The Lets Read Podcast - 339: MY TOWN HAD A DARK SECRET | 9 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 324

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about small towns & HalloweenHAVE 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:- Quince- Mint Mobile

I grew up in a place called Bart Township in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Bart is about as rural as it gets, especially around nickel mines where I grew up, which is home to a bunch of Old Order Amish. And if you're thinking of the Amish who practice Roomspringer or use flip phones because they're quote-unquote essential technology, this is not the old order. They're so hardcore they still refer to anyone who isn't Amish as English,

and that was my childhood. living like we were aliens in our own country, but I didn't know any better, so I was happy, right up until October 2nd of 2006. Now, like most kids my age, I dropped out of school after eighth grade to help my dad on the farm, and so that morning we were working together while my little brother was at school. Everything was going as normal, just another day on the farm when all of a sudden my dad says, is it your brother? I looked up to see this little speck in the distance, running down the tracks towards our farmhouse,

and I knew it was him. Dad then says, what the hell is he doing out of school? Because it was only 11 in the morning. And then I followed him as he marched off towards the house to find out what was going on. We got to the house to find my little brother in tears and my mom comforting him. Dad still thought that he'd just run away from school, so he was so kind of angry or sort of getting ready to be angry. But when my little brother finally got his words out and told us why he'd run home from school, I remember it was almost like time stood still for a few seconds.

He told us there was a man, in our classroom, and he had a gun. If you can believe it, this wasn't even the scariest part. Because as my dad is freaking out and rushing to grab his own gun, my little brother says something about the guy having chains and hooks too. Well, that was it. The red mist descended over Dad, and he ran off in the direction of the old schoolhouse while telling me to stay put and watch my mom and brother. We had to wait hours before Dad came back with the news of what had happened, and when he did,

this is what he told us. Around 10.30 that morning, not long after the kids came back from recess, a pickup truck parked in front of the old schoolhouse. A man got out, walked inside, and then asked the kid's teacher if she'd found a clevis pin out in the road. Now a clevis pin is kind of like a bolt, something used to fasten two things together. They're commonly used in farming, so almost everyone around those minds knows what one is. And since the kid's teacher hadn't spotted one that morning, she apologized for not being able to help, but wish the guy luck in finding his missing pin. The guy acted kind of weird. He didn't make

any eye contact, and he mumbled some sort of reply before walking back to his truck. Within a minute later, he walks back into the schoolhouse with a pistol and tells everyone they either do as he says or they're going to die. Now, thinking it's just a robbery of some kind, the kid's teacher tells the class to do as the guy says, but then instead of stealing the school's petty cash box and driving off, the guy orders all the young boys present, including my brother, to help him unload items from his truck before carrying them into the classroom. They carried in a whole bunch of tools, a shotgun, and a stun gun, but also a big pile of lumber

along with some wires, chains, and what we found out later was a bunch of metal eye hooks. The guy wanted to force the kids to watch what he was going to do to them, but as he's supervising the unloading of his truck, the kid's teacher made a run for it and managed to get to a nearby farmer to call 911. The guy knows that the teacher got away, so he ordered one of the boys. to go bring them back, and then went about barricading the schoolhouse doors using the lumber and nails the boys had carried inside. When he finished, the guy allowed three parents, including a pregnant lady I heard, and all the boys in the class to leave. Then after that, he makes all the

girls line up against the chalkboard like he was some sort of one-man firing squad. The first cop car arrived at the schoolhouse just minutes after that farmer's 911 call. Knowing what was going on, the cop used his loudspeaker to plead with the armed man to throw down his weapons and allow the girls to leave. Around the same time, the man calls 911 personally and tells the dispatcher that if the cops make a move on him, he'd execute the girls. He was saying all that right there in front of them so those poor girls knew what was about to happen and were also begging him not to hurt them.

Two of the girls even asked to be shot first, possibly in the hopes that would spare the lives of the other kids lined up next to them. But the man told them to be quiet and kept on talking to the cops. Dad said that by 11 a.m., there was a whole crowd gathered around the schoolhouse's perimeter, and that a bunch of ambulances were there, too, waiting to treat the wounded. They all heard when the shooting started, and Dad said the sound that rose up from the crowd was like nothing he'd ever heard before. Just this terrible sound of collective mourning, as each gunshot meant a lost life and broken hearts that would never fully heal. As the gunshots start popping off, all the cops start rushing the schoolhouse, hoping to put a stop to the massacre. But the man realized what was happening and started shooting at the cops out of a window.

They returned fire, being careful to only target the window that they were being shot at from. The man stopped firing, and they figured that he was either hit or reloading. But when they burst into the schoolhouse, they found him dead on the floor with a single self-inflicted gunshot to the head. We later found out that just before the shooting started, the man tried to call his wife to say goodbye. And I don't think she picked up the phone, but he must have left a message or something because when she got home from wherever she was, the first thing that she saw was a note on the table describing what her husband had planned that day. She had also called 911, hoping to stop what was planned before it ever started. But by then, it was way too late, and her husband was only minutes away from murdering a whole bunch of innocent children.

And all the wounded girls were taken to the hospital, but of the ten kids shot that morning, only four survived. A couple were pronounced dead at the scene, and I heard one little girl passed away in the arms of a state trooper as he tried to comfort her. They were all between just six and 13 years old. For some reason in the middle of this massacre, the guy decided to switch from shooting them with a pistol to shooting them with a shotgun. He still had ammunition in his pistol too, so a lot of people think he switched weapons to inflict more damage and make the scene even more gruesome than it already was. No one could understand why someone would do that. I mean, killing them is one thing, but deliberately making it as messy as possible is just, It seemed like the kind of evil I'd never be able to truly understand.

But then, after we found out who did it, or more importantly why he did it, it all started to make sense in this sort of sick way. First off, finding out who killed all those kids was a major shocker, because pretty much everyone in the nickel mines area and the surrounding areas knew who the guy was. His name was Charlie Roberts, and he lived down in Georgetown, and he was the milk tank drive. who visited a bunch of local farms, sometimes multiple times a week, too. He actually knew the families of some of the kids he killed, and he had a wife and three kids of his own at the time of the massacre.

The cops talked to his coworkers about him, and they said while Charlie had a history of depression and such, he seemed to perk up in the days before the massacre. But this is most probably because he decided he was going to kill a bunch of people, and that made him feel better about himself. The cops also thought he was inspired by a similar kind of hostage situation, which had happened in Colorado the same week as this one. Obviously, there was no getting a solid answer on that one because he was now dead. But he laid out almost exactly what drove him to kill those kids in the notes he left, and the message he left on his wife's voicemail that morning.

It turned out Charlie Roberts was hurting children in many ways, and had abused two female relations of his back when he was 12. He told his wife that he was daydreaming about doing it again, and that also explains the lubrication the cops found at the scene. But Charlie also explained that the death of his daughter was the reason he wanted to kill. He and his wife lost their little girl during childbirth about ten years earlier, and he wrote in one of his notes that he was filled with hate towards himself and God because of her death. His two female relations said that the whole abuse thing was just made up,

but I can see them saying that purely because they wanted their privacy and all of that. Either way, people started saying that Charlie wasn't that, and that he was just crazy, because he didn't actually touch those girls at the schoolhouse at all. He just killed them in cold blood before taking the coward's way out. And over the week or so that followed, the schoolhouse was knocked down and flattened so it couldn't remind anyone of what had happened. And while the reaction of the local Amish made me proud in a lot of ways,

it was the beginning of me realizing that I'm not like them and that I couldn't stay. So, for example, one of the first things folks did was reach out to Charlie's dad, who, as you can imagine, was absolutely distraught after learning about what his son went and did. They told him they forgave his son for what he'd done, and a bunch of folks even went to Charlie's funeral as a show of support for his heartbroken family. I thought all that was pretty cool because it obviously wasn't Charlie's parents' fault that their son went crazy, but the thing that still doesn't sit right with me was how people chose to forgive Charlie too. Amish people were taught not to hold grudges, but I just couldn't

find it in myself to forgive a man who had brought in lubrication into a schoolhouse full of girls in single-digit ages, and then end them. There was almost this attitude of like, if you can forgive the guy, it makes you a better Christian. So when it came to the concept of prevention, as in stopping something like that from ever happening again, people said things like, it's in the hands of God now. It's down to the Almighty alone to protect us.

I remember another person saying how they were happy Charlie Roberts had taken his own life, because it meant he'd already been judged by God by the time we were laying those girls to rest. If he repented before God, he'd be forgiven all of his sins. But the more I thought about that, the more I felt like I didn't belong among the old order, and now it's been almost 10 years since I left nickel mines behind me. So back in 1998, I was just 14 and living here in Leeds

in the UK. I liked football, I liked my mom's shepherd pie, and I like throwing sticks for our dog down at the park. Now what I didn't like, like most people, was school. I couldn't stand it, in fact, but I had my best-mate Danny to get me through the day there. Now, me and Danny used to get the bus together at the end of school, and no matter how much of a bad day I'd had, he'd always find a way to cheer me up, at least until one day, when Danny was suddenly the one who needed cheering up. So Danny was a good lad. It was never late for school, he did all of his homework on time, and he generally kept himself out of trouble. And then one day, while walking out of the boy's toilets, Danny accidentally bumped into a teacher named Mr. Carter, sending hot tea all over the front of Carter's nice white shirt.

Danny apologized, but Mr. Carter was absolutely livid. Carter actually like he'd done it on purpose and then sent Danny straight to referral, which was even worse than being given straight detention. He then told the school's head teacher that Danny had deliberately spilled a scalding hot drink all over him. and this elevated the seriousness of the incident to a health and safety issue whereby somebody could have been really hurt. And as a result, the head teacher wanted Danny expelled. Danny's parents basically begged the head teacher not to expel him, and in the end, they managed to whittle down the punishment to two weeks of hourly after-school detention, including two hours on Saturday mornings.

