The Lets Read Podcast - 340: THE MOST EVIL KID I'VE EVER MET | 9 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 325

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

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

So I've got a story for you about a time when I was a young kid myself, and we encountered a strange child. I think this is genuinely the scariest thing that's ever actually happened to me, and if I get sick like a fever or anything, this is always the thing I have nightmares about if I'm going to have them. So I figured that I'd try and exercise them by writing to you about it. So this was back in the 90s, which was the best time to be a kid because it just was. This happened in like 97, and life was just simpler and more relaxed back then. Things really changed everywhere after the beginning of the 2000s. I think we all know why, and it's not just nostalgia talking. For me, things changed before that, this summer of 97, though.

And when I think back on it, I picture it like a movie. Me and my four buddies, three other guys, one girl, we didn't have some cool nickname like The Losers Club and IT or The Goods, Goonies, and I don't even remember if the kids were called the Goonies in that movie. But anyway, we didn't have a cool team name. We were just kind of the gang. It was me, James, Barry, Pat, and Kendall. That summer, we spent most of the time exploring our rural neighborhood, playing various made-up games and fields and forests, and just having a good time. We built a fort, we made a dam, we rode our bikes, we had picnics. We were all aged 8 to 10 and wanted the summer to last

forever, or at least until our corridors ran out at the arcade or got cold or one of us almost died. Unfortunately, it's the last one that brought an end to our summer of fun. We met the strange kid on a Monday. We knew him for five days. He said his name was Russell. At the time, we were finishing up our fort in the forest, so we let Russell tag along because he asked. Now, he seemed younger than us, and he said that he just moved into the area. He had a pretty cool new bike, which at the time I didn't find suspicious. And now when I look back on it, though, I think Russell probably stole that bike. You see, Russell was a super unkempt and scruffy kid, like his clothes were almost rags. I don't mean like some old Victorian kid, just typical normal

90s kid clothes, but they were super torn and dirty and hand me down. It made Russell look like he came from a family that my sister would have called dirt poor. Russell came to hang out with us every day that week and disappeared at dinner time like clockwork. Now when Barry and I mentioned Russell in front of my mom, she said that she thought that he must be part of the farming family who'd moved into the farm down the way. He wasn't, as it turns out, but it was a good guess. He was just some other random neighborhood kid who'd recently started hanging around. On Friday, Russell begged and pleaded it with us to come with him and see something cool that he'd found. We had plans to carve our initials into the trees that day, but it could wait,

so we let Russell lead us around the outskirts of some fields that we weren't really supposed to cut through. Eventually, after we crossed through a little area of trees we'd never been in and had to balance our way over a small stream, we reached the destination Russell had in mind. It was a massive sinkhole. I'd heard about the sinkhole in the area. We'd all been vaguely warned to stay away from it, but none of us actually knew where it was. Now Russell had led us right to it, and more to the point, he was sort of waxing poetic about how he lived down in the hole.

No, you don't, Kendall said to him. Russell insisted that yes, he did. He lived down in the sinkhole. According to him, you jumped into the sinkhole and it teleported you to his home, a magical place called Salt City, where they had archivaled. arcade machines on free play, and it was super awesome. And then he said he'd show us, as long as one of us jumped down the sinkhole. Of course, we all knew this was insane. None of us wanted to go near the sinkhole, let alone jump down in it, and we were way too old to believe in magical teleporters to places called Salt City. I guess Russell had heard the name Salt Lake City before and decided Salt City sounded like an appealing alternative.

But when you think about it, it's hardly the magical kingdom. of Tarabithia, is it? Salt City. I mean, come on. Now, anyways, Russell was hooting and hollering about the Salt City this and Salt City that, that, and demanding that we jumped down in that sinkhole to go there with him. At first, it didn't dawn on us to ask why Russell wanted to throw ourselves down a hole, which would most certainly result in our deaths. So we started playing along, grilling him about this Salt City as we walked around the edges of that sinkhole. Not too close, though, vaguely aware that there was a danger Russell might try and push one of us in. Why wouldn't he jump in, we asked.

Because he was saving the teleports for us, he said. How did he leave each day to come play with us? Magic, etc. And it was all just complete nonsense. And eventually Kendall whispered to me that maybe it was a bit dangerous that Russell wanted us to do this and we should probably tell an adult. I agreed, so I tried to get the other three to come with us. James had gotten real argumentative with Russell, though, and was trying to get him to jump down if he was so insistent.

I whispered to James that if Russell actually did it, we'd be in a lot of trouble, and that's when I think James finally grasped the gravity of the situation. Russell was trying to persuade us to do something extremely dangerous to ourselves, and any kid who would do that wasn't someone we wanted to be friends with, obviously. We decided to leave Russell to his little hole, and unfortunately, Russell got really angry and belligerent about this, and tried to grab James and actually drag him back towards that sinkhole. Like suddenly this little kid went all feral, deciding, I guess, that he was going to throw James down this sinkhole, and be responsible for whatever came after. I have no idea. I do know that I realize James was in severe and immediate danger,

because despite being younger than us, Russell was seriously. stronger than he looked. He was managing to actually drag James towards the sinkhole, and none of us wanted to rush in and get too close in case the hole started to widen. And so I did the only thing that I could think to do. I grabbed the nearest thing I could off the ground, which happened to be a small log, and threw it at Russell when I had an opening. And my aim was true. The log hit Russell square in the temple and sent him reeling and staggering back. So much so, in fact, that he'd staggered right towards the edge of the sinkhole itself. Thankfully, James managed to grab Russell's arm and pull him forward.

Russell collapsed onto the ground on the edge of the sinkhole, and we all crept over to see the damage. Russell seemed to be unconscious. His temple was bloody where the log had hit him, and a little bit of blood was also coming out of the corner of his mouth. And in that moment, we made a decision. This kid had been trying to persuade us to do something incredibly cruel, and then tried to potentially murder James.

We had no idea who he was or who his family was. On the other hand, we'd get in a whole mountain of trouble if we told anyone that we'd been to that sinkhole and it was our word against Russell's about what had happened. We decided to just leave him unconscious at the sinkhole and run away. Let me tell you guys, if you're ever faced with a choice between coming clean about something or living with the guilt of hiding it, always picked the former. I spent five years with a secret weighing on us with no idea if we'd killed Russell or if we could have saved him or anything. Five years of nightmares, guilt, and terror when Russell was

simply not around the next day, or the next, or the next. And by then we were all too scared to say anything. It became our secret. Something we all avoided me. mentioning to each other unless we absolutely had to. And by the time high school rolled around, we were absolutely certain that we'd killed a kid in the summer of 1997, and would be our secret that we took to the grave. After two years of high school, when most of us were in our junior year, the freshman class started and Russell was among them. We found out because this kid with a mullet and a scorpion's t-shirt came up to us during lunch and was like, hey, aren't you the kids that I had to fight with that one summer and nearly threw into a sinkhole?

So, uh, sorry about that, guys. Now, Russell's theory was that he had heat stroke or something that day because he has no idea why he tried to persuade us to jump down the sinkhole. He just genuinely enjoyed hanging with us that week, and that day he just says that he had this strong, severe compulsion to lead us to the whole and tell us that nonsensical story. And we'd spent the previous five years believing that we'd killed him and being too scared of getting in trouble to try and find out who he was. He'd spent the previous five years feeling so guilty that he'd never tried to find out who we were. And we all just kind of laughed about it

in the end and even hung out with Russell a bunch after that, although not often because he had his own group of friends and we were different ages. It was such a strange relief. I don't recommend keeping a dark secret like that to anyone, and like I said, if I have fever-dream nightmares, this is what I dream about. How much worse things could have been for all of us if any of the events had played out differently. How stupid of us it was to just leave Russell there. But also, I think most of all, I get haunted by the story Russell told us, how that day, maybe because of heat stroke, he just had this strong, pressing compulsion to tell us all to jump in that hole. It makes me wonder whether if we'd walked closer to that edge, we would have felt the pull of the abyss too.

So just to clarify, I hate Halloween. Now, I don't resent other people enjoying it. I'm not a total grinch like that. But every year when all those decorations start going up and the big bags of fun-sized candies start appearing in the stores, I'm reminded of something I've tried a long time to forget. I used to live in an apartment in the city, and I'd spend a lot of my time sitting at my computer whenever I wasn't at work or at the gym. My desk was right next to a window on my left, and sometimes I'd find myself looking out of it

and watching the city just go by. I wasn't a creep about it. I didn't stare at anybody or anything. It was more like people watching, wondering where folks have been, where they're going, and what kind of lives they lead. I saw people walking around during the hospital. holidays in their hats and coats carrying gifts or trays of covered food, I saw all the new college kids moving in around September, wheeling office chairs along the sidewalk with bags

slung over their shoulders. And then around Halloween, depending on which day it fell on, I'd see costume kids walking the streets and collecting candy and admiring each other's costumes. And despite what I said earlier about hating the holiday, I actually used to really dig it. I'd carve one of those miniature pumpkins to put on my window sill and hang a small happy Halloween banner above it. I'd put a bowl of candy down near the front door as well, something for the kids to help themselves too. And it quickly became one of my favorite times of the year, and I'd sometimes find myself window watching for that first hour after dark, standing there with a beer or a cup of coffee and just checking out what the costumes the kids were wearing that year. Now, back in 1989, it was a Batman year in a big, big way.

