The Lets Read Podcast - 342: SHE LOST HER MIND IN THE DESERT | 10 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 327

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about being Home Alone & Off The Grid 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:- Mint Mobile

Many years ago, at the dawn of the 1990s, I had a best friend called Gina, and we were practically inseparable. So much so that it became a running joke, and certain people would refer to us collectively as Gina, as in Jenny plus Gina equals Gina fur, and we thought that we'd be attached to the hip till the time that we were old and gray. And then one day, completely out of the blue, Gina declared that she was moving to Nevada. But I guess I shouldn't have been totally surprised, and here's why. About a month before she announced the move, Gina's grandma passed away and left her a bunch of money. And since her estate was being divided among all of Gina's siblings and cousins, I was expecting it to be a couple of thousand dollars at most.

But when I asked exactly how much she'd received, Gina said it was a life-changing amount, and that technically she'd never have to work again. It turns out Gina's me-ma was. kind of an investment guru, or rather, she hired someone who was, and gave her a whole bunch of her pension money to invest with. This person turned out to be very good at the job, meaning that by the time she died, Me Mom was worth literally tens of millions of dollars. I know money is no replacement for losing someone you love, but having known someone who's passed away when he's pretty young, getting a chunk of change to solve your money problems,

sure does soften the blow a little. Not entirely. but it does. But that was not the case with Gina, because rather than begin some new and exciting chapter in her life, Gina's grandma passing away triggered the most deep-seated death anxiety in her. Gina started to reevaluate everything that wasn't a relationship with her nearest and dearest, and she realized that she kind of hated living in California. She realized that she hated her job,

and she realized that she wanted it way more out of life. And then after a period of self-reflection, and she dropped the news about Nevada. I figured since she had all that money, she picked out a nice place to live, not a mansion or anything that wasn't Gina's style, but at the minimum I expected her to at least buy a house. Only she didn't.

And where she showed me where she was moving to, I was stunned, because Gina wasn't moving into a house. She was moving into a trailer park in the desert that was so run down it was mostly abandoned. And she asked me to go check the place out with her, just to make sure that it was livable. And that term could only be applied very loosely, but it was enough for me to make a decision there and then. She was moving, and the trailer park would be her new home.

My boyfriend and I helped her move, and then we went to visit her around three weeks later to see how she was doing, and what we saw amazed us. Gina had gone from living a pretty basic life to living almost completely all. off the grid. She had no phone line, no running water, and the only electricity she got came from a generator that she kept topped with propane. But make no mistake here, while it might sound like she was having a self-imposed poverty, her step up was surprisingly comfortable. And by the time we visited, she had her trailer beautifully decorated both inside and out. She had a TV with a satellite that picked up some local stations, and she had a small greenhouse set up so she could grow up.

vegetables, and on top of her trailer, pointed up towards the sky, was a telescope. Now, I'd gone from super skeptical to completely understanding her vision for moving out there. It was quiet and peaceful, and the scenery was actually very pretty, considering it was the desert. And the only catch seemed to be the terms of the lease, or rather, the lack thereof. Gina said that she had paid her landlord ten bucks a month, and she was pretty pretty sure it was off the books, too. I remember being pretty concerned about that because if something went wrong, the landlord had no obligation to do anything about it, but Gina didn't care. She wanted

that kind of independence, and she didn't want to have to rely on anyone but herself. And at first, I thought it was cool as hell. My best friend was living out this newfound dream of hers, and she was making it happen not just on the back of all that money she got, but because she was working her ass off to make it work. I was proud of her, really proud. But then things started to go wrong. One day I got a call from Gina's sister, saying that she was kind of worried about her. I thought maybe something had gone wrong with the trailer or with that sketchy landlord, but her sister said it was more like a psychological problem. And it was one that I'd already spotted a sign of without ever even realizing it. And before the move, Gina had been interested in

interested in a lot of things, but astronomy was not one of them. So when I saw that telescope on top of her trailer and asked why the new hobby, she said something about how the night sky was so clear, so she figured it be a cool addition. And she was right too, and I can only imagine how beautiful the stars looked through that thing on a clear desert night. But the thing about that was, Gina hadn't told me the whole truth, and she totally masked the reasons for her moving out to the desert. But the next time I visited, it was well and truly a mask-off type moment. Between the last time I visited Gina and this time, I've gone through my first pregnancy and given birth to my daughter. And that meant by the time her sister called, I hadn't seen Gina for almost eight months,

and I drove out to give her the news that I was pregnant. I was also very worried during the more recent drive-out to see her, and all on account of what her sister had said during the that phone call. She said Gina had been saying some pretty wild things, and not a lot of it made a whole lot of sense. She didn't say much more than that, but it was worrying enough on its own, so I drove out to see her the very next day. Gina was outside when I rolled into the trailer park, tending to some of the vegetables that she was growing in that little greenhouse of hers. And when she saw me coming, she ran to my car and gave me a big hug when I got out. and she asked about my daughter, what it was like being a mom, and at first everything seemed totally normal.

Her trailer in the space around it was looking better than ever, with that telescope still sitting on top. And he asked her how she was, and she told me great. She didn't say anything weird or crazy sounding, only that the dry desert air had been pretty rough on her skin, that she was going to make whoever made her moisturizer a very rich person, which sounded remarkably level-headed for someone who was supposed to be. supposedly having a mental breakdown. But then we walked into her trailer and my jaw just about hit the floor. Almost every visible surface, both horizontal and vertical,

was covered in posters, paintings, and little knick-knacks, and every single one of them had a running theme. Aliens. There were framed photos of so-called UFO sightings, some of which had the dates and times engraved into little metal labels attached to the frame, And she had corny little green alien knickknacks all over the place, too, most of which that she had picked up from some dusty tourist traps that surrounded Area 51. A bunch of little UFO models were hanging from the ceiling, and there were little green

men plushies on every corner of her built-in couch, and her bookshelf had swelled with at least two dozen books of extraterrestrial visitations, encounters, and abductions. No, I'm saying, Gina? Is there anything you'd like to tell me regarding your choice of decor? And she just sighed and says, my sister called you, didn't she? And I admitted she had, but then asked Gina for an admission of her own. Something was going on with her, and I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. And over the next hour or so, Gina explained her newfound obsession, but on the surface, it wasn't anything to be all that

alarmed about. Having her grandma passed and receiving all that inheritance money had obviously had her questioning what she wanted out of life, and it was during that kind of quarter-life crisis that she started wondering if the truth really was out there. She started doing a little research on UFO phenomena, and then a little turned into a lot, before a lot turned into an all-day every day. She found all aspects of the subject fascinating, which on the surface seemed totally harmless. But as I came to find out, it wasn't just a casual interest. In so many words, and I listened to all this in total horror, Gina had thought long and hard about her purpose in the world, as well as who she was and had decided that she didn't belong on Earth. And now, out of context, this might have

even been more frightening than the reality, but she didn't mean it in a sort of self-destructive way, not entirely anyway. And so Gina had come to believe that her origins lay on some other planet, one that wasn't even in our solar system. She subscribed to that sort of aliens are walking among us kind of belief system, but not in the sense that they're all walking around in skin suits pretending to be human. It was more like certain people had extraterrestrial souls planted into them, And she was one of them. And that wasn't all either. Gina had been tracking North American UFO sightings for quite some time

and claimed to have noticed a dramatic increase in recent sightings. She also claimed to have noticed increased activity around Area 51, which she monitored frequently, which had brought her to the deeply shocking conclusion that she was due to return home. I remember listening in silence while she ran it on and on about how they were going to pick her up and take her home and how she'd finally be in a place that she'd always belonged. It was like a rollercoaster of emotion. I was scared, upset, mad at the

people she'd been talking to who'd been filling her head with all this nonsense about grays and Ananaki. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or yell at her. But all I could do was listen with increasing horror as she eventually revealed that she was due to return home very soon, maybe even that night. Gina was so confident that she was going to be visited by aliens, and that she invited me to stay at her place that night so I could witness it for myself. And apparently, even if they didn't come to pick her up, UFOs have been doing flybys of her trailers, so I'd most definitely see one of those if I'd stay up late enough with her.

And using the phone belonging to Gina's landlord, I called my boyfriend to let him know what was going on, and how I was staying with Gina for the night to monitor her. He asked if I wanted him to join us, but I said no. I wanted to make it look like a sleepover and not the intervention that it actually was. And then it was back to the trailer to keep Gina as centered as possible. And by that, I mean talking to her about all things earthly as opposed to celestial. I talked about high school, about movies, and about stuff going on back in California where she used to live.

and the last thing I wanted was to talk about aliens because I didn't quite know how I was going to confront her on it yet. I thought that I was doing a good job too because she seemed content not to talk about it as the night went on. But then all of a sudden, she just looked at her watch and says, all right, it's time. Gina asked if I wanted to join her to go spotting, as she called it, which involved a short walkout to a bluff overlooking a valley. And I stayed very neutral when I said, sure, and figured when nothing happened, that would be my time to intervene and talk her out of everything.

And it made for a very beautiful walk, and the night sky out there in the desert was absolutely mind-blowing. And then to my surprise, once we got to where we were going, we started to see these little lights flashing on the distant horizon. Gina said the area of the sky that we were looking at was directly over Area 51, and at The government used their own reverse-engineered UFO technology to signal and communicate with these aliens. I suggested that they were more likely to be test flights and stuff because I heard that's what they do out there. But when I said that, Gina gave me this irritated look and then loudly said something like,

No, Jenny, I know what I'm talking about, so don't patronize me like that. And the sudden outburst scared me terribly. Gina hadn't snapped at me like that since our college days and when we had the biggest fight of our whole friendship. But then it made sense because it was over something very real and something important. But that time, it frightened me because it was over some damned flying saucers. I also couldn't reassure myself by witnessing Gina doing any drugs or drinking because all night, she stayed as sober as a judge. The UFOs weren't coming out a bottle.

