The Lets Read Podcast - 33: Episode 032 | Crazy Man & Woodland Stalker Stories | 30 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: May 7, 2019

Welcome to the fifteenth episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Crazy Men, Haunted Farms & Woodland Stalkers.    HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON- ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music: Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFvrqVSJE8E PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Tread Experts.ca so this happened when i was around nine years old i'm 25 now and it's something i will never forget it gives me goosebumps to this day i lived in in a terraced house, four houses combined, and my neighbors and I each have our own little patio. There's a small road 10 meters from my yard where people do their Sunday walks and so on. Only a small fence separates my small yard and patio from that road. I live in a pretty crowded area with several of these terraced houses spread around in my neighborhood, so seeing people walking on that road is pretty normal for me. Seeing random people standing on my patio is not.

When I was nine I usually got home from school at about an hour before my mom got home from work. I lived maybe 50 meters away from my school so my mom figured I was mature enough to be home alone for around an hour before she got home. This one day I got home from school. I did the usual thing which was to make sure I locked the front door and double check that the back door leading to the patio was also locked. I was nine. Being alone was a little scary even though it was in the middle of the day and only for one hour. I then rushed to my room upstairs to play as much PlayStation as possible before my mom came home and made me do my homework. While playing, I heard this noise coming from outside my window. My room was located one floor over the patio with a view to the road

I told you about before. It was kind of like the sound of a cat. But my cat has been missing for over three months. Hope sparked and I thought, OMG, did he finally come back? I ran downstairs to check if it was my cat. But the sight that met me gives me goosebumps just writing this. There was a guy standing on my patio. A tall guy with black hair covering half of his eyes. Making him look like a male version of the Ring Woman or something. I could hear him making high-pitched sounds, almost like a cat meowing.

A brown liquid was running down from his mouth and I could see him spitting out my dad's stomped cigarettes. He was actually eating from the ashtray. I was frozen observing this, eventually snapped out of it and screamed so loud that the man must have heard it. He didn't react. He kept on eating from the ashtray. I ran upstairs to my room, locked the doors and called my mom who then called the cops. I've never been more terrified in my life. Laying in bed under my sheets, shivering with fear as I hear these creepy high-pitched noises coming from the guy eating cigarette butts from the ashtray on my patio. I kind of blacked out for a moment because the next thing I remember is the police arriving on the road by my yard.

I hear them talking to the guy saying stuff like, what are you doing? Get over here or we'll come down and arrest you and so on. He didn't respond, but the high-pitched sounds were more frequent and louder. I decided to look through the window, feeling safe now that the cops were there. I could see two police officers standing by my fence, one man and a woman. I did not see the creepy man, however, because he was standing directly one story under me and out of my field of view. The police jumped the fence and I remember hearing the creepy guy screaming louder than anything I've ever heard before. He charged the female officer with full force and he knocked her out cold. The male officer then immediately tased the guy, leaving him shaking on the ground, screaming still.

The policeman struggled to keep him on the ground while putting handcuffs on him, but eventually made it. After a while, he managed to wake up the female police officer who seemed to be badly hurt. He called for backup and an ambulance and then he sees me standing in the window above him. The expression on my face must have been something else, because he just looked at me and said, I sure hope you didn't see all that. I started to cry. By this time, neighbors started to arrive wondering what was going on.

One of my neighbors, an elderly woman, made me come down, and she took care of me until my mom came back home. The police took the creepy guy with them in the car and left. Before they left they promised to come back and talk to us about what had happened. This is where the story takes an unexpected turn. The male police officer came back later that night and sat down with me and my mom to talk. He explained that the guy on my patio was actually diagnosed with severe autism. He had escaped a facility where mentally challenged people lived located around 5 kilometers from where I live.

He explained that the guy had actually been living in my house 5 years ago but he had been forced to move when his mom, his only caretaker, died. The poor guy probably thought he would find his mom in my house. He missed the routines and he missed living there with his mother. The police had to remove him from the house that time five years ago because he was extremely strong. From what I heard he had extreme tensions in the body because of the autism making his muscles grow stronger and stronger throughout the years. This was the reason he reacted the way he did when the police came this day. Still frightened, I told the police officer that he needed to make sure that this would never happen again, and he promised it wouldn't. After a few sleepless nights, my life

got back to normal. The years went by and the guy didn't come back, until one year ago. At this time my mom and dad had moved out. I bought the house from them and I'm still living there today. I was enjoying my morning coffee on the patio when I see this random guy stopping on the road by my fence. He just stands there looking at me. I looked at him and gave him a nod and then I hear the high-pitched noises. It's him. His hair had turned gray but the high-pitched sounds made me realize. My heart started racing and I instantly remembered the reason why he was back. I realized that he must have managed to escape again. Because I kept my cool a bit longer than when I was nine I started to realize how sorry I felt for the guy. 16 years

later and he was back to look for his mother. I decided to carefully ask him if he wanted to come down to the patio. He instantly jumped the fence. I started to think he would knock me out like he did that police officer. He didn't. He smiled. He looked at me and smiled. I offered him to sit down. He didn't respond. I offered him to come inside. He started laughing. He went inside. His face lit up. Pure joy. He was home. It reminded him of the life he had with his mother. It almost made me tear up. All of a sudden he sat down on my couch, turned on my TV and switched directly to the cartoons. I observed him for a while, he was just completely focused on the cartoons. I just wanted him to enjoy the moment so I didn't say anything to him. I realized I had to call the

facility to let them know. The caretakers arrived 10 minutes later. After a lot of convincing, he got back up, crying, and they went back to the facility. I called the facility two days later, and we made a deal. His name is Tom, and I now consider Tom my friend. Every Sunday from the day he returned, Tom and his caretakers visit me to watch cartoons. They say it's the highlight of his week and makes my heart warm. Now for several years my thoughts were, let's not meet guy on the patio eating from the ashtray. And now my thoughts are, let's meet every Sunday to watch cartoons. My new friend, Tom. This happened about 19 years ago. I was nearly 13 years old and I was being raised by my grandparents. We lived in a little tourist town in Florida. They had had problems with their two daughters as adults, my mother being the older of the two and they wanted to do everything they could to make sure that I didn't turn out the same way a do-over if you will. So needless to say they were very strict

my aunt was having a good period she had her stuff together we were all very close my aunt understood what it was like to be raised under a glass dome, metaphorically speaking. They raised her too, after all. So being as she was my only aunt, she made sure that the time we spent together was always super cool. I would stay over Saturday nights. We would go out and hang out at the pier and she would let me go hang out with my middle school boyfriend who would find ways to get to wherever I was. My grandparents had no idea of any of these activities of course. I was just spending some quality time with my aunt and giving them a break. It was nice that I had a younger female figure since my mom wasn't around.

One night when we were out having fun my aunt meets this guy and they really hit it off. He was very nice and introduced himself to me. He went by JR and at first was kind and a charming talker. They exchanged numbers after hanging out for a while and then we went home and went to bed. They ended up going out a bit more and my aunt had really liked JR. He took her to his home and introduced her to his father and showed her around his land. He lived out in the woods in the middle of nowhere. I have lived in this town for 30 years and I still to this day couldn't tell you where it is. I was only there once. He was teaching my aunt how to shoot a gun. I remember her shoulder rocking back with the impact of the shot and it surprising her. He had these weird flamenco

dancing clothes in his closet. It was all seemingly harmless, I mean everyone has their quirks. About 10 days, maybe two weeks later, we were again at the pier out by the payphones talking about what to do that night and what to get for dinner. JR and my aunt were in their late 20s, early 30s and as much as she loved me, I imagine these were times that I got in the way. Well anyway we were at the pier and he is talking about how he has these painkillers. He offered me one. I declined of course and told him I had a high tolerance to pain anyways and didn't need that stuff. He then with a huge smile asked me if he can see for himself, assuring me he won't really hurt me, he's just trying to have fun.

This idiot twists my arm behind my back until I hear a pop. I start to cry and he laughs and says, oh sweetheart I was only playing, you said you had a high tolerance. I guess I was stronger than I thought I was being, I'm sorry, no need to ruin the good time we're all having. I go in the private peer office which my granddad managed, crying. My aunt comes in and lets me know that she thinks it's messed up too and that she talked to him about it. She goes back outside and he asks her what she is up to that night. She tells him that she isn't sure if I am staying over because with what had just happened. I was whining about going home. I was angry that she didn't deck him right there for hurting me. Well, he tells her that she should meet him under let's call it the sunset bridge at

2am on the other side of town. He says that the stars are beautiful and you can listen and hear the fish. He tells her he would love to see it with her and they can dance under the moon. We were all from a fishing family and live in a fishing town so fish activities under the bridge at late times wasn't necessarily something that threw up a red flag. If it's dark and late there won't be people there hogging all of the fish. She tells him maybe and we leave. I decide to spend the night after all, later sneaking in only if she will pick up my boyfriend Charlie.

She calls him when she gets home and says that she can come but she will have me with her. He groans and is like, fine, alright, I guess she can come too, maybe she'll get tired and sleep in the car. About an hour after she called JR the first time, I asked her about Charlie and she agrees. She sits down with me and hugs me and touches my face lovingly, apologizing for what had happened with my arm. My aunt was an amazing woman and I love her very much. She then calls him again and tells him not to worry. She's picking up Charlie so I will have my own entertainment and they can have their time. He goes into a rage and starts sputtering and cussing about how it's too complicated now and he just wanted an intimate meeting with her, not a family reunion,

I guess. He went on about how he didn't want to have to babysit a 13-year-old and her 14-year-old boyfriend. He hangs up after calling her some crazy names. She bewilderingly hangs up the phone and tells me what had happened. We go about our night with pizza rolls and playstation and things are fine. He calls her a few more times and drives by the house for a couple of weeks but my aunt was having none of it. After a while he left our lives just as swiftly as he had came. The whole affair lasted only a month if even that, three weeks maybe and all in all it wasn't the craziest experience she had had with a man. JR was soon forgotten and we went about our business. Flash forward two years later I am

almost out of middle school. My aunt had moved to a city about 40 miles away. I still lived with my grandparents. They were still strict but as they had gotten older so had I. I knew a few ways around the rules. One day, my friend Frank and I missed the bus home from school and called our good high school friend Darla to pick us up and take us home after riding a bit. She had this big beautiful red truck and I would ride around in the cab of it, loving the freedom and the wind. We were smoking cigarettes and laughing, listening to the radio. The time I would have spent on the bus before my stop was just enough time to hit up the Taco Bell drive-thru. We cruised down the road a bit before heading back to Frank and I's separate houses. He lived just down the road. We had a lot

of fun that day. She dropped me off first. My grandparents came outside. They were heavily confused at the sight of an unknown vehicle and even more so when they saw that I had gotten out of it. After letting her be the one to explain because she was older, cooler and more responsible, my parents thanked her for being kind enough to take me home. They said how lucky I was that she had just happened to be there to help me get home. The things we do to our parents, eh? That was the last time we ever saw my friend. She didn't show up for work for five days. I can't speak for everyone, but I assume she had just ran away. Darla's parents were going through a nasty divorce. The dad had a hot new girlfriend

and the mother was very bitter about it. Rightfully so, I guess. It was embarrassing for all of the kids. Her truck wasn't left behind. I figured she got tired of her parents acting like infants and took off. I missed her but she was in a whole other league of freedom and coolness. 16 is a whole different life than 14 especially when you are in different schools. I wished her well maybe even a little envious that she got out of this town and I was still here. I hadn't heard anything for two weeks about her when, at about nine at night, my grandparents got a phone call to turn on the news.

Darla's body was found out in the woods. She had been strangled to death and just left out there. I don't even know for how long. I was devastated. I was so joyful that I had the last experience with her but so saddened and horrified. She was so young, barely older than myself. She was about to be 17 in just a short time. It was a very sad time for our town. The good and bad news is that they caught the guy that had done it. He confessed after some very incriminating evidence and during his questioning also confessed to ending the life of his girlfriend who had been missing for about 8 years and also his father, staging his death to make it look like he did it himself.

When they showed his mugshot on the screen and said his name, I swear I almost passed out. There, clear as day on the screen staring back at me, was a picture of JR. I had no idea they even knew each other. I can't even imagine what would have happened if we had gone under the bridge that night. Investigation Discovery Channel did a piece on it a couple of years back. I was shocked to see it on the TV. The memories came rushing back and I decided to write them all down. I literally have a newfound appreciation of life now that I'm old enough to understand just how close I could have come

to losing it. My aunt lived on to make awesome new memories with me. I have a beautiful life with my husband and three boys that most likely wouldn't have happened if things had gone differently that night. I was ten years old when we moved into a new apartment. It was a bad neighborhood. My mom, who was eight months pregnant at the time, had no choice in the matter. We had just been released from a domestic violence shelter,

and turning down a cheap house wasn't an option, no matter if it was in the ghetto or not. Our first and last day of living there follows. After we were dropped off, we claimed our bedrooms, even though we had nothing but a few garbage bags of clothes. Not a single piece of furniture, even a bed. I claimed the upstairs because it was a cool idea to have two floors. I imagined running down the stairs to catch the school bus. My eight-year-old brother chose the room next to mine. My five-year-old

sister was sharing a room with our mom downstairs. It was right beside the front door. After our excitement wore down, we had to walk to the grocery store since we didn't have food either. While I was reading the magazines, I casually saw a cell phone that had been left on the racks. At the time, 2001, few people had them. Definitely not people like us. I picked it up and found my mom. I showed her with my face, shocked. She immediately put it in her purse. I became angry at her. I knew it wasn't the right thing to do.

We should tell the manager of the store or wait by the magazines and see if someone comes back to find it. Nope. Mom told me to hush and continue to shop. She wasn't a thief. I never saw her steal anything before then. I was still a little mad at her when we arrived back at our new home. We all obviously started taking turns with the phone playing the classic game Snake. When it came time to sleep, we literally piled all of our clothes on my mom's floor. It was the only thing we could use for a bed.

Us kids were goofing around on our pallet and mom was in the living room. That's when we heard the banging on the door. Someone was screaming to let them in the house. A male voice, an unknown voice, banging and kicking on the door, screaming out threats to let him in or he'll do terrible things. Mom grabbed the phone and immediately dialed 911. After she told them the address and information she urgently said before hanging up, hurry or we'll all die. She ran us to the bedroom and told us to hide in the closet and she slammed the door behind her. Of course me me being ten, I immediately opened it back enough to peep through

to see what was about to happen. I didn't see my mom. The kicking and banging kept getting faster and louder. He was shouting, I know someone's in here. Open up this door. Mom came out of the bathroom, holding the toilet tank lid above her head. She stood by the entrance of the door, waiting for him to eventually break in. Her face was frozen in the most serious expression. She was focused, holding this object almost like a tennis racket. She didn't move at all, ready to do something she probably never imagined she'd do, attack a stranger and maybe even worse. She never said a word back to him or us. I saw their lights before I heard them. The man was still cursing while the police subdued him. He sounded different though. Disappointed. Defeated. The cops then opened up our door.

I think he had just finished breaking in enough to come inside. My mom was still holding the tank lid in her warrior tennis stance. The cop calmly took it away from my mom and said, It's okay, we got him. Within two seconds she burst into tears and fell to her knees crying and thanking them. After we all hugged and calmed down a little, a cop who offered to stay and patrol until sunrise told my mom something in confidence. She shared with me years later that the stranger was a registered offender with previous burglary charges as well. The next morning, we got picked up by a family friend. We ended up staying with her until we found a safer place to live, right before my mom gave

birth to my brother. I don't know why he picked our apartment or why he tried so hard to get in. I'm just glad that my mom stole that phone that day. It was turned off the next day, but we still used it occasionally to play Snake. I'm a 32 year old female and this is something that happened to me only two nights ago. My husband, Kevin and I were on the porch smoking a cigarette. It was about 9 o'clock at night. We live far out in the woods, right off of a stretch of highway that's between two interstate exits. We were looking up at the stars, enjoying the quiet atmosphere of the crickets,

glad to have a temporary relief from all of the usual traffic noise. I heard something and shushed my husband, even though he hadn't said anything. Was that screaming? Yes, it was a woman screaming like nothing I had ever heard before. It sounded like she was getting murdered. In between blood chilling screams she was calling out, Help me, help me. I look at my husband.

