The Lets Read Podcast - 338: SOMETHING WAS STALKING ME THROUGH THE WOODS | 10 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 323

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about cabins in the woods & catfishingHAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?[e-mail] ME ON -►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/♫ Music & Cover art: INEKThttps://www.youtube.com/@inektToday's episode is sponsored by:- Betterhelp

So back in the late 70s, when I was still in middle school, my mom and dad went through a really nasty divorce. When dad disappeared for a week, Mom tried to reassure me and my brother by saying that he was on a work trip. But when he came home, they spent the next couple of days arguing before he left for good. Now, he didn't disappear or anything. He moved up to Crescent City into a nice house by the harbor. But since he didn't fight for custody, we kind of got this sense that he just wasn't interested in being a dad anymore. The most he ever talked about it was when he called on my 26th birthday. Mom never had a good word to say about him after the divorce,

and she said he was a deadbeat, that he'd gone nuts, that he was off someplace having a midlife crisis because he was a selfish, thoughtless a-hole. Dad laughed when I told him that, and he didn't disagree either. He also apologized for being so distant, but explained his life had taken. taken a horrible turn right around the time he and mom divorced. He said I might not understand until I was a dad myself and that sometimes a man has to do

what's right, even if it means sacrificing everything he's worked for. He sounded pretty drunk at the time, so I've never really put much thought or faith into what he had to say, and I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last chance that I'd ever get to talk to him. Around seven months later, Mom called me in the middle of the night. All she said was, your father's dead. And then she passed the phone to my brother so he could talk. Dad suffered a heart attack while taking a swim in his backyard pool.

No one found him for a couple of days, and Mom had to go identify his body. She came home drunk in a cab and had to go pick up her car the next day. We held a closed-casket funeral for Dad in the week that followed. Then me and my brother helped Mom deal with all the inheritance stuff. Dad did pretty well financially, so we were shocked to learn that he barely had any left when he died. All he had was his car, his house, a few thousand in savings, and one other thing. A property up near Black Marble Mountain, one he had built not long after the divorce. And that was the biggest shock of all, because not even Mom knew that he had anything built,

and she knew almost everything that he'd been up to after the divorce. According to the attorney mom hired, it was a one-room log cabin built on a small plot of land up in Sisku County, about 20 miles south of a little town called Happy Camp. We could either have it evaluated and put it on the market along with his house, or the attorney could transfer the deeds, and we'd be the proud owner of a cabin we didn't even know existed until just a few minutes before. Mom told the attorney to put the place up for sale, but I asked her not to be so hasty. She argued that there'd been nothing in that cabin but jerky wrappers and empty bottles of booze, but that didn't deter me. I later told her in private that I wanted to see for myself. My brother and I didn't know all that much about what dad had been up to, and since only one of us gave a crap,

it was up to me to go check the place out. I drove up in mid-November of that same year. making sure all the wildfires in the area had either burned out or been contained. But it wasn't a case of just driving out to the thing and loading my car up with anything of interest. Accessing the cabin took hours of hiking across unfamiliar terrain, and we grew up in a family that was more familiar with spas and resorts than hiking or camping. Preparing for the trip took months of purchases and planning, and by the time I was finally ready, I remember feeling very, very apprehensive.

I wanted to know what my dad had been up to out there, if he was just a latent appreciator of the outdoors, or if there was some deeper meaning to it all. But I never stopped to consider if maybe, just maybe, I was better off not knowing the answers to my questions. Now, I'm not talking about anything too sinister. More like I didn't want to see the evidence of degenerate alcoholism or worse, some kind of weird BDSM setup. So there was this sort of crowsy. creeping apprehension as my day of departure approached.

Just not nearly enough to stop me, though. And after driving out to Happy Camp, a friendly local directed me down to a place called Cottage Grove. There was a whitewater rafting company based down there who wouldn't mind me leaving my car parked overnight. And then from there, it was almost five miles of hiking out towards Black Marble Mountain, and all I had to go on was a map the attorney had procured on my behalf. and it was hard going. I soaked my shirt with sweat, got myself lost a couple of times, and burned through so much my water that I had to top my canteen up with some stream water.

And it warmed up fast and the chlorine tablets made it taste like a swimming pool. And then after a few more hours, the trees started to thin out and actually spotted the cabin in a distant clearing. And I was kind of expecting something fancy. like maybe some luxury man cave dad could retreat to whenever he needed to luxuriate, you know. But seeing it from a distance, I could tell right away that it was anything but luxurious. It was moldy and moss-eaten, and the front was all scratched up, presumably, from where generations of bucks have been using it as some rutting post. It had one small window on its front with no glass or a shutter, and the roof looked like it was about to fall in.

I tried a door thinking that it was fit to fall off, but it proved surprisingly sturdy. It was thick with these metal hinges and what I realized were metal panels that had been nailed to the other side. But that only caught my attention for a second or two before I turned to the cabin's interior. And when I did, my jaw absolutely dropped. Almost every surface was covered in maps of the area and all of them had been heavily written on. There was a lot of camping-related trash around it too, spent gas canisters for this portable stove, empty cases of water, all that sort of thing.

But dotted among the maps were photographs of what I came to realize were the same man. It was clear that this place was not newly built. Either maybe he renovated it or built on top of it, but it had been around for a while. Some were pinned to the walls, other were lying on the table or nightstands. stand, and while they weren't in sequence, they seemed to show this guy in a very disturbing state of deterioration. There were a couple of photos showing a very happy-looking man with red curly hair posing with family or friends. In those pictures, he looked bright and healthy, but in other pictures, some of which looked like he'd taken himself, he looked increasingly tired

and very gaunt, almost like he was sick. And then there were the pictures of the red-haired man that looked like he didn't know that they were being taken. There was one of him staring into a stream, his previously short hair, very long and unkempt, and then another slightly blurry picture of him walking barefoot and shirtless through the trees. There were no clues to who the man was, only that someone had been using the maps to track his movements. There were little annotations with dates and times, and one of them said, he's still here over a certain grid square. It looked like my dad had been either trying to find the guy or was tracking his movements. But why was the question? I started to search the cabin a little, looking for something that would give me a

clue as to what dad was up to. But the only things I found were this very hefty looking revolver in a desk's drawer and a box of 44 ammunition to go with it, and a couple of empty booze bottles, just like Mom had said. There was no running water, no bathroom or sink to wash myself in, And from what I could tell, Dad had spent an awful lot of time there doing something that I couldn't figure out. There was a cotton nightstand in one corner where Dad had obviously stayed overnight a bunch of times. So I dusted it off, tossed my bag down on it, and then took a walk around the area to get a better feel for the place. I wanted to know what had drawn my father to that particular area, and after seeing all those maps and photos, I had a feeling as to what was going on, just not enough to know for sure.

He had those additions to that cabin built in that specific spot for a specific reason, but nothing about the surrounding area gave me any clues to what was actually there. And as far as I was concerned, this was a perfectly normal patch of forest that was home to nothing more frightening than the occasional bear with their cubs. But that night proved otherwise. After making my way back to the cabin, I made myself some food, and then as the sun started to set, I went about reading the maps that were thrown around

by the light of my electric lantern, and there were some other notes written over certain grid squares that said things like, found him sleeping here, or human scat, feeding, question mark, all of which made me think that dad was tracking the man with that red hair. But then there was the note that said, almost saw me, too close,

with a too close having been written in big blog, lock letters. Then the gun made me realize that whatever happened to him, the red-haired man had somehow posed a threat to my father. And since I was now in the cabin, he might just pose a threat to me too. No, notes like made contact today gave me hope, but then others, quote-unquote, secondary contact, bad reaction, made me think that sleeping there was just not such a good idea after all. But then knowing that it was too late to do anything about that, without risking getting lost in the dark, it made me feel very, very uneasy. Once it was completely dark outside, I bolted the cabin door shut, closed the little shutter on its only glassless window,

and then tried and failed to get comfy on the canvas cot. And that proved just about impossible for a while. But with the sound of the wind in the trees creating this very soft, incessant drone, and with the exhaustion of the day's hike finally setting in, I eventually found myself drifting off to sleep. I don't know how long I was out for, but I was jolted awake around 2.30 in the morning after hearing a noise. My heart began pounding, and I looked all around the cabin for the source of the noise. Then I realized, with relief, that it was coming from outside the cabin. Something was moving out there, and at first, I thought that it had to be an animal of some kind, curious, probably of the smell of food. But as I listened, I started to hear this

very steady, bipedal shuffle that sounded way too confident to be an animal. Now, the first thing I did was go for the desk where that very chunky revolver was sitting in the drawer. Now, I'm not exactly some hot shot with guns, but I knew how to load and operate it so it was ready to fire. An animal would just leave given some time and possibly a warning, but a lone person out there, in the middle of the night, was definitely worth arming myself. for. My next move was to that small shuttered window, which I very swiftly unshuttered, and shined a flashlight out of. I had a wide enough arc to illuminate what was directly in front of the cabin, but not much else. But as I scanned, that rhythmic shuffling noise sounded like

it was getting closer and closer to my field of vision. I pointed my flashlight beam over to some of the trees to my right, then after a few seconds of waiting, a person, shuddered. shuffled into view. They were completely naked, with only patches of clean, pale skin visible through this covering of dirt and grime. Their long red hair was nodded and wild, and I caught a glimpse of a very similarly unkept beard, too. I knew who it was from the moment I saw all that hair, But as I shine my flashlight on him, he didn't react at all. He just kept walking side onto me like he was circling the cabin. And he kept going that way for about a minute or two before he suddenly just stopped.

Now at first all I could do was just watch, stunned into silence by what or more like who I was seeing. But when the guy paused and stood perfectly still like some creepy statue, I knew that I couldn't stay silent any longer. I called out to him, saying something like, Hey, I'm warning you. I got a gun in here. But he didn't react to the sound of my voice either. He stayed almost perfectly still aside from this very subtle swaying. And then out of nowhere, he suddenly started sprinting towards the cabin door.

And the way that he went from zero to 60, it scared the crap out of me. so I slammed the shutter closed and then backed away from the front wall of the cabin and pointed the gun right at the door. I saw those metal plates again and it suddenly made this horrible sort of sense why they'd been added. I thought the guy was going to throw his weight into the door to try and bash it open, but right as his footsteps got very close, they stopped, and he seemed to just sort of stand outside the door, quiet and still again. I reminded him that I had a gun, and that breaking into a cabin would be the last thing he ever did. And you guessed it.