They were just all in her head. I didn't push, though. I just simply said that I'd heard they were test flights, and I'm no expert. Gina calmed down a little and then kept on talking through her thought process. She brought along some boombox from her trailer, which I assumed was for listening to music while we were searching for these UFOs. But after she made her big speech about how she was successfully signaling the aliens herself, she turned to the boombox and pressed play. As all these weird beeps and boops started coming from the speakers,

Gina turned towards the distant lights and started kind of dancing. That's what it looked like anyway, but I guess she was making symbols with her arms and sometimes legs that the aliens could understand. And the beeps and boops were all kinds of out of rhythm and in different pitches, too. There was no music to it at all. It was more like a code Gina had thought would get the aliens' attention. And I was too stunned to say anything at first, but what surprised me even more was how, as Gina was doing her weird little dance, the distant light started getting bigger as whatever was out there got closer. I couldn't hear any engines or anything, and I know that you can hear plain engines from like a mile away.

But aside from those weird beeps, there was almost total silence, nothing but crickets. It was kind of eerie. but I still figured that we were just looking at some probably Air Force test flights. So as Gina got more and more worked up and her dancing moves got faster and more gyrating, I'd pick my chance to intervene. I started telling her, Gina, I don't think they're UFOs. I think you're all worked up in something and it's just manifesting as this interest in aliens.

Gina completely ignored me, throwing out her limbs and making them rigid, and alternating between the two. I'd swear the lights got just a little bit bigger when she did that. It could have been a trick at the light, but if it was, Gina saw it too. And she was like, you see, it's working. And she sounded all out of breath, but then no sooner did she talk. The light started to fade and then blinked out completely. And there was this brief silence as Gina stopped dancing,

and then she started off towards the horizon as the tape plan. the weird beeps finally came to an end. Gina didn't turn to look at me. She didn't even move at first, but I could see how tensed up she was, like every little muscle was stretched to breaking out. And then she exploded. She ran straight for me after she turned, screaming.

You messed it up. They were coming for me, and you messed it up, you bitch! And I'm saying, no, wait! but it didn't do a damn thing. I only backed up a couple of steps before she slammed into me, and then we both hit the dirt. The impact completely knocked the wind out of me, so I could barely breathe anyways.

But then the next thing I know, Gina has her hands wrapped around my throat, and it felt like she was squeezing as hard as she could. She kept on screaming at me, saying that I'd ruined everything, that she was going to kill me. I tried to get a grip on one of her wrists, but she pulled it away, and then punched me so hard in the face it made my vision flash white for a second when I closed my eyes. I tried to raise my head, but she punched me again, and I tasted blood in my mouth.

I think if it was anyone else, a man, for example, I would have been in some real trouble. But once I started to really fight back, I was able to get her off of me. I'd always been the taller and more athletic of the two of us, and although it was by no means easy, it wasn't long before I had Gina overpowered, and after that, it was my turn to yell, for her to calm the heck down before I started hitting her back. She struggled a lot, and she even started trying to bite me at one point, but then once she started to tie her out, she actually started talking, and then when she started talking, I was able to calm her down by asking her what the hell

had gotten into her. And that is when Gina broke down. And one bore you with all the little details of what came after, but let's just say that Gina doesn't live in the trailer park anymore. She lives somewhere a little closer to home and lives a pretty regular life considering her circumstances. I guess the weirdest aspect of the whole thing for me personally is how Gina is still into UFOs and other such alien phenomena. But she now enjoys it in a very healthy kind of humorous way and doesn't let it take over her life. And what she went through, her obsession and

delusions, I mean, were a manifestation of some much more deep-seated problem, one that started when she began to believe that her life had no purpose. It was compounded by grief that she felt as having lost her grandma, too, something she realized that she wasn't over until after the big fight we had. And she volunteers with animals now, and we still hang out from time to time whenever each of us is free. Gina sometimes apologizes for attacking me that night after she lost her mind. but I tell her it's all water under the bridge. Besides, it'd take a lot more than just some fisticuffs in the desert to ruin a friendship as perfect as ours.

So a long time ago, when I was a much younger man, I used to ride a motorcycle around the country while living as something of a nomad. I could write a whole book on the reasons why I chose to live like that, so I'll just skip over all that in favor of telling perhaps the creepiest, most frightening story from all of my combined travels. I used to stop at all kinds of places. Hotels, motels, holiday ins, as they say. But sometimes I didn't get lucky enough to find a soft mattress or a locked door,

and I had to either beg, borrow, or steal a place to sleep. One time in Wyoming, I drove from miles and miles through the night and didn't see so much as a gas station for hours on end. And then finally, I rolled into this little, one-horse town, which had a bar that looked like it was still open. A reliable way of finding a couch to sleep on could be to buy a bar, fly a couple of beers, and then offer to drive him back home in exchange for a place to rest. This was generally pretty safe, as 99% of the time they'd passed out upon contact with any

soft surface, and I actually got to take a shower and help myself to whatever was in the fridge before getting a few hours of shut-eye. Now, it wasn't stealing. I'd always ask if I could make myself at home, and for the most part, no one ever meant me any harm. But there's always that one little exception that proves the rule. And so I was rolling through the middle of nowhere when I saw that bar that I mentioned, and I figured it's my one solid option for finding a place to sleep. I park my bike outside and head through the doors,

and right away I can see my candidate leaning up against the bar, and he's this big tubby guy, like a red-headed Santa Claus. and he's sharing a hearty laugh with a bartender who's referring to him by name. I sat a few bar stools down from him, ordered a beer, and then a few minutes later, and since he hadn't seen me around before, he got to asking where I was from. I told him my story, bought him a beer when he ran dry, and then before long we were talking like old friends. We swapped stories, talk sports, and then eventually the bartender very lovingly told us both to get lost, and he told me his wife was at his sister's,

so he didn't even have to ask permission for some hairy biker to sleep in the guest room. And since I'd only had a couple of beers, I gave red-headed Santa, who told me his name was Ron, a ride home on my bike. We went inside, had a couple more beers, and then after showing me to the guest bedroom, Ron bid me a good night.

I should have been out by the moment my head hit the pillow, but there was something Ron said just before we called it a night that, kept on sort of replaying in my mind. He asked a few more questions regarding what I was doing, and maybe it was the beer having loosened up my tongue, but I told him how being a rolling stone meant that I had many contacts, but no constants in my life.

And what I meant by that could perfectly be summed up in one of the questions Ron asked before we retired. We were talking, and he's posing all sorts of questions here and there, when he suddenly asked me, So, say something happened to you. You're telling me there's no one that had come looking for you? And it was a point of pride for me at one point, being truly independent and living off the grid, as they say. It was just me, my bike, and the road ahead of me.

But there was some downsides to that, too. Downsides I didn't completely explore with Ron that evening. But he sure as hell seemed to pick up on them with that question of his. and the way he looked at me before we called it made me think that it wasn't entirely one of those more casual questions. I guess it was an additional effect of all those beers. That and my absolute lack of alcohol tolerance, which had that warning feeling creeping upon me so slowly. But as I lay there, I realized that I was better getting back on the road than just laying there trying to sleep.

And I wasn't great at trusting regular people anyways. Sometimes I prefer to sleep outside than pass out in front of some sketchy strangers. So when the feeling hit, I rolled out of bed and quietly started to get dressed. I put on my shirt and pants, and then I was working on putting my boots on. And then I heard a noise coming from outside in the hallway. Any other time I'd have figured that it was just the homeowner going to drain the main vein, so to speak, and it wouldn't have spooked me in the least bit. but that time, hearing that creaking floorboard had me freezing solid with my boot laces mid-tie.

I didn't move. I didn't speak. All I knew is that there was someone outside the bedroom door, and they weren't moving. I didn't know if it was Ron, someone who'd broken in, or Ron's wife having come home early from her sisters. And so there was a good few seconds where I didn't know what the hell I should do. But when I tied my boots and got onto my feet, Ron decided for me. He was covered in overalls in some kind of mask when he burst into the room, but I could tell just from the shape that it was him.

He came barreling towards me with some kind of mallet in his hands, but thanks to the amount that he had to drink, his swings were powerful, but very inaccurate. I ducked one way, dodged the next, and then slipped behind him to try and wrap an arm around his neck. I'd done enough hand-to-hand training in the core to get that done no problem. But what I wasn't expecting was Ron to simply fall back on his ass and crush me half to death in the process. It didn't just knock the wind out of me. It damn near broke my spine as 300 pounds of muscle and beer gut slammed me against the hardwood. I had to make sure that I wasn't broken in half before I tried getting up, but by the time I tried, it was already too late. Ron didn't get up. He just kind of rolled over so he was still on top of me, and then I'm still not sure why he tried this, but his choice of finisher was trying to stuff his fingers into my mouth, I guess to try and suffocate me.

Here's where I figured the booze had impaired his reasoning skills a little too much, because I could still breathe. And it gave me the chance to just bite down those fingers of his as hard as I could. And when I sank my teeth into his flesh, Ron let out a scream so loud that I thought it had burst my eardrums. He then pulled his fingers out of my mouth so hard that it threw him off balance a little, just enough for me to roll out from under him while he nursed his bleeding fingers. And upon seeing me get up, he tried to do the same. But being unable to put any weight on that hand, I bit, I was able to get the jump on him. I sent the toe of my boot into his chin, knocking the mask off of his chest.

face, but my first kick failed to knock him out. The second, though, this one did the job, and after another almighty swing of my boot, Ron was out cold and snoring. I remember watching some blood bubble at his nostrils as I put my clothes on as fast as I could. I was terrified that he'd wake up, and we'd have to dance that same dance all over again. But once I was dressed, I ran for my bike. Now I could have robbed the guy. Hell, I could have killed him. But all I wanted to do was get as far away as possible, because it's not just in the movies that cops don't like drifters.