The movie had just come out that summer, so I knew that I was going to see a lot of Bruce Waynes walking around down there. But the night itself was beyond anything I imagined. There was like an entire army of little Batman's out there, only occasionally broken up by the odd Nicholson-era Joker with a purple blazer and green hair. You got yourself your usual suspects, your vampires, your zombies, your ones, your werewolves. But that year, the Batman dominated. So maybe around seven in the evening, I was done window watching and I was back at my desk doing a little work prep. And since it was all prep,

sometimes I'd done a million times, I found it all very boring. And then as my eyes started to wander, I caught sight of a group of trick-or-treaters walking past my window. And out of habit, I turned to check out their costumes and was surprised to see a group of four kids, maybe 12 to 13, and without a single Batman among them. There was an Indiana Jones, a pretty good one too, but the one that really caught my attention was the kid dressed as John Rambo, complete with a black tank top and red headband. I was thinking, how the hell did a kid manage to catch a total gore fest? But then I remember my own 12-year-old self moving mountains just to get my hands on a copy of that Texas chainsaw masker movie. And then right as I'm reminiscing about watching Leatherface going absolutely bat-poop

crazy at the end of the movie, I see this dark gray van pull up next to the kids. I couldn't see the driver, but I saw the kids stop and look over towards the window where he was obviously talking to them. Seconds later, the driver got out of his seat, slammed the door closed, and walked around to the double doors at the back. The kids followed him, each of them looking curious as the guy kind of yapped away like he was trying to sell them something. And he looked normal, I guess, totally unremarkable. But as he's standing there talking to them and pointing towards the rear of his van, I get the sudden and terrible feeling that something awful was about to happen. I guess it was because of how cartoonishly suspicious it looked, like it legitimately looked like a

seen from some cheesy after-school special, which has the theme, Stranger Danger. But I guess that's what also gave me pause to look. I didn't know who that guy was, but those kids might, and it was entirely possible that he was one of their dads or uncles or something, there to actually get them after trick-or-treating. There were also four kids and only one of him, so unless he was some kind of ninja, there was no way that he was throwing all four in the back of that van, and it was unlikely he was dumb enough to even. try. It was also right at the side of a normally busy road with apartments and houses on either side and with the occasional car driving past too. So unless this guy was a complete maniac, I couldn't

see him trying to abduct four kids in such a busy, well-lit place. But no matter how much I tried to rationalize what I was seeing, no matter how much I told myself I was being paranoid or a scaredy cat, I couldn't help but shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong. I managed to talk myself down a little, mentally at least. But when the guy opened up the rear of his van and looked like he was showing something to those kids, I actually turned in my chair and picked up my desk phone ready to call 911. And there was still that voice in my head saying, He's not going to grab one of them, he can't.

You're just being paranoid. And part of me was totally convinced that he was going to drive off without any sort of incident, and I was going to turn back to my chair feeling like an idiot. But there was this other competing boys, too, one that said, get ready to make a note of that license plate. And then, as suspected, the unthinkable happened. As the kid in the front stepped forward, like he was almost trying to get a closer look at whatever was in the back of that van,

the guy pounced. In what seemed like one fluid motion, the man picked the kid up off of his feet and then dragged him into the van. The kid's three friends ran off, just turned tails and ran. And as I hit 911 and brought my phone to my ear, I tried to get an angle so I could see the van's license plate. It took off so fast I wasn't able to read all of it, but I told the dispatcher everything that I'd just seen and was able to describe the guy in his van in quite a bit of detail. The dispatcher woman said that she had officers en route, and that I

could relax because the police would do everything they could. And that calmed me down a little at the time, but I guess the clue was right there in front of me, because of the cops really did do everything they could. It wasn't nearly enough. The first missing person's poster went up just a couple of days later, and every single time I saw one, it was agony. The picture they used of the kid was obviously one from happier times and thinking that he might never be that happy again just about killed me

because I saw the moment that changed his life forever. Now, I don't know if he was a little bit of him. he was ever found. I hope he was, but part of me thinks that he stayed missing and was eventually declared dead. I later read that in America, a kid goes missing every 40 seconds and that almost half a million are reported missing every year. Most of them are returned home to their parents after they wandered off and got lost, but a large percentage of those that go missing are never reunited with their family. And I hope it wasn't the case. But sometimes I think that that kid was one of them, and on top of messing up my one chance to keep him safe, I got a front row seat to see

pure evil leave its mark, not just on me, but on the whole world. So I have a Halloween trick-or-treating story for you about an utterly terrifying child. No worries if you decide to run it outside of the Halloween season, though, because it takes place actually in February. So that's what made it so eerie at first. The knock on the door, Then the little kid standing there in some ghost costume saying, trick-or-treat, and holding out his battered pumpkin pail. A lone kid trick-or-treating and a classic ghost costume is kind of creepy on Halloween anyway, but at least it's supposed to be. This was a Friday night in early February, 9 p.m. exactly. Now, in that moment, I was just a bit speechless.

I couldn't see what the kid looked like under his little sheet ghost costume, but he was the height in big. build of a small six-year-old. He sounded like a boy, and I just kind of dumbly repeated, trick-or-treat? At him, and he nodded enthusiastically and said, yeah, and shook his little bucket in such a very endearing way. And when he shook it, I could see that he had some other candy in there, I guess, from my nearest neighbors. See, I lived in a very rural suburb property when this all went down, and the houses weren't super close together. But, far enough apart that a kid could feasibly walk around the small neighborhood trick-or-treating. At least that's how the kids did it on Halloween.

I hadn't really dealt with one in February before, nor one lone kid this little who wasn't actually accompanied by his parents. I told him to just wait on the porch, and then closed the screen door and went back inside, and pulled up some Reese's pieces and put that bag inside of his bucket. And the little kid thanked me, extremely politely, actually, and then said, see you tomorrow mister oh you would would you i thought to myself and i spent the next day occasionally sort of laughing to myself at what a clever little scam this kid had cooked up it was a friendly neighborhood who was going to say no to an adorable tiny sheet ghost trick-or-treating in february

and it was so silly and so obvious that it was almost surprising to me that more kids don't try this and by telling me see you tomorrow he'd given me fair warning to make a sure that I had a fresh stock of candy in. And I made sure to grab extra while I was at the store, actually. And it vaguely occurred to me that as a guy who lived alone in his mid-30s, giving candy to strange lone kids could probably end up being an issue. And I figured as long as the kid stuck to the porch in full view of the neighbors, and since everyone in the area knew each other, it would be fine to give the kid a little bit of candy for his little scam. And besides, my girlfriend and stayed over some nights, and she was just away for the next while.

But I didn't expect this scam to even last until she got back. I figured that there couldn't be any harm in actually entertaining it. But boy, was I wrong, but in ways that I couldn't ever predict. Now that night, at 9 p.m. on the dot, the doorbell rang and the little sheep ghost kid stood there. Took a treat, mister. And then he held up that pail and shook it. He had a decent hall already, it looked like, although nowhere close to what he'd have gotten on Halloween. I laughed, nodded my approval, and then dropped some candy into his bucket,

and he thanked me and left with another, See you tomorrow, mister. Now this ritual repeated itself for the next week, and by the time the following Friday came around and the doorbell went to ring at 9 p.m. sharp, I was starting to get a little frustrated, actually. My girlfriend was set to come back into town the next day, and I had to actually get her from the airport, so I needed to be up at like 4 a.m. And I'd also somehow convince myself that this kid's candy scam, no matter how sweet and endearing it actually was, would last exactly seven days and be over by the time my girl got back. I hadn't mentioned the weird ghost kid to her and our calls, and now it felt kind of odd having to explain that a kid was trick-or-treating at her house almost every night in February.

and yeah, it had been happening while you were away, and no, I didn't mention it because reasons, I guess. Really, I could have just explained exactly this, that I expected the kid to get bored before he did, but I was looking for reasons to be annoyed that night. Now, when I opened the door, the kid said as usual, trick-or-treat, and held up his bucket. And when he shook it, I saw that he had a whole bunch of candy this time.

Now, I rolled my eyes and said something about how the scam was clearly paying off, buddy. And the kid made us sort of confused, huh? And against my better judgment, it'd cause me to snap a little. I told him that it had been cute and funny to start with, but that I'd give him a bunch of candy so he could at least respect my intelligence and acknowledge that it's an actual scam. And I told him that you don't trick or treat in February and asked him to confirm that he knew it wasn't actually Halloween, right? And when I asked this question, The kid then lowered his bucket and then lowered his head like he was sad. And through his little ghost costume, I just heard him mutter that I wasn't supposed to ask that.

Now, a little bit of a chill ran down my spine as I suddenly realized that this felt like I was in some type of R-slash-no-sleep story. God damn, if only it had been some kind of supernatural curse story, then maybe I wouldn't be dealing with the injuries that I have to this day. Instead, the kid looked back up at me through his little ghost costume and began laughing in a way that was clearly tormenting and cruel. And then I heard a creek from the porch on my right, and another much older kid stepped around the side of the house and said, You don't ask that because I said so. And then before I could react, this tall, wiry teenagers started punching me with some kind of brass knuckle made out of a chain. And the blows were agony. I immediately fell to the ground and then took a flurry of these kicks.

And the whole time that obnoxious ghost child I could hear laughing with some type of glee. I've been so blindsided by the attack that I hadn't even thought to yell or scream. And now I finally did. And the teen attacking me responded by stomping on my spine, kicking me in the ribs, and leaping off of the porch. I vaguely saw the little ghost kid climb onto the teenager's back like some type of piggyback ride, and then they run off into the darkness. And as quick as I could, I started to drag myself to my feet and called the cops.

They got there surprisingly fast for where I was and eventually accompanied me to the local hospital so I could get checked out. I had a couple broken ribs, and my spine's never been quite right since that attack, I think. The cops said that it was the third. similar report of kids doing this in the county. And when we checked with my immediate neighbors, none of them had actually been visited by the ghost kid or his violent older brother. And so it seemed like the whole thing had been targeted at my place. At first, I was completely baffled, because the kids didn't steal anything. The older one just beat me violently and then they both left, and the only thing they'd really gotten out of it was just a little bit of free candy.

Now I kept harassing the cops, saying maybe I was in danger, maybe the kids would come back, and eventually a detective did come to visit me and told me that he wasn't strictly supposed to let me know this, but he would if it would set my mind at ease. Basically, the working theory was that it was some kind of gang initiation. The teenager who beat on me would accompany the little kid until their target challenged them on the fact that it wasn't Halloween, and then there'd be an attack, and the kid. the attacker would be initiated into said gang. And from what the cops were working on,

the attacker in each case had been a different guy, but the ghost kid, they thought that that was the same little kid each time. The detective told me on the download that they suspected that the ghost kid was the gang leader's own son and supposedly as much of a psycho as his old man. So this class act was getting his own little kid to lead gang initiations, and I'd just been an unknowing schlub who was in the wrong place.

place at the wrong time. Now, I never really heard any more about it or any more reports of this kind of gang initiation, so maybe they realized that it drew too much attention. I guess I've got to be thankful that they settled on something a little childish and not actually fatal, instead of the usual murderer guy in your in kind of thing. On the other hand, it kind of sucks to think about kids being initiated into these gangs in the first place, even older teenagers. But when I think about that Ghost Kid laughing as I got pounded on and beaten, there's no doubt in my mind that this kid's mind was already long gone into the darkness. And I pity anyone who encounters him as he becomes an adult. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial stress can impact us in ways

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That's better, h-elp.com slash read. When I was in eighth grade and with Halloween fast approaching, me and my middle school buddies brought up the subject of trick-or-treating. Now at age 12, we felt like we were right on. the cut-off point for it because when we got to high school, doing stuff like dressing up seemed like it'd get us very little candy and a whole lot of bullying. And then as we were talking about it, it suddenly hit us that 2002 would be our last ever year of trick-or-treating. Now, I'll save you all the boredom of a long poetic diatribe about growing pains and putting away childish things. But I mean

it when I say that we were bummed out as hell. Yet that only motivated us to go all out with our costumes so we could truly make that last night of candy mining one to remember. I didn't have the hair to dress up as Aragorn or Legolas, so I put together a hobbit costume consisting of a brown jacket, shorts, and a green blanket that I turned into a cape. I also got my hands in a pair of novelty human feet slippers, which really tied the costume together and made it look like I had giant hairy hobbit feet. Now my buddy Chris dressed as Harry Potter, which was easily the same. the best costume because he had all the Gryffindor merch to make it look legit.