He didn't say crap in return. There was just this dead silence for a minute or two before he started gently knocking on the cabin door. It was really soft and quiet at first, barely even audible. But it got louder and harder with each repetition. I figured it was a fist at first. but the longer it went on, the more I realized that the impact was much larger, and it was exactly at head height, too. That crazy bastard wasn't banging his fist against the cabin door. He was smashing his head into it, over and over and over again. I remember yelling at him to stop, while staring

straight at those metal plates thinking, Jesus Christ, this has happened before, hasn't been it. As the guy kept slamming what I assumed was his head into the thick wooden paneling, I started yelling at him that I wasn't my dad and that he'd passed away. I didn't phrase it exactly like that. It was much more drawn out and I must have sounded terrified, but I drove the point home that dad was gone and I wasn't staying. And then the moment that I made that point, the banging suddenly stopped. There was dead silence again, for a moment or two, and then I heard a voice outside saying my dad's name. It was a raspy kind of croak, like whoever was outside hadn't drank or said anything in a long, long time. But it was

clear enough for me to recognize his name. I told the guy for a second time that my dad had passed, and then in the morning I'd leave and never come back. But his only response was to croak dad's name again a little louder. I yelled at him that time, shouting about how Dad was dead, how I didn't know what the hell he'd been up to, and that I didn't mean anyone any harm by being out here. I expected him to repeat Dad's name again, but the silence drew itself out until suddenly I heard footsteps getting gradually quieter as whoever it was began to walk away. I remember just standing there, unable to move, but also unable to stop shaking as I listened

to those footsteps get more and more muted. Until finally, I couldn't hear them anymore. Hearing only silence again felt like a spell being broken. I could move again, but I also couldn't stop moving. There was no way that I was sleeping in that cabin that night, not after that. So I packed up my stuff, made sure that I was headed west, and then walked until I saw the sunrise. But that night hike was one of the most terrifying experiences of my my entire life. Not only did I notice that the cabin door was drenched in what looked like saliva on the way out or blood, but I mistook every little shadow on the edges of my flashlight beam for that naked, red-haired man. The same could be said for every little sound I heard too.

I heard an owl or something hooting behind me, and I'd spin around on the spot with my flashlight and my dad's gun at the ready. I honestly thought that I was going to to have to kill a man that night. And I thank God that it didn't come to that. I also didn't feel truly and completely safe until I was back in my car and on the move again. By the time I got back home, I hadn't slept in more than 24 hours,

but it was still so wired after all that adrenaline that I didn't even think about sleeping until late that same afternoon. I called the Ranger H.Q. at Yukonam to report what I'd seen and told them how concerned that I was for whoever was at. out there. I mentioned how I believed my late father had been trying to find a missing person,

but I didn't mention anything about the tracking or the observation he'd done, nor did I go into detail regarding that horrifying encounter of the previous night. All I said was that guy seemed dangerous. I didn't want the ranger thinking that I was some crazy attention seeker, and then once it was his turn to speak, the ranger told me something very shocking. He said that I wasn't the first person to make a report like that, concerning some red-headed wild man living out there in the woods. I probably wouldn't be the last either. But to date, he hadn't hurt anyone. He'd just give them a scare, especially considering his lack of clothing and obviously strange behavior. The oldest filed report was from 15 years before, which coincidentally was right around the

same time that mom and dad was getting divorced. I asked if my dad's name was a mom. any of those who'd made reports, but the ranger said no. Before we hung up, the ranger suggested the guy was an old-time friend of my dad's, who'd been out there trying to find him. I said it was possible, but I couldn't know for sure. And mom certainly didn't recognize the guy's description, and neither did she recall dad ever hanging around with anyone who looked like that. And that was probably the point where I was at my most curious,

and I guess there was a time there when I was in danger of falling into what I consider as the same trap as my father did. Now I figured why sell the place. I can go out there every so often and piece together what dad was trying to figure out and build. But then I saw myself falling down that rabbit hole of obsession, emptying liquor bottles out there on my lonesome till I, too, died long before my time should have been up. Now, after that, I put the cabin up on the market. I had to sell the land in the cabin as a kind of parcel,

and I sold it at a heavy discount purely because I just wanted to get rid of everything, and also because it was so dilapidated and disgusting. The thought of sending someone out there to evaluate it didn't even cross my mind, because I'm not sure if I could have lived with myself if they'd gone all the way out there, only to never return. A bit of a weird one for you here, but a few years ago, I ran a small discord for a bunch of friends who watched me on Twitch or hung out in other ways. Now, I'm sharing this next part because it's very relevant to the story. I'm what's known as an Ace Arrow, or Arrow Ace, or whatever, as in biologically, I've experienced no romantic attraction whatsoever.

As a woman, this is kind of handy to be able to tell people in an online community because, You know what some Discord guys can be like. And if I introduced myself as not even the slightest possibility, I found it to become a little easier to avoid those situations, not totally, but to a point. And then came a certain member of the community who will just call Rustin. He sort of lurked around mostly, adding his thoughts on things here and there, asking if he could join us for group gaming nights sometimes,

which he did, although he didn't have a microphone. One day, out of the blue, I received a huge DM from him, like thousands of words long. So at first I'm thinking, okay, I know exactly what's coming. Should I even bother to read this? But I did, and yes, it was exactly what I expected. A weird and unwarranted confession of love. Normally, I'd be sympathetic towards these types of things. It's not other people's faults that I'm ace arrow and have about as much interest in physical contact with the

another person as I do with a meat grinder. Now, I try and be really nice about it, even though I'm very open and upfront publicly that I'm not looking and never will be looking. And the heart wants what the heart wants, though. However, Rustin's logic wasn't just that he had a crush on me. He said, we were soulmates. We were destined to be together. Things could definitely work between us, and he knew because we had the same niche, specific tastes in things that indicated that we were soulmates. Now, we won't bore you with all of them, but some of the funnier ones were that we both played the X-Files' FMV game on PlayStation 1 as kids, and then later the X-Files resist or serve on PlayStation 2. But even bigger proof that we were destined to be together, we had both

played obscure survival horror games such as ghost vibration on PS2. Sure, buddy, I get that not many people have played that game because it was crap and the main character looks like a cross between Howdy Duty and Tommy Taffy, if you know you know, but that did not mean that we were soulmates. But then came the kicker. We had both played the very original Blair Witch Project game on PC, the one that connected to the Nocturne universe. If this is sounding incredibly nerdy, well, that's because it is. I'm a horror fan and a horror game developer, a friend of mine in the same field as part of the Let's Read community and encouraged me to send the story over, in fact.

So it's kind of my job to play these things. things. So like, yeah, okay, these were some pretty strange coincidences that we played and enjoyed those four obscure games, but that obviously did not mean that we were soulmates or that somehow being with Rustin could cure me of the fact that I am not biologically or romantically attracted to people. Like, I'm not talking not that interested or rarely in the mood. I mean, I am not. No amount of X-Files FMV games is going to change that. But then the message got even more insane. He told me that despite all of this, he knew that we couldn't be together because he'd heard me on stream laughing at jokes made by another member of the community, and he could tell

that we were in love. He said that he had a sixth sense for these things, and he knew that me and this other guy had something going on, and he didn't want to get in the way of that. The reason he was telling me all of this was to apologize in advance if he seemed moody or angry with me going forward. One, the guy he was talking about was my effing brother, Alex, who guessed it on my streams a couple of times. So yeah, good sixth sense, buddy. I guess Rustin hadn't been logged on or conveniently ignored the multiple times that we mentioned that Alex was my sibling, or maybe he thought because we're adopted siblings that didn't count or something. Gross.

Dude, he's my brother. This was all just really weirding me out at this point. But basically, this huge essay was a lengthy excuse to just guilt-trip me in. and explain why he was going to be rude to me in the community going forward. I didn't want that, so as polite as I could put it, I sent him a message saying that this was all a little much for me and crossed many of my boundaries, and I wasn't comfortable having someone around me

or my friends who'd behave this way towards me, so I think I'm going to have to remove him from the server and ban him. I asked him to confirm that he'd seen the message with a thumbs up and then blocked him. And now, fast forward to a year. I was hiring for a small indie game my friend was working on, and I was helping him out as an art director and scouting for talent for the role. I put out a call on various platforms looking for people to help them out, and one really stood out. Their CV said that they were a 23-year-old non-binary Austrian femme presenting artist, and their work was genuinely fantastic, really damn good art and they were local,

which meant that they could come into our co-working space for an in-person interview. Wonderful, I thought. My friend would be thrilled, and so was I. I emailed back and forth with this artist who agreed a date and time to come in and meet with me. It was just me in the office that day because the game director got called away on some urgent business. There was a knock on the door and a person entered. I checked the time, and yeah, this should have been my meeting with the artist. Now, I'm not trying to be judgmental about people's appearances. If they say they're femme presenting and maybe don't quite fit what I picture as femme presenting, okay. But when the 23-year-old non-binary femme-presenting artist looks, sounds,

and is dressed like a 43-year-old, bald and bearded man from Milwaukee, even I have my limits. He wore a Guns and Roses T-shirt that stretched at the seams over his hairy beer gut. He looked like Kyle Gass from Tenacious D if he'd gained 100 pounds, lived in a van for six months, and hadn't showered. He smelled like it, too. And he just sort of strides. in, closed the door behind him, and I didn't notice it, but he locked it, and took a seat on the

other side of my desk uninvited. I asked him if I could help him, and he said he was Amalie, the artist here about the job. Of course, alarm bells were ringing, so I say, you're a 23-year-old Austrian person, and he nodded and said yes in a very obviously American accent. What the how should I do? I was terrified of being slapped by some discrimination lawsuit or something, but this chunky-ass bearded man clearly was not a 23-year-old Austrian femme. Then I noticed a tattoo on his wrist. It was the stick figure from the Blair Witch Project, and a sinking feeling suddenly washed over me. I'd never seen him in person back in the day, but he had sent a photo of his Blair Witch tattoo. Yeah, you've already worked out who this is.