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Disclaimer. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month-five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full-price plan options available. taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. As a kid, I grew up in foster care, so I have a lot of memories of being home alone. These were mostly from early homes that I stayed in as a little kid, and there's only one that

stands out as being really terrifying, but it ended up changing my life. Thankfully, it changed it for the better, but at the time, it felt like it could be the end of everything. As a former foster care kid, I just want to say, please only only have to be the better. take up fostering for the right reasons. There are so many kids in the system whose stories don't have a happy ending like mine does, and I wish that wasn't the case. I've been placed with this family, the Harrisons, for about three weeks when this happened. I was coming off another stint in the group home, so at first I was excited to be with my family again. But when I met with the Harrisons, it was pretty quickly clear that they didn't care about me at all. I was just an excuse to get an

extra paycheck from the government. And thankfully, they weren't an abusive couple. They were just negligent, which I'd take over being actively abusive any day, but it sucks that we have to accept either. The Harrisons were actually nice to me in the way they acted. They weren't especially mean or cruel, and they were pretty generous with letting me help myself to snacks or treats from the kitchen. And I wasn't extremely shy and quiet six-year-old girl who mostly just like to hide under her bed and read, so I guess I was the perfect kid for a couple like this. You see, they wanted a kid that they could foster who would just stay quiet and stay in the house while they went out and went about their lives. That was me all right. I never got in trouble or stood up for myself

or did anything defiant, really, at least not when I was a little kid. So after a couple of days, the Harrisons took to leaving me alone in the house almost every evening. And honestly, this was fine by me. I was a very self-sufficient six-year-old. I had to be, growing up in care, and at the time I thought this was just bliss, being trusted to just sort of house-sit alone, free to access as many snacks as I wanted, and all I had to worry about was making sure that I didn't get in any trouble. Sometimes I wonder how long I would have stayed with the Harrisons, being poorly and negligently non-parented, if the following event hadn't happened.

And as I said, I'd been there for a few weeks. and it was yet another night where I was left on my own. I was just watching TV in the living room when there was a knock at the door. The house was in a sort of run-down suburb, better than what I was used to, but definitely a bit sketchy looking back. But to me it was a palace, and the fact that the Harrison's felt comfortable leaving me alone all night made me assume that it must be safe. Even so, I still knew not to answer the door when I was home alone.

Mr. Harrison repeated this to me every single time they went out all evening and left me there. Don't cause any damage. Don't answer the door. Don't forget to brush your teeth before bed. Always those three things. They'd never been a knock at the door before when I was home alone, so even though I had no intention of answering, I crept into the hallway just to listen. And I remembered that there was no way for anyone on the front porch to see inside and see me,

so I felt emboldened by that. I guess the guy outside heard the floorboards creak or something, though, because he was able to tell when I stepped into the hallway. He called out to me, and his voice was kind and gentle, and I wondered if maybe it wasn't anything to worry about. He said he was from CPS, and then he was there to check on me and see if everything was going okay at my new foster home. I didn't reply because I knew the Harrisons would be in trouble if the CPS found out they left me alone at night. and I really wanted to stay in this home where I was basically ignored and left my own devices to read and watch cartoons. The guy outside kept talking and saying that he knew that I was in there and that I should just open the door and let him in so he could check if everything was fine. And so I crept over to the other side of the hallway by the stairs and sat down on the steps.

Then the guy said that he'd left something behind when he visited before and that the Harrisons would want me to let him in, and in fact they told him to tell me to let him in. He used their full names too, which made me start doubting myself. I finally asked him to repeat who he was, and this time he said he was a friend of the family, and that the Harrison's had asked him to drop by to check if I was okay. Now, I may have been six years old and quiet, but I wasn't stupid. This guy had claimed that he was from CPS,

and now he was saying he was a friend of the family, so I quietly said that I couldn't let him in because the Harrisons had told me not to ever answer the door for strangers. At first, the guy told me this was good and I was a good girl for listening, and he said they'd wanted to test that I was sensible and could be trusted. And then he started insisting that now they'd done the test, I could let him in so he could quickly grab his wallet that he'd left behind. Now I replied saying that I was very sorry, but I wasn't able to do that. and this was a mistake.

It caused the guy to explode with rage. It was so sudden and terrifying that I can still remember the exact sound of him suddenly punching or hitting the front door. I can remember the explosion of anger and the horrible things he yelled at me through the door. Things I can't even repeat in this story as well as calling me a brat, a bad child, a horrible little C word, etc. Obviously, this really upset and scared me, and my go-to response to being scared was to find the nearest closet and hide in it.

Fortunately, I had a closet in my room at the Harrison, so I ran upstairs and hidden there. Less fortunately, the location of my room meant that I could still hear the guy at the front door. He was bashing and shouting, hurling all sorts of upsetting insults at me. And this went on for what felt like hours. Maybe it even was. At one point it sounded like he was trying to pick the lock or do something to break in. in. And I sat there in the closet, shivering and crying as this man that I didn't know and had never seen made the most vile threats. I had no idea if or when he might get inside and if he did,

then surely it would only be a matter of time before he found me. Eventually I heard another voice besides his and then another, and it sounded like the Harrisons. And then there was some angry screaming and some loud bangs from outside, not gunshot type of bangs, but like, almost wood-hitting wood or something being smashed. I started crying harder, terrified that something awful was happening to the Harrisons. And when I heard the front door eventually opened, it was accompanied by a sudden silence and calm. And then it slammed shut and relief washed over me as I heard Mrs. Harrison calling out for me, asking where I was.

I stayed in the closet for a while, too scared to reply or speak, and the Harrison's both called to me. Not kindly, though, but not angrily either, just sounding like it was all too annoying to deal with. And eventually, Mr. Harrison found me in the closet and told me to come out, and everything was fine now. I was too terrified to even ask them anything about the incident, and for their part, they certainly weren't offering any information. Instead, Mr. Harrison seemed almost angry with me, and that scared me even more, so I didn't want to push and ask for any further information. even though secretly I was just dying to know who the man was and what had happened with him. And the next day, Mr. Harrison was gone when I woke up and only Mrs. Harrison was at home.

She made me breakfast and didn't make any comment on the night's events at all, nor did she tell me what was about to happen. When the knock at the door came, I was surprised to see it was one of my caseworkers from CPS, who was there to take me back to the group home apparently. No explanation was given, and Mrs. Harrison wouldn't even look me in the eye when she said goodbye, and that she wished me luck with the rest of my life. I was too shy and scared to even ask why I was being returned to the group home, but as my caseworker gave me a ride back, I mentioned something about how a man had come to the Harrison's house the night before,

and she said, I know, sweetie, and just ruffled my hair, so I knew that whatever was leading me to be removed from the Harrison's house. house, it involved that man. And to this day, I have no idea who he was or how or why CPS found out about it and removed me from that family. I never saw the Harrison's again, and I could never find anything about them when I tried looking them up online years later, just out of curiosity. I spent a few more months in that group home until I was eventually fostered by a family who ultimately adopted me and who I now considered to be my real family.

Like I said at the start, most children in the foster care system aren't as lucky as me. Some of them end up face to face with a man like the one who threatened me through the door and aren't lucky enough to be removed from their terrible situation. Years later, a tiny part of me is still desperately wanting to know who that man was and what he had planned for me. But a much bigger part of me can probably guess what kind of man he was. And that part of me is grateful that I'll never have to. know. Not long after I started my second year of uni, I met a lad named Andy Stalker. And there was something of a pattern to mine and Stalker's friendship, one which invariably involved him getting

me out of trouble. Like the time he got me a job at the bar he was a supervisor at and I somehow lost my shoes. And I had to call him to say something like, mate, I can't come to work, I've lost my shoes. And then when I assured him that it wasn't an excuse, he loaned me some money for a taxi into town so I could buy a new pair. And that was just one of the many times he pulled my butt out of the fire, and by the time we graduated, I'd have done pretty much anything for Stocker. But little did I know that I'd do anything for him promise was going to be put to the test in the most rigorous way possible.

After graduation, Nien Stocker ended up moving in together, and then about a year later he announced that he was going to be traveling around Thailand, for six months. Now I was gutted that he was leaving, but I was actually made up that he was doing something so cool, and then it was bear hugs all around when the day of his departure came. Now after that, we kept in touch, which was how I found out that he was staying in Thailand for another six months. But in a month or two after that, he stopped replying to my emails.

I didn't think anything of it at first, but when one week without hearing from him turned into I sent him a message asking if he was all right and how the trip was going. About a week later, he replied saying that everything was fine, and he was in the very far north of Thailand visiting a sort of commune. He explained that there was a village out there in the middle of nowhere where tourists could sort of live wild for a while before going back to civilization. He'd been up to all kinds of crazy stuff out there. He'd learn how to drive, how to perform traditional Thai tattoo.

he went to all these Buddhist temples to undergo mini monk training too. So I thought the commune thing was just another one of his little adventures. Now that message was the last I heard from stalker via email. When a full two months elapsed and I still hadn't heard from him again, I started to worry that he'd sort of like moved on or something and it found new friends among the people he was traveling with. And it heard thinking that he didn't care enough to make time to email. me, but I wasn't his owner, so those sorts of thoughts made me feel guilty enough to shove

all my worries down and ignore them. But then maybe a week or so after a two-month period of silence had elapsed, I'm going to call from Stalker's mom, and she did not sound happy. I thought Stalker would be keeping in touch with his mom as a matter of priority, so to hear that he hadn't only cemented my concern. When I told her that I hadn't heard from him either, she told me that he was a little. that she was going to contact the police over in Thailand to report him missing. I asked her to keep me updated, but when she did, it wasn't good news.

The Thai police tracked Stalker down to some small jungle commune up near the border of Myanmar. He insisted he was fine and was there by his own free will, so the Thai police couldn't exactly drag him back to Bangkok since his visa was still valid. But when they asked him to get in touch with his family because they were worried, about him, Stalker did no such thing. The police also said Stalker was looking very unwell when they found him, and from the way he spoke to them, they suspected that he was either heavily abusing drugs or was suffering some kind of mental health crisis. And we were devastated. Something was going on over there, and Stalker was suffering. I had no idea what to do about it,

but it turned out Stalker's mom had a plan. Stalker's dad passed away some years ago, and Then since his sister was disabled and his mom had health problems, they were in no position to fly out to Thailand. But I was. I had the means and the will, and the only thing I was lacking was the funding. But Stocker's mom, Sue, said that she and his sister were willing to finance the entire trip. And it was surreal in the extreme, I'll be honest. Not just because of what was being asked of me, but because I thought, if anything, Stalker would be the one having to rescue me from something like that.

