The Lets Read Podcast - 346: I DISCOVERED SOMETHING HORRIBLE ON THE DEEP WEB | 8 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 332

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

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

Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I've been a mall security guard for about four years when I first met a dude called Craig. Guarding was something that I fell into around 2009 when the job market went and pooped its pants. The pay was okay. I didn't mind working nights, and some of the store clerks used to work us into their 20% employee discount, which was awesome. All my coworkers were pretty laid back too, including the boss. They were just regular guys bringing home a paycheck who didn't go looking for any trouble. But then Craig got hired, and right away, we all knew that he was different.

Craig was a short, balding dude with glasses, who was either at the end of his 30s or the beginning of his 40s. And word had it that he'd been a security guard ever since he dropped out of high school, and that meant for a while. But you'd never have guessed it from just looking at the guy. He was shy, quiet, and didn't strike me as someone who could handle himself if things got physical. But her boss said that he'd gotten amazing reviews from his references and hadn't taken a sick day and almost six years straight. Now, I guess you can't train that kind of reliability into someone, and you've got to snatch it up where you can find it. So Craig got the job, and it wasn't long before I was working shifts with him. Now, including those in the parking lot, the mall had like 20-something security cameras,

meaning a lot of our job was spent sitting in front of a giant bank of screens while watching for shoplifters and car thieves. In the daytime, we were the eyes in the sky and definitely much more of a reactive force than a proactive one. Night shifts were of different story altogether, but I'll get to that later. So one day, me and Craig are sitting in front of the screens. We can access each individual camera feed from the monitor on our computers, which we used to clip and store footage should we need to. But for the most part, we don't do that unless we've got a good reason to. So when I noticed how Craig was watching this one store without a break, I got kind of curious.

When I noticed that he was watching the store that sold clothes and toys for the under fives, I asked if he'd spotted something suspicious. Now, it's kind of sad, but that store was one of the biggest shoplifting spots in the whole mall. I guess the junkies figured out that formula and baby clothes sold fast over at the hundreds block, so it became a real problem after a while. But then when I asked him, Craig switched over to the camera feed of another store and sort of said something like, oh, never mind. It was nothing. Now, I didn't pay it much mind at the time. I did the same thing myself from time to time, but then the same shift, about an hour before clockout time, I caught him doing it again. And that time, he just straight up denied it.

Now, I said something like watching the baby store again, huh? And then he just sort of flicked over to another store again saying, what? No. Now, I somehow got into my head that he had some crush on the girl who worked there. And in all fairness, she was cute, so it did track. I also thought that I had a little theory confirmed when I teased him with the prospect, and he turned as red as a stop sign. Now, I said, you are into her, aren't you?

You going to ask her out? Come on, do it, dude. Don't be a wuss. He didn't get mad or anything. He just told me to stop while trying to keep a grin off his face. I left him alone, but not enough being like, oh, turns out you're human after all. You're all right, kid.

I clocked out maybe an hour or two later, and Craig grinned, as I said, Hey, don't let anyone else catch you crushing on the baby store girl again. He'll think you're stalking her. Over the next month or so, I was on a sort of string of night shifts watching the mall overnight, and two of those shifts were spent with Craig. I didn't see him as creepy robot anymore, just a quiet guy who focused on what was in front of him. But I did give him hell about not asking the baby store girl out yet.

I told him to live a little, because the worse she could say is no. That's not even like he had to go anywhere near the store during daylight hours either, not unless it was an emergency. But still, all he did was grin and tell me to just buzz off. Now, night shifts were different to days in that we actively patrolled the mall complex once every half hour. Now, one guy would leave the office and take a walk around while the others stayed behind to watch his back from the screen bank. We wouldn't always keep our eyes glued to the screens, not unless the walker called on

the radio. So as Craig was walking around the mall from the 2.30 a.m. patrol, I wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. and not until I happened to look up and see that one of the store's shutters had been partially opened. Now right away, I radioed over to Craig saying, Dude, one of the stores is unlocked. And then I had this weird sort of like twin moment of realization as two thoughts hit me at once. Craig wasn't answering his radio and the store that was open was the baby-clothes store.

Now right away, I'm thinking, uh-oh, Craig's in the baby store, mainly because we were not allowed to just walk into the stores after closing time, not unless something serious is going down. And since Craig was so reliable, I figured that there's no way that he'd be risking his job like that unless there was something wrong. So I grabbed my keys, and off I went to the baby clothes store. Now a few minutes later, I'm ducking under the half-raised shutter yelling out, Craig, you in here, buddy? And immediately he responds,

Yeah, I'm here. And steps out from behind one of the displays. He almost scared the crap out of me, and then I asked what the hell he was doing, and he told me he thought he heard something from inside the store. Now, I say, dude, why didn't you hit me up on the radio? That's why I'm here. As in why I was sitting at the screen bank. Now he hears something, he calls it in, and I can see past the shutters and into the store with nothing but a swivel on my chair.

So as soon as he said it, I knew his excuse. was nonsense and I reminded him of what he was doing might actually get his butt fired. It was like dealing with some dumb newbie. Only Craig was not some dumb newbie. He knew the job and he was pretty good at it, so it made exactly zero sense to me why he was acting the way he was. And so the next night, Craig kind of thanks me for, I don't know, caring about him, I guess. And he thanked me for not telling him, and he also thanked me for getting him out of that store, which was weird because It was almost like the way an alcoholic might thank you for stopping him from drinking. And I guess that didn't ring the alarm bells that it should have because at the time,

I just wanted to know what he was doing in the baby store so late. And that's when he broke eye contact and said something sort of like, I, uh, I'm going to be a father. And then raise him about to congratulate him, he added, and I'm scared. I told him something along the lines of, it's okay to be scared, but I'm sure you'll be fine. But I didn't mean it.

Not because I'm the kind to offer empty platitudes, but because I didn't believe him. I'm not saying that I have a particularly advanced bullcrap detector or anything like that. I just don't care how quiet a guy is. If his wife or girlfriend is pregnant, he complains to his buddies at work about it. Even if Craig wasn't the type to complain about it, I didn't buy him not bringing it up before that moment

when I confronted him about that store. And I didn't all the way confront him, as in like I didn't call him out on complaining that he was going to be a dad. I just knew that from then on that he was hiding something, or at least he was maybe hiding something. It was just enough to affect my opinion of him until I knew what that thing was, and when I found out, it was almost like a bomb going off.

Craig acted nice and normal for the rest of the time we worked together. I didn't catch him staring at stores, and I didn't catch him in any stores after hours either. He was just Craig. Quiet, weird Craig who lied about having a pregnant baby mama because the next time I asked about it, he totally responded to me saying, huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's fine when I asked about her. No, I thought it was weird as hell to lie about something like that, and I hope that the real reason wasn't, like, sinister or anything.

But that, as it turned out, was nothing but wishful thinking. And on a day when I had to do night shift with Craig, a friend of mine sent a message to the Facebook group chat we shared. Now, the first notification read something like Chris sent a video, and then the rest were him sending things like, oh my God, LMAO, check out this loser freak. And he used to send tons of stuff like that to the group chat. Weird videos or memes and all that kind of stuff. And so sometimes they were really funny.

and other times they made your skin crawl, in this case, the video was most definitely of the skin crawling variety. When I opened it, all the cameras showed was what looked like a kid's room. And then out of nowhere, a grown man dressed as a baby, walked into the shot, and then turned towards the camera. He was wearing one of those weird baby hats, the bonnets, and some makeup, and had this almost oversized pacifier in his mouth. So at first I didn't recognize him, but he had to take the pacifier out to speak, and when he did, I suddenly realized what I was looking at. It was Craig. The adult baby now babbling about mommy and having a full die-dye, and then pretending to cry saying,

Weh, we're going to closing the video, and then just standing there in my kitchen for a second or two, just not really knowing what to do with myself. Obviously, one of the thoughts going through my head was, that's why Craig was in the goddamn baby store. He obviously couldn't wear any of the clothes there, but knowing why he was interested in them made my skin feel like it wanted to crawl off my bones. But then my other thoughts involved stuff like, was Craig dangerous?

Was he some kind of PDF file whose thing was dressing up like a baby? I had no idea. And it's not like I wanted to dedicate any brain. power to it either. It made me feel uneasy and very queasy thinking about Craig all dressed up like that, but it made me even queasier thinking that I had to spend ten hours in a shopping mall with him completely alone. I ended up calling my buddy Chris, the one who sent the video, to ask where he'd found it and how many people he'd sent it to. He said someone from his job sent it to him and that he'd sent it to just about everyone he knew, with obvious exceptions for family.