is right. Rustin. He saw me looking at the tattoo and was, well, I guess the jig was up. And so I asked him straight up, did he catfish me as an Austrian feminine her 20s just to meet me? Rustin then leans towards me and said that he knew once I saw him and we made eye contact, I'd realize that we were soulmates, that the connection would unlock something in me and I'd no longer be broken in the ways that I was, and the power of our connection would fix me. I was furious, so I stood up and stormed to the door and attempted to leave, and that's when I realized that he'd locked it. Luckily, it was just one of those catches that you flick, but as I was trying to unlock it, Rustin was up on his feet and grabbing me. He pulled me away

from the door, surprisingly gently, and whispered in my ear that as soon as I felt him against me, as soon as our bodies touched, I'd understand. Let's just say it was one of the scariest and least pleasant experiences of my life. There certainly was no awakening. If I'd been Arrow-Ais before, then Rustin's touch had somehow sent my romance interest into the negative figures. I told him that, no, sorry, I didn't feel it. And if he didn't let go of me right the frick now, he was going to feel something very unwelcome. I was absolutely trembling and shaking with fear, and my threat squeaked out like a mouse on helium,

so I don't think it threatened them very much. I did get a burst of strength, though, because the idea of this repulsive evil father Christmas doing something unspeakable to me was just too much. I fumbled for the door lock while also banging on it, screaming for help, hoping some of the other people who used the co-working spaces were in the office that day. The security guy on the door had been around. at least because someone had let Rustin up, and I managed to get the door open and fled, with Rustin thundering behind me. Now for a big man, he was fast, although it sounded like he was

really physically struggling. We were on the fourth floor of this rented co-working space, so I had the genius idea to run down the stairs. I was pretty fit, and he was not, so maybe this would slow him down. I underestimated his determination, though, because by the time I reached the third floor, still calling for help. It sounded like Rustin was getting closer, if anything. I decided to turn and risk looking back, and that's when I saw him sort of leap or fall. I don't know. He just sort of flung himself belly first down the stairs towards me, maybe trying to land on me like John Cena on meth or something. Unfortunately, I sidestepped that, and he bounced against the wall and then stumbled at the top of the stairs.

and then this guy bounced, tumbled, and fell down two flights of stairs, screeching and yowling in pain the entire time. Now, despite myself, I was kind of worried that he was going to actually break his neck, so I ended up chasing down after him just in time to see him face plan on the floor. And then suddenly, other people showed up, bursting in through the stairwell door asking what the hell was going on because they thought they heard a noise. I told building security everything, who then called the cops. Rustin was not in good shape. He ended up having some broken ribs, a broken arm, and worst of all, his guns and roses

T-shirt had split from throat to sternum, and I'm pretty sure that was a genuine 80s artifact. Now, anyway, it was kind of hard to get any crime to really stick on him. He'd only mildly assaulted me, which I did press charges for, and it was enough to get a restraining order against him too, but I think the amount of people who told him that they'd make sure his life wasn't worth living if he came after me again was enough to keep him away. Hopefully he no longer thinks we're soulmates. And I can tell you one thing. Being grabbed by that guy most certainly did not change my mind on having no desire to date. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's take a moment

to honor women and the incredible burdens they carry in their careers, relationships, families, and numerous roles each day. March brings us International Women's Day, a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the strength and achievements of women while also acknowledging the heavy load they often carry. It's so easy to overlook their emotional well-being amidst all their juggling. So let's take a moment to remind all the amazing women out there just how valuable they are, and that therapy can be a fantastic space for them to focus on their own needs and give themselves the care they truly deserve. My mom has had such a big, impact on my life. She laughs like wind chimes and makes the best pancakes shaped like crooked hearts.

She used to say every scraped knee deserves a brave sticker and every bad day can be fixed with a story. This month, as we celebrate women everywhere, I just want to say my favorite hero still wears flour on her cheeks and calls it magic. All of the therapists at BetterHelp are fully licensed in the U.S. and follow a strict code of conduct to ensure you get the best support possible. BetterHelp makes it super easy for you by handling the matching process, so you can concentrate on your therapy goals. Just fill out a quick questionnaire to share your needs and preferences, and with over 12 years of experience, we usually nail the match on the first try. Plus, if you're not feeling your therapist, you can switch any time using our personalized recommendations. BetterHelp is a friendly giant in the online therapy space, boasting over 30,000 therapists and having helped more than 5 million people worldwide.

all while earning a fantastic average rating of 4.9 out of 5 from over 1.7 million client reviews. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash read. That's betterh-elp.com slash read. This story happened to my aunt back when she was in her 40s. This was around 1998. Webcams weren't a thing that many people had back then, and people like my beloved aunt, who was always pretty technologically savvy, used to use IRC chat rooms and these AOL chat rooms you'd have access to by being an American online customer.

No, I'm not sure exactly how she met this guy. She just says a chat room and can't remember further details. The guy claimed to be a pretty successful author, and my aunt's always been attracted to literary intelligence, so they struck up some type of friendship. And she kept pushing him to tell him some of the things he'd written, though, and he wouldn't. And he sort of playfully refused and promised her that one day he'd tell her the truth, but not yet. Eventually, a budding online romance developed between the two of them.

And this was back in the days before meeting romantic partners online was remotely advisable. So she knew that she was taking a pretty big risk. She lived in Toronto, and he lived in Nashville, and they were talking about her flying out to meet him. She gave him crap again, saying, how could she prove that he was in? who he said he was. And he had sent a few scans of some photos, but they didn't look like any famous authors that she knew, and besides, he said, nobody knew what he supposedly looked like as an author, which wasn't too uncommon back then before social media. What he did send her, though, was redacted scans of his bank account, which she swears to this day appear to be legitimate.

He certainly had money, and whether it came from being an author or not was another matter, but that part didn't seem to be a lie. Nor was it a lie when she received a plane ticket in the mail, paid for in his real name, as well as the deposit sent to her bank account for travel expenses. He told my aunt he genuinely loved her and wanted to be with her, and she believed him and felt the same. So my aunt was all set up to fly out to Nashville,

at the airport, ready and excited, when suddenly an unexpected flash storm hit. It delayed the flight by an entire day, day and she was extremely stressed because she needed to get this information to her man. And we should probably give him a name, actually, so I guess I'll just call him Alan because that's what he said his name actually was. Now, eventually, things were arranged that my aunt was given accommodation in a hotel overnight, and from there, she tried to call Alan on the landline that she had for him, but nobody was picking

up. It made sense because right about now her plane should have been landing, and he would have been there to meet her at the airport. She could only hope that the airport itself would inform people that the flight from Toronto to Nashville had been delayed and would be landing the following afternoon. She left a message on his answering machine, but since she was still calling from a hotel room landline, she had no idea what number to give him to call her back. He didn't call back, but she took the flight anyway and hoped that he'd be there when she landed.

Needless to say, there was no sign of Allen, and she waited around for a while hoping he'd show up, but he didn't. Thankfully, my aunt did have an address for him, and it wasn't a cheap cab ride, but she took it. His house was pretty modest, a single-story building that didn't really give away the fact that the owner was rich, this successful author, but it didn't really rule it out either. My aunt tried knocking, looking through the window, looking for a spare key or anything, and eventually an elderly neighbor came out and asked her what the heck she was up to. Now, my aunt kind of broke down crying and told them everything. The elderly neighbor was kind of weird about it, which you can't blame her for.

But when my aunt showed her the photo of Alan that she had, which she'd mailed her, and the actual mail back then, the 90s were wild, the neighbor confirmed that that was the man who lived in the house. However, his name wasn't Alan. That didn't necessarily prove anything. People do use different names, so my aunt asked the neighbor lady about whether this guy was an author, and my aunt says that she clearly started to say yes, but then backed down and changed her mind and said, no.

No, he worked some job that she didn't know about. My aunt decided to stay in a hotel on her own dime for a few more days, calling Alan repeatedly, and eventually his answering machine said it was full, and she couldn't leave any further messages. Now, heartbroken, my aunt returned to Canada. Thankfully, she was able to get her return tickets shifted to earlier, and she never heard from her.

Alan again. Now I grew up hearing the story, I'd been a little kid when it happened, and just knew that my aunt had found someone and then later that things had just gone wrong. Mom told me some very brief variants of it over the years, but eventually in the mid-2000s, my aunt cornered me at a Thanksgiving dinner and told me that she wanted to share the whole story because she knew that I was in the mysteries and true crime and things like that, and something had never sat right with her about the whole thing. So the story I've just told you is the story she told me. And it really did sound like she'd been catfished.

But the thing that really stuck with me was, why? What did Alan have to gain from this aside from just cruelty? And maybe it was just my aunt's unwillingness to hate this guy, but it really didn't sound like he was out to hurt her, at least not in the way he did. Now, I did some digging, even though I didn't have much to go on. an author who disappeared on a certain date, whose name may or may not have been Alan, but wasn't the name that he published under.

I got it in my head that the guy hadn't catfished my aunt, but something else had gone on instead, so I was searching for authors who died around that time, and nothing really came up. Then, on just some stroke of genius, I asked my aunt if she still had the address for Alan. A few weeks later, she managed to dig it up from some printout of an email that she'd from all the way back then, believe it or not. And I looked up the address itself and the past owners. It had been owned by a man named David, then the next name, and the next owner had the same name, and a Google search suggested that it was his son. So I looked up David and that name,

and there wasn't much in the way of information for him back in the 90s. But then I get drawn down this rabbit hall on a sadly now defunct message board about conspiracies and missing people. people. The thread had flagged up in my search for his name, but I didn't immediately see how it was relevant. It was a thread about a female romance mystery author, locally published in the area of Nashville, that Alan lived. The thread had started out with the OP asking if anyone remembered these books. There were about five or six of them, and they were typical Harlequin-style romances, but the OP remembered them having passages that read almost as if it was in some kind of code, like strange unusual sections that didn't seem to fit with the rest of the otherwise generic romance novel.

