The Lets Read Podcast - 347: SOMETHING STARED BACK AT ME IN THE DARK | 18 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 333

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

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

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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 lived in a haunted house as a kid in the 1990s, and the activity was centered around my attic loft. There were lots of unexplained noises, objects being thrown around, etc., and there was only one event in particular that truly scared me. I could have been seriously hurt if the timing had been slightly different. Now, for context, the house was built in the 1940s, and it was pretty creepy. The cavernous basement and the surrounding property included, but the focus here is on the attic. The house was a traditional New England colonial with a detached two-car garage off to the side.

It sat on about an acre, with three sides bordered by a row of evergreens and an old stone wall. The attic was a walk-up with a full set of stairs, which split it into left-and-right finish sections. Now, I'm talking late 1970s puke green shag carpet and wood-paneled walls. A lot of the house had been renovated around that time in the 70s or early 80s. There were two panels, one at the top landing and another directly above the door at the base of the stairs behind you. These were removable wall panels that led into the slope part of the house's roof line. And those compartments were used as storage crawl spaces by my father. The left side of the stairs had a waist height retaining wall slash shelf,

while the right side had a full-sized wall with a small closet accessible from the opposite side. inside that closet was another small removable access panel for something or other, and I can't remember what it was for. I honestly forgot it was even there most of the time, but this is foreshadowing. Now anyways, my dad used the left half of the attic for his collectibles and storage, while I had free rein at the right half as my hangout spot once I got in the middle school at around 1997-ish, and I spent a lot of time up there playing video games and building Legos. I had two chairs, a couch, a table, and I could pick up a basic over-the-air TV signal. And I hung out with a bunch of my friends up there, and it was great.

Now, most of the time. Now, a quick tangent, I can recall one instance when I was probably about five years old, really young in any event. And my dad was going into the storage space at the stair landing to shuffle around some of his collectibles, a lot of baseball-related items, but I'm getting off topic. I crawled in there and started exploring to the right side, thinking that he was messing around on the left. And in the very corner of the attic crawl space, I saw these two incredibly intense, ice-blue glowing eyes. I got this overwhelming, unexplainable feeling of fear, unlike anything else.

And I just turned around and booked it out of there without saying anything. And that was the only time anything like that happened while I lived there, and I'd gone into the crawl space a ton over the years. Now that the attic layout is covered, the important parts for these occurrences are the three removable wall panels. These things weren't just loosely put in place. They required deliberate effort to remove. I think you know where I'm going with this.

And often while I'm hanging out up there, at least the panel at the top landing would pop out of its place with enough force to slide down the stairs and crash into the door at the bottom. The panels were about three feet tall, and there were at least that much distance between the last step in the wall. If it was the panel above the door, on the other hand, that required even less to make a ruckus. And there was only about an 8 to 10-inch ledge next to the wall on the right that you had to shimmy across to access that panel, and I remember it being about the width of a VHS tape. Naturally, when that panel came off the wall, it crashed down 10-plus feet to the base of the stairs,

a ton of noise. Now, this was the normal version of events, and it started happening more and more the longer I'd spend time up there, from 6th through 8th grade. Typically, I'd just pick up whichever panel had fallen, put it back in place, and continue whatever I was doing. And now we're getting to the meat of the story. I was sitting in my chair playing PS1 during a long gaming session one summer afternoon, probably in 8th grade, and the chair was positioned a few feet from the closet directly to my left. I got up to use the bathroom on the second floor, since obviously the attic didn't have any plumbing. And as I made my way towards the stairs, only a couple of feet from the chair, both the panels and the stairway suddenly flew off the wall simultaneously and collided in

mid-air, crashing down into the stairs in the door below. On top of that, the panel inside the closet shot off the wall with the same intensity, if not greater, directly into the chair that I had been sitting in. I ran down the stairs, scared out of my mind, and didn't go back up there for hours. Aside from going back there later that day to turn off the TV and PlayStation, I don't think I went back up there again for about a week. And to put it into perspective, imagine these panels leaving the walls with roughly the same force as vehicle airbags deploying, the first generation ones, not the modern stuff that isn't quite as powerful. These were three-fourths of an inch to one-inch thick wood panels, old-school material, not the cheap stuff that you get at the store

today. Getting hit by one of those would have seriously messed up a grown man, let alone a scrawny 12-14-year-old kid. And no, it wasn't a draft or stormy weather. This happened regardless of the conditions outside, and I remember one less intense event when I picked up the panel from the bottom of the stairs, fit it snugly back into the wall, turned around, took a few steps towards my side of the attic, and it did the same thing again. And I just straight up said, all right, I'm leaving, packed it up, and did something else in the house. I had gotten the hint. Now, most of these events happened during middle school in the late 90s when I was allowed to take over that space.

We moved out when I was entering high school in 2000, and these things also occurred at other times when nobody was up there, usually at night, and I heard a lot of crap happening at all hours. My bedroom was right next to the door leading up there, under my father's side of the attic. However, the frequency of the noises and phenomena dramatically increased once I started spending my free time up there. I know for a fact that at least two of my friends experienced these events while they were at my house, and so did my younger brother, who was three years younger than me.

Regrettably, I was kind of an a-hole to him around that time, and one of my friends and I locked him up there once. It was almost like the spirit had read the script, because as soon as we locked him in, the panel at the top landing came off the wall. Notably, the panel directly above the door that he was desperately banging on did not come off that time, and he was screaming and crying to be let out like Michael Myers himself was up there.

This was a total dick move, I know, but middle school boys, what do you expect? He would have been around 10 or 11 at the time, so not super young. And to wrap things up, I drove by the place last summer and it looked like it was either being completely renovated or a prep for demolition. I got it into my head that I should talk to the current homeowners to see if they'd experienced anything similar, but I never went through with it. I drove by again earlier this summer, and it looks like the renovations are done. There are visible improvements from the street and the dumpsters are gone.

Still didn't find the stones to go ring the doorbell, though. Is anyone here old enough to have been a dad in the mid-90s? Well, I am, and I went through a lot during fatherhood when my three kids were still under 18. Two daughters, one son, and I couldn't be more proud of them to this day. But I'm not here to gush over my kids. The year was 1996, my son was five, and that Christmas, he wanted the hit-hot toy that every other kid wanted, a talking 12-inch buzz light-eared doll. If you were a parent around then or even a kid, you'll know how freaking impossible that thing was to acquire.

Kind of rubbed salt into the wound that jingle all the way came out around the same year, basically portraying the same kind of struggle of a parent trying to buy an action figure. But I digress. I didn't go into a wild caper involving Sinbad, which ended up with me dressing in a full-functioning Buzz Lightyear costume. Instead, I turned to the classifieds, worth a look anyway. People have found strange and unexpected things in the classifieds before. And so I scoured the classifieds, and sure enough, I did actually find a few Buzz Light Years. However, the sellers were obviously asking for crazy prices. The cheapest was like 100 bucks, and the most expensive I saw was like 180, I think. Now, for some

context, the toy was like $25 retail, I believe, and no way could I afford that much for one single present for one of my three kids. It would have to be the only gift that he got, and I know that that would have disappointed him just as much as not getting one at all. Now, after a few regular store tours after work each day, I resigned myself to passing on that buzz lightyear. But then I saw it. A listing in that day's paper in the classifieds. A buzz lightyear doll for sale. $40. Of course, I figured it must have already sold, but I called the number anyway, and holy crap on a cowboy. That lovely old lady on the other end of the phone still had that doll.