Now, that meant the video was going around town, so it wasn't going to be long until Craig got recognized for being the giant man-baby in it. And while a heck of a lot of people were going to laugh their butts off at him, I knew that there would be people that thought he was a predator and would want to hurt him. But was he a predator? Or was he just some harmless weirdo? Now, that was the real question, so that night while we were at work, I decided to just ask him about it. It was probably one of the most awkward and creepy exchanges of my entire life, and it took me like three hours to work up to it, too. I wasn't scared of Craig. At least I wasn't physically intimidated by him, but if I confronted him on what was, no doubt, a deep, dark secret,

what was to stop him from freaking out and pulling a knife on me or something? Even if he didn't, and just straight up denied all knowledge, spending the rest of my shift with him was going to be awkward as hell, so it was definitely a period where I thought to myself, just mind your own business and let whatever happens happen. But I couldn't, and in the end, I asked him. The second I said, Hey, Craig, I saw this video today. He turned even redder than I had asked him if he had a crush. Now, I cut myself off after today and just watched his reaction to sort of gauge it, and I swear to God, Craig started sweating right there in front of me. I told him I figured that he knew which video I was talking about,

but he didn't move and he didn't say anything. He just stayed sat in his chair, eyes locked on the screen bank, swearing and shaking like he was coming down with some fever. I guess I didn't really know where to go from there. He'd already admitted it silently, but it was an admission all the same. And I don't think I expected him to do anything

but deny it until he was blue in the face. and so once I had the admission, I went to what I considered the most important question of all, which was, Craig, are you a weirdo for kids? And then, and only then, did I get a reaction? His head spun around and he says, No, it's not like that, dude, I swear to God, I'm not. It was a very strong reaction in one that had a pinch of outrage to it, and not the kind of, please believe me,

that you get when someone is lying to save their skin. Now, I guess I never truly know for sure, but in the moment, his answer, it rang true, and I believed him, but that still left the question of what the hell was he doing making those videos. And I guess it might sound a bit weird, but I kind of backed off on wanting to know why. I mean, I could probably take a shot in the dark and it wouldn't be too far off, but even if I knew it wouldn't change anything. Craig was weird. Really weird, actually, but as far as I knew, I know.

knew he was harmless and I actually kind of liked the guy too, so there was that. And then, because I liked him, I knew he didn't deserve what was definitely coming his way, and I told him to quite literally get the hell out of town. And Craig knew it too. He knew that once people saw that video and knew the guy who made it was a security guard down at the mall. It wasn't just his job he'd be in danger of losing. And so even though his record was clean and I didn't personally believe that he was some kind of didler. The best thing for him to do was leave town and start over someplace else. And once I was done giving my speech, Craig looked like he was searching for the right words, and then he burst into tears out of nowhere, and he didn't stop

crying for a good couple of minutes. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't feel too bad for him. Uploading videos like that was dumb as hell, and it was only a matter of time before someone recognized him, but his dumb mistake had ruined his life, or at least it was going to ruin his life, if he didn't find someplace far away to live and fast. Well, that was the last I saw of Craig. When we clocked out, he thanked me for letting him know that his video was going viral and then told me that I might not see him around much anymore. I told him I was sorry to hear that, but it was for the best.

He needed a fresh start someplace else, and he needed to fix whatever needed fixing so he didn't feel the need to put that kind of crap online, because it was either going to get him hurt, or this was half the reason I felt very little sympathy for him, I felt like whatever his thing was specifically, it had the potential to turn into something dangerous. Like maybe he was telling the truth when I asked him if he wasn't some kid like her or not, but people change, right, for better and for worse. And a dude who dresses up like a baby and chooses to do so in some skimpy little diaper thing and not like a onesy, that stuff's got to have the potential to get worse.

I don't care what anyone says, and I say that as a father of two daughters. Craig was gone by the time everyone realized what he was posting. All our coworkers either got sent the video directly, or they got told about it at work. And so Craig's reputation was just about obliterated come the end of the week. Our boss said it was good that he got the hell out of town because he'd have fired his butt if he tried to stick around. There was a lot of hate towards Craig like that, and I get it. But all I really feel anymore when I think about him is fear. I hope he's doing okay and that he found a good woman or man or whatever and settled down

because one of the alternatives is that he didn't get himself together and he got worse. And then if he gets worse, maybe he'll do something, something terrible with a kid or a baby. And then it'll kind of be my fault for not taking him around the back. of the mall and shooting him when I had the goddamn chance. My name is Ruslin, and I'm almost 60 years old living in Brighton Beach here in Brooklyn. Now, I listen to your podcast a lot when I drive my cab, which is all I do, all day, every day pretty much, just driving my cab. But things never used to be this way.

You see, I emigrated to the United States in 1992, a short while after my country disappeared overnight. But before that, I was a forest ranger in central Russia, where Europe meets Asia, and a place called Yugidva. Now, the Yugidva National Park is spread across the western slopes of Russia's Ural Mountains, which was about 1600 kilometers east of Moscow. Now, there is a tundra at the highest elevations, while meadows cover the lower. But more than half of the park is covered in boreal forest of pine and spruce. At almost 19,000 square kilometers, it is a very big place. And to put that into perspective for you, the entire landmass of Kuwait is only 17,000 square kilometers,

meaning the park is even bigger than some entire countries. Seeing as it's in quite a remote location, there are other parks with much easier reach of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the park received relatively low levels of tourism, with only a few thousand people visiting each year. Seeing as it's in quite a remote location, there are other parks with much easier reach of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the park received relatively low levels of tourism with only a few thousand people visiting each year. Back when I work there, those visitors were often the families of Red Army soldiers stationed at nearby bases, as it was an encounter with one such soldier in 1987 that marked the beginning of the events that I'm about to share with you. My official title while working for the park was Lyshnik, which loosely translates to

Forrester. Now, we don't have rangers, and I find this a very American concept. We were not offered fancy titles under socialism, and we did not require them to do our jobs. We were foresters, one and all, and that's what I responded to when I heard it barked at me from down a trail one day. It was high summer, the busiest time of the year in terms of tourism, and I was walking along a woodland trail when I suddenly heard someone shouting from behind me. You there, Forrester, come here now.

Now in that moment I turned to see a man out of uniform, but I could tell just from the way he addressed me that he was an officer in the Red Army. I had served a few years in the Army myself when I was a much younger man, enough to know its officers shared the same collective personality, that which my American neighbors called Jerkoffs. I like this word, and it almost sounds like a Russian word. And as he marched towards me, quick and angry, I turned to face him. Now behind him stood his family, a wife, and two young children, a boy and a girl.

But unlike the officer, who appeared furious, all three of his family looked very shaken, like they had seen something which frightened them deeply. Now, when I asked the officer what the problem was, he exploded. He told me some strange person was wandering around the forest, and that this man had deliberately set about to intimidate his wife and children as they sat down for a picnic. I asked for a description of the man, and the officer described him as being tall, dressed in dark furs, and wearing a hat that appeared to have been made from a bear's head. Now, at first, he didn't outwardly threaten the family.

He just simply watched them from a distance and opted for a silent staring contest when challenged by the officer. But then, when the officer took a few steps in his direction, the man wearing the bear's head began to charge at them. The officer said his children began to scream, and he believed he was going to have to fight the man to protect them. Yet just in the style of the beast which sat atop his head, it was a false charge, and after having scared the officer's wife so terribly that she was crying, he stopped and then walked off laughing at the terror he'd sown. Now, to me, it sounded like a hunter who'd drunk too much vodka, but when I suggested that, the officer made it clear that the man was no hunter. He carried no visible weapon.

All he had was madness in his eyes. Now, he also suggested that I find him and fast, because if the man wasn't apprehended by the end of the following week, there'd be hell to pay. So later that day, myself and one of my fellow foresters got to work trying to find this so-called crazy man who wore a bear's head for a hat. Now we had an old UAZ-469 back at central headquarters, one which we nicknamed the goat. It was loud, the brakes were lousy, and riding in it for long distances put bruises on your butt.

So not necessarily the greatest of all time, like my friend's kid says about the Dagestani fighter. The goat wasn't gentle, but it was reliable, and it was easy to repair. and then with so much ground to cover to do our jobs, we loved it like the Huns loved their horses. We drove out to where the officer had spotted the man wearing the bear's head, and then we went walking around the woods for hours, looking for tracks or leftovers from campfires or animal butchery. Now, the park used to get a great deal of illegal hunting, especially during the autumn months, which certain poorer families wanted to stock up their larders for the long Russian winters that I do not miss. And since the park was so big, these hunters sometimes spent days at a time living off the land while tracking down larger animals to bring home.