But I never have refused the request in a million years. So after sorting the time off with work, I flew off to Thailand to bring Stalker home. And after the 17-hour flight, I was absolutely exhausted, and that first 24 hours was spent catching up on rest and adjusting to the time zone. But then, once I was up and about again, Sue Stalker, aka Andy's mom, sent over an email detailing where I had to go and what I had to do. The 17-hour flight turned out to be just the first leg of my journey,

because the next phase included a 14-hour bus ride from Bangkok to a small town in the far north called Naisoi. That bus ride made the flights seem easy in comparison, and it was made even worse by the fact that I got extremely travel-sick on some of the bumpier roads. It was in Naisoi that I met up with a local guide named Prem. Prem had heard of the remote jungle village where the western tourists, quote-unquote, went native, and Stocker's mom had arranged for him to guide me. Just not all the way there. Prem told me that the area that I wanted to get to was full of, quote, bad people.

There were smugglers, bandits, armed rebels, and gun-toating poppy farmers guarding their fields. It was completely lawless out there. But that's why stalkers' commune chose to base themselves there, so they could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted to. And while that might sound like a good thing on the surface, Prem assured me otherwise. He said the only reports he'd heard of this commune was that it was a village full of crazy farang,

which is the Thai word for foreigners. He said the village's name used to be Wat Kao Tong, and that many Thai used to live there. But then as more of the crazy Ferang moved in, the more the Thai people began to move out. And then after maybe 10 years or so, there were only a handful of Thai people living there, acting as go-betweens for the Farang

who called the village Peace Town. And I suggested to Prem that if a bunch of hippies could manage to live out there, then surely we'd be okay too. But Prem told me that that was not the case. Not only did Peace Town pay a hefty protection, fee to the local smugglers, you couldn't just walk up and ask to live there. You had to be recruited in places like Bangkok or Pouquet, and they only recruited people who'd be fanatically

dedicated to their cause. That didn't sound like stalker at all. The only thing that I'd ever known him to be fanatically dedicated to was his beloved football club, Huddersfield Town. But we knew he was there, so there was no chance in hell that I was about to back out, especially not having come so far. Now, Prem said the walk to peace town would take two days, and this meant an overnight's day in a small village called Wat Kareni. The only catch was that it was in the hands of Burmese rebels. And it was alarming seeing so many people walking around with guns,

especially when they looked to be no older than teenagers. But the nine-hour hike through the jungle was so grueling that it was too exhausted to care for the most part. All I wanted was food and a place to lie down, and the village had both. And then after dinner, myself and Prem were shown to the place that would be staying for the night. We were both shattered and wanting nothing but sleep, but at about 9 o'clock at night, a young man with a gun stuck his head into the shack and said something to Prem and Burmese. Prem said that we had to go to the center of the village because every evening the rebel commander gave a speech,

and everyone, guests included, had to be there. And we made our way through the village and so we came to a clearing among the houses. And there must have been a hundred people there, all gathered in a semi-circle around two men, and everyone who noticed me just sort of stopped and stared. The crowd was a mix of villagers and Burmese rebels, who you could recognize by the random bits of camouflage gear that they wore,

and the weapons on their shoulders. The two guys at the front were also Burmese rebels, but only one was on his feet, while the other was on his knees with his hands tied behind his back. I asked Prem what was happening, but he said he didn't know, and I was just hoping Prem might be able to reassure me that the guy on his knees was not about to die, but Pram couldn't do that. Not because he didn't speak Burmese, but because that's exactly what was about to happen. The man on his feet gave this big speech about how the guy was a traitor. Then, at the end, he held up the gun while all these volunteers jumped up. He gave the gun to one of them. Then the volunteers stepped forward and absolutely lit the kneeling man up with a handgun.

Then there was just this big cheer. But me and Prem were completely shell-shocked, just standing there quietly while people ran over and started kicking, and stamping on the dead man's body. And only then it was safe for us to walk back to our shack to try and get some sleep. But as you can imagine, sleep did not come easy anymore. I just remember lying there on that cot, listening to someone shooting off a gun in celebration, and Prem just said quietly, we should have not come here, Owen.

It was right. I was absolutely terrified, but what was just as true was that I had to be the there. I had no choice but to keep going, and walking away would have been the easiest thing in the world, but to me, there was more of a chance of a pig flying over us in the jungle. And so we stayed in our cots, managed to get a few hours of sleep, and then we were up at the crack of dawn the next morning and on the move again. And I feel like I've glossed over this by this point, but walking through the jungle was a very, very stressful experience. It was scary sometimes because there were actual tigers patrolling the same jungles as us, but most of the time it was this mix of totally exhausting

because of the heat and humidity and totally disorienting because everything looked the same to me. Krem walked for a few hours with me and then when we got to a small stream running through the jungle, he stopped and said that that was the furthest he'd go. I asked him to come with me, stopped just shy of begging, actually, but as much as he said that he was sorry, he couldn't. And then the way he wished me luck, with a sort of sad expression on his face, it had me thinking, I'm definitely going to die out here, aren't I? I was absolutely cacking myself, but Prem said that as long as I stuck to the stream, I'd make it to peace down by sundown.

He just had two warnings. Firstly, if I see a tiger, do not run straight away. Throw your pack at it if it charges. Then try running away. Secondly, he told me that there was a village ahead and the only one that I'd see before reaching Peace Town, and I was not to stop in it. And I only really understood why when I was there. Prem said it was a bad place, popular with bandits, and if I stopped, someone would scam me,

and if I didn't move fast enough, the bandits would chase and rob me and hurt me. But it wasn't armed men that I spotted on the approach. It was just a bunch of kids playing by a stream. They were naturally a bit curious about the big farang walking towards their village, so they walked downstream to me to have themselves a little gander, and one of them had what looked like a can of paint in their hand, and they were drinking something out of it. They were by the stream, so I assumed it was water,

but when the little girl got close, I could smell the fumes coming off of what she was drinking, and it was so shocked that I asked her in English, what the bloody hell is that you're drinking there? Obviously, she didn't understand what I was saying, but even if she spoke English, I'm not sure that she'd have understood because she was absolutely plastered. The little drunk girl just laughed at me when I spoke and her little friends joined in too. And I don't know if they were drunk too, but they followed me all the way through the village and only stopped shadowing me once the grown-ups pushed them out of the way. Now, I always offered everything you could imagine walking through that village.

drugs, women, guns, a wife. You name it, and those Thai villagers offered it. And once I made it through the village, I didn't know which to be more scared of, the tigers, the bandits. But when a few hours came and went, and I didn't see any armed men appearing from the trees, I reckon that I was over the worst of it. But I was dead wrong. It was almost sunset by the time I spotted another group of buildings further upstream and I wasn't even within 50 meters by the time these two blokes ran out to meet me. They were white guys, very tanned with sandy blonde hair and they were carrying primitive-looking spears. And when they were close, they pointed them at me, and then one of them asked me in a sort of Australian accent, "'Looks like you're little lost, mate. Best turn around

before you get yourself hurt.' And I was so tired that I could barely get the words out, but I managed to make it clear that I was looking for a lad named Andy, who might possibly be going by stalker. Now, the other bloke, who sounded German or Austrian or something, said that there weren't any Andy's living there, and then demanded to know who I was. Now, after making it clear that I was a friend of his, and if Stalker really wasn't there, then I just wanted to know where he'd gone, the two bloke started to soften up a bit. They stopped pointing their spears at me, and then after telling me to wait there where I was, one of them ran back into the village. He came back a few minutes later and nodded to his mate who then led me into the village.

And I don't know if many of you remember that Chaz thing that happened in Seattle in 2020, but seeing it on the news reminded me a lot of peacetown. All the other small towns and villages I'd seen, with the exception of one, had been neat and tidy and orderly. But this one had graffiti all over the houses. Everything was overgrown, and it was chaos. There were drum circles. People were dancing in the nude,

and the smells of weed and patchouly hit you like these one-two punches. And there were people with guns, too, spaced among the groups wearing shades and looking very sinister. One of the spear-carrying Aussies had led me to a small concrete house, and then just said, And there, mate, have a good one. And then walked off. I walked inside, saw the skinny, hairy bloke looking up at me from a table,

and it took about ten seconds to realize the Charlie Manson lookalike in front of me was stalker. And I say, Andy? And then almost like it took him a second to recognize me, too, his eyes suddenly lit up and shouted, Owen! He acted like his usual old self, and after a big hug, he asked me what I was doing in Thailand. and I told him that I was there to bring him home. And he didn't even react badly. He just sort of asked me,

Really? Why? In this very calm but confused way, and that's when things started to go downhill. I told him to take a look at himself in the mirror and to see how skinny he'd gotten and how mental he looked with his long hair and his beard. But Stalker took this as an insult

and started asking what my problem was, at which point I just completely lost my rag. I told him that my problem was that he'd scared his mom and sister so much that they'd literally paid me to bring him home, or at least try. And I also had a big problem with him acting like nothing was going on, like he hadn't done a complete 180 and started living like a hippie in one of the most dangerous places on earth, too. Well, a lot of shouting followed after that, to the point that someone came in looking like they were ready to, to batter me in Stocker's defense. We cooled down a bit after that and was Stocker saying that he'd arranged a bed for me,

so I'd at least have somewhere to sleep. And after that, while we were carrying a mattress into his little stone shack, Stocker apologized, but only for acting all aloof and pretending like he hadn't dropped out of life because that's exactly what he intended on doing. He said it wasn't until he got to Thailand that he realized how much he hated his life back home. and then he went off on about how he hated the whole corrupt system back home and how he refused to be a wage slave until he died and what he said made a lot of sense in parts life isn't fair but his solution was to just give up on it and when i talked about how worried his family were i could see that i was getting through to him

but when he demanded that we changed the subject and talk about it more in the morning i didn't push When I talked about how worried his family were, I could see that I was getting through to him. But when he demanded that we changed the subject and talk about it in the morning, I didn't push. I knew that getting him to think about family was the way to get him home, so I didn't mind waiting to do it. And I thought that we'd end that day, walking back to civilization, but in reality, it ended with me thinking that I'd never get to leave. And so that next morning, after a bit of breakfast, Stocker thought that he'd show me around the village. It was basically a propaganda tour, with him showing me how good life there could be.