And then our two buddies Richie and Matt came as Spider-Man and Shrek, respectively, with Matt painting his entire damned head with green face paint and even dyeing his hair green too. And he got a gold star for effort. But without the bald head or Shrek ears and being skinny as a rake, he just looked kind of hilarious. Now, we all met at my house at around 5.30 and then after putting some finishing touches on costumes, my mom grabbed her camera and snapped a picture for posterity. And that picture ended up being something that I deeply cherish, even all these years later. We look so young and happy, but there's a sort of naivety about us, too, because little did we know. This was the very last

time we'd all be in the same place, at the same time. We just didn't know it yet. We headed out onto the streets at around 6 p.m. And while Halloween was always a big deal around our neighborhood, that year it felt extra special. Whole platoons of costume kids were being let up and down the sidewalk by their chaperones, and almost every single lawn was trying to out-spooky its neighbors with increasingly extravagant decorations. And if our business was candy, then business was good.

People were so impressed with our costumes that wherever we went, we get at least a handful of goodies or two. even if in one case it was just a bunch of sugar-free candy and a toothbrush from someone who must have surely been a dentist. But it made for an awesome night, and we covered almost the entire neighborhood in almost two hours. But even when we'd hit up probably every house we could and we had enough candy to last us till Thanksgiving, we still didn't feel like calling it quits. We wandered the streets, admiring costumes and lawn decorations, and talking about all the cool horror movies our parents wouldn't let us.

see for at least another three or four years. And the feeling that we had that night is still something I appreciate about Halloween, even after all these years. But it's a holiday that comes with a lot of unhappy memories, and all because about what happened at around 8.30 to 8.45 that night. Since Matt and Richie lived out in the sticks, their parents were due to pick them up from my place at 9. So right around 8.30, Richie suggested that we make our way back so they wouldn't leave their rides waiting. Chris seemed kind of bummed out that we were calling it at night, but we were all bummed out because we knew what it meant. It was the last time that we'd all get to spend his kids together because in a year's time, we'd all be young adults as they were calling it at the time.

And things were changing. I felt it. We all felt it. And it sucked. I didn't give Chris's bad mood a second thought, though. Not till we reached the place that we usually parted ways, and he just kept on following us back to my place. I figured that he might have been trying to catch a ride with Matt or Richie, but when I asked him, Chris said that he wasn't planning on going home. And he says, there's got to be some more houses that still have candy. And explained that he wanted to get his last piece of Halloween candy ever, like a kind of ceremonial thing to end our night.

And I thought that was kind of cool. But then Chris asked if I'd head back out with him once Matt and Richie had gotten their rides home. And I was pretty beat, so I just wanted to chill, eat some candy, and see if there was anything scary on TV. Besides, we had school in the morning, and I didn't want to stay up too late. Chris was always relaxed, a reasonable sort of kid. But on this occasion, he did not react well to me declining his offer. And he says, dude, are you for real? This is our last Halloween ever.

And you're just going to sit on your ass and watch TV? I told him I was tired. And even Richie responds, Yeah, dude, how much candy do you need? But Chris insisted. He said it only take like 30 minutes more, but then it was my turn to insist, especially on the fact that people wouldn't appreciate us

knocking on their doors after 9 o'clock. And we started off on an argument, but then Chris cut it short to say, Fine, whatever. If you're going to be an asshole, nothing I can do about it. And this was just really, really strange behavior for Chris. I saw it. Matt and Richie saw it too.

And at the time, I figured that Chris just didn't want the night to end. But these days, I think it was a sign of what was to come, and we just couldn't see it yet. And as Chris marched off, I yelled after him, asking where he was headed, and he mentioned a street that we hadn't covered yet, maybe 15 minutes walk away. And then after Matt responds, the hell's gotten into him. We went inside to just revel in our candy halls before Richie's parents showed up. Now, Matt's mom followed closely behind, and then after managing to catch a little of the original Halloween movie on TV, I just went upstairs and hit the hay.

I thought about Chris, about him knocking on those doors alone. And first I thought that I might have missed a place, that maybe a couple of houses had been like, here, take the rest of this candy I don't want my kids rotting their teeth. And I could see him the next. morning in school saying something like, dude, you missed out big time. But the next day, I woke up to a text message Chris had just sent after midnight, and all it said was, Hello, meet pliers. I'm thinking, what the hell? Hello, meet pliers? And I texted it back

saying, lo, what the hell does that mean? And since we should have both been getting up for school around that time, I figured that it wouldn't be long before I got a reply. But Chris never texted back. I caught up with Matt and Ritchie over lunch and asked if either had spoken to Chris that morning, and neither of them had heard from him, so I just brought up the weird message. But Matt and Ritchie figured it was Chris's idea of some joke or something. And I had to wait until I was out of school to call him, and after getting a voicemail a few times, Chris's mom answered the phone to tell me that he was sick.

And my first thought was something like, stupid idiot, ate so much candy that he made himself sick. and I texted Richie and Matt to let them know. And we figured that we'd see him the coming Monday in school once his blood sugar had lowered from critical to just warning. But he didn't show up then either. I tried giving him another call, but his phone was off. And then when I tried Chris at home, his mom told me he was still sick

and she'd get him to give me a call when he was able. Now, I might have been 12, but I wasn't completely stupid. I still believe Chris was sick in some way, but I also had the feeling that, there was something his mom wasn't telling me, and there was more to it than just some illness. I brought up my suspicions with Matt and Richie at school, and by that point, and they were also starting to think that something was going on. We hadn't heard from Chris all weekend, and we still hadn't spoke to him by Tuesday.

So I figured that whatever was going on at home, it wasn't something that he wanted to talk about. And the best thing we could do was just give him a space and wait until the time came when he needed us, like really needed us, to be his friend. And Wednesday was the only day that I didn't call or text Chris, only because of what Matt said about giving him some space, but it still sucked. I felt like I was losing a friend, so that next day, Thursday, I rode over to Chris's place on my bike and called his cell from outside where I could see his bedroom. I figured that it'd just be all like other times, that it'd either ring out or it'd be switched off. But for the first time in days, Chris actually picked up the phone. I waited for him to say hello or what do you want or something like that, but he didn't say a thing.

He just sort of stayed quiet until I asked, Chris? Are you there? He still didn't say anything, but I could hear him breathing, and he did the same thing when I asked if he was okay. He didn't say a damned word. He just sort of listened to me, and then he hung up. In those first few moments after he hung up, I was kind of heartbroken. I didn't realize it at the time, but something much large. and much more sinister was going on. But in the moment, all I could think was that he just

sort of didn't want to be friends with me anymore. I figured I'd screwed up one of my best childhood friendships because I wanted to eat candy and watch movies and have me feeling like a big bag of crap. I didn't know what else to do, so I just tried calling Chris again. But when I felt a lump forming in my throat, I hit call N because I didn't want to sound like some sissy while I was talking to him. But then right as I looked up at his window one last time, I saw the curtain start to kind of twitch. Someone took hold of one of the curtain, and then after peeling it back, I saw Chris looking out from the dark of his bedroom. Only he didn't actually look like Chris anymore. Even from down his driveway, I could see how pale and gaunt he looked, and it was like his first time seeing the world

outside. He looked all around at first, like he was almost scanning for something, and then these big, blank eyes locked on me. I raised a hand, intending to wave it, but I remember stopping short and just sort of holding my hand up to see if he'd react, and he didn't. He just stared at me, like he wasn't even blinking up there, and then he disappeared behind that curtain again. I remember just sitting there on my bike seat sort of staring up at Chris's window in a kind of daze. In the space of just a couple of minutes, I went from being worried to heartbroken to just straight up scared. Whatever was happening to Chris, it was serious, and I could tell that much from the way he looked.

And you can call it intrusive if you want, but I'd be damned if I didn't try and find out what it was. I tried everything I could think of. I tried calling him a bunch more. I tried talking to his mom, and I even got my own mom to call her, thinking that maybe she might tell another grown-up what was really going on. But all Chris's mom would say was some variation on, he's sick. He's getting bed rest, and he'll be out of school until he's well again.

And at the time, I thought that my mom might be in on it, too, but by that I mean that Chris's mom had told her the truth and that she was hiding the truth from me for some reason. And I guess it was at an age when I was acutely aware that grown-ups didn't tell kids everything. And sometimes it was just a version of the truth and not the whole truth, if that makes sense. And so I got fixated on that until I asked my mom, and it wasn't until she actually got mad at me. that I started to believe her. It was only then that I brought up Chris's Hello Meat Pliers' messages, how I was worried that it wasn't just sick

and that something worse was happening. Mom gave Chris's family another call, and this was maybe a week after the first, so I figured that she might get an update of some kind. Well, she did get an update. And the update was that Chris and his family were leaving town. And when she told me, she said that there was a chance

that Chris had stopped talking to us, as in me, Richie, and Matt, because he was upset about the move. She said that people handle stuff like that in weird ways sometimes, and that sometimes people choose to ignore their emotions instead of confronting them. I asked why Chris's mom would lie like that and say that he was sick, and she told me that parents protect their kids by any means necessary sometimes, and that a little white lie sometimes spares a whole lot of heartache. but it wasn't just a little white lie. I'd seen his face.

