The Lets Read Podcast - 341: I THOUGHT I WAS GOING INSANE | 21 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 326

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Halloween & Paranormal EncountersHAVE 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

To put this in context, my school won a government grant where they could choose 25 of us to take on a trip to an abandoned village in Spain. We could miss five days of school, but there we had to do some simple restoration work for the village in exchange from our room and board. We cleaned the streets, painted some walls, helped in the kitchen, took care of some livestock. It was hard work, but we had a great time. The village is called Granadilla. in Carceres, in case anyone wants to check it out online. And the program was called Program for the Recovery and Educational Use of Abandoned Villages. And as a brief history of the town, it is located on the banks of a reservoir that flooded the town in the 1960s.

The inhabitants who refused to leave drowned. Anecdotally, the old cemetery remains underwater today. The first night, the counselors who lived there during the camp took us to the new cemetery, to tell us scary stories from the village. Ghosts, lovers who took their own lives in the old castle, we were all enchanted. Now, one of the counselors had even hidden behind the cemetery wall and would make noises and bang on the walls from time to time

to scare us during the stories. Now, despite the scares, you could see everyone was having some fun. Suddenly, in the distance, a car appeared. It's a fairly inhospitable part of Spain, so the road had no street lights. We only saw what our flashlights illuminated and now the headlights of that car. I remember the way the counselors looked at each other when they saw the car. Granadaea is far from any other town.

There are no shops or houses nearby, and I think there was nothing for a 20-minute radius. That road only led to the town, and there were all of us who should have been there, 50 kids in total, us and another school, four teachers, and three counselors from the town. So who was driving at midnight on that road that leads to nowhere? The car drove very, very slowly almost to where we were standing. We all thought it was a joke from our instructors, but the truth is they were acting pretty good about it because we didn't see them smile or even break their temperament at any point.

And they looked at the car in surprise and tried to continue telling the story. The car stopped near us, turned around, and went back the way it had come, disappearing again in the distance. We continued to giggle, thinking it was just a little skit to scare us. Now, a few minutes later, the car appeared again, but this time followed by another car. Both were completely identical, white, those old-fashioned cars that look almost square, and both were driving extremely slowly, tailgating each other as if in a parade. I remember one of the chaperones signaling to another if he knew who they were.

Both shook their heads. The cars did the same. thing. They got very close to us, waited a few seconds and then turned back the way they had come. Some of the kids started asking them who they were, clearly a little nervous. The monitor, who was inside the graveyard, came out too, looking at the spot where the cars had disappeared again. No one seemed to know anything, and our teachers also started asking them if there were people hanging around here. And then for the third time, the cars reappeared. Now there were three of them, again, identical. They did the same thing. They drove slowly, one behind the other, but this time they

parked in a small gravel area at the side of the cemetery about 50 meters away from us. They turned off the engines, opened the doors simultaneously, and this is where I started to get scared too, and three figures, about the same height and build, got out and just stood there, staring at us. I say staring at us because that's what it seemed like. The truth is that's the truth. as I never managed to see their faces or any actual human features. My teacher then started telling us to stand up, and we all started following the counselors back to the village. Our teachers watched our backs and asked us to stay calm. I walked beside one of the teachers, and I heard a counselor tell him, this isn't our business

anymore. That would be out of line with the kids. When we arrived to the village, the monitors closed the gate leading into Granadilla and asked us to remain calm. The village's walled and the only access was that one which was already closed. Whoever the cars were, we were already out of their reach. I remember how scared some of my classmates were when they went to bed that day. A couple of them even cried next to their teachers who assured them that it was definitely just some prank. However, no one seemed to believe this theory. But surely if it was a joke, it was a very nasty one. Still, we were able to enjoy the rest of the week without any more scares or strange people hanging around.

In the village, no place had been built for the kids who went camping there to sleep, so we stayed in the old houses of the inhabitants. Those that had two rooms had been emptied to make room for 12 beds in each house for us, six beds in each dorm. And we had a great time, worked hard, and explored every corner of the place both day and night. We arranged fake weddings, snuck out to stargaze, and bothered the cattle at night. you know, the kind of things that 16-year-olds do when they have a town all to themselves for a week. And by the time we reached our last night there, we were all exhausted.

Some had barely slept in a week with so much hustle and bustle, and the physical labor that we were doing during the day was clearly starting to take its toll on our spirits and bodies. So when we finished dinner that night, almost all of us kids went home. We know that some of them did stay and chat with the students from the other school, but around 1 a.m., the whole town was quiet. It was easy to hear anyone who had skipped bedtime because our room had a large window that we left open at night to let in the fresh air,

and consequently, any noise from outside. Nothing could be heard outside that night, though. I couldn't sleep, which is something that happens to me a lot when I'm excited about something. I'd had a great time, so much so that I seemed to have forgotten about the car incident from that first night. I met some great people and I'd loved working in the village, so even though my colleagues were already asleep,

I was still thinking about everything we'd done. And that's when I heard the door downstairs open. It's an old door, one of those heavy ones that drag on the wooden floor when opened. It's impossible to be discreet. I was surprised to hear it open because I hadn't heard anyone pass under our open window. I assume they were our teachers trying to figure out if everyone was already in bed and resting or trying to catch the guys who usually tried to sleep with their girlfriends while camp was going on. Now, anyways, I was surprised because they had never come to our house. We had never made any fuss about it,

and honestly, we were usually so tired that we turned off the lights pretty soon after dinner. Whoever was downstairs slowly started to climb the stairs to our room. On the landing, there were two doors facing each other, the one belonging to the girls from the other school and ours. The wood creak beneath their feet as they walked very slowly. So slowly that it was strange, and I lifted my head from the pillow to see if any of my friends were also awake and listening to the same thing. However, they all seemed to be asleep. The person reached the first floor, the bedroom floor, and paused for a moment. And then they began walking slowly toward our room.

The door we had was as old as the house itself, and it didn't fit properly with the frame. and because of this, there was a gap of about five centimeters between the bottom edge and the floor, through which light was leaking through. The person was acting so strange that I sat up in bed trying to hear something. I looked at the doorway and saw two feet standing there, and the strange thing was that they were so close to the door that it seemed like the person behind it was leaning completely against the wood. I saw the handle move, though the door didn't open. It was as if someone with very little strength was trying to be.

to move it. I had unzipped my sleeping bag and was now sitting on the edge of the bed, trying not to touch the floor with my feet so as not to make a sound. I looked around again, but everyone was still asleep. The handle was still moving, but it was almost imperceptible. But me, I was scared to death. And then I stood up. At that exact moment the wood creaked beneath my feet, and the person, or thing, I couldn't say exactly what it was, shot down the stairs. The strangest thing was the speed at which it did it, a sort of superhuman speed that made me shiver, and I remember going extremely cold and feeling paralyzed. Every step that thing took on the wood up the stairs and then down them sounded like

it weighed 300 kilos, putting all its weight into each step. It seemed to have been running for its life going down those stairs due to the strange speed that to this day I still can't recreate. When the person reached the floor below, they slammed the door so hard it made the wall shake. I couldn't move. I just stood there, still in the same place that I was, just trembling with fear. The strange thing wasn't that someone had broken into our house. It could have been any kid, any teacher, maybe someone trying to play a trick on us.

The point was, is that no kid or adult could have run that fast, making that much noise down those stairs. nor could anyone slam the door, which felt like it could have been heard all over town. And even though I waited a moment to try and listen through the window, no one seemed to be outside. I heard no footsteps on the gravel driveway, no laughter, no one entering the adjoining houses. I woke my classmates up crying and told them what had happened. Together, we went out in our pajamas to see if anyone was around the house or if we saw any lights on in any of the other kids' houses. Nothing. And we even went to our teacher's place to ask if it was them,

but they were also in pajamas and very clearly sleepy. I don't know how many times I've told the story, how many times I've gotten goosebumps remembering it. I don't know what it was that entered our house in that village that night, but it wasn't human. Years later, Granadivia appeared on a famous Spanish television program about paranormal events called Quarto Millenio. They talked about spirits.

entities that still roam the houses and that old castle. So I was at a Halloween party back in 2001, and it was the craziest night of my life. I'll never forget it, even though I kind of wish I could. I didn't really know anyone there, apart from the girl who had brought me, because we were kind of hooking up at the time. She was a bit of a hood rat, and so were her friends. And when we got there, there was one chick just passed out on the front lawn, her skirt hitched up to reveal her underwear and just sleeping out there with no shame.

But what the hell right, I'd seen worse at frat parties. Now little did I realize that this sleeping beauty would become the beast of my Halloween. And an hour or so had passed at that point when we're all inside dancing and having fun and enjoying life. And then suddenly, the sleeping psycho comes crashing into the house, screaming that she just had a prophetic dream that the punch had been spiked with strict nine of all things. And then her eyes lit on me. She pointed and started screaming.

I was the one. I was the stranger among them. I'd spike the punch and was trying to enact some type of apocalypse prophecy. And I'm just sitting there like, uh, no. But for some insane reason, half the party started to turn on me with some sort of suspicion. And someone yelled that they thought the punch had tasted a bit strange. And another person had shouted that they'd seen me ported. something into the bowl. Of course, none of this damn crap had actually happened. I'm not Jim

Jones. I was just there for a good time, but half the party didn't seem to be having it. And then the other half decided to come to my defense, and of course this was all insane. It was just Glenda, who was always making up conspiracies and did actually have mental problems. So then this big fight broke out over me while I'm there ducking and dodging and diving to get away from this group of absolute idiots. And all the while, this Glenda lady is just screaming about how I'm the antichrist and put Stricknine in the punch. And at the time, I didn't even know what Stricknine was. A group of guys seemed to believe her because they started grabbing me, holding me down, punching me. And at that point, I thought this was it. I was probably dead. All these drunk idiots were going

to kill me. I even tried to fight back, but it was at this point five versus one. And then some other group of guys attacked them, and at that point it just gave me a chance to get free. And I ran like the wind, jumped into my car and just high-tailed it out of there. I didn't give a crap about the girl who invited me. They were her psycho friends. And as soon as I was far enough away, I called the cops. Now, I had heard the party got shut down, and of course there was no trace of that stricnine or any other poison in the punch. And I never spoke to any of them again, and I never wanted to. It was the most pointlessly and terrifying night of my life, and I have to be honest. I've avoided Halloween parties or really any parties ever since, especially The Punch.

So long-time listener, first-time submission. And I notice a lot of them are longer form. Typically, I tell these two events separately, but they take place so close together, and they're so similar you might as well make one long story. Now, the side effect is that by the end of it, it's probably going to sound pretty far-fetched. a bit too much for some people, but I assure you everything you're about to hear here actually happen to me. So I might as well start from the very beginning then.

This all takes place in the early fall of 2003, probably starting sometime in September, but a couple of weeks go by. So I'm a high school senior, but don't have any driver's license yet. And I don't remember what the inspiration was, but my best friend Mark and I were on an urban exploration kick at the time. We've been to some abandoned houses and barns and stuff like that, and there was even this place called the Underground Gas Station right down the street from school.

It wasn't actually underground. It was a concept designed from the 70s where it was hidden from the road with a ton of trees rather than in-your-face signage. It was pretty cool, but it's townhouses now. We were getting bored with the obvious stuff out there. We needed a better target. And somehow I landed on this place in the general, area called Little People Village, and this is where the chain of events really kicks off.