But I was having none of it. And I brought up all the good things about life back home as much as possible. And just like the night before, I could see that I was getting to him. And then after lunch, Stalker said that there was something that he had to go and do. And I told him to go do his thing and I'd just wait there where I was. And I thought that I'd use the opportunity to catch up on sleep, but no sooner had I kicked my boots off, but his new girlfriend, someone named Layla, came in asking for a chat. Now I was nervous right away because you could tell that she wasn't happy with me.

And then when I said yes to her question if I plan to take stock her home or not, she went mental. She said that I was trying to ruin his life, break them up, and bring bad energy into the village. and I told her I was doing nothing of the sort, but this Layla was having none of it. She told me to leave and never come back, but then when I refused, she pulled out some large folding knife. I think it was more an involuntary nervous kind of laughter, but it just blurted out as I asked her, what, you're going to stab me? In the peace village? And I didn't think she was serious. I just thought that she was some mental bird who wanted to scare me a little bit. and so when she proper lunge for me and actually tried to stab me, I couldn't believe it.

I started screaming. Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? At the top of my lungs, knowing that my best chance of getting her away from me was alerting other people. And the little stone house was just that, little, so it wasn't long until I was completely cornered and had no choice but to defend myself. I really didn't want to do what I did. So please don't get the impression that I took. any pleasure from this whatsoever, but I hit her. And the impact sent her reeling with a trickle of blood leaking from her nose, just as Stalker and a few others came running into the house.

Layla started screaming bloody murder about how I'd just hit her out of nowhere, which prompted them to basically frog march me out of the house and towards a kind of makeshift holding cell. Stalker was there, but he wasn't one of the lads who dragged me off. He looked distraught when I admitted to hitting her, and even more so when I kept saying stuff, mate, I swear to God, she tried to stab me, as I was being dragged off. I don't think I'd know what to do either, so I didn't hold a grudge about him just standing there and doing nothing. But at the time, being barricaded in that little shed with an actual armed mob outside

and having stalker doing nothing about it, was furious. But it was only angry for a short while, because after a visit from someone whose face I couldn't see, all I could feel was fear. I couldn't see his face because he was standing on the other side of the shed door while talking to me, but I was told that I'd be publicly punished for punching stalker's girlfriend. And my first thought was how. So that's what I asked. But all I heard from the other side of the shed door was the sound of footsteps getting quieter and quieter until they were gone. Now, I'm not ashamed to say that I've never been so terrified in all my life. like I honestly thought that they were going to kill me.

I couldn't shake the image of that man being shot on his knees and how happy everyone seemed when it happened. I was convinced that that was going to happen to me. But try and escape, and the armed guard outside the shed would almost certainly shoot me. And so I stayed put and told myself to wait for a better opportunity. Once it was fully dark, I remember hearing someone walking up to the guard outside the shed

and then recognizing Stalker's voice when they spoke. I was relieved at first. I thought they were going to let me go, but when I saw Stalker standing there with that handgun in his grip after he opened the door, my heart dropped. And when I asked him what the gun was for, he didn't answer my question. He just told me to get up and come out of the shed.

And when I did, Stalker pointed towards the jungle and told me to get walking. I asked why he had the gun with him. him, over and over, actually, but he didn't say a word, and then it hit me. They were going to shoot me, and it was stalker that it volunteered to do it. I begged him not to. I brought up all the times we'd shared how his mum missed him, but all he said was, shut up and walk, Owen, any time I tried to get him to see reason.

And he marched me away out into the jungle, with me begging and pleading the whole way until he finally told me to stop where I was. I was. When I did, Stalker told me to turn around, but he didn't have the gun pointed at me like I was expecting. Instead, he just said, hit me. When Stalker said it a second time, it didn't make any more sense than the first, but then when he added, it has to look real. I suddenly realized what his plan was. I started asking where, and he told me to just get it over with, and so I hit him. I tried to aim for his lips, and it worked a little bit too well, because the second after he was knocked back, he sped out some blood, and I told him I was sorry.

But Stalker just shook his head, and as he spat again with a raised hand as if to say, it's okay, I asked for it. He then told me that once I was a safe distance away, he'd fire off three shots into the air, shots he'd claim were aimed at me after I punched him and ran off. But then after that, it was up to me to get myself to the next village, which would take all night. He gave me a torch and compass and told me to keep going north no matter what, and then wish me luck. The last thing he did was make me promise him something. Then I turned and ran.

I remember hearing the gun going off behind me and it was such a messed up situation that I was actually glad. to hear it. I knew that it meant that I had to get moving, but the shots might also scare away any animals in the area, animals that might have otherwise have made me a midnight snack. Making it to the village didn't take all night either, but I did hear shouting from behind me at one point where a peacetown had sent out search parties probably looking for me. Thankfully, Stalker had given me so much of a head start that they didn't catch up, not even with me at walking pace. But the thought of what they had to be. do if they caught me was still terrifying. And when I made it to the next village, I knocked on the first

door I found. Anywhere else, you might expect people to tell you to F off if you woke them up in the middle of the night. But the Thai family whose house it was were stereotypically understanding and friendly and helped me get back to Nye Soi in the morning, which was the village I started in where I met up with Prem. And when I turned up at his house, he couldn't believe I was alive. And we were so relieved to see each other that we actually hugged. After that, it was a case of going back the way I'd come via the 13-hour bus ride back to Bangkok. The most difficult part of all happened after I flew back to the UK, because I had to meet with Stalker's mum and fulfill the promised I'd made him. And that involved lying to her and telling her he was dead.

He told me he couldn't leave, the people would get hurt if he tried and that he couldn't let that happen. He also said he was too far gone to come home, that he'd never adjust, and it it all be one big disaster if he tried. So, all that considered, it was better that his mom and sister believe that he was dead. But I didn't agree, and although I promised him that I'd convinced them he was, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I tried, don't get me wrong, but I broke down just a few words in and had to tell them the truth. I said I'd failed, and that I'd probably spend the rest of my life regretting that failure. They'd trust me to get the job done, to bring their son and brother home, and I'd been too stupid and weak to be able to manage it. And we all cried

together while they tried reassuring me that I'd done my best, and they were grateful that I'd even tried. But that didn't seem to do anything for that sense of personal failure that I felt, and the feeling that if I'd done things differently, stalker would have been right there sitting next to us. And not 10,000 miles away in a place that was intended to be heaven, but turned out to be, hell. So when I was a kid, it became a tradition for a few of us cousins to stay with Grandma over summer vacation.

Grandma was my mom's mom, and there were four of us cousins on Mom's side, although I had six maternal cousins in total. We'd cross over into each other's lives every single, summer through grandma, and it became a summer event that I always look forward to. Sometimes one of us would be staying at grandmas alone, depending on the timing of things and what one family might be doing or what summer vacations they might be taking. This summer, there was a period of five days when I found myself staying alone with grandma. Now, this hadn't been planned.

Usually the summer vacations with grandma were designed for us cousins to hang out. This one week, the plan had been for my cousin's Saffron and Bryant to be here too. But due to some mistake or other to do with hotel bookings, they were arriving later. I didn't mind hanging out with Grandma for a few days by myself. We always had fun there, whether there were other cousins present or not, but this does all explain why on one night that week, I was left alone in Grandma's house while she went to her usual weekly bingo. Normally, Grandma tried to avoid leaving any of us home alone by ourselves,

but this time I assured her that it would be absolutely fine. I was 12 now, practically a man, and I could just chill and watch television or play on my Nintendo DS while she went out to Bingo. She'd only be gone for four or five hours. What could go wrong in that time? A lot, it turns out, and the events that played out were enough to shatter my trust in other people for years to come. Grandma had been gone for about half an hour at that point, and I was playing video games so it felt like five minutes.

Grandma walked into town for the bingo, as she'd given up driving a few years before. So when the doorbell rang, I didn't think anything of answering it, assuming Grandma had forgotten her keys because I wasn't really aware that any time it passed since she left. And when I pulled open the door with a smile ready for Grandma, and I saw the young woman on the doorstep, I suddenly remembered that I wasn't supposed to answer the door to strangers when I was home alone. If only I'd thought about that before pulling the door open enthusiastically. But I had done so, and the young woman on the doorstep immediately stepped into the house and gave me a small hug and then closed the door behind her.

And I was kind of like, hey, who were you? A bit taken aback and shocked by this cool-looking girl hugging me and pushing her way into grandma's house all familiar and friendly. And the girl acted sort of mock upset and told me that she was horrified that I didn't remember her. She was Alice, my cousin, Uncle Jim's daughter, Martin's sister. And it suddenly clicked. Martin was the other cousin who'd often stay at Grandma's house.

And there was me, and then Saffron and Bryant, who were Aunt Yvette's kids and Martin, who was Uncle Jim's son. But Martin had two older siblings too, too, who were too old to come stay at Grandma's with us. One of them, Fred, was quite a bit older and had a kid himself, and we saw him at family events, but I'd completely forgotten about Alice. I couldn't remember the last time that I'd seen my cousin Alice, but now I could definitely tell it was her.

She'd gotten taller and older and more emo-looking in the few years since I'd seen her last, and I tried to remember how old she'd had to have been now, 18 or 19 maybe. Alice walked into Grandma's living room and dumped a full-looking duffel bag on the couch. And she began looking around as if almost looking for Grandma, and I explained that Grandma was out at Bingo and wouldn't be back until later. Alice acted all bummed out and that she'd missed Grandma, but said that she was going to be staying overnight so it was fine and she'd catch Grandma when she got back. And there was absolutely nothing that made me feel like I shouldn't trust Alice. Heck, there were even photographs on the wall of her in the living room.

Even if she looked a bit different in ways that I couldn't quite put my finger on, this was definitely my cousin Alice. She started asking me about Mom and how we were doing, and it confused me a bit because she didn't seem to know that Mom and Dad had gotten divorced a couple of years ago. But then she made such a big show of apologizing about it and acting like she felt bad for forgetting. No reason why she should remember anyway. I barely even remembered who she was.