So whatever was going on with Chris, I knew that it was serious. Mom said that I'd come to accept it as time moved on, but it didn't, and I never have. I think something happened to Chris, that night that he went off trick-or-treating on his own, and I think it was so bad that he and his family either chose to leave town or just straight-up had to. I tried looking him up on Facebook a while back, but he doesn't seem to have any kind of social. media, and I figured enough time might have passed that he'd be willing to talk about it, but even if he is, I couldn't find him anywhere. Sometimes I think about that weird text message he sent too, and in my darkest moments,

I think he wrote, Hello, Meat Plyers, because he was using predictive text and a very terrified frenzy. And what he'd really meant to text was, help me, please. So I wanted to write to you today to finally share a story that happened to me when I was a little kid back in the 1990s. It caused a big rift in my family at the time for reasons that you'll soon see, and it involved my single aunt, who was my dad's sister and her daughter Serena, my cousin. My parents weren't married when they had me,

and for a long time they said they didn't need some official piece of paper to show their commitment to one another. Well, eventually, I guess they did, in fact, need some official piece of paper, for some reason or another, so they decided that if they were going to get married, they'd do it properly. I was a little bridesmaid to my own mom, and it was a little girl's dream. A whole day felt like some magic fairy tale. The only part of the memory that I have that feels more like a nightmare is remembering my cousin

Serena lurking on the outskirts of the wedding, dressed in black and sort of scowling at me. I remember her whispering to me that it physically hurt her to be inside the church for the service, and then later at the reception, telling me that she was never going to get married, and people who got married were lame, and she'd never commit to one person except for her one true lord, Satan. Serena was a 15-year-old emo teen. I was a six-year-old princess wannabe,

and so I believed every word my older and therefore obviously smarter cousin told me. Also, mom and dad had told me that I had to become friends with Serena because I was going to be staying with her, Auntie June while they went on their honeymoon, so it was like Serena would be my sister for a while. Serena had been there when they said this, and she acted very excited and happy about it, and didn't mention Satan or how being in church hurt her soul or any of the insanity that was to follow. Her dressing in black was a bit of an eccentricity, my dad said, a word that I didn't know at the time, but I kind of liked. And he said that Auntie June had been like that when she was a kid,

too, and now Auntie June, was the nicest, sweetest person we knew, wasn't she? I agreed. Auntie June was lovely and nice and sweet, and I remembered Serena being nice and sweet too, and she hadn't worn black or even scowled the other times that I'd met her. And this was a recent thing. At the wedding, I asked her if it had always burned her soul to go inside a church, like she was claiming, and she said yes. But I knew that she had been at my baptism when I was a baby, and I never heard about her getting burned then. She told me that the only reason she didn't catch fire at the wedding is because she'd performed sacred rights to protect her soul from God.

I didn't really understand any of this at the time, but I knew that I'd been taught that God was good and loving, so I was very confused why Serena would be scared of him. I think even at six, I knew she was lying to some degree and maybe just sort of play acting. I definitely didn't take it seriously or think it was. was scary, or even think much of it at all, though. I thought she was cool and I was excited to spend the next nearly three weeks with her and Auntie June in their house on Millbrook Road, where Auntie June and Serena promised me they'd made me an exciting bedroom that would be mine for the whole time that I was there. I'd previously been told that I was going to share with Serena, so I was a little

bit disappointed that I'd have my own room instead, but when I mentioned this to Mom and Dad, mom just said that Auntie June had told them it would be for the best if I had the guest room. The first couple of days with my aunt and cousin were just normal, fun days. I either spent time being fussed over by Auntie June or Serena when Auntie June had to go out to work. It was summer vacation, but not for Auntie June, obviously. And June sometimes worked in the evenings and then Serena would have to babysit me sort of. June said that she'd try to switch to as many day shifts as possible, but there would be some nights when she wasn't there. It was on the third day staying there that I had my first overnight with Serena, and that's when she dimmed the living room lights and told me to scoge in close and listen real good, because she had to tell me something important.

I listened, excited to hear what she was going to say, and she told me their house was haunted. Now, I assume this was some kind of game because mom and dad had told me many times that ghosts weren't real, so I played along and acted shocked. Serena didn't seem to think that I was taking it very seriously, though, so she tried to stress how scary and dangerous it was. When he kept giggling and talking about ghosts that I'd seen in cartoons, she switched it up, telling me that ghosts were working for demons, and of course demons came from hell, so I had to take these seriously,

otherwise Satan would claim my soul. I reminded her that she told me that she'd pledged her soul to Satan at the wedding, and she called me a smart ass. And then she got all very serious and told me that I had to really believe her now. She said that she'd pledged her soul to Satan in order to save me, because someone, she didn't know who, was planning to sacrifice me to the demons. And eventually this started to upset me a little bit, and I guess Serena got the reaction.

she wanted, because the more upset I got, the more she continued. I don't remember the exact details, but she started telling me some very dark horror movie things, how the demons were going to take me down to hell and slowly peel my skin off, eat my soul, and it would be because someone had sold my soul to Satan. Serena said that she pledged her own soul to Satan to protect me, and that's why she avoided churches and why she dressed in black. And then she showed me a pentagram that she'd drawn on her arm in Sharpie and told me it was the dark Lord's mark. It was all very silly, but you know when you're a little kid and an older kid is trying to upset you so it does, even though you don't really believe them or care.

I think that's what happened, at first anyway. And then Serena said it was really important that we work out who had sold my soul to Satan because the only way we could have both of our souls would be to break their pact. That night, Serena let me stay up too late, so I was overly tired anyway. I remember I had nightmares and kept waking up afraid of bumps in the night and ghosts in the house. I was a really rational, grounded child, but even I was starting to wonder if there was something to Serena's story. After all, why would she be lying about this? Over the next few days, I spent a lot of time with Auntie June. Serena wasn't around much, and when she was, her and Auntie June kept having a lot of

arguments that escalated into screaming. Whenever these would begin, June would send me into the other room to watch TV or ask me to do some chore in the garden, but I heard enough to hear Serena accusing June of being wicked, evil, and controlling. And the next time Serena babysat for me during one of June's night shifts, she told me that her mother was an evil woman who mistreated her, and that she thought that it was her who'd sold my soul to Satan. Now I found this very hard to leave because June was lovely and very kind to me, and she could be pretty scary when she was arguing with Serena. That was true. I told Serena my skepticism, while also trying not to offend her, and she looked upset and said that she understood because Satan's minions are very convincing.

It still confused me that Serena had claimed to be Satan's minion at the wedding, but I guess I was too young to maybe start triple-guessing theories about who was behind with demonic pact, especially when I didn't really believe in any of it other than that people were mad at each other and wanted me to be scared about something. And just over a week it passed when Serena babysat me again, and this time she told me that she had definitive proof that Auntie June had been the one to sell my soul to Satan. In the last few days, I'd spent a lot of time with June out of the house, and she'd even taken me to the store the day before and bought me a new toy,

so I was pretty convinced that she hadn't sold my soul. sold to Satan. I also hadn't seen any evidence of the ghosts or demons that apparently infested the house according to Serena. But again, she explained that this was because she'd signed her own pact with Satan to protect us. I had overheard June and Serena arguing about me, though. Serena had accused her of giving me a lot of attention and trying to get her claws into me, which did sound scary, admittedly. It was very hard to know who to believe when, in my eyes, they were both adults. Obviously, now I know that I should have just told June what was going on right away, but, hey, I was a kid. And so that night, Serena took us into Auntie June's bedroom, which is where we weren't supposed to go.

It was always locked, but Serena knew a way to pick the lock, using magic, she said. Although when she told me to look away so my soul wouldn't be corrupted, I saw her slip a key out of her pocket. Inside, she showed me the evidence. June had horror novels on her bookshelf, and on a board in her room there was an old Polaroid photo of Auntie June, dressed as a witch, standing next to a devil who looked suspiciously like my dad in a Halloween costume. Serena insisted this was real, photographic evidence of her mother at an old coven meeting where she'd committed herself to Satan, though. And I was less impressed by the horror novels. Some of the covers were generally very scary to me, and I didn't understand how someone like Auntie June would want or allow things like that in the house. I'm really not quite sure why this was the deciding piece of evidence for me that began to sway me,

but it was. I've been so rational and sensible up till then, but seeing all that terrifying imagery sitting on June's bookshelf, somehow Serena was able to persuade me that it did in fact prove there was a evil side to Auntie June. I still didn't believe any of the Satan nonsense, or about the packs, or selling my soul or anything. like that. I think Serena knew that, though, because she changed the angle of her story a bit, and now it was more about stopping Auntie June from doing bad things to us in general, and that she was secretly a wicked abusive woman and that we had to help her purify her soul. We left the bedroom and Serena locked it up behind her, again making me look away to save my soul

while she did the magic. And then she took me into my bedroom. We never went into Serena's bedroom either. She said that it was because that's where the ghost congregated, and it would scare me to see all the things that she had to surround herself with due to her selfless pact with Satan. Serena told me to sit on the bed and wait while she went to her room and got something. And while she was gone, I heard some bangs and crashes in the hallway that I think were supposed to sound like ghosts, but were clearly just Serena. And then eventually she returned and had a small baggie with three berries in it. She held them up and looked me very seriously in the face and told me that these were holy berries, blessed by God, and that we needed to make sure Auntie June ingested them. But because I always did the cooking with her lately, I had to slip them into her food somehow.

Serena made me promise that I would. She'd made me swear on my life in the lives of my mother and father. I kept my toes crossed and swore. And now, like I said, I wasn't a stupid kid. I knew that whatever Serena was asking me to do here wasn't. a great idea. I also knew that Berries could be dangerous. The part that I couldn't really get my head around is why Serena would want me, her cousin, who she was supposed to love, to harm her mother who she was supposed to love. It didn't really compute to me that they could be really dangerous,

and that's why I didn't take things as seriously as I should have. Also, I was like six, remember? I wish I could say, in Serena's defense here, that I really can't be sure that she intended for me to go ahead with it. I want to remember there being some hesitance that she was unsure, maybe told me to just do it if I was able to, et cetera, but I can't. She was very strongly adamant that I'd do it. Like I said, she made me swear. She told me specifically to put them into the fruit salad that Auntie June made, which only she ate because there would be blueberries in there. But she also told me that if anything happened, she wouldn't tell me what. She just said that I'd know, then I had to say that it It was me who gave Auntie June the berries, otherwise it would undo the breaking of the pact.

So Serena had very clearly set me up to get in trouble and then coached me into taking the blame. The problem was simply that I didn't know how serious it all was. What I did was wait until late that night when everyone had gone to bed, and then I went to use the bathroom and took the baggie with me. And my plan was to simply flush them away and then tell Serena that I'd done what she asked, and nobody would be any of the wiser. And I even thought that I was really smart because I thought ahead, and knew that if I just dropped the berries down the toilet, they might not flush away.