LPV itself isn't integral to what happens later, but it's worth talking about for a minute. I think I've found it on an urban legends or creepy locations website, the same kind that you'd find Dudley Town on and various abandoned asylums. You should still be able to find pictures of it online today. That last part with Asylums does come into play later, though. Now anyway, the legend behind LPV was that it was this crazy artisan who built a tiny intricate stonework village in the woods. It also had an ominous stonework throne that felt out of place, like he was the ruler of the little people. And so the thing with the throne is that whoever sat on it got cursed and died seven years later.

Yeah, totally believable. Now, the problem, though, the description of the location for LPV was absolute trash back in 2003 from multiple sources. They were contradictory and vague, and it's much more accurate on modern sites. And that meant that we had a lot of ground to cover and locations to scout, which all does lead to a vent one, so just bear with me a second. Now, eventually, we found it several miles away from where we started. It's wedged in between the green belt next to a highway exit and high-voltage power lines.

Turns out it was a roadside attraction during the time of trolley lines and smaller parkways. The trolley line went defunct once the interstate popped up. It is quite creepy and you can see evidence of an old throughway. And yes, I sat on the throne. Now, early in our search for LPV, a few exits further up that same interstate, we decided that this abandoned nursing home or hospice care complex was a fine alternative to turning up empty-handed on our main quest. Now, the side quest it is, I guess.

Ironically, we went here far more times than we did LPV. way easier access, and I'd say the two of us probably hit this spot over a dozen times easily before the spot got too hot. And the encounter that I'm about to get to was somewhere in the middle of all of our visits, but first a bit about the complex layout. There were a few buildings that were not connected, so I'll just talk about the main one where this takes place. It's shaped like a T, or that Tetris piece, with a central hub of sorts on the ground level. It's two floors with the basement. Each of the side wings have a stairwell and the central one had the non-functional elevator. The only way into the building was from a busted-out window on the side of the basement.

I hated that basement. It gave me the crease, man, and you get dumped in from the window into this huge open space with a piano, a stage, and these creepy murals on the wall. And they reminded me of the murals that you would see in Cold War era communist Eastern Europe. The place had plenty of evidence of prior activity, mostly degenerate teens, spray painting things, smash stuff, and dead birds, and a couple of code browns and a few toilets, if you know what I'm talking about. Now, I never saw any squatter camps or used needles or anything of that sort, and the two of us explored every inch of that place. We knew all the nooks and crannies, the hidey holes, all of it. Oh yeah, there was this one room upstairs, though,

and the floor was covered in what looked like dried blood. No, all right, on to the main event already. Now, Mark and I are in the central hub on the ground floor. This particular day, we brought our very realistic-looking BB guns along, and we were having a grand old time shooting random stuff that got left behind in the clean-out. It was all vandalized already after all, so who really cared. And now we had already been in there for a good 40 minutes and covered all the ground, mind you. Now, all of a sudden, from directly above us, we hear full, tilt.

running to our left down that side wing. The person above us sounded like a tank of a guy, easily over six foot and 250 pounds, wearing some very heavy-ass work boots. Foolishly being teens with fake guns and Mark being a tough guy, we just looked at each other and ran to either stairway. He went down the hallway to the one that we heard the running in.

I went to the other one to cut them off in case they doubled back. The footsteps never made it back to the stairway. Now remember, you have to go into the basement to get out of the building, and the noise was on the second floor, and those stairs are the only way to the basement. So we devise a plan. He starts on his end of the corridor, clearing each room. I stay in the corridor, and then we alternate back and forth. There was nobody there. It was like they just vanished. A big guy like that ain't going to fit in a hiding spot somebody my size can fit into. And we all knew the spots no matter what size you were. The only conceivable place we didn't search too hard was the ceiling, but it was a drop ceiling, and there was no way that it would support someone that size.

We went hard searching for about 45 minutes and just called it and decided to leave. It was just starting to get dark by that point anyway. We Mike our way out the place and walk back to his truck tucked into the far corner of the lot out of sight. And maybe by about 30% of the way back to the truck, we both just kind of froze all of a sudden. We both hardcore got the feeling that we were being watched. Without saying a single word, the two of us simultaneously turned around slowly. In the second floor corner window by the stairs,

there's some type of disembodied head looking straight at us out the window. You know the stereotypical, ghastly-looking, emaciated gray-dead ghoul-looking trope? I could keep describing it, but I think that gets the point across. It was just there. No torso attached to it, no hand holding it up.

It kind of had this mist to it as well. Even if you looked at it like, okay, there was a squatter in there, the noise from the running does not match the person in the window. And I leave this one at least open to interpretation, but I know what we both saw and heard and that was not a living person. That place never gave us another encounter of either variety, so I'm not really sure. And lots of people died there, though, after all.

I wonder if this new condo complex they put in there is haunted or not. Now, all right. On to the second event in this narrative, I don't recall this happening before the hospice or after, but it's within a couple of weeks of each other. Remember when I mentioned asylums? Well, here's one for you. This one was tucked back maybe half a mile down a service road in the woods

connected to a busy highway overpass and exit that was next to our local mall. Rest and peace to the mall these days. Now, the back side of the complex is rather large, a trap rock ridge line connected to this awesome state park, and one side is the highway. Now, I probably found it through the same early websites, but it was right there in our stomping grounds,

so we couldn't resist. And the place was called Undercliff Sanitarium. You can still find documentation of it online, but it got demolished in 2014 or 16. Now, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I want to say that it was shut down in the 90s, along with many of the others around the country. It was known for treating children with tuberculosis and other diseases, troubled children, mental patients, perhaps.

And the thing with this facility is that it was still half operational, only in a different capacity. There were a lot of buildings in that complex on that service road. The problem was, is that it was all State Department facilities, including a state police barracks since it had easy access to both highway directions. I found this old picture of an ancient HDD that I got on an urbex forum that shows all the various security cameras and what building had what in it. And yeah, the safest way into there was traversing the ridge and looping around the far back. And that's not what I did either.

I found that picture way later, and I was like, yep, that makes sense now. And just to give you the sense of security that that place had, And later on that school year, I'd tried going there with a friend of mine and these two chicks one night. And the plan was to drive around the loop that circled the main building all the way in the back and leave, and take a few pictures on my digital camera while doing so. I got two pictures on the front facade and one around the side. And by the time we got around to the back of the building, there were three squad cars surrounding us, and I'd say that we were less than one minute.

Now, one more, and we would have been out of there. trespassing tickets for everybody, I guess. They do not mess around. I never actually got to go inside, but if you dig around online, you'll find a lot of explorers here. Now moving on, myself and Mark head over there in his 90s manual Ford Ranger one fall afternoon. We had no idea how tight the security was, but thankfully, we chose to check out one of the first buildings you come across in the complex. But we did have the right idea to park behind the building on a small concrete courtyard on the opposite side of where most of the surveillance actually was, so that turned out to be fortuitous.

This building wasn't all that big. It was an auxiliary something or other, and I guess somewhere in the 3 to 5K square foot range, perhaps. And we get out of the truck and lock it up. And that part's important because the ranger is manual everything, transmission, locks, windows. We locked up the doors and windows, including the rear slider. And he also had one of those diamond-plate toolboxes in his bed

that had its own keyed lock. At this point, we decided to do a perimeter walk around the building to see if we could locate an entry point or not. It couldn't have taken more than two minutes' tops. And it's about the same size as my house. I've tested how long it takes me to walk around that. And as we round the corner, having not found an easy entry point, we both stopped dead in our tracks when we see the truck.

Whatever could have opened up when that ranger was wide open. I'm talking all the windows, doors, tailgate, tool, box, hood, glove box, center console. There simply wasn't enough time for somebody who have picked all of that and then disappeared. The general area wasn't exactly the best. There was some hood projects down the street, but that wasn't it as we're like a quarter mile into the woods. Not only that, but I would have expected to get robbed too. It wasn't the cops either, as I illustrated earlier. We both decided to just get the F out of there, as all of this was just too weird. When we got back to the house, went on what was called my command center to do a little clickety clacketing online, and I found

this website that I hadn't seen on Undercliffe. You can still find this info up today, and upon reading the site that afternoon, I had my holy crap moment. There was some stories on there, man. One of them was exactly what happened to us, like an hour prior, to a T. And I'm thinking, dude, come on here. You have to read this. So in our case, the long and short of it is maybe in the 1930s, there was some kid who was stabbed to death with a shank by other kids who were at the facility in that courtyard that we parked on. I think the accounts mentioned mischievous activity in that area for the most part. And once I found that picture with a security detail that had an aerial view of the complex, I confirmed that the building we parked next to would be the only one that fit the story

in the facility. It's a shame I never got into the main building before they demolished it, and I'm sure that if I had, I probably also would have experienced some of the stories that are centered around that building. And so after all of that, you can see how this sounds kind of outlandish, right? Such a short period of time and two significant paranormal encounters. Yeah, okay, but as I mentioned in the beginning, I swear this is all true. And for what it's worth, it's not like I see stuff like this all the time, but I have experienced a handful of other paranormal encounters. They were all not only very different styles, but at very different points in my life, and I actually lived in a haunted house until I moved for high school. Now, I tend to err on the side of a skeptic, but I know what

I've experienced and I've never hallucinated in my life. I know a man's word on the internet doesn't mean much, but I've had other witnesses in every case, so don't just call BS. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial stress can impact us in ways we might not even realize. It impacts much more than just our finances. It's tough on our mental well-being and relationships, too, with a staggering 88% of Americans feeling the pinch as we kick off 2026. Those money worries can lead to anxiety, sleepless nights, and even feelings of depression, often sparking arguments in couples. This month, let's make it a point to talk openly about the emotional burden of financial stress and remind everyone that struggling with money doesn't equal failure. Sometimes it's just about

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like that get kind of a bad rap. Look, all I can share is my experience, and I grew up with strong morals, a strict but fair set of rules guiding me, and an understanding and loving of the teachings of Christ that I genuinely believe can make the world a better place if followed properly. Now, I'm not here to have some theological argument, though, but I want to set the sea. that I lived in a very traditionally churchy town. I still live there now and I'm proud to raise my kids here, and that's all I'll say. No, I'm not here to convert anyone else. Free will means that you can believe what you want.

That's the beauty of it. But it is important to the story that you understand that from a very young age, I had a strong, willing faith in Christ that I and everyone around me celebrated. Now, we also went completely all out for Halloween. Now, our town, back in the 1980s, genuinely. won awards for our parades and decorations. Now, you see, we don't believe that you should shy away from Satan and the demonic. You should confront it, parody it, make fun of it. That's what Halloween is all about to a lot of Christians, and while it has its roots in pagan culture, I actually believe that

the way some Christians have adopted it is a legitimately beautiful thing. All this to say, the annual children's Halloween party held at the church hall was a huge gosh darn deal for us local kids. We got to dress up as spooky scary skeletons, ghosts, witches, beasts. We did draw the line at devils and demons, but I don't know if that was a rule or just an unspoken thing that we just simply didn't want to portray ourselves as directly satanic. But the lore, sort of, was that the townsfolk decorated the place all spooky-like, and if any real evil came to town, then they'd see all this and think, we're not welcome here. We knew it was all metaphorical and silly and a chance to let loose,

but I think it was a genuinely nice lesson that our town elders came up with. Halloween was a Saturday that year. I was dressed as a vampire. My buddy, Billy Yukes, decided that he had to go as the ultimate warrior from WWF, and it was called that back then, so that brought on a few chuckles. Now, Sally Simpson was a witch, but the good kind. Sammy Hall was a classic skeleton, and you get it. The party, which, as I mentioned, was being held in the church hall, had some sandwiches, little cakes, party rings, jelly and ice cream, and everything a kid's party would actually have.

