward me. There was something about his gait, something about his posture in the way that he walked

that felt threatening. I pretended not to see him and decided to hurry away to the left. I clipped Ben's leash to his collar in case we needed to run. Now glancing over my shoulder, I realized that I'd lost sight of the guy. Maybe he was just another walker and I had nothing to worry about. Something told me that that wasn't the case, though, and I began to hurry through the trees, Ben at my side. When the guy stepped out ahead of me, I had to stifle a very small scream, and I swear to God, it was like something out of a slasher movie. He just emerged from between the trees, except now he was much closer to me and coming from a

different direction. He must have run through the orchard to get there ahead of me. I quickly changed direction, hurrying with Ben through the trees. I could just about see the edge of the orchard through the misty trunks, and I didn't want to lose sight of our goal. goal. I also didn't want to get caught by my would-be stalker, so I began to speed up. So did he. Behind me. And I could hear his footsteps now, jogging speed, and so I broke into a run, and so did he. The orchards rose no longer seemed quite as straight or easy to navigate.

As I ran, I briefly lost sight of the direction I knew the exit style to be in. I didn't want to stop and I let the guy potentially catch me, but I needed my bearings. Whirling a around, suddenly angry I turned to face him. But the man was gone. No sign of him. I tried to peer through the trees looking for a shape, a shadow, anything. I crouched down, hoping to see past the trunks of the short squat apple trees. No sign of the guy. Ben took this as an opportunity to get excited and start trying to lick my face, and I had to fight to avoid getting distracted. I had to take this situation seriously, I felt. I managed to work out the direction we needed to head in and started to jog through the trees again. The fact that I'd lost sight of the stalker

wasn't filling me with any confidence. I made it a few more meters when, sure enough, there he was again, moving to my right. This time, though, he caused me to stop in my tracks. Sometime during his last disappearance, the orchard stalker had removed his pants. And for want of a better word. He was letting it all hang free. Very gross. And that's when I recognized him. I'd seen this guy before while walking Ben around this area and a few other dog walkers had pointed him out as acting strangely. There had also been recent talk of a flasher in the area, but it wasn't until now that the two things were connected. This guy was the local flasher, great, and now he was following me through the orchard. Ben began to growl, and I realized that if I was close enough to the

flasher to recognize him, then he was close enough to catch up with me. He took a couple of tentative steps towards me, and I felt the genuine, icy terror coursing through my chest. This is back in the 2000s, too, and we didn't carry our mobile phones everywhere at all time, so I had my phone with me, but it was in my car. Well, that's fine, I told myself, I just needed to. I just need to to get back to the car and call the police. The problem is, I needed to make it there before the flasher got to me. I had no idea what he'd do if he caught me and I didn't want to find out. There was only one thing that I could do. Run. And so I did. With Ben at my side, I sprinted through the orchard. Thankfully, it wasn't harvesting time so the ground wasn't lousy with fallen

apples that could send me sprawling. And I did have to duck and dodge the occasional branch, though, especially since I wanted to put a lot of distance between myself and the flasher. When I finally reached the edge of the orchard, I had no idea if he'd been following me. I made for the style and quickly climbed over, feeding Ben's leash through to the other side as he crawled under the planks. As I was climbing over, I could see that the flasher was still a ways into the orchard. He definitely followed me, but not too closely, and now he was standing there, pants off, just sort of blankly staring after me. And from there, it was a single open field back to the car.

I got in and immediately called the cops. Unfortunately, in a small countryside town, they didn't have the resources to send someone down there right then as an emergency. And the officer I spoke to implied that there had been a number of reports of a flasher too and they were looking into it. I guess they did, in fact, look into it as sometime later I was called to identify my flasher and stalker in a lineup. I drove over to the neighboring town

where the identity parade took place and picked the guy out. There was no mistaking him, although thankfully he wore pants that day. Unfortunately, not enough of the other women he'd also flashed were able to correctly pick him out in the identity parade, and charges couldn't be pursued at the time.

Kind of a bummer, but what can you do? Thankfully, it seems like the threat of almost arrest was enough to stop the guy from going down to the dog walk, and flashing women, at least for a while. I never saw him down there again, but I did see him around town on occasion. My son, who was at the town library one day, also saw him trying to leave the library suspiciously. He recognized the guy because I'd pointed him out to my son previously. The man was trying to steal books.

He exited the library and the theft alarm went off. And so he reached into the huge backpack that he always carried, removed a few books and then threw them onto the desk and then just scurried off. Nobody even tried to challenge him according to my son. This was nearly 20 years ago now, so who knows what this guy's up to, or even if he's still alive. I haven't seen him around town in a long time, and either way, though. Let's hope he gave up his life of crime or stuck to stealing library books instead of stalking and flashing women out at the park. I'm one kid of many from a former farming family.