Now, I offered her the full $40 because I didn't want to risk anything, and the old lady explained that she'd bought the toy by accident for her grandson, having heard on the television that it was a hot new gift, but her daughter had told her it was for little kids and her grandson was 12, and so it was probably a bit too old for the toy. Now, grandma was going to return it to the store, but her daughter and son-in-law made her listed in the classifieds, and they told her to sell it for a hundred bucks, but she couldn't bring herself to profit off of it that much out of some desperate parents, so she lowered it to 40. Now, she sounded like an awesome, genuinely lovely old lady that I had no hesitation when she said that I needed to visit her home to come collect that toy, because

She didn't drive. Typically, with exchanges like this, you're meant to meet in a public place where possible, but it really didn't seem like that would be necessary here. No, spoiler, the old lady genuinely was just a lovely old woman. She wasn't luring me to cook me in her pot and eat me for Christmas. That's not where this is going at all. Now, I drove the 20 minutes over to the old lady's house and went inside. Now, it was the typical adorable old granny's home.

photos of her many familial generations on the wall, pictures of a man who'd clearly been her husband, and a worn-out single-seater that I absolutely knew her beloved had sat on every night until he passed. Now, Granny gave me a cup of something, and with it she brought the Buzz Lightyear doll out, and it was the right one. It was perfect. It was still in the Sears bag. It must have been how she managed to find it, as Sears was downscaling their toy stock at the time, so I didn't even think to really check there. And we chatted for a bit, and then I could tell that the old woman was getting tired,

so it was nearly 8 p.m., and old people tend to go to bed early. Now, trust me, I'm actually one of them now. I triple check that with Granny that she was okay with the $40, and I even offered her $50, about as much as I could afford, but she was having none of it. In fact, she tried to knock it down to $30, but I could tell that the extra $10 would be useful for an old woman during Christmas, And with the deal done, I bid her a nice goodbye, promising to stay in touch and plan to add her to our Christmas card list and also ask my son to write her a thank you note when I told him the story on Christmas.

I left the house, walked down the steps to the street, and began to head towards my car. And that's when they appeared. A gang of three young people. Faces covered in balaclavas wrapped in these things. wrapped up in these thick coats. And I could tell from their muffled voices that they were young, maybe even mid-teens, but that didn't make them any less menacing. I started shoving me, grabbing at the bag that I was holding,

and they were asking me what I had there. Was it anything valuable? Was it worth my life? I just immediately tried to appeal to their youthful human instinct. And I explained that it was the Buzz Lightyear toy for my five-year-old son, and I'd gone through hell to get it. Now, I expected at least an ounce of humanity or empathy at this, but no, it caused them to cackle and circle me, snatching at the bag and trying to pull it away from me.

Now, I thought about lashing out. Now, back then, I wasn't some weak guy, and I could have probably done them some damage, but I was scared out of my mind that I'd get in more trouble than they would if I beat up a teenager in the week before Christmas. Eventually, they converged on me and began to overwhelm me. And then I felt a cold, strange sensation in my side. I didn't realize what had happened at first, but I remember my vice grip on the Sears bag failing and dropping the buzz lightyear doll.

One of those youths snatched it up, and then they all looked at me, and I could see a weird kind of horror in their eyes. Why, I thought. Who the hell did that, one of them asked, and the others just shook their heads, clearly not wanting to admit to whoever it was. I was still confused. I had no idea why they were freaking out and now suddenly running away, and then I felt it, the burning, agonizing pain in my side.

I reached down and touched it and felt this wetness, even though I had my wool gloves on. One of these kids had stabbed me. I'd been stabbed over a buzzed light-eared doll. Now, I wish I could say that I chased them down and got the toy back, but instead I collapsed in the middle of the sidewalk and began having to be able to be. half-heartedly calling for help. Thankfully, someone had heard me pretty quickly, and the paramedics arrived and got me to a hospital. Thankfully, the blade had barely entered my side thanks to the winter coat and hadn't penetrated

further than the tissue and muscle. No harm, no foul, except for a few days of pain and some stitches. Thankfully, the work's medical insurance covered most of it too, so didn't even screw up Christmas, financially, so to speak. And it was still the matter of the matter of the problem. of letting my son down gently. I deliberated whether I should tell him that I wasn't able to get the Buzz Lightyear doll, but in the end, me and my wife decided to just tell him the truth.

And so a few days before Christmas, we sat him down and explained everything, why Daddy has an injury, and why he wouldn't be getting the Buzz Lightyear toy he wanted. I kind of expected tears in a tantrum because he was five, but no. He was completely gracious and wonderful about it, and just said that he understood

and that he'd be happy with some of the same. the other things on his list, which was admittedly pretty extensive. And so my son never did get the Buzz Lightyear toy for that Christmas. I got a knife to the gut, but Christmas was still wonderful with a family. And then a week after New Year's, I happened to see a lone copy of the Buzz Light Year toys sitting on a store shelf. And I guess they weren't quite so frantically in demand then. So, of course, I bought the toy for him, and finally I was able to give my son a talking

Buzz Light Year. That year, I decided to make a concerted effort to get all the kids heavily into video games because you couldn't really go wrong that way. But that one Christmas, the ugly spaceman from Toy Story, nearly got me killed. Be safe out there, folks. Even 30 years later. So take this with a pound of salt. I understand this is crazy and probably my brain doing some weird stuff, so yes,

I know this probably all means nothing, but this has been in my brain. for so long that I just got to get it out. When I, now an 18-year-old female, was in second grade, I rode the bus to and from school with my older brother, and no particular memories stand out, but a few related to this girl named Tina. And since my brother is a couple of years older than me, he sat towards the back of the bus while I sat in the middle,

and a couple of random people would sit next to me in the morning towards the beginning of the year, until people found the person that they wanted to sit next to for the whole year. One day, this girl that I had never seen before sat next to me, and this weird smell overwhelmed me. It was like this stale smell that didn't smell bad, but also smelled old and musty. I'm sorry, I literally can't explain it because I only recognized it when I smell it, so this Tina was a few grades above me, but other than that, nothing stood out about her. She looked like every other kid in the school, and the only thing off was the way that she smelled

because it was something that I'd never smelled before in my then six years of life, law. Now, I don't remember how we became friends, but we did, and after about a week of knowing each other, she told me on a Monday that she had a secret that she had to tell me the following Tuesday. Now, I was hyped for a week waiting, and when the day finally came, she told me she was a vampire. Now, at six years old, I did know what a vampire was, and that they were not real and only. in cartoons like Adventure Time. And so when she said this, I knew that she was lying and just sort of confused. But when I told her I didn't believe her, she said that she'd prove it to me.

And this is something I'll never forget because I remember it so vividly. She told me that Vampires Grant Wishes, which was something I had never heard about vampires, so I didn't really believe that either. But she insisted and said that if I wish to become a vampire, she would make me one. and that had proved that she was one. And so, since I didn't believe her, I agreed, and wished I was a vampire. And she snapped her fingers and told me to look in the bus driver's front mirror. And since I was sitting on the outside toward the aisle, I leaned out and saw nothing in the mirror.