It was decorated with paper bats and pumpkins, and there had even been a pumpkin carving contest that the mayor of the town, who I'll call Mr. Watkins, was going to judge later in the afternoon. And the event was mostly for the kids, but a lot of the adults attended too. It was a real community event. Now, I remember Derek Rogers, the then owner of the local bar, his son still owns it to this day, carried around the sound system down to the church hall and acted as a sort of DJ, playing classic Halloween hits like The Monster Mash and whatever other Halloween songs might have existed back then. I don't really remember too much about the music because Derek Rogers didn't get too far into a set before, I'll just call, the event happened. Now, we were all dancing and jiving and having fun in the middle of the church hall when, suddenly, out of the blue, there was a huge crash in an explosion of stone and wood. People started screaming and running away from the direction of that sound. Me, I was just sort of standing there, frozen like some fool.

A gosh-darn truck, complete with wicked-looking metal roll bars on the front, had just crashed through the side of the church hall. I recognized the truck. It belonged to the handyman that I'd seen around town recently, and he was a newcomer, and we all noticed newcomers. I'd heard my mom and pops talk about how he spent almost all of his spare hours when he wasn't doing odd jobs for cash, praying in the church. Nobody really knew where he lived, and they said maybe he just lived in his truck. He yelled at me one time when I'd been walking past his truck parked on the sidewalk where I was painting Widow Young's front porch. And he told me to get away from his goddamn property, and he knew what us young spawned the devil were like. And he used language that I don't think no God-fearing man should actually use, especially

to a kid, but I figured God must love him because he had a cross tattooed over his heart, which you could see when he was doing his labor. Now, though, he was leaping out of this truck, stumbling over the debris, and pointing at us kids. In one of his hands, he held some rusty tire iron, and I can't remember. what he said word for word, but it was something like spons of Satan, little demons. I knew you were infesting the town with your effing evil, your goblins, and I can see through the masks you wear, and you're all going to die. Of course, this made most of the kids start screaming, crying, running to their parents at the back of the room, and everyone was still a little shell shock

from the truck coming crashing through the church hall wall, and most of the kids were younger than me and my friends. We were eight and nine and most of them were five or six-year-olds. Now, my protector instincts kicked in at that moment, and I spat out my little vampire fangs that I was wearing, which were annoying as heck anyway, and I definitely yelled at this handyman. We ain't no evildoers, sir. We love Jesus just like you do. I might have been a little delirious given the situation. Then he said something I did not expect. He said that our town was infested with evil because we allowed. Well, let's just say I can't repeat what he said,

but there were certain racial slurs that implied that he did not believe non-white people should be allowed to live in our town. Then this absolute weirdo rips his shirt off, and I saw that he had some other tattoos, which were sort of cross-shaped, but not. And I think you can probably imagine the design that I'm talking about. So there I was, an eight-year-old kid facing down some racist who represented everything that I and Christ himself stood against. My little hands bawled up into fists, and this handyman stared at me, totally fixated on me

as he took one step towards me, and then another. I heard the sound of a gun being cocked, and then another, and then another. Seven of the adults had finally arrived on the scene, white, black, Latino, a multicultural mix of the beloved members of our community, our loved ones. The people this hateful man who'd risked killing a group of kids had decided were evil. One of the folks was my own dad. He put a hand on my shoulder and gently guided me behind him, whispering that I'd done good. And seven guns were trained on this guy.

I prayed to God, prayed harder than I ever had in my life, that he wouldn't be stupid enough to charge at them and cause a firefight. I said the prayer, first under my breath and then louder and louder. Jesus, forgive this man. I said. My mom had run up from behind and was trying to drag me away in case things did get violent, but I kept praying. And this handyman raised his tire iron, and he seemed like he was going to charge them.

And then a gun went off. It was my dad's gun. And dad had never been a good shot until Carl had always teased him for it, and to this day, I don't know if dad's aim was true or off the mark, and he claims that he hit exactly where he had wanted to hit. and that bullet hit the handyman right in the hand holding the tire iron. Immediately he dropped the weapon and began howling in pain. Dad just kind of stood there, frozen, while the other gun-toting townsfolk ran in,

kicked the handyman's legs out from under him, and then held him forcibly at gunpoint until the sheriff's backup finally arrived. This handyman was arrested, charged, and sent a prison upstate. Now I don't know exactly what the charges were brought on him, and I don't really want to know. All I know is that I attended a Halloween party where a deranged, misguided soul almost drove his truck into us,

and then in my opinion we avoided any loss of life or serious trauma thanks to the love of Jesus, the bravery of the townsfolk, my defiant inability to back down, and most importantly, we were saved by my dad's absolutely abysmal aim. And this was near 40 years ago, and the old man still around,

He still can't hit a barn door with a banjo, and honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. So I grew up raised on Christian values, even attending Catholic private school for a couple of years. And despite this, I was a standout problem child and never really believed any of it at all. I found some of the stories from the Bible interesting, but nobody in my family really forced the religion on me. I just happened to be within a family that held mild Christian values. And with that being said, none of them were really devout Christians themselves. This is important because it should be understood that I was quite aware of Christian beliefs, but never actually took them as truth.

Now let's just jump forward now to my teenage years where this all began. At the age of 12, I was engaged with all things mystical and mysterious. I read books and browsed websites and everything between ancient aliens, conspiracies, ghosts, mediums, witchcraft, Illuminati, and the demonic. and this was around 2003-4, so just past the turn of the millennium. All of these things were of great interest to me, but I had no actual evidence or reason to believe any of it. It wasn't until my family had made the decision to move that these things became more viable. My parents had locked in on a house that they thought was perfect for us and were close to closing the deal.

My mother wanted her mother and my grandma to come approve of it first. and while I ran around the empty rooms trying to decide where I would have my bedroom, my mother showed my grandmother around. After the tour was given, my grandmother felt uneasy about the house, specifically the second floor. She didn't like the way that it was set up and worried what would happen if there was a fire while me and my sibling were up there. And this wasn't enough of a reason to deter my mother, though. And after they checked over the potential new home, we proceeded to head back to the car.

while on the drive my mother mentioned to my grandma how she was weirded out because she could have sworn that she saw a little girl staring at her from the second floor window now this led my parents to investigating the history of this house and they had found to their amazement that there was in fact a fire on the second floor of this house many years prior in that a young girl had perished in those flames and with that said that strange coincidence was not enough to stop them from trying to buy the house. It was actually the fact that upon inspection there was found to be a roach infestation, and my mother would not have any part of that, and this led us to finding our actual new home in another nearby town. This house was approved of much quicker and had the okay of my grandmother as well. So a couple of business days go by, and we are pretty much all moved in and set at our new home, and this is when we get a knock at our door. Turns out it was the woman who had previously lived there who sold us the house. She wanted to pass a message onto us. The message being that her mother had died

in the house and that she would occasionally appear, but that we shouldn't worry because she was friendly and was just attached to the house. Now, we will keep this on the back burner for now. Now, cut to a few weeks later, I had made a new best friend who lived down the street from me. My house number was 112 and his was 12, and I thought that I was pretty cool, but no special meaning there. Now, it wasn't long before I became close with this family and they in turn became close with my parents. We would regularly visit each other's homes for get-togethers. The first to get-together we had, my friend's parents asked mine about the move, where my parents filled them in on the details.

And this is where things got a little strange. To our surprise, my friend's family actually lived in the house that we were looking at prior for a good decade. And when they proceeded to say that they moved because the house was incredibly haunted, They said that there were two different ghosts in that house, one of which was a young girl, and the other, a malevolent old man. This shocked my family, and so far intuition was on point. My friend had three older brothers, two younger brothers, and two younger sisters,

one of whom they adopted, and they also ran a daycare out of their house, so it was quite packed on the daily. Each of the older brothers had traumatizing hauntings happened to them in that house, and the oldest brother, who was 21 at the time, still wouldn't sleep with a lights off because of it. And this was the first point in my life where I've seen multiple people confirming and agreeing upon spiritual activities and a real capacity. Now, let's jump forward to about the age of 14. Now, following my same interests, I was fascinated with the ideas of ghosts and spirits. I wanted nothing more than to interact with them in some way or another, but despite the past

mentionings, I myself hadn't seen one single shred of their existence. It was frustrating, and I tried all manners of contact, bought crystal balls, stared into mirrors in the dark, looked into black ink, researched Inoccian, literally everything under the sun but nothing would work. And this is until I opened a Ouija board on my 15th Christmas. And there was one message to take from this entire thing is that I tell you from the bottom of my soul, do not engage with a Ouija board, period. I didn't immediately use it, but one day my friend and I were chilling per usual and I had

remembered the new Ouija board that I had gotten for Christmas. I asked him if he wanted to use it with me and he hesitantly said yes. I may didn't go down into the basement with me because where else would be the perfect place to use it. I had just opened the box and placed the board when my friend chickened out on me. And I mocked him and told him, I'm going to do it by myself then. and I placed the little piece of the board and proceeded to ask it questions, but to no avail. Nothing. I was extremely disappointed, and I thought for sure that it was going to be it, but no. I put it back in the box and brought it upstairs, and that was that.

Or so I thought. But boy, was I wrong as wrong could be. Immediately over the next couple of days, I started experiencing things that were unusual. Simple things at first, like lights being funny, my dogs acting strange, objects and doors moving. This, however, was spectacular to me. I had no fear whatsoever. If anything, I was extremely excited and more into the occult than ever. I thought that this is it, what I'd been waiting for, paranormal activities. And these types of things continue for the next couple of years steadily, and then it finally happened that I saw my first ghost ever. I was 16 at this point,

and I had been making my way from the kitchen through the dining room towards the living room. And while I was gaping between the kitchen and dining room, I had seen what I thought was my mother walking towards the kitchen from the connecting hallway. I took note in my peripheral of her pink dress, which threw me off a bit because my mother normally doesn't wear such a thing. It wasn't until I made my way through the dining room to the living room, where I had seen my mother and father sitting on the couch watching a movie. This instantly made me take five because I realized my mother not only was not wearing a pink dress, but was not in the hallway going to the kitchen.

I proclaimed to my parents instantly of the shock and surprise that I was in, but they just sort of shrugged it off and continued with the movie. I didn't press the issue because I was now elated with the fact that I had actually seen a ghost, and I had instantly presumed it to be the prior owner's deceased mother. I would go on to look at her as a guardian spirit of the house, so to speak, though I never did see her again. And this event was ultimately a bad thing because it put me more at ease with the idea of communication with the dead. I took her spirits as an example of what all spiritual beings would be like, which pushed me further into looking for such things. However, over the next two years, things progress for the worse.

I developed insomnia. There would be random spots in the house. that would make your blood run cold. Doors would knock over and over, and things would be thrown out of closets and off dressers and shelves. One of the more creepier occurrences would be electronics acting without electricity. Dolls would speak their recorded sounds on cue without batteries, because I had taken the batteries out of all such things to try and prevent this,

and lights would go on and off repeatedly. I'd even have TVs go white static and start blasting max volume. I would unplug them and would stay on and go louder. And this scared the straight crap out of me, literally getting chills through my body reminiscing about this right now. And these weren't things where I would question other possibilities. These were things seen as nothing other than what they were, impossibilities. And there was one night in particular where it clicked

and the fear had taken permanently a hold of me. I hadn't recently at the time gotten into the Harry Potter books, I'm a big reader as a youngster, and I was sitting on the couch in my basement, which was now redone as a TV room, where lots of things would happen. I had one of those little bendy lamps used for reading books as my only illumination. And I was thinking to myself how great these books are and how I thought it was funny. People at the time thought that they were the devil. And I kid you not, as I'm in this thought process, the light bulb explodes, projecting the glass of shards at me. Luckily, no harm was done, but I instantly hopped up in fear and ran out of my basement to escape the dark.