We sold the business some years ago because local farming just isn't what it used to be. far too hard to maintain, but I'll always have extremely happy memories of growing up on a farm. We worked hard, played well, got up at the crack of dawn, went to bed exhausted, and generally lived a solid, honest existence. Our family farm was a decently sized grain farm, focused on various crops. At one point, we had lots of workers and lots of machinery. We also had a number of silos for storing the grain. Anyone who's visited farming country has probably seen them, or some variant, squat metal cylinders that stood on stands, basically.

We didn't have those really large, fancy ones that you see sometimes, but they had presents enough to be notable and very memorable. Now, I won't bore all of you by going into details of how grain silos work, but what you need to know is that they're essentially huge metal tubes, some tallest skyscrapers, and after a harvest, they're filled with grain that can be stored up, packed up, and shipped off cell. Now as kids, my family was strict about farm equipment, because it's farm equipment, you know, they had to be. You can't just play around with that kind of stuff. One single error of

judgment and you just lost a hand or a leg or maybe your scalp. And so here and there as little kids, we'd get taken around the farm. This tour was usually by her mom, and we'd have to explain to her exactly what a machine was and why it was dangerous. And this is how she drummed it into our heads, scaring the bejesus out of us by having us talk about limbs being cut off and all sorts of things like that. But when we'd get to the grain silos, it was all very vague. Mom would stop and get very serious for a moment.

You can't teach kids about danger if you make it too scary and serious, and we'd stand and look up at that metal silo. We'd say something like, these are the grain silos and we don't climb up the ladders ever if you fall in, you don't come out. And then Mom would hurry us away onto the next part of our tour, which I think was the Thresher machines and all of the other random stuff. And then Mom would hurry us away onto the next part of the tour.

Now, I'm not sure that any of me or my five siblings really thought about what it meant to fall into a grain silo at the time. To me, the danger was falling in when they were empty because, well, it'd be a huge fall. Way more than enough to kill you. And as a kid, I had no idea whether the grain silos were usually empty or full, so I just figured that was the danger most of the time. But how wrong I was. You see, falling into a grain silo when it's empty, sure, that'd probably kill you enough. A quick drop, a sudden death, just like any other high fall.

Getting stuck in a grain silo when it's full of grain, though, yeah, that's the actual danger. That's what had Mom so spooked and why we weren't to go anywhere near. those silos. Anyone who grew up on a farm will know about this. There's all sorts of data about the ever-increasing rain of grain silo deaths. And around 15 years ago, there was a big to-do about changing the law so younger farm workers weren't even allowed access inside a grain silo. But that never went through in the end due to farmers protesting, I guess. And if you don't know, some grain farms require the workers to go inside the silos to walk down the grain, and it can be very dangerous. There are all sorts of laws about grain silos, and they differ from commercial

farming and independent farming. Lots of differences, actually. And the only law we knew, though, was mom's law. Us kids did not do any work around the grain silos. She just wasn't having it. Our dad never seemed too concerned, but mom was the real power in our household. It was her family farm, after all, and our grandparents also agreed with her. The kids don't work in the silos ever, not while I live and breathe, she said. And I would later find out that she actually meant that. She never wanted any of us kids to work in a grain silo, and she knew that it was important work that had to be done,

but something about the silos spooked her. I guess maybe she had a bit of a woman's intuition, given what came next. One day, one of the farm workers, who held a relatively senior role, simply didn't show up to work. Rick had always been one of the most reliable men that you would ever know. hadn't taken a sick day in all of his years on the farm.

He was in his 50s, a beloved fixture around the farm, a favorite to everyone. Rick was our uncle, mom's brother-in-law, through marriage to her younger sister, our aunt. So when he simply didn't show up one day, it was kind of crazy unusual. Work carried on as normally as it could without him, but both mom and dad were super stressed at Rick's absence. They were talking about it nearby when my younger sister, Ella Bees, said something like, Uncle Rick went into the grain silo. They questioned her on what she meant, and Elabeth claimed that she saw Uncle Rick on top of the grain silo in the night when she was getting a glass of water.

It was true that you could see the grain silo from that farmhouse kitchen, but why would Rick be on the farm overnight in the first place? Still, Dad went over to the silos, and he and a worker checked. I was nearby, and I was kind of nervous about Rick, too, and nervous about my dad going into the silo, so I hung around to watch. I heard Dad shout out, and I could tell something was wrong immediately. By late afternoon, Rick's body had been recovered from the silo. I was there when the workers, the sheriff, and a couple of his deputies laid Rick out on the tarp on the ground, and by all that's holy, I wish I hadn't seen it. You see, sometimes when you fall in a grain silo,

you suffocate. Being compressed by grain does terrible things. to the human body by itself, and Rick's face looked like it had taken a beating. But it wasn't the pressure of the grain that suffocated him. It was the grain itself. He drowned in it, slowly and painfully, inhaling grains of wheat after he'd sunk beneath the surface. You could tell by looking at him, too, by the state of the body. Now I don't want to be terrible by describing my uncle's body. You all can look up the Wikipedia page for grain entrapment if you want the specific details, but even still, let me tell you, it was absolutely and completely horrific to see. I had nightmares for months after as a kid. And from what I heard,