I read more and more of the thread, and that's when David Allen's name came up. The female romance author, J. A. Len, seemed to be self-published back in the days when self-publishing was extremely costly and hard, and her book was a staple at local fairs and craft events and bookstores, but all of the stalls were manned by someone claiming to be the author's brother. David Allen and then the name. As the thread went on, these sleuths began to dig further and discover that David Allen name

was spelled Allen like A-L-L-E-N, which allowed them to discover that on the afternoon my aunt was flying into Nashville, a man named David Allen name had gone off the road on a cliff-top path and crashed through the guardrail, dying instantly. And so I'm just there thinking,

holy crap. My aunt didn't get catfished. Her lover tragically died on the way to meet her. But then the post continued. A few posters swore down that their relatives had eloped with a guy named David Allen Blank who lived in Nashville. All of them had cut off their friends and family and claimed that they were living with David Allen on a commune of sorts. A commune nobody could actually prove even existed. So now we have David Allen Blank meeting multiple women on the internet throughout the 90s, paying to get them to fly to Nashville, and then they all mysteriously disappeared. Some of the posters even had proof of missing person reports, which they posted scans of, and then one final post really chilled me to the bone. They'd claim that they used to work for the

Nashville County Sheriff's Office, and that they'd get in a lot of trouble for posting these recordings. But this was the tape taken from David Allen's answering machine after his death. I listened to it all. There were multiple messages from my aunt on there, along with a couple from two other women who seemed to be in some kind of early stage relationship with David. But the most chilling one was the message received just before the final two messages from my aunt, in which she desperately tried to explain that her flight had been delayed by a day. It was a male voice, saying that David Allen had let them down one too many times, that the goods had been scheduled to arrive in Nashville that day, and a lot of effort had been made to ensure everything was running smoothly. David Allen, apparently, should have booked a different

flight route for the goods to ensure that there were no weather delays. I thought about posting, saying the other messages were from my aunt, I thought about telling her. I had no idea what to do. Now, I saved that file and ultimately decided to just selectively take bits of the information. So to this day, my aunt believes that Alan, David Allen, tragically met his death while driving to the airport to meet her. It was a tale of doomed love, and it gave her closure. But there's so much that doesn't make sense to me. Romance has always been a lucrative genre, but a self-published romance author wouldn't be making the kind of money in the 90s that my aunt claimed was on Allen's bank statements. Okay, maybe she got it wrong, but what about the weird-coated paragraphs that a handful of

the posters recall being in the books? And why were there no images of the books themselves? It didn't sound like they'd been widely in circulation. Only about three members of the weird lost media conspiracy forum that I'd found had ever even read them, and they'd all grown up in 90s Nashville. I wish I'd posted on the forum or made at least one or two connections there because the place got shut down while I was still trying to decide what exactly to do. And it had nothing to do with David Allen. There was some other drama about how a much more severe sense of political topic that caused the forum to implode,

and the hosting providers themselves just decided to delete it. And the admin posted a notice saying that they no longer felt safe running the forum, and that was that. But here's what I think. My aunt was catfished, but not in a way that she first suspected. David Allen was involved in some kind of human trafficking or maybe a cult program, where he'd lure certain women across the country based on criteria that I can't quite work out by pretending to be a successful author. Now, he was certainly an author and certainly rich, but so much about his identity was fake.

And what happened to the other women who supposedly eloped with him, they all told their families on the telephone that they wanted no further contact with them. And back then, these things really didn't get looked into that heart. But I'm certain that David Allen was not the doomed romance author that I let my aunt believe, and that whatever catfish scheme he had planned for her, it was a lot more sinister than simply luring. her to Nashville and breaking her heart. I just wish that I knew the truth of what it was. So I noticed that you don't get many submissions from trans people, so I thought that I'd send the story that happened to me recently about the time that I was catfished on a dating app.

So to clarify, I'm a lesbian trans woman and I use an LGBTQ plus dating app that I won't name because it's still fairly low-key and hasn't been sworn by the usual bigots trying to ruin it for us yet, but it's also not aimed at, let's just say, blue sky-type LGBTQ plus people. And I do not mean this derogatorily, but it's for us older gays who lived through New York in the 80s, those kind of folks, bisexual boomers, late-game lesbians, whatever you want to call us, and we kind of like to keep it that way. So I'm in my mid-40s, and honestly, I just want to quietly live my life as the gender that I identify as.

I spend years consulting with doctors and doing the whole psychiatric assessment business, making sure it was the right decision for me, and I feel that it was, and I've never been happier with who I am. Now, not to preach, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, but as an older trans woman, I really do want to add this note for anyone listening. Please, please, please, be 100% sure you're fully aware, educated, and ready for what you're getting yourself into before you begin that process. This view makes me a little unpopular.

with the kids, but I promise you you will live a happier and healthier life, even if it feels like you're having to leap through hoops early on. The world sucks for us right now. Make sure that you're fully sure that you want to commit to that fight, and my heart goes out to anyone going on the same journey I did, especially as a young person in today's climate for a bunch of reasons. And the story is kind of a cautionary tale about the kind of things trans women face, I guess. It's something I've dealt with all my life, but it was worse when I was. younger. So back to the app, I matched with this other trans woman who claimed to be in her 30s. She looked a tiny bit familiar in her photos, so I wondered if I'd seen her on the app before.

She also certainly looked closer to my age, but hey, some of us lived hard. In reading her profile, she seemed like a good match and a fun time, so I messaged her. We exchanged a few messages and then agreed to an evening meal at a small bistro in the village. When I arrived, the matre d. me to my usual table. Yeah, I'm the type of person to have a usual table at a gay bistro, and I sat and had a glass of wine while I waited for my date, Charlene. Now, the person who eventually sat opposite me was a very masculine-looking person in their 50s, wearing a casual shirt and tie. They certainly weren't trying to pass as a trans woman, but, hey, fair enough. Maybe I misunderstood that they were a drag queen. If so, they'd be disappointed, and I'm only into women of any

sorts, not men who just masquerade as women, even though I'm cool with that, so I asked him, hey, are you Charlene? And he says no, he's actually Charlene's dad, strongly emphasizes he's straight for some reason and says he found out that his daughter had a date with me and wanted to check me out first, because he's really protective and doesn't want his daughter being hurt because she's vulnerable because she's trans, as if I'm not. Now, naturally, this is all very suspicious to me, and I'm starting to definitely think that I've seen this guy before.

One, I am absolutely certain that this man was Charlene, but, hey, if Charlene is his daughter, then there could be a resemblance. Two, I'm also absolutely certain that I've seen him hanging awkwardly around some of the bars that I frequent in the village, which, let's just say, aren't typical for straight dads. So this guy says his name is Charles, another red flag. Charles and Charlene? and that he's sorry for the deception, but would I mind spending the evening with him so he could tell Charlene whether I'm safe to go on a date with? I should have said no right there because already I was starting to understand exactly what kind of a catfish situation I was experiencing here.

Now, I'm a cocky B word who loves a free meal and a free drink, so I tell him, sure, I'll hang out with him as long as he's paying. And he says, of course, a fine lady like myself should never have to go Dutch. Fair enough. And so we get talking for a while and it becomes very clear that he's interested in me. Charles seems to forget that he even had a daughter called Charlene as soon as the food arrived. He was just interested in me and in particular, interested in asking if I'd had the surgery. Yes. And weird things like, did this mean that I was biologically a woman now?

Did I get a womb surgically implanted? All sorts of very strange questions. Bear in mind that this was just before the panes. too, so it's not like this happened during a time when finding info about how this all worked was super hard. And I told him some of these questions were things that he should maybe research himself or ask Charlene. And by then we finished dinner and, God damn, this guy was so apologetic. Like, I felt really bad for him. And then he starts doing this thing that some guys do when they try to overcompensate. Like, I wish I was trans myself. I feel spiritually trans. And I would have voted

for trans Obama if I could. Okay, he didn't say that last one, but it was almost as cringy as that. And I decided enough was enough, and I looked right in the eye and said, there's no Charlene, is there? He didn't reply for a moment, so I continued, asking if he simply wanted to go on a date with me. And he kind of nodded shyly and said that he was into me, but he knew I was only into women, so he posed as a trans woman on the dating app.

I try to be as gentle as possible here. I tell him there's nothing wrong with a straight guy wanting to date a trans woman, but there is something wrong with catfishing people and pretending to be a woman when you're not. He counted this by saying that in my profile, I said that I was happy to date trans women with or without the surgery. And I'm like, yes, women, I'm a lesbian. And he could not grasp that it made any difference. And eventually I just said that none of this was important.

The important part was that he'd fully posed as someone else on a dating app made up a trans daughter and catfished me, and surely he saw that that was bad and kind of scary. Now, he looked almost frustrated and really thought that this might go okay. But then he asked, and would I maybe at least try spending the night with him? Maybe I'd feel different, and he really didn't mean it when he said that he had a transgender soul, and that it didn't matter that I'd had the surgery. I try and be as gentle as possible. I tell him there's nothing wrong with a straight guy wanting to be.

to date a trans woman, but there is something wrong with catfishing people and pretending to be a woman when you're not. He countered this by saying that in my profile, I said I was happy to date trans women with or without the surgery, and I'm like, yes, women, I'm a lesbian. He could not grasp that it made a difference, and eventually I just said that none of this was important. The important part was that he'd fully posed as someone else on a dating app, made up a trans daughter, and catfished me. And surely he saw that that was bad and kind of scary. Now, he looked angry. And I really thought that this might go okay, but then he asked,

would I maybe just try spending the night with him? Maybe I'd feel different, and he really did mean it when he said that he had a transgender soul, and that it didn't even matter that I'd had the surgery. And that's when I realized that he was a full-on chaser. Typically someone who convinces themselves they're straight, but fetishizes and tries to hook up with pre-op trans women. Usually they prey on much younger people than myself, but I guess Charlie was into older people too.

And I told him, hey, why don't you just set your profile up on the app so you're not pretending to be your own trans daughter, but just list yourself as bisexual and looking for men and women? Well, good God, was that a mistake? Are you calling me an F-slur? Charlie screamed, leaping up from the table and throwing the table to one side, sending the remains of our wine flying into the food of our neighboring diners. I jump back, like, well, this guy's gone from one to a thousand real quick,

and then I noticed he's holding a fork and coming right at me. He's screeching about how dare I call him an F-sler, and that he's loudly accusing me of cat. fishing him, saying I pretended to be a man to get him to come on a date. Little does he know that most of the people in the bistro right now actually know me, so for one thing, that's laughable. Two, while backing away from his jabbing fork, I ask him how that makes sense because he's a straight man. How could I have catfished him in that manner? And he just starts jabbering on, and when he doesn't have an answer, this lunatic just jumps at me with his fork, trying to stab me in the face with this piece of

cutlery. And one of the other diners that night was the nicest, most gentle mid-50s gay guy that you could ever meet. And he was also a hardcore biker, sort of leather daddy, and a former Marine. So when he stood up and got between me and Charles, I knew it was over for him. My buddy, who will remain nameless because technically he did commit a crime here, grabs Charles' wrists holding the fork and puts enough pressure on it that I'm sure he snapped a bone or two. And then he hits him with a punch in the gut that would have winded King Kong. Charlie goes flying backwards, crashing into another table, upending someone's food all over the damn place, so now he's got this 20s gay guy and this lesbian best friend mad at him too,

and everyone's screaming at this Charles guy, calling him a chaser and a catfish and a creep and God knows what. And then suddenly everything went silent. And that guy in his 20s who just had his food knocked over, who I vaguely knew, said the most damning, scathing, violent thing of the night. Honey, he said to Charles, in the most stereotypical camp gay hairdresser voice you've ever heard, which was not even how he talked at all. Honey, he says, you've got some balls on you to come on a date in the village and an outfit that Dwight from the office would be ashamed of. Charlie was still reeling from the punch by Leather Daddy,

but this was the killing blow, essentially. And he glared at us all with the most murderous look. And then, I'll never forget. He yelled the most out-of-pocket, bizarre thing I think I've ever heard anyone say. I hope Al Gore sends you all back to England. And then he ran out of the restaurant. Now we're all too stunned to follow for a moment. and then a group of us went running after him, only to see a car peeling out of the parking lot.