I flew up the basement stairs where dolls started going off. Some bins of toys were kept under these stairs, and the fear jolted in me. I sprinted even faster and finally opened the basement door and reach for the hallway light switch in front of me, flicking it as quick as I could. Again, I kid you not. As soon as I did, the hallway bulb exploded. At this point, I'm thinking, there's no one. No freaking way any of this is happening right now.

And this has happened two more times again in the living room and once more on the second floor once I made my way up those stairs. Four light bulbs exploded in total. Now again, I'm quite rational despite these things. I am aware that this could be a very coincidental electrical wiring problem, but everything that ultimately happens says otherwise. I made it to my bedroom on the second floor where things normalized out and I finally had light. And it was at this point in life where these experiences were taking a huge toll on me, really ramping up my insomnia. I was in constant fear while at home due these things happening left and right, and some of the things so common I barely batted a lash at them. Now, before we get to the big one that I want to give just a few more descriptors of everyday occurrences at this point.

And while laying in bed, I would do everything in my power to avoid looking at my closet, which had a nasty habit of opening wide so I would be beginning. gazing straight into a dark void. And before you say draft, I might add that I would lock and blockade it regularly. And no matter what I did, this freaking door would push itself wide open, moving whatever blocked it right out of the way. And it got so bad that I tried bargaining with it, telling it, it was free to do what it wanted as long as it wouldn't open on me while I was trying to sleep. In 33 now, and I tell you as a well-rounded adult that this was not mine tricks. And it's not every night, but quite a few of them. I would feel things crawling beside me onto my bed.

Not in the general sense of where your mind is questioning if you're actually feeling or not, but in the sense of the spring mattress would straight indent and compress as the invisible force crawled right beside me. Again, this scared the hell out of me, and I would freeze in fear. And the last occurrence that I would see all the time affected other people, and due to my sleeping problems, I was always the last one to fall asleep. I witnessed multiple times people's arms being raised in their sleep like they were reaching for the sky. And there was a day when I had a cousin and two friends crashing over and I watched as one of their arms was rising in the air. It made me feel like whatever this was, was taunting me, showing me that it could do whatever it wanted to to whoever.

The real kicker is when I was sleeping on an air mattress in my younger brother's room, four years younger, And I did this because at this point I was so terrified to sleep alone that I needed to be near someone to feel somewhat safe. And as I was dozing off, I watched my little brother's arms raise into the air. And the only difference this time is that he actually woke up while it was happening. I watched him grogly realize what was happening to him, and he jumped to his feet, turned and ran into the freaking wall out of terror and panic. And I legit started laughing because I'd never seen anything so absurd and shocking. my entire life. And the way his feet moved like an old cartoon, like he was Sonic the Hedgehog, the way the blankets jumbled beneath his scurrying feet, and the sheer speed at which he'd hopped up

and darted into the wall. Save to say both my brother nor I got any sleep that night. So, if you made it thus far, you understand at this point whatever is going on has been ramping up and becoming more bothersome by the day, and this is where we climax. I had grown quite brave at that because these things were so regular and common that I simply just became used to it, and was able to sleep solo once again. So there I am, lying down on the couch against the furthest back wall in my basement. This was generally where I slept and hung out at this point in life. I had three dogs, one of which was a little white chihuahua named baby,

and she was the most timid, docile, scaredy cat of a dog that you can imagine. Everyone who has pets understands that you come to learn the general behavior of them, And I had just turned off the lights and popped onto my back where my little baby jumped up to sleep on my chest like she always does. And this is where the single most terrifying thing of my life happened. Baby instantly goes to alert and stands up growling in the darkness. She does not ever act like this, and her fur is raised and her fangs are bared. I can immediately perceive that this little dog is trying to defend me from something despite her tiny stature. And this puts me on full alert and I sit up.

to also peer into the darkness while she just stood guard on my lap. And the next thing I know, she coweres. Her tail goes between her legs, and she whimpers and flees. And before I can gauge what's happening, my arms were pinned straight down to my side, and my back was forced straight down into the couch. I can see enough to tell you with 100% certainty that there was nothing there. While forced down, it feels as if I was pushed five feet through the couch, like my soul was straight pushed out of my body.

And I was so consumed by fear that there wasn't a single thought in my head other than static and panic. And it seemed like forever. But in reality it was probably only ten seconds. And as soon as this force let go of me, I hopped straight up in my undies and darted through the darkness toward the stairs. And this is the part that I want to make crystal clear because this right here is the part that you never want to experience. Those who think the paranormal and ghost are cool have not experienced the sensation I am about to describe. I tell you, I felt a tangible hatred that was unlike anything I've ever felt. It was the feeling of something that hated every fiber of your being and wanted nothing more than to destroy every last bit of you in the most malevolent way possible.

It was inhuman, the sensation. It was in this moment I understood hell is real, and this was something from there. There was no doubt in my mind. It was a sense of knowing, absolutely. It was the predator, and you were the prey. I scrambled room to room in my house, and just like before every light bulb started shattering, and I just couldn't escape the darkness.

I made it to the second floor and burst into my parents' room screaming, and I swear on everything that they would just not wake up. I shook them and yelled, nothing. I then ran to the only other person in the house of the time, my little brother. Same thing. He would not wake, and it was like trying to shake somebody out of a coma. And I tell you, in all honesty, I was 18, considered myself a man at this point, and I had loads of pride. Still, this did not stop me from hopping right into my brother's bed next to him, pulling the blanket over me. Now, you would think at this point that I was safe. No, this thing repeated what it

did in the basement. It took hold of my body over and over, and I could feel my mind, breaking and my soul dying right in my very body. After the tenth time, I was just completely hopeless. I had almost given into defeat and on the verge of being scared to death and just demolished by these demons. And this was when I remembered something I heard many times from my Christian upbringing. Pray to Jesus. And I swear to you on my eternal soul and all that I love and hold dear the moment that I cried

out to Jesus, this stuff stopped. a dime. Fifteen years has passed at this point, and I've not experienced a single thing mentioned ever again, and I haven't even come close to getting the feeling that something paranormal is near me. Every single bit of the experience has vanished. And for the next year straight, I started praying at night, spending at least 15 minutes per night before going to bed through all my prayers. And though I don't pray as much, and I am every bit as faithful, if not more, at this point in my life. However, that's not the complete end to this saga. The very next morning I tried to explain to my parents what had happened. Now, I can't say that they fully believe me, but they at least listened enough

to help me out. I thought about how it all seemed to start when I first used that Ouija board, which led me to doing a quick online search of how to dispose of those kinds of things, because I did not want that thing or portal anywhere near me again. It said online that the only way to truly close a Ouija boardist to burn it. And so that same day my parents and I brought it out back to the fire pit. Now, I must say that I was hasty here and left the bidding to my parents because I didn't even want to look at that thing or be near it anymore. Funny enough, it was years later that I was regaling the events with my mother where she gave me a bit of surprising news. And she proceeded to tell me that she did in fact believe me because that day, unbeknownst to me, the Ouija board would

not burn. She expressed how she and my father doused it with gasoline, and it just sat there unscathed. They ultimately threw it out into the trash can and watched the dump truck take it away, and I figured that must have been good enough because again, nothing ever came back. And I like to imagine that it eventually got incinerated at the junkyard at some point. And that's pretty much the end of that, but I can still provide one more happening that I found quite coincidental. When I was speaking of my mother and father, it was really my mother and stepfather. I say this because when I finally told my blood father this ordeal, he went on to tell me all

about how he was severely haunted in his youth, and similar to me, was a non-believer who happened to call out to Jesus for help. Now, I can't say for certain, but this has led me to believe that there may in fact be some kind of hereditary thing going on here. And like I started out saying, I've not fabricated or embellished even one. bit of this. I have pondered the thoughts of such things as mental disorders, but to that degree, I have two things to go against that. One, doctors have continually found my mental health to be fine, and two, no matter what the case, it stopped forever on the drop of a dime the moment that I called out

to Christ. And there may be a few more things than I'm blanking on at the moment because I've been writing this for the past two hours or so, and I'm getting to that point where my brain is starting to fizzle, but I'm more than happy to take on and answer any questions about my demonic experience. So some people have some pretty weird triggers. And back when I used Twitter, I'd see people listing things like fall guys or baked beans or happiness or dream the Minecraft YouTuber as trigger warnings. Okay, maybe the last one is fair, but I used to kind of roll my eyes and think, how did these people actually manage to make it through life, being triggered? by the little beans from Fall Guys.

And then I developed severe PTSD from Elvis Presley, and I understood. Okay, yeah, maybe I am being a bit goofy here, but it's just to mask the pain, really. I genuinely do become a sobbing, quivering wreck if I look at Elvis Presley too long, or worse, an Elvis Presley impersonator. I'm not even exaggerating either. It began when I was invited to a Halloween party with a specific costume gimmick. That gimmick? Freaking Elvis. Entrance was $5, or if you came dressed as Elvis, you got in free.

I did not have an Elvis costume, so I just paid the $5 entrance fee. And I'd say about half of the party goers skipped the Elvis nonsense, too. But that still left 30 or 40 poorly conceived Elvis's who had not left the building. And I'm not great with super tight crowds, and the party was way busier than it should have been. It was held in someone's house, and I don't think they realized the draw that the Elvis gimmick would create. There were men trying their best to be the king. There were goofy Elvis's dancing in their blue suede shoes.

There were sexy Elvis's, both female and male. And I even saw one girl using the anonymity of her Elvis mask to repeatedly flash her breasts. I was glad that I'd shown up in sensible jeans and a strappy top. I can't go wrong with being boring, and I'd gotten a ride with a friend. friend who doesn't drink, so I helped myself to a beer from the keg. I needed it to deal with the ongoing atmosphere. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. As part of the Elvis ween, guess what singer was playing constantly on the stereo? Absolutely no break from Elvis's greatest hits, playing on repeat via Spotify. And even after my first drink, I was deeply regretting being there, but my friend

had wanted to come, and she really loved Elvis. And when I decided to get my second drink, A short female Elvis stumbled up to me and handed me a red plastic cup of beer. She mumbled something about suspicious minds and sort of staggered off. No, normally I would never accept a drink from a stranger, but even with the Elvis costume, I recognized her as another friend from college. Little did I realize that she wasn't saying suspicious minds, and she was trying to tell me that the drink was suspicious, and could I get rid of it for her.