I started to freak out, and I'm telling you, I don't know if the girl was a magician or what the freak happened, but I was not in that mirror. And so I started freaking out, and she calms me. me down and tells me, wish not to be a vampire. And I do. My reflection comes back in the mirror. After that, I believed her and started picking up on other details. For one, she didn't have fangs. She had those sort of lucky teeth that Kirsten Dunst has where the canines aren't sharp, but stick out from the front, which kind of gave her a lisp. And she also didn't ride the bus in the afternoon unless it was raining or the sun wasn't out. And I mean that with no, exaggeration. She never rode the bus on a sunny day. She seemed to be committed to the bit.

And the last thing that became an occurrence was that she would regularly remind me not to tell anyone that she was a vampire or she'd wish that I never existed. But didn't really scare me, but it was kind of off-putting. Like, okay, girl, I won't. Now, something I want to mention, but I low-key doesn't really matter, is that she accused a guy in my grade named Kevin of being a werewolf. Like, okay, I guess so. So about a week after the wish thing, she told me that I could get one wish every Tuesday. And I wish I could tell y'all what I wished for, but if I remember correctly, I would tell her that I couldn't think of a wish every time for some reason. I don't know why. I just remember being like, I don't know, let me think.

And then the next day I'd have a wish and she would say, girl, it's Wednesday, so no. Now, I never got bad vibes from her or anything either. It just felt like I was the only one who knew her, generally, since no one else talked to her on the bus and we were in different grades, her being in fifth and me in second. I never saw her once we stepped off the bus either. Generally, for a long time after all of this stopped, I figured that this young girl who had seen Twilight and was obsessed, but then I remember what happened the last time I saw her.

The last time I saw her was a Tuesday, and instead of granting me a wish, she told me that there was a monster party happening that night, and she wanted me to sneak out of my house and come. Now, I was intrigued, but didn't really comment, so it just went, okay, sure. And I asked her where it was, and she said that it had come to me in a dream because that's how vampires kept secrets. And I just kind of forgot about the whole thing once I got off the bus, since I had no intention of going anyway since I was literally probably five or something.

Now, anyways, after forgetting about it all the day, when I went to sleep that night, I had a crazy dream. I dreamed that I was at a party, and there were so many stereotypical monsters there. They weren't exaggerated to be scary. They literally looked like there were 1900s movie counterparts as I walked through the room, so it just looked like a bunch of monsters drinking from red cups like I saw on TV. And as I walked through, I saw a vampire who looked like Dracula, pale skin, widow's peak, long fangs and cloak. and as I walked through to reach him, I noticed that there was this big hole in the middle of the floor that looked like a cliff behind him.

And when I got to him, he said something to me that I remember for a long time, but recently forgot. And it was nothing scary, though, just sort of a remark saying, oh, you've made it. Or something along those lines. And as we were talking, he moved in a way that I followed to hear what he was saying, not realizing that he was turning me around so that the cliff was now next to me. And at some point I ended up slipping and holding onto the cliff with both hands, begging for him to let me up, and he just stood there for a bit. There was no urgency in the dream at all.

For me, asking for help, to him not moving to help, it all felt very calm. And eventually he bent down and started to lift my fingers up, so I wasn't gripping the cliff until I eventually fell to my death. And now the way my dream works is that they play out like a movie. So they're not in first person, while I never see my own face. I see various perspectives. And so I felt it was as if a camera watched me go down and hit the ground. The dream didn't end when I hit the ground either.

It kind of stayed and I saw myself on the ground dead. It was so surreal to think about because it was so randomly graphic and nothing surrounding my interactions with her before that ever gave anything sinister besides her last interaction with me leading up to the dream. And after that night I never saw her again, and weirdly it took me a couple of years to. realize her connection to my dream. That smell has never left me, and neither has that dream since I never remember my dreams

and can only recount like five I've ever really had. And I occasionally get reminded of this whole thing when I meet someone who smells like her, which has been maybe four times since. Overall, she probably wasn't a vampire, but between the bus mirror thing that actually did happen and I can't refute, and the crazy dream, I don't know. I know the mind can make up some crazy stuff, but I remember anything down to a tea like that, and I really don't know what to say. I'm not religious and have a difficult relationship with the paranormal stuff, and whether I believe in it or not, but that's probably something I'll post about later. Hey, Joel and crew, do any of you remember that huge horrific blizzard that happened in Oklahoma way back in 2009?

I got caught up in it, if that's not obvious. I was driving home from a remote, Christmas party on Christmas Eve when the snow really began to fall. What reception I could get through the radio was telling everyone to stay indoors and definitely for sure don't go out driving in your cars. Well, thanks. That really helps halfway through my journey. Now eventually the snowfall got too heavy and I couldn't risk driving. I tried to pull into what seemed to be a safe side bank but in fact was a snow drift that tipped my car into a ditch. Within seconds, the whole car was covered in a blanket of white. Did you know the blizzard reached a record 14 inches of snow that year? Imagine being out in that. And so there was no point trying to gun the engine or pull myself out of the ditch. The car was

kind of just sort of sideways at an angle, firmly stuck, and of course, I had no cell reception in the middle of a blizzard out in the sticks. Now, I was going to die in my car on Christmas Eve, I thought. I thought about my boyfriend waiting at home for me, and the late night that we had planned, and I just sort of sat there and wept. He worked as a paramedic, so he hadn't attended the party with me as he didn't want to call off a work on Christmas Eve, and I was going to let him down by dying like a moron instead of spending Christmas morning in his arms. My teeth began to chatter, and I found every possible wrap, blanket, and piece of material I could in that car to wrap myself up in. I allowed myself occasional blast from the heater, but I didn't know how long I'd need to conserve the battery,

and I had to be careful with this. Whenever I turned the heating on, it would melt the snow on the windows just a little, and it felt like I was there forever. Hours, days, weeks. I drifted in and out of consciousness. One time I woke up and I was shivering so bad that I thought that it was going to be, bite my own tongue off. Now, I allowed myself an extra long gun of that engine in the burst of the heater then. Gradually, the snow mounted off the windows, and I can't tell if I fell asleep again,

but I had this distinct memory of seeing someone outside in the snow. They were wrapped in deer skins and just sort of prowling the forest. I know it had to be a dream, but you know when a dream feels like a dream? This didn't feel like that. This deer figure stalked through the trees, and they'd clearly noticed my car, but were pretending they hadn't. I banged on the window, shouting for help, but unable to open the door and too afraid to wind the window down in case the snow burst in and buried me. Now eventually this deer-clad figure did approach the window, tapped on it, and then just ran away. All I can remember is some dirty human face.

I think I must have been delirious because I have no explanation for this at all, and this wasn't like the middle of no way. of Finland. It was Oklahoma. I decided the heat was getting to me, so I just shut it off, but I still felt too hot, so I started removing the blankets and coverings that I had on. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered that this was a symptom of hypothermia, that people become convinced they're too hot, but not too cold. And I began drifting, and eventually a choir of angels descended from the heavens, glowing golden and silent through the blizzard. Except it wasn't a quire of angels.