And after about an hour or so of hanging out with Alice, she asked me if I remembered when we used to play hide-and-seek in Grandma's house when I was a little kid. I did vaguely remember, and Granddad had been alive back then, and Grandma's big house seemed even bigger when I was a little kid. Now, I was worried that Alice was going to ask me to play hide-and-seek with her again, which seemed distinctly uncool as a 12-year-old. And instead, she asked if I remembered the time that she hid in the basement and none of us. could find her for hours. I said I didn't remember this because I honestly didn't. And Alice told me that back in those days, all of his kids had been terrified at the basement except for her, and she was the only one brave enough to go down there and hide. I laughed and said that Grandma's basement didn't scare me at all anymore now, and I didn't remember being scared of it as a kid. Alice laughed and

said that I've been so scared of the basement that I'd cried when the door was left open. I didn't remember this at all and I just laughed it off. And then Alice said that she dared me to go down there. I think I just shrugged and just asked why or something. And she really played it up about how scared of the basement all of us cousins used to be. And then she dared me $10 to go down into the basement to prove that I wasn't scared of it anymore. Now please remember at this point, no matter how much of an obviously suspicious red flag this seems, A, I was 12 years old, and B, I had no reason to distrust my slightly older cousin, even if she had shown up unexpectedly a grandma's house. All I had were good, somewhat hazy memories of hanging out with Alice when we were younger,

and I had no reason to read anything deeper into it. I thought my cousin was just being goofy, and I'd forgotten the lore of the basement. I also really wanted $10, and Grandma's basement wasn't even slightly spooky. It was just a normal food storage basement, and going down there was an... easy 10 bucks. I only realized how badly I'd screwed up when I got to the bottom and the door slammed shut behind me and I heard the sound of a key clunking in the lock. I still thought Alice was pranking me, even when more and more time passed and I was trapped down there with no way out. I didn't entertain the idea that anything too bad was going on though. When hour two crept up

though, and then hour three and hour four, I knew something was very wrong. I was busting for a pee, and my throat was hoarse from screaming for help and calling for Alice or grandma or anyone, and I would never admit this at the time, but now in adulthood I'm fine with admitting that I cried so much at that point that I had a headache and spent the entire time that I was trapped in the basement begging and pleading with Alice to let me out. It felt like I'd been down there for a hundred years when I eventually heard the sound of the door being unlocked, and grandma's voice calling down to me. She sounded old, frail, and panicked. I rushed up the basement stairs and hugged grandma and collapsed sobbing onto the living room couch. Grandma asked me what had happened,

and eventually I just snorted out the explanation that cousin Alice had come over. I'd let her in, and she'd locked me in the basement. Grandma's hand flew over her mouth, and she just kept asking over and over if I was definitely sure it was Alice, as in our cousin Alice, Uncle Jim's daughter. I said, yes, I was pretty sure that's who she said she was, but why had she locked me in the basement, though? Now, at first, Grandma didn't know, but then she went to check something, and when she came back, I could see that she was white and shaking. To this day, I still don't know exactly what Alice stole from Grandma. She took that secret to her grave. and it led to some very heated exchanges between the families because, presumably, whatever it was, held some significant value,

and would have been an important part of the inheritance when Grandma passed. I managed to piece together some of the story over the years, though. Alice had been estranged from Uncle Jim and Aunt Leslie since she was 15 or 16. She'd fallen in with a bad crowd and developed some extremely bad habits, and, well, you can probably guess the rest. Grandma and the other adults hid it from us that our cousin Alice had become wayward, and this meant that I wasn't prepared when she showed up at Grandma's house that night. The theory is that she had been watching the place and knew that I was alone there, and that she'd be able to get in by just gaining my trust.

The funny thing is, I'm very grateful that she locked me in the basement. The reason is because of an item that Alice left behind in Grandma's living room. I only heard about this from cousin Martin, Alice's brother. there many years later, as apparently grandma had never been able to explain why Alice had left a hammer on the cabinet, which she must have brought with her. Martin had his theory when he told me about this some years later, though. He thinks that Alice was going to crack me in the head with that hammer if her plan had failed, and she hadn't been able to get me into the basement. I have no idea if this is true, and none of the family I've ever heard from Alice again. And as far as I know,

she's still out there, living off of whatever she stole from grandma all those years ago. Grandma passed away a few years ago now, and for the last part of her life, Alice became a sort of family secret that nobody directly referenced. Kind of a sad way for a person's life to play out when you think about it. For me, it also represents the end of childhood and the end of summer vacation at grandmas. But at least all I had to endure was a few hours locked in a brightly lit basement and not a hammer to my skull. To set the scene, I'm a female, and this happened when I was in my late teens. It was around 2008 when this happened.

I was still in high school, and my parents attended some kind of charity event. This meant that they were both out together that night. Then the night passed without any major incidents to start with, but then after an hour or so of being home alone, I started to receive the calls. Caller IDs said that they were coming from a block number, of course. and I'm not really sure why I even answered the first one because of this. I should have just ignored it, but I guess I was kind of just curious, or maybe I didn't notice the lack of caller ID because I picked up all very cheery and said,

Hello, this is, and I said my parents' residence, how can I help you? Something like that. I forget the exact order of the calls because they all stand out in my memory is terrifying, but the first few calls involved the caller who had a deep and robotic sense. sounding voice, describing what I was wearing, and then what I was doing in the downstairs living room and in the kitchen. It sounded like something out of scream, but there was something a lot more mundane and seedy about it when it was happening in real life. Just this creepy dude with some voice modulator, making it extremely clear that he could see me. It's thrilling and scary in

certain ways in the movies, but when it's happening to you, it really does not feel good. It made me feel dirty and intruded upon, and I guess that's why I acted irrationally. I would scream at him to leave me alone and then hang up the phone, only to answer each time he called back. I know it sounds dumb. I could have just let the phone ring off, but consider what was going through my head at the time. There was a guy who was prank calling me who could somehow see me, and I wanted to know how much danger I was truly in. As he called me, I darted around the house, closing the blinds and making sure the windows and doors were locked. At this point, I didn't consider calling the cops because the guy hadn't actually threatened me. He was just stating that he could see me and stating what I was doing.

It was incredibly strange. It wasn't like some dirty voice breathing or anything like that. He'd just call and say, you're wearing a white t-shirt. And I see you just changed the channel. Things like that. And I was worried about wasting the cop's time if I reported it, which I guess looking back is kind of stupid of me. And to this day, though, I'm not convinced that they would have taken me seriously back then. And so I got stuck in this sort of loop of every time the phone beeped, I'd feel this sick dread in my stomach. But I couldn't stop myself from answering it either. And the more I let him speak, the more I started to deduce from the things this guy was saying. He could only see me on the first floor. If I went upstairs, he lost sight of me and would hang

up the phone. If I'd wanted to avoid being seen, I could have stayed upstairs and maybe I would have thought to call the cops, but I got it in my head that I should try baiting the guy, so I had something more concrete to go on. Now, in adulthood, I know that it was very stupid of me to let this play out, and I should have handled it totally differently. I was just sort of bullheaded and fiery as a kid, and I was affronted that this guy was creeping on me, and I guess, yeah, even despite how uncomfortable it was making me feel, there was a degree of childish intrigue in letting the events play out here. And eventually I had all the curtains and blinds closed downstairs and I was confident there was absolutely no way this guy could be looking through the window of my house. Yet the calls

kept coming. The phone would sound and the sky would state matter-of-factly what was going on. I was changing the channel on the TV and I was getting a glass of water, very weird and mundane things to be creeped on about. And I started asking him what he was getting out of all of this, and he wouldn't respond. It was so strange and awkward, and I think that's what began to genuinely scare me more than if the calls had been filled with threats or innuendo. It felt like the guy had decided to do this to creep on me and spy on me for some reason, but then had no idea why he wanted to do it when he was actually doing it. I don't know if this makes sense, or maybe I'm just thinking about this after the fact,

but I got the impression that these calls weren't his big, creepy plan. It was just something that he felt compelled to do on top of something else he'd done. I decided not to answer the calls for a while and see what would happen. He kept calling, incessantly, to the point that the ringtone just wouldn't stop. And as soon as one call would end, he'd call again and again and again. And in the end, it was making me so mad and upset that I answered again. and before he could say anything, I demanded to know how he could see me. And that's when he replied with a line that made my blood run cold.

I'm in the house with you. He even said ha, ha, ha, ha, on this very deadpan, monotone voice. Of course, I knew he couldn't actually really be in the house. I would have heard him talking for one thing, and I checked all the closets and corners and possible hiding spots, but it was still absolutely terrifying to hear as some teenage girl home alone. I started trying to think about it as if he was in the house, though. Was there any clues to how he could be watching me?

I tried to remember all the different things he'd seen throughout the night, and I realized that everything he saw was either in the living room or in the kitchen doorway. Whichever window he was watching me through had let him see the main living room in almost its entirety, and he'd also commented previously on the fact that I'd almost spilled water as I entered from the kitchen. And this suddenly got me thinking. The idea felt familiar of there being a view of my living room where the kitchen doorway was visible. And that's when I remembered this was the view from the family's PC webcam. Now remember, this was the late 2010s,

and the idea that hackers could watch you through your webcam was fairly new at the time. I ran to the family computer, unplugged the chunky webcam that we had at the time, and suddenly, the call stopped. This basically confirmed it for me. This creeper had somehow accessed the family's PC webcam and could see me. This made me feel better in a lot of ways. It was probably some internet weirdo who was nowhere near me and had no idea where I actually lived or who I was. And this was somehow a lot better than a possible stalker outside. But still, the idea of a hacker watching me through the family computer made me feel sick.

Long story short, a family friend ran this scan for us and discovered that something had been downloaded onto our family PC at some point the week before. We never found out which family member had downloaded this software by accident, but I'm certain it was my dumbass younger brother who was always downloading weird crap at the time. He was 12, and we did actually report the internet. incident to the cops, but this was way back in 2008, like I said, and cybercrime just wasn't even a thing that they looked into much. And plus, I underplayed the situation by not revealing how many times I'd answered the phone and admitting to the fact that I kind of handled the situation in a very unfortunate, morbid sense. And I'm just very grateful that it was only the family living room that that hacker could view. The idea of someone being able to spy on me through that

laptop in my bedroom made me so paranoid that I just kept tape over my webcams across all devices ever since. I never found out who the weird hacker caller was or confirmed for sure that he was just some internet weirdo who had access to my webcam and managed to connect it to a phone number, but it's the only explanation that let me sleep at night. It's not been nearly 20 years since then and I still tape over my webcams to this day and make sure my own kids are extremely safety conscious about using the internet because you'd never know what kind of weirdos are out there. So I'm a girl and I met guys online in the early 2000s, back and it was still considered risky and dangerous to meet people online.