After the events of the party, I asked her, why she handled it this way and she could barely even remember. She said that she was drunk and scared that there was an Elvis who wouldn't leave her alone, and she was worried that her drink was spiked. Of course, being the buzzed idiot I was, and having sensory overload from so much Elvis, I just down that drink. But I don't think it was roofied or anything. I've been roofied before, sadly, and it didn't feel like that, but there was something in that drink, something that almost immediately started giving me a headache and the sweats. I started looking around for my friend, trying to tell her that I needed to go and that I really didn't feel good. And that's when I saw him,

the most realistic-looking Elvis at the party. He didn't wear a mask, his hair was styled in a pompadour, and he wore Elvis sunglasses in that white rhinestone suit that made the king so famous. And there was only one man that I knew who could look that much like Elvis without actually being Elvis. And remember when I said that I've been roofied before? Well, I'd been roofied by my ex-boyfriend a year before, and he had that same baby face, that same dark hair, the same build, everything. This was him. The Elvis staring at me across the room was my ex-boyfriend Rodney. I'd had to take a restraining order out against him. I was never able to prove that he was the one who roofied me. But he became what they called a

fixated individual after I broke up with him, a complete and utter nut job. And now here he was, dressed as Elvis, watching me from across the room. And I know he was watching me because he did that thing where he used his two fingers to point to his eyes and then to me as to say, hey, I'm watching you. And I darted into the other room looking for my friend. Where the hell was she? I squeezed through the crowd, shoving lesser Elvis's left and right, and people started yelling at me telling me to watch it, and I could feel evil Elvis's eyes on me. And sure enough,

when I looked around, there he was, slowly walking through the crowd like Michael Myers or some crap, but a perfect depiction of Elvis. I ducked into another room. What was this house, I thought? Why were there so many rooms and so many people dressed as Elvis? Was this even real? Or the drugs from the drink playing havoc with my system? I couldn't really tell in the moment, but I knew that I had to get out of there. The Elvis was still pursuing me, and I tried to tell myself that it was just the drugs and alcohol, but he was slowly following me.

And I think that I must have just kept looping around the house, barely coherent because he always seemed to be there. Eventually I found myself outside in the front yard. More Elvis's milled around and music was playing from some type of outdoor system. I turned to the front door and evil Elvis stood there. There was no mistaking it. It was my ex-boyfriend, Rod. He had this sort of knowing, smug grin on his face that was so familiar to me.

The terror of him catching me was unspeakable. And then, despite pursuing me slowly for most of the night, he just suddenly leaped down the porch steps and came running directly at me. His sunglasses stayed on his face. His Elvis sideburns obscured his features somewhat, and I was certain it was him, though. Why else would he be charging at me? I was confused, but I screamed, I turned to run,

and my legs just gave out from under me. This evil Rodney Elvis was on top of me, grabbing at me, grabbing at my hair and my clothes, and I have no idea what he had planned. It was like he was trying to just strip me naked, there on the front lawn in front of numerous other people. Rodney always was some complete psychopath, especially when he was on Coke or some other drug, which was often.

Thankfully, the crowd didn't take kindly to an Elvis Presley impersonator trying to violate me out front. The biggest, fattest Elvis I'd ever seen came thundering along the lawn, and I later realized that he was wearing a fat suit as part of his costume, and the whole schick was Elvis just before he died. At the time, though, the hamburger sticking out of his jacket pockets just made me feel like I was going mad, but it didn't care. Fat Elvis leaped the final distance towards evil Elvis, my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend, and body slammed him so hard that the pair of them went flying across the lawn. I pulled myself to my feet, unfortunately puking as I did so, which in retrospect I think saved me from whatever dodgy

drug had been slipped into that drink earlier in the night. Fat Elvis was doing his best to stomp on evil Elvis, but his bulk, or rather the fat suit, was getting in the way. But now others were joining in. This group of random Elvis Presley's just absolutely pounding on evil Elvis, and that's when my ex-boyfriend rolled free and pulled out a gun. And within seconds he fired, hitting fat Elvis square in the stomach. This fat Elvis reeled back, fell over, and the other Elvis kind of held up their hands in surrender, backing away from evil Elvis as he stepped away. He fired one more shot into the air, causing everyone to duck and then just took off into the darkness around the side of the house. A couple of the elvices wanted to follow him, but the rest of us told them not to. The guy was

armed, and then I told him that I knew who he was, and we could just call the cops. And now, after all the chaos, skip forward a few hours. I found my friend, who took me to the police station, and I explained everything. I told them that my attacker was my ex-boyfriend Rodney and explained the history. They ended up looking them up and the officer gave me this very strange and grave look. Rodney had been arrested a day ago for armed robbery on a convenience store in a completely different state, she explained. And she went on to tell me that he was still in custody and had been so for at least 24 hours. Now, I kept insisting.

I was certain that that evil Elvis was Rodney. and she even put a call into the sheriff's department where he was being held. No question. He was still incarcerated. There was no humanly possible way that evil Elvis was Rodney. And later they questioned him about the incidents and apparently he was just completely clueless and they told me he even seemed to express genuine concern for me. And there you have it.

A couple of years ago, I was stalked and attacked by an evil Elvis impersonator who appeared off in the night and I have absolutely no idea who he was or why he targeted me. He looks so much like Rodney that I could swear that it was him, but there was no way it was. And so now any time I see anyone dressed like the king, even Elvis himself, I remember back to that Halloween party, and I think about what he tried to do to me and what could have happened. One piece of good news was that plus-sized Elvis, like I mentioned,

was wearing what turned out to be an extremely large and cumbersome fat suit. He was a skinny guy, and that meant that the bullet from Elvis's handgun was actually blocked by all the foam in that costume. So, plus-size Elvis, who actually turned out to be a friend of mine from college under all that makeup and fat suit, was absolutely fine. Now, I have no idea what became of evil Elvis. I'll scour the news for an Elvis impersonator committing violent crimes, but I've never found anything like that. And all I can hope is that he was just picked up for some other offense, and, The only Elvis impersonation he's doing these days is hopefully the jailhouse rock. For some reason, I never thought about posting my story here.

I've posted on YouTube comments before, and I think I've talked about it on my YouTube show before. But anyway, it started when I was five or six, which would have been 1988 to 1989, and I would see what was called The Bloody Man, walking up and down the stairs in my house. I can't remember his face, and not sure if it's, because I never looked at it or he didn't actually have one. I just remember it would never be the middle of the night, but more like bedtime that this would always happen. He had a bandage on his head that was bloody in a hospital gown.

I remember having a feeling that I knew this wasn't right, but I wasn't scared. I'm not sure if the lack of fear was due to being told not to be scared somehow or if I was just so young that I didn't know how to be scared. Now, anyways, this person that I would see, I would come to learn later in life, was my uncle. He had been beaten in the head with a baseball bat, came home, brain swelled in his sleep, and was taken to the hospital by the family in the morning where he died several days later. Now this was August of 1982, and I was born in December of 1983. There's much more to the story, both his life and that night itself, but I'll hold off on that for now.

I saw the bloody man somewhere in the range of 15 to maybe 30 times, and then my mom and I moved out of there to get our own place, and this was my grandfather's house, and I was gone for five years. Around 12 or 13 years old, I moved back to that house, and while I never saw the bloody man again, it was far from the last paranormal encounter I would have in that home. And after being back around five to six months or so, one day, I was showing my little sister how to play a Sonic the Hedgehog game, and as I'm explaining it to her, as clear as day, a female voice says her name. And my sister instantly got up and went to the door and said,

Yeah, ma? And I was frozen solid in fear. Now this was for two reasons. The first was that I knew for a fact that that wasn't my mom's voice that said my sister's name. It was my grandmothers who had been dead for ten years. The second thing I knew was that my little sister didn't seem to realize was the voice had not come from downstairs. It came from right at our feet by the foot of the bed. And I just sat there frozen in fear while my sister yelled for my mom, who of course said that she had been washing dishes and never called for her.

My sister then sulked while walking back to the bed. What's the matter? I asked her, and she said, I hate those stupid stares. The bloody man is scary. So I started asking her who had told her about the bloody man, and was it any of my friends, etc., etc. and she was in shock that I knew who the bloody man was and was crying for me to believe her that she really sees him and none of my friends had spilled the secret to her. She was about five at the time, same age I used to see him.

The next part of the story involves all my friends. Every sleepover after hearing my grandmother's voice, my bedroom door started shaking. Thinking it might be my stepfather, we would open it as it was shaking and no one would be standing there. And upon realizing this, the shaking would terrify us, so every sleepover for about a year, the door would shake, and these horrible claw-like scratching sounds would go down the door. My friends and I would fight to hide in the corner of the bed while it would happen. So if you're keeping count, that's me and my sister who both saw the bloody man and heard the female voice, and three of my friends who witnessed the shaking and clawing at the door. Five people. But believe

or not, the last part of this story gets even crazier. We sold the house and moved a couple of cities over about a year later. One thing I forgot to mention is the reason I moved back at 12 and 13 is my grandfather had a bunch of mini-strokes and was in a wheelchair, so my mom moved back in to take care of him. Well, after we moved away, I told my mom that it surprised me that she sold her childhood house and she talked about all the bad memories that she had there that had replaced the good. And then she said, plus, Grampies started creeping me out towards the end.

And it turns out he started telling her, your brother's still here. Every night up and down those goddamn stairs, up and down, up and down. He saw the quote, Bloody Man, too, his son. But that's not the craziest part. About seven to eight years after selling the house,

the guy that bought it saw my uncle in a gym, and beeline it towards him demanding to know what the hell is in that house. He, his wife, and two of his kids kept seeing uncle around the house. I made it a point to walk by the house to try and catch someone coming out once I heard the gym story and one day I caught the youngest son leaving. I introduced myself and asked him about what they saw and he said he was too young at the time but his mom, dad, and two brothers would always see my uncle behind them and me. mirrors in the house. They got rid of the mirrors and it stopped, he said. I don't quite understand

that part because mirrors had nothing to do with it for me, but still, that's three people in my family, three friends, and four people of a different family that essentially saw the same thing or heard it. And I'd give anything to learn exactly what the heck went on in that house all those years. Now to set the scene, most of us are Kiwis living in Australia, and we're an odd bunch There's me, Chris, and Paul, and we're all from New Zealand, and we all moved over here together. And then we met Rocky, an American bloke who just sort of jelled with us and became the missing member of our quartet. But we were lads who loved a party. We loved a lot of things, us, and didn't take life too seriously.

And we weren't and aren't haters. But let's read, bro, I hate boats. I don't know if you've ever been on one. You're a YouTuber, so maybe you aspire to own a yacht or some crap like that, and have wild parties out on the deck where everyone gets drunk and imbibed substances. You know that Lonely Island song, I Want a Boat? It makes it look so much fun. Same as movies or shows where rich people go out on yachts and have a great time.

Well, don't do it. It sucks. I didn't used to have a fear of open water, but I do now. And it's all because one Halloween, my idiot buddy Rocky decided that we, the boys, should all pool together, rent a yacht, and then pick up some of the night. some baddies in a coastal bar and tell them that we were some rich Wall Street idiots and go out to sea for a good time. Sounds like a flawless idea, right? Well, yeah, it wasn't. Now, first off, Rocky barely knew how to pilot a boat. So we sort of ended up drifting out to sea for a bit and then dropped anchor and thought, hey, we've got alcohol, someone's brought,

well, other things, and we managed to convince about three girls to come party with us. Now, the fact that there were five of us guys. Only four of us were the tight crew, too, and the other guy, he was an Australian fella that we'd met in the bar, and he had the substances and pretty much begged us to let him attend our rich hedge fund party. He said he had some great investment opportunities to run past us. And of course, we weren't hedge fund managers or Wall Street wankers or anything like that. We were more like the schlubs from the hangover or any Vince Vaughn or Owen Wilson American comedy movie that you can name. Just regular dudes who liked a party, who like to try and usually fail hooking up with some honeies, and just have fun. We'd also blown most of our

savings on renting this yacht for one day, and the deposit alone was completely eye-watering, which we would lose if any damage occurred to this vessel. And so basically the four of us were all bit jumpy about getting too drunk or wrecked, especially when the Australian guy, who will just called Barry, started breaking out the baggies. We realized that Halloween fell on a full moon that year in 2001, and Barry got incredibly excited about this, doing nose candy and howling at the moon as soon as the sun went down. Now, please just remember here. We were dumb guys in our early 20s. Barry was probably 35, and we didn't know him at all, and we just invited him onto a boat from which there was no real escape, and the guy was off his head on the powder.