so did other people too. I know that members of my family did. Life had to go on. And since we lived and worked on a grain farm, that meant the silos had to stay operational. I think everyone regarded them with a little more fear and suspicion from that day on. There had only been one other silo death on the farm, many years back in my grandparents' day, and one near-Miss rescue when I was younger, but Rick's death hit different for a number of reasons. The main reason, though, was why Rick died. Remember Elabeth said that she'd seen Rick climbing the grain silo at night? That turned out to be correct. Rick had died deep down in that grain silo. Within minutes, he would have sunk deep beneath the grain and then slowly suffocated over hours. There was no note, so we don't know for

sure, but the way we figure, Rick did this to himself. He drove to the farm late at night, climbed up into the grain silo, and opted to step off the ledge and into the grain. Why? Who knows? People do funny things due to undiagnosed mental health issues. We suspect it was deliberate, though, because that's how Dad knew to call for help and mount the recovery mission. When Dad climbed up the ladder and into the hatch, he'd found Rick's boots, jacket, and watch neatly placed on one side of the ledge. The only indicated that someone was down there in the dark depths of the silo. Hey, let's read. I know you typically share stories about people, but sometimes God's other creatures can be absolutely terrifying.

And one such story happened to me and my husband when we were vacationing on a farm a few years back. The land had a public path that ran through a number of fields. In past visits, these fields have been used to graze sheep, and this time, though, we were walking our two dogs along the river when we noticed that the sheep had been replaced with cows. They were quite some distance away on the other side of this huge field, and we really didn't pay any attention to them, and they paid no attention to us. We were just having a nice time. The dogs jumped in the river, they were fetching sticks and stones and all of that,

and generally playing and having fun. And that's when my husband told me to look at the cows. They were all standing on high alert, sort of staring at us, this entire herd. I had no idea what in particular caught their attention, but something clearly did. Most of them looked kind of younger, these smaller cows, and I watched them for a moment staring at us, and then when nothing happened, I went back to playing with the dogs. It must have been ten or so minutes later when I glanced back at the cows and saw that they were now staring at us. Something about us had caused them to fixate. My husband suggested that we

actually leave, and I decided he was probably right. We were about halfway down the field at this point with a river on one side. The gate leading into the next field was about an eighth of a mile away. As we made the leave, the cows started to charge, all of them, all at once. The entire herd thundered across the field. We were still some distance away. away from them, so we had time to react, but my God, I had no idea that a herd of cows could be that fast. I guess I paused for a moment because that's when I realized that some of the cows were young. These male cows that haven't grown into full-blown bowl status yet, so they don't really need separating. Now, these young bowls were clearly the ones spurring the rest

of the cows on because they led the charge. And basically myself, my husband, and our two dogs were being charged down by a herd, or rather stampede, of the young bulls. And that's when my husband told me to run. I pushed the dogs forward and we bolted. My goal was to get the youngest dog to safety, so I scooped her up in my arms. She was still a puppy and couldn't really run that fast. And then me and the two dogs ran for the gate. Meanwhile, my husband decided the best course of action was to try and bathe the young

bulls into following him. And so that's what he did. Almost like some prize-winning Matador. He waved his arms, jumped up and down, and yelled at the cows to, come get me. They started running toward him, which is when he realized the problem withdrawing the attention of an entire herd of stampeding cattle. He was now being charged by those exact stampeding cattle. These cows then thundered across the field, and it was like that scene from the Lion King, if you remember that, except without the dramatic music or the lion, just a horde of stampeding, snorting, angry cattle. And looking back, I can see the funny side,

but at the time, I was just running, screaming, calling for help. I tripped and almost fell, making sure that I kept hold of the youngest dog as I stumbled. My husband wasn't as fast as I was, and he was hanging back a bit. I yelled at him to come on and hurry up. Now, by now I'd reach the gates in safety. My older dog was looking between me and my husband probably thinking, should we go back and save him? At the same time, my husband was keeping the attention of these stampeding young bowls

by backing away toward the river, and he eventually had to wade in, and it wasn't until he was about way steep in the water that he managed to halt the cattle's advance. When they reached the riverbank, the cows sort of just changed their minds and began aimlessly ambling around. This allowed my husband to trek along the riverbank

and out through the gate joining us in safety. Now, this story might not be up there with stalkers or serial killers and all that kind of stuff that you usually get, but my God, let me tell you, in the moment, being charged down by an entire herd of stampeding cattle was one of the most terrifying moments of my entire life. It's easy to underestimate just how fast they are, and they were easily 30 or more cows in total in that herd. They could have trampled us to death with ease, and it's very easy to underestimate animals, especially if you live in the countryside and deal with farm animals regularly. Normally, they'll leave you alone, and a herd of standard cows likely would have,

but those young bulls present in the field meant that they were angrier, more riled up, and more prone to being startled. And needless to say, we did not go walking in that field again while the cows were grazing anymore. 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 release. every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.