So I crushed them in my hand and wiped the mulch off and flush that away. And I even tasted a little, little taste of the juice on my tongue, just in case they had actually been blueberries all along. And they were not. And then I made sure I scrub my hands very clean of any evidence of the purple staining and went to bed. And the next thing I clearly remember is waking up in a hospital with these terrible, terrible stomach pains and barely being able to breathe. And then I remember drifting in and out of consciousness and doctors and nurses in a panic, and at one point, Auntie June pacing back and

forth asking me if I'd eaten anything I shouldn't have. And at this point, I was just about coherent enough to tell her the story about Serena and the berries, even though I felt awful telling on my cousin. I told her I hadn't eaten them, though, and just crushed it and licked it a little bit, so I didn't think that's why I was so sick. Again, memories continue to be vague here, but I remember Auntie June and Serena screaming at each other in the hospital, and then another voice yelling at both of them. I remember having to drink some disgusting black liquid and everyone acting a little relieved, even though I didn't feel like I was getting any better at all. I spent a couple of days very sad and scared and struggling in that hospital until my parents

came back early from their honeymoon, and I'd never been more relieved to see them. So yeah, my cousin Serena tried to get me to poison my aunt with deadly nightshade, and because I was too sensible and serious a kid to let her convince me to do it, but too naive to believe that it could be anything too dangerous, I ended up giving myself some very minor deadly nightshade poisoning. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. I could have ended myself or worse, I could have ended up killing my aunt. And I'm not sure that I would have ever been able to forgive myself for that.

No matter how much people tell me that it wouldn't have been my fault, I'm not sure that I would have been able to accept that as true. One thing that was true, though, was that Serena had tried to convince me to poison her mother, and her actions had led me to getting mildly poisoned instead. So, of course, everyone wanted to know why and what the hell had happened. I didn't really follow or understand what was going on at the time being so young. I just recovered in the hospital and was told that I wouldn't be seeing Serena or Auntie June again. Later this changed, but that's what Dad told me.

Pretty angry at the time, and I think a part of me had become scared of Auntie June after all the things Serena had told me in the horror novels on her bookshelf, because I just remember being glad that I wouldn't have to deal with any of that again while I was focused on just getting better. And here's how everything eventually played out, though. It turned out that Auntie June had been severely struggling with Serena for about a year. Out of the blue, she'd gone from a well-behaved and kind girl into a monster. June was barely coping with her, but didn't want to admit it to anyone in case they judged her.

She knew that Serena had always genuinely cared about her little cousin, so she thought that me going to stay there during my parents' honeymoon might heal the rift between them, and instead it made things worse. My dad was extremely angry at his sister for withholding how serious Serena's behavior had become. Apparently Serena had used physical violence against June shortly before my stay, and all dad could focus on was the fact that I'd been endangered. It didn't take long to realize he was being harsh on Auntie June. Serena wasn't just a troubled teen, it turned out.

She was eventually diagnosed with a handful of serious mental illnesses and underwent prolonged psychiatric inpatient treatment. At one point early on, Dad was adamant that they pushed for an attempted murder charge against Serena, especially because she seemed extremely unrepentant at the time. And when it was discovered how mentally sick and suffering she was, that was soon dropped. Eventually, the riffs mended. Life was very hard for Serena, but she eventually overcame her demons. I actually joke about this and leads a somewhat normal, if unconventional, life.

We are very close friends, and she knows that I'm sharing the story. We have a kind of attitude about it where we'll both get a kick out of it if it somehow manages to appear on an actual let's-read video. So hopefully that proves that despite it being an completely terrifying, horrific experience for everyone involved, it did at least have a happy ending. One of the most significant events of my whole childhood happened on Halloween. So a few friends and I were out trick-or-treating, and we actually went pretty much to every neighborhood within walking distance.

And then on the way back, we found ourselves wandering past a place of almost legendary status. And for as long as we'd been aware, there was this old house in the neighborhood over from us, one close to the other homes, but also disconnected by large, overgrown front yards and a fairly long driveway, too. Now, we never saw anyone home, and we never saw any cars in the front yard, and we never saw anyone either coming or going. We were pretty sure it was abandoned in some capacity that someone owned it but never visited. But what we were 100% certain of is that the place was haunted. If you saw the place at 13, you'd probably think it would.

was haunted too. Heck, see the place at 30 and you probably still think that that place has a resident ghost or two. It looked like a haunted house, all old and gothic and stuff, like the kind of place the Adams family would live. And so naturally, a bunch of over-imaginative 13-year-olds were convinced there were long-dead spirits wandering the halls. And as we walked past, we all went a little quiet, just kind of checking the place out before our buddy Charlie slowed down to a stop. And this big grin came over his face, I remember. And then he says, How much candy you're going to give me if I knock on that door?

Now, we're all thinking, dude, there's no way you're about to knock on that door. But Charlie bet his entire bag of candy that he would, and suddenly none of us would take his bet because he was clearly very serious about dingle-dong ditching this haunted house. Now, I still had my doubts, and when I bet him a handful of candy he wouldn't do it, Our two other friends did the same. And then once the bets were in, off goes Charlie, bold as brass down that driveway. We carried on watching him walk up the driveway, pretty skeptical and doubtful.

And then when he got to the door, Charlie looked back at us. He was trying to be brave and not show any fear, but even from all the way down the driveway, we could see how nervous he was. Now, I remember hearing, I told you wouldn't do it. But then I guess Charlie did too, because right out of the way, after it got said, Charlie raises his fist and knocks on that door. And one of us actually gasped, I remember. And I remember not giving a crap about candy at that point because Charlie just hammered

on the door of some haunted house. And we all watched in silence as he backed away from the door, turning his body as if he was about to run. But not only did the door not open, but nothing moved and nothing stirred. The house stayed dark and incredibly quiet, and the longer it did, the more than it did, the more Charlie's confidence started to build. He stopped, and instead of walking back down the driveway towards us, he walked right back to the front door of the house and knocked for a second time.

He did even louder that time and with a kind of playful rhythm too. Do do, do do do do do. And we're laughing among ourselves by that point, mainly at just how brazen Charlie was being. And then once he heard and saw us laughing, that only spurred him on more. And when he knocked a third time and started yelling out, Hello? Anyone home?

We thought it was hilarious as kids. I guess it was all that tension being relieved, realizing that our fears about that place have been completely unfounded. Charlie started yelling about how if a ghost didn't appear to give him a treat, he was about to give them a trick they'd regret. Then he yelled that it was going to come back with holy water and sprinkle it all over the place so the ghost couldn't live that. anymore. And we were just laughing our butts off by the time he got to that part, and one of us

says, all right, brother, you won. Come get your candy, let's get going. But Charlie wasn't done. He then started dancing on the porch, singing the Ghostbusters theme like, I ain't afraid of no ghosts. And then we were about falling over laughing. And then just as I looked up, sides hurting from laughing so hard, I saw the door behind Charlie suddenly open. And all three of us stopped laughing as Charlie spun around, just in time for this shadowy figure to come lunging towards us and snatch him up. Charlie screamed, but it was no good. This person dragged him back into the house before slamming the door closed, and then there was silence again. The moment that door slammed, the three of us went running down the driveway while yelling Charlie's name.

I guess it was pure instinct, something propelling us. to try and help our friend, but that front door was closed and locked, and since busting into the house some other way seemed insane, we knew the only best thing to do was to go get help. As I said, the house was like this oddity in the neighborhood, part of it, but not part of it, so there were a couple of houses nearby we could run to. And we ran to the door of one, just banging on it until some angry-looking adult opened it up, and then we all started yelling together in this chaotic explosion of begging in a moment. pleading. And I guess all the guy needed to see were the looks on our faces to know that we

weren't just a bunch of trick-or-treaters anymore. I remember he ran inside, called the cops, told us to all shut up, and then asked one of us to explain in a few words what had just happened before he relayed all that information to the cops. We were still freaking out, begging them to hurry, but the guy kept telling us to shut up so he could hear the dispatcher. And we then waited in the guy's front yard with him until we heard the sirens. And then we ran over to the haunted house into where the cops pulled up and then begged them to go help Charlie. The cops ran up to the driveway, told us to stay back, and then banged on the door while we watched. I remember my buddy saying, kick the door open, he's in there, kick the door open.

But obviously the cops wouldn't do that right away. We thought we were going to have to wait minutes. And those were minutes that we didn't think Charlie had, so we started freaking out all over again thinking no one was taking us seriously. We all joined in, yelling at the cops to get in there and rescue our friend, but all they did was banging on the door again, saying, police, open up. It was agonizing, thinking Charlie was going through God knows what, and the cops are just knocking on the door like they're collecting for goodwill. But then right after they'd knocked that last time, the door swung open again,

and outstepped a man with Charlie at his side. We weren't close enough to hear what was said to the cops, but we could see Charlie just standing there, either nodding or shaking his head every time the cops directed a question to him. And that just kept going on for a minute or two as we stayed quiet expecting the guy to get arrested at any moment. But he didn't.

The cops didn't even touch their cuffs and then another minute or two of talking. The guy walked back inside, what was by then, a well-lit hallway and shut the door again. The cops walked Charlie up the driveway towards us and we were still in this sort of stunning, silence, not able to comprehend how that grabber hadn't been arrested. But then as they got close, one of the cops was saying something like,

lucky that gentleman was home to help your friend out. Things could have been much worse. And we're thinking, what the hell is you talking about? And started explaining Charles had been grabbed and pulled in. But then the cops basically told us not to make up tales like that, and they knew that we were trying to do some sort of prank on that place, that person wouldn't give us any candy. Now, we didn't know what he was talking about at first.

But when it clicked that that grabber had tricked them somehow, one of my friends got incredibly mad saying, that's not what happened. And he tried explaining the whole thing to the cops, like from start to finish. But then Charlie turned to him and said, dude, we shouldn't make up stuff like that. It's not cool. And we were stunned for what seemed like the 12th time that night.

And I mean, like, completely stunned into silence, so all we did was just sort of stare at Charlie, thinking, what the hell's gotten into you? And the cops told us it was time to go home. And that they saw us out on the street again, causing trouble, they'd drive us all home personally with some very stern words for our parents. And this is the last thing we wanted, so we did as they said and just started walking back home. But you can bet that we asked Charlie what the hell happened in that house that made them act so suddenly weird. He told us it was dark at first, and that the guy was hurting him, bad too. The guy made Charlie tell him his name, where his family lived, where he went to school. He promised each time the pain would stop if he just told the truth.