We were both really freaked out. The more she screamed, the closer she was getting to the house. I could eventually see a figure running along the median of the highway making their way closer to the part of the highway that was in front of our house. Our house is a good ways back from our driveway, but not far enough that you can't see anything. If we could see her, that meant that she could see us. We have no yard security lights, stupid I know, so we were in complete darkness. We could still see the highway perfectly fine due to the house across from us who still had their Christmas lights up. I threw my cig in my yard and back up to stand in the doorway of the house, pulling out

my phone to call 911. She's still in the median of the road, screaming. If anyone else in the surrounding houses heard her, they pretended like they didn't. Kevin runs past me inside to get on his jacket and shoes. I tell him not to go out there, but he ignores me and gets dressed anyway. As soon as he is out of sight, I see a red car barrel up the road and pull over next to where the lady was at. With her in the median, there was still a stretch of highway between them. There was a man driving. I couldn't see what he looked like. I only heard his voice. He was yelling that he was going to hurt this woman, calling her terrible names. It looked like he was throwing stuff at her out the window,

maybe clothes. As soon as she sees him pull up she starts running straight towards our yard. By that time I was already on the phone with the police officers but as I said I live out in the woods, pretty far out of town I'll add so it would take them a bit to get there. I yell for my husband. I tell my nine year old to go in our room where the baby is and close the door. He can hear the whole thing and was pretty frightened. My husband runs out onto the porch and into the yard towards her. He asks if she's okay and she says that she had gotten a ride home from this guy and halfway down the road he started acting really creepy. He refused to let her out where she told him and

kept driving with her in the car. She looked behind her seat, pretending to look at a car behind them and saw a roll of duct tape. Fearing for her life, she jumped out of the moving car and just started running down the road, screaming for help. Kevin starts to lead her towards the house, but now is also on the phone calling the police, having gathered more information that I wasn't able to give them when I had called. They told him to stay on the line with them, until an officer showed up. He lets her in the house and her face looks terrible. She is red and bleeding in a couple of spots, road rash from where she had jumped out.

She also said that he had hit her before she was able to escape. She came in and we locked our door, knob, deadbolt and chain. We stood together near the window waiting for the police to show up. Kevin giving updates and answering questions on the phone. No, they haven't gotten here yet. Yes, this car is still parked across the highway. It's a red sedan in front of the house with lots of blue porch Christmas lights. He told them,

I was trying not to lose my cool when there was a loud bang on our door. The man was yelling, I know you're in there. I saw you running. The people in there can't protect you. I shouted through the door that he needed to leave our property and, if he was smart, get in his car and drive off. I told him we were on the phone with the police.

The answer he gave was the worst one I could have ever heard. He says, Go ahead, call the police, I don't care. They won't be here in time. Bang, bang, bang on the door over and over. The woman was freaking out and crying saying help me, please help me over and over again. I ran to the kitchen to get a large knife just in case. We had a huge solid iron door but our windows were easily breakable.

If he wanted to get in badly enough he certainly could. My husband just came from our bedroom with his gun when a squad car pulled up in the yard. Two more following behind it and one across the street where his car was. He took off, running on foot. They tended to the woman and got her home safely. Turns out she lives across the highway from us, five houses to the left. It had been two hours later and they still hadn't found him. There are a lot of places to hide in these woods. I just hope he hides far away from here.

I was a cashier at a busy grocery store, only a five minute walk from where my family lived. I knew several customers very well since I worked regular weekend shifts and lots of people came in at the same time each week. I always worked Sundays 3pm to 11pm. One Sunday afternoon was when I met this weird, creepy middle-aged man. He was with a woman and a young toddler the first time so naturally I thought they were a family. Nonetheless, I was my super friendly self. A lot of customers told me over the years that I always made them laugh or smile.

Maybe this was confused as flirting, I don't know. So anyhow, this man, despite his wife or girlfriend being there, was overly friendly with me right away. I noticed pretty quickly that he wouldn't take his eyes off of me and held eye contact way too long. They left and I brushed it off. Then at night, at around 9pm when there was barely anyone in the store, he came alone when I was on break. I had another employee actually come upstairs to the break room telling me that a customer was asking for me, by name. I didn't think anything of it because sometimes my friends came by or a customer came

back because there was a mistake on the receipt, cashier's names were always listed on there. So of course, it's this guy. but nothing is wrong. He came down to the grocery store not to complain or buy anything else but to tell me that he had a great interaction with me and that he sees great potential in my customer service skills and would like to go for coffee with him so that he can get to know me better. Professionally of course. I politely declined and let him know that I was in high school and had other professional plans for university. He becomes really pushy, saying it's never a bad thing to get your foot in the door. Can he at least get my number for when I've finished university and looking for work? Keep in mind I'm 16 at this point, who even asks questions like

that? I kept declining and he offered to drive me home. It was late. I said no, I live close by so I walk and he started asking, oh what street do you live on? I live close by too. At this point I can see another employee from a distance starting to wonder what's going on and I'm getting creeped out and annoyed. My break was interrupted because of this guy after all so I just say no thank you over and over. Finally he left saying he'll be back next Sunday to see me because he sees great potential and won't let me go just like that. Red flags go off all over my head. I call my dad, tell him everything, ask him to pick me up, even though we live super close, like not even a two minute drive. Obviously he says yes,

worried about me. When my dad picks me up I notice this guy in his car, in the parking lot, waiting, more than an hour since we spoke. I, stupid me, didn't mention it to my dad because I'm 16 and still in denial that this could be a serious situation. When we start driving, I notice that he is behind us so finally I tell my dad. My dad drives straight and then circles around two different streets to see if anyone is following us and yes, he is. My dad, being the European man that he is, gets out of the car to wreck this man but the car speeds off. We wait a bit in the car as my dad debates calling the cops but decides not to. When we get home, he parks the car in the garage. The story doesn't end there though. My parents try to force me to quit my job or just stop working

Sundays but I'm like nah it's fine because well who knows I was a stupid teenager so nothing happens during my weekday shifts and I basically forgot about it but alas the next Sunday night rolls around and so does this idiot this time taking a photo of me with his phone. I kid you not, he took a photo of me as he approached my till. Laughed it off saying, I can't forget what you look like, right? I was seriously shook but too nice to tell him off like I would had that happened now. I don't remember the whole encounter but he kept pushing for me to sit down with him privately because he owns a business and needs people like me. I was so

uncomfortable and scared but tried to play it cool. My dad picked me up again that night. He wasn't in the parking lot this time. I stopped working Sundays. I gave my boss a description of the man. He came by one Sunday asking for me and was straight up told off by a supervisor, an older co-worker and friend, telling him to never come back or the store would pursue legal action. I didn't see him again and I went off to university. Now the follow up. One weekend in my second year of university I went shopping with my mom and when we were sitting in the food court eating I felt someone staring at me and I saw him sitting at a table maybe eight

or so tables away with that same woman and child and more people glaring at me his eyes his face it looked like he wanted to eat my soul I told my mom and we got up and left them all right away. I didn't look back. I haven't seen him since and I hope I never do. I know some people may say that maybe he meant well and really was just an eager businessman or something. But there's nothing like the vibe of knowing that somebody just isn't right in the head.

This happened around 2012 but I remember most of what happened clear as day. I worked with my girlfriend at a busy restaurant. We worked all the time and it was a stressful job. We took off a few days and decided to fly somewhere to get away from work, people and the town in general. I found decent deals and flights to Ocean City, Maryland for two nights. She had never been on a plane. We loved the beach and I could hit up all the local crab cake spots. It was perfect. We flew into Baltimore and rented a car to drive to Ocean City.

Nothing memorable happened the first day. We laid on the beach, hit up all the local shops, and had forgettable food. The second full day we woke up and went to the most recommended stop for crab cakes, and on the way back we stopped and got crab cakes to go from two other recommended places for later. We stopped by the hotel to drop the food off and went to the hotel bar for a few drinks. Now my girlfriend at the time was a smoker and I hated it. She also would attract attention from guys which I would deal with but wasn't thrilled about. We go to the rooftop bar at the hotel and the bar itself is a four-sided island in the middle of a patio. It's probably 2pm and a clear sunny day. We pull up chairs and there's only a few women on the left side of the bar and a guy bartender behind it. We got obligatory house margaritas. After her first

drink my girlfriend felt like she wanted to smoke but the girls and the bartender didn't have one to bum her. We got refills and schmoozed with the bartender about the area and things to smoke but the girls and the bartender didn't have one to bum her. We got refills and schmoozed with the bartender about the area and things to do but mainly kept to ourselves. The bartender seemed as if though he was being fake. Something was off and I couldn't put my finger on it. A feeling of I really don't even want to run to the restroom and leave her here at the bar because I don't trust something. More than a few times he asked if we were staying at the hotel. I think I said no, the girlfriend said yes. He asked us what room at one point. The girlfriend went to use the restroom. A minute later I heard

Guy's voice. I didn't realize that there was a group of three to four guys that sat at the table directly behind us. They were either playing cards or just smoking but they made some comment to her when she walked back. Great. We finished our drinks and were googling tropical drinks for her and area hot spots to check out. The guys came up on either side of us and talked to the bartender and got beers. You can tell they were either friends or regulars. I honestly couldn't tell you if they were there when we came to the bar or came after but they had a sleazy vibe. Me and the girlfriend ended up talking to the only other couple at the bar that had come and sat down. It was nice to be away and just relax. We always like making new friends. I didn't realize it but

one of the guys came up and either brushed against my girl or made a comment, and it rubbed her the wrong way. So in her infinite wisdom, she wanted to be bothersome to them and got up and asked to bum a smoke. I didn't realize it until I turned around, and there she was, talking to the guy with his shirt unbuttoned and gold chains hanging on his chest hair forced. I didn't want her associating with them but if one gave her a smoke I would get the guy a beer if it meant we didn't have to leave the bar to hit a store for smokes. She came back without a cigarette, mad. Apparently the guys kept asking what's in it for us and said your boyfriend wants to fight us why would we give you anything? I didn't want to fight them.

I was on vacation and I wasn't paying attention to them but I didn't like the implication of the other comment at all. Because we had a lackluster first day I wanted to pack in fun things this day so this drink was my last one. I asked for the tab and the guy of the couple we met gave us his business card and said we should meet him and his girlfriend at secrets at 8pm. The guys behind us kind of swarmed on all sides of us and slammed down a pack of cigarettes, two smokes inside left, in between both me and the girlfriend. They said something like, here, and then ordered another round. We found it odd but I thanked them and offered a shot. I don't even think they replied. One asked if we were vacationing, then asked if we were staying at the hotel, then took the round of beers back to the table. I had a weird feeling,

as if they were locals and didn't like us because we were visitors. Turning back to the bar my drinks were now completely full. Stupid me didn't even question it. I didn't want a refill but figured the bartender taught me off. I took a sip and the drink was strong. I just closed out so maybe it was a thank you for the tip. It was disgustingly strong like rubbing alcohol maybe even turpentine. I told my girl to try it. Boozy Susie over here takes a huge pull from my drink and nearly spit it back out. It was gross. She made a face and said that it shouldn't taste like that. I couldn't even ask the bartender about it, he was gone. I don't know when he disappeared, but he was nowhere to be found. I can't remember if I fully finished the nasty thing.

My girl said something along the lines of, the guys are staring, let's go. I was originally worried that she was going to chat them up and thank them before we left but she said she felt weird. The whole vibe changed, she wanted out. I remember spending a minute or two saying goodbye to the couple we were going to meet later and heading towards the door into the hotel. The guys weren't at the table. Patio door, elevator, hotel room door, bed. My eyes open and I turn my head right. The alarm clock reads 3am. I am face down in bed, on top of the covers. I push myself off, slide back off the bed and stand up. The sliding glass doors are wide open, as are the screen doors to the balcony.

There's a breeze. I think, did girlfriend jump off the balcony? And in that millisecond I hear crying behind me. My girlfriend is sitting Indian style on the floor with a clamshell of what was $40 worth of crab cakes in her lap, crying. She said she couldn't wake me up. She asked me if I remembered what happened. She said she had been sick and throwing up for four hours non-stop. What happened? I bent over and sit down with her and got hit with a wave of sickness. I ran and was in that bathroom for hours puking.

By the time I came out she was asleep and passed out again. This had to be a bad dream. I remember thinking that maybe we went to the club and got wasted and I blacked out. I went back to bed. We both woke up at 7am to our alarms. We had to take the rental to Baltimore and catch a flight back. We both had to be at work at 2 today. I was shaking, she looked terrible, and we both felt like death. She was shook. She said the walk back to the hotel room was scary and she didn't remember anything after. Wait, what?

According to her, when we walked into the hotel from the bar patio, one of the guys was on a chair near the elevators. He said something to us but the doors closed quickly. She said when we got to the floor, two of the guys were at the end of the hall, heading towards us. She said that we got into the room and they stood outside our door and she thinks they knocked. Apparently I laid on the bed and immediately was lights out. She couldn't wake me and passed out herself until she woke up to violently vomiting for hours. My body was shot, I was shaking and now I'm processing that these scumbags maybe followed

us to our room. Part of me thought she was exaggerating, but you know how you have a weird slow motion flashback. Well, as I was graying out on the way to the hotel room, I remember one of the guys being by the elevator. Also, as she was brushing her teeth, her mouth was blue. I went to the mirror, so was mine, neon blue. Nothing we had that day was blue. I went to the mirror, so was mine, neon blue. Nothing we had that day was blue. I had light green margaritas and vodka and root beers. This was proof that something fishy had happened. We didn't know what to do. We had to get back. We couldn't stick around.

We got to the car. I barely felt okay to drive, but I wanted to be home. We felt dirty, we were confused and we wanted out of Maryland and swore we were never coming back. We missed our flight, explained the situation to the desk and somehow got put on another flight back home. We sat in the airport for hours, dying. The flight was painful too. We made it to work a few hours late that day. Nobody believed our story and thought we made it to work a few hours late that day. Nobody believed our story and thought we made it up to justify being late and we kind of never brought it up again. I googled to see if similar situations happened and found nothing. We googled blue tongue and saw it's a side effect of a drug. I'll be honest, I felt lucky we made it out of Ocean City.

I don't know if we were a target of a room invasion or robbery, or if they wanted to attack or kidnap my girl. It could have turned out ugly in a lot of different ways. What if my girlfriend didn't take a huge swig? What if I drank the whole thing by myself? How close did I come to an OD or death depending on the drug and its interactions with alcohol? I swear the bartender was in on it. I did call the hotel and asked if there was any issues with people being drugged or room robberies there and they said no, they have zero incidents

and I think I let it go. I emailed the hotel from a throwaway email I created and told them to watch the hotel roof bar and bartender and never got a reply. I realize I wrote a ton, but that's my story, from elementary school every day and we would bus home together. We had to transfer two times and this happened at the stop of the second transfer. One day I saw an old Caucasian man get onto the bus after us. He looked around 60 years old with white hair and he was really big. Since there was no seats available I stood up to offer my seat for him. He gave me a smile and thanked me and I thought nothing of it. After a few minutes I noticed that he was still staring at me with a smile and at that time I thought he was just appreciating the fact that I gave up my seat

for him. After another while I was starting to get uncomfortable because I was noticing how intently he was looking at me. Once again I tried to reason that maybe he had mental health issues or he was just slow because of his age. I took my brother by the hand and we moved towards the back of the bus. By the time our bus stop arrived the bus was pretty empty. My brother and I exited and we started walking in the direction of our apartment. It was only a few feet away from the bus stop. I was pretty paranoid from earlier so I turned around to check if anyone had followed us off the bus. I saw the old man walking in our direction and I internally panicked. I reasoned to myself

that maybe he lived in this area too and it was just a coincidence that he was walking in this direction. So I kept walking towards the gate of the apartment. My brother and I got to the gate and I was digging in my backpack for my keys. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and I looked up to see the old man smiling at me. I didn't know how to react so I just said hi and kept looking for my keys while I had my eyes on him. By that time I was really creeped out because his stare was really intense. He said thanks for giving up your seat for me and asked if I was free to go for lunch with him so he could thank me. In my head all I could think was that it was around 4pm so why would he want to go to

lunch? I quickly declined, shoved my brother past the gate and slammed it behind me. The old man just kept smiling and staring as I looked back and I was glad that I was able to escape from him. A few days passed and I thought nothing more about the incident. Then one day I saw him again at the bus stop. I tried to stand as far away as possible and try not to look in that direction. The bus stop was a busy one, so there was always a line of people. I could feel him staring at me, and I remember just wishing that the bus would come faster so I could get away.

We got onto the bus, and I could still see him smiling as he stared at me unblinkingly out of the corner of my eye. I tried to keep my attention on the book I was reading and not let it bother me. When our stop came, my brother and I quickly got off the bus and sped walked to the gate. I turned around to check if the old man had followed us off the bus and was immensely relieved that he didn't. I looked at the bus as it drove past and I remember seeing him by the window seat just staring at me. Then for the next few weeks he just kept showing up to the same bus stop. Sometimes I see him sitting by a ledge and when he sees us he gets in line for the bus. Sometimes he tries to go up to me and initiate conversation. I always ignored him the best I could and keep my

brother on the opposite side of him with me in between. I was also him the best I could and keep my brother on the opposite side of him with me in between. I was also immensely glad that I lived in an apartment so he didn't know where exactly we lived. I never told my parents about it and although I contemplated telling someone that was in line with me or calling the police, I never did because I thought that staring wasn't really a crime and he didn't do anything except try and initiate conversations. Plus there wouldn't be any evidence. I also thought that because he was an old man he couldn't do much harm and maybe he was just lonely. I just tried to put up with it the best I could and stay as far away as possible from him. I also couldn't

take another bus because the bus didn't come often and we had to go to extracurricular activities afterwards. Then one day he initiated conversation again and started telling me that he was a rich man. He showed me the gold chain around his neck and the gold rings around his fingers. I was mildly offended that he thought that this would make me talk to him. So my brother and I went into a nearby supermarket to try and avoid him and take the next bus. I thought that he would give up and just take the bus so I wouldn't see him when I went back. Except he followed us into the supermarket. I walked through a few aisles to try and lose him.