Danny said they believe that he hadn't meant to hurt Mr. Carter. but being fully aware of how unfair life could be, they advised him to keep his mouth shut, take the punishment, and put it behind him. Danny's brother, on the other hand, wasn't quite so philosophical about it. Paul, who was almost a whole three years older than us, wanted revenge. Although he'd never been personally picked on by him, Paul had hated Mr. Carter during his own spell at school, and having his little brother treated so unfairly sent him right around the bend. But while he promised that we'd get Carter back, he told us revenge was a dish best-served cold.

At the time, I had no idea what he'd meant by that, so Paul explained himself. If we rode our bikes past Mr. Carter's house that very same day and pelted it with two dozen rotten eggs, he'd know who it was right away. But wait a couple of months and make him think that you're all good and sorry and all of that, and he'd have no bloody idea who it was. On top of that, Carter would have even less of an idea of who egged his house if we did something on the night of the year when all sorts of stuff like that is happening. That night, being Mischief Night. Now, for those that don't know, and to be fair, I didn't really know this myself until I googled it,

Mischief Night is a tradition that stretches back hundreds of years. Historically, it's taken place on different days of the year depending on which area of the world you're in, but the premise is always the same. The night before some sort of religious festival, kids take to the streets to perform acts of mischief. In the distant past, the mischief involved robbing cabbages from nearby farms, but more recently in places like the United Kingdom in America, kids throw eggs or sometimes whole rolls of toilet paper over houses and trees

till they're completely covered. I used to take place on the 30th of April. Then I know it once. point in parts of England, it used to happen on the night before bonfire night. But these days, on both sides of the Atlantic, the date seems to have settled on the 30th of October, the night before Halloween. And it's this night that Paul picked out for our revenge. Another reason Paul told us to be patient was so he could work out a way of really hurting Mr. Carter. Now, I don't mean physically hurt him. Paul was a good lad like his brother, so the thought of actually harming the guy never seriously

crossed his mind. But we needed a way of getting back at him for picking on Danny like he did, and that wasn't going to work with just a few eggs or some toilet paper. It was weeks before Paul came up with something. But then one afternoon, Paul shared his idea with us, and by gum, did it seem like a gooden. Mr. Carter was into classic cars, big time too, so much so that he invested a hell of a lot of money into a first series Jaguar E-type that he kept locked into his garage. That car was his pride and joy, the thing that got him out of bed in the morning, and we were going to wreck it. It was early October when we started planning, but right from the beginning, we knew it would be no easy task. We couldn't just break in during the small hours of the

morning. Mr. Carter, or a neighbor, would wake up and call the police, so we discussed some more silent options. We considered slashing the car's leather seats or spray painting, Carter, is a knob on the side of it. But that just wasn't going to cut it for Paul. He wanted Carter to suffer. I mean, really suffer, and a deeply embittered Danny signed off on whatever he came up with, so we got creative.

The first phase of the plan involved asking one of Paul's mates to do us a favor, or more like two dozen favors, actually. Almost every night for about three weeks, Paul's mate Marvin would ride over to Mr. Carter's house, and then after knocking on his door really last, he'd hop back on his bike and ride off. He'd give us little reports on it too, how Carter was getting angrier and angrier every time he did it.

And by the time Mischief Night came round, Carter had taken to running down the street after a frantically peddling Marvin, screaming that he'd give him a bloody good hiding once he got his hands on him. Now everything was going according to plan, or at least according to Paul it was. All we had to do was wait until Mischief Night and we'd make Mr. Carter suffer. big time. And on the morning of the 30th, I was buzzing with excitement. All the kids at school were asking each other what they were getting up to that night, and both me and Danny had to put on poker faces when we said, eh, not much, just keeping out of trouble. Neither of us had any classes with

Mr. Carter, but I saw him in the corridor at one point, and I swear that I felt the color drained from my face as we passed each other. I got it into my head that if he saw me looking shifty, he'd know that we were up to something, so I was hugely relieved when 3.15 rolled around and it was time to go home. As me and Danny walked to the bus stop, we went over that evening's plan of action. Paul had everything organized and planned out meticulously. All I had to do was show up at their place at 7 p.m. When I told Danny I was nervous, he said he felt the same way. But he had also thanked me for helping out and told me that I was the best friend he'd ever had. Even if I had been harboring serious doubts, that last line would have obliterated them, and so needless to say, there was no turning back

then. A couple of hours later, all four of us were just around the corner from Mr. Carter's house. Riding in a group like that with the two older lads, all my nerves were left behind me, and I was keen as mustard to knock seven shades of crap out of Mr. Carter's old jag. We hit our bikes down the street behind the cars, Marvin snuck up Carter's path, and then after banging on the front door, Marvin ran back toward the street and climbed on his bike. But then instead of pedaling off right away, he waited until Carter had opened his front door, and then he shouted, catch me if you can, toss-bott, and then started pedaling like mad. Carter went berserk.

Marvin had told us how angry the knock-a-door dash was making him, but seeing it for himself was something else. He screamed something we couldn't make out and then ran for his car. not the jag, but his everyday car. And then after wildly backing out of his driveway, he sped off down the road in pursuit of Marvin. We were elated. The plan had worked perfectly, but we also knew that we only had about 15 minutes before Carter would return home. Marvin said it got to the point where he'd chased him in his car,

and then after easily escaping pursuit using the neighborhood's alleyways, Carter would drive up and down looking for him for a while. and we wasted no time in putting on our gloves and running up Carter's driveway and toward the garage. Paul then took out a towel from his bag, and after Danny held it up against the small side window, he punched it through so it broke nice and quietly. Paul knocked out the rest of the glass and then laid the towel over the bottom of the frame, and then we climbed inside before someone switched on the light. But when the light came on, there was no bloody car.

We couldn't believe it. This was a big open space where the car used to be, but for whatever reason it just wasn't there. Months of planning had amounted to nothing, and even if we managed to break a few windows or trample as flower beds, it wouldn't be as satisfying as smashing that jaguar. I remember suggesting that we just leave, and maybe break one of Carter's front windows on the way out. Danny said that wasn't a bad idea, but Paul was having none of it. He said there had to be something in that garage that we could break or steal that it really get to Mr. Carter, and he wasn't leaving till we found it.

Even Danny thought that it was a bit much and that we ended up getting caught if we stuck around too long. But Paul had already had something picked out. There seemed to be a footlocker, like the old military kind with a padlock, and as soon as Danny pointed it out, I knew what he was thinking. Inside would be Carter's old army and navy stuff, precious artifacts from his time in the forces. He'd be devastated if anything like that went missing. So that's what we were going to take.

There were a pair of rusty old bolt cutters mounted on a tool rack nearby, and then after Paul took them down, he and Danny got to work clipping the padlock off the foot locker. I remember how loud the bolt cutters were when they finally cut through, and then Paul and Danny dropped down, flipped open the lid and started rummaging through the footlockers contents. Looking over the shoulders, all I could see were white envelopes at first. I thought that they might have had money in them, seeing as they looked stuffed, but all they contained were pages of handwritten letters. There were a few pieces of jewelry and Danny stuffed those into his pockets.

But then Paul pulled out a framed photograph of a young woman, along with a small glass jar containing a lock of brown hair. I remember thinking the girl must have been Carter's niece or something because he didn't have a family as far as we knew. But then, after looking at the photo for a few seconds, Paul dropped it back in the locker like it was radioactive. Danny asked him what the matter was, and Paul told him to put the jewelry back immediately. Danny asked why, but Paul just walked over toward the broken window and told us we needed to leave. Danny started giving it loads about not leaving without getting Carter back. But Paul growled a reply of,

No, Danny, to let us know how serious he was. We hopped out of the window, grabbed the towel, and then ran out into the street and towards where we'd stashed our bikes. The last thing Paul said was, Follow me and don't stop until I do. And then we rode like hell till Paul finally slowed down. Now, we were all out of breath, legs burning from the wild peddling that we'd just done, and me and Danny were still proper confused why Paul had suddenly reacted the way he did.

We wanted to know what had scared him so much about a picture of a girl. But it wasn't the girl. It was what happened to her that scared him. Now, like I mentioned, Paul was a couple of years older than us, so there were a few things he remembered, odds and sods that were just before mine and Danny's time. and one of those things involved a young lady gone missing on Ilkley Moore. He told us that there was a big search for her and that her picture had been all over the local papers around the time she went missing. The girl in the photo frame, that was in Carter's foot locker, looked almost exactly like the girl had gone missing.

Danny started arguing the toss, asking his brother if he was sure that it was the same girl. But Paul was positive. He told us how no one had ever found a body. She was only assumed to be dead, but he was absolutely, positively, 110% sure it was the same girl in the photo, and that that lock of hair and those pieces of jewelry had almost certainly belonged to her. I couldn't believe it, as in I literally couldn't believe what I was hearing. I didn't think Paul was lying or making anything up, but it was also like my brain just couldn't process what I was hearing. I thought that there just had to be some kind of mistake, that maybe there just had to be some kind of mistake,

that maybe this missing girl was one of Carter's relatives in some capacity, and what we'd seen was nothing but just some keepsake. But Paul wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't a coward either. He wouldn't have pulled us out of Carter's garbage unless he was deadly serious about something. I just couldn't bring myself to accept what he was suggesting. It only felt truly real once we arrived at a phone box outside of a row of shops, and Paul went inside, called 999 and then anonymously reported Carter, for what we'd found in his footlocker.

He didn't say how he knew that jewelry and that lock of hair were in there, only that he'd seen them with his own eyes. Then after giving Carter's address, he hung up and we rode off again. And that's when it properly sunk in what had happened that night. The police report made it real, and just like when Danny said I was his best friend, there was no turning back now. We thought there'd be a ton of police cars outside Carter's house within a few hours, maybe a helicopter and a TV crew.