Sadly, none of us got his license plate, but it turns out that a lot of cameras did, so he eventually got taken to court by the bistro owner and forced to pay for damages. And we kind of downplayed some of the events, though, but just so the one guy didn't face any assault charges, and thankfully Charles kept quiet about that. And the night this all happened, I went back home, all catfished out, and went to block Charlene Charles on the app. And unsurprisingly, the profile was already gone. Anyways, be careful out there in my fellow alphabet army.

There are some incredibly weird people in our community, especially the ones who aren't quite willing to admit that they're actually part of the community. We have enough danger from the outside, so let's try and be nice to each other within, you know? especially don't tell people that you hope Al Gore sends them back to England. We all agreed that that one really stung. Now this may surprise you to learn, but I'm a woman in her 70s who has been listening to your show on the internet for many years. My lovely grandson played your show, and he says it's a podcast, but they'll forever be radio shows to me. In the car on a family trip one day, and three hours later, I was hooked on your voice, your stories, and your excellent.

delivery. Now recently I asked my grandson if you're married, just out of curiosity and he said you're not. And jokingly I said that if I was 50 years younger, maybe I'd email you and ask you for a date. My grandson remarked that this would make for a pretty exciting story for your channel, that you got catfish by a very old lady, and then he started to explain what catfishing was. Now I stopped him and said, kiddo, I know what catfishing is. I was a catfish a few years ago when we were in school. And his jaw just about hit the floor. He's 20 now, but when he was in school, I was around 70 years old, and he had no idea that I'd been the victim of catfishing. Neither did my son, his father, because frankly, it's a little embarrassing. But my grandson,

Dami, he'd begged me to tell him the story of what had happened. And then when he was done, he'd begged me to let me help him write it down so he could send it over to our favorite podcaster. and I told him that I was perfectly capable of writing my own emails, thank you very much. But I think he just wanted a reason to email you, so if you do read this out on your show, please can you say hello to my grandson, Dami, short for Damien, and tell him Joel from Let's Read wants him to know that Granny loves him very much. Now all that said, let me tell you about my creepy experience. So my husband, Vic, tragically died in the 90s in a very violent incident,

but he always told me that if anything were to happen to him before me, then I had to promise to at least try and find someone else to make me happy in my final days. Well, I didn't really want to because Vic was the only man for me. But then, when I was using my computer that Damie had insisted that I get, I kept receiving these pop-ups and ads and spam for dating services. Hot singles in your area, my fanny. I know a scam when I see one, but it did get me curious. Now, this would be around maybe back in 2017, I think.

So dating sites were actually pretty normal then, and I think people were even using those apps like Tinder, but I decided to go for a classic. They showed me Bumble because I liked the name and I thought that it was cute. And the gentleman that I met on there was a real silver fox, named Nate, and I knew Vic would have approved of him. He seemed like a real gentleman. I could go into detail explaining all the wonderful things that Nate said about,

himself and what a great fellow he was, but as you know, this is a catfishing story, so it was all lies. Now, I arranged for a lunch date in Kensington, because old dears like me prefer to be tucked into bed by eight, so I met him at this lovely open-air cafe that I frequented sometimes. Now, the man sat down opposite me clearly was Nate. I could recognize the facial features and the jawline, and he was most certainly a very attractive man. The problem was, He looked about 23 years old, and I can be exact because he actually later told me this. Now, I remember that Damy had shown me a computer game on his telephone one day, where he took a picture of himself and made himself look old,

and he'd look just like Vic. He then took a picture of me and made me look young, and I looked just like me from my glory days. That's when I figured my date had done, taking a photograph of himself with that same game or app, and then used it as his profile picture. and I just stared at him, and immediately my mind went to all those scams that you read about. Now, my dear friend Ethel had fallen for some of those some time ago,

and you often heard about old widows and spinsters being seduced by young men in order to secure their vast fortunes. Now, surely this couldn't be happening to little old me. I stared at Nate and sipped my cup of coffee and said nothing, and he just gave me this sort of weird smile and said that he wasn't. quite what I was expecting, huh? I said, no. No, he was not. And it was very old and didn't have the patience for these sort of strange games, and please could he explain exactly what was going on before I left. Now, he gave me another grin, and I recognized this as trying to be seductive. Then he asked if I would have agreed to meet him if he knew he was 23. I said, no, honestly, I

wouldn't, and he responds with, well, there you go then, as if that explained anything. So I asked why exactly he wanted to meet me in the first place, and he said, wasn't it obvious? I was smoking hot, and he was into women like me, like really, really into women like me. I asked what he meant by women like me, and he winked and grinned and said that he meant senior, because weren't women like me always more expert, more seasoned, more willing to push boundaries? He then proceeded to say some much more vile stuff that would have made me blush if I'd been less of a prude. And I most certainly was not flattered, though.

The way that I saw it, a man pretending to be 50 years older than he is to catfish an old widow, is no less deceptive than those weird men who pretend to be in their 20s and show up for dates looking very obviously like they're in their 50s. Deception is deception, Vic always used to say. Now, this man, Nate, was now suggesting that it would be an honor for me to have a night of passion with him, and he'd show me things that he was sure my old deceased husband would never have dared to show me. Now, this got my blood boiling. Nobody spoke bad of Vic.

Nobody. Nate was just lucky that Damie or my son weren't here, or things would have gone a lot worse for him. I stood up, knocking my teacup over and spilling the lukewarm tea onto Nate's lap. He didn't like this one bit, and he jumped up calling. me some old fool and saying that my dimension was preventing me from accepting the best night of my life. Now I snappily told him that he should not speak to a woman like this, whether women of his age or elderly women or men for that matter. Also that catfishing and deceiving elderly widows typically does not lend itself to seduction and makes him appear very suspicious.

Nature snorted, looked at me up and down with a very strong sneer and told me that I cleared wasn't some rich widower, and he wasn't interested in stealing my pension or my mills and boon collection. He said he was put on this earth to give sad, dried-up old dears like me one final night of passion. And then he said the most chilling thing yet. He leaned over the table and hissed at me that his dream, his fantasy was to cause a fatal heart attack with the power of his lovemaking. Other people were starting to look at us now. We've been the only people sitting outside, but a few folks had exited the cafe while this was going on, and the other passerbyes had become concerned about what they saw. From their perspective, a sweet old granny was

being threatened by a young man, which I suppose was exactly what was happening. Little did this Nate realize, either, that a woman had walked up behind him just as he'd launched into his twisted confession about his fantasy of his manhood ending an elderly woman's life. And the passerby did not like this one bit, I assume, because she swung her purse at him and hit him straight in the side of the head, with no warning and absolutely no announcement. He whirls around and starts screaming at this woman, saying she's assaulted him, and that it was a very rude word beginning with a W, and a woman who teases male chickens and that I'd let him on. Of course, people did not believe this story coming from this predatory-looking young

man compared to the sweet old lady who was insisting that, no, Absolutely not, and in fact he'd catfished her, and maybe even wanted to steal her pension. A handful of people began shoving him, telling him to jog on my old son, or he'd be meeting the Lord a lot quicker than this old deer would. I appreciated the intervention. It was the first time that men have fought on my behalf since before Vic passed, and almost felt like old times, so much so that I didn't even stop to think when Nate just fled like a coward. Maybe I should have had him arrested or something.

Was it even a crime to pretend to be older on Bumble? And when I got a cab home that afternoon, I checked the website, and that buffoon hadn't even deleted his profile. Instead, he sent me a message calling me a slur in an old hag, and that he'd send me a picture of his genitals with it saying, this is what you're missing, if he could. And since you'll be reading this in audio, Mr. Joel, please point out to your listeners that he spelled it as Y-O-U-R.

Now, I screenshot at Nate's profile and the message that he sent me and forwarded them to Bumble Trust and Safety. Now, anyways, to end this story, I called Damien told him the whole sordid tale, and he was fuming, of course, but also a little bit amused. After all, Nate didn't actually know who he'd been trying to seduce. Vic had his faults, and there were many times that I didn't condone his activities. But my dear departed husband was a fairly high-up enforcer. and a certain crime family here who will remain nameless.

Sadly, even though Vic had given up the life, the life came catching up to him in the 90s, and he was sadly caught in the crossfire and of an event that didn't even involve him. But he'd left me a very, very tidy nest egg, and I am exactly the kind of person that predators like Nate will normally target. It took every ounce of my stern, granny, energy

to absolutely forbid Dami from tracking Nate down and teaching him a lesson he'd never forget. and I'm pretty sure that being made to look like a fool by a woman in her 70s and having his stuff reported to Bumble was punishment enough, maybe. Now, thank you for reading Mr. Joel, and maybe one day I'll share some stories with you about some of my more wild times in the 70s when Vic was still alive. But for now, good night and God bless. It's nearly 8 p.m. and it's time for this old deer to retire to bed.

So I'm a grown woman who still gets scared listening to your stories like a little kid. Now, I won't share my exact age, but I'm old enough that when this happened to my mom, the term catfishing didn't even exist, and wouldn't for a good few decades after this. So the way she tells it, she got the wool pulled over her eyes, so to speak. I don't know if you use that expression in the States, but it comes from, I really have no bloody clue, actually. I guess covering someone's face with a sweater, and maybe a smart aleck in the comments can tell us. So back when my mom was an eligible bachelorette in the 1960s, a friend of hers called Sandy convinced her to go on a date with this guy.

She said he was a right catch, easy on the eyes and loose with the wallet, if you get what I mean. Not only that, but he was a burgeoning player in the up-and-coming London movie scene. We all know the UK's put out some absolute banger movies, like The Full Monty, Mean Times, and, of course, Psycho. Now, Mum's friend Sandy was making all these hints that Mr. Hot Poop Director, who will just call Ron, had some connections to Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker that was his mentor or something, and he was looking for a leading lady who Sandy thought sounded a lot like Mum. Mom fancied herself as a bit of an actress. She'd done some school plays and even been in the Panto at the church hall a couple of times,

which in those days was basically like being Hollywood royalty. Now, back in those days, Mom was sweet on a guy named Simon, so she was a bit reluctant to agree to this date with Director Ron, but Sandy was insistent. And that's how it worked in Hollywood, apparently. He wouldn't expect anything from her, just a polite and friendly dinner date, because whoever heard of a Hollywood executive behaving poorly with women. I mean, let's not even get started on the fact that this wasn't Hollywood.