After I couldn't see him anymore, I decided to buy my brother a treat to calm him down. We headed back to the cashier's area and lined him. After I couldn't see him anymore I decided to buy my brother a treat to calm him down. We headed back to the cashier's area and lined up. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw the old man with a $20 bill in his hand. He offered to pay and I said no thank you. I think he said okay and just walked out. I didn't see him afterwards at the bus stop and thought that maybe he took the hint that I wasn't interested in anything to do with him. Luckily this happened a month or two before summer break so I didn't have to take that bus route anymore. I also didn't have to go to extracurricular activities so my brother and I took the bus

at a different time. Fast forward a year, I was walking my brother to summer school every day during the summer. On that route we walked past a subway stop. One day, we saw the old man at the subway stop. We quickly walked away, hoping that he didn't see us, but he must have seen us because every day after that, he was sitting outside the subway stop. He didn't try to initiate conversation, but he was always staring intensely at me from afar. I started getting nightmares of him kidnapping me or taking a knife to threaten me. After a week or so my brother and I just took a different route to school.

I didn't see him again until last year, so around 6 years after the initial time I met him. I saw him at the bus stop on my way to university and my heart automatically started beating faster and my hands became clammy. He must have saw me because he smiled and stared at me without blinking again. Luckily, since my classes aren't a set schedule, he wasn't able to lurk at the bus stop again waiting for me. I still see him on the rare occasion at bus stops around where I live but for the sake of my sanity, old man, let's not meet again. A few years back when I was around 18 years old, my best friend Jesse at the time was dating and rooming with this guy named Corey. Corey had a twin brother named Tyler. They were both super nice and friendly guys. I would hang out over at Jesse's house quite often because she didn't drive and

had a baby to take care of. A lot of the time I would babysit for her so she could work her two jobs. When Corey and Jesse started to date, Corey's twin brother needed a place to stay as well. There was enough room in the apartment for Tyler to stay at Jesse's apartment for a while until he was able to get back on his feet. So pretty much every time I was at Jesse's, the twins were there as well. Not too long after Tyler had arrived, Jessie made a joke stating how fun it would be for me to date Tyler since she was dating Corey. She thought it would be cool for the two best friends to date the twin brothers. At this time, I had a boyfriend and I wasn't interested in Tyler that way. I had just turned 18 and Tyler was 26 years old. I felt that he was too old for me at that point

in time as well. I wasn't particularly happy with the boyfriend I had either and Jesse knew that as well. I was trying to make it work though. One day Tyler was taking a shower when I arrived at Jesse's. Jesse and Corey were hungry and wanted to go grab some food for everyone. They left and I stayed behind just chilling in Jesse's room. Tyler had came in not too long after that that they left and sat on the bed with me. He was talking to me about random things, then all of a sudden he just blurts out that he has strong feelings for me and that he is in love with me. I barely knew him, but I told him I was sorry and that I had a boyfriend which he already

knew, but I felt I needed to remind him. He told me that he knows and he just wishes he had me instead and that he will just have to learn to get over it. So from there I relaxed a bit about the situation. After all, you can't help who you are attracted to and that's totally fine. A couple of months later I was talking to Jessie on the phone and Tyler was there with Jessie. She was again joking about me and Tyler dating and I said he's too old for me anyway. It might be your thing but not mine. I was trying to joke back with Jessie. I had to get off the phone though with Jessie after that point because I had things to do. Not too long after

we hung up she called me back. When I answered, she said Tyler just scared the living daylights out of her. I asked her what had happened. She said he got super angry at what I had said about him being too old for me and started flipping out and stormed out of the house. She thought he was going to do some damage. I couldn't believe that he was being so overdramatic like that. I told her that he's being ridiculous and he needs to get over it. It's just how I feel. He's a nice guy, but no thank you.

I made that clear a while ago anyway. Jessie knew about that incident of him telling me he had strong feelings for me anyway. She probably shouldn't have kept joking about it but again she felt she was being harmless. After his breakdown at Jesse's he did end up apologizing to her and to me for acting that way. We forgave him and told him he needs to work on his anger issues or he is going to scare people away and he promised he would. A couple of more months later Tyler started texting about how he could make me happy and I should leave the guy I was with for him. That he would do everything for me and give me anything I wanted.

I told him he needed to stop this because I had already told him I wasn't interested. He wouldn't stop though. He kept blowing at my phone with long paragraph messages about wanting me to be with him, the things he would buy me and do for me, and also talking really bad about my boyfriend at the time, which he wasn't wrong about my boyfriend at the time. My boyfriend at that time was a horrible human being as well. I was getting sick of him blowing up my phone after I was repeatedly nice to him about the situation and tried my best to let him down easy, so I went to my boyfriend about it. As soon as I showed him the text that created a whole other wildfire. He lost his mind and got angry with me as if it was my

fault. He ended up punching a hole in his bedroom door and fighting with me the whole car ride home. He said I brought this on myself because I didn't stop talking to Tyler. I was pretty upset that he was treating me that way and then I had Tyler blowing up my phone as well. It wasn't too much at once. I blocked Tyler from messaging me and calling me. That didn't stop him though. He would make Facebooks and message me on there. Super long paragraphs again. He started talking about marrying me and what ring would I like for him to buy. He wanted to get me all the gifts too and sometimes he would. He would get me gifts and have Jesse and Corey bring them to me when he was at work. I would constantly tell him to leave me

alone and he would say that he would do that if that's what I wanted. I would tell him it was what I wanted and he would leave me alone for maybe a day, sometimes less. Then I would get another five paragraphs from him again. Every day this happened and it happened pretty much all day. I had stopped responding, hoping he would stop then, but he didn't. He kept sending the paragraphs and I honestly stopped reading them. I blocked him on Facebook and he would just make another one and message me. He kept up with that for a long time.

I kept ignoring him though. Then one day was the last straw. I tried my best to be patient with him and to not take it to the police but this was it. Tyler had messaged me again over Facebook. He said that my silence had given him the impression that I am playing hard to get and that he likes that. He said that he understands just what I am doing now so since I won't talk to him he is going to come to my house and give me what I want. He said if I didn't answer him back right now that he was going to come over and do things to me that I can't even imagine and that I will really want him then. I didn't reply to those messages either, thinking he wasn't really

going to drive to my house. He's just trying to get a response out of me and it's not happening. It was a scary message though, nonetheless. I had taken a nap at some point that day. There was a knock on my door but I didn't answer it. My mom wasn't home so if it was her, she would have had the key and came in. I just ignored the knock and went back to sleep. Then I heard my mom come in and call my name. I got up and went to her and she said that I had a letter from someone. It was shoved under the door. She handed it to me and it was a letter from Tyler. He did show up at my house. In the letter he wrote some pretty disgusting things to me.

He said he was angry that I didn't open the door and let him in. That he came all this way down here just to talk to me and this is how I treat him. That I'm selfish. He said he was going to take me out to pick out a wedding ring and now it's the last thing he ever wants to do. He said he hated me. He just went on and on in the letter expressing his anger with me i immediately showed my mom and printed out the conversations from the facebook messages

my mother and i both went down to the police station and made a report and documentation the police read and documented everything but nothing super crazy had been done i wondered what would have happened if i did open that door when he came to my house. I'm so glad I didn't. It didn't end there. A couple of days later my mom had just arrived home. She said she saw a car parked out front of the house. The person in it was sleeping. It was a man. He ended up waking up and seeing my mom and he booked it out and she chased him down as far as she could, at least until she got his license plate information. We took it to the police to see if it was Tyler and it was.

He was sleeping outside my house in his car, stalking me, waiting for me to come outside. It seemed I always just missed him and it was like luck. It was strange but I was thankful. Once that was taken to the police an official court date was being made. He was taken to court for everything and I had to be there to watch. They never asked me to testify but I was there to see what consequences one would get from this harassment. He got a slap on the wrist and was told never to talk to me again. He agreed with everything the judge said and went on his way. I was angry that was all he got, but he didn't do anything terrible, abuse me or worse, so that's all he was able to get. I thought I was finally rid of him though.

I still stayed cautious of my surroundings. I'd always carried my keys in between my knuckles and I had a taser as well. For a little while I would have someone walk me to my car every time I left for work at night, just in case Tyler was lurking somewhere. He was a strong bodybuilder type so I knew I would never have a chance against him. A few months go by, almost a year, and I get a comment on my separate business Facebook and follow page. It was Tyler. He was commenting super vulgar things on my page. One of the comments concerned my breasts. I immediately printed that out and went to the police. They couldn't believe he was back at it again, harassing

me. I was so tired of this already. I felt like he would never go away. Again, we went to court and this time he was not allowed on social media for at least three years and he wasn't allowed to have any contact with me or anyone that is in contact with me. He also had to do community service and he did get taken away in handcuffs. During the process of the second court meeting, he did admit to his lawyer who told my lawyer that he was obsessed with me and he didn't know why. My lawyer told me what he said and I felt cold inside. I couldn't believe it to hear that actual word. Obsessed. That's exactly what it was too and for him to actually say it too as if it's normal. Since that court date, I haven't heard from him or Corey or any of his family. I haven't seen them either. I have moved since that has happened and my Facebook is quite private.

I am 25 next month and I am constantly still having to worry that he will find me one day, that he will make a Facebook and try to harass me again. I'm pregnant with my first child and I don't need that stress along with that. This happened years ago when I was 19. I'm now in my mid 20's. I still remember this very clearly because of how creeped out I was. Back then I was living 600 plus miles away from my parents in a different state. Even though there was a distance, my mom and I still talked on the phone at least twice

a week and we were still really close. So when we found out her cancer was back I didn't think twice about dropping everything to drive down to see her. A plane ticket was too expensive and I had a 10 year old Toyota that might have been a bit beat up but still got me from A to B cheaply and quietly. My parents weren't thrilled at the idea of me driving the 11 hours by myself but my mind was made up so they offered me a deal. I would stop at a rest stop every 2 or 3 hours and stretch my legs and call them and in exchange for this courtesy,

they would pay for my gas. If I didn't call within the three hour window though, they would assume I had been in an accident and call me repeatedly, interrupting the audiobook and podcast they knew that I have on. I accepted the deal. And that's why I was at this particular rest stop at 2.45am. This was actually one of the nicer stops. Well lit, multiple vending machines that didn't have huge cages around them, the payphone wasn't broken, and it looked clean. There were a couple of cars there with people sleeping in them. I still had 15 minutes before I did check in with my parents. I got out of my car and stretched and then almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a man's voice right behind me. Miss, can I ask you for a favor? I turn around and he's leaning against my car. I have no idea how he got there so fast. I didn't see him when I parked but there

he was, uncomfortably close to me. He looked like he was in his 40s. He didn't look dirty or twitchy. He was too close, but his body language didn't scream threatening. And even though I was 19 years old, barely over 5 feet, and at that point in my life 110 pounds soaking wet, and even though I had already binged a lot of true crime media and knew the dangers of a girl my age alone at night with an out-of-state license plate, my idiot self asked what he needs. He told me that he accidentally locked his keys in his phone in his truck and could he just borrow my phone real quick to call his friend. It would just take a second and it would really help him out and I almost handed him my phone. I was reaching into my pocket to hand

it to him and then I actually looked at his face. Like I said, this rest stop was surprisingly well lit and this guy looked really normal, except for his eyes. He had dead shark eyes, you know what I'm talking about. It's the Ted Bundy, Dick Cheney actress in a Glade commercial who is trying to convince us she's in love with some idiot who doesn't know how air freshener works eyes. They're smiling, but the eyes are vacant and creepy and staring way too hard. I got that feeling, that runaway feeling. I knew immediately not to hand this guy my only way to call for help so I put up my best customer service smile and told him oh my god I'm so sorry but I don't have

a charger and I need to save all my battery for the tracking app my parents have on my phone and I need that juice to call my parents which I actually have to do right now but good luck. And I turned and walked about 20 feet and he doesn't leave. He was still just leaning against my car watching me but now I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to leave him alone with my car because he creeped me out and he has a serial killer face so going to the bathroom is out but I also wanted to get away from him, prove I'm not going to help and maybe he'll leave. I could technically get into the car, but I would have to get really close to him unless I crawled over my passenger's side seat, and he's not moving. So I did the first thing that popped in my mind. I called my dad, and my dad for the first time that night didn't pick up the phone. When I

heard his voicemail I glanced back. The guy still hadn't moved, he's still just staring at me. So I faked a conversation with my dad. I angled my body so that the guy couldn't see that I had hung up the phone and loudly said that I should be home in about 30 minutes when in reality I was still at least 4 hours away. I mentioned exactly where I was and reassured the fake caller that this was a good rest stop with plenty of lighting and a couple visible security cameras. The guy still hadn't moved and I'm running out of steam on this fake conversation. In the years since I've thought of a lot of things I could have said while pretending to talk to my dad but in that moment I was beginning to seriously freak out and my mind went blank so I hung up

and didn't know what to do. I had hoped that the fake phone call would scare him off but he was still leaning against my car. I stalled for another couple of minutes. I bought cookies from the vending machine. I walked around a little. At this point, he's been leaning against my car staring at me for at least 10 minutes. I honestly debated waking up one of the men sleeping in their parked cars and asking for help, and just the thought of having to wake someone up to help me get into my own freaking car annoyed me enough that I stopped stalling and headed back to my car. I decided that unless he touched me, I'm just going to pretend he isn't there. He waited until I was unlocking my car door before he started talking to me again.

He told me again that he really needs to use my phone. He's stranded here unless he can call his friend to bring the spare keys. He's not angry or begging. His voice sounds weirdly friendly but he'd been creepily watching me for way too long while blocking my exit so I'm not falling for it. I almost pointed out to the working pay phone just in case I was wrong about this and I was being mean to a guy who actually needs help. But then he leaned forward as I was getting in and I lost all nerve and slammed and locked the door as fast as possible. He didn't move until I started the car and put it in reverse and then he finally stepped back and let me pull out. I didn't even

have my seatbelt on. I was so focused on getting away from him. And then halfway out of the rest stop my mom called me. My mom who would freak out if I don't pick up and who was already sick, and I needed to put on my seatbelt. I could still see him in my mirror. He was standing right next to where I was parked with his back to me. He was far enough away that I felt okay parking again and to answer the phone, but I kept my engine running and I kept watching him. I don't want my mom to worry so I told her everything is fine, where I am, my ETA. Now that I was in my locked car away from him I was beginning to feel like I had overreacted. She scolds me about speeding and I tune her out

because the guy is moving now. As my mom lectures me about road safety, I watch the guy cross to a truck, unlock the door and get in. The keys being locked in no longer seem to be an issue for him. I watch the truck head back out to the freeway and drive out of sight. I had to pretend to be fine to not upset my mom. I didn't get back onto the road for another 20 minutes and when I did I didn't speed. I didn't want to see that truck. I found out years later that the closest city to that rest stop has a major problem with human trafficking and that girls who look like they don't live nearby or maybe look like they are living out of their cars tend to be targets. I don't know if that was what was happening or if he was just trying to scare me into handing over my phone. I had just started working graveyard at the gas station close to my house.

I believe it was my sixth shift altogether but the fourth being by myself. It was just after 11 o'clock PM and this man came in. He's about 40 and had the dumbest haircut I had ever seen. Think botched bowl cut. Anyway, he asked me if I had changed for a hundred. I told him I'm sorry but I wasn't allowed to take it and even if I was, I didn't have the change. Side note, the company's third shift policy was we were not to take 50 or even if I was I didn't have the change. Side note, the company's third shift policy was we were not to take 50 or 100 dollar bills period. Well, he got upset and started

complaining. He started trying to talk me into getting change from the safe. I apologized but again said that I couldn't. I tried my best to continue on to the elderly customer waiting behind him. He called out to his friend and asked if he had anything smaller. The kind lady I was waiting on asked me to hold her bag while she used the restroom. Bocut's friend comes in and I immediately saw that he's on something. Now, I try not to judge people, but it was obvious. His face was covered in sores, kept touching at them and he kept bouncing in places on his toes, like some kind of tweaker prize fighter. The friend starts asking me questions. Hey sweetheart, how you doing? Are you always here

by yourself? Do they let you have weapons behind that counter? And if so, do you carry one with you to work? I always carry a gun. How much money do they allow you to carry in the drawers? Do you still have to do safe drops even though business was so slow? Each question that he asked made me slightly more uncomfortable. I'm kind of a mouthy woman and I don't always use my head before I speak. Finally I interrupted him and was like, Look, do you plan to rob me? Because if you are, you're wasting your time.