Choir of Angels. It was a rescue truck, and they were here to freaking save me. Now, I won't describe the boring, elaborate process that involved getting me out of my car into one of those shiny thermal blankets, and then taken to the hospital with a severe case of hypothermia. So, that's how I spent Christmas Day that year in a hospital, making sure that I had enough fluids and didn't go into shock. My paramedic boyfriend didn't leave my side and brought me some of my gifts to my hospital bed, and it was actually one of the best Christmas days ever because the night before, I was certain that I was dead. And not being dead in a ditch is one of the best Christmas presents you can ask for. At 152 a.m., my phone rings. It's my husband. He had already text me,

letting me know that he was on his way home from work, worried that something was wrong. I'd answer. I say, hey, babe, you okay? And there's silence. "'Babe? "'Can you hear me? "'I can now, are you okay?' "'I respond. "'I don't know what just happened. "'I'm almost home, but I saw something.

"'I'm about to lose service. "'Be waiting on me, please.' "'I get out of my bed and stand at the front door "'waiting to see his headlights come down our long driveway. "'He gets in the door with a shocked look on his face, "'and this is what he says to me. "'I saw these... things, these tall white things. A tall white woman with two other tall white people, not white like

skin collar, like snow white. They were standing out by the abandoned train tracks. The woman had what my brain could only compare to a trash bag with light. I know that's not what it was, but that's what reminded me of. When I saw them, they noticed me too, and I just got this feeling. I can't explain it, but I just need to get out of there. It was like an unease came over me. I'm not sure what they were, but it wasn't right. They're not humans. Now, I started reheating his dinner, and then it hit me. This automatically made me think of the tall whites. Now, I googled tall whites, and I looked at asked my husband if any of the photos were comparable, and he scrolled to one image and said, yeah, this is close. Now, the next morning, we decided to go back to where he saw them,

and there was a black mark on the ground, like something scorched the earth. Now, even more puzzling was that it had lightly rained the night before, and it was raining when he saw them. Nobody lives in the area where he saw them. It's just an old one-lane road that connects to two larger roads and crosses the abandoned railroad tracks. We also live in the outskirts of a very tiny little town. It's unlikely that anyone was this far out, making a fire directly next to the road and tracks. And as we're walking towards the car, an old man and a beat-up old Ford pulls up beside us.

Now, he says, hey, what are you all up to? Neither of us recognized him, and we just nodded and said, and we're just looking at something. Is our car in the way? Now he puts the truck in park and gets out, and he says, No, y'all are fine. Did you kids see something interesting? And my husband responds,

I saw something out here the other night on my way home from work. I mean, I'm not sure what it was, though. And the old man says, is that right? I live over that way. Have all my life, as he points to the highway. An awkward silence falls over us for a few seconds as we're walking to the car,

and then he says, y'all believe in aliens? My husband and I both look at each other. I say, Yes, actually we do. And he goes on to tell us that he and his wife, his late wife, experienced a lot of strange occurrences over there over the years.

Now, he said the scorch marks were from them, and asked if we'd ever seen anything in the sky that was unidentifiable. Now, my husband showed him a video that was taken a couple of months back of an unidentified flying object over our house. He invited us over to his house, saying that he had some images that he'd like to show us, and it may not have been the best decision, but we agreed. Now, my husband actually has his carry permit, so I wasn't too worried if anything weird went down. Now, we followed him to this old farmhouse, and he said his grandparents built the house back in the 1800s, and all of them had seen and experienced things on and around that property. He goes to a little garage slash shack and retrieve some old Polaroid pictures,

all five photos picturing your classic flying saucer. My father took these, he said. There's more in the house somewhere. And he goes on to tell us that he's not exactly sure where they come from or why they're here, but he knows there's different species and different kinds of crafts. Now, I'd like to think that we gained a friend, but I'm still not 100% sure what my husband encountered. I just thought I'd share the story.

here and see if any of you think it's connected. So I'm actually the son in the story, and it was a tale my dad told me many times from when I was a kid. I'm going to write it from his perspective as he dictates it to me, though, because it makes more sense listening to it from his point of view. And I asked him to write it down for me, but he said, I'm not writing out all that crap for some Facebook Minecraft pod channel nonsense. He's 65 now, and I have no idea how he knows what those things are, but I just told him that I'd write it out for him. And he also cannot get his head around the fact that you are not Markiplier and that other YouTubers exist, so I'm writing it exactly as he dictates here. So anyways, hi, Markiplier, or whoever you are, this happened back

in the day. Our family, stupidly, decided that we wanted a real Christmas tree that year. Now, trust me, don't bother. It's messy as crap, and, well, I guess it could lead to the kind of thing happening that happened to us. We drove out to a certain national forest, me, the wife, and this little bastard here writing this all down. Now, please note, I love my son very much, I just like giving him a bit of crap here and there. And so we were just going through the national forest when I found it, the perfect tree. Out came the axe, and I began swinging like a woodsman out of old. Paul Bunyan would have been proud of me, whacking and thwhacking away at that tree trunk like a pro.

And suddenly I heard a sound, a sort of spluttering, horrified scream of what the F do you think you're doing. A big, fat, older couple came waddling their way through the trees, dressed up in winter gear. The man was red-faced from exertion and years of enjoying a bit too much to drink. He pointed one fat, bloated finger into my chest and told me I was not, I repeat, not allowed to cut these trees down. I replied that, in fact, I was allowed to cut these trees down, and this part of the forest allowed it, and I even produced the necessary paperwork proving it. Now, in fairness, not everyone knows that certain parts of certain national forests allow you to cut down Christmas trees, so I came prepared.

The man took the paperwork from my hands, and instead of looking at it, he threw it down into the snow and just stomped on it, like some stupid toddler. Now, my wife was seeing red. I'm the calm one at the two of us, but she comes up to this guy and started giving him an earfall. How dare he lay hands on her husband, and how dare he accuse us of false crimes? Now, he began to stutter, and my wife continued to yell at him, now for getting spittle on her face. Every insult you could think of she was throwing at this angry old busy body. Now, I looked around for my son to check that he wasn't too upset by this whole ordeal.

I didn't see him, nor I realized did I see the fat wife of the angry man. I scanned the forest, and there they were in the distance. The egg-shaped woman waddle running away, holding my son's hand and dragging him along. I'm not entirely sure what she told him to persuade him to go with her, but he wasn't trying to pull away or anything. The husband realized that I'd noticed what was going on and tried to step between me and the view of his wife kidnapping my son. Well, no.

I obviously wasn't having that. And without even stopping to think about the potential repercussions, I punched the fat husband in the face so hard that it sent him flying across the snow, smacking against a tree and collapsing to the ground. I was probably going to be in some trouble here, I figured. And then I remembered this was a plot to kidnap my son, so I was pretty sure a punch was fair game.

I sprinted towards the woman dragging my son away. It was hard work in the thick snow and somehow this chunky woman was faster than you'd expect. I was faster, though. I grabbed the back of my son's coat and swung him behind me, throwing him backwards onto the snow. And then, determined not to let this kidnapping heifer get away, I drew on my old high school football days

and tackled her in the back as hard as I could. Maybe too hard because we went flying forward and her face connected squarely with another tree, knocking her out. I dragged her back to where my wife had somehow tied the husband up to a tree, with the ties that we'd bought to attach the tree to the car roof. The wife was out cold, but the husband was just sort of muttering that we got this all wrong, that they just didn't want us destroying the forest. And the forest where it was perfectly legal to farm a Christmas tree, mind you.