Now, me and my two other buddies, Chris and Paul, were making half-assed attempts to hit on the honeys we picked up, but they were more interested in Barry in his wild antics. Rocky, on the other hand, was absolutely freaking out, worrying about the deposit that we dropped on the yacht and then stressing in general. Eventually, he took me to one side while the others were getting drunk and high with weird Australian Barry. Rocky told me that he'd effed up big style, and a hell of a storm was heading right. towards our location. That's fine, I said. We'll just raise anchor and sail back to the docks. We can't be that far out, right? And that's when Rocky tells me that he'd never actually dropped anchor, and the boat had been just drifting slowly further and further out to sea, and he basically

just had no idea what in the hell he was doing. It was almost nature or God or someone was playing a prank on us. No sooner had Rocky made this confession that the heavens absolutely absolutely opened up, and heavy freezing rain began to pound down in the boat. The girls ran under the cover of the bridge, but there was barely enough space for all of us to fit in the small interior sections of this tiny yacht, the best we could afford. Now, Barry, on the other hand, was standing out in the storm. Lightning was striking the water, dangerously close by now, and choppy waves had began rocking us back and forth.

Rocky, Paul, and Chris were yelling at each other to navigate back to shore, and the girls were just screaming. Now, I'm not convinced they even knew how to plot the route back. How Rocky had managed to convince the rental company to even let us take the boat out, I'll never know that, but he was always good at bullcraping his way through situations. But back to Barry, he was hollering and screaming about some sea witch, and I think he called her Shazanzie or something like that, and even 24 years later I've never been able to find any evidence of this so-called sea goddess.

Barry was imploring her to save us. And then he paused, as if listening for a reply. And this is when one of the girls said something to me that they'd seen Barry taking a whole bunch of LSD, at least three tabs. Great. So he had this mysterious Australian drug addict standing out in the storm, and holy crap, what was he doing now? He starts to produce a goddamn knife from the boat's toolkit

and started carving a sigil into the wooden decking on the boat. boat. Of course, Rocky's first thought was the goddamn deposit and how much money we'd lose, so he runs out into the storm and starts screaming at Barry. Barry Cox has head to one side again and yells that, sure, he'll do what Shazanae says. And then his face goes very serious, rain was hammering down, lightning striking, and he tells this that because it's Halloween and a full moon, Shazanae demands two sacrifices to release us from her domain. Oh, calmly, I ask him what he means by that, and he holds up the knife and makes a very obvious slicing gesture across his neck. I tell him, hey, buddy, don't hurt yourself, and he laughs and says it's not him that Shazanae wants as a sacrifice.

So I asked him who he wants, and he points to one of the chicks we brought with us, and then Rocky, the only guy who knows how to pilot the damn boat. So, of course, I'm not about to let this high as heck Australian lunatic sacrifice any of us to his imaginary sea witch. The storm is closing in, and Rocky's doing his best to navigate the choppy waters before any real danger occurs. At least any real danger besides the lunatic drug addict who's demanding that Rocky and the girl whose name I don't even remember anymore, but I think it was probably like Belinda, come out and fall on his blade in the name of Shazanae. And so I'm looking around in the pouring rain, trying to find a way to de-escalate the situation without getting myself stabbed in the face by this madman. I spy a harpoon gun on the floor, but no, couldn't.

I'm not shooting this guy with a spear and having that on my conscience. He's drunk, and on an LSD trip, it isn't deserved to die. He seemed like a solid bloke before the sea witch sacrifice crap. Unfortunately, Barry saw me looking at the spear. gun and decided to make a move for it, towards me with a knife. He said I wasn't a sacrifice Shazine wanted, but he wouldn't let me get in the way of saving the world from the storm that would consume us all. According to him, that's what was going on. This was the apocalypse, and it was on us all, and only the deaths of those two random people he

just met would save the world, i.e., he was absolutely off his face on drugs. And you know when people are absolutely off their face on drugs, they like to talk at length, and boy, did Barry talk. So much in fact that he didn't notice one of the chicks was sneaking around the side of the boat towards Barry. And I remember her name was Krista because we dated for a while after this, but I think it was just a situation ship because it didn't really last. And I guess being held captive by a sea god-worshipping nut job isn't the best basis for a long-term relationship. Now, anyway, Krista had crept up behind Barry. who was waving this knife in my direction, and she grabbed some kind of pole, which I guess was used to fish things out of the sea if they fell overboard.

Now, Barry was in the middle of some big rant about saving the world. Rain was hammering down, lightning was lighting up the sky, and then wham. Krista smacks Barry in the head with the pole as hard as she could. He staggers, and for a moment I'm not convinced that he's going to go down. And so I'd dart in like the hero that I always wanted to be, and sock him right in the jaw. with the best and only punch I'd ever thrown in my life. The knife goes flying out of his hand, right overboard, and Barry collapses forward. Now quickly, the others, apart from Rocky, who's still trying to steer the boat away from the storm,

all come running. We'd found some rope and some other things to secure Barry, and we'd tie this lunatic Ozzy up in the back of the boat, and somehow, thankfully, Rocky managed to guide the boat back into the key. We're expecting cops to be waiting on our return or the Coast Guard or someone, but it was a bit of an anti-climax. I guess Rocky never thought to actually radio the Coast Guard for help, which we still give them crap for to this day. And there was only one person waiting on that dock, and I could tell right away that she was the Karen type. Middle-aged, soaked to the skin, and looked like she was ready to call the manager. And thankfully, her anger was not directed at us.

It was directed at Barry. She explained that she was Barry's wife and took one look in him hog-tied and incapacitated in the back of the boat and just said something like bloody Nora, not again, you bloody sea word. And before we could even protest, she just climbed on the boat, slapped Barry around in the face six ways from Sunday until he woke up, and then sort of marched him to a nearby car, throwing him into the back. Now I was kind of shocked to realize that she was driving a Bentley and a pretty nice one at that. We thought she was going to do a runner, and one of my buddies was already writing down their registration plate. But then Karen came back and was surprisingly apologetic. Her excuse? Barry was having some type of midlife crisis and liked a party.

We tried to explain that he'd been threatening to sacrifice a couple of us to some sea witch, and Karen just shrugged and said, yeah, he gets a bit weird on Halloween and on a full moon, so she quote-unquote wasn't surprised. Like, okay, lady, this guy sounds like he really isn't safe in modern society, maybe. But he wasn't our problem anymore. At least not when Karen pulled out her checkbook and wrote us a very sizable check to cover the damages that Barry had done to our boat and any other trauma that we'd actually suffered. Now, we're talking a five-figure amount here, more than enough to buy our silence as much as I'm ashamed to say it. And we made sure to plead with Karen to get her

husband some help, and she kind of implied that it was an uphill struggle, but they were trying. And then she said that maybe we could join them on their boat sometime, because Barry's not normally like this, I guess. Well, I'd hope not. And she gave me her card, and while we never did take her up on the offer, with no desire to ever see these weirdos again, I did look them up a few years later and realize that we've been in the presence of a couple of very rich people. So in our quest to impress some hot chicks by pretending we were rich enough to own a boat, we discovered the reality of having the kind of money that turns you into someone like Barry. And after that, I've spent the next 20-odd years feeling perfectly happy that I'm just a lowly mechanic in a small Australian town.

And the guys drifted apart, but sometimes we still message on Facebook and talk about the time we were almost sacrificed to an imaginary sea witch during a storm on Halloween. We barely even tell other people this story because it sounds so bat-crap crazy that we usually can't be bothered to even try convincing people it's true. But I figured, hey, I'm getting on in years, so I'll just post it to you, and maybe it'll serve as a cautionary tale for anyone else who randomly decides to rent a boat and sail into a storm during a full moon on Halloween night. So my girl and I encountered something very strange this weekend. So we trail run, and it's sort of become our thing. Now, yesterday we found a trailhead that was up towards the mountains about two hours away from Seattle, pretty remote.

So we left early and got to the trailhead at 8 a.m. The trail was particularly difficult. Steep enough that we found ourselves walking pretty often, and in retrospect, we should have been surprised by what we saw next. Midway through our run on a steep descent, we pass a lone hiker and think absolutely nothing about the encounter. alone, maybe 65 to 70 in wearing all white. The clothes were modern, looked perfectly placed for today. Hiking pants, vest, hat, and she had one hiking pole in a backpack, all white. Again, modern clothes didn't stand out as strange, and we say hello, and she says nothing back.

We were running, so there was really nothing rude about it, and we just simply passed her. We continue, and it gets harder, but progress nearly three miles uphill, and we get to a point where the trail becomes an overgrown forest road in a small clearing. And at this point, the road begins to get very, very overgrown. So we crossed a small ridge and suddenly we see a hiker. It's been 30 minutes since we saw the older lady in white. Yet, here was a hiker with the same outfit. There were no folks in our trail, yet we'd swear that this was the same person.

But that would be impossible, right? and the gravity of this didn't quite hit yet. So strangely, we ran past her again. We ran a couple of feet in front, at least, because at this point the road was entirely bushes and not passable, and so we turn around. So we walked past her last time, and she says something, something like, seems like the trail ends here.

It didn't feel eerie, yet in retrospect it was eerie. We ran back. and everything seemed normal until we reflected on why this lady was there. How could she have even made it there at all? We just ran five miles uphill, steep terrain, and so did this 70-year-old lady. It's been a one-way path, and there had been no other turns. The trail we were on at this point was completely overgrown. Enough that we had to turn around, and why was she there?

How did she get there? Was she the same lady? And when we turned around and ran back that same trail, we never ran into the first hiker. So I got a weird Halloween story for you. My buddies and I were on the way to a haunted house attraction that doubled as a Halloween party. It was sort of a what you call a bespoke thing set up by a friend of ours. I just turned 21, so I was used to relying on other people to supply the alcohol at various kegars and gatherings. And then as we drove to the host house in the hills, it struck me as, holy crap.

I was old enough to legally buy alcohol and bring some beers to the party and finally wouldn't feel like such a scab who was always begging other people for beer. And this was the first time that I'd stopped at a convenience store to buy alcohol and I was buzzed. I had ID with me and I could legally buy whatever things I wanted and nobody could stop me. vodka, rum and gin, and that's what I decided. I told my two pals to wait in the car and they were both 20, and I had a vague memory that some places won't serve you if you're with minors.

I didn't want to risk anything getting in the way of this right of passage. So I just sort of went across the parking lot, heading the clouds, and pushed open the door of the convenience door with the confidence of a 21-year-old who no longer has to rely on some fake ID to inevitably fail to buy beer. And the guy at the cast register was some scrawny guy who looked just a bit older than me. He gave me this weird, suspicious look that I interpreted as, you're underage, aren't you?

And so I shot him this wide, confident smile. Fair enough, I thought. I do have kind of a baby face, so I snatched up a basket to fill with my legitimately gotten gains. And I decided to take my time, browsing the snacks, and maybe I'd buy some funnions or talkies or some other snacks for my buddies and I. Beef jerky, that was good. And into the basket, that went. Candy corn, that was always a Halloween stable, too.

And I look over my shoulder at the cashier, and he seemed to be sweating profusely. He wasn't looking at me, though. He was just looking at the mirror in the corner that reflected all of the store. I followed his gaze. My heart at that moment absolutely sank. Crouched down an aisle away from me was a man wearing a balaclava, and clutching what seemed to be. be a shotgun.