Now, let me tell you, it's probably a good thing we considered some online friendships to be inadvisable back then because there's some major weirdos around. And let me tell you again, and back in the 2000s, they were first discovering computer and what they could do with them. This guy added me on ICQ, an old instant messenger program. ICQ used to have this feature where you could just add a random person. Like, it would just select another user at random and allow you to message them. And as far as I ever knew, there were no way to see the difference between someone who'd added you by directly typing your username in

and someone who'd added you as a random request. So I had a bunch of friends there who I only knew through ICQ. as well as a few IRL school friends who I spoke to through the service. One guy on my friend's list, we'll just call Steve, was a pretty cool and funny guy. We didn't really know each other that well, and I had no idea how he came to add me as a friend, and I never really even thought to ask. It wasn't something that really mattered back then. You accumulated a bunch of internet weirdos who were just kind of there in your life,

and you didn't really remember how you'd met them. Steve would just send me dumb jokes and memes, and before we even called them memes, and he'd sometimes recommended cool new music for me to download from Napster or LimeWire or whatever weird stuff we were using back then. He was just one of those guys that you meet online who seems cool, funny, and mysterious, and you don't ever let the conversations get too personal because you're both too cool for that. Most people who grew up as a loser, introvert online teen in the 90s and 2000s like me

will know exactly what vibe I'm talking about, or at least I hope so. Now one day, I was home alone because my parents were out of town. I was in, I think, maybe my junior year of high school, maybe, or the start of senior year. And yeah, it must have been the start of senior year because it was October. And it came as a massive surprise that when, out of the blue, internet friend Steve messaged me saying, Hey, I'm going to come over tonight because you're home alone. Something along those lines. And as far as I knew, I'd never even discussed which city I lived in with Steve, let alone

given him my specific address. And I certainly never told him that my parents were out of town. I figured it had to be a joke and a coincidence, so I just replied with Raffle or some such and waited to see what Steve said. Steve replied saying that he was serious and he was going to come over. I scanned back over our conversation to see if I had mentioned being alone over the weekend and passing, and I hadn't.

Now, I don't want to screw up my friendship with Steve at this point because I thought he was cool and funny, so I'd try to play a cool myself and sort of act like I'm going along with the joke. I ask him how he knows my address, but I'd try and make it seem like I'm kidding around. Hard to do over text, but we had it down to an art form back then. Steve got all serious and said that he's been wanting to tell me for a while, but we actually go to high school together, and he didn't add me randomly. He said that he could tell that I thought that he was just some random guy, but we actually know each other.

And this starts to make my hackles rise, but I still assume that he's just joking because this is the kind of prank that we'd play on each other back then. But Steve replies with a bunch of things that he could only know if he knew me in real life. Details about me. My high school crap like that. And this kind of freaked me out at this point because either Steve was some hacker guy or he really was an IRL acquaintance who just hadn't admitted it until now. Still, he hadn't really done anything wrong, though, other than saying that he was coming over, which could still be a joke, so I just asked him about that, and he said no, he was serious, because he wanted to talk to me about things face to face.

I said no, he shouldn't come over, at least not without telling me who he actually was first. Steve said this was the problem. He didn't want to tell me who he was unless he could do it in person, because he had feelings for me and he was worried that I'd react back. if I knew who he was, so he wanted to explain himself to me in person. And so I asked him why it would be better if he could tell me in person, and he just sort of says, it just would be. And then refused to clarify any further. So I started getting more and more mad and freaked out at this. I couldn't explain why, but it just felt like he'd led me on somehow.

You'd have to have seen our conversations back in the day. He'd definitely acted like someone who did not know me IRL until that point. It felt deceptive. Besides, I kind of gotten into my head that Steve was Andy IRL, this skater kid from high school who had to crush on me in sophomore year, and had been a bit overly persistent with it until I told him to chill out. Andy was the only person that I could think of in real life from high school who might want to or need to explain himself to me face to face about hanging out with me. It also pissed me off that he decided to reveal all this by making it clear that he knew my parents were out of town. It felt like a weird power play. And considering that I hadn't told anyone about my parents going out of town,

it was info that had to have been obtained creepily. At least that's what I thought anyway. In my head, my friend, Internet, Steve, had just revealed that he'd been high school Andy this whole time, someone I majorly wasn't attracted to and had rejected previously, and now he wanted to come over and hang out because my parents were out of town. And I'm just like, law, no. How about we end this here and forget it never happened? And then I blocked him. It sucked to lose that internet Steve person as a friend,

but then I had to keep reminding myself that he wasn't Internet Steve. He was somebody in real life and probably Andy. And I fully expected that to be the end of it. When my doorbell rang 15 or so minutes later, I didn't even entertain the idea. idea that it could be Steve or Andy. And by the time I'd gotten downstairs, though, I had put two and two together and started to freak out. What if Andy was just standing there on my doorstep asking to be let in? He was a big guy. He could easily overpower me if he wanted to. My front door

back then was the kind where you could see the vague outline of a person through the frosted glass, or as was the case here, you could see where there wasn't a person at the front door. And so I crept to the peephole and looked out. There was nobody standing there, but I could very clearly see the word bitch spray painted across my driveway. So Internet Steve really was a local person and was not above making threatening gestures the moment he got rejected. I was very glad that I went with my gut and blocked him, and the next step was doing something about it, though. Now, being a very awkward teen, I realized that I did not want to have to deal with my people. parents and or the cops over that incident, and I knew that I'd get blamed for giving our home

address to strangers, no matter how much I tried to explain that Steve had to be a local person. So I'd just sort of scrub the graffiti off of our driveway that weekend before my parents got home and never mentioned it to them. Naive, I know, but I'm still convinced that I save myself a lot of unnecessary drama. The next stage involved confronting Andy at school. I did this the following Monday, backed up by two friends, and I just walked up to him and demanded to know what he'd been doing on Friday night. About five or six of his friends all said skate park at once, and Andy just looked at me confused. Apparently, Andy had pulled off some notably epic skating trick at a late-night skating contest at the park on that previous Friday night, and his buddies thought that I'd heard

about it and was asking about that. Thankfully, this gave me cover to pretend that this was, in fact, what I was talking about, instead of having to explain the whole story about the graffiti and internet Steve. And so I played it off like I was impressed by hearing about Andy's skate trick, and then just sort of skirted away, embarrassed, and none the wiser as to who Internet Steve was. Andy himself found me later that day and asked what was really up with my question earlier. And I guess he worked out something was actually bothering me. We weren't friends or anything. He'd been a little pestering when he had a crush on me softly. more year, but I didn't hate the guy or anything. And I just explained to him outright that a guy

that I had on my ICQ friends list had threatened me and suggested that he had a previous crush on me. Andy laughed and said it was far from the only person who'd ever had a crush on me, which made me feel like a jerk. But then he was actually really pretty sweet about it and genuinely concerned for my well-being and said that he'd ask around and see if he could dig up any info or hear any gossip about who Internet Steve might really have been. Unfortunately, Andy never found out, and I think I know why. I've never been able to prove who Internet Steve was, and in some ways I think it's for the best that I never knew,

because it would have opened up a huge amount of trouble if it had come out back in the day and had confronted this person. You see, I'm 99% sure that Internet Steve was actually my history teacher. It would have explained why he wanted to see me face-to-face to explain himself, and why he wouldn't tell me who he was online and why it would have all been super weird. But it's also horrifying to consider that a grown-ass adult, a teacher no less, was talking to a high school girl online, and then when she blocked him, wrote an insult on her driveway and spray paint.

Now that teacher was a younger teacher, must have been in their late 20s, and he and I got along pretty well. Now I admit that I did have a tiny bit of a crush on him, but I was a teenage girl. It's an adult teacher's job to dismiss. that kind of thing. And we'd always been pretty chatty at school, talking about music and movies and books in a sort of cool teacher, loser, student type way. But after the incident with Internet Steve, that history teacher started acting very weird with me, extremely distant and cold, and even scolding and snapping at me on a few occasions. It was the only person in my life who

acted differently towards me immediately after I blocked Internet Steve. And to this day I am certain that it was him. I do wish that I'd been able to prove it, but it was one of those things that you don't really notice at the time, and it only actually dawned on me at graduation when I really thought things over. I went off to college the next year, and there was nothing I could do to try and prove that that teacher was internet, Steve, so I guess I just have to hope that whoever it was, he never escalated beyond being a weird creeper who threatened girls with graffiti. With someone like that, though, who knows how nuts they can get. So I have a story for you that's become a bit of a legend in my family.

It's a weirdly fond memory, even though it was absolutely terrifying at the time, and I'll think you understand why I appreciate the memory even then. Back in the days when this happened, my dad was a park ranger out on a range near Beacon Rock. He and Mom had separated shortly after I was born, and our relationship had always been a bit strained, and I don't want to imply that dad was absent or anything like that. he just wasn't the type who intended to settle down and have a family, and it was clearly a big adjustment for him, which meant that when he did try, he tried his best, but he wasn't present all the time, and sometimes I'd go months without hearing from him.