But all that happened was a police constable knocking at his door, took a look around his garbage and then just buggered off again, satisfied that there was nothing to concern himself with. It was only then we realized that what was intended as a deeply serious report had been mistaken for some mischief night shenanigans. Breaking into Carter's garage and then into his footlocker had also given him advanced warning that someone had discovered what was potentially his deepest, darkest secret.

So by the time a policeman was having a mooch around his garbage, he'd probably scrub the place from top to bottom and re-hidden that foot locker if he hadn't disposed of it completely. And in the weeks that followed, I thought Carter was going to be arrested at any moment. I couldn't bring myself to even look in his direction as I feared that one look at my face and he'd know it was us who broke into his garage.

Paul kept telling us to be patient again, that investigations took time and that Carter would be arrested eventually, but he wasn't. Nothing ever happened. Or rather, the only thing that happened is that Carter got away with it. And just after Christmas, once we were all back in school, there was an announcement in the school's assembly. Carter was leaving, not just another school somewhere in England, but to teach at some international school in Hong Kong. The head teacher treated it like Carter was moving up in the world, going on to some grand adventure to the Orient. Only me, Danny, and Paul, and Marvin knew the real reason

Carter was moving. We talked about it once or twice, and Danny mentioned something about extradition. He didn't know the word for it at the time. He just asked about the potential of Hong Kong handing Carter over once his crimes came to light. But then Paul shared his theory on why Carter had picked Hong Kong over just about anywhere else in the world. It might have been an ex-British colony and it might have still had plenty of English-speaking institutions, but Hong Kong had been handed over to China that previous year. If it was no longer British territory and since the UK didn't have an extradition treaty with China, Carter wouldn't have to return home.

Even if they found a smoking gun on his property, there was nothing the police or government could do to bring him to justice, and the worst part, it was all our fault. By breaking into that footlocker, all we'd done is give him advance warning. He might have come a cropper at some point, and if the police raided his house, they'd have found the same thing we did. But any chance of that happening were scuppered the moment that we decided to cut the padlock off. Smash his car and maybe the police find the footlocker while they're following up on a vandalism report. But by making an anonymous report on mischief night of all the bloody nights, all we'd really done. was make sure Carter could escape justice.

And to this day, I still feel this deep twinge of shame and regret. Paul had it the worst, what with it being his idea. He got mad into booze as he got older and was an out-of-work alcoholic by the time he was 30. People thought he was just a loser, someone who couldn't deal with the everyday working world. But me and Danny know different, because it's the same shame and guilt we only barely managed to fight off, that ended up completely consuming him. Building a great wardrobe really just comes down to having pieces that work well together and actually last. That's where Quince comes in.

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Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash read for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash read. Back in 2002, my boyfriend and I were driving from Chicago to this little town in South Dakota called Vermillion, where his parents lived. Around noon, we've been cruising through I. Iowa corn fields for hours on end, when suddenly the corn just sort of stopped. It was like coming out of a forest into an open field, but instead of seeing nothing but green grass, all we could see was ash and charcoal. There had obviously been some kind of fire, and while my boyfriend said it's

normal for farmers to sometimes burn their fields, to prepare them for a new cycle or whatever, it still looked creepy as hell. We went from being able to see just a few feet on either side of the highway to being able to see for miles upon miles around us. And that's how it was so easy to spot the man and the little boy that I saw walking hand in hand through a burned out cornfield. I could only see them at a distance at first, but the difference inside was plain to see and boy, did it look wholesome. It looked like some old-timer taking his grandson out for a walk to show him the burned-out fields. And then as I watched them from a distance, I saw that they were headed toward what looked like an old well. I didn't mention it to my boyfriend at all. We were

enjoying a comfortable conversation hiatus while listening to a little music, so I just watched the hallmark card scene zoom in as we got closer and almost silence. And by the time the pair of them reached the well, I could see both of them in almost perfect detail. I could see the old timer was wearing dungarees and had a little dark thinning hair on the top of his head. And I could see the little boy's blue shirt and white sneakers and how he had this almost white blonde curly hair too. And then as we drove right past them, I also saw it clear as day when the old man picked up the little boy and then tossed him down the well. I remember yelling out, oh my God, at the top of my lungs and the seconds after I saw it. Then as my boyfriend was panicking,

asking me what the hell was going on, I was frantically searching through my bag looking for myself, phone. I briefly thought about asking him to stop the car, but this image flashed in my head of us lying dead in that field, covered in gunshot wounds, so I just told him to keep on driving, and that a kid had just been thrown down a well. Now he says, what? What the hell are you talking about? Because he'd been zoned out with his eyes glued to the road and hadn't seen a thing. but once I explained in a little more crucial detail, he asked if I was 100% sure that I wasn't mistaken, and he understood why I was so freaked out. I eventually managed to find my cell phone, but when I pulled it out and unlocked it,

I saw I had exactly zero bars. So I did the next best thing, and grabbed our map so I could find out where the nearest town was. I was relieved to see that there was just one a few miles down the road, and I told my boyfriend, friend to put his foot down so we could get there and call 911. And when we rolled into town, the first place we saw was this little diner at the side of the highway called Albert Kitchen. And we pulled into the parking lot and I almost fell rushing from my car to the front doors. And then once I was inside, everyone's heads spun around as I ran up to the counter and asked to use their phone. The lady behind the counter said, sure. And then I dialed 911 when she put the phone up to

the counter and asked to talk to the police. As I described what happened to the dispatcher, everyone in the diner was listening in, and they gasped when I said how I saw a kid get thrown down a well. The dispatcher said to wait where I was so the sheriff could send a deputy over, and then after I thanked her, I hung up. I was still shaking with adrenaline by the time I placed the handset back in its cradle on that phone, and when I turned around, every single person in the diner was just staring at me. The lady behind the counter brought me a glass of ice water to help me calm down. Then as me and my boyfriend were waiting for the cops to show up, a man got up from his table and began to approach us. He introduced himself and then started asking about the burned out fields we'd

seen. And then when I went over what we'd seen and how every field for miles was all blackened and charred, he turned around to one of the other diners and asked if they were some guy's fields, Art Landry is the name I remember him saying. He then asked me to describe the man I'd seen, and then everyone seemed to agree that it was Art Landry that I'd seen, and that his grandkids had been staying with him that week because their parents were out of town. Everyone seemed shocked, but also really confused.

They obviously knew this Landry guy pretty well, so to hear that he'd done something so terrible, they just couldn't believe what they were hearing. They asked me a couple of times if I was sure. And then when I said that I'd never been so sure of anything in my entire life, there was almost this ripple of, oh my God, and, oh, dear Lord, all around the room. Now, I'm not exactly sure how long went by before a deputy actually showed up to talk to us, and when they did, we went out to our car so we could talk in detail away from the people inside the diner.

Now, I repeated the whole thing again and got that same sort of, are you sure reaction from the deputy. like what I'd said was just almost verging on impossible or ridiculous. And then right as he's asking me all these questions, another cop car rolls into the parking lot and outsteps the county sheriff who's driven all the way over from their headquarters to talk to us. The deputies saved me from repeating my story for pretty much the fourth time by explaining exactly what I'd seen to the sheriff.

And he too did the whole, huh, really, thing? And then walked off to talk on his radio for a couple of minutes, before returning to where we were standing. He told us someone over at HQ had called Mr. Landry to ask him about what I'd seen. No, Art didn't know what I was talking about and said while he did have his grandson staying with him that week, that they hadn't been anywhere near those burned-out cornfields. Now, by then, I was practically begging the sheriff to drive us back down the highway so I could show him exactly the well that I've been talking about.

He said he couldn't just walk up on somebody's land like that without a warrant and that he'd have to speak with Mr. Landry personally before anything like that happened. I tried to keep my cool. I knew the longer we talk, the less chance that kid had of surviving that fall, not to mention whatever was down there at the bottom of the well. If it was water, he might drown. If it was dry, then we need to get him out ASAP before he died. I tried to convey all of that as best I could, but the moment. The more animated I got, the more the sheriff and his deputy started to look at me like I was crazy. I had to literally beg the sheriff before he told his deputy to drive out to the old well

on that farm to check it out. But when he did, I was so genuinely thankful that I almost burst into tears. The whole time we were waiting, my boyfriend was like, it's going to be okay. You'll see. Everything's going to be fine. The sheriff was almost half sitting in his car talking on his radio, then all of a sudden he got up and walked over to us, calling out that he'd got some good news.

Firstly, the well on that farm was empty, and secondly, Mr. Landry was headed down to the diner with his grandson, so I could see for myself that everything was fine. Now, I was kind of speechless for a second because I was certain, and I still am, of what I saw out there. The sheriff then took the opportunity to explain how thankfully I just must have been mistaken. Who I saw out there, they were probably just picking their kid up to show them the bottom, and any dropping or falling that I saw was a kind of maybe optical illusion given from how fast we were driving through the smoke.

And the only thing that I could think to ask when word finally came back to me was like, how could the deputy be so sure the well was empty? Was he sure that there wasn't a kid down there? underwater maybe, or just out of reach of his flashlight. I knew what I saw. There was a kid's life at stake, and I wasn't about to just take someone else's word for it, especially when they were throwing around phrases like optical illusion or trick of the light, which was starting to sound more and more suspicious to me the more they crop that up.

And I get that people have that small town mentality of wanting to defend their own, but the way they didn't even seem to give a crap about this kid started to turn from alarming to kind of disturbing. and as I'm trying to keep my cool and stay polite as I'm explaining to the sheriff that I know what I saw, the deputy returns from checking the well. But following behind is this beat-up old truck and after it comes to a stop, outsteps this big old guy in dungarees with dark, thinning hair. And the first thing he said was something like, Who's this saying I didn't drop my damn grandson down at well?