All that activity makes them easy to track. But to our surprise, and aside from a few useless tracks that led into streams or under hard ground, there was no sign of the bear man anywhere. Now, we decided to finish our search as sunset was fast approaching, but since I most definitely believed the officer when he said he'd bring trouble for us, if we didn't find him, we just resumed our search for the bear man the next morning, bright and early at dawn. Now, myself and the coworker headed further into the wilderness, leading on from what we believed were likely to be the bear man's tracks, but we couldn't know for certain. We crossed a few

miles of meadows and streams keeping our eyes on the ground for any sign of our bear man, but all we found were animal tracks, a few droppings, but nothing human. The man had no doubt gone deeper into the park, in which case we were traveling in the right direction. So to not find a single sign of him beyond what we'd already found was deeply unsettling. And after a while, myself and my partner started to believe that going any further was a waste of time. If we hadn't found any trace of the man, then we were in the wrong area. But then right as we were about to turn back and return the goat to HQ, we found the charms. Now, I don't know if charms is the right word here, but the word in Russian is Oberich,

and it means like trinkets that have a holy or spiritual power to them. Some are related to the church and consists of lengths of blessed rope that some tie around the necks of their dogs, but others are related to Zagavori or Slavic folk conjuring and do not bring blessings, but only curses. And so, as you can imagine, it was a very unpleasant. surprised to find that the ones we discovered that day were almost certainly of the second variety. The first one we found was hanging from a low branch and consisted of a small bird's skull with a backboard of woven twigs. Now my partner pulled it from the tree and gave me a look. Such things were not strictly legal during communism. Zagavori wasn't against the law,

but a man could expect some extensive psychiatric treatment, quote-unquote, if he was found to have faith in such ancient superstitions. We didn't take this as an indication that our bare man was a crazy person worshipping the old gods, but we certainly took it as a sign that he wasn't interested in respecting our authority as foresters. Having realized that we were closer than we first thought, we decided to push on into the forest. Then only after a short distance,

we found more of what we could only assume was the bear man's charms. Not all of them included animal bones, only the most disturbing ones. But each and everyone let us know that we were in this man's territory, someplace he did not want us to be. There was still the question of if this man actually made the charms, but we had to assume it was him because the idea of two or more people running around with furs while making charms, that was just too unsettling for us to consider just yet. And since we had his territory roughly marked out, myself and my partner returned to HQ to report what we'd found.

Now our boss told us that he'd organize a wider search with a larger team for the next morning. And at dawn, we hiked alone to cover more ground, using radios to keep in touch with each other. But this proved to be a big mistake. At around mid-morning, one of our team was walking through the area that we'd explored the day before when suddenly, the very ground beneath his feet seemed to give way. At a pure instinct, the forester turned as he fell and tried as best as he could to propel himself away from the drop. This meant that he was able to hang on, but only barely before he used all of his might to drag himself to safety. Now, once he'd managed to find his feet, he'd turned around to inspect what he'd almost fallen into.

And that's when he discovered a deep pit full of sharpened stakes. and there were six in total, and each was sharp enough to puncture a man's boot, should he have fallen with enough force. And since he was safe to do so, the team member called in what he'd found over his radio, and we all went rushing over to his position to check it out. And only then did we realize how serious the situation was. This bare man didn't simply mean to mark out his forest fiefdom. He was determined to wound or potentially even kill anyone who pursued him.

And since we were not armed at the time, we were treated to our various HQs, either northern, central, or southern, and awaited further orders from our boss. And we were itching to find the man and have the police arrest him for almost snuffing out one of our team. And then when the time finally came to strike back, it came with fantastic news. The next time we went out looking for the bare man, we were told that we'd be equipped with rifles loaned from the local Red Army militia, like your Army reserves kind of thing. and we were also ordered to travel in teams of two for safety, which was also music to our ears. And we thought this could keep us safe and that the sight of us with weapons might scare this bare man away. But we were wrong, dead wrong. And just a few hours into the search, we received a frantic call over our radios from one of the two-man teams.

The caller sounded terrified as he explained that they were under attack from an unknown position. They couldn't see the attacker, but their attacker could see them. them, meaning they'd been forced to fall back at a rapid pace to avoid being hurt or killed. Now, we hadn't heard any gunfire, which was obviously very strange if these two men were under fire, but we also knew which sector the pair had been assigned, so we went running in their direction with our rifles ready. Now, we expected to hear gunfire on our approach, but we didn't. We only heard the sound of our two frightened co-workers running for their lives and yelling

for us to help them. When they saw us, they began shouting about how he was behind them. And then they frantically begun urging us to rake the area behind them with bullets because he was there. We just couldn't see him. They had clearly not been spooked by anything imaginary. Someone had most definitely given them a fight. But to us, it looked like they were running from ghosts. Now, the two men refused to come out of cover for a minute or two saying that there had been arrows flying.

at us any second. Now, this is the point where we all asked them arrows. Are you sure? But we didn't need to take their word for it because after carefully retracing their steps, we found one of the arrows that had been shot at them buried in the trunk of a tree. Now, that incident with the arrows marked the end of our forester patrols, the boss refused to allow us to return to that area of the forest without a militia escort, the militia being the Soviet militarized police force here. They could bring their Kalashnikov and PKK-M machine guns with them, all fully automatic, unlike the SK rifles we used, which dated back to the Great Patriotic War. And a week later, and once they had assembled, we guided the two dozen strong militia unit towards the bare man's territory, and then we hiked up and down the forest all day long in search of him.

Seeing as we were a larger force, we were able to cover much more ground, but no arrows or bullets were fired, and we were fired, and we were fired, and we were. failed to discover the man's living arrangements. We thought that, since we didn't encounter him a second time, the bare man had most probably moved on, and this made a lot of sense to us as he'd seen us walking through his woods with rifles just a week or so prior. If the man really was confined to a simple bow and arrow, then we had him sorely outgunned, and it only made sense for him to flee while he still had his luck. But the man had not moved on. On the contrary, he simply simply, he simply simply waited to strike on his own terms. About a week after the militia helped us sweep the forest,

two foresters staying in a northern sector cabin received a very frightening surprise in the middle of the night when they discovered that someone had snuck up to their cabin and set it on fire. Luckily, one of the foresters was awake and heard the glass bottle smash on the wood outside before the sudden burst of flame sent him rushing for the fire extinguisher. He tried his very best to douse the flame,

but those old Soviet military fire extinguishers that we had were next to useless, and he was unable to put out the fire. Both foresters managed to escape the burning cabin with their lives, but the incident marked a further escalation in this conflict. Instead of us going hunting for him, this bear man was now hunting us. And the boss had called the militia back into the forest, only that time. They arrived with more than twice the numbers. Instead of just two dozen men, they sent an entire company of militarized police to comb the bare man's territory.

And that time, he didn't simply watch and wait for the policeman to corner him. He attacked. Chaos erupted around midday when one of the militia officers was shot with an arrow. Thankfully, it only punched through the meat of his shoulder and did not penetrate any internal organs. But we all heard the man's screams of agony echoing around the forest. before a storm of gunfire commenced. The men accompanying the wounded officer opened fire into the woods, shooting everywhere and anywhere in the hopes of hitting their hidden attacker.

When they finished, no more arrows came after their storm of gunfire, and following a search of the area, blood trails were found leading deeper into the forest. The militia tracked these blood trails with dogs, and after hours of marching deep into the woods, they finally found one of the man's living spaces, consisting of little more than a dugout that used pine branches for shelter. The blood trails had ceased long before then, presumably after the bare man tended to his wounds,

but despite there being ample evidence of him residing there, it was nowhere to be found around his improvised living space. Now that final militia patrol marked the end of our encounters with the bear man. There were no more arrows fired, no more charred. no more charms found, not for a long time anyway. We thought the man had either succumbed to his wounds or decided to vacate the area entirely. In either way, we had dealt with a problem that could have easily resulted in one of us losing their lives. And so, as you can imagine, we were very relieved to be able to focus on our jobs again.

Now, at this point, years have passed, and the iron curtain fell. And overnight we found that we didn't have jobs to even do it. anymore. Some had stuck around living off the land and off what little our old money could buy us. But then slowly and surely, one by one, Forrester started leaving, some from Moscow or Perm to find work, and others to foreign countries where they'd hoped to start a new life. I ended up being one of those men who left Russia for good, but during that process of getting a visa, packing on my things, and saying goodbye to family, I often wondered if I was doing the right thing or not. But Do you know what happened to make me realize that I was doing the right thing?

It was when I heard from an old co-worker, still living in and working in Yulgavah, that on a routine tree count, another one of the bear man's charms had been found. Only this one looked brand new. And I've never looked back, not because I don't miss Russia, which I do a lot sometimes, is because there was never just one wild man wearing his bear's head, hoping to kill. or wound foresters. There were more, perhaps even a lot more. And it felt like it was only a matter of time

before that same bloody struggle played out all over again. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which is a great reminder that you're never alone in whatever challenges you're facing. There's always support out there for you. Life can be quite the ride, with some days bringing joy and others feeling a bit too much.

But remember, you don't have to tackle everything alone. Having a friend by your side to listen, understand, and support you can truly change everything. Lately, what's been keeping me up at night is that constant feeling of trying to figure everything out on my own. Work, life decisions, the future, all of it just kind of piles up when it gets quiet. And honestly, I don't always talk about it as much as I probably should. It's easy to think you're supposed to have all the answers, but the truth is no one does. That's a big part of why therapy can be so helpful. It gives you a space to talk things through with someone who's there to listen without judgment

and help you sort through it all. You don't have to carry everything by yourself. The therapists at BetterHelp are super friendly, fully licensed in the U.S., and follow a strict code of conduct to ensure you get the best support possible. BetterHelp makes it super easy for you to find the right therapist by handling the initial matching for you. Just fill out a short questionnaire about your. needs and preferences, and with our over 12 years of experience and top-notch match fulfillment

rate, we usually hit the nail on the head the first time. And if for any reason, you're not totally viving with your match, you can switch to another therapist from our personalized recommendations at any time. BetterHelp is a friendly giant in the online therapy space, boasting over 30,000 therapists and having helped more than 6 million people worldwide, all while earning a fantastic average rating of 4.9 out of 5 from over 1.7. million client reviews. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy.

Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash read. That's betterh-e-l-p.com slash read. Hey, Joel, my name's Les, and I'm from the northeast of the United Kingdom, and my daughter and son-in-law are big fans of your podcast. They listen in the car a lot, and you remind me a lot of an old radio program we had over here called Fear on Four, only an American version. I love listening to that on the wireless when I was just a lad, and those were all ghost stories, and I was informed by my daughter

that yours are all submissions from listeners. Well, with that in mind, here's one for my days as a hotel concierge that I've never forgotten, and one I never will forget either. It was the late 90s, and just coming up to the summer holidays, when the hotel I was working at lost a number of important staff. We lost our receptionist to maternity leave. Not that we weren't happy for her, but her absence was a big loss because she was phenomenal at her job. And then on top of that, we lost two of our most experienced members of the service team,

one of which came at very short notice due to an undiagnosed heart condition. Now, at a big hotel chain, that wouldn't have been a problem. But as a small boutique hotel that employed only about a dozen forward-facing staff, their loss was very sorely felt. I knew we needed staff and badly, but we all trusted the management to make the right hiring choices. But when they hired a lad called Brian, they made a serious error of judgment.

And from the moment I met him, I could tell that there was something not right about him. Call it a hunch or call it many years of experience, but there was something off about him from the moment we first spoke. First impressions aren't always perfect, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. for about a week. And then I saw the way he looked at some of our female guests, especially the younger ones. It's not unusual to see a baggage boy's eyes wander when a beautiful lady is staying in

the hotel. We used to get some very well off people staying with us and rich men have beautiful wives. But when I saw the same look in Brian's eyes over a guest's 11-year-old daughter, I knew it was a very bad omen indeed. And I tried talking to the management about it because we could still get rid of Brian while he was still in his probationary period. But management said it wasn't that simple. They had the right to let him go at any time, but they still needed a solid reason, something that would look good on a report

so Brian couldn't find a way to accuse us of discrimination. They had the right to let him go at any time, but they still needed a solid reason, something that would look good in reports so Brian couldn't find a way to accuse us of discrimination. They told me to keep an eye on him, and that if a customer made a complaint for any reason, they'd give Brian the chop. Now, I tried to keep my eyes peeled and a reason before anything happened,

but in the end, the person that needed protecting was Brian. Now, one evening in mid-October, just as the nights were starting to get dark early, Brian was on shift and with us until 11 p.m. His shift passed without incident, and then he went off to the staff room to clock out and change his shoes. He always left his dress shoes in the staff room and commuted in his trainers. His dress shoes smelled awful. And this usually involved him retiring to the staff room for no more than a few minutes before he'd reappear in the lobby and leave through the front doors. But on this occasion, he didn't reappear in the lobby. It wasn't a crime to hang around in the staff room following a shift, but after maybe 10 to 50 minutes of Brian not reappearing, I started to wonder what

he was up to. A couple more minutes went by and I started to get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that got worse and worse. I couldn't shake the feeling that Brian was up to something. I just didn't know what. So I told the night receptionist that I was going to check on him. But then no sooner had I stepped toward the hallway leading to the stairs that Brian suddenly appeared, staggering in the opposite direction, and he had blood streaming down his front. All of my contempt for the lad suddenly evaporated. He looked terrified, with his eyes having become these big white and brown circles that just screamed danger. And as I got closer, I realized that his nose had been severely broken, so much so that it looked

like it had been smeared across his face almost completely flat. And he also appeared very dizzy, like he could barely stand, and as I got closer, he just began muttering, help me, please help me less. Now, I got him into the back office behind the reception area, and then after handing him a load of blue roll to stop the bleeding, I told the night reception. who was definitely in a panic by this stage to phone 999 and ask for both the police and the ambulance service. Now, I kept asking Brian what had happened because I obviously needed to establish if the rest of us, guests included, were in any danger. But the only thing Brian

said that made any sense was, don't let him get me. Please don't let him kill me. I'm asking who, Brian? Who attacked you? Where did it happen? But he wouldn't say. He would just groan with that big wad of blue roll clamped over his mouth, and it was a few minutes that I was absolutely terrified, convinced some hammer-wielding maniac was about to round the corner and start smashing the place to smithereens. But instead, as I walked back out into the lobby to reassure the night receptionist wasn't alone, a barefoot man in shorts and a t-shirt appeared and shouted, Where is he? No, I'm not daft. I knew this bloke had been the one to give Brian a pasting, and for the briefest of brief moments, I thought that there was a chance that he hadn't deserved it.

Brian was a creep. There was no two ways about it, but that didn't rule out him having a very unfortunate encounter with a violent psychopath. But, and as I'm sure many of you have predicted by now, the man in the shorts was not some violent psychopath, and Brian most definitely did deserve to be battered. After he appeared, the angry dad in the shorts, I mean, it took a minute of trouble. trying to calm him down before he stopped demanding to know where Brian was and started explaining why he was looking for him. So we only had 12 rooms at the hotel because the hotel's mantra was something along the lines of low occupancy, high quality. We had four single rooms, five doubles, and then rooms 10, 11, and 12 were suites, or what we called our family rooms.

These consisted of a larger adults' room, complete with television, lounge, and small dining area, and then a smaller kid's bedroom. And due to fire safety regulations, both rooms could be accessed from the first floor hallway. That's the second floor to you, Yanks. Meaning we had room 12, but then room 12B, which was the kid's room. And so right before he got into bed, the angry dad decided to check in on his two primary school-aged daughters, who were asleep in 11B. But then who does he see standing there in almost perfect dark

watching his two little girls as they slept? Brian. And as he could imagine, Brian had no good reason whatsoever for being in the girl's room. And once that was established, and the girl's dad realized that he wasn't there in any professional capacity, he went ballistic, as any dad would, I suppose. But what happened next,

was just a shambles. After talking the angry dad down from wanting to quite literally murder young Brian, he demanded we call the police. But then after reviewing the footage from the corridor security system, the police arrested the dad on suspicion of assault and GHB. Brian had done enough to be immediately sacked, but he hadn't done anything worthy of being arrested, so he had this truly bizarre situation where the aggravated party was put into handcuffs while the creep who had been planning on doing God knows what to his daughters, was treated like the victim. And I suppose that's just how the law works. One party had done nothing but stand in a hotel room with some sleeping girls in it, and the other had inflicted serious bodily harm, and I do mean

serious because there's no way Brian's nose was ever the same shape again. And I suppose to the cops who was an open and shut case, especially once they reviewed the footage and saw the dad kicking seven shades of crap out of Brian. Now, I don't know what happened to him, and I hope he didn't have to do any time for it. Brian, on the other hand, I know exactly what happened to him. We got rid of him, not a moment too soon either, and it was good riddance to bad rubbish. My name is Ion, and I'm a forester here in Romania. I lived in a small village very close to the forest, and every morning after waking up early,

I put on my uniform and I head out into the forest. and my job is really quite simple. Just like my colleagues, I walk many kilometers every day to check the trees. We mark old or sick ones to be cut legally, and then we count the number of young trees and plant new ones in the spring. Now, we keep our eyes peeled for bears and wolves or links because they too must be monitored and counted just like the trees. But one of our most common activities is stopping cars and trucks to check their papers

and check for illegal wood. Because without a doubt, the single biggest problem that we have here is illegal logging. Now, they mostly come at night with axes and chainsaws, and then cut down the best in the oldest trees, either beech, oak, or spruce, and then haul them away as fast as they can. Now, you might ask yourself, well, how many trees can these people cut down? It can't be many. Well, sometimes the larger gangs can cut down to 100 trees per night,

and they do this night after night taking very few nights off, so in that space of about a month, we can lose thousands upon thousands of healthy old-growth trees. Now, many of the foresters, the less-reputable ones, take bribes from the loggers. The rest of us are intimidated with their axe and chainsaws, and sometimes they even carry guns, something we ourselves were not allowed to carry until 2019. At which point it was too late to stop this story's events from unfolding. illegal logging is very damaging to the forest and not just in the ways that you might assume. Without the trees, the soil washes away when it rains.

This muddy's rivers causes them to burst their banks, and they flood villages to cause devastating and sometimes lasting damage to people's lives. Logging also frightens the animals who either flee their habitats or are killed as their nests or dens come crashing down or are crushed by those same falling trees. and I fear that if we lose our beautiful places, my children will not get to see the big old forest that I saw when I was young. And that thought breaks my heart, but it also gives us the will to fight them. And it's just that.

This fight has required many sacrifices, not just in time and effort, but in blood. And for a long time, we used to hide in the forest at night with a notebook and a flashlight. If the group of illegal loggers was large enough, we would simply hide in the darkness, Take notes on their numbers. However, if the group is small enough, we can sometimes trick them into thinking that we are more in numbers, at which point they will abandon their lumber, jump into their trucks, and drive away. But this isn't always the case. Sometimes the loggers go on the attack and will rush us with their chainsaws and axes at the ready.