It was London, but you get the point. Now, anyway, Mom decided that she'd go for it and would simply not tell Simon and hope that he understood when she explained how she'd gotten her big break and was about to become a star, etc. She got all dolled up. I've seen the photos. She looked classy. Like you genuinely could believe that she was at the Oscars with how stylish she looked.

And when she got out of the tax, at the restaurant that she'd been told to meet Ron at, though, I think her Hollywood dreams began to melt away. I guess calling it a restaurant is very generous here. It was more, now, if you've ever been to London, you'll know the kind of outfits I mean. Dark, dingy, pokey little restaurants that stink of cigar smoke, with carpets stickier than a Velcro shoe. And as soon as she entered, a guy parked at a table in the back, waved her over. She knew immediately, this was her date. Mum wasn't sure who or what she'd been picturing with Ron.

Sandy had made him sound like Roger Moore, but also warned Mum not to get her hopes up too high in the looks department. But then followed this up with a wink implying that he did have the looks to back up his reputation. Heck, I think at this point, Mum would have been happy with a younger-looking Alfred Hitchcock, or anyone who wasn't Ron, really. And the way Mum tells it, Ron was like some kind of comic book character, and not in a good way.

He was five foot tall and thin as a rake, and somehow had a beer gut on him that would rival Oliver Reed in his heyday. And then he had this huge, long nose above, and Mom swears this is true, a mustache that he could absolutely in no way be unaware look like a certain Austrian painters. Immediately, in her mind, Mom started thinking of Ron as hit conk, based on his own. huge nose and resemblance to a certain dictator mixed together. This made her start laughing at her own little joke as she sat down. I guess Ron, hereby known to the rest of us now as hit conch too, because if I have to think of it so to you all, must have said something he intended to be funny because he beamed a smile so wide and wolfish that Mum could have sworn that he was ready to eat her.

He had these yellow, crooked teeth, too, although Mum says that, Back then, that was fairly normal for working-class lads in London. Hittconk was supposed to be some movie Bigwig, though, so she expected him to have teeth that were at least within the vicinity of white, though. They sat down and Hittconc ordered a bottle of the cheapest wine on the menu, giving them a look like he'd just ordered luxury champagne. And then he began rabbiting on about the movies that he was going to make and how he was going to be huge and how difficult it was to get studios to back him

and that they just didn't understand his vision. But with a last like Mum as the third member of the team, they couldn't fail. Third member, Mum asks. Hittconk makes a big display of pulling out an old-fashioned pocket watch and says, yeah, Ron should be here any minute now. Mum's suddenly confused and wrong-footed. Are you not Ron, she asks? And Hitkunk hoots with laughter and explains that, no, he's not Ron.

In fact, he's Gary. Gary Reed, the producer, and he'll be sitting on on Mum's date with Ron just to see how things play out and what the chemistry is like. No, Mom's absolutely confused at this point. Sandy had led her to believe that this was a date with a guy called Ron, who was both a romantic catch and as an actress. Now the guy dressed like a two-bit Hollywood phony is there claiming he's not even Ron in the first place. Oh, here she is. Hit-Calk blurts out and turns to where the bell above the door just rang. Now, Instruts, well, I only wish Mom had a camera phone back then.

She describes Ron, Ronnie, like this. Imagine Mira Henley was a drag queen, but a woman dressed up as a woman dressed up as a woman and also the blueprint for the predatory lesbian trope. Oh, and she had a perm like Miras, too. Except for some reason only the left half of her hair had taken. and the right half was flat and limp. Oh, how I wish I could have seen this woman for myself. But alas, I wasn't even an egg at this time.

Now, let's read, Joel, if you ever feel like hosting a fan art competition and anyone wants to have a shot at drawing, Ronnie, it would make my bloody day. I still search the internet to this day to somehow try and find the slightest possibility of a photo to see if Mum really did her justice. Ronnie slumps down in her chair. commands hit conk to order her two beers and then waits in silence as they're delivered. She downs one without pause for breath and then just belches and then turns to mum. Christ, you're a hot little bent, aren't you? She says apparently.

Mum's a little taken aback. Ronnie introduces herself as Ronnie. Mom jokes like Ronnie from the Kray twins and Ronnie stares at her as if looks could kill and ask if she looks like a bloody man. And Mum has no idea what to say, because despite obviously being a woman, Ronnie did indeed look rather like a gay man. Then she laughs and squeezes Mum's hand and is all like, Don't worry, darling, you can call me whatever you want, as long as you call me. And it's Cray, like K-R-E-I-G-H. Mum just nods, totally taken aback. So Hittcock says that he'll let the two ladies get on with her.

it. This is just a screen test, as they both know, and they just need to act out a romantic meal between two forbidden lesbian lovers. He explained that Mum's character, Scarlett Letitia, comes from a wealthy plantation owner of family and Ronnie's character, Fanny O'Bannon, is the daughter of a feared London gangster. Mum's all like, so if I'm the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, is my character supposed to be American? Hitt-Conk looks genuinely baffled at like he hasn't really thought about it, and then just waves his hand away saying the plot doesn't really matter.

So for the next 30 minutes, Mum and Ronnie ordered the grimyest spaghetti cabanerum known to man, and sit there eating it and ad-living small talk while Hitcock occasionally tells them to sexy it up and get a bit more touchy-feely. Now, Mum has always been a pretty liberal lass, but that didn't extend to being felt up by a mysterious lesbian, so she was a little against this.

Furthermore, she was starting to feel extremely duped by both Sandy and Hitcock, so she asked Hitk exactly how he knew Sandy. Mum was friends with Sandy through the typing pool that they both worked at for a bank or something. Hitk laughs and says Sandy's his niece, and he's always hooking him up with available women for his movies. Mom is starting to lose her patience here, so she slams her fork down and asks Hitkong and Ronnie to explain exactly what the hell the movie is and why she has to sexually eat spaghetti as a screen test, which had no camera's presence,

she adds. Ronnie says something along the lines of, you poor sweet summer child. It's a grotti movie, a dirty film. Surely you knew that. This district of London is basically known for its adult industry. No, my dear sweet mother had not known that, and she got up to leave. Hitkalk stopped her in her tracks. He reminded her that it was only girl-on-girl adult film,

so it wasn't really like doing it at all, and the camera equipment that they had was so crap that hardly anyone would be able to tell her there was her. And understandably, Mum wasn't convinced. Then Hit Conc pulled out the check. He said, maybe this will change your mind. And he even did that eyebrow wiggle thing, like he was making her an offer she couldn't refuse.

Ten pounds to star in an hour-long piece of, of Grot with a woman who may or may not be the female doppelganger of Ronnie Cray, overseen by a man who looked like the Italian version of the Austrian painter. Mum just laughed, stood up and thanked them for their time and began to walk to the door. Hittonk began chasing her, trying to give her every excuse under the sun as to why she should stay. Mum glanced back over her shoulder and she swears that she saw a look of screwed resignation on Ronnie's face. And just then, the door to the restaurant opens, and three smartly dressed men and suits enter. Now, these were exactly the type of men that Mum had been led to believe Leonard Hitchcock was.

They looked her up and down, nodded approvingly to each other, and one of them asked Hittconk if this was the talent they were investing in and had been promised. Mum said that actually she was just leaving, who wished them luck with their movie. The older heavyset guy of the three just looks at Hitcock and says, Not again, mate, you're not screwing us yet again. And the younger man in a white suit with a gentle smile takes Mom aside and asks her exactly what they promised her. She explains that she's been kind of duped into coming on this date

and then forced to eat spaghetti with a predatory lesbian while Hitcock watched. Mum was not the type of woman to be shy or intimidated by London hard nuts. She'd grown up around them. and the guy in the white suit told her that his name was Jimmy, and everything would be fine. In fact, he'd walk her to the bus if she wanted and even give her a lift home because he had his car nearby. Either way, he said he thought that it was better if they maybe left right now because a few more of the boys were showing up in a minute. And in fact, they did, nodding hello to Jimmy like he was some big wig, even though they were twice his age. As the door jingled shut behind Mum, the crashing and smashing,

and shouting started. Mum, ever the curiosity killed the cat type, tried to turn back and look inside to see what was going on. But Jimmy gently but firmly guided her away and said that she seemed like far too nice a woman to star in Leonard's Grot movies, and definitely too nice to see what was going on inside the stag and ferret right now. Ronnie came bursting out the door, running on one heel, hooting with laughter and yelling to Mom that had been nice to meet her, so that made Mum feel a little bit better. Don't worry, Jimmy said. Nobody's going to get killed over a crappy adult movie. Just some lessons going to be taught, after all. And the gleam in his eyes and the kindness in his voice was what let mom allow him to give her a lift back to hers. And she mostly ends the story there,

but when she tells us kids anyway, she adds that, as we're probably aware, she invited Jimmy up for coffee. The story of Jimmy is its own whole other tale. He's my dad and the the father of my two older siblings, but not my younger sister. He's lived a very interesting life, but I would say an honorable one, and ultimately I feel like if Mum hadn't been catfished almost starring in that movie, I probably wouldn't have been born. Jimmy, I've never called him Dad weirdly enough. It's one of my best friends, and we have all manner of bizarre stories like that, but I don't think any of them are quite as scary as the time, before I was even a twinkle in Mum or Jimmy's that that mini dictator and Mira Hindley almost got my mom killed in a London gangster bar brawl.

Oh, and as a side note, mom did eventually end up meeting the real Ronnie Cray shortly before he was sent down and she says that he was much more polite and much more civilized than the Ronnie Cray that she almost starred in that film with. So I guess that's nice. In September of 1993, my college buddies and I were just about to start our junior year when we decided to meet up for a camping trip. Now, we've been talking about it for almost a year. We just never found a time when all four of us could make it. So before classes started, we figured that we'd head out into the boonies for some real call of the wild type stuff, as I like to call it. We picked out Olympic National Park, if you're familiar with it,

and it being just a couple of hours drive away. And then combine that with Olympic National Forest, Yes, there are two different places that border one another, we had one of the largest wilderness areas in the lower 48, right there on our doorstep. We drove out on Thursday the 2nd early in the morning with the plan to drive back to Seattle on Monday the 6th. Now, we were full of pep on the drive out there, excited for three full days of living wild and free.