I don't have time for this and I need to get back to work. His hands fly up and he starts sputtering. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, rob you? What? I was just trying to make conversation. What's wrong with you? I answered, well then your conversational skills could really use some work. You don't ask a woman working alone overnight those types of questions. So the real question is, what is wrong with you?

I saw now that Bullcut had pulled the car horizontally across the parking spaces closest to the door. Upon seeing this, I was just beyond done at this point. I told him to leave the store and not ever come back during my shift or I would call the cops. He left. The poor woman who had gone to the bathroom had heard some of the exchange. She came up to me before leaving the store and asked if I was alright. I told her that I was and thanked her. Just a weird customer that gave me a weird feeling. He only came back once after that. I was in the cooler and could hear him yelling at the manager about not being allowed in the store.

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Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The farm I grew up on is rather famous, locally, for being haunted. Its story is a bit long, though, so please bear with me. The farmhouse itself sits far back from the country road, an 1860s era farm that had been vacant for over a decade when we bought it. My father always made a point of mentioning how good a deal it was. I don't remember the early years very well, I was six or so when we moved in, but I do remember the regular as clockwork coming of the haunt. It came every Sunday night at 12.45am just as Monday began. It started outside in the barn, pounding and thrumming and moving like a big man walking slow. It grew louder,

gaining odd little squeaks and pops as it came. When it reached the side porch, the house resonated, making the bricks in the wall shiver. Then there was a pause. I always imagined the thing fishing a key out of a furry vest pocket, as next always came the slow, slow, slow opening of the kitchen door, then the loud bang of the door slamming shut, as if to say, I'm here. Fast, odd-sounding steps all through the downstairs followed, steps that sounded like the world's largest basketball

overfilled with air and slammed against the old wooden floorboards. Pang, pang, pang. The odd pneumatic sound ringing for a brief second between each. Sooner or later, it headed for the stairs. To climb them nice and slow, floorboards shuddering in time with each step, until it came to the top, and my bedroom. Right above the kitchen and open to the stairs, my room was the kind old-timers refer to as dormer room, or dormer, being an old English word for open and doorless, well suited for trapping little boys on the wrong side of the stairs with monsters.

It wasn't so bad at first. The haunt would come up the stairs, making the house shake with each step. Pang, pang, pang, until it reached the top. Then it entered stealth mode, wandering through my room quietly, just loud enough for me to hear, now and then purposefully bumping my bed or the dresser next to my head. Sometimes it would lean over me, huffling gently in my face, daring me to open my eyes. If I'd already hidden under the covers it would very very slowly pull the bedclothes off of me. They'd creep away an inch at a time as if scrunched under someone's fingers. Someone at the very foot of my bed less than a hand's length away from my feet. I'd wait and wait then try and pull them up. Sometimes they came, sometimes they didn't.

Before too long, but never soon enough, the haunt wandered in to visit the rest of my family, starting with my parents, then would move on to my sisters and many a Monday morning came with their bedclothes needing washed. Then dad discovered that it wouldn't come out into the light. Someone left the bedroom overhead on one night and the haunt stopped cold at the light spilling from the open doorway. Of course, the bathroom was past my room, leaving me trapped in the dark with the haunt. Neither of us were very happy about it. First it shook the staircase until plaster dust rained and floorboards warped but the light stayed on. Then it flew into my room at speed making the walls shake and my dresser fall over and yank the covers from my bed.

It leaned down to where it seemed inches from my face. I felt something like cat's fur dragging across my chin, my lips and then off the bed, only to have it come back up the other side and across me a couple of times. I never wet the bed as a child, but that night I came close. Then, for the first time, it started going through my things. We were a farm family and not very well off, so I didn't have many toys. Of the few I had, I loved my Hot Wheels the most. Hot Wheels, if you're wondering, are little metallic replicas of famous automobiles. The hot slung them around the room like mini jets, clipping one of my eyebrows. I've still got the scar. Then it tore through the crawlspace on either side of my room where old books,

clothing, and other things were stored, leaving piles of shredded paper and torn fabric behind. In the morning, I was blamed for most of the mess and worse still, my Hot Wheels were gone. The next weekend, it spent most of the night in my room again. At school on Monday, I was sent to the nurse's station twice then finally they called my dad to come get me early. So the next Sunday when the haunt reached my room and began to brood and shake the bed I was desperate. Nobody can see you from where they're at. I hissed and the smallest little boy whispered, just go shut the bathroom door. Nine seconds later, the bathroom door slammed shut so hard it cracked down the middle, the lights snapped off, and all chaos broke loose. The next

morning, I felt better than I had in weeks. I'd actually slept, my family's creeping denial about our ghosts had vanished, and my hot wheels were back in their stands. Sunday nights after that stayed exciting for a long time. A cake baked late Sunday for an early before leaving for camp birthday party became a film that completely covered the kitchen from ceiling to floor, except for the plate the cake had been on that was clean. Another time my stern old Baptist grandma brought her pastor up from West Virginia. They spent all of Sunday praying the haunt away, only to be chased out of bed and out of the house by some god-awful heathen spirit. But the best had to be the haunting of Tabby and Fat Rat.

Like most places, our little community had its share of delinquents, especially of the juvenile variety one a perpetual high school senior went by the nickname of tabby his wingman and partner in crime was a sophisticated and reserved fellow known as fat rat these two lousy but unlovable losers were behind a rash of thefts in the local farm community, though they hadn't yet been caught. Farmers keep fuel on hand for tractors. Tabby and Fat Rat would sneak up to a farm during the wee hours and fill their tank with someone else's gasoline. They hadn't gotten around to our place yet when my dad heard about the thefts. Being a practical man, he switched the signs on the diesel and gasoline tanks. As luck would have it, Tabby and Fat Rat tooled up our long, long driveway late one Sunday night and,

by the light of the lone security lamp between the barn and the house, filled the tank of Tabby's 74 Chevelle. Filled it all the way up, with diesel fuel. Right around midnight or so. Being awake, Dad heard them pull away. By this point, he reached the kitchen window where the phone, landline only in these days, hung and was dialing the sheriff. What happens next is pieced together from his telling and what the sheriff, Tabby, and Fat Rat told people later. It started with the outside security light growing dimmer and dimmer, then dying. Then in the dark, there was this odd, huffling sound. Neither of the boys knew what it

was, where it came from, but I could have told them. Whatever was making that noise nuzzled up to the back of Tabby's neck, just as he realized he couldn't see a thing. He screeched and jumped in the Chevelle, screaming obscenities and Fat Rat realized he was in real trouble. Something even bigger and hairier than him was blocking the car door, something that pinched him so hard it left purplish knots, some in very tender places. The Chevelle's engine roared. The diesel in the gas tank started toward the carburetor, helped along by Tabby's foot pushing the pedal to the floor. The car jumped forward and so did Fat Rat. His head bounced off the roof, breaking his nose, but fear gave him strength enough to heave his flubbery self on board. I heard the engine and reached a window just as the boys were flying

down the driveway, arms outstretched, middle fingers extended. Dad had to dial twice to reach the county sheriff. He was laughing so hard. He knew what was coming. Just about twenty yards onto the main road, the Chevelle's engine clattered, shuddered, and died. There's a certain darkness that comes only on a midwestern night when there's no moon, when the stars are hidden by the fall clouds and you're a dozen miles from the nearest neighbor. It's a darkness that circles your chevelle as the headlights die, as the dome light flickers, a darkness that comes in bursts and snatches until it's complete, and in the cold, dark car, with you. They ran as long as they could,

something furry and nimble bumping them, pinching them, tripping them to fall so it could hover over them, huffling happily until they ran again, screaming. When the county sheriff came for them, they flagged him down, happy to get in the cruiser The deputy had to take them straight to county correctional And sent another sheriff to check in with us The boy screamed when he tried to turn into our driveway

Maybe the haunt got used to us, or us to it, but Either way, things slowed down over the years By the time we could afford to move, it didn't seem so bad. At first it seemed almost distracted, then started doing less during each visit. It would barely roam through the house before it was off, as if in a hurry to get back to something more important. Then came a Sunday night when it didn't show at all. Soon enough, once became a few, and a few became common. By the time I entered high school, the rare visit by a resident spook was more a reassurance that

it still walked than it was a night of terror. The very last time came just as we were moving. I had graduated high school that summer. My parents had divorced and I was helping my father move the last of his things. We were down to this huge old steel desk. He'd use a Ford forklift tractor to move it into the second floor and I had no idea how we'd get it out. Dad had gone home to be back in the morning while I decided that driving home and back wasn't worth the two hours sleep I'd lose. It didn't even occur to me that it was Sunday night. Tired, I curled up into a corner with a pillow and blanket and fallen dead asleep, only to be wakened by the most horrific noise. Every drawer in that huge steel desk had been slung open at once, hard enough to bend some

of the rollers inside. I thought I'd had a heart attack. It took me a second to realize what was going on, that the haunt was making a last appearance. Yeah, I said very quietly into the empty house. I'll miss you too. Then I turned the light on and went back to sleep. About two years ago, my aunt died, and it would be the third sibling that my mom lost. She lost her brother to murder, a sister to special needs complications, and then her other sister to a heart attack. My mom was devastated and was having PTSD symptoms still from her brother's murder and my aunt's death sent her into a downward spiral that I didn't think she would recover from. One day I was talking to a

friend about my mom and the pain she was going through when she mentioned that she had had a friend whose parents died and she went to see a medium with her and that the experience blew her away and that maybe I could try taking my mom to see her too. I was skeptical at first because the only other experience I had with psychics or mediums didn't impress me and I was sure most or all of them were con artists. My friend assured me that if anyone was the real deal, it was this woman. She had said the right names of the parents, knew that she had items of the parents with her and what they were.

She also got their personalities right and the messages were clear and everything she said was exactly right. The woman had a huge emotional release after the session and hasn't had any more depressive episodes since and feels like she can move on with life. Basically this conversation convinced me to pay almost $200 for a session if it was even remotely going to help my mom. I didn't want to tell my mom what we were doing that day because I was scared it would get her hopes up. If this woman turned out to be a fraud I would never forgive myself for hyping up my mom and dealing with the

downfall. When we got there and I met this woman I knew I was going to like her right away. She looked like a well put together rock star. Her eyes were the lightest prettiest blue color I had ever seen and I immediately felt warm and comfortable. She set my mom and I down and we started the session. She explained how she worked and continued. The first person to come up was my uncle. He immediately started talking about how I didn't do what I promised to do. I promised him about a month before he died that I would stop worrying so much. He was right. I didn't live up to that promise, and I beat myself up over and over again over things I can't control.

As I was watching the conversations between the woman and my mom, I saw my mom change. There were tears streaming down her face as she acknowledged that everything that the woman was saying was in fact correct. There were things that my mom couldn't control that led to her siblings' deaths. She realized that day that nothing was her fault and that when she wants to communicate with her family, she can, because they were right there with her all the time. After this session, I saw this woman two other times and even took one of her classes. The last one on one session I had with her was a few weeks ago and the reason why I'm writing this. Three weeks ago my closest cousin had ended their own life by gunshot to the head. I was at a complete loss.

She seemed to be doing okay. Our whole family has some kind of mental issue and there are family members who are a lot worse off than she was, so it really made me question what some of the people in my family were capable of, including myself. Ironically enough, I had a session booked with the medium that I had booked about two months in advance, not realizing that this would happen one week before my session. I don't know why, but knowing that I had that session the next week was the only thing getting me through the initial shock of her death. Finally the day of the session comes and I was so nervous I almost puked. I was so close to a person who died and I had an extreme

amount of unanswered questions and in this weird circumstance I I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find out exactly what was going through her mind that night. When the session started, I started to feel a little less anxious and just wanted to know. Other family members actually came through first, which surprised me since I specifically only asked for one person. When the medium gets done talking about other family members, she asks me if there is anything else on family I would like to touch on. I told her that there was a recent death that, I was surprised, hasn't come forward yet. She then goes, Oh.

Oh, ouch, my head is killing me right now. I sat in silence, knowing why. A gunshot to the head would probably cause that. The medium then started to cry and told me that the energy of this woman is extremely overwhelming. At first the medium thought that she was murdered by the quickness that it happened, but then she said no, that's not what happened and then her head started to hurt more. The medium then said she definitely ended her own life, but my cousin was not showing her death taking place like they usually do for her.

My cousin was unable to talk about her own death. My grandma was apparently standing in front of her, doing some of the talking for her. The medium then told me that when my cousin shot herself, she did not know what she was doing. She then said that she had talked to the people on the spirit side who had planned an ending of their own life and knew exactly what they were doing but she didn't say that. I basically learned that my cousin had a lot of healing to do on the spirit side and that she needs to get to the point where she can talk about her own death. My cousin wouldn't even apologize to her own family. She stepped forward and said that there needs to be apologies all around. It really made me realize

that even though you die, your energy does not die. You don't get the real of your life flashing before your eyes that cause you to realize and learn and become completely at peace. Maybe some people are all of a sudden at peace but my cousin is not one of them. All I can do is try to talk to her myself and remind her that everything will be okay in the end and all her family will be up there with her one day and I hope that she'll have something to teach us by the time we get there. One crisp and frosty Saturday morning when I was about ten years of age, my friend called round for me. We went into the woods that were next to my house and proceeded to trudge towards a pond called Mermaid's Pool.

Now the pond is quite a strange place. Me and my friends all thought it was spooky. Over the years I explored miles of woodland in the area and never found another one. It's an oddity and a local historian traced the name Mermaid's Pool back as far as the middle ages so it's been there at least a few hundred years. It's surrounded on three sides by mature birch trees whose bare roots go down into the lake, and on the fourth side is a steep 50 to 60 feet tall grassy bank with odd clumps of gorse bush. We walked through the woods until we reached the top of the steep bank and proceeded to yank stones out of the frosty ground and hurl them down at the pond to try and break the ice on its surface. We couldn't break it, but it was pleasing to create fracture

lines and watch the stones skid across the ice. We could see a man walking along the path to the side of the pool through the trees. He was quite tall and stocky and wore dark clothing with a chunky black coat. He was accompanied by a large black dog that walked right beside him, despite the fact that it wasn't on a lead. The path is quite windy as it nears the pond and at one point he had his back to us. We saw he had a bright orange triangle on the back of his coat. He proceeded to the opposite side of the pond from us and then stood at the edge with his dog and stared intently up at us. I felt intimidated enough that I stopped finding and throwing stones. There was a fair amount of distance between us and there was the steepness of the bank but it was the dog that I was worried about. My friend had other ideas.

He was older, tougher and braver than me. He carried on hurling stones, though he aimed a bit shorter and adjusted his trajectory to minimize the possibility of hitting the guy. The dog started growling up at us, only it was no ordinary growl. It was the loudest I'd ever heard, more like a massive wolf or lion. The place had weird acoustics but nevertheless it was just too loud. I doubt very much if we could have heard a normal growl from the top of the bank. The noise, coupled with the intense glare from the motionless guy was enough for me. I turned to leave and told my friend we should get out of there. He nodded but stood still for a moment and remarked upon the

crazy loud growl. He was determined to commit one final act of defiance and said something like, just one more. He found a good sized stone and we both looked down towards the guy as my friend raised his arm to throw it. The guy was the same, motionless and staring, but his dog had lost interest in us and was sniffing the base of the tree behind them. But though the dog was turned away, the growling continued, as loud as ever. My friend dropped his stone and we stared open-mouthed at each other. It wasn't the dog that had been growling. It was the man. We ran for ages, probably a full five minutes back towards my house. When we rested up for a little while feeling grateful that the weird guy with the

stare and the booming growl was behind us, but more strangeness was to come. We went back around my house to get a drink and to tell my brother about our encounter. My angry mother accosted me as soon as we got through the back door and reprimanded me for being 25 minutes late for lunch. I knew for a fact that we left for the woods at about 10.15. It wasn't long after some Saturday morning show I watched had ended at 10. Our entire escapade lasted an hour at most, including Journey's time. So how was it now 1.25pm? There was over two hours missing. I used to bump into my friends as adults from time to time until I left the area. It was never long into the conversation that one of us would say, Do you remember Old Growler? And it would all come flooding back.