Would he just follow up with another question while squeezing his fingers in a way that Charlie said was painful beyond all belief? The guy made Charlie tell him almost everything personal about him, and then he said if he ever showed his face around or he talked about what he'd seen inside that house, he'd burn Charlie's home down at night with his family asleep in their beds. We wanted to know why he didn't just tell the cops all that, because the guy wouldn't so much as be able to burn a piece of toast if he was in jail. But Charlie said, they had people everywhere. At least that's what he's been told, and he didn't want to risk that being true.

And we then asked what he'd seen, as in like, the thing in the house the guy didn't want him talking about. But Charlie got mad at the very suggestion that he'd tell. tell us and said that he'd never breathe a word of what he saw for as long as he lived. But that wasn't completely true because a couple of years later, what happened that night came up in conversation. Even years later, Charlie didn't want to risk revealing what he'd seen, so he never told much in the way of detail. But all he said was that it was bad, really bad.

And even at that young age of 13, he understood why the guy said that he'd kill him if he spoke about what was in there. And he said that that was what made him believe that something might actually happen if he talked, because it was obvious that they weren't normal and that they weren't good either. Sometimes me and my friends would talk about it, the ones that were there that night, and we didn't say anything to anyone else, but sometimes we'd talk about it among ourselves when Charlie wasn't around. And sometimes we wondered if he was making it out to be more than it was.

But Charlie wasn't the type. His story also stayed completely consistent and for many, many years, too. And he also refused to go anywhere near that part of the neighborhood again, and if he'd made it all up, I don't think he'd have been that scared for that long. We ended up going to different colleges later, and we ended up losing touch over time. I learned to know better than to ask what he saw inside that house, but that doesn't mean I don't wonder, and to this day, I think about whatever it was he saw, and it was so terrible that it actually scared him into keeping it secret.

A lot of people have stories about that one kid from their school days who was just the freaking worst. My story goes places. The kid in question wasn't who was scary. He wanted to be scary. He wanted to be really intimidating and he wanted the rest of us to be scared of him. He was new to school and a proper short-arse little guy, alone on a new place in the middle of year seven so I can see why he decided to front. And he was such an oddball.

So this kid was new at our school and he had an attitude that stank and he decided he wasn't going to fit in. He wasn't going to try and be anybody's friend. Instead, he wanted us to fear him, so he picked someone to emulate that he thought we'd find badass and scary. Unfortunately, that person was Fred Durst. Now let me set the scene. I was just an average year seven girl doing average things, watching all of this play out. Durst was the short, puny little year 7, who was short for even our 11-12-year-old ages. He had a baby-faced and blonde hair, and he'd storm around the school doing the nooky walk from the Limp Bizkit video, literally acting like Fred Durst, just scowling at people and saying the F-word if you got too close. The teachers said that he had behavioral issues, but as you can probably guess, as little kids, we found Durst hilarious.

And yes, he did insist that everyone call him durst. Lynn Biscuit is kind of hard to explain to anyone who wasn't a kid during that era. They were a really weird band in that they were pretty universally regarded as terrible. All their early albums received mid-terrible reviews, and they were voted worst band of 2000 by some magazine, I remember. Even among the metalheads, the new metalheads, the corn and slip-knot fans, Lind Biscuit was not particularly considered cool or good. This also took place in 2004, so their fourth album had just come out, the one with behind blue eyes on it.

But Durst only had their second album, significant other, and then later chocolate starfish and the hot dog flavored water, which is a key plot point in the story. Now, basically, if you weren't a tween in 2004, let me try and explain. The kid was obsessed with a rebel band and tried to use. use them as a source of fear and coolness, three years after they'd stop being particularly musically relevant. And many of us believe this would last forever and that they'd never have a revival. Well, Fred Durst and buddies have proven us all wrong in 2024 and 25 with a limb biscuit renaissance. Does our friend Durst get a similar revival? Will you find out? So this little kid would strut through the corridors of our secondary school, snarling and scowling at people,

wearing a red baseball cap that no teacher could get him to take off for love nor money. He prided himself on singing along to Limp Biscuit's second album, significant other, which he played through a battery-powered portable CD player with terrible tiny co-ac speakers attached in the headphone port. And no matter how many times the teachers tried to confiscate DIRS CD player or ban him from listening to Limp Biscuit, he somehow managed to steal it back within a day and would have returned to blasting significant other through the corridors,

hallways, and classrooms of our secondary school. I think the teachers would have taken him more seriously if the rest of us hadn't constantly mocked and made fun of him. And eventually, Durs didn't care that we weren't afraid of him. He went from trying to be hard to trying to be the class clown. Any attention was good attention to him, and we would constantly goad him and bait him into making himself look like an idiot, and for his part, he was getting easy and free attention like he wanted.

I know for a fact that Durs wasn't some mentally ill kid or anything. He didn't come from a troubled home, and he was just a little asshole back then. I don't know if it's still the case in British secondary schools these days, but back in my day, when I was in school, doing music class, was compulsory for the first couple of years to secondary school. We didn't really learn much. It was kind of an unstructured class. Sometimes we'd play around on instruments.

Other times we'd all have to sing, and then sometimes we'd be taught vague musical history lessons, or vague attempts to teach us what musical score was. Music class was basically a free muckabout session, and we all loved it, not least because of our teacher, Mrs. Beaton. She was a proper sweet old granny type, clearly still working as a music teacher because she enjoyed it. And I went to a fairly rural school,

and I think that if she taught in the bigger city school, Mrs. Beaton would have been forced into retirement many years before. But my school was kind of small, kind of underfunded, and didn't exactly have a wealth of music teachers queuing up at its door. Mrs. Beaton never lost her temper ever, and she was maybe the only teacher who really genuinely tried with durst. I guess because his bizarre limp biscuit fascination was music-related, and she thought maybe she could reach him by trying to be nice to him

and encourage him to listen to other music. This didn't work, of course. Durs would just turn up significant other, usually nooky or break stuff, and I swear that thanks to Dursd, I'd hear those two songs more than any other music during 2004. Let me just reiterate. This album came out in 1999. Limbiscuit had four albums out by 2004. Durs just only owned this one, at least for most of the story.

So Mrs. Beaton tried really hard to be nice to Durst. And he was rude as hell to her, and she never once got angry at him or raised her voice or anything. Oh, there's one thing that I haven't mentioned about Durs' copy of significant other yet. It was the censored version, so all the swear words were just muted out hilariously, and his parents wouldn't allow him to own the uncensored version back in the day in case it was a bad influence. And I first met them back at parents' evening of that year. They were at the table next to mine, and I heard them describing their son as spirited, and enthusiastic to a teacher,

who was explaining to them that, no, he was incredibly disruptive and badly behaved. They seemed actively shocked at this, which was the first time I discovered that his whole Durst act was mostly only at school. And this was before the Mrs. Beaton incident. So back to that, every time he'd disrespect Mrs. Beaton,

the rest of the class would get particularly mad at Durst. We started calling him Durst the worst, which I think is a nickname, Fred himself probably heard often. But despite us trying to use it as an insult, Durst love being called Durst the worst. Because we were stupid kids, we didn't realize that we were only encouraging him and rewarding his attention-seeking behavior. So a typical music lesson would kind of go something like this. Mrs. Beaton would say, Hello, class. Something, something, something dance macabre, something, something, something teacher voice, oasis and blurb, something, something, and then she'd sigh and

had something about limp biscuit. She tried her very best to incorporate limp biscuit into her music theory lessons, knowing that Durst would just bring them up anyway. Then Durst would hear limp biscuit and take it as a sign to yell, I did it all for the nookie. Come on, the nooky. Or I'm a grab a chain saw, or something similar. And then we'd all yell at him to shut up, Durst the worst, and then he'd wrap back at us in a bad approximation of Fred Durst, and then eventually we were all disrupting the lesson, not just Durs, so Mrs. Beaton would clap her hands together politely and ask for gentle, calm, quiet. And that was her catchphrase. And of course, none of us wanted to upset Mrs. Beaton, our beloved teachers, so we'd all calm down then. Ders generally kept the swearing to

corridor moments because it was the only thing the teachers couldn't just let fly, I guess. So in other classes, his disruptive behavior usually involved the lines I quoted above, or he He'd self-censor to avoid getting into too much trouble. Not the case in Mrs. Beaton's class, though. He knew lovely old Mrs. Beaton would never actually punish him, so he used this opportunity to say the full range of F-bombs and B words that you would hear in their music. And you could see that it genuinely bothered Mrs. Beaton every time he did so.

Like whenever he said the F-word, she'd twitch a little and tell him it was harmful to use language like that. As some example of how powerfully sweet Mrs. Beaton wasn't, was, Durst even listened occasionally, and he would usually stop swearing once he saw that he offended her too much. The main event happened on the day we came back from half-term break. It was the final half-term of year seven, which means Durst had been at the school for around six months. He joined after the Christmas holidays, hence why he was the insecure new kid acting like a weirdo. It felt like he'd been the main character of our entire school forever, though, even though

this must have just been because he was in my class. Looking back, it was obvious that the situation couldn't go on forever, and that something would have to be done about Durst eventually to stop him disrupting our entire school lives. And I sometimes wonder what things would have been like if the Mrs. Beaton incident hadn't happened. Maybe Durst would have moved on to Lincoln Park or called himself Shinoda and become a very different person. And that day back after the summer half-term, though, he was still Durst, but there was something different about him. We all recognized it right away because he'd been spinning significant other every single day for six months. But I particularly recognized it because my older sister had other Limp Biscuit albums, so I'd heard it before when it came out in

2001 or whenever it was, and the thing I'm talking about is Limp Biscuit's third album, Chocolate Starfish and the hot dog flavored water. Durst had the CD. He was listening to it, jamming to roll an air raid vehicle, and in fact, a smug and excited look on his face as if it was a brand-new album and this was his first time hearing it. Turns out that it actually was the case. He'd literally been gifted it for the first time on the way to school that day. In amongst his usual snarls and spinning his red cap on his finger, Durst would point to his CD player during form room and say things like new album, and good, huh, to anyone who came close. Of course, we all psyched him up, asking him about it and asking him which his favorite tracks were in things.