And believe me, you have not seen your life flash before your eyes like you will, when a man with a revving chainsaw is running at you full speed. It's a horror that I'm never likely to forget. Now, we call the police when this happens, but they are stationed far from the forest and only ever arrived too late to do anything about the loggers. Now, for the most part, us foresters tried our best to stop the logging, and we also tried to root out those of us who have been taking bribes. We tried very hard, but we were mostly unsuccessful in this. And in the end, the government decided to tar us all with the same brush. So one day our boss summoned us all to the headquarters because he'd had an announcement to make.

The local government had gotten sick of us failing to adequately deal with the problems of the loggers, and after learning of a few isolated cases of foresters taking bribes, they decided that we all had been corrupt. Our protests fell on deaf ears as the government had already decided what they were going to do. If we weren't going to root out those taking bribes, then we would all have to pay for us. for the lost lumber. Thousands of Liu, our national currency, would be taken from our collective paychecks every single week, and the longer we failed to deal with the problem, the longer the deductions would

continue. We were furious, absolutely furious, but this was also at a time when we had but two options to choose from. Work is agreed and lose out on pay, or quit, and face the possibility of not being able to put food on our family's tables. And for some of the younger foresters, it was a tough choice. But for those of us with families, we had only one option. Ramp up our efforts to rid the forest of those loggers, no matter what the physical or spiritual cost.

And at this stage, we were still not permitted to carry guns around the park, so we had to think creatively to scare off the loggers. And at first we used firecrackers, very large and powerful ones that we could launch through the trees from a distance. These would explode over the logger's heads and terrified them when they were working on the darkness. But then after a while they learned not to be bothered by them and would just carry on until we ran out of fireworks to launch. And after that, we tried bringing dogs to scare the loggers, but they called our bluff, as we weren't willing to risk the safety of our loyal, furried friends, so we didn't sick them on the loggers anymore. And all the while, we petitioned the government to allow us to carry guns with which to defend, ourselves, but at each turn, we were told the same thing over and over. You're not soldiers,

you're not police, and it's too dangerous. In the end, we were told to focus on intel gathering in the hopes that we would turn over what we found to the police and have them arrest the allogers in their homes. But this was a very slow process, and as we began to lose money, we began taking risks. For months, we found ourselves fighting a losing battle, and then finally a small victory gave us a massive boost of morale. Two of the foresters, Niku and Gavril, were out on patrol one night when they found a group of loggers. There were a lot of them, and only two of our foresters, but then instead of simply observing them

and taking notes, Niku and Gabriel hatched a plan. And this was at a time when, if one lone forester confronted the loggers, the loggers would just simply chase them away with their axes and chainsaws. And so when Niku began shouting at them and walking straight over to them with his flashlight switched on, some of the loggers stopped their cutting and began walking towards him. And there was shouting of all kinds of curses, making a big scene, and although not all of the loggers went to chase Niku away, it caused enough of a scene to draw the attention of those who remained behind.

Meaning no one saw gavel sneak up to their truck and stab holes in three of its four tires. No one saw him sneaking up and no one saw him sneaking away. And then the next morning, a second pair of foresters found the illegal loggers truck abandoned with those three flat tires. We were elated and we celebrated the abandoned truck like we had just won a battle in some great war. We were able to sell the illegally harvested lumber to recoup the forest losses and plant many new trees. And we also had a new and effective way of fighting the loggers and that brought our spirit. it's up an incredible amount.

But sadly, it didn't even last a month. Because just a few weeks later, little Pavel was out patrolling on his own in a section of force that we didn't think was of any interest to the loggers. And we found out that we were wrong. It was the middle of the night when we got a call from Pavel saying that the loggers were trying to outsmart us by logging where we didn't expect them to. He said there were lots of them, too, two trucks worth, so we needed backup to try and scare them off or distract them in the,

enough to get a knife into the truck's tires. Those of us that were on duty and could access a vehicle rushed to Pavel's aid. We were hopeful, knowing that we could stop those loggers if we could only get a man near the trucks. But then as we all rushed to Pavel's position, he started talking over his radio again. He said the trucks had almost finished loading up and that the loggers were preparing to leave. We told him not to do anything alone, but after that, he stopped responding on his radio. I panicked, and so did everyone else who heard the radio so quiet.

Then, when I arrived at the scene, only my fellow foresters were present and the loggers had disappeared entirely. But to our worry, so would Pavell. And we spent the rest of the night searching for him, walking in pairs with our flashlights and calling on his name. We searched for miles around, but when daylight finally came, he turned out to be no more than a hundred yards from where we were first standing. We all knew that he had been found, and we all knew the search had come to an end, because we heard a man screaming like his sanity

was slipping away. He had found Pavel, and they had chopped and sawed him to pieces. It was without a doubt the worst crime I had ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on, and in my time as a forester, I had seen a number of very grisly murders and very gory accidents. but not one of them, not even the prostitute who was found broken in half and shoved into the cavity of a tree, managed to horrify me as much as seeing Pavel in pieces. It affected everyone terribly and many of us went to Pavel's funeral to console his mother with how brave he'd been. I wouldn't say his sacrifice was worth it because we should have been given weapons long before Pavel lost his life, but his death prompted our bosses to enter into serious talks with local politicians.

who relented and allowed us to carry rifles. We're not allowed to open fire unless we're directly threatened, but seeing us with rifles was all it took to scare the loggers into going someplace else. We put a brass plaque up at the HQ to honor Pavel's sacrifice, and it's a reminder to new foresters that they are lucky to be part of a new generation who are allowed to defend themselves. We still face danger, and illegal logging hasn't stopped entirely, but now no one will ever suffer the same fate as poor Pavel,

who died while protecting the forest from human greed. Hey Joel, I'm a comedy writer, and while these days I do okay, I even got my name in the credits of a show on Hulu, that's not always been the case. In the beginning, it was a grind, and trying to transition from being a Comey Chef to a comedy writer was not the easiest, let's just say that. For example, the first year,

job I ever got that paid me purely for my writing sucked. I was writing skits for a small company whose goal was to create viral videos. Our boss said that he knew a guy who could turn click numbers into ad sales, and with ad sales came some pretty big money. I guess that doesn't sound too bad on the surface. But the content outlined the ad guy sent us was just lame. It obviously had to be funny, but he was so scared of offending anyone that he sometimes sucked all the funny out of a skit and doomed it to fail. Now, I don't know exactly how our boss made any money. I guess by keeping the numbers of employees to just me and one other guy, but he kept it going for about a year before he called it a day and quit while he was ahead. It was probably the worst, most boring writing job I

ever had, and thankfully, I went on to have a much better experience in the industry. Shout out to my current producer and editor. But ironically, it was in that super boring job that I got one of the weirdest and freakiest stories of my whole life. And that story centers around a guy named Paul. Paul was a very funny guy. He grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, not too far from me, and although his sense of humor was drier than a bucket of sand, he was easily one of the smartest, funny people I'd ever met. But he also happened to be really, really weird, too. He never ever joined me and the boss man for beers have to work. Even on his birthday, he just wanted to go straight home to do whatever he did there. And we had next to no idea what that was because he only ever gave monosyllabic

replies to any and all questions about his personal life. And the only thing we knew for certain was that he didn't have a girlfriend or wife and that he didn't have any kids either. So what he did alone in that apartment of his was just a complete mystery. Neither me nor my boss chose to probe too much. He was a chill guy, and he made our lives way easier by writing very good, but very clean skits. Now, I wanted to push him to find a girl or something, because it's true that a good sense of humor is a huge aphrodisiac. But like I said, I was his co-worker, not his grandma, so I refrained from asking, have you found any nice girl, sweetheart? But then imagine my surprise when I was working in the office one day, and I heard a female voice coming from the communal room.

I didn't go running to see who it was. I just kind of listened in for a second, sort of like, dude, does Paul have a lady friend over? No, I stayed put, not wanting to cramp a style and all of that, but I was still quietly thinking, way to go, Paul. At least until I crept closer to my office door and heard the lady's voice a little clearer. And she sounded old.

Not really old, but way older than Paul's regular dating range. So when the voices died down and I heard Paul walking back to his office, I went over to ask who the special lady was. All right, I did kind of tease him just a little, as I was saying, oh, what's up, Casanova? You got a girl paying you visits to work now, huh? Well, that moves pretty fast, huh? But instead of shooting me a little grin or even telling me to leave him alone, Paul then says, I don't know what you're talking about. No, I thought that was just him making the jokes, so I respond, oh hearty, har, har, all sarcastically before I asked him, for real, who the chick was.

But I quickly realized that when he denied all knowledge of any lady being present, he was very serious. As Paul stared at me with this completely unamused look on his face, I realized something was going on. And the first place my mind went to was cheating. And the only time I'd ever seen anyone straight up deny seeing a woman was when they were cheating. and didn't want me, you know, blabbing about it in front of their girlfriend. But I knew that there could be other reasons, too. I mean, maybe the woman was a relative of his or something passing on some type of bad news or at least something Paul didn't want me to know about.