Immediately I realized what had happened. He'd been in the process of robbing the store when we pulled into the lot, and I just sort of walked into the middle of some stick-up. Instead of turning me into bloody paste, the guy had clearly decided to hide behind some stacks with his shotgun pointed at the clerk as a warning, and the clerk asked me if I'd found everything I needed, clearly trying to encourage me to pay and get out, and to call for help. I went along with it, telling him that, yeah, I was done. And it was clearly a tremor in my voice, though, and in my own head it sounded like I was pooping bricks. I glanced up at the

reflective mirror and saw the gunman beginning to stand up. Oh, God, I thought he had clocked me. And I saw his black masked head appear over the aisle, and he did, in fact, clock me. He told me to move to the front of the store. His voice was muffled through that woolen mask and I obeyed, just trying not to pee myself. And I have no idea why, but I kept hold on my basket of groceries the whole time. The gunmen stepped forward, gesturing for me to stand behind the store clerks, so we were both within range of that potential shotgun blast. And this was it.

I felt like I was going to die. I said a quick prayer, and hoped upon hope that my buddies in the car had somehow noticed what was going on from the vehicle and called the cops on their cell phones. All I had to do was just stall for time. What's brought you here today, buddy? I remember asking the gunman, and it was the first thing I could think to ask. A dumb question, and he knew it.

And I could tell that he was pretty frustrated as he replied, telling me that he was here to rob the place, obviously. And I figured maybe I'd try and appeal to his human side. I'm just here for the spirits, I said. Going to a haunted house, I thought he'd pick up. some spirits for the festivities. And the guy was wearing a black mask, but I swear I saw him go pale. His eyes were widened, and I had no idea what I'd said or done to affect him so much.

And then he asked me, This place has spirits? I was baffled. Of course it did. It was a wine and spirits and liquor store. And the gunman's eyes were darting around and the shotgun was shaking in his hands. And that's when I had the dumbest revelation of my life. He thought I meant freaking ghosts.

He thought I was here to recruit actual dead spirits to come with me to a haunted house. And then he asked me if they speak to me too, if I hear their voices calling to me because he does. He said the spirits told him to come here today and rob this place. At that point, I just winged it. I told him that's what they're like here. They're trickster spirits. they're trying to corrupt him so the devil could claim his soul. And this was my job to guide them to a nearby haunted house where they could be at peace.

Now, I was rambling, just making up any crap I could think of, because from the way his hands were shaking, it looked like he was buying it. I told him that he shouldn't give in and shouldn't listen to the voices. He told me that he usually takes medication to keep the voices quiet, but he hadn't been able to afford it for a while, that his dealer was out of town. Great. So this guy was suffering from probably heroin withdrawals and hearing ghostly voices and had a shaking, sawed-off shotgun pointed directly at us. And suddenly, I heard distant sirens getting very quickly closer. I didn't look out. I just continued to pray that the cops would de-escalate this situation before he could fire off a shot.

And what happened next? I cannot explain. To this day, I have no explanation for what happened. A bottle of vodka fell off the shelf. It just sort of fell off and smashed onto the ground behind the gunman. Now, the rational part of me knows that he must have knocked it when he was ducking down back there, or maybe it was just sort of poorly stacked, but... But late at night when I have flashbacks to this hostage situation, I can't help imagine a spectral figure giving that bottle a little nudge.

I know that didn't happen, but it was a miracle nonetheless. At that moment, the gunman whirled around at the sound of the glass breaking, and when he saw it was a bottle of spirits, he let out a scream that I swear could have woken the dead. And then, oh my God, this is the part that I wish I could forget. I heard a gunshot, and the gunman's head exploded. He put the sod off into his own mouth and pulled the trigger. I heard the bell over the door sound,

heard the cops running in, yelling for me to get down in the ground, and I just complied in some type of days. My ears were ringing from the sound of the shotgun blast, and there was blood and all sorts of stuff all over and on me, and to this day when I look in the mirror, I'm convinced that I haven't washed all of it off. Later, we discovered that the gunman had some history of some pretty severe mental illness and drug use.

He'd been in and out of facilities his entire life, didn't receive remotely the appropriate mental health care, and he turned to heroin to drowned out the voices, and when that all dried up, those voices came back, and all it took was for me to mention spirits and an ill-placed bottle to end his tragic life. We never did go to that haunted house party, and I've never celebrated Halloween since. I think I'm haunted enough, as it is. When I was around 10 years old, my dog fled and disappeared. It had happened before, so we did the same as it.

the other times, paid some radio announcements to spread the word and glued some pamphlets around, and nothing worked. Until one day, my father mysteriously said, we're going to go get Frodo back. Now, this was before the Lord of the Rings movies, mind you, and both him and my older brother were big fans of the books, and we drove through a weird, rocky road, which was far from home, and actually found Frodo waiting for us by the gates of a house. No one greeted us. My father opened the gate and the dog got in the car with us. Now, 20 years later, he finally mustered the courage to tell us what had happened. He's a physician and had an appointment with a patient, and the patient got in and said,

You look distressed. What happened? And my father replied, our dog ran away, and my youngest son is very sad about it. And the man then asked for a piece of paper and then a pencil, and he drew a map and said, this is where your dog is. And we followed the map and found Frodo. And not a matter of belief, as Frodo was the living proof of that man's abilities. And that was also a very special evening when my father told us what had happened.

It was a family gathering, and my godfather said, Yep, that's it. Some people just have those amazing abilities. To which my mother replied, Of course, just like Julian. Which is me. And everyone stared at me and my godfather asked if it was true and I just gathered strength and said something which I'd never shared in their company because it kind of made me embarrassed as I always saw my family as rational materialists. Yes, I replied, and proceeded to telling them all sorts of weird things that I've kept to myself, such as seeing ghosts when I was younger.

My godfather got up and went inside the house, and a gesture of unbelievable kindness. he came back with a rare bottle of Portuguese wine that he was keeping for a special occasion with chalices for all of us. He served us the wine, raised his glass in a toast, and said, To Julian, for the courage of sharing with us something special today. And this is one of the sweetest memories ever. I'm blessed with an amazing family, and I'm well aware of that. I didn't have any plans to celebrate Halloween this year. I bought some candy on the small chance that can't.

kids in my apartment block might trick-or-treat, but it had never happened before, so I didn't expect it this year. Not only that, I was working late at the office, and by the time I began the walk home, it was past 10 at night. Now, usually I get a taxi, or these days an Uber, but it was Halloween and the streets were pretty busy. It fell safe enough to walk the few blocks home, or so I thought anyway. And there were crowds milling about and costume in the streets where my office used to be, so I sort of mingled among them for a while, making my way to the next block. I expected the festivities to be continuing on that block, but no. It was like it had been completely and utterly abandoned. Wherever the crowds were headed, it wasn't this way.

Well, that was fine by me. I hurried down this darkened commercial street, my heels clacking against the pavement, the only sound echoing around the darkened buildings. But then I heard footsteps behind me. It was slow, methodical, and in perfect time to my own steps. Anyone who's ever walked home alone at night will recognize the sound. It's the sound of being followed. So I sped up, and I couldn't risk looking over my shoulder. A large man was walking behind me, and there was no doubt that he was following me. When I stopped, he stopped, and when I sped up, he sped up too. I hurried to the end of the block and stopped looking for a direction to turn, and that's when I saw him pointing at me. He seemed to be wearing black gloves, and I could barely see his face, but there was no mistaking it as a threat.

His pointing spoke volumes, this, I'm coming for you and I'm going to get you. And that's when I remembered the crowd on the other block. I tried to recall which direction they'd been heading, and I thought that I could cut through to wherever they were going if I was. went right. I'm not caring, I kicked off my heel so I could run easier in my stocking feet and sprinted down to the next street. And the further I got, the more I realized that I could hear the sound of music and partying. But behind me, I could hear the thundering sound of these footsteps behind me, and the stalker was clearly following me still. Thankfully, I was fit and fast and worked out regularly. He was a big man, and I was confident that I could outrun him.

And it was right. I burst out into a throng of mass demonic figures. And hot damn, I'd forgotten that my city's debut Halloween parade was happening this year. We'd never done it before. A big street party with floats and performers and all sorts of stuff like that. Holy crap, this was the perfect place to lose my pursuer. I pushed through the crowd, not caring if I was disrupting people. Nobody seemed to care as they were all partying and dancing and dancing around the parade float that was currently. driving down the street. On it were dancing skeletons and corpses popping out of coffins, and the creepiest song I think I'd ever heard in my damn life was playing from the speakers. And then the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, something, something, and you'll be the first to die were the lyrics. And for the first time I genuinely wondered if I'd fallen asleep at my desk and was dreaming that I was in some horror movie. But someone knocked into me, sending pain through my shoulder, and I realized this was very real. Not only that, the man who'd

been following me was now creeping down the side of the hearse float. I started to run again, heading towards the end of the parade, and crashed straight into a group of college-aged guys spilling one of their beers all down their front. Now, I quickly started to apologize and explained that it was being stalked by a man who actually was going to hurt me, and I thought that they would help me. Instead, they just began tugging. at me, demanding that I pay for their drink. One of them tried to grab my purse, and another clearly off his face drunk pulled me to him and asked for a kiss. Now I'd run from one danger straight into another. These young men were clawing at me, snatching at me, and all I could do was

scream for help and try and batter them with my purse. I cracked one of them in the side of the head, and he yelled out in pain, but by now the parade floated, reached us, and the music was just blaring. The worms crawled in, the worms crawled out, I remember. And then, from atop that float itself, some beefy, muscular skeleton started yelling, and he was screaming at those guys asking what the hell they thought they were doing. When he starts to jump off the moving float and coming towards us. He was clearly a big guy, and so were the other skeleton figures who had joined him. They'd been performing on the parade float, but as soon as they saw these drunk frat bros

assaulting me, they leap to my defense, thankfully. Now, these boys scattered into the crowd, yelling and just making vague, drunken threats. I thanked the skeletons, and they explained the direction the parade was going, and the quickest route that I could take to get back to my area of the city. It was only a couple of blocks away, and I'd just gotten turned around and lost in all the confusion. The Halloween decorations and party equipment made the area look almost alien, and so I made my way home, and I was almost at my apartment block just a building or two away, when something caused me to stop and turn.

The stalker. I completely forgotten all about him, but he was stood there at the end of the street, a hood covering his face, one black glove held out pointing at me. Our eyes were meeting, or at least I think they did, and I could barely see his face under the shadow of that hood.