And it was clearly he loved Roland and take a look around, which, to be fair, was a banger, because those were the two songs he kept playing over and over and singing along to the latter in particular. When he was listening to Roland for the fifth time, though, I noticed something. Not only did Durst have a second limb-biscuit album now, it was also the uncensored version. Yep. Fred let loose with a full barrage. of cuss words on this album. And for anyone who knows the Chocolate Starfish album, you can probably understand why this is significant in where it's going.

If you don't, well, then stay tuned. Because music was our last lesson of the day. And for most of the day, we saw Durst strutting through corridors or in some of our classes, rapping along to Roland, snarling at year 11s, and doing some kind of new dance to this day that I don't think Fred Durst ever did. And I'm pretty sure it was from that one bloodhound.

gang song, but for whatever reason, Durs did that dance along to Roland. I'd been listening curiously all day, wondering if Durs would dare to play the title track of the album in front of the teachers. I remember my sister playing it to me when I was in primary school and telling me that I had the promise not to tell Mom and Dad that she'd let me hear it. We both found it hilariously, stupidly funny, sitting in her room listening to Fred Dirst screaming those lyrics, which of you don't know them. Well, again, stay tuned. And Kid Durst did not play hot dog in front of the teachers or at all. He just listened to the middle few tracks of the album over and over again,

creating his usual mini-tornado of musical chaos as he Durst walked through the halls. As usual, everyone laughed at the weird little limp biscuit kid doing his weird little limp biscuit routine. And as usual, Durst thought that he was intimidating as all Frick and the coolest kid on campus. And when we all showed up for music class, things were suspiciously quiet. and calm, and that's because Durst was late to class. Mrs. Beaton took the register and asked if Durs was out today. One of us said no, he was in school, but she just shrugged and began the lesson, which today was going to involve listening to some classical music and talking about Chikovsky. I don't remember that really is what it was, but something like that, probably, and Mrs. Beaton

gave me some preamble and then sat down at her desk and put her hand on the CD player. It was like Durst timed his arrival for that moment. In my memory, looking back, I would swear that I could hear the faint sounds of the intro track, Who's in the house? Limbiscuit is in the house drifting in from the corridor as Durst made his way to class. And then his track one became track two. He slammed the door open, stepped in, and slammed it shut behind him. Then with a bow and a flourish, Durst interrupted our music class with a memorized word-perfect sing-along to Limbisd

Biscuit's titular track, Hot Dog. I won't quote the whole song, obviously. I can't quote the whole song on YouTube, but I remember once hearing that Hot Dog held the world record for the most number of F-bombs used in a song, at least for a while. It is also a direct parody of the 9-inch Nail song closer and quotes that song,

as well as perfect drug and other 9-inch nail classics in the chorus. But here are some highlights of the 2-minute 10-second performance we got from Durst in music class that day, and from the sweet, beloved OAP music teacher Mrs. Beaton. Get the F-up. It's an effed-up world and an effed-up place. Everybody's judged by their effed-up face. And then about ten similar lines and something about DJ lethal. Ain't it is shame that you can't say the F and the F blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Obviously, I don't remember the song from memory. I had to look up the lyrics, but it's burned into my mind watching Durst caper and leap about the class, his crappy speakers hanging around his neck,

doing a dance that wasn't even from Limp Biscuit. It's burned into my mind how we all cheered him on and got raucous every time he said the F word, which is a lot in this song. And it's burned into my mind how none of us dared to even look at Mrs. Beaton the entire time, because surely, even she would be furious at Durst for this insanity. And Durst finished with a flourish of just know that nothing you do can bring you closer to me. And the class fell silent, and that's when we all knew, Durst included, that this had gone too far this time, that the whole class should probably be ashamed. I turned to look at Mrs. Beatton to see what the teacher's reaction to Durst's disruption

and constant use of the F-bomb was. She was sitting at her desk, staring ahead, breathing heavily. Dersh just sort of stood there, looking defeated and pathetic. It was the most normal human behavior I'd ever seen from him. He even took his cap off and muttered, Sorry, miss, and went to sit down. Mrs. Beaton was still staring ahead, breathing heavily. She didn't even look at durst as he went and sat down,

and looking a bit sheepish. And that's when I realized that she wasn't looking at any of us. She was staring off into space, like the top left corner of the classroom, so staring at nothing, basically. One of the other students quietly said, Miss? To try and get Mrs. Beaton to react.

She slowly stood up and as she did, so I could tell even then something was deeply wrong, she swayed on her feet, her breathing still heavily, and we still thought that it was just anger and outrage at durst. Mrs. Beaton took a few unsteady steps out from behind her desk and into the center of the classroom. The desk had been arranged in a sort of view shape

around the teacher's desk, so there was a central space where we'd congregate if we played the instruments. Right now it was empty, and this is where Mrs. Beaton walked. The whole time she was staring into space, then she reached up with her right hand and gripped her chest, suddenly and viscerally. Then she sort of shook a few times on the spot, let out a strangled cry, and dropped to the ground, a dead weight. Literally, I'd discover later. Mrs. Beaton had suffered a massive, devastating heart attack and a brain aneurysm. And to those of us who saw it happen, we'd swear it occurred as a result of sudden trauma. It felt like Durst had shocked, dear, sweet Miss Burton into having a heart attack with his performance of that song.

Of course, we didn't know it was a heart attack at the time, or even that she was dead. First, there was panic and some kids running to get another teacher and breathless explanations of how Durst had burst into class and performed a song resulting in Mrs. Beaton dropping to the ground. And then there was more chaos and paramedics and teachers crying and guiding students out of the classroom carefully. And then finally all of us kids were saying one thing to each other under our breaths. Durst killed Mrs. Beaton. The next few weeks must have been awfully difficult and complicated for the other teachers. Mrs. Beaton was beloved among staff as well, of course, and it's really hard to argue that Durst didn't kill Mrs. Beaton, even though he obviously didn't mean to or even mean

to harm her. But adult teachers can't go accusing a 12-year-old boy of killing their 76-year-old colleague because she had a heart attack in response to his bad behavior. They still had to treat that bad behavior in the same way they would have normally treated it. Unfortunately for them, they all knew they'd been complacent with Durst, and if they suddenly acted differently, it would imply that they believed that he was at fault. Now, I have a bit of insight here, so I know that his parents had had plenty of meetings with the school, and the teachers panicked and worrying about the psychological effect that it would have on their son if he fully blamed himself for Mrs. Beaton dying.

On the other hand, they understood that he couldn't be allowed to believe that he held no responsibility either because his bad behavior had led to something terrible happening. So basically the teachers and his parents decided that he should be punished, but not too much. Simply moving schools wasn't an option at first, and they also decided that it could make Durst internalize too much guilt. So basically it meant that Durst got a handful of detentions and our music teacher was dead. In the eyes of his angry classmates who all knew we bore a bit of guilt too, this meant that Durst had gotten away with murder, literally. We only had a few weeks left for summer term,

and I think most of us were too shell-shocked at seeing Mrs. Beaton die to literal cringe to actually act on it then. We all received counseling, although surprisingly little, concerning that we'd seen a woman die in front of our eyes. And our class also had a special assembly without Durst, where the headmistress herself emphasized strongly that while Durst's behavior had been unacceptable, it was very important that we all realized

that Durst did not intentionally harm Mrs. Beaton and that she was very old, and we all had our part to play and blah, blah, blah. We were little kids. and not very compassionate, and also certainly didn't want to admit that we all egg Durst on that day. And so instead, we spent the summer seething and plotting with our friends and talking about how we were going to make Durst pay in the autumn term. Honestly, I think we were surprised that he even actually showed up at school in September.

I didn't know until later that moving schools would have been a really awkward and difficult option, so I'd genuinely just been expecting never to see Durst again. The kid who showed up at the start of year 8 was a very different boy to the Durst of year 7. Haunted is the best word to describe him. Clearly if there was one person who blamed Durst for Mrs. Beaton's death, it was Durst himself. On the first day of class, he walked up to our form room teacher and handed over a note and then quietly sat in his seat. The teacher read the note and addressed the class to ask if he would call Durst by his real name,

Ben, going forward, and then moved on with taking rest. register. Durst, or Ben, just kept to himself after that, and he barely spoke to anyone, and when he did it was because he had to. He most certainly did not listen to Limp Biscuit or any music in the corridors, and he did not attend music class, and now that I think about it, it's kind of ghoulish that the rest of our class still had the lesson in the same classroom we'd seen Mrs. Beaton dying, but hey-ho, here we go. The new teacher was young and inexperienced, and some of the boys in the class would make half-hearted jokes about how the role was cursed because of Mrs. Beaton, but nobody really got mad at them for it because we all knew

that the respect that we had for her was good. And we were all still mad at Durst, though, and refused to call him Ben despite what we'd been asked. We called him Durst or Killer and made absolutely no secret of the fact that we blamed him for murdering Mrs. Beaton. One of our favorite ways of tormenting him was to sing the Abba song when I kissed the teacher, but changed the lyrics to Killed, which was deeply cruel in retrospect, and I'm pretty sure some of the boys got in some more trouble for bullying Dirst than Dirst ever got into the year before any of his behavior. And while I think the teachers should have been tougher with Dirst in the first place, I do think it's right that they crack down on his bullying now.

Dirst, or Ben, had very obviously not intended to do anything more than scandalized Mrs. Beaton. Certainly not kill her, and even then as a kid I could tell that he was deeply haunted and guilty about. it. It was like Mrs. Beaton's ghost lurked around him. In fact, some kids started saying that. There was a rumor that if he looked at Durst at just the right angle, you could see Mrs. Beaton's apparition in his shadow or in his reflection. We'd share this rumor just loud enough for Durst himself to hear, and more than once I caught him staring at his reflection or his shadow in a very nervous way. And throughout year eight, it eventually just became set in stone fact that A, Durst had killed Mrs. Beaton, and B., Mrs. Beaton's ghost was now haunting Durst.

The bullying continued, and no matter how severely the teachers tried to punish us, we would not stop calling Durst a killer, and telling him he was haunted. Last September, I somehow landed this incredible employment opportunity. The company was based out in the Pacific Northwest, and seeing that I was in NYC, I replied somewhat on a whim because the pay was so good. They gave me a call, I interviewed okay, then when I didn't hear anything back for a couple of weeks, I figured that they'd just passed me over. But then one day, they called and told me that I'd got the job.