He sounded mad, and the sheriff walked over now. saying, hey, now just hold on, Art. She's just trying to help. Now, this man named Art, then walked around to the passenger side of his truck, opened up the door, and then helped a young boy out of the seat. He then led him around to us to see, and then told me that was the boy he's supposedly thrown down the well in this very aggressive, accusatory way. Now, my boyfriend said quietly, see, I told you everything to be fine? Like in a very comforting kind of way, but things were not fine, because the kid that I'd seen had blonde curly hair,

and the kid in front of us had dark hair that was closely cut. Now, I started getting more and more frantic as I explained how it wasn't the same kid, and the deputy tried telling me maybe it was the son catching his hair that made it look like it was blonde. Now, having them trying to make me feel like I was crazy made me want to start. scream, but I knew that it was the last thing that had helped my case. So instead, I tried asking if there was anyone else who could talk to because I didn't feel like they were being very helpful. And then while me and the deputy were talking, the sheriff asked my boyfriend if they could talk in private. A few minutes later, my boyfriend comes back saying we need to leave. The sheriff had

basically asked if I was crazy or not when my boyfriend said no. He told me to get out of town before I was arrested on charges of public disturbance. They couldn't have people just rolling into town, throwing around accusations, and dirtying a good man's name. So unless we had any other official business to attend to, we were to leave immediately or face arrest. Now, by that point, I actually wanted to leave. I had this horrible, creeping feeling that something dark was going on in that small town. But whatever it was, neither of us were getting to the bottom of it while in the parking lot of that damn diner. I faked an apology to that farmer and his grandson, whoever the poor kid was. And then the second we were back on the road and I had some reception,

I called the Iowa State Patrol to report the whole thing. I told them that I thought something messed up was going on over in that town, specifically on the farm of one art landry. But they got back to me saying that there was nothing to it. I then went through the whole complaints process saying that I didn't think my report was being handled properly, but again they got back to me saying they'd done everything they could, but there was still nothing to report. But I know what I saw. I'd never had any kind of hallucinations before or since. I don't need glasses, and no, I'm not crazy. So I'm an Italian-American on both sides of my family, and my dad's side has lived in Brooklyn since the 1930s. My grandpa Luca came over on his ship.

when he was still in his 20s, and as long as I knew him, he was the most deeply Catholic man I'd ever known. He carried rosary beads around with him, he never missed a mass or confession, and he sprinkled holy water in his bedroom every night to protect against evil spirits while he slept. But there was one aspect of his faith that he didn't pay much mind to, and that was the obligation for pilgrimage. My maternal grandmother always prided herself on her visits to the sanctuary of the Madonna di Loretto and the Monte Sant'Angelo. But Grandpa Luca had absolutely no intention of returning to Italy for any reason whatsoever. During one of the many conversations I had with him, I asked him why that was, why a man so proud of his culture and cuisine could be

so averse to seeing his homeland again. He replied that, as much as there were things he disliked about America, it was a new place where the things of the old world couldn't follow him. I was never quite sure what he meant by that. If it was heartbreak or debt or the mafia that drove him to America, but one day when I was old enough, he saw it good to actually tell me a story. And I realized why he'd stayed so quiet about it in the past. So born in 1911, Grandpa Luca was 11 years old when Mussolini and his fascists came to power. He grew up in a very poor area of southern Italy,

a place where the fascists had a lot of support, so when Grandpa turned 17, he was proud to enlist in a very prominent paramilitary organization. I don't want to turn this into a whole history lesson, so I won't go into it too much in detail regarding which organization Grandpa joined. But let's just say it was a very brutal, very fanatical one that ran their own secret prisons on behalf of the state. And being a dictatorship, the government had to disappear a lot of people to keep hold. of said power. But they also needed a place for these people to disappear too, and that's how they ended up setting up their own secret prisons around the Italian countryside. My grandpa was young and keen to do his part for his country, and he never envisioned himself guarding the jail cells of artists or poets, but he never complained either. And then when he proved himself capable,

he got moved to a place where more dangerous prisoners were kept. And these weren't just prisoners of conscience, and some of them were hardened partisans who'd taken up arms against the state, but there were other kinds of prisoners, too. You see, one of the ways the fascists kept their grip on power was by partnering with the Catholic Church, but this partnership had its conditions. The church had to tell everyone that Mussolini was a good guy. Then in return, the fascist would wield their power to crush the church's enemies. But who did the Catholic Church call its enemies. Well, to put it bluntly, religious cults. And when I heard cult, I thought of the branch Davidians at Waco or Jim Jones and company drinking the Kool-Aid down in South America.

But we only heard about the bad religious cults, and there happened to be some that aren't nearly so sinister. A religious cult might form around a particular saint, for example, or a group might practice mild forms of flagellation. The latter is all well and good if it's sanctioned by the church, but if it's done without strict adherence to doctrine or without their explicit permission, it's considered a grave sin. And as much as they probably like to, the Catholic Church can't just go around arresting and detaining people for committing sins. But that's where the fascists came in, thugs who would do things that would get their hands dirty. Instead of poets, artists, and resistance fighters, Grandpa found himself guarding the cells of sweet old priests or harmless hermits who posed

a threat to the church's control. It seemed almost every day some harmless old fruitcake was dragged in, broken and bleeding, and every single time my grandpa would wonder why. But then came the day when they dragged a man in with no name and grandpa didn't wonder anymore. Even the most withered and isolated hermits gave a name when beaten hard enough. But this man, who was stick-thin and with long black hair only said, I don't have a name. Even after a time in the prison's torture chamber, and since he headed up one of those more sinister cults I mentioned earlier,

who practiced ritual slaughter on All Hallows Eve, he was considered a very dangerous man. And so unlike most of the prisoners who were kept in large and communal containment areas, the man with no name was kept in constant, solitary confinement. And for the first time, Grandpa Luca understood why. The man with no name had a dark, almost nauseating aura about him, and it was said that he'd done terrible things as the leader of his cult. So for the first time in a long time, Grandpa understood the need for such stringent security, and he was glad for it. The prison was a brutal, unforgiving place,

but like any prison, the people in charge needed ways of keeping the inmates placid. They were allowed cigarettes, they were allowed to play soccer, and they were allowed to put on plays or shows, so long as they weren't of a political nature. Aside from a handful of fascist-approved titles, the prisoners weren't allowed any books, and they weren't allowed to have any writing materials either. But they were allowed things like chess sets, playing cards, and other such ways of entertaining themselves. The prisoners in solitary confinement were no different. They too needed mental stimulation to prevent restlessness, and this was how the guards ended up honoring an odd request from the man with no name. He didn't accept any of the books,

cigarettes, or playing cards offered to him, and seemed content to stare blankly at the wall of his cell all day. But this made the guards worry that he was going insane, so they asked if there was anything they could bring him to keep him occupied. Some prisoners asked for a ball to bounce, and others asked for a Bible, but in the case of the man with no name, he asked for a rock and a strip of sandpaper to shape it with. The request made it all the way up to the warden who decided that there was no harm in allowing the prisoner such objects, so long as nothing sharp or bladed was given to him. And so that same day, a guard stopped by his cell and gave him a rock and some sandpaper. And over the next few weeks, the man with no name started shaping that rock.

guards would stop by his cell to check in on him every so often, or to deliver his daily bread and water, and they'd see his progress. They'd see how that jagged piece of stone was smoothed off and then worn away in certain sections until it was smooth and shiny all over. And then right about the same time the rock started to get very smooth and oblong, like an almost oversized pill, the general prisoner population got more and more rowdy. They were making demands about exercise and food, saying they needed more of both that they were going to riot.

Guards beat unruly prisoners mercilessly if they attacked each other and denied food to those who attacked guards. But nothing seemed to calm their tempers and the unrest got worse and worse. Every night the prisoners would congregate in the courtyard where they normally played soccer, and they'd chant slogans about a free Italy. The guards had tried everything except shooting the prisoners to calm them down, and the warden still only had the mandate for a prison, not a death camp, so they couldn't just shoot anyone who refused orders. But nor could they carry on with the beating and starvation

because those kinds of punishments only made the general population more violent. Instead, the warden tried to make a deal with them. On all-hallow's Eve, the night before Halloween, the warden gathered the prisoners to make an announcement. If they stopped demonstrating, he would arrange a delivery of fresh bread to the prison, along with several cases of good wine so each prisoner could have a whole cupful to themselves. I guess they considered that the nuclear option, the thing that had put the demonstrations to bed. But to the warden's surprise, the offer did nothing to quell the unrest.

I guess the warden got mad that the prisoners rejected his offer, so he went right back to offering beatings and starvation, only double as much. But this not only caused another demonstration, but it escalated into a full-scale prison riot. Grandpa said that he'd never seen violence like it before or since. He said it was like the prisoners were in a rabid frenzy, that they weren't just attacking prison guards and trying to tear the prison itself apart, but they were killing each other too. Prisoners who had once been friendly with each other were now literally at each other's throats, ripping each other apart with their bare hands.

It was chaos, pure blood-soaked chaos, and the prison guards had no choice but to withdraw, surround the prison, and kill anyone who broke out and tried to escape. All night long the riot lasted, from dusk until dawn, but only a single prisoner breached the outer wall to be shot by the waiting guards. The next morning, the guards walked back into the prison and were greeted by a scene from a nightmare. There were dead bodies lying all over the prison's courtyard,

and there was so much blood that it formed big puddles on parts of the yard. Most of the prisoners were back in their cells, either completely exhausted, frightened out of their minds, or nursing some severe wounds. Most were accounted for in one way or another. But once they completed their body count, the guards realized someone was missing. But there was no time wasted in figuring out too,

because only one of the cells was empty, the cell belonging to the man with no name. Grandpa corrected himself after saying the cell was empty because that wasn't strictly true. It just didn't have anyone living inside of it. Lying on the floor of the cell in a pool of his own blood was a prisoner, one who had no apparent connection between himself and the man with no name. His heart had been torn out, ripped clean out of his chest, and the man with no name was nowhere to be found. The guards searched the prison from top to bottom, certain that the man had to be hiding somewhere, but they couldn't find him and in the end, they do accept that somehow

the man with no name had escaped. Grandpa said a big investigation followed because the warden was convinced that he couldn't have escaped without the assistance of a guard. He said one of them was either a member of the man with no name's cult, or he'd been bribed or threatened into helping him escape by the man's acolytes. Grandpa said all of them were dragged into interview rooms and then threatened with imprisonment or worse if they didn't confess. But not a single guard showed any hint of being involved, and the warden was forced to come to an alternative conclusion to save his skin.