So to start a little backstory, my husband and I lived in a big city in a teeny tiny house around 500 square feet. We were planning our wedding and starting a family soon so we couldn't stay there anymore. Well, I couldn't. He was okay with it. We had dreams of moving out into the country and we found such an amazing deal on 320 acres that we had to check it out. We emailed the realtor and she had said the lady living there wasn't ready to show the house yet. She didn't want to sell so she wasn't sure when she could show it. We asked that we could come and see the land and the house would be fine until we could build her dream home further away from the highway. So we go as excited as ever. We pull up and get out of her truck.

All you could hear was birds and the wind. It was so peaceful and quiet in comparison to city life. We knew this was our home. The realtor arrived and the owner wasn't home so she showed us the house. It was 1300 square feet so it felt like a mansion to us. The lady who owned it was 80 some years old and lived on the property alone. Her children wanted her to move closer to them for fear something could happen to her. She always went out into the field on her quad, not trusty at all, in her beat up van. So inside her house there were pictures of saints everywhere. She was Haitian and I got the voodoo vibe but not at all on a negative concept. So we go explore the outbuildings. One of them

has a chair, a ton of burnt out candles and some knives. More voodoo vibes again, not negative. It's a religion and I'm not one to judge what people believe. We ended up meeting the lady and she took us on her quad to see the land. It stalled a few times. She was really fun, upbeat. She also seemed to like my husband and myself. So we made an offer and got the house. I was really excited. We had a bunch of friends help us move in November of 2016. I burned sage in the house because that's something I do. I never got any negative vibes but just to clear it out for our belongings. I had a friend with me and she said she saw a shadow move so she also went over to the house with Sage just to be safe. We do know someone died on the property cutting trees down

so I wanted to be on the safe side. Another friend got super creepy vibes that night. They stayed on the main level bedroom and she said the entire night it felt like someone was watching her. On the main level in the original house there's the bedroom, kitchen, living room and an oversized pantry. There were two bedrooms upstairs. There was an addition on the main level. It had the dish pit aka sink and cupboards but not enough room for a table in the bathroom and its own little cellar basement.

The original basement looks like something out of a dungeon with giant boulders and unfinished. The pillars holding the beams up are trees rather than 4x4s. It's very rustic and I love it, but it can give off weird vibes. I'm no stranger to ghosts as I grew up in a haunted house but that's another long story. My husband has always been very skeptic. The beat up falling apart barn always creeped me out. I never liked it and I would just avoid it. Half of the roof was caving in. It looked a little like a scene from a horror movie. It even creeped out my husband. He felt like something was always going to jump out at him when he was fixing things in there. Now on to the paranormal bits. So I can't remember really

when this started as so much as has happened in the years we lived here but it started when I was walking into the living room and passed by the basement stairs. I saw a black dog, almost pit bull shaped, sitting at the bottom of the stairs with red eyes. I did a double take and it wasn't there. I went into the basement thinking it was our big dog, Mastiff Rottweiler Shepard Labcross, but he wasn't there, he was in the dish pit. So I tell my husband and shake it off. I felt uneasy about it but didn't want to make a big deal of it. Next event, I have a miscarriage. Not sure how long after this, maybe a few months, so I am in a pretty dark place. We also had a falling out with a very close friend that ended up being pretty messy and some huge negative

family drama with an in-law. The in-law is very verbally abusive and manipulative. A few months later, husband has to work a job overnight in another province. First night by myself in the house. It was creepy. I felt so uneasy the entire night. I was so thankful he was gone the one night. It felt like I wasn't alone. My dogs were a little on edge. It was super windy and stormy out. It was a perfect scene for a horror movie. So I went to bed early and slept it away.

Carrying on again, I'm pregnant once more. Our baby boy was growing wonderfully. Our two old dogs, Japanese chins, had some crazy dental work done. They weren't happy campers, so they were up all night. My pregnant self was tired and cranky, so I took my Yorkie Poo to the main level guest bed to sleep. She was pretty restless. She kept looking to a corner of the room and then moving to different parts of the room and then moving to different parts of the bed trying to get comfortable. Always to sit up and look at that corner. This is the bedroom my friend had very negative vibes from. So my Yorkie poos started growling

at that corner of the room. So we noped out of there pretty quick and suffered a sleepless night with our recovering dogs. It was super dark and you couldn't see anything in the room. Then we had a music festival on our property in June. It was fun and related to this in the future. Lovely baby boy decided to be a breech baby and kick my nerves all the time to the point I couldn't walk. So I started maternity leave early at 36 weeks, due end of July 2018. So I am home now all day. The house felt so different than just being home on evenings and weekends. It felt like a heaviness. I couldn't go in the basement if it was dark out, only in the daytime. I just got this feeling something bad would happen if I did. I constantly felt like I was being watched.

If the small dogs were in our bedroom, the Yorkie Poo would bark and growl at anyone coming up the stairs, which was a new behavior for her. This is when I started getting feelings like I would be followed up the stairs. Baby boy is born and he's a night owl, so I am up a lot in the night which isn't normal for me. Our top floor is 3 4th stories so there's storage space where all the walls are because of that corner angle of the roof. And in baby boy's bedroom there's an opening with no door. I feed him in his room so not to disturb the husband as he is still going to work. It feels like something is watching and waiting in

there. I would avoid looking at it because I felt like if I did I would see glowing eyes or something worse. Even just walking the hallway between bedrooms is very uncomfortable during these night time feedings. I end up starting to see these shadows following me, which was creepy and it defied all science. I always tried to debunk things I saw, so I wouldn't work myself up into a frenzy. These shadows were also so large. They'd be as tall as the ceiling, ten feet, and were disproportionate looking. I would try to recreate the shadows with my steps, but it never worked. As for the feelings, I always tried to make myself believe it was in my head, just an overactive imagination.

Sometimes knocking would come from the basement, especially when the internet wasn't working and our modem and router were in the basement. That would be awful because I had to work up a lot of nerve to go fix the internet as it was my lifeline without cable. We moved the guest bed into the basement. I was going to sleep there one night so I could catch up and my husband was going to feed the baby boy at night. So I settle up in the basement, get all comfy cozy and excited for a night's sleep. Turn off the lights and there's this green light on the ceiling. It's fading in and out slightly

but in no regular pattern so I'm thinking it's a reflection on the ducking or something. Turn on the lights and it's solid wood where the green light was. There also isn't any green light to cause a reflection. I noped out of there and went into our travel trailer on a cold fall night. We had another festival in September. Ended up talking to someone that was there in June. So they're asking me about our other big black dog. And I'm like, there's just the one. And they are dead serious. They saw this big pit bull like dog in the field at both festivals. So this kind of made me feel like I wasn't going crazy and reassured me that I was experiencing something real. But then it made me realize I'm not crazy and this

is happening and it's pretty terrifying. When husband is at work I'm very isolated. Our closest neighbor is a mile away. All our family lives an hour drive away. So I'm a little freaked out with everything going on. I'm talking to our local friends and city friends. I get in touch with a medium. She got me to text her a photo of our house. She says the land is bad, the house is bad, and the dog is possibly a demon. She offered to come help me salt the house for gas money. She never charged me anything. She never told me why the land is bad and to this day I am still very curious. So I ended up getting a local church group to come pray through the house. It really didn't

do anything but they told me some crazy stories of other houses they had blessed so the area was pretty haunted. So I am super unhappy still because my husband is about to leave for 8 weeks and I don't want my son growing up in a haunted house like I did. I am also so uncomfortable in the home and about to be alone with our little guy. Someone gets me in touch with a shaman. He comes and does his thing, really cool to watch. So he finishes up and tells me what he found. Lots of shadow people. In that hideaway space upstairs, at the top of the stairs and bottom. Basically everywhere where I felt like I was being watched and such. Apparently shadow people feed on negative thoughts. Also I never explained specifics

to them so it was neat that his findings matched my experiences. The shadow people weren't feeding off of me but rather my husband. But I am super sensitive so I was getting all the bad vibes. The dog was as he said 80% gone and if it wasn't he would come back. He said the barn was awful and we should just burn it. He set up a crystal grid around the property to protect us in the future from negative spirits. We talked about some of my past experiences, me having so many, and the previous owner. I feel as though her voodoo was protecting her from what we were experiencing.

The shaman was lovely. He gave me some blue corn for storing some of my crystals and gave me some suggestions to help my sensitivities at bay. Shaman leaves. Husband comes home, says the house feels lighter and he couldn't believe it. Fast forward a few more months. I was watching Netflix with my little baby sleeping in my arms. Husband comes home and says says I think I saw something so that was a little vague so I pry a bit he thought one of our little Japanese chins went into the bathroom it was a white and small thing that went in there our chins are black and white so he follows and the bathroom door was closed. He's so baffled being the skeptic he is so I text

the shaman up. He says he'll do his thing and get back to me. When he does he says it's one of our guardians. Sometimes I feel things move through the house but it's nothing like what we experience. No more shadows, no phantom dogs. I can go into the basement at night now. I don't like going down there at night because it's still a little creepy. My husband isn't so skeptical anymore, but it was a wild ride from moving in to over two years later. At least for now, all is calm in the home. I've mentioned in comments in this sub that there's a cat's ghost in my family. Surprisingly we refer to it as Ghost Cat. It's an itty bitty, just out of kittenhood tuxedo cat with a little extra white facial

fur. It died around 1992 or so. I have a sister with a strong penchant for narcotics and she was staying in the third floor loft at my mom's spindly old Victorian era home when she brought home this kitten. She had it long enough for it to have discovered how to escape downstairs to the kitchen where my mother noticed and would feed it then it suddenly stopped. Knowing my sister and fearing the worst my mom went looking and found the poor little thing. It had gotten into the storage attic side of the third floor, went exploring under a loose floorboard, gotten trapped and died. I was home visiting at the time. I'd moved out of state and helped bury it. Apparently, we forgot to tell it that it died, because when I was home to visit

the next year, it visited me. I'd gone to sleep in the spare bedroom, making sure that mom's crazy, sex-crazed, and somewhat vicious old intact tomcat, Jack, was not locked in with me. I climbed into bed, turned off the nightstand light, and settled back to sleep. And a little something, undeniably cat-like, jumps on the bed. Being a bit groggy and having cats of my own, it takes a second for me to be concerned, but I had woken up before with Jack fastened to a leg by clawed teeth, going to town like a jackhammer, so I flipped the light on and hunted for him, intent to throw him out. No cat. Off with the light, back under the covers. I was mostly asleep when I felt the little thump of a small cat on the bed. Turn on the light on the side table.

Nothing there. I mentioned it the next morning and am told that the little kit I'd buried the previous year wasn't at rest. It supposedly would jump in the bed with my mom, play and chase back and forth the jack and occasionally be seen watching curiously over the house goings-ons. In other words, just being a cat. I didn't believe it much then, but over the years it stopped by when I was home to visit. When mom got ill enough to swallow her pride, cancer, I came home and couldn't deny that there was a spirited little spirit in the house. Well, I could. It's always just at that line, you know, where it's deniable. When mom passed, a ghost cat roamed up and down the stairs loudly.

First time I saw the little thing. It slept in my bed that night too. It shared space with my then girlfriend, now wife, and our cats after we took up resident there for a year or so, and when we moved and started setting up mom's estate. I'd see it out of the corner of my eyes I did repairs or packed family memorabilia. I went back over not long ago, checking pipes against the cold. Electricity off, working with a flashlight.

New owners. Nice couple, expecting their first kid, to take possession next month. Just outside of the flashlight beam was this little tuxedo kitty, just vague enough that I couldn't swear I saw it, but enough I knew it was there. So I told it, while working, this wasn't home anymore, it should come home with me. It was about a week later, night before last, that I felt an extra cat thump into the bed. I think. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I'm pretty sure Ghost Cat moved in with us. So this happened last weekend at my friend's old farmhouse out in the country of North Carolina.

I stayed there Friday night and nothing happened. Saturday night he pulled out a spare mattress and I slept in his kid's playroom. The playroom had once been his deceased uncle's bedroom. His uncle died years ago on the farm's property when a tractor's radiator cap blew off and hit him in the forehead. So at around 3.30am I wake up to my friend's two-year-old son yelling over and over again, leave my room, leave my room, leave my room. He was screaming it as loud as he could and crying uncontrollably. This went on for several minutes.

I tried to ignore it but obviously I was a little creeped out. His dad woke up and asked him what was wrong, what he was talking about. The kid kept crying and said, I don't know, I don't know. So I got up and told the ghost, Okay, you win. And went and slept in another room. My friend said his kid had never done that before, not once, never woke up yelling something over and over again like that. I wonder if the ghost somehow spoke through him.

The next day the toys in the playroom kept making noises by themselves, going off and playing their music. We went and took the batteries out of them and turned them off but one of them kept making noise and we couldn't figure out which one. There was a big red ball that kept changing positions around the room too. I'd walk through the room which is on the way to the kitchen and it wouldn't be blocking my path but when I'd come back it would have rolled into the walkway. Pretty spooky experience but overall interesting. My main concern is the ghost messing with my friend's kid. That part bothered me the most. I went into the playroom and told Uncle Ghost that he's an idiot for messing with a kid and that he should pick on another grown man instead.

I told my friend to consider getting his kid baptized. I don't know if that would help, but it couldn't hurt. I'll start with my earliest memory of something unexplainable. To start it off though, I used to consider myself an open-minded skeptic, watching ghost hunters growing up just to laugh and fairly easily debunk their encounters. What interested me was my lack of notable experiences, but the last ten or so years have started to convince me otherwise. 2005 to 2006, my sister and I would stay the weekends at my dad's house. Important note, there was only three of us in the house at the time.

The living room was next to the kitchen with two open doorways that connected them. In the kitchen was a set of double doors that led to my dad's room. These doors made the most horrendous noises at the hinges that could be heard throughout the entire house. The three of us were watching movies in the living room and around midnight my dad went to bed. My sister was asleep on the couch and I was on the floor. Suddenly there were footsteps in the kitchen. I could feel vibrations caused by the heavy footfalls on the floor. My dad was in his room, my sister still on the couch. This continued for two to three minutes, just pacing back and forth.

After it stopped, I decided I should get some sleep. This next one happened around 2011. I was in high school and living with my mom and stepdad. I would walk home after school every day and my sister rode the bus from the elementary school. My mom and stepdad worked every day so I was always the first one home. After a stressful day at school I went straight to my room and landed on my bed. I just wanted to close my eyes for a bit and unwind. At the foot of my bed I heard a very loud deep breath, like a sigh, but it sounded force. Needless to say I shut up and looked around. No one was there, I was the only one in the house. Later that year I woke up in the middle of the night, wide awake like I was being watched.

I had this sense of dread come over me and I looked around the room. My open closet door shut on its own. It didn't slam but it had some force, enough to make it latch closed. The dreadful feeling went away and I managed to go back to sleep. At this point I was convinced there was something in the house. Some kind of residual energy or something. One night I was gaming with some friends. I was the only one awake when I got up to get a glass of water. I took off my headset and set it on the desk.

When I got back my friends were talking about who might have been in my room. They said they heard a woman's voice while I was gone. The house was old so I assumed that's why these things were happening. After I moved into the first apartment with my girlfriend I started having second thoughts about that. The building was still pretty new. As far as I knew there were no deaths in the building. Our dog is very timid, he doesn't bark much and is scared of anything bigger than him. He wouldn't react to people moving around in the apartment building or even knocks on our door. One night he was standing in the hallway staring at the front door. This was out of character for him. I got worried once he started to bark at the door despite no one being outside. I started to contemplate the idea that what this was was

attached to me somehow. I've read that people can be haunted in the same way that buildings or objects can. I was more serious about it when I heard the deep breathing again behind me just like my mom's house. A deep sigh sounded like it was forced. I spun around in my computer chair and no one was there. These things never happen consistently. Maybe a few months apart, sometimes years. I was freaked out when I was touched one day. I was the only one at home when the hat was knocked off my head, right into my lap. Another time my beanie was lifted right off my head like it was being pinched from the top. Those are the only times I've ever been touched by it. After all of this though, I've never felt threatened by it. I've never felt like I was in danger by what was

happening. It was just creepy. Until last year, my job requires me to open on Sunday mornings. This usually meant that I was awake at 4am and had to be at work by 5. St. Patrick's Day fell on a Saturday last year. We live in a house split up into different apartments and all the other tenants wanted to throw a big house party Saturday night to celebrate. I'm a pretty light sleeper so instead of trying to sleep through a party I wanted to go to work and sleep there. It was going well until about 11 that night. We have a lounge area upstairs. It has some couches and recliners. This lounge area has a sort of overlook above the main lobby of the building with hand rails. You can see part of the lobby below you. There are large window panes that look out the

front of the building too. They go from the floor all the way to the ceiling. At night it's too dark to see that far through the windows, only what the spotlights shine on. I was having trouble sleeping on one of these couches. I was having a sense of unease, almost like I wasn't alone. I kept hearing noises in the walls but I assumed those were just pipes banging around. Then I heard a door close downstairs. When I opened my eyes there was a bright flash that reflected off the windows and lit up the lobby downstairs. I sat and waited for a bit before closing my eyes again. That's when I felt it. It wasn't like before. All of the experiences before were different. This one felt almost sinister. I've never had the feeling to run as much as I did then.