Either way, I took the hint and just responded, all right, my bad dude, I must have been mistaken. Now, I thought it was strange, but like I said, Paul was an okay guy and I didn't want to make him mad by pushing him on something that he didn't want to be pushed on. but then it happened for a second time. Paul's office was right next to mine, and although we had our own little work spaces, the boss definitely saved himself a few bucks on space

because the walls were paper-thin. And so when it took my headphones off, the only thing that kept my concentration, really, I suddenly heard the sound of a woman's voice coming from the room next door. Now I'm thinking, damn, Paul's got that lady back in the office again. But seeing as he was weirdly sensitive about it, I pretended not to hear it. And I say pretended, but that didn't stop me from listening in out of

curiosity, especially when I realized that it was that same older woman's voice that I'd heard the previous week. And unlike the first time when it sounded like Paul and her were having a friendly exchange, that second time it sounded like they were actually having a little bit of an argument. Now, I could hear the woman verbally sort of pecking at him, and then Paul alternated between sounding like he was sorry and sounded like he was defending himself. It actually got pretty heated at one point, but instead of tapping on the wall and telling them to keep it down, I just kept on listening, wondering what in the hell was going on in there. Finally, after maybe 10 to 15 minutes, Paul and his lady went very quiet again,

and I figured that it'd be only a matter of seconds before I heard his door open and close and then footsteps walking down the hallway and out of the office. but there was nothing. And after about a half hour of silence, I realized that she was still in the room with him. And then not long after that, my curiosity got the better of me. I thought about an excuse to go visit Paul in his office

and then focused on trying not to embarrass him when I opened the door. And what I meant by that is, I wanted nothing more than to be like, I knew it. I knew you had a lady in here, you dirty, rotten scoundrel. But I also knew that he'd be super pissed off,

if I sort of blew his cover. I kept this sort of iron straight face when I knocked on his door, preparing myself to just sort of say, oh, hey, how's it going, to his lady friend? But after I knocked and he yelled, enter, I walked into a room containing Paul and only Paul. And at that point, I felt like I was losing my freaking mind. I was 110% certain that I just heard a woman talking in his office.

and I was also certain that whoever it was hadn't left either, because like I said, these were paper-thin walls. And so when I say, I'm pretty sure I just heard a woman in here, I refused to take Paul's no for an answer. And then I say, dude, why are you lying? And it wasn't like I was going to snitch on him to the boss, and even if I did, there was really nothing that said

that we couldn't have visitors in the office. And so it made no sense why he'd try and pull the wool over my eyes like that and just lie to me. Now, Paul claimed that he wasn't lying, and I felt like banging my head against the wall or sort of talking to one would be more productive than talking to Paul because what the hell's going on. We went back and forth like that for a while, with me trying to explain how it wasn't a bad thing that he had a lady over, or at least how he didn't need to lie to me about it. And then after a few minutes of that, Paul exploded. In the six or seven months that we'd worked together, I'd never seen him so angry.

He went completely red in the face, stood up from his chair, and yelled at me to get the hell out of his office. I tried to reason with him, but all he was saying was, now, Kurt, get the hell out. It honestly seemed like if I didn't, he was going to actually punch me. So I quit while I was ahead and walked out of his office. We didn't speak for a couple of hours, not till the end of the day, and when we did, I apologize for pushing on something he clearly didn't want pushed on. Paul didn't accept my apology and instead just looked irritated that I'd even brought it up. But since I gotten it out there, I'd just sort of backed off and then told him that I'd see him the following morning.

I mentioned the whole thing to my boss after work over beers and we both agreed that Paul was acting strange. But the strangest part by far was when we realized that his lady friend had to have been hiding in the room when I knocked on the door to check on him. If I hadn't heard her leave, then where else could she be? Hell, I might even have interrupted them getting a little handsy or something, and whoever his lady friend was, she was probably just shy. But even after I left his office, I didn't hear anyone leaving, so if she did leave, it was on her tippy toes not wanting to attract my attention. Like I said, we both agreed that something weird was going on, and that maybe Paul's girlfriend was like a heck of a lot older, and that's why he was embarrassed. But we were way, way off, and given a thousand guesses, I don't think

either of us would have gotten close to what was really going on. And so the next morning, I was driving to work, and my usual route took me across the bridge. But then that morning, the bridge was closed. I turned around and had to take an alternate route, which meant that I was about 15 minutes late. But when I arrived at the office, Paul had yet to show up also. Now, I told my boss, I was sorry for being late, and I genuinely was because he was an awesome guy, despite how bad the job sucked. But then he says, looks like everyone's a little delayed this morning, and then told me about Paul. I figured that he probably took the same route I did, meaning the same bridge, so it was probably one of those who got stuck in the very same jam I

escaped by turning around. Now, we both figured that he'd showed up within the hour, maybe a little longer if the jam was as bad as I thought it was. But I think only like 10 or 15,000. minutes went by before my boss knocked on my office door with some news. Now, the bridge was down because somebody went nuts that morning. They stopped their car in the middle of the bridge, got out, and started yelling at the people behind him. The cops had to come along and haul the guy off, most probably to the psych ward, seeing how crazy he was acting.

But now, since the guy was gone and his car had been moved, traffic was flowing again and Paul could be showing up at any minute. But he didn't. In fact, he didn't show up at all. Our boss called his cell phone a bunch times, and we didn't worry at first when he didn't pick up, but then as time went on, we did start to worry. He didn't show up the next day either. He wasn't answering his home phone or his cell phone,

and with someone having gone nuts on the bridge only to be dragged away by the cops, we started to wonder if the two things might be connected. I guess to anyone reading this, it's pretty obvious what happened by now. But denial is a powerful thing, and we didn't fully entertain the idea until weeks later when we finally got the truth. As I said, a lot of you probably worked out that it was Paul that went crazy on that bridge that day. And while that's all terrible and very unfortunate, and I legitimately hope that he's doing much better now, that wasn't the really messed up part of it. Our boss ended up meeting a guy who will remain anonymous because he could probably still get into trouble for this,

and he was one of the people that had dealt with Paul after he was taken to a hospital, like a psychiatric hospital too, not a regular one. Obviously, he had a complete nervous breakdown there on the bridge, and after blocking traffic, I figured he was just yelling F you to the people behind him. But he wasn't. He was begging them to call the cops, and when they arrived, they were the first to hear something he ended up telling a lot of people over at that hospital. He needed to be taken to jail and fast.

because he just murdered his own mom and then eaten her. Now before you all freak out completely, he hadn't really eaten her. He hadn't even hurt her either, and he couldn't because she'd been dead for years by that point. But the cops didn't know that, not right away. So when he swore on all that was holy that he'd just cooked his mom's head in the oven, the cops went over to his place to see if he was telling the truth. It turns out Paul had roasted and eaten ahead. It was just a pig's head that he'd gotten from someplace,

and he'd left it so intact after only eating a little, that the cops didn't even need to send off a sample or anything. They could see that it was a pig just with the naked eye. The cops went back and told Paul's doctors, who put it to him that the whole thing was just in his head. Paul went nuts, called the doctor a liar, and then lunged across the table at him. And after that, he was officially deemed a ward of the state

and was doomed to remain in that hospital till he showed significant signs of improvement. I had a cousin who was forced into mandatory psych care, and you do not get out of that system easily. They let murderers out of prison easier than they let crazy people out of hospitals, and that includes people that haven't heard of fly. So that's the other part of this that I find really creepy. How a guy is normal, or at least seemingly normal as Paul,

managed to go so crazy that he's now an indefinite resident of some state hospital. And Paul, if you somehow ever hear this, I miss you, buddy, and I hope you're doing better. I've worked for the Forest Service for the past 15 years or so, and it's a job that comes with a set of pretty unique challenges in terms of law enforcement. And one of the biggest problems we've faced is that of illegal hunting. No matter how flexible we are, and no matter how much prior warning we give the local hunting community, there are still those who seek to bypass the law in order to bag themselves a buck out of season. It's probably one of the most infuriating things we deal with too, because if everyone acted like the out-of-season hunters,

there'd be far fewer deer and other animals to hunt in season, and it might well contribute to a population spiral among the local fauna. And they acted like the rules shouldn't apply to them, and they give you the worst excuses. Like one guy swore on all he held deer that he thought it was still September. I mean, he'd have to be a moron to forget what month it was, and he'd have to have pegged me for even more of an idiot to believe an excuse like that. Needless to say, we take illegal hunting very seriously. So when we get reports that they're operating out there, putting the animal population in danger, you can bet your bottom dollar that we act on them. So one day, when I got word that some illegal hunting might have been taking place in a particular area of the forest, I drove over immediately to check it out.