Sure, buddy. That's why your pig of a wife tried to steal my son. And this was days before cell phones, so my wife and son drove to the nearest convenience store while I just sat guarding the couple. We had no more restraints for the wife, so I kind of just sort of, sat on her, which was not pleasant to say the least, and thankfully she didn't regain consciousness. Eventually my wife returned with the cops, and the couple were squeezed into the police cruiser, and I'm actually surprised they fit. Ultimately, nothing came of it, though. It was their word against

ours, and according to the cops, they were willing to overlook the numerous assaults that I'd committed against them, as long as we accepted that it was all a big misunderstanding. We didn't have a choice, really. No way was I going to prison and depriving my son of a father just to fight a losing battle. I do worry sometimes that that couple had done this before and did it again, but there's so much evil in this world and only so much of it that God-fearing folk like us can fight. And I hope you enjoyed my little story, Markiplier, and you read it on your radio show or whatever you weirdos do. Thanks for listening, and remember, don't be afraid to tackle a fat woman if she's kidnapping your son. Dad out.

And so there we go. That was my dad's story. I have vague memories of it, really, so I know he's mostly telling the truth. I have this slight recollection that the woman promised to take me to see Santa and I somehow fell for it. But I don't like to dwell on that. The idea that I was that stupid as a little kid is almost harder to cope with in the fact that I was nearly kidnapped and probably eaten or whatever they were going to do to me. So there's this woman, Paula, we'll call her. She's maybe five foot four, eighty-five,

pounds, originally from a country in South America, and freakishly strong. I used to take yoga with her, and we did aerials and pole together. And she's also nearing 60, but you would never guess. She's so fit and tiny and almost ageless in this very intense, wiry, even vibrant way. But I've never quite known what to make of her. I wouldn't say that we were close, though for a little while we started to get closer because we were around each other a lot. The thing is, She started subtly mirroring me, doing her hair like mine, painting her nails the same color, styling herself in ways that felt oddly specific. She even bought me clothes, and it didn't feel like some sweet gesture.

It felt off, like she wasn't admiring me. She was trying to wear me or be me. And then one day, we were at OpenPole together with one other person there, and the studio doesn't have dim lighting, it's actually very bright. and fluorescent. And when she was doing this sort of sideways pole sits and I could feel her watching me. We are both extremely flexible, but I have this sort of connective tissue disorder, so I have a slight edge on her, which isn't a big deal, but she is extremely competitive, probably even a covert narcissist. Now anyways, I'd just done something kind of splitty, and as I turned around

to smile at her because it felt like she was looking at me, and when I did, her eyes. were completely black. I mean fully black. I looked for several seconds because I couldn't look away. She just seemed almost vacant. Not checked out, but absent, like she'd gone somewhere momentarily and she was temporarily checked out.

But yet it also felt like there was something in her place, an almost energetic placeholder. Something else seemed to be looking out through her, but it wasn't necessarily an intelligent being. I was left with this feeling of, I don't think I was supposed to see that, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't know that I saw this. But also, I don't know if she was even aware of something happening. It was like when you accidentally see a mic in a movie or a crew wearing jeans in a film set in ancient Rome. It wasn't just a weird lighting thing.

Again, bring fluorescent lights at the studio, or a blink. It was just unmistakable. And I've never seen anything like it before or since. and I'm also pretty positive nobody else saw it. Now, it only lasted a few moments. I finally stopped looking at her and walked over to the table where my stuff was and took a sip and then everything was just sort of back to normal. Now, I know how this sounds.

I try to rationalize it and gaslight myself into letting it go, but I can't. Not with everything else. The mirroring, the vibe, the way I never felt entirely at ease around her. I'd really love to hear what other people might make of it because I honestly don't know if I'm reading too much into it, or not enough. So many years ago, now I worked in a little craft store, and it was coming up to Christmas. Now, this was always a lovely, busy time for the store, and we'd done extra well that year. We all decided to run a pot-lucky Christmas party, and the assistant manager, Janine,

volunteered to host the festivities at her house. All good, all grand. Now, four weeks before the event, we received emails from Janine planning, maybe over-planning the meal, and we all decided what we were bringing, making sure everything would be perfect, etc. Now, one constant in every single email that she sent was the strong, strong emphasis that Janine was allergic to peanuts, like fatally, deathly allergic. And we all had to promise repeatedly that we would make sure that our dishes weren't contaminated by peanuts in any way. not a problem given the dishes that we were preparing.

The big day came and the spread was fantastic. The eight of us sat around Janine's extending dining table talking about excitedly the great year that Carol's crafts had gone through. Now Carol, the big boss, was already a little drunk when she got there via her cab, which was wild to see. It was like seeing your grandma tipsy. Janine's husband set up the table for us and laid out all the food and then vacated the premises. going out drinking with the boys, apparently, he said.

So it was just the eight of us, the full staff of Carol's crafts. Seven women and one guy named Bruce, who was the absolute spitting image of Freddie Mercury back in that era, just very campy and bisexual. He was the joker of the group and had the rest of us women howling with laughter at some of the crazy dating stories from back when he lived in New York City. Now, none of us noticed the oddity about the spread at the table. I won't ruin it by giving it away just yet, but there was something that we should have all picked up on, and none of us did.

We were having too much of a good time listening to Bruce's stories and chattering among ourselves, and we barely even begun to eat. When we did, though, the food was delicious. Everyone had outdone themselves. Compliments were being thrown left and right, fun was being had by all, right up until Janine started coughing, and then choking, and then her face. began to swell. It was obvious what was happening. She'd ingested peanuts somehow, and she began to claw at the table reaching for water, trying to croak out the word epipen, but we had absolutely no idea where she kept that epipen in her house. Suddenly, Carol was on her feet reaching into her purse and producing an epipen out of nowhere. Later, she'd claimed that she'd always carried

one with her, as the boss, knowing that one of her employees had a peanut allergy. So without any fuss or hunting for an EpiPen, Carol shot Janine up with the epinephrine and immediately the effects were obvious. She started being able to breathe again and the swelling stopped. That wasn't enough, though, so we called 911 and an ambulance was there in minutes and she was taken to a hospital and treated. And that wasn't the end of it, though. Long story short, the doctors discerned that Janine had fully consumed peanuts and that her reaction had been far too bad for minor contaminant. that meant that one of the dishes that she'd eaten had contained an actual large amount of peanuts. Janine insisted on getting the cops involved because after the repeated numerous warnings,

it felt like an attempt on her life. I can't blame her. It was determined that the meatloaf contained ground-up peanuts and more than enough to be deliberate. But therein lay the big mystery and the thing that we hadn't noticed throughout the whole meal. The potluck should have have consisted of eight dishes, and there were nine, and all of us denied bringing the meatloaf, and we all explained which dish was ours. Now, time passed, and we went back to work after the Christmas break. Janine kept dropping comments and remarks suggesting that she believed one of us had brought the meatloaf as well, and then we started suspecting each other. Had Bruce finally gotten sick of Janine's OCD and how the shelves were stacked, and what about Carol? She conveniently had

an epipen on her person, despite having no need for one. Was it really just a thoughtful gesture for an employee, or had Carol merely wanted to ensure Janine didn't die, but let the allergy serve as a warning? And then there were all the other staff members. None of us had a problem with Janine, and we were all like family, but someone had certainly tried to harm or kill her. Carol's crafts wasn't the same after that. We all suspected each other, and just when it felt like we'd moved on, someone would bring up the peanut meatloaf and would all start again. And this broke Janine. She started referring to us as potential killers and talking openly to herself in the breakroom about how her colleagues wanted to end her. In the end, Carol had to ask to leave and honestly

we were all kind of relieved after that. Maybe that would be the end of it. But then Carol gathered us all in for a meeting and told us the disarrie she was. It was weighing on her too. She explained that she'd gathered enough of a nest egg to retire, and that the stock was being sold off to another craft store in a different state, and there would be no new owners, and Carol's crafts was closing for good. I suppose when you're all surrounded by an attempted murderer, it's inevitable. We never did find out which member of Carol's crafts tried to kill Janine, and before you groan at a lack of conclusion, that's because the answer was none of us.