I had this sense that someone was in front of me, almost like a change in air pressure. I immediately got up and ran downstairs. It felt like it followed me. I had this sense of urgency, like I was being threatened. I don't know how else to describe it. I got in the car and hauled it back home. I haven't experienced anything like that since then. I'm not sure that I want to. It's probably important to note that maybe a hundred yards away from the building is an old graveyard The headstones date back to the mid to late 1800s It's tucked back into some trees but

In the winter, when the trees are dead, you can see it It always feels kind of eerie around there. I live with four people, our house is from 1950 something. The peanut butter poltergeist. I'm walking downstairs through my kitchen around 3 am when a pot of peanut butter flies off the counter at me and hits me directly in the side. I was more confused than scared but it was creepy. It's never happened before or since and the weirdest thing is that week my mom had bought soft peanut butter rather than chunky and she

has never bought it since. Number 2. The Black Blob Incident. This was really spooky for me at the time. Basically in my bedroom, second floor, part of our 2013 extension. In the corner of the room I have a big cupboard with a set of shelves with a back panel and two side panels on top. It's full of books and has even more books on top. My night vision is very good and I could see my whole room very well, albeit mostly in monochrome as I can't view color all too well in the dark. However, tonight was different. There was a huge blob of black stuff above this cupboard thing, filling that top corner of my room, which was very strange as everything else was fine, but that blob was pitch black and seemed to be growing and shrinking and changing shape like jelly. Again this happened around 3am and is never before or since. Its appearance was accompanied by a sense of dread and a huge feeling of being watched even more than I normally feel at night. Number three. Numerous weird sightings as a kid. Up to seven.

Every night as a kid I used to go to my mom's room and would hide under the covers every night until my mom came in and then I'd go to sleep with her. Yeah, probably a baby, but I was young. No matter where I slept, I felt like I was being watched and could see things moving in the dark, so I'd hide in mom's room. A lot of stuff I'd put down to child me's ADHD-fueled overactive imagination, as I'd often imagine shapes of stuff in the room. Examples of mom's old wedding dress morphing into aliens from Doctor Who, for example. But there were things I could never explain and I wish I still remembered specific examples because this is the perfect place to say them. 4. Possibly my granddad's ghost. My dad's dad died recently and shortly before his death he asked my dad for an old ladder related heavy thing that he had lent my dad. Dad said he thought he had given it back and forgot to go look

for it. Then my granddad died in an ASDA walking around without a mobility scooter and having fun like he was told not to by his doctors. Dad then found the ladder related thing a few days after the funeral and left it on his shed because my granddad wouldn't be needing it now. However, one day he was doing some do-it-yourself by his shed using some equipment he'd recently acquired from my half-grandmother, dad's stepmother, because she didn't need them after my granddad died, when the very heavy, huge ladder-related thing flew off the shed and nearly beheaded him. The ladder thing smashed into the wall and the floor with a crash loud enough to scare the pants off of me and my bedroom, two floors above him and

with two walls between me and him. There was some wind but nowhere near enough to move anything, let alone this ladder thing. Dad responded to it by saying, Alright, alright, I'm sorry, I should have returned it, but you don't need it anymore. And nothing else has happened since. My uncle has had similar experiences with something of my granddad's, but I've forgotten the exact story, and he hasn't had anything happen since my granddad's funeral. It first started when I was five. As a kid, I always had that feeling of something watching me in my parents' house. Out of the house, everything was gravy, but at my parents' house, it was an eerie, constantly looking over your shoulder feeling.

Remember, I was five. I didn't even know what spirits or ghosts were yet. I was tucked into bed with the bedroom door open. I never slept with the door closed because it always felt like someone was standing over my bed while I was trying to sleep. I woke up because I had to go to the bathroom. Once I turned to get out of bed I realized it was freezing cold. I looked at the doorway and there was a little girl standing there with red eyes, wet black hair. She had a raggedy green dress on and her skin looked like it was underwater for months. No movement at all and we made literally dead eye contact. I quickly laid back down and threw the covers over my head. I tried to scream for my mother but my adrenaline was pumping so hard not a single word came out of

my mouth. I got the courage to whip the blanket off of me to see if she was still there and just like that she was gone. Let's just say I didn't end up having to go to the bathroom after that. A few days after that I saw the girl who possibly drowned. Toys would start randomly going off in my football shaped toy box but not just in the toy box. I had a Furby on my dresser. Every 90s kid had to have one when they first came out and that Furby would have conversations by itself in the middle of the night. After a while of this I ended up putting the Furby in the closet and turning the switch off to shut it off. A few nights later, the little idiot started talking to itself again.

As the tough manly five-year-old I was, I got up, opened the closet to turn off the Furby so it would shut up, and the switch was already off. As I had the Furby in my hand it opened its eyes and yawned at me. I took the batteries out of it and threw the Furby against the closet wall. I never put batteries back in that toy again. Then other random toys in my toy box would start going off. After a while I learned to just ignore it. My second paranormal encounter. Jump a couple of years later my parents have a tri-level house. Going upstairs, the bathroom is the first floor on the left. I was walking by the bathroom and at the end of the bathroom stood an older lady in a beautiful skinny white dress with red hair.

She waved at me and I waved back and she turned and walked through the wall like the wall wasn't there. I never got scared nor did I feel scared. I actually felt comfortable seeing her in a way. It almost felt like we knew each other and she was just saying hi. I started telling my parents about the encounters and I found out something that blew my mind. My dad told me my grandparents are mediums and believe that it got passed down to me. I had no idea what a medium was. He had to explain everything to me and how to deal with it. He even gave me a spirit guidebook for mediums to read as a kid.

Jump forward to where I was 13. My older sister was a spiritual person and a dark personality in a way. She just moved out of my parents' house and we were cleaning out her old stuff in her bedroom and then I came across something under her bed that instantly gave me goosebumps from head to my toes. A Ouija board and a white box that had bold black print on it that said Ouija. I went to go show my mom, and all of a sudden when I went to go pick it up, that little girl that possibly drowned came into a picture in my head, and her red eyes were staring at me in my head, and I quickly dropped it and never touched it again after that. I sat there, and it all made sense why I was seeing all of these random faces in my parents' house.

My older sister was using a Ouija board and opened a portal to the spirits, bad or good, to be welcomed into our home. I never really told anyone about this gift or encounters I have except for my really close friends and family. It's hard to tell people when you feel like no one will believe you and think you're lying through your teeth. So you reddit readers are getting an exclusive preview. I'm now 26, have my own apartment, two dogs and a girlfriend that I live with. Until this day I often think of that little girl in the green dress with the grey slimy skin. Haven't seen her since neither. Since I moved out of my parents into this apartment, the constant footsteps, knocking and voices continued. Yes, we live in an apartment so you will hear those things but we live on the top floor and I hear the footsteps in our kitchen

and down the hall to our bedroom. The knocking comes from the spare bedroom. A new paranormal trick started happening last year as well. Walk past the kitchen and everything is fine. Walk past it again and a couple of covered doors would be open even when I'm home all alone, it happens. So I know it's not the boss lady leaving them open, nor myself. I imagine this is one that's heard of a lot, and I will start by mentioning I have major emotional personality disorder, and take quetiapine and diazepam to combat it, so this may be a factor. However, for years before I have experienced unusual things in my home, all seeming to emanate from the spare room which has always been ominous to visitors. Friends always complain it's unusual and uncomfortable to sleep in.

In 2014 I got myself a PSB7 spirit box not taking it seriously at all me and a friend went to a cemetery got a name matched it to a stone scared us but we figured hey probably a coincidence we went back to his place used it in his room and the responses were always profane and rude I sold the spirit box after this. I didn't want to know anymore about this kind of stuff and just ditched it. So ever since, my house has felt strange and wrong at certain times. I hear creaking and muffled voices that I cannot make sense of at all. Please note I hear voices to some degree but they are much different to these. They are in my head and strong, continuous chatter. My mental health has become extremely bad as of late and I am more than happy

to pin everything on this. But maybe I should ask questions so here I am. To put it most simply, there are top halves of torsos floating at the end of my bed and they wear hoods, float left and right, and I just stare as they try and reach out towards me but can't. I'm not religious but I say prayers in desperation and nothing happens. My medication is heavily sedating so I generally will fall asleep facing these figures. I have flash dreams and sensations of me being grabbed and pulled away from my bed and taken away. Tell me I'm just crazy, but goodness, I've never experienced such realistic visions. If they are hallucinations, I will be relieved. But quetiapine quells hallucinations, so I have many questions.

Can anyone advise me? What are these shadows? The following events that I am about to tell you happened to me and my mother at separate times, and both stories still scare the life out of me today. But first, I need to give you some backstory. I live in a small town in Texas with less than 2,000 people. I am 19 right now, but both stories I am telling you occurred about 27 years apart from each other. The first story was when my mom was 18 and the second story was when I was 14. Side note, I don't feel comfortable using anyone's real names so I'll just be using fake ones. The events of the first story happened during my mom's senior year of high school so probably around 86 or 87. It was about mid-March and my mom had the idea of celebrating since it was the start

of spring break and also her best friend Judy's birthday. Her and her friends had the idea to go out to the local lake near our town. I can remember the lake relatively easily. It was roughly an hour and a half from the town I lived in and my family used to be really big on the outdoors, so we would often go there during our summers to camp and swim and all that. Good times. Anyways, my mom was never a particularly paranoid person, but she was always one to be wary of her surroundings. She could always tell when something was off and she would take any means necessary to protect herself. This would mean carrying around her pocket knife wherever she could. I don't think she ever thought she would need it, it was more of a precaution, but on this particular night she definitely did.

She was out at the lake with her friends boozing, listening to music, swimming, and making out with their boyfriends and just having a good time. A couple of hours into their party my mom had to use the bathroom. Coincidentally they had set up camp far from where any of the designated porta-potties were so she just went out into the woods. She was stumbling around for a couple of minutes trying to find a good space when she heard the most unnerving and chilling sound she had ever heard. It sounded like a knife carving into a tree, but it was much, much more sinister. At first she brushed it off, thinking it was one of her friends playing a joke on her. Plus, she was incredibly wasted anyways. She kept walking, but then she heard it again.

Only this time it was louder. Whoever it was, making that sound was laughing too. The laugh was just faint enough where you might miss it if you weren't paying attention, but it was still just as terrifying. It was obvious to her that someone was trying to get her attention because the sounds stopped suddenly when the person realized she had noticed. She looked around confused for a couple of seconds until it hit her. She saw something moving in the trees a couple of feet away from her, like someone was crouched down so they wouldn't see her but there was still what sounded like a scratching noise against the tree bark. That sobered her fast, and she reached for the knife in her pocket, only to remember that she had left it in her purse, which was sitting in her tent.

She was completely crippled without the realization of what was happening. She couldn't move, until she had remembered the flashlight that she had taken out there with her. Automatically, the air around her illuminated and in the distance she saw the steel metal of what looked like a machete glimmering against the light emerging from the bushes. Whoever was out there was taunting her. Again she stood frozen in fear at what she was seeing. All she could mumble was something along the lines of, what? Who? What? Who? Then the metal had started to shift as if the person was moving towards her and my mom bolted back to the campsite. When she finally found her friends she ran into her tent

and retrieved the pocket knife. I don't know how she planned on defending herself in a machete to pocket knife fight but I think she just clinged onto what protection she could. Her friends were trying to calm her down. Her boyfriend said he'd go and get whatever was there but she protested and eventually everything went back to the way it was except nobody went into the woods to use the bathroom and my mom didn't sleep at all that night. The next day the teens had woken up to police sirens and tapes surrounding their camp. Some police officers had led them to a path that led up to the main road. My mom cried as she hugged my grandparents when she saw them.

Everyone gave their statements and the police informed them that the man that was out there had more than likely traveled to the spot after ending the life of a high school principal and attempting to assault his wife in a neighboring town a few hours before. Apparently the guy had shot through the door of their house, hitting the principal. He also attempted to break down the door before the man's wife had threatened to call the cops. He ran off after that and traveled down to the lake. That's where he ran into my mom. While the police were searching the area, they found a machete laying on the ground, two hunting knives taped to two different trees, a bowie knife, and a mix of a few energy pills and Jameson bottles next to what looked like dried vomit in the grass.

They assumed that he had crouched in the bushes a few yards from where my mom and her friends were partying, waiting for someone to come in the woods to pee. Then, he would do god knows what to them. They told my mom she had left at exactly the right time because sometime after, he had thrown up probably due to mixing the pills and the alcohol and more than likely left the premises. During the trial, they found out the boy was planning this for months. He was apparently into the occult and other satanic stuff like that and had gotten a girl in a neighboring town pregnant shortly before the incident. Her parents were furious and they had taken the first steps to ensuring he would be sent to prison as he was 18 and his girlfriend was only 16. He admitted going

to their house, ringing their doorbell, ending the life of her dad and attempting to break in. After that, I guess he just went on a rampage. He wanted to take revenge on the people he thought deserved to die, ergo the popular jerks in their school. My mom was popular, but I don't think she ever was one of the mean types. There were other kids celebrating spring break at the lake that night, but my mom's friends were the first ones he came across. My mom was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. That event traumatized my mom for years. A little shy of 30 years later, my mom had drove me and some of my friends to the closest mall to celebrate my 14th birthday. We went through the day having fun, playing hide and seek in Sears. I know lame, but there are so many places to hide in there. And shopping.

That night, however, was a different story. My mom had just dropped us off back at home and I remember asking her if we could go to the park, which was only a block away from my house. All of my friends were planning on staying with me that night anyway, so it's not like anyone had a curfew. A little context here, I'm a guy and most of my friends were girls at the time except for one but I had just come out as gay to all my friends and I don't think their parents had any issues with them staying the night with me. That's not relevant to the story I guess but I just thought I would explain. My mom agreed to let us go as long as we took our cell phones and headed home at an appropriate time, which we

all agreed was about one-ish in the morning. The night was cool and chilled and we stood hanging off the playground equipment telling scary stories. They were all the basic run-of-the-mill stories about some stupid girl being stalked by a crazy psycho on Friday the 13th and stuff like that, which now that I think about it, sounds kind of like what happened to my mom I guess. So none of us were really that scared. Then I told them all the story of what had happened to my mom. None of them really took me seriously until my friend Nicole reminded us of those incidents that happened around the same time. She then reminded us that the killer, who had kind of become a figment of local folklore

in our town, had been released on probation. We were all thoroughly freaked out by that fact, but it was made even worse when one of my other guys, Brandon, noticed something from the road. Um, guys? We all looked up to see a black truck, I couldn't tell the make or model, starting to head down the street parallel to us. Now our park is more of just a large square plot with streets facing each side of it, so cars passing by was not a strange occurrence, but usually those cars would just turn around another street off of the perimeter of the plot. This one didn't do that. The truck had entered the square on the street that was facing us and we watched it as it turned onto all of the forest streets surrounding. He wasn't going the speed limit either. He was just cruising like he

was watching us. Now like I said, this town was small so when a car circles like that it's usually just some high school kids looking to smoke and chill out or something and make sure no one was around to see. But no one ever really wants to know what goes down when those cars stop. But like I said, this guy was going so much slower than he should have been plus it was one in the morning and it didn't feel right. At that moment we all agreed that the situation was just too creepy and it was probably best to get out of there and head on back to my house. That's when the car stopped on the same side we had noticed it on. The guy's truck was parked

almost right in front of the turn to the street where my house is so we decided to go the opposite way and just circle back around to my block so we wouldn't have to pass that truck, but that's when I heard a demanding voice yell at us from the driver's seat. I couldn't get a good glimpse of him, but from what I could see, he was a man that looked to be somewhere around my mom's age. All he said was, Ian, come on boy, it's getting late. Thinking he was probably just looking for a dog or something, we all kept walking.