The official report stated that, to the best of the warden's knowledge, the man with no name had died during the riot, and that his remains were too mutilated to properly identify. And this was way more acceptable to the warden superiors because he wouldn't exactly go around saying the man had disappeared. But disappeared is exactly what the guards thought happened. They just had to keep their mouth shut about it. And that wasn't the only thing that they were ordered to keep quiet about. Some of the guards started saying that the unrest only started happening when the man with no name took to shaping that stone of his and how it got worse and worse as the stone got smooth and then started to take shape.

One of the guards added that on the morning of October 31st, the man finally completed his little project. He turned that jagged rock into a small but perfectly formed figure of a man. And hours later, the demonstrations turned nasty, the warden had his offer rejected, and that terrible slaughter had started. And such things were not allowed to be discussed, and nor were the guards permitted to leave or transfer their posts, lest somebody suspect that the warden's version of events be anything less than truthful. Grandpa realized that if he was going to escape his life as a prison guard,

he'd have to escape the entire country. And so that's what he did. He went AWOL, smuggled himself into France, and then was on a ship headed for New York by his first week of December. He spent his first Christmas in New York alone and not being able to speak English. But he didn't mind. because America was a place where the things of the old world couldn't follow him.

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then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. So I grew up in a little place called Medicine Bow, Wyoming. We're probably most famous for being the not-so-final resting place of Dippy the Dinosaur, whose skeleton now resides in the Natural History Museum over in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now, there's some hot springs just outside of town, and Butch Cassidy robbed a train just a couple of miles away on the first cross-country railroad. But aside from that, there's not much here aside from dust, gravel, trees, and some trailers.

I was raised by a single mom, and while words like strict and rules didn't seem to be in her vocabulary, there was one thing she told me to never, ever do. and that was to never go near the house of old Bob Barnes. So Bob lived in a trailer right on the edge of town, and he made his living going through other people's trash to find stuff he could either sell or turn into something he could sell. And he only ever did it at night, too, but even when people did catch him,

half of them were too scared to even say anything on account of the fact that he actually killed someone and got away with it. Mom told me he was a monster, and that the kid that he'd killed had been a close friend of hers in high school. And that's all she ever told me about it, though, and I figured it was just because it was too much hurt to talk about. Over the years, I learned bits and pieces here and there about Bob's life and the murderer he was said to have gotten away with. I learned he fought in Vietnam, that he volunteered for it, too, but that after he came home again, he just sort of couldn't go back to normal. He moved his trailer right out there near East Island Lake and people said never to go around to the north side at night because old Bob would most likely be out there shooting squirrels

for the next night's dinner. Don't want him mistaking you for a squirrel now, do we? The older people would say with that look in their eye that said that they were serious. But now everyone acted like they were scared of him. Some folks seemed to even sort of pity him. Now remember I was hanging out with a buddy of mine when we were both about 14, and his mom was giving us a ride someplace when he brought up old Bob. My buddy's talking about him like he's the boogeyman, but all his mom had to say about him was basically, poor man, all he wants is to be left alone. Now my buddy's like, Mom, he killed someone. And you saw this weird switch in her like she was putting on a mask as she said, that he did, and you better stay the heck away from his trailer, young man.

And it was like we'd, I don't know, caught her out on something. I just wouldn't fully understand what that thing was until a few years later. And by the time I was 17, old Bob was definitely the devil to me. One night my mom had gotten drunk and told me the story of how Bob killed her friend. She wasn't like an alcoholic or anything. she just liked to have a few wine coolers on a Friday night while watching Dallas and Falcon Crest. But then one night I got home from a friend's place to find her all teary-eyed while looking at old pictures of herself and her high school friends, including the kid. Old Bob had apparently murdered.

She told me how they used to hang out in school and sometimes outside of school too since two mutual friends were dating. And she said aside from partying a little too much, it was a good guy, and didn't to be. deserved to die in such a way or at such a young age. He'd been drinking out near that lake with a couple of friends when he wandered off to take a leak in the bushes. And that's when he sees someone walking through the shrubs, carrying what look like a little kid over their shoulder. Mom's friend yelled something of the guy who starts running off with this kid over their

shoulder, so he and his buddies decide to give chase. And then once they caught up with the guy and with Mom's friend at the lead, the guy drops the kid, spins around, and lights Mom's friend up like a bang, bang, bang, bang. And the poor guy was dead before he hit the dirt. And while the kid they rescued was taken to the hospital, she ended up passing away because she had a massive dose of tranquilizers in her system, and it damaged her organs. All the kids that were hanging out at the lake that night said it was old Bob that shot Mom's friend. But then for some reason, he just was never arrested and never went to jail.

And it finally made total sense to me why everyone either feared or hated him. Maybe my buddy's mom just didn't know the full story, and that's why she said that weird thing about that poor man. But I did, and as the months went by, all this hatred for him was festering away until finally, I decided I was going to do something about it. I had already told my friends about the whole thing, so they knew how much I hated old Bob for having seen.

saddled my mom with this lifelong trauma. But it wasn't until we were sitting around the campfire one night that I brought up the prospect of doing something. One of my buddies had asked his dad about this little kid who died from the OD, and he'd confirmed that that was true. People didn't like to talk about it, as you never knew when the girl's mom would show up behind you in a store or whatever, but the whole thing that differed from the story he heard was that the kid had shown up in town and hadn't been found near the lake.

That little detail didn't matter to us, though. It didn't matter to me anyway. The story was still basically the same, and old Bob still needed to pay for what he'd done all those years before. And so I hatched the plan with my buddies that night. I was going to hike out to his trailer in the middle of the night, watch it for a while to make sure no one was up and moving around, and then I was going to set it on fire. Yes, I know. Dumb idea. I could have killed a the guy, but at the time and in my head, I was going to set his trailer on fire, and then as I was running off, he was going to wake up, run out, and stand there, mad before having to move someplace else. But I was incredibly young and incredibly dumb, so things didn't quite go down like that at all.

And it took a little while before I felt brave enough to siphon the gas that I needed to do the job. I didn't have any money, like at all, so I ended up stealing a can of paint thinner from our school's art supplies. Then one Friday night, after hanging with my buddies around the campfire like we always did, I lied to them and said that I was headed home when, really, I was headed to Old Bob's place. Now, it took about an hour of walking around the lake to the other side, then once I was within maybe half a mile, I turned off my flashlight and traced the water's edge till I spotted a light coming from Old Bob's trailer in the distance. I stuck to the plan and watched the place for maybe 40 to 45 minutes until the sound of the TV stopped and the dim light I could see went out.

I gave it another minute or two waiting until everything was silent and still, then I took that can of paint thinner from my backpack and started creeping towards Bob's trailer. My heart was pounding by the time I got within a few feet, and the fact that the trailer was still silent had me thinking that I'd crept up totally undetected. But then Razum about to pop the lit off my can a paint thinner. I suddenly hear this loud click to my right that I instantly recognized as a gun before someone says, what you got there, boy? I froze, knowing it was old Bob, and that he'd caught me red-handed trying to burn down his place. I didn't want to say what was in my hands because I figured once he knew what my plan was, he'd just blow my brains out without

a second thought. And so I didn't say anything. Old Bob then told me to drop what I was carrying. And then when I dropped the can, I saw the beam of a little flashlight hover over it as Bob figured out what I was doing. He told me to turn around, because he wanted to see my face before he killed me. But again, my body didn't seem to want to respond. I was shaking by the time. I was shaking by the time. he rushed me and spun me around. But when he saw my face, he shoved me away from him so I fell over backwards and then just looked at me for a minute after lowering his gun. I was so scared that even though I wanted to beg him not to kill me, the words wouldn't come out. Then out of the blue, he said my name out loud to confirm it was me. I went from terrified to extremely confused and

terrified. He knew my name, and he knew who my mom was too. And then after I confirmed who I was, he told me, I wondered how long it'd be before you showed up. First words out of my mouth that whole time came out as, how'd you know me? And then after inviting me inside his trailer, old Bob promised to tell me everything I wanted to know. After we sat down in this trailer, he asked what my mom had told me about him. I guess I got a little braver because I told him all about how I hated him for killing my mom's friend. He asked to tell him how I thought it went down and he just smiled as I told him my mom's version of events. He didn't interrupt at all, but when I was done, he told me,