Maybe you've worked it out already, but the culprit? was Janine's husband, Paul. He'd prepared the table for us while we all had drinks in the living room, and this included secretly heating up a meatloaf he'd prepared earlier while Janine was at work, into which he'd crushed dozens of peanuts. His plan, we found out, had been to try and kill his wife and make it look like it was one of Janine's colleagues. Now, we found this out via a very long, apologetic email that Janine sent us all some years later.

She explained everything. Paul was now her ex, and in one of their final blazing rouse, he'd let something slip about the meatloaf. It wasn't enough to bring any kind of charges against him, unfortunately, but she did include potentially tried to poison me with peanuts in the divorce proceedings, so there's that. No idea what Paul, Janine, and Bruce, or any of the rest of us are up to now. I do know that Carol retired to Florida and passed away during the pandemic, ironically by being hit by a bus and not the virus, according to Facebook, but I wish them all the well. Now, I'll just say one thing. There's no way that I'm having a potluck Christmas meal with any of them ever again.

So when I was about eight or nine years old, I was laying in the front bedroom of my great-grandparents' large home my mother inherited, and there was an entire upstairs apartment not being used, and it was a large three-bedroom home on the first floor. Upstairs were three more bedrooms, a kitchen, and the bathroom. My mom was about to rent the upstairs out, but saving it for a relative whose lease was up. And my mom and her entire family grew up in that home. And by this time, my great-grandparents had passed on, but my grandparents were still alive. Now, I often watched television in bed with my mom when I was that young and would either fall asleep in her room or go to my room, which was closer to the back of the home. Now, it was Friday night, so I was allowed to stay up late. At around 11.30 p.m.,

we heard a very loud noise of someone entering the home through the back door. Now, you have to pass through the dining room, living room, and kitchen to get to the back of the home, and you cannot see the back door until you've reached the kitchen. My mom grabbed her gun, and I remember grabbing a metal candle holder, and she told me to stay in the room and hide, but I refused. I wasn't going to let her go alone, and I was scared, so I trailed behind her with my weapon. My mom had her gun drawn, making her way to the back room, ready to blow someone's brains out, and when we reached the back room, the room was glowing. We only saw it for maybe two to

three seconds, and then it went pitch black, and after the glow went away, we saw the back door wide open with a men's size 12 mud print on the door where someone had kicked it in, and there was no one in sight. When my mom tried to call 911, the phone line was dead, and we later found out that it had been cut. She had a panic button. that alerted the police in the front room, and the alarm had not yet been set, but the button actually worked. And help came within six or seven minutes. This happened in 1994 over 30 years ago. However, I have always believed that someone came there with the intentions of doing us harm. And I also believe when they kicked down that door, they saw something that scared the life out of them,

and they took off running. I believe it was our relatives protecting us in that family home. I saw the glow clear as day and it was almost this purple color, almost like a lit gas pilot on a stove would look like. And my mother saw it as well. We never talked about the glow until I got older, and she never mentioned it to anyone, I don't think. And we had the conversation when I was about 20 and talked about the glow and she looked at me in complete shock and said, Oh my God, you saw that too. So I'm a woman in my mid-20s. Usually I live with my boyfriend, but he was away for work returning home on Christmas Eve.

And this story takes place a few days before Christmas Eve. I was just chilling around the warm single-story house and my PJs. And the place was decorated for Christmas, and I was excited for my boyfriend to finally get home on Christmas Eve and see it. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing when I first heard the noise, probably watching some crap on Netflix, but I heard what definitely sounded like footsteps on the roof. Now, you know how it's not at all weird to hear strange noises around a house. Buildings new and old can shift and settle, especially when the temperatures change. Plus, there could be squirrels hibernating in the roof space.

Even a single-story house has one. And whatever, bros, as long as you don't bother me, I'll let you warm yourselves up there. Now, my friend called, and we were chatting and gossiping about various crap, including whatever show I was watching on Netflix, which makes me think it was probably 10 reasons why, because I remember I was complaining about it so much that my friend laughed at me for raging like I was on Twitter. And then I just happened to mention the footsteps that I'd heard on the roof earlier, and she joked that maybe it was Santa coming early, and he was going to slide his sack down my chimney. Now, we chatted a bit more and hung up, and I went back to watching my crappy show, and then I heard it again.

Definite footsteps on the roof, though, it seemed. And it sounded like someone was sort of pacing back and forth. and then at one point running around almost in a circle. What the hell I thought? Now raving myself up in my winter coat, I went outside to see if I could see anyone or anything on my roof. Of course I couldn't, but then being a five-foot-three woman, I could barely see the roof in the first place.

I would have had to get a ladder out of the garage and there was no freaking way that I was doing that in snowy weather, just in case there was a dude on the roof. Besides, what could he actually do on the roof, so I just went inside. Big mistake, though. The guy on the roof must have seen me, even if I hadn't seen him. And this apparently sent him into a frenzy.

It was like he was running around on my roof like some maniac doing laps or whatever, but why? I have no idea, but it was incredibly unsettling and terrifying and very scary since I was home alone. So this guy did not stop running around up there for a good habit. half hour, which caused me to go out again and look. Now, this time, I saw him. He was wearing a filthy Santa suit and had the build of a meth addict. And he saw me too when he pointed right at me. Then he started shrieking about how I was on the naughty list, and that's why he'd been running around on my roof for the past two hours. When I thought about it, I had no idea how I'd even gotten on my roof. It's not like he could climb up onto it without a ladder. And the

ladder was definitely in the garage. The only thing that I could think of is that he'd somehow taken a running jump from a neighbor's roof and managed to make it. Either that, or he actually was Santa, I guess, but that would mean that Santa was a filthy, emaciated meth head with rotten teeth and a bizarre roof exercise regime. Thankfully, I had my cell in my coat pockets, so I pulled it out and dialed the cops right in front of him, keeping eye contact with him the whole time. I guess there was a danger that he could have leaped off the roof at me and somehow avoided injuring himself. Or as I thought of later, he could have thrown something at me, but thankfully I didn't consider that at the time. Plus, with how cracked out this guy obviously

wasn't pretty sure that he couldn't have hit a barn door with a banjo. And when I got off the phone with the cops, I told Meth Santa that they were on their way. And he sort of paused, thinking about this for a moment, and then started doing laps around the roof again. and I watched in shock as he ran in circles faster and faster and then eventually charged towards my neighbor's roof and did a front flip as he jumped across the gap. Now to his credit, he made it too. Meth Santa was some parkour expert apparently, and I watched as he sprinted around the roof leaping further and further.