Ian, I said get in the car, boy! He shouted again. That really just confused the crap out of us. I looked back at all of my friends just to make sure. It was just Nicole, Brandon, Sarah, Jenny, and me. No Ian. In that moment, I made what may have been the single dumbest mistake of my life and shouted back at him. We don't know an Ian, sir. None of us are named Ian. At that moment, the creep started to get out of his car and that was

it. Nicole and I booked it out of there, not really looking back to see if any of our friends were following us. We ran straight for my house and as the man saw us run, he got back in his truck and slammed the door. We ran right past him which was a stupid thing to do in retrospect but it was just a straight shot to my house after that. I could feel the air tightening in my lungs as I raced back to my house. I'm pretty sure I never ran that hard in my life. I probably should have waited for some of my friends to join just to make sure that they were okay but I just assumed that they were right behind us. When we reached my house I locked the door and then told Nicole

to get my mom and dad and some knives from our kitchen. Honestly that was probably a bit of an overreaction but I was scared out of my mind and I just thought it was so bizarre that that weirdo thought it would be necessary to get out of his car to just talk to us. A couple of seconds later after my friends had joined us in my living room and my parents had come from upstairs, we explained what had happened. My mom and dad calmed us down and they said they'd keep the gun from our gun safe in their closet just in case. Nothing ever came of that night but none of us got any sleep. That night I kept having an awful feeling. I thought about the trauma my mom had gone through all of those years ago, feeling like there had to be some kind of connection to what had just happened. It all seemed too weird. The next morning my fears were realized. I was scrolling through

my Facebook feed on my phone when I found an article on a local Crimestoppers page. It had read, Glenn Miller, local serial killer said to be released on parole on December the 12th. That was roughly three weeks before my birthday. My heart stopped as I kept reading. Apparently after he was released, as the article explained, he had went to live with his son, who his girlfriend had given birth to after he was arrested. His name was Ian, and there was a picture of him standing next to a black truck. I knew this had to be some kind of sick coincidence, but I could not shake the feeling that that was the truck we had seen all that night. This incident still terrifies me today,

knowing that I could have met a fate that my mom almost did 27 years before. So this was around a year ago now and I'm writing this down so I can try and move past this horror ordeal. To start, I'm a 21 year old female from England and live in a fairly small town. I met my ex, we'll call him Jay for privacy reasons and the fact that I don't want him to read this and come and find me. I met Jay when I was 16 and started my first job at a pizza place. He seemed like a nice guy but I was in a relationship at the time and saw him purely as a friend. He used to give me lifts home when it was dark and even buy me cigarettes or food if I was strapped for cash. My relationship ended two years after and I had moved on to work

at a pub in the next town over and Jay appeared in my life again after pulling up at the bus stop where I was waiting and offered me a lift to work. I gladly accepted as it had been around a year since we had last spoken and was happy to catch up. After he dropped me off at work we agreed we would speak again and possibly meet up. After that he paid me regular visits at work and asked me when we were going to meet up. We agreed to go out drinking one night with one of our mutual friends and on that night out one thing led to another and we ended up sleeping together. He took me home the next day and we continued to meet up regularly, go out in the car, meet up with friends or just watch movies. Eventually he started taking me to

work every day and taking me home as he said he wanted to make sure I was safe. It became easier that I would stay with him so I began to basically live with him at his parents house. Me and his family didn't get on for some reason so they all took an instant disliking to me so we eventually moved in with my parents. We had been together less than a year but things were moving pretty fast. He wanted us to get our own place and I agreed having always wanted a place of my own and I did really like him and thought even if things didn't work out romantically he would be a good roommate. We agreed on these terms that we would get a place together but if things didn't work out we would carry out our lease and then move on from there. We began looking for places when his dad became suddenly ill and died a day or so later.

It was such a shock, no one saw it coming and no one took it harder than Jay did. The craziest part was that an hour or so after his dad had died we went to walk his dogs and he proposed to me. So this was in early November and we had only been together since July the same year and he had previously brought up marriage with me but I had insisted it was too soon and I was too young. I know it's crazy but in his current state I didn't feel like I could say no, so I agreed to his proposal. We moved into our two bedroom flat in February and began living together quite happily and had agreed on a long engagement, which suited me not wanting to get married so young and also he wasn't hurt by any rejection. However, after a month or so of living together I started to notice some change. He became moody and short with me like I was constantly irritating him and didn't

like it when I went out with my friends without him and I later found out that he was going through my phone while I slept. I just accepted what he wanted as every time I tried to argue with him about things he would apologize and say he was grieving his father and would end up feeling sorry for him and guilty for getting angry. However, things soon got out of hand when I reconnected with an old friend. We'll call him P. P and I had fallen out a year before over our differences in his drinking habits. I worked with him and he would often get drunk and not turn up for work so I would cover his shifts. We got into an argument one day when I couldn't cover his shift and didn't speak for around a year. It was a pretty bad argument but he got help with his drinking and reached out to me to apologize for his behavior. Jay didn't like this. He insisted that I didn't speak

to P and would constantly look over my shoulder when I was texting him and would become angry when I would be going to meet my work friends repeatedly asking me if P would be there. I reassured him that nothing was happening and that me and P were just friends but one day he got furious when P called me in the middle of the night. He demanded to know why he was calling and I had no idea. Turns out it was just a butt dial. He turned on me, insisted I was cheating and proceeded to push me against the wall and demand the truth. I told him he was acting crazy and nothing was happening. He pushed me around some more before storming out of our flat and driving away.

I rang my best friend for comfort but didn't actually have the guts to tell her what had happened and just ended up having a gossip session. I told her we had an argument and he had left but no details of the violence he displayed. Jay came back the next morning and apologized. I said it was fine but he needed to watch his temper. Then we had a normal day and he took me to work that night. A few weeks passed before he was violent again, this time much more serious than before. I had found out I was pregnant but having had miscarriages before I waited until I had the ultrasound to tell him. When I did he went crazy, screaming about how I was a cheat and it wasn't his. I burst out crying saying I wouldn't do that to him but

he wouldn't listen. He gave me a beating I wouldn't forget and then stormed out the flat again. I was bleeding pretty bad and in a lot of pain. I called my friend and she rushed over as she didn't live very far away. When she arrived I told her what happened and then she confided in me that she was in a similar situation with her partner. I found out later that day that the fight we had had resulted in me losing our baby. I was in pieces but terrified if he could do that to me knowing I was pregnant. Surely he could do anything to me. Time went on with his violent behavior. He beat me and even assaulted me in ways I dare not describe. I didn't want to sleep with him. He accused me of sleeping with other people and then forced me into bed.

I had told my friend I was struggling with his behavior and she didn't know what to do. I didn't want to go to the police because at the time I was convinced it was my fault and he was a good guy really. It was just bringing out the worst in him. I eventually broke things off and to escape him I went to stay with some friends in the next town over where he didn't know where I was. This is where it gets really crazy. He started following all my colleagues home from work to find out where I was. This meant I had to keep moving

from place to place but I was scared putting my friends at risk. He dumped all my possessions at my parents house telling them I was a cheat and didn't want him anymore as I had found someone else. I eventually went to stay with P, my friend I had mentioned earlier. He told me he wasn't scared and wouldn't let J hurt me. J followed P home and had his friends follow him too to find out when I was there. He would have people sit outside the house and follow me. He would turn up at random times in the night demanding things like keys for the flat or money for rent. I refused this as I had given my keys back to the real estate agents and explained

to them that he had kicked me out dumping my things at my parents house. Jay would message me every day saying horrible things like he was going to make me pay and I would regret this. Also, I would get messages or calls from his mother and sister giving me abuse and saying things like they would come get me. He came into my work a few times before the manager banned him for being there whilst I was working. So, he just hung around outside my work waiting for me to finish when he would hurl abuse at me and call me names. He demanded money off me for quite some time and I eventually moved home with my parents but I'm too scared to move out of my own place for fear of him finding me alone. He still to this day tries to find contact with me through social media or coming to my work.

He still hangs around outside my work waiting for me but my managers are kind enough to let me stay when we close and take me home so he can't get me. I really hope he moves on and stops tormenting me and my friends. We were together all around 10 months and the whole thing was too fast and crazy. I truly hope I never have to go through this ever again. Tonight I missed a meeting with the devil. I'm just going to start by saying that I am fascinated by the paranormal and unexplained mysteries. One of my favorites is the case of Robert Johnson.

It's important that you know about him in order for my story to make sense. So I'm sure we've all heard about musicians making a deal with the devil, but perhaps the most famous of these cases is that of blues legend Robert Johnson. Between 1936 and 1937, Johnson recorded 29 songs which would go on to become some of the most influential music in history. He was loved by many and people couldn't get enough of his music. But this wasn't always so. When he was younger, Robert would hang around local juke joints where famous musicians would be playing. During rest periods, he would beg them to let him play their guitars and when they did, he got a lot of complaints about the noise he was making.

No one liked his music or his singing and they made fun of him for his lack of talent. One day, Robert had had enough and after he was mocked by his own father, he ran away. Six months later, Johnson returned. Walking into a bar called Banks, Mississippi with a guitar on his back, he made his way to the front. Musician Eddie House recalls asking Robert, boy now where are you going with that thing? To annoy somebody else to death? Johnson got up on stage and played the best guitar that he had ever heard. By the time he was done, everyone stood with their mouths open in complete awe of Robert's unnatural talent. A few blues musicians, Tommy Johnson, unrelated to Robert, explain the process of selling your soul to the devil.

1. Take your guitar to a crossroads between 12am and 3am and start playing. 2. A tall black man will walk up to you, take your guitar, tune it, and hand it back. 3. If you accept the guitar, you will be able to play anything. It was rumored that this is how Robert Johnson acquired his skills, and this was only perpetuated by some of his songs, such as Crossroad Blues, Hellhound on My Trail, Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Me and the Devil's Blues, Crossroad, and more. Robert died a year after returning to town at the age of 27. While it is believed that he may have been poisoned by a jealous husband, no one knows how or why he died. However, witnesses who saw him on the day he died

said that he was crawling on all fours, barking like a dog. I've always wished I could be a good singer. I dabbled in a bit of guitar here and there but I'm nowhere near as good as I'd like to be Couple this with my fascination with the paranormal and you may not be surprised to learn that I wanted to go to a crossroads at midnight just out of some dark curiosity I know nothing will happen but

what if? I thought about it for weeks and I think to myself, I've not got much else to do, let's just take my guitar and see what happens. There's a crossroads not far from where I live and it's ideal. It's a perfect cross in the middle of nowhere and it doesn't get many people passing through even during the day. Last week at about 12.15 on Saturday night I was driving back from having dinner with my aunt and I came to a T-junction on my way home.

Now I had a choice between turning left and getting home quicker, but it would be a windy road with a lot of turns and junctions. Or I could go right which would mean an extra 10 minutes, but it's pretty much a straight road and would mean passing by the crossroads that I've been thinking about a lot recently. I decided to turn right. I followed the long straight country road and slowed down as I approached the country roads because I would have to take a right turn and that's when I saw it. Out of nowhere I saw a large black shadow figure standing on the driver's side of my car. He wore a flat cap and had a long black coat with his hands in his pockets. He must have been about 7 or 8 feet tall and was right next to my car as I drove past.

I only noticed him when I got to about 5 meters from him but all I could make out of him was his outline. As I continued to drive I watched him until he went into a blind spot and when I turned at the junction he was gone. He had been standing in the open and was now nowhere. It scared the life out of me if I I'm being honest, and made my adrenaline spike. I know what I saw, and I've told a few people about this and I feel like some of them are humoring me and the rest think that I must have been seeing things after an hour long drive, but I wasn't sleepy at all. I was blasting music out loud and singing along as this happened so, what was it? Was it just a tall man standing there waiting for someone to pick him up from the middle of nowhere?

Or was the devil really waiting for me to strike a deal with him? They say that you'll never need to call for the devil, because he will come to you before you ask. So something weird happened to me the other day and I'd like to share it here. For some backstory, my name is Tom and I'm not going to share my last name for privacy reasons. I live in a very rural part of Pennsylvania where a bunch of coal mines used to be. I live in a neighborhood of houses where each house is about a quarter mile or less away from each other with dense woods in between each house. My street has 10 houses including my friend Sam or Samantha's house who is a part of this too. She is my closest neighbor

and friend. We hang out a lot and in this story nothing different was happening. We met up between our houses at a tree that we engraved our names into a while back. Anyways we met up and walked towards her house's direction because that's where the town that we're on the outskirts of is. As we walked, we were talking about Bigfoot. We both believed in stupid urban legends. I teased about the Jersey Devil or the Slenderman or a Skinwalker attacking us, and it always scared her which was amusing me. A noise could be heard behind us. It was an engine of a vehicle. I turned and saw a white Honda Civic. Weird for people around here coming up the road.

I turned back thinking nothing of it. As it passed, two men stared daggers at us. It was weird but I shrugged it off. We made it to the edge of town, a 7-Eleven we go to often. In the parking lot though, the white Honda Civic was there. We walked in and I saw one of the two men from earlier at the counter ordering a Slurpee and two Twix bars. He saw me enter and frowned but turned to Sam and smiled. I grabbed her hand and took her immediately to the right of the entrance where a bunch of magazines and books were. I told her I don't trust those men and that they seemed weird and up to something.

I told her about the smile and she took me a little bit more seriously and told me to loosen up a bit and to not worry about it. Well, I didn't listen and kept on worrying about it. She walked past the entrance again towards the slurpee machine. As she passed, the man, now walking out with his bag and drink, looked right at her, you know, butt. It disgusted me and I looked at him like he just committed a crime. He said, what are you going to do about it, little guy? Then walked out. I thought, why would he talk to me like that? I wasn't even a threat to his whole weird idea that looking at underage girls was cool or something. These men now crossed the line and it bothered me badly. I called my mom to come to us because there were weird men

and she said that she'll be there shortly. Sam came back over with her coke and cherry mix slurpee, what she always gets and got a pretzel. I picked up Twizzlers and paid for everything, being the respectable gentleman I was. As we walked out, I saw the Honda Civic still in its parking spot, but no two men. A feeling of being watched came over me and creeped me out. I told Sam, hey, let's meet my mom on her way here by starting the walk. She shrugged and said okay. I opened my Twizzlers and munched on them as we walked onto the road leaving town. Trees started to come over us as we walked further. Soon enough, we both heard footsteps in the woods to our left.

We turned and saw a man. I haven't seen this man before, so we were creeped out. I said, Sir, do you need assistance? Hoping that that was the case, and not a I'm here to hurt you case. He then sprinted at us, and I dropped my Twizzlerslers and Sam dropped her pretzel and Slurpee and we ran. I then heard an engine behind us. I turned and saw the man turn around, now running towards a white Honda Civic. The man in the store was in the driver's seat. I was speechless. I knew something was up with these people from the start.

I told Sam to run faster and that it's the men from the 7-11. We ran as the white Honda Civic pulled ahead of us and the men got out. I grabbed Sam's hand and pulled her behind me. I wanted to show as much dominance as possible. One said, Oh, look at that. He's protecting his girlfriend. I shouted back she's not my girlfriend and I called the police. The one man then pulled out a knife and said, I don't want to hurt you,

but if you're resistant I will. They started to approach as light shone from behind them. It was my mom. She pulled up in front of us, obstructing our view of the men. Me and Sam got in and she pulled away. We drive home safely, not seeing those men or the white Honda Civic again. But what I do know is, I will start carrying a knife around with me everywhere and a message for everyone reading. Be careful out there. There are crazy people, creepy people out there. My guess is one of my father's spine-chilling Korean war stories, but since today is his birthday, he would have been 86. I thought this would be a good time to share it. During the Korean War, my father was a medic on the front. Basically, he described it as dodging non-stop onslaughts of explosions and bullets while

trying to help as many fallen soldiers as he could, while listening to their agonizing screams of medic, medic. Most of the time there wasn't even anything he could do for them, so you can imagine the trauma he went through. One night, many years ago long before he died, he told me a story that to this day still gives me chills. He told me that when he wasn't on the front trying to save lives, he would be back at the base camp assisting doctors and basically doing whatever he was ordered to do. For obvious reasons, he tried not to get too close to anyone, but the constant

stress he was under made it impossible not to have a few close buddies. They would mostly just exchange stories about back home, share letters, bum cigarettes off of each other and kick a ball around during their breaks. According to my dad, one of the most dreaded assignments was a night duty in the foxhole, especially during the winter. He said the cold hard ground was like lying in an icy tomb, and given the near-death experiences he suffered on a regular basis, the idea of climbing into the hole was a nightmare in and of itself. Inside the hand dug holes the temperature could get well below zero, but with a combined body heat of a few men, it was far warmer than outside.

Once inside the foxhole, the next worst thing was going back out to pee. He and his buddies would take secluded turns that were pretty well spaced out so they wouldn't be moving around and making too much noise. Stealth and silence were essential to survival, but he had been with this group for a while and they made a pretty good team. So he told me that one night it was particularly cold. For the first time he had decided to forgo drinking some of his water rations that day so he wouldn't need to pee and just skip his turn crawling out of the foxhole to relieve himself. The night went by as expected, cold and uncomfortable, eyes and ears fixed for any possible movement and the occasional silent communication among the group using hand and facial gestures. It was getting close to 4am,

his turn to crawl out to pee. The sergeant in command beckoned him to get ready to go and he motioned that he didn't need to but instead of getting the anticipated suit yourself reply he got the that's an order silent gesture. He knew that there was absolutely no arguing against an order so reluctantly he crawled out of the hole on his belly. At the designated point, he rose to his knees and continued to the area assigned for the soldiers to relieve themselves. Obviously, given the circumstances, he went ahead and quietly did so. When he finished, he retraced his path in the same manner, crawling on his knees and then back down on his belly. Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks. He heard a crack clear as day.