And then after stopping for some lunch, we drove down to a place called Fair Home, where there was a campground in the general store. store. And that was our landing zone, if you will, a place where we'd spent our first night before heading out into the trails the next morning. And from there, we'd hike out to the lookout, soak up the views from our campsite on the mountain, and then just lazily make our way back to the car, which was supposedly supposed to go through like a rainforest, which we'd heard was like stepping onto an untamed planet. I'm not even joking. The first night was a heck of a lot of fun,

and then we passed through that rainforest on the next morning's hike, confident that we were heading in the right direction. And you couldn't miss the range of hills that we were headed for, so getting ourselves completely lost was just about impossible. But eventually, there came a point where we realized that we weren't on the trails that we thought we were. Not that it bothered us much. We knew that if we kept heading pretty much westward, we'd spot the lookout sooner or later.

But what we didn't count on was how thick the trees were. It got to the point where although we knew what direction we were headed in, we had absolutely no clue where we were exactly. And then after walking through endless trees for what felt like hours and hours, we came across the cabin. And it was so worn down and weathered that it was almost camouflaged against the backdrop of trees. The roof was completely covered in dead leaves, and there were vines creeping up one side,

and these glass windows were so dirty that it almost looked. like there was clouds inside. It looked completely abandoned, and after peeking through the windows, we saw inside was covered with what looked like old camping stuff. On a table there was just crumpled up aluminum foil, a half-empty box of matches, and a dented tin can with a spoon crusted and dried beans. Scattered around the floor were torn wrappers from granola bars and a spilled bag of actual trail mix, and there was also an unzipped and stained sleeping bag slumped against one wall, next to a pile of damp firewood that somehow never made it to the cabin stone fireplace. And after pushing open the unlocked door, I saw a deck of playing cards scattered across the

floors if a game was just kind of abandoned mid-play. And there were also faint carvings on the walls, too, stuff like initials, dates, and just some very crude sketches. And we agreed that we were looking at some kind of hikers stopover, and that'd be the perfect place to rest for a few hours before we carried on towards that lookout. And then after sweeping away some of the trash with our boots and broken branches, we settled in to have some lunch. After sitting on the porch and heating stuff up with our little camp stove, I decided to explore the cabin a little. I figured that I might be able to salvage something from the debris, and then since it was all trash in the main room, I decided to push my way into the bedroom to see if there was anything there.

One of this had already taken a look, but he hadn't checked all the drawers in the old nightstand on account of it being covered in just a bunch of cobwebs. And the old stained mattress in the corner reeked of just rotten, mold, and dampness to the point that I almost covered up my nose and mouth as I checked the nightstand's drawers. And the first thing I saw when I opened the first drawer was what looked like a used condom, so I slammed that thing shut again because good God there. It's gross. Now, the second drawer had a bunch of empty glass medicine bottles with faded prescription

labels. But then when I open up the third drawer, I discovered it contained some kind of leatherbound notebook. I pulled it out of the drawer, opened it up, and saw that it was someone's journal, with the first entry dated in 1978. I didn't imagine it to be really that interesting, like maybe some hiker just forgot his journal or something, but after reading that first entry, I'll be honest, I was hooked. The journal had been started by someone who was right at the beginning of what they called an adventure of a lifetime and detailed their plan to basically live off the grid for the rest of their days. They talked about how incompatible they were with modern society

and how they knew that they'd be much happier out there on their lonesome while living off the land. The journal was supposed to be an effort to document their adventures in the hopes that it would serve as a sort of guide to other folks who wanted to escape modernity and embrace nature. Now, as you can imagine, I was actually pretty psyched to have found something like that. I'd gone from thinking that it'd be filled with some terrible poems to being like, damn, dude, I could probably get this published if I tried. I walked back into the main room and told the gang about what I'd found.

but not everyone was into it. Two of them were too fixated on trying to clear the cabin's old chimney and had this total whatever reaction to me announcing my find. But my buddy Steve then says, Really? No way. And we sat down on the porch's steps and started reading through the journal together. Now, like I said, the first entries mostly detailed what the guy wanted to do

and how he wanted to do it and what he hoped to achieve. But then as they continued, It was a lot more of the nitty-gritty survival stuff that I was actually hoping for. We found the entry from the day the guy ran out of store-bought food and had to rely on what he'd been hunting, catching, and foraging. It sounded scary, but exciting, too, and it was thrilling to read how happy the guy was as everything he'd worked towards was starting to pay off. But then came the part where the guy accidentally poisoned himself with some undercooked game, and he got really sick for a couple of days. Now I felt his anxiety when he wrote about how much it had sucked to die from something as crappy as food poisoning, and we were stoked when we read the entry about how he was starting to feel better again.

Now, after reading through a couple of more entries, Steve was starting to get a little bored, so he walked off to help the others to try and start a fire in the cabin's fireplace. But he kept going on, and I'll never forget what I ended up reading. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the entries got kind of. say me after a while, for lack of a better word. The journal's author did pretty much the same routine over and over again, with only the most minor of differences from day to day. And that meant that I went skipping ahead a lot to see if I could find any longer,

more interesting entries. I watched as entries from 1979 bled into those from 1980, and as they did, they got less and less frequent. But then as 1981 slipped into 82, the style of writing started. started to change and sometimes quite dramatically too. What were once elegant passages, prose, degenerated into something more primitive, and it wasn't like he was talking to the reader anymore, like you were a friend. It was more like he was talking to himself or like trying to talk to God. There were long rambling tracks about

how he could hear the sky sing when it got really quiet, or how sometimes when he's killing a rabbit or a pigeon, and it kind of felt like he was slaughtering his own self in some weird protective kind of way. He talked about how he wasn't just out there to find a new way of living anymore. He was out there to save his soul and some great game between the devil and the Almighty. Now it was clear that he was losing it a little from the isolation, but the guy seemed to know it too. He acknowledged how bad it was affecting him, and he knew he needed to go spend some time among other people to just sort of soak up some civilization for a while. But he also wrote about how he couldn't bring himself to do it, how much he'd come to hate regular people, and how wasteful and mindless they are. It was kind of sad,

reading about how this guy's quest to enlighten himself had turned him so bitter and reclusive. But then as the mid-1980s rolled into the latter half of the decade, the entries weren't just sad anymore. they got downright scary. Some of the later entries were short, clipped, and extremely angry sounding, with the letters seeming like they'd been scratched into the page. Then in 1989, some of the entries weren't even written in actual script. It was all just squiggles and shorthand, only the writer must have been able to understand. When there were words I could understand, they were mostly curses or these weird compound

words like kill death, blood god, or sick brain. The author wrote how they were angry at God and that something had gone wrong with the world that meant that he couldn't play the game anymore. I remember how one line said something kind of jumbled like, I am not what I am. I am not my offense. I am a cosmic being and the truth of my rules are the way the next revealed. I don't think that's what had said word for word, but it was basically the same sort of garbled almost computer-generated text, like his internal CPU was going very screwy. And there was some other stuff, too, but it was just sort of, I am finished, it is finished, I must finish it, over and over again, sort of like variations on finishing something.

And that was the last of what I could read, and the rest was more of that shorthand, the only kind that was a little more intricate and deliberate than the squiggles on the other pages. I figured they had to end soon, that at some point he's going to give up trying to write as he completely lost his mind or finally abandoned his little quest. But instead, the entries continued and they somehow got even worse. There were a lot less of them, sometimes only once a month, but the entries continued into 1990, 1991, and 1992. And then right as I'm thinking, no effing way has this guy been out here since the seven. I turned a page and saw the numbers 1993 just roughly scrawled above another long track of symbols and squiggles. And as a reminder, this story takes place in September of that same year.

So when I saw that the final couple of entries seemed almost fresh, with cryptic mentions of the approaching fall, I felt this wave of panic come over me. We weren't at some random hikers restop. We were in some dude's cabin. And that dude was a dangerously insane individual. I rushed inside the cabin and said, Yo, we got to get out of here. Now.

And the whole time we'd been there, it had been peaceful and quiet. So my friends were very confused asking things like, what, why? What's up? What happened? And I didn't have time to explain everything I'd read, so I just kept saying, we shouldn't be here.

This is someone's place, and they're crazy. There was still this moment of confusion as they responded, How could you even know that? And then I say, Okay, that there's this journal, it's their place, and we need to move. And it wasn't until I flick through the later pages to show all the symbols and scribbles that my friends realized how serious I actually was about this.

And when everything finally dropped, they quit trying to light a fire and we got the hell out of there. It was bizarre how fast. the whole mood shifted. One minute we were just tilling in this random cabin, completely content with ourselves out there in nature, and then the next, we were walking as fast as we could with our heads on a swivel, praying that we wouldn't run into the person who'd written that journal. My buddies kept asking me questions on what I'd read, and each answer only got them more and more panicked, wondering what a person like that might have done if they'd found us in their own home.

We hiked till we were almost completely wiped and that lookout was finally in sight. Since we were so beat, we agreed to scale it in the morning, and then we hiked up the valley a little to put some more distance between us in the cabin before setting up camp. And after we set up camp, it was hard to get back to normal again. Before we found the cabin, the woods seemed like this big playground, so to think dark corners held dark and dangerous secrets, it really put a damper on things. And we weren't armed, which was a major mistake in retrospect, but we were just out for a

couple of days hiking and we weren't looking to brave some wild frontier like Lewis and Clark with our muskets at the ready. These days, I'd never go into the woods without something to protect myself, though. But back then, let's just say that we paid for our naivety with fear that we felt that night. We were pretty confident that we were far enough away from the cabin and wouldn't run to its owner, and we were also confident of our own. the numbers because four of us and one of him made for some pretty good odds. But it was easy to be confident during daylight hours and after night set in and we were surrounded by darkness, we huddled around our campfire like every shadow was hiding some danger. And I think the anxiety

peaked when someone brought up the prospect of him actually tracking us. The guy must have been crazier than a dog and a cat factory and there was no doubt that he lived out there long enough to be able to hunt and track some game. And we were an unarmed group of four, having made no real effort to conceal our tracks, meaning that there's every chance that he was sneaking up on us through that darkness, and it scared the living hell out of us. We kept on our guard most of the night, and then as it was approaching 11 p.m., I remember there was this lull in the conversation, as we all went quiet while staring at the campfire.

I was actually starting to feel somewhat relaxed again, because if the crazy guy from the cabin wanted to track us, he definitely would have caught up to us by then. I started to think that I might have actually gotten myself into a panic over nothing because there was every chance that this guy was way out in the boonies and only returned to his cabin every so often to, I don't know, sleep in that stinking mattress or whatever. That's when we heard the scream. From the other side of the valley, this blood-curdling scream came echoing through the tree.

The word scream doesn't entirely fit what we heard either. It was more like a cross between a howl and a roar, one you could hear all this anger and madness in, but also all this pain too. Whoever made that noise was not in control of themselves or their mind, and just hearing it scared the hell out of us. The scream had sort of petered out for no more than a split second when one of my friends says, that's him. And there was no debate from anyone else. We knew damn well who made that sound. There was no disputing it.