I didn't say anything about not being serious regarding my application, but I did tell them that I might have some logistical issues in moving across the country and finding a place to live. I thought that it'd have them considering other candidates, but they were so dead set on bringing me aboard that they offered 12 months of free accommodation until I got under my feet. It was a nice place too, small for a house, but well put together for what I could tell. And so in the space of around 24 hours, that application I sent off on a whim ended up changing my life. About a month later, I'd moved out to Washington

to start my new job, and I was absolutely enamored with my new house. It was actually the first time that I'd lived in an actual house and not just an apartment, and having expected to live in New York city for most of my life, living in a house wasn't something I expected until I was aged like 40 or 50. It might sound kind of lame, but it was very exciting in a sort of now I'm grown up kind of way. And the thing that got me super excited as we rolled into the middle of October was that Halloween was actually approaching pretty quick. And like I said, I'd never lived in a house before. Only apartment buildings and trick-or-treaters generally don't actually stop at apartment buildings unless there's a bowl of candy outside and some direction on who to actually buzz.

And that's if they trick-or-treat at all. Because from experience, it's definitely much more of a suburban activity than an urban one. But that meant, as late October started to approach, I started planning what I was going to do for the spookiest day of the year. I carved a pumpkin, bought a ton of fun-sized candy bags, and then made sure my front windows had enough decoration to entice local trick-or-treaters. and let me tell you, it worked. And from maybe 5.30 to around 8 o'clock,

I had around two dozen groups of trigger-treaters knock on my door. I saw a Waldo, a beetle juice, a couple of cowboys, and then there was the kid who looked exactly like the main character from the bear, who'd also apparently mastered the, I'm so tired I could collapse look. And I saw a mini Michael Myers who made me wonder how the hell a 10-year-old knew who Michael Myers was, but I think the best costumes of the no one, night were two boys wearing Mario and Luigi costumes who were almost the exact same proportions

as those two Italian plumbers. And after Mario and Luigi showed up, the group started to thin out a little, and rather than face being interrupted while I was cooking or showering, I just decided to put a bowl of candy out on the window sill outside so any latecomers could actually help themselves. Now maybe an hour later, just after 9 p.m., I sat down on my couch to check out what horror movies Netflix had to offer. I was sitting there in my bathrobe, beer bottle in one hand, and the TV remote in the other when I suddenly heard a gentle tapping on my kitchen window. The size of the house meant my kitchen and living area were right next to one another, so I could literally turn my head and see where the person was knocking. I figured someone just wanted the candy bowl

refilled, and by tapping on the window, they were just being a smart ass and showing off to his costumed friends by acting very creepy. Now, I was not a little bit. I wasn't mad about it. I actually kind of smiled to myself thinking, all right, buddy, that's exactly what I would have done. And I was also kind of half expecting a jump scare when I pulled back the blinds, too, and that maybe some mass teenage troublemaker was going to growl more candy and scare me. But I was ready for them, so I grabbed the blinds, pulled them back, and just about felt my heart stopping my chest. Standing outside in the dimly-lit street, I saw a lone figure wearing a ski mask and dark clothing, and he was pointing what looked to be some kind of short, black

shotgun at the window. Now, I must have looked at the guy for no more than maybe a split second, no longer than the time it took to blink, but when I look back on it, it was like he was perfectly framed by the window for maybe a minute or two. I remember how the material his ski mask was made of kind of shined in the low light, and I remember how his eyes were the widest I'd ever seen and how the whites were the whitest I'd ever seen. I remember him holding the shotgun in both hands and how it looked sleek and jet black, but kind of old and scuffed, too, like it's been passed around. But then once that image had been burned into my brain, I hit the floor so hard that I ended up with some serious bruising on my arms and legs. Yet in the moment, I didn't feel so much of a

twinge of pain as I slammed into the hardwood beneath me. I thought the shot was. I thought the shot was going to come at any second. I thought the glass would go flying across the room. I also figured that I was screwed either way because then he could just lean through the window and blast me. But no shot came. I'm not 100% sure how long I was lying there, but I had this weird thought of, I guess time really does stand still when you're terrified. I figured the guy was one trigger pull away from blowing out my windows and that it was seconds dragging by before he re-aimed and fired again. But then I suddenly heard a car door slam and then a really loud revving of an engine before a car sped off into the night. I didn't get up right away.

Part of me didn't trust that it was over, but then after maybe a minute or so of silence, I pushed myself up off the ground and dared appear behind the blinds. The street outside was quiet again, just streetlights and parked cars. And then when my legs stopped shaking enough for me to actually stand, I called 911 and told the dispatcher what had just said. happened. And that first call-out was as boring as it was frustrating because after taking my report, the cops basically told me to go get a hotel room for a night if I didn't feel safe, which, duh, I didn't feel safe. I knew they weren't exactly going to post a guard outside for a little old me, but to basically be told, don't like it, then leave, seemed incredibly cold.

And I spent the night in a hotel and went to work that next morning with one hell of a story to tell. I figured that I'd probably spend a second night in that hotel, too, because I still had no idea what was going on with that masked man in a shotgun, at least until I got a phone call from a police officer in the late afternoon. And then he explained everything. So the cop who called wasn't one of the regular street cops that I'd spoken to after the incident. This guy said he was from the city's gang task force. And after hearing the report, he believed that he could provide a little insight into what had happened. According to the cop, my home's previous occupants had been gang members, and it only vacated a matter of weeks before I moved in.

In all likelihood, the guy with a shotgun didn't fire because he recognized that I wasn't anyone he was looking for. And rather than murder a civilian and bring down even more heat on them, the trigger man had the wherewithal to not do his job, and then dive back into the getaway car before I made it to a phone. He didn't think I'd be targeted again, not after they knew that it was some civilian in that place, and not who they thought. But as much as I'd like to say that that reassured me, I'm just not sure that it had the intended

effect. I realized that up in my apartment building I was actually protected. I had some crazy nights in my time, and the streets of New York City can get equally crazy at the worst of times. But whenever I was home, I was up in my castle, three fours above all the craziness going on down there on the street. And it didn't even occur to me until that night, how in that house, I was exposed to just about any son of a bitch who came up and tapped on my window. That stayed with me too for a long time, and although there soon came a time when I felt safe enough to relax again, I also knew how terrified it would be if I heard that same tap, tap, tapping on my window again. The scariest events of my entire childhood took place on Halloween.

So I was out trick-or-treating with some friends, and we were making our way towards the neighborhood with big houses and some pretty long driveways. And we'd gotten full-sized candy bars at a couple of houses the previous year. As you can imagine, we were pretty excited to get back there before they ran out. And as many of those big houses had people celebrating Halloween, so we had to walk between maybe four or five at a time before we saw ones with decorations. And we hit up one place and then found another, but then had to walk like a whole block before we saw another place that looked like it was giving out candy.

My buddies and I started walking up the driveway, and the place looked really friendly and welcoming. They didn't have just one, but two pumpkins out front, and whoever decorated the porch had spared no expense whatsoever. There was plastic bats hanging from the ceiling of the porch, creepy plastic, root-looking things wrapped around the columns, and the front door had been draped in these fake cobwebs. It looked awesome, so I remember expecting nothing but a very warm welcome. and some of those precious, full-sized bars. And instead, we got something that sent us running and screaming back down the driveway. I remember pressing the bell at the side of the door, but not hearing anything.

I figured that it might have been one of those electric doorbells with sort of a softer ding-dong that you could only hear inside the house. But then when no one came to the door, I assumed that it was probably broken or something of that nature. And that's when I reached for the door to knock on it. But when I did, it swung open just a little on its hinges, revealing that it was unlocked and actually open. Both me and my buddies kind of looked at each other on account of how strange that was, and then I knocked once more while calling out, Hello? Anyone home?

No one answered. And apart from the soft sound of a TV playing somewhere in the house, it stayed completely silent. And as things went from weird to creepy, one of my friends suggested that we just leave. And I felt it too. Sort of this creeping sense that we shouldn't be there and that something bad was actually happening. But at the same time, I just had that burning curiosity and I couldn't just walk off without first pushing that front door open. I remember reaching out very slowly and one of my friends says, dude, what the hell are you doing? But I didn't listen.

I just slowly pushed the door open with the tip of my finger while calling out again to see if anyone was home. I'd hope to see a person walking down the hall, having just neglected to fully close their door after that last bunch of trick-or-treaters had showed up. But instead, I saw an older woman lying on the floor so that all I could see were the bottoms of her shoes. When my friend saw, he just gasped to himself,

and then called out just as softly to ask if, she was okay. Obviously, she wasn't okay, and I honestly thought she was dead at first. But then as soon as my buddy called out, she kind of just reared up so she was sitting on her butt and looked right at us with these eyes that looked like they were looking through us. But that's not what really scared us. What sent us running back down that driveway, screaming our little heads off, was the blood running out of the gash where her forehead met her hairline, and the raspy, scratching, grud. And the raspy, scratching, own that she let out as she just sat there looking at us. The first of us to turn and run started screaming, zombie, it's a zombie at the top of his lungs. And I blame my little kid brain

for this, but I was also thinking, holy crap, it really is like the living dead for a few seconds. At least until it occurred to me that there was no way in hell that that lady had come back to life after being dead. And then in actual fact, she was actually really hurt and in some serious need of help. My buddy was still yelling about zombies when we ran up the driveway of the house opposite that, and I had to tell him to shut the hell up before anyone answered the door, because they'd end up probably calling the cops thinking some kids were just playing a prank on them. And as soon as a man opened the door, I started yelling about how he needed to call an ambulance because the lady across the street was hurt. The guy yelled for his wife to call 911,

then we all ran back across the street. The lady was sitting on her porch by then, holding something against her head to stop the bleeding, and having woken up a little from being out cold, she was able to talk again. I remember the guy called her Helen when he asked her what had happened, and she told him how some son of a bitch had whacked her as soon as she opened the door. It turns out the guy had been walking around in an oversized Halloween costume, mask and all, and then hit her over the head with something when she went to tell him to buzz off. She thanked us for telling someone to call 911, but she seemed to be fine,

and that if we came back the next night she'd give us all of her leftover candy for being such good boys. And we did just that. And there she was, with a bandage around her head and with her husband thanking us for helping her. I'm glad everything turned out okay. We all were, but at the time it was one of the most frightening things I'd ever experienced. I guess at that perfect age where I knew what I was seeing, but my mind was. couldn't quite process all that fear and dread that came with it. I thought that I was seeing the dead coming back to life, and that was horrifying to me. But now I understand the real tragedy is that when they're gone, there's no coming back

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