Okay, kid, this is what really happened. My mom's friend was a very troubled dude growing up. And as much as people tried to help him, he even. only got worse as he aged into his teens. He was expelled from school for stealing panties out of the girl's locker room. He got in trouble with the cops for supposedly flashing a bunch of middle schoolers and only got charged with a lesser crime because he claimed he was peeing. And then in the months before he was murdered,

he'd been seen talking to kids around town and said he was just playing with them when confronted by their parents. On the night he was murdered, it was an old Bob walking near the lake with a kid over his older. It was my mom's friend, and in reality, the whole situation happened in almost complete reverse. Old Bob had been out hunting squirrels as he tended to do when he suddenly came across a bunch of drunk teenagers walking by the lake at night. It was a full moon, so he could see them clear as day walking through the shrubbery, and he follows them to make sure that they're not headed to his trailer for some reason. Old Bob stalking these kids along the edge of the lake,

listening to them hooting and hollering and laughing, when he realizes one of them is carrying something over his shoulder, something that looks scarily like a kid with long, glossy hair that shined in the moonlight. Old Bob closes the distance a little more, and here's the group of kids planning to do something awful with what he realizes was an unconscious child. Then as soon as he heard that, Bob flicked on his flashlight and tells him to drop the child. The guy carrying the kid was my mom's old high school friend, but instead of dropping the kid and running, he pulls out a knife and is halfway to driving it into the kid's chest when old Bob

puts a couple of 22s through his chest and drops him dead. Bob said he didn't get a good look at the kid who ran off, but at least one of them was almost certainly a girl. He then picks up the unconscious kid, walks her all the way into town, then drops her off of the old gas station where a clerk was on the night shift. The clerk called 911, but Bob didn't stick around. He just told the clerk that there was a body out near the lake, and the cop should stop by old Robert Barnes Place, because he's the one who did it. The cop stopped by the very next morning and take Bob into custody, but his story checks out, and the missing girl's parents were too relieved

to have her home to do anything but thank him. And to them, Bob was a hero. But according to him, he sure didn't feel like one. When he got back from Vietnam, Bob promised himself he'd never heard another human being as long as he lived. And that was half the reason he lived out in the sticks. If he'd been able to save that girl's life, it might have made it all worth it. But she was probably already dying from the trank O.D. from the moment he first saw her. So all killing mom's friend did was help a sick individual escape justice for his crimes. But what made him sick to his stomach and made it feel like double the waste was how the others got away with it.

That was the reason he stayed away from town because he couldn't stand being around the grown-ups version of the little monsters who got away with ending that girl's life. He didn't know exactly who they were, but he figured there was a pretty good chance my mom was one of them. Bob said he didn't care if I believed him or not. He just wanted me to do him one favor. Go home, tell my mom what he just told me, then look her dead in the eye after asking if it's all true or not. Well, I did exactly that, and while it's best not to describe blow-for-blow how that little exchange went down,

let's just say our relationship has never recovered, and she's the reason I haven't been back to Wyoming in almost 20 years now. I grew up in a place called Shallow Water, a little northwest Texas town about 10 miles outside of Lubbock. When I was 19, I had a job at the Exfab plant, and I used to get a ride to work with a couple of coworkers. Every morning we'd stop at this little coffee place called Hebrews to get some cups of go juice,

and it's there that I met a girl named Rita. We got to talking about the donuts and which ones were our favorite. And then after confirming she was single, we swapped phone numbers and started texting back and forth. We went on a couple of dates throughout October and then towards the end of the month, and with Halloween coming up, I asked Rita if she had any plans for it. And she said that she was headed to a Halloween party, up towards the country club, and that if I wanted to go, I could tag along with her and her friends.

Now, I was wild about this girl at the time, and none of my friends had any plans outside of sitting at home, probably playing Pub G, so I figured why the hell not? So I put together a pretty basic ghost-faced costume. the same thing that I'd worn a couple of years before, and then I took the opportunity to show Rita that I actually had some social skills by winning over her friends. It made for a pretty fun night, at least until Rita went to the bathroom,

then came back faster with this very worried look on her face. She said that her ex had showed up, completely out of the blue too. He was supposed to be away working on some oil rigs out in the golf, but apparently there had been a change of plan, and it meant that I needed to get out of there. In short, Rita's ex was an A-hole, and if I stuck around, there would 100% be a fight once he worked out who she was with. I didn't want to leave, but I also didn't want to fight that guy. So I said goodbye to Rita and her friends and then figured that I could slip out without any issues.

But then right as I'm walking down the driveway of this big old house, I hear someone yelling from behind me saying, That's right. You get the hell out of here, if I kick your ass. Now I looked over my shoulder to see some angry-looking dickwad being held back by his dushy-looking buddies, and he just kept on yelling stuff at me as I turned out of the driveway and hit the road. I intended on walking back to shallow water, which would take a couple of hours, but I didn't mind. I was too obsessed to care about walking all that way, and thoughts of Rita kept me warm before my phone suddenly buzzed in my pocket. It was Rita, and she said that her ex was pissed. After starting another fight, he and his buddies had been kicked out of the party.

They were mad as hell, and they intended on catching up with me so they could give me that little ass whooping. I had this gut feeling of uh-oh. And as I realized that they were driving and I was on foot, it was only a matter of time before they caught up with me. I lost my ghost face mask at the party, but I was still wearing that raggedy kind of black gown thing as I started jogging down the side of the highway. It seems kind of dumb looking back on it, but at the time I couldn't think of anything else that it'd help. I needed to get home, or at least get out of the area, so I could make it harder for Rita's X and his boys to find me. And so there I am, jogging along the side of the highway in my Halloween costume, and every so often I'm looking over my shoulder at approaching cars thinking,

please do not be a Rita's X. And they all keep passing me, one by one, until one of them slows down right alongside me, And I think, this is it. I turned to look at the car, expecting to see a car full of jerk-offs ready to kick the crap out of me. But it was a lone woman who rolled down her passenger side window and called out to me asking if I needed a ride. She looked like your typical soccer mom in her SUV and purple sweater and followed up by saying that she figured if I was running alongside of the road that I most likely needed to ride someplace. and I told her that she was a godsend, that I'd never needed a ride so much in my entire life, and then after making sure that she was headed my way, I hopped in the passenger seat, and we took off down the road.

Now, she introduced herself as Deborah and asked why I'd been running down the side of the road in the first place. I didn't know what else to tell her, so I just told her the truth. I told her all about Rita, how her ex had shown up at the Halloween party that we were at, and how I was running because she texted me saying he was out to kick my butt. I also tied that into why I was so grateful that she stopped from me, at which point Deborah laughed and told me it was no problem. But she did say that's what I got for dipping my toes into the dating pool. Now, I could not have agreed more,

but I didn't agree when she said that I should be finding a nice girl to settle down with. I mean, I agreed with the nice girl part, but settled down and get married. At 19? That kind of sounded like a nightmare. Now, I only politely disagreed, and she laughed again like she knew I would, and then we just kept on driving while talking about this and that. And we'd already established that I was headed over to shallow water, and Deborah had said that she was going the same way.

So when she turned off the highway and started heading straight east, I figured that there had been some confusion at first, so I reminded her where I was headed. She said that she hadn't forgotten. and she just had to make a stop at a friend's place on the way back. Since she was giving me a ride out of the kindness of her heart, I wasn't about to complain about the pit stop, so I just kept on with a small talk as we drove down this very dark, dirt road.

But when she suddenly stopped the car, the mood shifted completely. I asked Deborah why she suddenly stopped, but she didn't reply. She just reached into the compartment of her door, and the next thing I knew, I had a gun pointed at me. I just froze up at first, partially in fear, partially in complete disbelief. Deborah then tossed a small sack at me, one made of a black cloth, and she told me to put it over my head. I thought it was a joke.

Just a really bad joke, so I told her, this has to be a joke. But Deborah wasn't joking, not at all. And she said that I could either put the bag over my head, or she'd shoot me in the head, call 911, and tell the cops I tried to violate her. Again, I was just stunned. It was a waking nightmare. It had come out of nowhere, so I just couldn't find the words till she says, Are you deaf?

Put the bag over your head before I shoot you dead. I asked where she was going to take me and what she was going to do with me. But more of an act of defiance, if anything, I knew she wasn't going to tell me. It was all just a way of delaying the inevitable. Then when Deborah told me one more time to put the bag over my head, I did as I was told. Once my face was covered and I was almost completely blind, Deborah got us moving again. I kept asking where we were going and what she was going to do with me. But whenever she did speak, Deborah only said stuff like,

Shut up, demon. I ain't got ears for none of your lies. And she kept referring to me that way as a demon. And we stopped the car and she ordered me out. I couldn't see where I was walking, but she kept the gun to my back until I recognized that we'd walked inside someplace. The next thing, she's telling me to put my arms out, and she's tying my wrists around some sort of metal support that felt cold on my wrist. After that, she took the hood off, and I could see that I was in a barn.

Deborah told me if I did anything funny, she'd kill me when she came back. Then she left the barn for what felt like forever before coming back with what looked to be her younger daughter or something. She still had that gun pointed at me as she told her kid how I was a demon, and if they both said a prayer, I'd reveal myself as the monster I was. The whole time I'm trying to reason with her, telling her I'm a good person, and then I say my prayers too, stuff like that. But Debra keeps telling her daughter things like, Now hear that, those are the devil's lies.

And we don't have ears for the devil's lies, do we, sweetie? She had that kid trained pretty good. She barely even looked at me, just kept her eyes on her mama, nodding yes or no whenever she asked a question like, and you know what we do with demons, don't you, sweetie? That's right. We destroy them. Then both of them together started praying, and no matter how much I begged them both to see some sense, they wouldn't listen.

When I got louder, they got louder, until we were all screaming so loud that seemed crazy that no one could hear us. But no one could hear us, and so no one showed up to help me. And when I was done screaming and Deborah was done praying, she told her daughter to look at me and see the demon that's been revealed. That kid saved my life because she took one look at me, crying and begging for my life and sobs and said, I don't see a demon, mommy. Now Deborah responds, Of course you do, sweetie, look harder. But her kid just shook her head and repeated herself.

And I'll never forget the look on that woman's face when she gave me a kind of second look, or like she looked at me for the first time all over again. She looked like she was studying me, and then she looked very surprised, and then finally she looked very sad. She turned to her kid and said something along the lines of, Mommy made a mistake. And I joined in. Yes, a mistake. That's all that happened.

Everyone makes mistakes. Please let me go. Please let me go. But again, dead. Debra didn't seem to listen. Her little girl's eyes were fixed on me, all wide and afraid, but glassy like she was right on the verge of tears. But Debra didn't look.