Now, one of the techniques we use to identify illegal hunting is examining tree trunks in the suspect area. Now, be it a fresh scar in the bark, a small puncture buried beneath new growth, or the piece of metal detected just under the surface, there are many ways to tell if a rifle or shotgun had recently been fired in a certain location. A bullet lodged at a certain hike can tell investigators not only where a hunter stood when taking a shot, but also the direction the shot was fired, and we can also use the frequency of said damage to determine if it's a place poachers use as a regular spot. If the trajectory of the shot lines up with the habitat of a protected species,

it might even help officers build a case involving the killing of said protected species. And in light of that, us rangers sometimes use metal detectors to locate lead or steel hidden beneath the tree's bark, or, in serious cases, bullets may be removed for ballistic. testing. A cartridge dug out of a tree can link a crime scene to a specific firearm just as it might in traditional criminal investigation. Logging companies also have a large vested interest in this because when their saws hit metal buried in wood, the blades can be ruined and operators can be severely wounded, sometimes even killed. In fact, a lot of the reports that we get come from sawmills who alert the authorities to places where gunfire into trees happens frequently.

In this way, trees can serve as a sort of silent witness. Long after an illegal shot had been fired, the evidence may still be lodged there right inside the wood. So, after getting the report and driving over to the area in question, I grabbed a handheld metal detector from my truck, and then when walking through the trees looking for any sign of gunshot damage. Sometimes buckshot damage looks like scratching from deer antlers, which they do remove velvet it in marked territory, so sometimes you'll run the detector over a suspected patch of bark, only to get nothing. But then after walking for maybe half a mile, I saw some pretty glaring

evidence of shotgun damage to a tree. Now, it was a clear example of buckshot damage, one of the clearest I'd ever seen, so I had no doubt whatsoever what had caused the damage. But when I ran the detector over the stop, it just stayed silent. This was obviously very confusing because even the smartest illegal hunter doesn't bother to go digging into tree trunks to retrieve tiny pieces of metal. And from what I could tell from the naked eye, there was a lot of it stuck in that tree. So much so that it might have even come from multiple shots. I pulled out the small knife that I carry with me at times and then started to carefully pull away some of the bark around the affected area. And once again, it was quite clearly

some ballistic damage because of the obvious tunneling. But when I got to the bottom of one tunnel. It wasn't a fragment of dull metal that I saw, but a kind of off-white, almost porcelain-looking substance. I'd never seen anything like it in my life, and I've been working for the forest service for almost ten years by that point, so naturally, I was very focused to get to the bottom of it. I'd use my knife to scrape away some of the woods so I could dislodge the small off-white clump, but then after very carefully extracting it from the tree and examining it up close, I was so shocked that I remember letting out a gasp as I almost dropped it. It wasn't a piece of buckshot. It wasn't a bullet. It was a tooth. And from what I could tell, it was a human

tooth. As a ranger, you learn to identify the teeth and or bones of all the various animals that called park home. Birds are probably the easiest to identify, and then deer teeth are pretty easy seeing as how flat they are. And the same applies to carnivore teeth, too, as their distinct shape makes them very easy to identify. And so when I pulled what was quite clearly a front tooth out of that tree, there was no doubt in my mind that it was holding a person's tooth and not in animals. Now, we might be forest rangers, but we're still law enforcement, and we're charged with all of the same duties as regular police officers. So when I found that tooth, my first thing, thought following the initial shock was, I need to preserve the rest of the evidence.

I walked back to my truck, called in what I'd found over the radio, and then made my way back to the damaged tree to string a bunch of crime scene tape around the surrounding undamaged trees. One of my co-workers was on scene within the hour, and when I showed them what I'd found, they also admitted to finding it incredibly scary. We also felt kind of powerless because I'd say 90% of stuff that goes on in the forest stays in-house, so to speak, as in we deal with it ourselves. But something as bizarre and unexpected as teeth being buried in a tree would require a team of crime scene technicians, possibly even a forensic anthropologist, since we didn't even know

how old they were, and how long they'd been stuck in that tree. Now, it took days before a full team was assembled. But then one morning, right at the break of dawn, a whole team of techs and forensic guys and a photographer were all headed towards the taped-up. barrier. Everything was photographed, the tree, the ground around it, and positioning of the damage, as well as a close-up to show the teeth still lodged in the trunk. Only when all that was done did they actually go about removing the rest of the teeth from the tree, and they only did so using tools meant to preserve even the smallest trace of DNA or residue. The team also took samples of

the wood, too, because the rate of growth can help determine how long the teeth have been there. My co-worker and I stood there watching them all morning and then offering any information that they might find useful. The investigators seemed particularly interested in there being any unusual activity in recent weeks, and we said if there had been any, we sure hadn't spotted it. And then after that, it was up to the lab to do their tests, so all we could do was wait patiently to hear back. Obviously, our number one question involved who the teeth belonged to

and so did the lab. And so the very first thing we did was compare them to the dental records of those on the National Missing Persons Registry. Now, unfortunately, they didn't get a match. But they were able to quickly move on to DNA testing, which everyone believed would be more likely to bring up a match. DNA testing doesn't just tell you who something belongs to. It tells who their relatives are, too. So even if the lab didn't get a direct match, there was a chance that we'd be able to contact who could fill a assistant. in on the whole picture. But there were no matches, none whatsoever. Whoever's teeth were in that

tree had no relatives on that system, living or dead. And while that's not entirely out of the question, it was another deeply unsettling little detail that we had to contend with. In the end, we never did find out exactly how those teeth ended up in that tree. All we got were just a list of likely theories. One that's worth mentioning, although it turned out to be false, was the idea one of my coworkers had. He figured that it might be some kind of Native American burial site, so old that a tree actually grew up and brought some of this guy's teeth with it. Now, I mean, there was obviously a chance of foul playing that some poor soul had taken a shotgun blast at close range or something, but if that was the case, there would have been shotgun fragments

buried along with it. And as one co-worker said, it was almost like someone had loaded up a shotgun and shell with human teeth and then just fired them at the tree. Now, this was the one scenario, no matter how unlikely, creeped the ever-living crap out of us thinking about it. In fact, just about the only comfort that we had was the idea that those teeth were old, really old, and that if their owners had suffered at all, at least it hadn't been recent. Something we maybe could have done something about and failed to. But just about the only conclusive thing the lab brought back to us was that the teeth appeared to have been buried in that tree trunk for just over a year at maximum, and that they belonged to a man in his 40s at the time

of presumably death. Now, that was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing that I'd actually been working as a ranger around the time of such a thing happening. The forest is a big place, too, and by comparison, our ranger team is little more than a skeleton crew, so it's impossible for us to be everywhere at once. But still, it's a bitter pill to swallow. And they never did find out who those teeth belonged to, and no one could say for sure that it was murder, or that his teeth had ended up in that tree some other way. Now, I try not to think about it, because when I did, it made walking among those trees

all the more creepier. And even now that I'm retired, I still think about those teeth every so often and wonder how in the world they ended up deep in that tree. I've worked in medical science for nearly 20 years now, mostly as a lab technician, but also as a coordinator and principal investigator. And many years ago now, I used to work in a small medical clinic in the greater London area. We mostly ran blood and urine tests, and while we had an x-ray room and a few other things too, it was 95% blood and urine week in and week out.

And as you can imagine, we're exceptionally careful when handling samples. I can't imagine many of you have received calls saying, Irm, we misplaced that blood you gave us. Can you come back and give us some more? And that's because we're really careful with them. And so one day, when one of our nurses came to us saying that he dropped our sample, our first thought was concerned, and not for the bloody sample, but for him. Now, I don't want to use his real name because that'll give away which clinic this took place in,

so I just call him Dave. And when Dave dropped a sample, I was worried that. that he might not be feeling well. When I asked him what happened, Dave said that the beaker dropped from his grip after he suddenly became lightheaded. So we sent him home for two days, then he came back feeling much better.

Now, Dave was a great nurse, an asset to the clinic, and God knows we wanted to look after him. So a couple of weeks later, when it happened for a second time, I recommended that he'd just go to the doctors for a full checkup. Dizzy spells can be a sign of some pretty nasty illnesses,

but following a full medical exam, he was told that there was nothing wrong with him. We were relieved. Why wouldn't we be? Not to mention, Dave did admit to skipping breakfast on the day of the second spill. So once again, it passed without too much suspicion, and Dave continued to work at the clinic. But then came the day that I walked in on him doing something that I told myself was impossible, and it felt like I was hit by a train. We trusted Dave to be alone with the samples, so it wasn't in the least bit unused. for him to be left alone and uninterrupted for sometimes long periods of time.

So when I walked into the containment lab, I caught him by surprise, just as he was lowering a sample beaker of urine from his mouth. I froze. He froze. Then he dropped the beaker to the floor and mumbled something like, I dropped it. But it was too late. I'd seen everything, and there was no unseeing it either. Dave begged me not to tell anyone. He swore that he'd never do it again

and even offered me money to keep quiet. But what else could I do? To say his behavior constituted gross misconduct would be putting it mildly and we simply couldn't have anyone with such inclinations around the clinic. End of story. As you can imagine, it was quite a big deal,

but all the general medical counsel was interested in was keeping it out of the papers. So when Dave just sort of disappeared, it suited everyone just fine. It was the end of our problem, but not the end of his problem, because procedures stated that we pass on what we'd learned to the police. David broke in laws pertaining to the mishandling of biological materials, which covers everything from blood to stool samples.