As I grew older, I knew not to take this personally. Dad was what they called a wandering soul. He needed to be out in nature to feel alive, and it was genuinely his calling to be a park ranger and care for others out in the wilderness, that is, the United States nature. And as a boy growing up, there were plenty of times when I was mad at my father for not being around as much as other dads or having a place that I could easily visit every other weekend. And then as I grew up and became a man, I started to really respect and relate to him, especially after he passed. I have a lot of fond memories and wild stories about dad, especially from when I was older. But this is one of the rare stories when I was younger, and it's a story about dad where he's notable for not,

being around. Now let me explain. Dad was the kind of ranger who moved around between different parks. But after he fathered me, he tried to find a more permanent spot and became the ranger up near Beacon Rock. He had a small but tidy cabin up there, which meant that he finally had somewhere that I could safely visit and stay, especially now that I turned 10. I was at a stage in my life where I'd gotten over being a bratty kid, but I wasn't quite a too cool first school teenagers, so that summer my dad was my hero. We did so much cool stuff together, fishing, animal spotting, hiking, and exploring around Beacon Rock. Like any hot-blooded ranger, son, I was absolutely fascinated by the Bigfoot legends around the area. Dad would roll his eyes and indulge me whenever

I'd ask him to tell me about the big old mountain men, and women, I assume. who were rumored to live and hunt in the area. Dad always preferred talking about other, more tangibly real animals, but I always wanted to hear about Bigfoot's. I mean, who wouldn't? They're genuinely a fascinating cryptid, whether you believe they exist or not. But as for me, well, listen to my story

and then decide which camp you think I've fallen to. Now, it was late evening when Dad got the call. A search and rescue operation was underway some ways down the park, and they absolutely needed all hands on deck. Dad argued, swore, and insisted that he wasn't happy leaving his son back at the cabin, and we had movie night planned. But then he sat me down and we talked about it, and he explained how this job meant that sometimes people's lives were in his hands,

and I was absolutely fine with him going and being a hero. And besides, I had my Wii at the cabin, and I was happy to get in a bit of practice so I could kick Dad's ass at Wii Sports Resort all that weekend. And so Dad drove off down the trail in his Jeep and I just settled in for a late night of video games and worrying about my dad's safety. Now I tired myself out on Weesports Resort and then just settled to play some Zelda. The sun had set outside now and I thought about whoever was missing in the park and hope that Dad and the other Rangers would be able to find them safely. And when I first heard creaking and movement on the porch outside, I assumed Dad was back and readied myself to greet him. The cabin was open planned so I could see the front door from the living room,

and that's when I realized that whoever was in the porch was not dad. They were lurking around out there doing something, but not unlocking the door coming inside. And then my heart sank as I heard the door rattling. Someone was trying to open it, and it definitely wasn't my father because he had a key. I got up off the couch and crept towards the door, hoping that I could peer through the window and see something in the darkness. And as soon as I got close to the door, the rattling stopped, almost respectfully so.

And I sniffed. There was a certain scent, strong and impossible to ignore. And my eyes just lit up. Could it really be? It smelled like a wet dog, musky and damp, exactly like Dad had described in his stories. Bigfoot. If it was actually Bigfoot out there, then I knew that I'd be completely foolish. to open the door and introduce myself to some eight or nine foot crypted muscle man.

So thankfully, I kept my cool and just simply stood near the door smelling that musky animal smell. And there was some taps on the door, like one, two, three taps, almost like a signal or a greeting. Now, I would have been wowed by this, but then something on the other side of the cabin immediately drew my attention. Another sound. This time, the splintering of wood. A much more aggressive, threatening sound, it was coming from the room at the back, a thin corridor sort of room, which meant that I could hear where the sound was coming from but couldn't see what was causing it.

Torn between a potential Bigfoot sighting and a potential intruder, I rushed to the door leading into the back room and looked around the doorframe. And sure enough, at the window was a very human-sized figure, clearly trying to finagle the window open with some kind of tool, which had splintered the wood and was even now letting the intruders slide their fingers into the gap and start to open the window. I gasped in terror, and the figure must have heard me because he resumed his attempts to open the window. And without thinking, I shouted up for help.

The response was an angry roar from the other side of the cabin, then the thundering sound of distant footsteps. Suddenly, the figure at the window froze and immediately withdrew, from trying to break in and disappeared. I ran to the window and could see just the faint movement of shadows outside in the moonlight. It was an incredibly dark night, and we left the back porch lights off while I was alone, precisely to avoid drawing the attention of any would-be criminals, I assume. I kept watching, and I'm absolutely sure of this.

I saw a second, much larger shadow, come running from around the side of the cabin and run past the glass as I hastily closed and relocked the window, which thankfully I was able to do despite the damage to the frame. I guess it hadn't been closed properly in the first place, which is how the intruder had managed to get it partially open. And I could hear running footsteps leading away from the cabin, and they sounded way too heavy to be any sort of man. It was all a bit chaotic and terrifying, though,

and I'm not ashamed to say that I shut off all the lights, grab some pillows, and hid under the table in the living, room for a while. Eventually, I guess I drifted off to sleep, but something woke me up. In the still darkness, I could smell it again, that scent of disgusting, wet, musky dog. It was coming from the direction of the front door and in my half-asleep state. The smell made me feel comforted in a weird way, even though it was so pungent, like I knew that I was safe now. And then I somehow managed to drift off back to sleep, tired from fear in the events of the night. night. Eventually, I woke up again at what turned out to be about 7 a.m. Dad was just letting himself

into the front door, and he was surprised to see me crawl out from under the table. He was holding something in his hand, though, and looking between this thing and me in surprise, and I looked at it too, and I asked him what he had, and he held it up and said that he'd found this on the doorstep when he got back. It was sort of a rock and a feather, and he said that they'd been placed squarely in the front of the door, with a rock on top of the feather, and definitely had not been there when he'd left the night before. So then I explained the events of the night to him as we sat at the table, both just staring at the offerings left on our doorstep. So what had been going on with Dad while I had my adventures? You're probably asking. Well, it turns out that the search and rescue

was actually a hiking disagreement turned nasty. Two hikers had a disagreement, and one of them and shoved the other down a small cliff and disappeared off into the forest. And this had been observed by other hikers from some distance away, purely by chance, so the rangers had to locate the assault victim and also aid in trying to capture his assailant. We were convinced that this person is the guy who tried to break into the back window of the cabin. And after assaulting his buddy, he made his way through the forest and found Dad's cabin and decided that he had to break in. Whether he knew that there was a kid in the cabin or not, we don't actually know.

Probably not. It was clearly a marked ranger's cabin, so he likely assumed the ranger was out helping with the search and rescue or just off doing something else. As for the other visitor, well, who can say? But someone or something chased off that intruder that night, and they smelled like a wet dog and left an offering of a rock and a feather on my doorstep as if to say, hey, I'm looking out for you, I got your back. Sure, it could have been a normal animal that spook the assailant.

The guy disappeared off into the wilderness, and as far as dad was able to ever track, he never got caught. So we were never able to interrogate him as to whether he'd been chased off by a bigfoot. But I know what I believe, and I was there that night. I heard those footsteps and smelled that musk, and I was the one whose life was saved by the most unlikely of saviors. I believe, and dad believe too. And we never had any encounters quite as close to that. But there was certainly other evidence that Bigfoot's are more than just a myth in the area. As to whether you believe or not, I'll leave that entirely up to you. So I have this really creepy, eerie memory of being home alone when I was a little kid.

My recollection of it is super dreamlike, to the point that I actually thought that it was a dream for most of my adult life. But then recently my mom mentioned the incident and I sort of said, huh, wait, that actually happened? And then she says, yeah, that's when I realized that I have a true scary story to share with you and not some lame dream. And I think I preferred it when I thought that it was a dream, though. And so I remember waking up in the middle of the night and everything felt heavy and still. You know when you can just tell that your house is empty, even though there's no reason to know that? That's how this felt. But I was like four years old and it was the middle of the night, so that it was all pretty alarming to me.

I wandered out of my room and into my parents' room. I was too short to reach any light switches, so I had to make do with the moonlight and what little light there was. I could see that my parents' bed was empty, so I went downstairs looking for them. In the living room, the TV was on, playing nothing but static. And I have no idea what time of the night this was, or why any station would be showing only static. but that's what I remember, and I also remember weird red lights flickering throughout the memory. And the next I went into the kitchen, trying to find any trace of my parents. At first I didn't notice her sitting there in the darkness.

An old woman, and when she spoke, it made me jump. I tried to reach the light switch because there was a stool in the kitchen that I could climb onto to turn it on. However, the old lady told me not to turn the light, so I didn't. I could just about see her outlined by the moonlight sitting at the kitchen table. And the weirdest part is, as to this day, I would swear that she was completely, totally naked. Why this didn't alarm me as a little kid, I don't know, but I just sort of accepted it at the time. She explained to me that she was the neighbor, and my parents had sent her here to look after me.

She said that mommy and daddy had to go away, but she was here now and she'd always be here. And before I even had a chance to fully take in her words, I heard the sound of the front door being unlocked and opening. Immediately I ran out into the hallway and saw my parents entering the house. They quickly turned the lights on and mom gathered me up in her arms and hugged me and said that they were sorry for leaving me alone. I told them it was okay. The neighbor lady had come to look after me and said that she'd always be here.

And when they asked me where the lady was, I explained that she was in the kitchen. And the next thing I remember is being in the kitchen, my dad turning on the light, and the chair where the old lady had been sitting was on the floor and the back door was wide open. When Mom referenced the event recently, I asked her if she could remember any further details than what I'd just shared. Mom shed some more light onto it, and they'd both gone outside into the front yard because there had been a house fire nearby in the neighborhood. And like a bunch of the neighbors, they went outside to check out what was going on when they were woken by a house. the red lights of the fire service and paramedics. And that explains why the memory is just sort of tinted for red for me, I guess. According to Mom, I told them that the neighbor lady had come to take me away,

not to take care of me. I'd also told them that she wasn't wearing any clothes and that I didn't like her, so I was glad that they had come home when they did. And from the way Mom remembers it, the old lady was on the verge of leaving with me. She says that they kept asking me about it gently without wanting to scare me, and I described an extremely old, naked woman who had been waiting in the kitchen and tried to persuade me to go with her. Another weird detail is that as a little kid I repeatedly described the woman as slimy,

or being covered in slime, but could never explain what I meant by that. Mom says that they found a jar of some condiment on the table with an unknown clear substance on it, which weirdly verifies my claim that the lady was slimy. And this was a new detail for me, too. I don't even remember the slime, but it's definitely not something that my elderly mother would have added herself. My mom says they were only gone from the house for five minutes or so, and that they always wondered whether the neighborhood fire

and the naked, slimy old lady were connected. Maybe the substance that she was covered in was some kind of accelerant, and that would be my guess. It's good to know that I didn't just dream about some creepy old naked woman when I was a little kid, but on the other hand, knowing that the memory is real doesn't make me feel very safe whenever I'm home alone, even all the way now, well into my 30s. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST.

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