Not at first. She just kept saying how sorry she was before offering to take her back inside. I had to wait another God knows how long before Debra showed up again, still holding that gun and with a black bag in her hand again. I felt this deep feeling of relief seeing the bag because I knew that it meant that it meant that she was going to drive me someplace again, or maybe walk me someplace. Either way, she wasn't going to shoot me, but that didn't mean that she didn't threaten to. She gave me some big speech about how she was doing God's work out there, and how sometimes she made mistakes in identifying demons

or devil-worshers. She was very sorry that she put me through all that, but she also couldn't leave me alone unless I promised not to tell anyone about what she'd done. Right there, With either the gun or the black bag on offer, I'd have said just about anything she asked me to. So I promised her, I promised to God that I'd never breathe a word of what happened that night to another living soul. And then Deborah put the bag back on my head, untied my hands, and then directed me back towards her car. And the next time she took the bag off my head, we were on a dark stretch of highway that I couldn't identify. Deborah said it was roughly where she'd pick me up, and as much as I couldn't be sure, I was too relieved to be out of that barn and out of her car to give a good goddamn where I was exactly.

And before she drove off, she actually said, God bless you! And explained how God would reward me in heaven if I kept my mouth shut. Well, I didn't keep my mouth shut. And after I walked all the way back to shallow water, I called the county sheriff and filed a report. I knew it wouldn't be an open and shut case, obviously, but Lecoffs got back to me and the prognosis was probably worse than I thought. Without any witnesses or anything like that, any kind of legal proceeding would be a sort of case of he said she said. Deborah's version of events were obviously entirely different from mine, but it wasn't just they were different.

They were varied wildly. She said that she did the Christian thing of giving me a ride home, and I tried to take advantage. after stopping at her home so she could give me a bite to eat. She said that I was drunk, which admittedly I was, and the fact that I'd been partying beforehand would look real bad if it was just put in front of a judge. And then on the off chance that they did manage to pin a charge on her, it might not be anything big like kidnapping,

because if she convinced a court that she was in fear for her life, they might not even convict her for reckless endangerment and she might just walk. And in the end, the best advice, the cops would give me was, don't get in the cars with any more strangers, and to save myself the stress, I just chose not to press charges. Needless to say, I had one hell of a story to tell Rita, and she thought that it was crazy not to press charges, at least until I explained how it might potentially have my name dragged through the mud. If I tried to get Deborah locked up, which wasn't even her real name, by the way, she could make the counterclaim that I was just some

drunk pervert who tried attacking her after showing me kindness. This was red on the cusp of stuff like MySpace getting big too. So the idea that people could look me up and assume that I was some kind of predator, that would be like a whole second nightmare I had the power to avoid. Sometimes I regret it, especially when I think about her doing the same thing to other people, because I get a sick feeling in my stomach that some people didn't get to walk away. The worst day of my life was a Sunday and it happened in a little town called Windsor out on the Carolina coast. Now, back then, Windsor was home to less than 2,000 people and was your average backwoods North Carolina town.

We had a grocery store, a gas station, a bojangles, and the peanut factory. And then aside from a few churches and chapels that surrounded the town, that was pretty much it. It was quiet and neighborly. Murder wasn't a word that you heard spoken around Windsor, and you only ever heard it on the radio or on television. But then came that night in 1993, when all that evil stepped out of the TV and took a walk around town.

It was the evening of June 6th, and I was down at the Bertie County Sheriff's Office about a mile south of town. The Bertie County Jail is down there too, and after collecting some paperwork from one of the deputies over there, I was sitting on my desk just quietly filling it out when we suddenly heard dispatch over our radios. It was the quietest day of the week,

so I don't think anyone was expecting anything more than a civil dispute or a minor accident. So when we heard the codes for a man with a gun or multiple deaths, there was a split second where I was convinced that there had been some kind of mistake. But when I saw my fellow deputies running out of the office and towards their cars, I knew that there was no mistake. It was real. I followed the other deputies out into the parking lot, jumped into my cruiser, and then we sped off in a rough convoy towards the grocery store on the north side of town. Now, this grocery store is called Be Lo, as in a play on the words, be low, as in the prices here, be low, and it rivaled the local churches in terms of places folks could congregate and converse.

And so, knowing the three deceased were most likely people I knew, maybe even friends of mine, that was already a tough pill to swallow during that rush towards the store. And when we arrived, the place was all closed and locked up since they closed early on Sundays, and we still had next to no idea what to expect. The 911 call that had come into dispatch was from a wounded survivor of whatever had happened, and with them being in so much pain, they couldn't go into too much detail. We only knew that there were bodies, a man with a gun, and survivors who desperately needed our help. The Beelow had these glass panel windows all the way along the front, so on the approach,

you could see this long trail of blood going from the front to the back of the store. After we busted in, we found all that blood belonged to a member of Beelow's cleaning crew, who'd crawled all the way from the back of the store with gunshot wounds so we could use the phone. Me and the other deputies spread out once we got inside, clearing the place from aisle to aisle to make sure no one was waiting to ambush us, and then once we got to the back of the store, we found five more people. Three of them were dead, and another was badly wounded with stab wounds. For some reason, the killer had left the fifth person, a member of the cleaning crew,

completely unharmed. And there was no helping most of those that had been shot, but we did what we could for the survivors, and thankfully both of them made it through. But as EMS were working on getting the wounded airlifted to the hospital, we got to hear the whole story of what had happened from that one other member of the cleaning crew who got to walk away covered in blood, but without a scratch. And it was every bit as bad as we feared it was. Every Sunday, a cleaning crew used to stop by the beelow to wax the floors

and get them all shiny again for the next week. So come closing time at 6 p.m., and once his customers were, gone. The store's manager let the crew inside and then locks the doors behind him. The crew starts shifting mats and getting their buffers ready when the last remaining store clerk sees a person she doesn't recognize step out from one of the aisles. She thinks it's a customer who failed to notice the store closing. When she walks up to the guy and informs him it's after closing, he points a gun in her face. The cleaning crew are right at the front of the store at this point and the guy moves on the clerk so quietly that they don't even notice what's going on. So as the gunman's

forcing the clerk into the back office, they're completely none the wiser. And once he's in the office, the gunman orders the manager to hand over all the on-site cash. He hit at the exact right time, too, right at the end of the week, and we know that he made it out of there with a few thousand dollars in cash, along with a bunch of money orders totaling three grand. But then, instead of just leaving after getting his hands on the cash. The gunman orders the manager and clerk back onto the shop floor and then rounds up the cleaning crew too. I didn't see exactly what the victims were bound with, but I later heard it was dog leashes the gunman grabbed from one of the aisles. And then once he got all six of them at the back of the store, he ordered them to tie each other up

at gunpoint. He tied the last person up himself, and our survivor was telling us how, once everyone was tied up. He thought that the ordeal was over. The guy had his money. He had everyone tied up so they couldn't call the cops right away, and he had no reason at all to do what he did next. But he went ahead and did it anyway, and this is where things started getting really, really messed up. The gunmen start stacking people up in their twos ordering them to lie on top of each other, and then before anyone can figure out why, he says, God forgive me for what I'm about to do. and then starts shooting into the stacks. He only got a couple of shots off before either his gun jammed or he ran out of ammunition.

And then when he ran off, our survivor said that he thought it was over for a second time. But then seconds later, the gunman comes running back with a knife he'd grabbed from someplace, and he starts asking the survivor if they're going to tell the cops about him. Obviously, the survivor says no, and so does the man stacked on top of him, who we later found out was the survivor's own brother. But as they're trying to convince the guy they won't tell us cops about him, he flips out and starts stabbing the brother on top with the knife he'd found. He cut the guy's throat from ear to ear

and then kept on stabbing him in the back till the knife blade broke off inside of him. Our survivor claims he then asked him for a second time if he'd identify him to the cops have given the chance, and then when he says no again, The gunman walks out with the money and leaves the last man alive. Our survivor said he was convinced that the guy would come back, just like he did before when he went to grab a knife. He also had his dead brother on top of him, so I don't think he could have moved even if he wanted to.

And then the surviving member of the cleaning crew, thinking that the other man was dead, manages to free himself from the dog leash before he crawls towards the front of the store, which was where we found him, with the phone still in his head. hand. When it came to the investigation that followed, I don't remember ever being so invested in a case before. One of the poor folks killed was a relative of the county sheriff, so he made it a personal mission of his to bring the guy in. But right from the get-go, things started to go wrong. First off, the Beelow security camera system wasn't working at the time of the attack. They had a repair man scheduled for that coming week, and while the timing of that still haunts me,

it obviously meant that we had no security camera images of our suspect. Secondly, all three of our survivors gave us a matching description of the guy, a very distinct one too. He supposedly had a crooked nose and hazel eyes, but the sketches we circulated didn't amount to any sightings of him, no solid ones anyways. All we had were reports of a white sedan with Maryland tags speeding out of town on the 17, not after the murders, though.

But after the car was trying, tracked down, its owner was cleared of any involvement. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I think the most frustrating part was how the investigation ended up fixated on this one detail that I'm not even sure was true. At one point, one of the victims asked the killer, why are you doing this? And while she was referring to them being stacked on top of one another, the guy must have thought that she was asking him a more general question as and why are you robbing us? He said something about being a former cop

and one who was recently fired from his job. But although it was clear early on that he couldn't have been a cop, since there was no match on his fingerprints and the lead investigators seemed convinced he was either former military or a former law enforcement, that completely contradicted what people like myself came to think, which involved him being a fugitive

who killed because he didn't want any witnesses. But by the time the investigation started to seriously consider that possibility, the killer could have easily escaped the country using the thousands of dollars he stole. And that's my best guess as to why he wasn't caught anyway. And afterwards, people who worked in law enforcement talked about what happened like it was a tornado or something. They made it sound like this terrible, almost random event that no one could have stopped. But I still felt useless.