It was unlikely that he'd be locked up. A first offense would get him a fine and suspended sentence at most, so we were told, but he'd never be able to work in the health service ever again. His life as he knew it was over. But to be fair, he probably should have thought about that before he decided to take a shot of piss right as I walked in. Now, anyway, life moves on without Dave, and although we missed his skills and experience, we did not miss the feeling of knowing that there was someone like that working amongst us. I think it was like six or seven weeks, long enough that we'd almost let the whole sorry episode slip from our minds,

or at least I personally almost had anyway. And then one day, after driving home from work, a car pulled into my driveway behind me, having followed me home from the clinic to block me in. Now, I knew who was the moment I saw the car. I'd seen that car almost every day in the clinic's car park for almost three years. It was Dave's car, and he had followed me home. He walked on my driveway towards me as I got out of my car, shouting at him to get away from my house before I called the police.

Now, I made such a racket that my husband actually came out, and our kids watched from the front window as he walked Dave back up the driveway. He wasn't polite about it either. Neither of them were, and Dave only started to back off once my husband had promised to bounce his head off the concrete. We reported him to the police, but since Dave was out on bail, there wasn't much that they could do unless they caught him in the act of actually threatening us. All they could do as it stood was warn him to stay away from me or his attempts to do something. so would constitute harassment. But it didn't stop him and things only got worse. It all culminated with Dave trying to drive me off the road one evening when I was on my way home from work. I knew I was in trouble from the second I looked in my rearview and saw his car in the road behind me. I just didn't think that he was mental enough to try and scare me in such a dangerous situation.

I don't think he wanted me dead. Or maybe he did, who knows. But if I think he really wanted to murder me, he could have done it with a knife come closing time at the clinic. However, that didn't make what he did any less frightening because his reckless driving ended up with me careening off the road and into a ditch. I wasn't hurt, not too bad anyway, but I did need to go to the hospital to get checked out just in case. It was a horrible experience, but like many dark clouds, it did have a silver lining. Dave's dangerous driving had been caught on several cameras, meaning he was swiftly arrested and kept on remand before his trial since it was deemed that he was a threat to the public. The new dangerous driving charge meant prison was now on the cards, and although he only

got three months for all the offenses he racked up, it was still three months where we could all feel safe again. He didn't bother coming back to do anything, not to my house or to the clinic. He did three months of a six-month sentence, meaning any other offense would have him recalled to prison. Now, I was appalled at what a light sentence he got at first, but now I actually appreciate how smart it was. Three months is nothing to sniff at for a first time lag, and then the prospect of another three months in jail was enough to deter Dave from any further threatening interactions. And it's a bloody good thing that he didn't turn up at our house again because I swear my husband would have done time for murder. I've been a U.S. Forest Ranger for the better part of three decades, and in that time, I've heard some mighty, tall tales from various hikers and campers. We've had more Bigfoot sightings than I can count,

about 20-something UFO encounters, and one guy even swore that he saw Jimmy Hoffa, the union boss, who disappeared, hiding out in the barons and living in an RV. It's not just the reports we receive either, because when certain people find out that I'm a ranger, they sometimes ask me about strange or unexplained encounters that I might have experienced while on duty. I appreciate the question, it's a lot more exciting than the stuff I'm usually asked, but unfortunately, my answers tend to disappoint them. I've never seen any kind of undocumented animals out here, nor have I seen any strange lights hovering in the sky, and the only hairy, bipedal, growling monsters I've seen stomping through the woods have been my co-workers during early mornings.

The only thing that's ever happened that's left me truly disturbed doesn't even make for a good story, I don't think. It doesn't have a beginning, a middle, or an end. It was all just confusion, fear, and unanswered questions, and it started when a ranger named Ron went missing while out on patrol. It was a regular morning, and Ron was outperforming a fire management inspection when he suddenly stopped responding to radio calls. A ranger drove out to his last known location where he found Ron's truck abandoned in his radio sitting on the passenger seat. A breach of research of the areas surrounding the truck yielded nothing, so by that late evening, we had state search and rescue guys out there walking the woods with their sniffing dogs.

And it turned out to be a relatively simple process of letting the dogs lead us to him, and after letting them sniff around Ron's truck for a little bit, we expected Ron to be injured in some way, as there were a few other reasons why he'd just drop out of contact like that. But when we found him, it was way worse than we thought. Ron was cold and he looked to be suffering some kind of allergic reaction. I had a cousin that was allergic to peanuts and Ron looked and sounded exactly like my cousin did when he accidentally ate something with peanut brittle in it one Halloween. Only, it wasn't just Ron's face and neck that looked incredibly swollen. It was his arms and hands too.

They were this sort of deep pink and the skin was so stretched and taut that it looked almost shiny. The same reddy pink discoloration was consistent all along his arms and hands, but around his fingertips, the skin had become so dark it was almost black. No, we had a medic with us, so she rushed into action as soon as we found him. She cleared Ron's airway, put an IV in his arm, and then an ATV with a transport cot, showed up to take him back to the headquarters. And from there, he was airlifted to a hospital, and by the time he was in that chopper being lifted up into the air,

we were a mess. We had no idea what had happened to him out there, and what he'd done or what he'd found. Instead, just about the only thing we did know was that there was a good chance Ron wasn't going to make it. The medics who treated him looked panicked as they tried to figure out what was wrong with him, and one of them even told us straight

that it wasn't looking good for him. One of the Rangers, a lady named Susie, was in tears by the time we sat down in HQ again. We thought about Ron's wife and kids and how worried they must be and it just tore us up. Over the next few days, we stayed in almost constant contact with the hospital, awaiting word of any change at all in Ron's condition. Then thankfully, our prayers were answered, and around 72 hours after he was admitted, doctors announced that he'd been stabilized and that he'd most likely pull through.

A few of us went to pay him a visit and found his wife in a chair at his bedside. We were obviously very happy to see him awake and alert, so it made for an emotional reunion, but there was an elephant in the room, a very large one too, because each of us were desperately wanting to know what the hell had happened to him. And when we asked, we were incredibly frustrated to hear that, essentially, Ron couldn't really remember what had happened to him. He remembers walking through the woods, looking for buildups of dead wood or dry pine needles, when he suddenly spent. spotted would look to be a piece of black volcanic rock lying on the ground. It looked very out a place in a forest with no major deposits of that kind of stuff, and so assuming it had been dropped by a hiker, Ron walked over to it and picked it up. He said nothing felt out of the ordinary

at first. It felt kind of light, much like a lot of volcanic rocks, but then as he was walking with it, it started to feel very warm in his hands. This was one of the last things he remembered. As he dropped the rock, knowing that whatever was happening, it probably wasn't good for him. And he then said that looking at it, just lying there on the ground, was when his memory started to get very hazy. He remembered the swelling feeling, and he remembered not being able to breathe properly. But after that, it was just darkness until he woke up in a hospital bed with all those tubes sticking out of him. Now, after a couple of their agents came to talk to him, Ron directed the EPA towards where he'd been patrolling, and they sent a couple of guys over to look for the rock he'd found. At first,

doctors were afraid that it had been radioactive, and that Ron was suffering from some kind of acute radiation sickness. They were able to rule that out very quickly, thanks to the technology they had at hand, but that only allowed them to rule out one of many possible explanations, and in order to save his life, they needed that list to get much shorter, much quicker. The medical team tried everything, but only managed to reduce the severity of Ron's condition and not alleviate it entirely, and that at some point, right around hour 60, Ron's condition began to stabilize, seemingly on its own, after which his prognosis improved dramatically.

And by the time we visited, the doctors were safely able to rule out any kind of allergic reaction. But obviously, they wouldn't be able to figure out exactly what had happened to Ron until the EPA was able to recover the rock that he touched. only this is where things get weird because the EPA guy couldn't find any trace of any such a volcanic rock anywhere. Now they walked over the grid squares that Ron had given them, and this was solid info because we had a digital record of where he'd been headed that morning. But after combing through the undergrowth with a fine-tooth comb for hours and hours on end, they didn't manage to find a single piece of rock fitting the description that Ron had given them.

They obviously didn't want a hazardous or toxic substance getting into someone else's hand, so they tried their damnedest to find it. But they couldn't, and that scared us. Having something like that around the forest quite obviously posed a danger to the public. And we tried our best to warn visitors not to pick up any strange rocks and to report anything unusual directly to the Forest Service office. We were terrified the same thing would happen to a curious hiker or, God forbid, a child. But nothing ever did, and it was like that little piece of warm rock had just disappeared from the face of the earth.

And without it, there was no way that we'd ever definitively find out what had happened to Ron. Ron did get better, but he never did come back to work, and he ended up getting a job working with his brother and some home renovations. It was good money, but Ron loved being a ranger, so we knew something really must have frightened him to want to throw in the towel altogether. I can't say it's kept me up at night. It's all long in the past, but I still sometimes catch myself wondering just what the hell he found out there. 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.