And then he began to run, charging straight at me. I turned around and fled as fast as, as I could to my apartment door, swiping the security key, and diving inside and slamming the electric door behind me. The night guard looked up in me in surprise, and I blurted out what had just happened. And together we watched and waited for that stalker to appear in front of the door, as at the same time the night guard called the cops. The stalker never showed up, though. For whatever reason, he stopped following me just before he reached the building. We called the cops, and they checked what little CCTV footage there was.

was on the route home, but with all that Halloween parade and the dark costume the stalker was wearing, the best they got was some blurry shot of me running down the street pursued by some dark shape. And to this day, I have no idea who that stalker was. I've never seen him again, and this was almost six years ago now, and every single day I expect to see him following me. I never walk home alone anymore, and I never attend Halloween parades either. Both events on the same night get me a little nervous, and Halloween.

can be genuinely terrifying and not always in the ways you expect. When I was 16, my sister and I were walking home for lunch, a half block from the high school. A girl in my younger sister's class was driving someone's car in the parking lot doing donuts. It appeared the girl in the front passenger seat was scared and wanted out, and the door opened and she was pulled under the car. The driver must have thought that she was still on top of her, ended up backing over her for a second time, and I knew she was dead. And then I saw what looked like refractive light combined with a mist or fog, and this was the best that I can use words to describe it, really, that sort of

ascended up just above the car, and then it was gone. My sister ran down to call 911. Now, I was dry heaving in the ditch as I was extremely sensitive to other people's pain, so witnessing a person ran over twice and be gone was overwhelming. I wondered about what I saw a few times that summer, never told anyone and didn't think that I'd be believed. It was a long-fated memory by the time I was in my late 20s. My BFF was driving my car to drop me at CTAC for a business trip on the old Highway 99 viaduct. We came up on an accident that had just occurred, motorcycle versus SUV. The SUV was on its side, wheels facing the bay, and a woman was having a panic attack,

and another woman was kneeling by the motorcyclist, reaching for a pulse. I saw the same refracted light and foggy but transparent particles move up and away from him and then disappear just as the woman sunk her head down, and I interpreted that as no pulse. What could it possibly be but a soul or a quantum group of particles from the elements of a supernova that gave us life, returning to the fold? This isn't the only experience I've had that didn't have an explanation based on our current understanding of quantum physics, chemistry, biology, any of the sciences. But it's one I have witnessed twice under similar circumstances, so it would be difficult to explain it a way as a reflection of some light bouncing off of metal or other anomalies. Firstly, I don't want to convince anyone that I really have this skill.

my objective is to report and answer questions from people who are really interested or curious about the subject. In parapsychology, telepathy is the ability to acquire information about another person's thoughts, feelings, or activities without using verbal, body, sign, or written language. I discovered this skill when I was seven years old when I went to try a cinnamon candy with a friend. We bought it at the supermarket and we each ate one and I loved the taste, but I heard my first. friends say, wow, it's really bad. So I replied, no, it's really good. And he looked at me, scared and said, how did you know I didn't like it? I didn't say that I just thought it. And at the time, I didn't understand, and he was somewhat intrigued and spat out the candy and went home. And after that, I noticed that when talking to friends, I would hear a certain voice coming from them

when they were about to say something. I always spoke before they spoke, and they were surprised. but soon they started to treat me badly. They call me boring and weird and stopped talking to me. And to continue having friends, I stopped sharing what I heard and didn't talk about it with anyone anymore. As a teenager, I managed to meet and have relationships with many girls. My friends, who didn't know, didn't understand how I managed to date so many girls, and I jokingly said,

when you know what the other person is thinking, it's easy. And they always laughed. The voice I hear doesn't always have the same voice as the person. Sometimes it's just the person's intention or feeling at that moment, but sometimes it's the same as the person's voice, and it depends on how they represent their conscious thoughts. During my life, I told a few people about this ability, and when I did, I had to prove it by talking about something she was thinking,

and even then the vast majority didn't believe it and thought it was some mentalism or a magic trick. As an adult, I decided to use this skill to help people. I chose to be a psychologist. Obviously, I do very well during the sessions, and my patience praise my work a lot, as I know exactly what they are feeling and thinking. So this is a pretty incredible story. My nephew is apparently the reincarnation of the first pilot to break the sound barrier.

First of all, he doesn't have access to the internet or TV, and the only thing he watches are cartoon channels. Charles Yeager died on December 7, 2020, and my nephew was born a few days later, premed, It all started when my nephew started telling my sister this memory from his past life that he was a pilot and that one day his plane crashed over mountains, but he didn't die. And he also said his name was Yeager and occasionally referred to a Charles, but we didn't make the correlation right away because the pilot also nicknamed himself Chuck Yeager. I don't have all the info, but I'll do an update later. And my mother has to tell me everything in detail, but in short, my nephew has information he can't possibly. possibly know, such as the types of planes Yeager flew, etc.

And now we're going to ask him about Charles Yeager's brothers, sisters, and sons, and information that only he could have. But what would you do then, if you were us, if it turned out to be true? Because I myself still find it hard to believe, but what should we do? Contact his family? Hello, just so you know, your father has been reincarnated in France. here's the information that only you could have known, which proves it, he's fine, and loves Paw Patrol. When I was in college, a friend of a friend through a small Halloween house party.

Nothing too wild, just the usual decorations, costumes, punch, apple bobbing, and vodka, the usual. And when we arrived at the party, the center of the living room couch had been taken up by a werewolf. Now, I've never seen a werewolf mask like it before. It was like something out of a movie. and you would swear that it was a professional prop. His snout looked wet. His maw was glistening with saliva, and his werewolf hair looked genuinely real in his eyes, man.

I had no idea how he even saw out of the mask's eyes. But they were fully realistic eyeballs. Just incredible. And this dude was just sort of sitting there in the middle of the couch. If it hadn't been for the fact that he only wore a mask as part of his werewolf costume, I might have assumed that he was a prop. But below the mask, he wore a sort of Hawaiian T-shirt and chinos. He had thin, knobby legs, these dirty sneakers,

and on his arms he had tattoos that looked suspiciously like prison tattoos. And I figured they were just sort of drawn on, like it was some werewolf character that I didn't know about. I'm not a big werewolf guy, so I figured that I couldn't ID the particular werewolf that he was dressed as. and occasionally one or two of us would sit next to him and try and talk to him. But man, the dude stayed in character the whole night. At first he just let out this sort of wheezing growl,

and after a while he'd just sort of stare forward silently. And the party went on and the werewolf continued to sit there. We began to speculate who he might be. And eventually it hit. He was our friend Josh, and this was exactly his M.O. Last Halloween, he'd come dressed as a mannequin and stood in the corner for an hour before finally moving and scaring the crap out of us. So if it was Josh, we wanted to leave him and see what he'd do. Surely he had a big scare plan for us.

Josh did have a big scare plan for us, in fact. At just before midnight, he burst and through the front door dressed as leather face, swinging a toy chainsaw. And he apologized for being late, but his car wouldn't start. Now, our eyes darted back between Josh and this werewolf and the werewolf and Josh, and the werewolf just sat there, staring at us, unmoving, and it was beginning to just unsettle us. We explained the situation to Josh, how this werewolf was just sitting there, staring, and he got extra freaked out about it.

And so he went over to this guy and says, buddy, say something. Buddy, who are you? No reply. So Josh grabs the werewolf mask and pulls it off. And I'll never forget the sight of that gray face. Yellow bile had dripped from the corner of his mouth. His sightless eyes stared at nothing, and he was clearly and obviously dead.

Cue a massive panic as the party dispersed and we called the cops. Thankfully, none of us were under any suspicion, as the autopsy revealed that he'd taken a massive drug overdose, apparently stumbled into our party, sat down, and just sort of quietly died on my buddy's couch. He was just some homeless guy in his 40s, and none of us knew him. The cops couldn't even find a confirmed identity on the guy, and in the end, we were the only ones at his tiny funeral covered by the state. and for whatever reason this old homeless guy had decided to pump himself with a cocktail full of drugs put on the most realistic werewolf mass I'd ever seen and come to our party to die. The least we could do was just give him some kind of send-off. I still don't know his real name or why he chose our party to end his life,

but I still think about him sometimes and I hope that he's in a better place, living his best life and howling at the moon. So I've been sitting on this for a while. I haven't told anyone about this because it sounds freaking crazy, but it stuck with me for a few months and I just need to get it out. If anyone else has experienced something like this in Texas, especially central Texas, I'd really like to hear about it. So way back in September, I was going through some pretty severe depression,

and I was thinking about taking my own life. Now, I came up with a plan which was to actually jump off a water tower, and when the time came, I snuck out of the house at around 1 a.m., and began my 25 to 30-minute walk to the tower. Now, my original plan was to climb the water tower, but when I got there, I noticed a radio tower pretty close by and thought, yeah, this one's going to take me out for sure. Now, to get to the tower, I would have to cross this field with an abandoned building off to the side,

and it looked like it was made out of a shipping container. Now, I wasn't really focused on the building, just heading toward the tower, but that's when I saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks. On the far side of the building, something was peeking around the corner, just the upper half of its body. I only saw it for a split second, but it was tall, at least eight feet, completely white, and not shaped like any animal I've ever seen before. It was fast. As soon as it realized that I'd noticed it, it turned and bolted.

And the speed it moved with wasn't normal. It was almost like it wasn't bound by the same laws of physics. Like it was too big to be that fast, too smooth in the way that it moved. It was almost too uncanny. Now I also want to point out because this was an important detail that I left out, that I did hear the grass rustle when it ran off. As if seeing this thing wasn't scary enough, just hearing the grass rustle for a moment made the experience that much more terrifying.

And this could have been an auditory or visual hallucination, but I have no concrete answer. Now, I just want to clarify to everyone that I have never been much of a spiritual or religious person up till that point. I have always followed logic and reasoning, so when I saw that creature, I immediately began thinking of reasonable explanations. And at first I thought, was that a cow? Because I heard mooing in the fields earlier.

And so I assumed that that's what I saw and it probably had to be a cow. So when I got far enough to see the area around the building, I saw that the same the The cows were all fenced off and they were far away, and there was nothing else around. And, I mean, there's no way that a cow could stand on its legs like that and move at the speed it did. What really messed me up wasn't just the sight of it. It was how I felt. The wave of dread that hit me was overwhelming. Not like normal fear. It felt primal, like something inside me knew that I had to get out of there immediately. And here's the weirdest part. I went there, planning to die.

But after seeing that thing, I didn't want to die anymore. I was absolutely freaking terrified, and I've never seen something like this before in my life. I don't have any history of hallucinations, and I wasn't under the influence of any drugs. What I saw was absolutely real. And I'm not saying it was paranormal, I don't know, but it was real, and real enough that it made me turn around and leave when I thought that I was ready to die. And if anyone else has seen something like this, especially near towers or isolated areas in Texas. Please, sound off in the comments. So I got to work this morning and began

unloading and loading cargo into the back of my truck. It's very dark in my workspace and so much so that I have to wear a headlamp to read labels in the loading area because the lights are not very bright in my workspace and it gets bright during the day and is very silent and I'm the only person who starts here at 4 a.m. Now this morning, at roughly 4.15, I stopped loading my cargo and sent my boss a quick text message and something literally loudly hissed in my ear and actually felt warm air on my neck. I freaked out and probably looked ridiculous if the security cameras caught it because I was backing up quickly and spinning in circles trying to see whatever it was. I flinch so hard that I gave myself slight whiplash,

and then I immediately ran outside to my car and waited for my co-worker to come in about an hour later, so I wouldn't be alone. And I debated leaving work. I'm on my lunch break now posting this, and when my co-worker saw me outside. When he arrived, I just told him that I'm sick and needed to come outside for a few minutes. I'm totally freaked out, and I don't want to come back into work for tomorrow. I went in the area at 4 a.m. over a thousand times, so I am very used to the norm, and this was the first experience like this that I've ever had. Now, for some context, I drive a five-ton truck for a third-party logistics company at a large factory with over 5,000 workers.

Part of my job requires me to be the first person on site every day at the logistics area to have materials delivered before the factory workers shift start at 7 a.m. Other people usually start showing up at around 6.30 and I arrive at 4 a.m. every morning to load and unload my own trailer in a dedicated caged-in area that only I work in as I'm the only driver here for this company. Only me and two other co-workers have access carts for this area. I won't name the company or factory that I work in because I don't want it to affect my job. The black square drawn in the image is just covering a company logo. There's nothing paranormal that I can see in the photo. It's just to show what the place looks like. Yes, workers have died in this building from machinery mishaps in the past, and it's been operating for over 50 years.

I've had numerous paranormal experiences, but never any at work. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Reef! on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.