His body was shivering on the freezing ground but he didn't move an inch. He waited. He heard it again. It sounded like a branch snapping and the soft crush of dry leaves. Something or someone was definitely out there. He couldn't decide if he should just sit tight or try and make his way back to the foxhole. He calculated that he was no more than 12 or 15 feet away from the hole, but he might as well have been 100 yards away. His mind was racing. If it was an animal,

the joke would be on him, but if it was the enemy, he didn't want to accidentally give away the foxhole's location, but at the same time, he desperately wanted to warn his buddies. And what he said felt like an eternity, but what was probably no more than a minute. He lay perfectly still, listening and debating what course of action to take. And then he heard the voices. They were extremely quiet, but loud enough for him to hear, Korean. It sounded like they were moving away from his position. He was overwhelmed with relief but kept his cool and quietly started crawling back to the foxhole, all the while

trying to imagine the best gestures to use to let his group know what he had just witnessed and that the enemy was near. The moon was bright enough to affect his vision when he crawled back into the foxhole. Just inside, he waited a moment for his eyes to begin adjusting to the pitch dark. He still couldn't see his hand in front of his face, but he wanted to get back into position and away from the cold air seeping in through the foxhole opening. Careful not to run into anyone, he eased onto his hands and knees, and the ground felt icy cold. Slowly he began to crawl towards his spot, but immediately the hand he put his weight on slipped

and he lost his balance. His upper body fell hard against the ground. When he tried to pull himself back up, he slipped again but this time he could feel it and he could smell it. Terrified, he panicked. The more he tried to just get up, the more he slipped and slithered. The warmth, the smell of iron, and the horrific silence were more than his eyes ever needed to see. They were all dead. In a sneak attack, the enemy had surprised his buddies and cut their throats, while he had been ordered out to pee. I live in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

It was a Tuesday night. I was lying on my bed trying to get some sleep. I laid there for about three hours until I decided to get up and take a walk around my neighborhood just to clear my head. It was two in the morning. I was walking down the street when I remembered there was an abandoned building in our neighborhood. I decided to visit it. People say that this building is haunted. I always wanted to see what was inside that building. The building itself looked really creepy. Broken windows, a huge metal door which said no entry with red paint. As an 18 year old college student I wanted

to be adventurous. I climbed through one of the broken windows and got inside the building. I took out my phone and started to record so I could show off in front of my friends. Just let you guys know from my phone. It took me a couple of seconds to realize I was inside a small room. I walked out the door into the hallway. It was an apartment. I was doing commentary while recording to make it look cool. I got out of the apartment and into the main hall of the building. On the left side of the elevator, there was a small passageway which leads to a really small room under the stairs. I went there to investigate when I got close to the room I heard a clicking noise coming from the first floor. I was frozen for a split second.

I walked back to the main hall still recording then I heard a loud sound of metal dropping on concrete. I almost crapped my pants. I wanted to get out of there but something inside of me told me to go upstairs and find out what it was. I started walking up the stairs as slowly as I could. I don't even know what I was expecting to see up there. I got to the first floor and as expected it was dark but it got colder. Now this event took place in the middle of August. It was hot outside. I'm into paranormal stuff, and when I suddenly felt the cold, I knew this place is not a joke. I should have turned back, but I wanted to see where that sound

had come from. There were four apartments on each floor. I investigated all four of them and saw nothing. A chill ran down my spine when I realized that the whole first floor and the ground floor is covered in sand. There's no concrete and no sign of anything metal. The cold temperature on that floor and the fact that I was alone gave me the chills. I hurried down the stairs, made my way back to the apartment, got out of the window and ran my way back home. When I got home I drank gallons of water, calmed myself down and took out my phone. I wanted to hear that sound again so I played the video and to my horror the audio in the video was messed up. My commentary wasn't there at all. Like I said, there was no problem with my phone, it works fine.

I was so scared that I couldn't sleep that night. I told my friends about it and they told me that it was really stupid to go inside that building alone. I didn't delete the video, I decided to keep it as a memory. Fast forward to December, I was going through my gallery and I came across that video. I decided to keep it as a memory. Fast forward to December, I was going through my gallery and I came across that video. I decided to play it. I forwarded it to the part where I heard the sound and... and surprisingly that sound is clearly heard in the video. I don't know how but it could be heard clearly.

I got goosebumps and closed my phone. I promised myself not to go near that building ever again. It was Friday night and I had just gotten home from spending the whole day with Jay, my boyfriend and now husband. At the time I lived with my mom, stepdad and triplet brothers in a two bedroom, two bathroom condo. My family was going through some hard times and that was all we could afford at the time. I shared the master bedroom with the triplets so each of us had a twin bed. Two of the beds were on each side of the room and the third under one bed that could be pulled out when needed. And the fourth, my bed, was at the foot of the second bed

making a backwards L shape that faced the bedroom door. Fast forward to about 11pm, we say our goodnights and go to bed. And I'm exhausted from a long day. Fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. And this is where things get scary. I can't exactly remember if I was dreaming or not, but I do remember clear as day getting woken up to what felt like someone pinning me down with their hands on each shoulder and their knee in the middle of my back. I could feel my blood running with fear. As it leaned over over it whispered,

Are you awake? I felt paralyzed, couldn't seem to move or open my eyes. I tried to scream but all my efforts were useless. Even though I couldn't move I did feel like I was going to poop myself, that's how scared I was. I again heard the same creepy sinister voice say this, and this time in a loud whisper, I know you're awake. Again, I try not to move, but all I could do is pray. As I'm praying for this to stop, I hear the most evil, malicious, vile laugh I have ever heard in my life. I could hear my heart and blood racing. I slowly start gaining control of myself. I manage to sit up. It's dark but the outside light is bright enough to where

I can see where everything is and that's when I see him or it. The shadow of a man in what looks to be a trench coat. Now I can't really say in detail what it or he looked like because it looked like a shadow walking by and just like that, it disappeared. About five minutes go by and I'm now sitting up. I look over to the triplets and they are all sound asleep. Now I know you guys might think I had some type of sleep paralysis and I know for sure that was not

the case. The next morning I join my parents for breakfast when I start telling them about my terrifying experience. The story grabs one of my brothers, we'll call him Chris, his attention. As I continue with my story Chris starts walking towards us and before I could tell him about the evil laugh he blurts out, The laugh! You heard the laugh? It was an evil manly laugh. It made me jump out of my sleep. But when I looked over, there was nobody there.

I closed my eyes and heard movements on your side of the room so I peeked and I saw you just sitting up. I wanted to say something and I wasn't sure myself what that was. Shivers went down my spine. Everyone was freaking out, thinking someone may have broken in. We double checked everywhere for signs of a break in and found nothing. We have since moved and are living better lives, but if anyone has ever had an experience similar to mine please share or if you have an idea of what it was please let me know. I also forgot to mention that prior to this happening my upstairs neighbor ended their life and he wasn't found till about a week later. Maybe that has something to do with it. So the last time I detailed some small instances where the bond between my mama and me saved my life when I was a baby.

But I also mentioned that there always seemed to be something pulling me away from her, and today I was going to go into more detail about that. This story is the one mama told me in most detail, but I know there are more. As I may have mentioned before, I was more on the quiet side as a kid, even as a toddler. Mom wasn't much of a fan of leaving me at kindergarten all day or such either so since I was so quiet she tended to pick me up right after work and ran errands with me by her side. Of course this meant she made sure that I knew some rules of behavior and stuck to them. I knew that I wasn't to leave her side without asking first.

I wasn't to leave her line of sight, going with strangers or accepting anything from them without her permission was a taboo, and I obeyed rules surprisingly well as a kid, so I typically stuck close to her. I also was very particular about traffic etiquette, to the point where I absolutely scolded my mom for it if she ever tried to cross a red light. One day, we were running errands again and currently finishing shopping at the grocery store. Mom was at a table by the entrance and exit door to pack our things. She had to let go of my hand for that, but she kept checking that I was there.

Suddenly, she noticed the door opening and closing. It's a heavy door one needs to push from the inside. The grocery store still exists, still has that door, and when going there last year, I as an adult had to put quite some weight into it to open it. But no adult had exited or entered. Instead, Mama looked up to see me running at full speed towards the busy street. Of course, she screamed and immediately went to try and follow me, but the door wouldn't budge. She vividly remembers another adult noticing and trying to help her, but even together, they could not open the door. She watched in horror as I darted in between the parked cars towards the asphalt.

Fortunately, I was scooped up at this moment by a man who seemed to come out of nowhere. I personally am fairly sure that he was probably exiting his car as he had just parked or something when he spotted me and jumped into action. Mom was probably just so focused on me that she didn't see him sooner. Still, he had amazing timing, and weirdly, I turned completely calm when he held me and stepped towards the store. The door suddenly opened normally and mom could stumble out and take me into her arms, upset and crying that she almost lost her baby. I don't know what happened afterwards, aside from a few other patrons of the store comforting her and us going home and I myself don't remember much from the incident. I feel like I saw something across the street that I absolutely needed to get to. My behavior was especially weird because not

only did I absolutely adore my parents and usually stuck super close to them. I also didn't usually run anywhere unless I was in a panic trying to catch up to someone or playing catch. In fact my kindergarten teachers always had to fall back to herd me back to the group because I usually walked extremely slow looking at the ground at all times. The only way mama could make me keep pace with her was by making a game out of walking in sync with each other. Yet she describes my movement back then like someone was pulling me on a string. I was completely focused on something across the street, moving so fast, she still feels physically ill just thinking about it. I'm really glad that this man spotted me in time. If not for him, I wouldn't be here anymore.

These stories aren't mine. They're my boyfriend's. He had never told me about these incidents until last night when we started talking about weird experiences. Now, this happened when my boyfriend was much younger, I'd say probably around 11. He often went to visit his cousin down in a small town in Colorado. His cousin used to live near the local high school. This comes into play later in the story. The two of them would often go on what they called midnight adventures. Basically, they would wait until the later hours of the night, then they would take their bikes out and ride around the town, going to restaurants and getting food, just cruising around town finding things to do. This particular night they had been out for a while. They had just got done going to McDonald's to have the breakfast after midnight

special they had been putting on at the time. They were riding their bikes next to a park that had a fence around it, and suddenly they noticed a massive white dog that resembled a husky barrel out of nowhere towards them. They both were startled as it seemed to come out of nowhere, so they rode faster parallel to the fence. As they rode the dog came running on the other side of the fence matching their pace but as they reached the end of the fence it disappeared. They hesitantly stopped to look around for the dog but it was nowhere to be seen. Freaked out they decided to go back home but they were on the opposite side of town from their house. Boyfriend's cousin says that he knows a shortcut through an alleyway.

This alley is narrow and has a singular street light at the end. As they turn and begin to go down the alleyway, guess what's sitting under the street lamp? The white dog. It just sits there looking at them. They decided to nope out of there and go around. As they turn the corner of the street, they see the dog still under the street lamp staring. Then the street lamp turns off. They decide to hightail it out of there and they make it back home without any more incidences.

This next story also happened during one of those midnight adventures. The two had just gone out for the night and they decided to go to the high school parking lot to mess around. Since they had bikes, they figured it would be a good spot to ride around since it was flat and well lit. Suddenly, my boyfriend sees a man in dark clothes walking through the opposite side of the parking lot. At first, he thinks nothing of it until he takes a closer look. The man was a reasonable distance away from them yet he seemed tall. He said he was probably eight feet at least. Boyfriend quietly asks cousin if he's seeing the man too

and he confirms. The man continues walking down the parking lot until he reaches a light post. He walks behind the light post and disappears. He doesn't come out the other side. Boyfriend and cousin freak out and decide they have had enough already. They instantly turn around to go home. Last story my boyfriend told me was not part of the Midnight Adventure saga, but instead it occurred when he was way younger. Boyfriend was probably

eight living with his mom and sister. His sister and he shared a room in bed. Back then both the boyfriend and the sister had a very bad habit of sleepwalking. One night boyfriend's sister sits up out of bed and looks at a corner. At first boyfriend thinks that she's awake but soon realizes her eyes are still closed. Suddenly, she jumps out of bed and starts screaming. How did you get in here? What do you want? In between, she takes a blanket and covers boyfriend, all the while looking in one corner, saying, don't hurt him. She starts screaming for their mom who comes busting in the room flicking lights on and there was no one there. All the commotion caused the sister to finally wake up. She claims she swore someone was in the room with them.

So these events took place around four years ago. At the time I was living with my girlfriend in a pretty dumpy house out in the country. This was in a particular area that people referred to as meth country, though I'm sure many areas hold that description. There was a lot of strange characters and houses that were just metal shacks with junk strewn about the properties. To add to the sketchy nature of this area, there was dozens of dogs that seemed to just run wild. Someone likely owned many of them, but they were all without collars and were quite mangy and dirty. However, there was this one dog in particular that has always stuck with me. The first time I encountered it, I was outside of her house weed whacking and as I finished up

one side of the house, I turned and had a small heart attack when I saw the most intimidating dog I'd ever seen running towards me. It looked like some kind of mix of Pitbull and Rottweiler and looked like one big muscle. Its head was literally the size of a pumpkin. However, it just kind of ran up to me and was seeming to just want to play. His tail was wagging uncontrollably and it would roll on its back to expose its stomach to me. After my nerves settled I started petting it and it was actually a big sweetheart However, despite it being quite friendly, it was really disgusting

It smelled awful and whenever it exposed its stomach I could see flies and bugs blanketing its underside After giving it some attention for a bit I saw something in my peripherals that caused me to glance at the left There was this large black dog standing completely still, just staring at me. I know it sounds cliche, but it really looks similar to a black wolf. It was some sort of mutt, but just to give a better description, I'd guess that it had some German shepherd, some type of hound, and maybe some black lab in its lineage. It had very long legs and was probably around a hundred pounds or more or less. It was kind of unnerving how it looked at me.

It just made me feel uneasy. It stood probably a hundred feet away and I tried to coax it over to me but its tail never even twitched. It just stood there as if it were made of stone. After it looked at me for maybe a minute it just turned and trotted away behind a wall of brush that ran parallel to the road and when it did the friendly beast of a dog got off the road and ran to catch up with it. I would see this dog every few weeks or so and what always creeps me out about it was that I would always catch it staring me down not knowing how long it had been watching me. My girlfriend told me how she had seen it a few times as well and how much it creeped her out. My encounters with it grew more frequent over the passing months to where I started to see it nearly every day.

Sometimes I'd be outside and would catch it looking at me from a distance And other times I would actually step outside to see it across the road Looking directly towards my front door It eventually became routine to where I'd walk out of my house in the morning And head to class or work and it would be waiting While at this point it had never done anything that caused much harm Aside from being plain creepy I was starting to get really creeped out by this thing. There was one incident that happened in the last month or so of our lease that kept me from going outside unless it was to leave for somewhere, and even then I would book it to my car. One morning, I was cleaning out my car. I had let it get pretty cluttered and dirty and was just getting all the trash, clothes and other miscellaneous things I had left in there.

While I was cleaning out the back and under the passenger seat, I heard a sound coming from the house. I looked back and my girlfriend was frantically pounding on the window and pointing behind me. I turned, and the dog was prowling towards me while crouched low, almost like a cat would when stalking a prey. It was maybe 30 feet away and adrenaline hit me when it went into a dead sprint towards me. I remember hopping in the back of my car and slamming the door shut. It reached the side and it just stared at me through the window with these dead eyes. It just looked like it hated me. Not even like it was hungry and wanted to eat, but like it just wanted to kill me.

I know that sounds kind of stupid but it didn't really have any excitement in its eyes or body language. It didn't paw at the windows or make any sound, it just stood still as it always had. I eventually triggered the car's alarm with my key set and it calmly trotted off after a few seconds. We promptly called animal control since it seemed to make a deliberate attempt to harm me. We gave them a description but since there was a lot of dense forest in the area, they couldn't locate him. None of the nearby residents claimed the dog as their own.

I'm pretty sure if any of them did own it they would lie to avoid any legal consequences. Animal control searched for a good while and after coming up empty told us to call them back if we ever saw it again. I don't think they took it very seriously to be honest. I saw it two more times before we left. It would be standing near the spot I first saw it, just barely visible in the street lights while facing my house. Both of the last sightings were very late at night so I just didn't feel like bothering with animal control again since they probably wouldn't be able to track it down in the dark. I don't know what whatever happened with that dog. We moved out a few weeks early, and I just wanted to put it out of my mind.

I do sometimes have nightmares about it and the way it looked at me through my car window. It was the only time in my life I truly felt like I was prey. I'm just glad to be far away from it. and give and receive feedback from the community, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. Links in the bio.

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