And when the cops got there, I told them roughly where he'd gone, but I was kind of in shock. It's not every day that you see a meth-dout Santa doing parkour across your neighborhood. Now, I went back inside and kept watching out the window, and about 30 minutes later, I saw a squad car driving past with that Santa in the back, looking pretty sad. And shortly after, there was a knock on my car and a kind lady cop explaining the whole situation. The guy was known as a local crack and meth head, and according to him, he was sick of being a bad person, so he wanted to be Santa. But he couldn't afford any gifts, so his plan was to just run around on some roofs and let people think Santa was real. I guess it was kind of sweet in some way,

and that was until he admitted dropping some baggies of probably cocaine, but I don't know how good it was, down the chimneys to some of the houses, and I was glad that I didn't have a chimney. And when I asked how they'd finally caught him, the cop just sort of laughed. He said that despite his mad skills jumping around, his eyesight clearly wasn't that great because after one particular epic leap, he'd run headfirst straight into a chimney and knocked himself out. And then the cops and the fire department had brought him down, checked him over with the paramedics, and then carted him off to the local police station. I have no idea what became of him, and I'm not sure what kind of crime it is to freely drop baggies of probably dirty cocaine down people's chimneys as a

Christmas present, but I hope he got the help he needed. When my boyfriend returned, I told him the story and he thought it was the funniest thing ever, after refusing to believe me for about an hour. And he was hugely disappointed that he didn't get to see the fun for himself, but despite that, and despite my visit from Meth Santa, I still managed to have a great Christmas. And this year, I hope you all do too. Just remember, if you hear footsteps on the roof, it might be the jolly fat man, or it might be a crack addict. These days, you just never really know. From the time I was seven years old until I was

12, my family lived in the front house and my aunt lived in the back house. From her living room, I could see out the front door. I began to notice that almost every night, I would see an older man wearing brown mechanic overalls and carrying a lunchbox stop at our front door. He would pause as if he were unlocking it and then enter the house. I told my aunt about the man and she took told me to let her know about it the next time I saw him. The following night, she was watching with me when I saw the man walking up our driveway. I called my aunt and we went outside. I asked her if she saw him and she said that she did. We walked to my house and watched as the man stopped at the door, unlocked it and entered the house.

We followed him as he walked into the kitchen and placed his lunchbox on the counter. He turned around, almost facing us, and then disappeared. This happened for years until I decided to ask our neighbors, an elderly couple that all the neighborhood kids called Grandma and Grandpa, who had lived in the house before my family moved in. Grandpa asked me why, and I told him I was just curious. He told me that a man named Kenneth had lived there, and he was a mechanic and had a garden in the backyard that he loved. I asked why he moved out if he loved the house so much, and Grandpa told me that Kenneth was coming home from work one night, when he died in a car accident. He never made it home.

I said that was sad and that I hope that he hadn't gone through any pain. Grandpa said that he passed instantly as soon as the two cars collided. I told my aunt what Grandpa said about Kenneth, and she told me that maybe I should talk to him about it. I was 12 years old and had been seeing this man for years. He never scared me, so I decided to try. He usually showed up at around 6 p.m., so I waited at the first. front door for him, and when he walked up the driveway, I spoke to him. I said,

Hello, Kenneth. You had an accident and never made it home from work. My family lives in your house now. You're free to keep coming back here every night, but there's a beautiful garden waiting for you on the other side. You're free, and I know that you miss your garden. Kenneth looked at the house and then down at the ground and then up at the sky. He disappeared for the last time. He disappeared for the last and we never saw him again. I told my grandma and grandpa what I had done, and grandma said that she had seen him walking down the street, but he always looked right through her.

He heard you. He saw you, she said. And that is a very special thing. Don't ever forget that. I won't say which company I used to work for, but it had multiple departments, and each department had an office to itself. My department would always do a secret Santa, and every year it was awesome.

And that was until 2015, when the guy assigned to buy my gift was the new guy, the office creep, and I'll just call him Crispin. Of course, I had no idea. It was Crispin who was buying my gift. That was the point. In fact, we weren't supposed to find out

until we took our gifts home, opened them, and then revealed who bought for who the next day at work. Now, I've been assigned Margaret, this elderly woman who'd been at the company for years and who loved bath bombs and things, things like that, so she was an easy buy. Being a young woman in her mid-20s, I figured that I'd be easy to buy for as well. My secret Santa gift felt like a framed picture, and I could feel glass on one side as I gently tapped it. Now, it was pretty poorly wrapped, with a very fragile sticker

stuck to the front, and I made sure to be careful getting at home. When I arrived home, I had various things to deal with, like breaking up with a guy that I met on Tinder, who seemed cool at first, but soon became way too clinging and obsessive. And I put on my big girl pants and broke up with him over the phone instead of text message or email, because I at least owed him that. And then I had a glass of wine to calm my nerves, and by the time I remembered my secret Santa gift, I wasn't kind of a melancholic, but floaty mood. And when I opened it carefully, I thought that I was seeing things. It was a framed photo depicting a young, attractive couple. on a beach. The man was wearing a speedo that left very little to the imagination, and the woman was

wearing one of those hideous micro bikinis, neon pink I might add, and that left even less to the imagination. And you know the ones where the parts covering your naughty bits are clearly kind of see-through, so you're basically skirting the line of being naked? Yeah. And fair enough, what people want to dress like, though. But the horrifying part was the fact that my face had been photoshopped, extremely badly onto the micro bikini chick's neck. Now, I'm a pretty pale girl, my hair's almost black, and this model was clearly a bronzed, blonde bombshell. No attempt had been made to make our skin tones match or anything else for that matter, and in fact, I could still see a bit of her hair sticking up behind my own head.

And even this was the most horrific thing, though. The horrifying thing was that Crispin from work had been photoshopped over Speedo Hunk's head, and this had to be a joke, right? A somewhat cruel prank from one of the girls since they'd been a little bitchy about Crispin. Now, I was less convinced it was a prank when I noticed that his signature was in the corner of the photo, though, written in Sharpie, although, of course, that could be faked as well. Now, feeling kind of upset and sick about it, coupled with the earlier events of the evening, I left the weird photo on my desk knowing that I'd find out the culprit tomorrow at work. and it was as bad as you'd expect.

We all gathered together that lunch break with the reveal of food-bought gifts for who, and as much as I'd hoped and prayed it wasn't the case, mine was from Crispin. And when he asked if I'd liked it, with genuine sincerity in his voice and on his face, what the hell was I supposed to do? Realistically, I know that I should have reported him to HR or just chewed him out, and I should have shown the Photoshop to my colleagues, although I felt weirdly embarrassed to do so. But Crispin outranked me in the company,

and he was friends with the boss above, and he had this look of an eager puppy on his face when he asked me if I'd like the gift. And so I did the dumbest thing I could. I said that it was sweet and thoughtful. And when it came time to show off our gifts to each other, I pretended like I'd forgotten it at home and described it as a photo of Crispin and I

and then left it at that. I know I made a stupid decision by letting this slide. Trust me, I really do. You're probably screaming at your phones or TVs or wherever you listen right now about what a dumb idiot I was, and yeah, I do agree. But it was just such a weird left-field incident that it could barely work out what to do, say, or even think. That night, I dismantled the photo. I didn't want to toss the whole thing out because it was in a bizarrely high-quality frame, and I figured that I could use it for something that wasn't massively creepy and weird. No, I was almost expecting some kind of message to be written on the back of the photograph.