The worst thing to happen in Windsor for maybe 200 years, and I'd been sitting on my ass writing our paperwork while some sick bastard was stacking bodies and blowing their brains out two at a time. But what I still can't figure is, why did he let the last victim live? Our survivor told us that the killer told him straight up, I'm going to let you live. But that makes my fugitive theory seem a little shaky. Part of me thinks he just got tired of killing and he could. and faced stabbing a second person to death after killing what he thought was for other people. But then, there's this other part of me, one that thinks that he left one alive so he could tell everyone what happened, because he wanted everyone to know what he did and how he did it, so he could

maybe read about it in the papers afterwards. But I try not to entertain that side of me, because when I do, it makes the pain of not catching that guy hurt even worse. I could get in a lot of trouble for posting this, so I'd like to remain as anonymous and nondescript as possible. I'm sorry if this gets annoying while reading this, but I'm confident you'll understand my reasoning once you reach the end. So I work as a teacher in an English-speaking country, teaching seven to 11-year-olds, and let's just say that I've got a few years' experience under my belt. I have no regrets. I love my profession, and I do it all again in a heartbeat given the chance. But while the highs have been high, the lows have been lowes have been low.

in ways that I'm not sure other people can imagine. You see, when you work with kids, you get to be part of some pretty incredible things sometimes. But there's a dark side of it too. And sometimes you end up privy to things that quite literally haunt you. One day, right at the start of our term, we had a kid that I'll just call A arrive in my class. A was from a non-English-speaking country, and although they struggled with communication at first, extra English lessons really helped him out, and it only took a couple of weeks before his personality started to shine through.

A was also from a country that didn't celebrate Halloween, at least not nearly in the same way that we do in the West nowadays. So as September rolled into October and the Halloween decorations started going up, the level of enthusiasm with which we celebrated it came as quite a surprise. You see, A came from a very conservative culture, one that took things like ghosts and ghouls and witches very seriously. So he found the whole thing quite scary at first. Then once it was explained to him that it was all just a bit of fun

and we were taking things that scare us and making them not so scary anymore, he started to see the fun side. The kids in my class made me so proud of them that term because they welcomed A into the fold with open arms. They asked a lot of very awkward questions about his accent and his background and stuff, but only in the way that kids are prone to do, so there was nothing that I'd have labeled bullying. But then once they got to know him a little bit more,

A was quite a popular young man, and around Halloween, some of them took it upon themselves to teach him all about it. They taught him about vampires, about zombies and werewolves, but the creature A found particularly enchanting was that of Dracula. I asked him why, and he said he liked the idea of staying up all night and being able to turn into something that could fly, i.e. a bat. It was adorable. Seeing him bonding with his peers and conquering his fears all at once. And having him really enthusiastic about a new thing was great for his English. Slightly odd that some of his first

advanced English words were things like undead and Transylvania, but whatever it takes, I suppose. Halloween that year was on a Friday, and after lunchtime, me and my class played dress-up. We put on masks and makeup and scary costumes and had a pretty good laugh about having an impromptu Halloween party. A. wore a pair of plastic fangs that I bought and a torn bin liner as a cape, and then he spent the whole time creeping around and hissing at the other kids from behind his shiny black plastic cape. They thought it was a riot, and once again A was a joy to watch. Then at the end of the day, he insisted on going home still wearing his cape and fangs. I told my boyfriend about it that weekend and agreed that A sounded like a really nice kid.

And then come Monday morning, I was excited to find out his little vampire routine had survived the weekend. But A wasn't in class that morning. We had to have the headmaster call his family at home to find out where he was. And it was only then we found out that he was sick. The headmaster asked his parents to make sure they informed us of illness in the future and they said, sure, fine, no problem. And then that was that. The next morning, A still hadn't returned to school, so his headmaster called his family again to ask for an update. Their English wasn't fantastic, but they could speak enough to get across that A still needed bed rest and would return to school

as soon as he was able. Again, this was no problem. But then after not showing up all week and not showing up the first two days of the next week, we started to worry. The headmaster placed a third call to A's family, but after he got the same response of, he's sick and needs bed rest, the headmaster asked if they had taken A to a doctor. His parents said no, they hadn't taken him to a doctor, but the reasons for not taking him were lost in translation. And that was the first time that the words, social services cropped up into the conversation, and things escalated from there. A full two weeks after A was absent from school, a social worker knocked on the door of his family home. The same conversation played out again, with the social worker being told that A was sick,

and the social worker asked if she could come inside to see him, but A's parents refused. The social worker said that she had the power to come back with a police officer, and they'd be arrested if they barred her access to A, but either they didn't understand what she was saying or they didn't care. In an ideal world, the police should have gone over to the house immediately to perform a wellness check, but red tape meant the social worker couldn't get a specially trained member of the community outreach team until a full three weeks after A's initial absence. And then, and only then, could they access A's family home, and what they found inside must have shaking them to their very foundations. A. was lying in his bed, nothing more than skin and bones.

There was evidence his family were trying to take care of him, but he was still dangerously ill, so after an ambulance was summoned, A was rushed to the hospital. And upon his arrival, there was a mad dash to find out what was wrong with him, because he really was on death's door with him being so skinny. But doctors soon worked out why he was so ill. A. hadn't eaten in nearly three whole weeks, and had only been given the bare minimum of water to keep him alive. Once they realized it was a case of starvation, A. was nursed back to health, and the police moved to arrest his parents. But from what I heard, A's parents behaved unlike any of the police officers had dealt with before, at least when it came to child neglect cases anyway. They seemed like good, hardworking, honest-to-god people, and they were absolutely devastated that their son was so ill.

But when the police asked why A was so malnourished, his parents couldn't understand what the issue was. In their view, they'd done the exact thing a local holy man had advised them to do, which was feed A as little as possible in order to starve the demonic spirit that had possessed his body. and I can only imagine how stunned the people were when they heard A's parents say that, but say it they did. They were absolutely steadfast in their belief that their son was possessed by a demonic entity, and the first clue that they'd gotten was his sudden and intense interest in the macabre. They went to that local holy man that I mentioned,

and he gave them their assessment, and then they did what they thought was best for their son. but in reality, it almost killed him. During the third week, when A was really starting to waste away, his parents arranged for the Holy Man to come over so he could give A an exorcism. I don't think it was the kind from the film, you know, with Holy Water being flung all over the show, and the power of Christ compels you being yelled in tandem. But they did something,

some kind of ritual designed to expel demonic forces from A's little body. but I guess from their perspective it didn't work, so the starvation diet only continued. Hearing all that was easily the most frighteningly shocking thing I'd heard in my career and nothing's topped it since. The thought of that poor little boy, lying in that bed, wasting away, and all while believing that there was some demon inside of him, it breaks my heart just as much as it sends a shiver down my spine. A's parents ended up going to prison. Not for long, but I know they got custodial.

custodial sentences while A went to live with a foster family in another part of the country. I'd so look forward to seeing him that Monday morning to see if he was still obsessed with Dracula. I had no idea that I was never going to see Little A ever again. My dad used to work for the foreign office and he met my mom while working in Peru. My mom's heritage is really important to her, so things like Peruvian food and music were a big part of my childhood growing up. We only visited once when I was a kid too, so in my late 20s, I decided that I'd fly over to visit relatives and explore my mother country a wee bit. I was driving on this little back road in the middle of nowhere, trying to find the little

town my relatives lived in when I suddenly saw these flashing lights in my rear view. The Peruvian police served pulling me over for some reason, so not wanting to cause trouble, I pulled over fast and got ready to use my very rusty Spanish. But instead of getting out of his car and walking over all slowly with his shades on like the yanks do in the movies, this police officer takes a defensive stance behind his open car door and then starts hailing me over his loudspeaker, telling me to stick my hands out of my window. Immediately I'm crapping myself, because I've barely seen a gun in real life before, let alone had one pointed in my direction.

And then as I'm shouting at this policeman that I'm unarmed and, terrified, he's acting like I'm some hardened criminal, telling me to shut my mouth as he slowly approaches my window. He's got his gun right in my face as he's trying to put cuffs on me one-handed, to the point that one flip of his trigger finger and my brains were going to be decorating the passenger seat. And then as he's doing that, even more police cars start turning up before they literally drag me out of the car and off to jail. Being in that jail cell was probably the single lowest point of my entire life. The police have been throwing around words like murderer, violator, and hurting children. And one even gasped and said, that's him, as I was led through the

station. I was having these daylight waking nightmares about being locked in a foreign country for something I didn't do, which were made all the worse by the occasional policeman coming to gop at me through the bars of my cell. I kept trying to tell them that I was British, and that I was only there on holiday, but they responded by asking if I thought they were stupid and to shut my mouth before they shut it for me, terrible stuff like that. And this goes on for a couple of hours, and I think my life is just over. And then out of the blue, someone unlocks my cell and tells me that there's been a mistake, and I'm suddenly free to go.

It was a very surreal experience walking out of that police station. I was shaking like a chihuahua, but the police. were a mix of either laughing at the mix-up or apologizing on a scale that did not cover what I'd been through. They acted like they'd ticketed the wrong car, not drag me into the station at gunpoint, but regardless, I was just glad to be on my way. I was relieved, but I was furious too. I just couldn't show it lest they find a reason to lock me up again. But before I left, they showed me a picture of the man that confused me with. He was a violent, wanted criminal, a truly dangerous individual and looking at his picture was like staring almost into a mirror.

Easily the most terrifying experience of my life and when I ask my relatives if I was entitled to any kind of compensation, they laughed before saying, no chance. Now I had an amazing time and I don't regret going, but I also haven't been back to Peru since and next time I'm getting my family to pick me up from the bloody airport. 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.