And there was no way in hell that we were going to stay hanging out in that same spot. We doused the fire, packed away our tents and the rest of our gear, and then we walked non-stop until we found ourselves back in that general store and where we parked the car. By then, the light of dawn was creeping over the hills and the east of us, and just seeing it felt like salvation. We didn't say much on the ride back. Someone suggested that we should have taken the journal with us, you know, sort of as proof that someone was out there having completely lost their mind.

But the rest of us agreed that stealing it would have made the guy even madder than he already was, and that he definitely would have ended up tracking us through the woods had we stolen from him. But having heard that scream that echoed across the valley, I'm not sure that he could have gotten any angrier at knowing his home had been disturbed. Even today, I thank God that he didn't track us down, and I try not to think about what would have happened should that man have found us. I grew up in small town, Montana, and back when I was in my late teens, I used to work as a night porter at some cabins in the mountains.

Now, to clarify what that is, it was basic night watchman stuff, making sure everything ran nice and smoothly. And then every so often I'd get someone calling at the office to check in late or ask a few questions. We just had a VHS player installed at the office, so the night porters would be less tempted to take a nap. So I got into the habit of renting tapes before heading into work so I could watch movies all night. One night at around one in the morning, I'm right in the middle of scaring the pants off myself watching the Hellraiser movie, if you remember that, when I hear something moving outside the office. The office had these two glass panel windows and a door with a glass panel on it too, so I could see out into the darkness.

I just couldn't see who was moving around out there. Sometimes the city folks used to go stargazing, so it wasn't unusual to have people walking around later on at night. So when I first heard it, I didn't think much of it, and I just kept watching Hellraiser. But then a minute later, I heard it again. That time, I heard it closer to the office. so I load the volume on the TV and listened through the silence. It didn't sound like human footsteps. It sounded like something creeping up on all fours and it was getting closer.

We used to keep a loaded gun in the cache safe for reasons you can probably guess, but it doubled as barren mountain line protection too. So the first thing I did upon realizing that there was something creeping up on the office was rushed to that safe and grab that gun. I then crept out of the office and into the lobby, which consisted of nothing more than a desk, chair, and logbook along with those big glass windows. As I stared out into the darkness, looking for the source of that shuffling sound, I couldn't see a thing. I kept looking for the reflection of the thing's eyes, partly because I had the bejesus scared out of me on a previous occasion

when a coyote turned and looked at me through the darkness and I almost pissed my pants. But even after grabbing a flashlight and shining it out into the darkness, I still couldn't see a damn thing. Then at nowhere, a man rises up from the ground beneath the window, and I jump back and let out a yell. He had what looked like blood staining their mouth and chin, and there was reddy brown slime all down his shirt. He smeared a little on the window as he tried to steady himself,

and then he collapsed back down into the ground. I knew that he must have been hurt in some way, so the first thing I did was run to the phone and dialed 911. But then the dispatch lady wanted to know what was wrong with the guy, so I ran back to ask him. The dispatch person then must have assumed that it was alcohol-related because she told me to ask the guy what he'd been drinking. I ran outside, asked him the questions, and all he'd do was just groan in response until I finally picked up on two words, number nine. Now I respond. is that a drink or something?

I don't know what you mean. But again, all he did was grown in pain. I ran back to the phone and told the lady what he'd said about number nine, but then it hit me. He wasn't talking about a drink. He was talking about cabin number nine. I ran back to the phone, made sure that there was an ambulance on the way, and then I ran all the way down to cabin number nine to check it out.

The front door was wide over. and there was more of that reddish-brown vomit on the step. But then inside, it looked like something out of a horror movie. There were three other people. Two passed out on the couch and floor and one standing on shaky legs over the sink. He was puking what looked like a mix of blood and something else in that sink. And then, when he heard me from behind, he says, Help me.

Please. Then kind of sank to the ground to stop himself from falling. Now, obviously, I'm asking what did you guys drink over and over, but all the guy could do was point towards the table as he carries on retching and gagging. There were maybe half a dozen bottles of liquor strewn about the cabin's kitchen and dining area that was wine on the table and various other drinks on the countertop, and it looked like a big meal could have been eaten too. I started to realize that it wasn't just a case of one guy drinking too much,

All four of them had the same reaction, meaning something they ate must have been really, really passed at sell-by date, or they were sick with something that I might well have been in danger of catching as well. I didn't have time to dwell on that last part too much. I just made sure not to touch them or any of that puke, and then I ran back to the office phone to report what I'd found. And in the end, it wasn't just one ambulance screeching up the path. It was four. Once the paramedics were busy treating the folks in cabin number nine, I gave my boss a call at home to let him know what was going on. He was there within the hour, and then we joined the growing crowd of various guests that were gathering around a stare at what was going on.

The EMTs got all four sick people on the stretchers, and then once they were securely in the back of an ambulance, it would speed off back down the track with its lights flashing, and then we'd hear it hit its siren as it reached the high. highway. When it all cleared out, my boss couldn't believe the mess that they made in cabin number nine. He said it smelled like blood in there, but there was vomit too and it wasn't just blood. He wanted to know what the hell had happened and when he got to the bottom of it, or as much of the bottom as there was to get to, this is what he told me. A lady from Washington State had organized a kind of reunion with some of her old friends and she just so happened to pick our humble collection of cabins for that. And they all drove out there, happy as can be, bringing wine and food and gifts and all that. And then once they were there, the lady who organized the reunion

poisoned their food, cut the phone line to the cabin, and then drove all the way back to Washington while her friends started vomiting and collapsing. That's all the cops knew at the time my boss spoke to them. They didn't know why she'd poisoned her old friends, only that she'd used a bunch of weed killer and rat poison, and if I hadn't called 911 when I did, they probably wouldn't have survived. Growing up, I always thought my grandfather was a very strange guy. He was always very generous with money, and apparently I was his favorite granddaughter, but he was also very cold and aloof with me whenever he came to visit. Mom and dad said that that was just his way. He grew up during the Great Depression, so he had a very tough childhood and dedicated to

his life to the construction company he founded, so while his business acumen was tip-top, his social skills were obviously very lacking. He lived to a ripe old age and left a very generous amount of money when he passed, and then on his funeral, everyone had nothing but good words to say about him. But the next day, my dad asked me to take a seat in our living room with him and asked if I'd like to know the truth. The way he phrased it had me kind of scared at first, because I thought that he was about to reveal some sort of dark family secret. But he laughed as he assured me that that was not the case at all. In fact, he wanted to tell me the story of Grandpa's upbringing

and how he became to be the man that he is. I didn't know much outside of the whole Great Depression thing, and it sounded so sad that I never cared much to ask. Yet little did I know there were parts of Grandpa's childhood that he forbade my parents from sharing ever. with me. It was hard to imagine why he might do that, if not to conceal something very shameful or immoral. But as my dad told me the story, it all became clear. So way back when the financial crap hit the fan and grandpa was still just a kid, my great-grandpa moved his family out of Denver, Colorado,

and up into the foothills of the Rockies. They picked out this area of land, cut down all the trees, and then got to work building themselves a small log cabin for themselves to live in. Apparently it was just a stove, a chimney, and a couple of beds for them to share. Everything else was either outside or non-existent. They'd hunt, fish, laid traps to earn some fresh meat, and they had a small vegetable patch, and my great-grandpa would sometimes take dried meat and skins into Denver to actually trade for some simple luxuries.

It was hard living, and they didn't get to enjoy. Christmas or birthdays in the same way some other kids did, but they also didn't know any different. So while it was abject poverty, Grandpa had made some happy memories from that time of his life, at least until the strangers came. Grandpa said they were having dinner when he heard a group of men outside, calling his father out of the cabin. His father told his family to climb out of a back window and run for their lives, and then as they're running, Grandpa said, that he could hear his father's screaming in pain as the strangers broke into the cabin and murdered

him. He said that he, his mom and sisters wandered around the hills for a couple of days, barely eating or sleeping. Then when they returned to the cabin, his mom made him and his sister weighed out in the woods almost a whole day while she buried their father and cleaned up the cabin. After that, and at the tender age of just nine years old, he was the man of the house. He didn't go to school. He didn't get to play around like other kids. Grandpa worked to put food on their table every day of his life. By the time he was 13, he owned a mule named Chip, and he'd ride Chip into a little town called Evergreen to work for a construction company that was based there.

That way, they were guaranteed some money to buy food, medicine, and all of that stuff instead of having to rely on what they could hunt and scrounge for. And when he wasn't at work, Grandpa was out of his job. fixing up the cabin or butchering game while his mom cooked and his sister cleaned. He didn't have time or energy for anything else and one of the things giving him the most trouble was the cabin's chimney. Birds like the nest in it during the summer and since his father wasn't an expert builder, the construction itself was far from perfect. So while it needed a good yearly clean and early autumn to get it ready for the winter, the bricks seemed to get looser and

looser with each passing. On the year of his 18th birthday, just as summer started going into fall, Grandpa got himself ready to clean that chimney. But this time, no sooner has he jammed the brush up there, but a brick comes tumbling down to the fireplace, sending soot and ash all over the place. Grandpa curses his bad luck and then starts trying to put the brick back into place, but he realizes something is sort of half sitting in its place. Grandpa thinks it's a dead bird or something and gets ready to cover his mouth and nose after dragging it out of the nook, but it's not any kind of dead thing that's blocking the brick from going firmly back into place. It's three cloth sacks, and in them are dozens of solid gold coins.

Not even his mother knew why those men had shown up and killed his father, and that was partly what made it so terrifying and traumatic for them. But after finding those coins, it all suddenly made sense. No one knows if my great-grandpa stole them or there was someone out there who knew that he was up there in the hills with his stash of gold coins. He didn't even tell my great-grandma about them. But finding them up in that chimney changed their lives completely. And within a couple of years, they were living the good life in Denver after Grandpa started up a construction company all on his own. All his life, Grandpa remembered what it was like being so poor that they barely had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

So all he did was work, just like he'd always done, from dawn till dusk and for the sake of his family. And the reason he was all so strangely frosty with me, despite me being his favorite granddaughter who he'd showered with gifts on birthdays and Christmas, was because I reminded him of his little sister. the one he'd been so hungry with while out in the woods after listening to their father's dead screams. And after that, I lost all my resentment towards him. It wasn't much. I loved my grandpa, and I accepted that he had a little thorniness about him.

But after I learned why, I forgave him with all my heart. And I hope, wherever he is, he feels both my understanding and my forgiveness. Rest in peace, grandpa. I love you. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m.

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