Ideally, a reveal that it was all some big prank and more likely a weird confession of love or a poem or something from Crispin. But no, just blank. And so I tore the Photoshopped image into pieces, taking special care to decimate the micro-bikini lady and making sure my own head was definitively removed from the body and torn into a bazillion-gillion pieces. Now, once again, I know I'm an idiot for not photographing the evidence or better yet keeping it. But I was just so dumbfounded by it all that I wasn't thinking straight. So instead of doing any of the things I should have done, I shredded the photo, threw it in the trash,

and then took the trash bag outside and put it in the outdoor garbage can. I figured the further away that I was from the cursed image, the less I'd have to think about it. And I didn't think about it again, not really, until that day at work a few days later. I was in the break room making myself a coffee when I heard the door open behind me. I greeted the newcomer with a, hey, knowing it'd be some member of our small department that I was friendly with. Now, I wasn't even concerned at the idea of it being Crispin. He'd behaved totally normally since the Secret Santa, and I was beginning to think that I maybe misunderstood a joke or overlooked a meme or something that I'd never seen before. And I felt his breath on my cheek before he even spoke.

I had no idea how to react before he spun me around and stared me in the eyes, his face glowing and red with anger. Why did you throw my gift in the trash? He asked. His fingers were squeezing tight against my arm, and for the first time in my life, I felt genuinely, terrifyingly threatened by a co-worker. I kind of stammered out not knowing what to say.

How the hell could I explain it when it was so obvious why it was so gross, this inappropriate gift that I wouldn't want? He squeezed my arm tighter and then demanded again that I explained why I'd trash the gift. And that's when I got mad. I shoved him away, back against the small table in the center of the room, and I let him have it with both barrels. I told him it was inappropriate, perverted, and completely unwanted. And then it hit me. How the hell did he know I'd thrown his gift in the trash? Could have been a lucky guess, but I wanted to know, so I asked.

And the answer was very chilling and very simple. He told me matter-of-factly that he had a suspicion that I might do this, so he'd been checking my garbage. Like, holy crap, bro. I was taken aback and had no idea what to do or say other than ask why. Why the photo? Why this obsession? Did he have a thing for me? Was this some kind of attempt to win me over? Crispin acted insulted and almost disgusted, like the idea of being attracted to me was

sickening to him. Now, I know he was trying to rile me up, but my dumb idiot self bit the bullet, demanding to know why that was so gross, and if so, why did he Photoshop such a weird, strange picture as my secret Santa gift? And this a-hole had the temerity to claim that I was the one sexualizing it, and that it was simply a couple of people standing together and I chose to read that into it. My fake body had been basically naked, mind you, and you could see everything through that micro bikini. That settled it. Crispin was a creepy nut job, and I was the complete idiot not to keep the evidence proving it. Turns out that didn't matter, though, because a minute later, Crispin had grabbed me, completely out of the blue, and was trying to force my face towards the

stove top, which I'd just used to boil some hot water for tea. Now, he was yelling something about finding out how vain I'd be without my beauty or some crap. Just an utterly insane, delusional man. I tried screaming for help, knowing a couple of other co-workers had to be nearby. Thankfully, the first person that burst through the door was a guy named Greg, the department manager, and I didn't notice at the time, but he'd had to smash the door with a fire extinguisher. Crispin had locked us in from the inside. Now, it was only my terrified screams that caused Greg to know something serious was happening.

He quickly tackled Crispin away from me, slamming him into a cupboard and punching him so hard in the side of the head that Crispin just collapsed like Santa's discarded sack. I was kind of taken aback that Greg had been so keen to defend me so violently, but he later explained that, A, he'd heard enough through the door to know something bad was going to happen, And more disturbingly, B, Crispin had been bragging to some of the male co-workers that the secret Santa gift that he was getting for his unnamed female colleague was going to make her dive straight into his bed. So a creep all around then, I guess. Now, naturally, Crispin got fired despite his apparent friendliness with the boss of the company, who mysteriously acted like he didn't even know the guy.

I opted to press charges against Crispin for his attempt to burn my face, and thankfully the company had a secret security camera in the rec room slash kitchen area that verified my story, albeit without sound. Crispin somehow managed to get a suspended sentence. I guess because his assault ultimately failed, but as far as I've heard on the grapevine, his lunatic behavior messed up his life for years to come. I can't say that I have any sympathy for him. I still work at that company, promoted into Greg's position eventually, who himself has risen up the ranks. We still do Secret Santa even because we all decided that we weren't going to let one insane creep ruin the festive season for us. But we do tell new employees about the one guy who took it too far, without mentioning that I was the recipient, of course, just in case anyone else gets into their head,

that sending the most bizarre and unpleasant Secret Santa gift is the way to a fellow employee's heart. Spoiler, it isn't. So some years ago, my wife was caring for an elderly friend's mother during her final days. My wife has worked in care for many years, and as our friend's mother had advanced dementia, was entirely nonverbal and bedbound, the family needed some professional support to best help care for their mom. And as such, it was arranged that my wife would stay at their mom's house from Friday afternoon to the Sunday afternoon, as the family already took care of her around the clock during the week. And as the family has no nason's childhood,

they were more than happy for me to stay there over the weekend as well, and for our daughter, who had just turned two at the time, to be there as well with my wife, as my wife took care of their mom who was bedbound in the lounge downstairs. And I knew the house well for my childhood as it was right across the road from my friend's parents' house. As the family of known me since childhood, they were more than happy for me to stay there over the weekend as well and for our daughter,

who had just turned two at the time, to be there as well with my wife, as my wife took care of their mom, who was bed-bound in the lounge downstairs. I knew the house well for my childhood as it was right across the road from my friend's parents' house. And as a family, we had the second double room upstairs for my daughter and I, and my wife split the night between our upstairs room and a camp bed downstairs next to her patient, for her hourly checks as she had alarms set throughout the night. My daughter would toddle around the house and ask questions about the lady my wife cared for, who my daughter ended up referring to as Nana Flo.

My daughter had explored the house thoroughly with my wife and I, but one day we went upstairs to go to our room, and she wouldn't cross the landing. She outright refused and began to cry. I picked her up and asked her what was wrong, and she told me that she was very scared. And I asked her why, and she said that she felt frightened and sat upstairs, so we went back down and she seemed happier.

At bedtime, I got her to sleep downstairs and carried her asleep up to bed. And the following day, we went upstairs after breakfast to get her dressed, and she again wouldn't cross the landing. I asked her what was scaring her, and she pointed to the boxroom door. And I asked her what she was pointing at, and she said, The scary door. The door was exactly the same as all the other doors in the landing. Dark brown, no detail other than the wood grain and a right-angled brass handle.

I told her that there was nothing scary about the door and opened it to show her inside the room. It was a small room used for storing things that Flo hadn't used in the years since she was bed-bound. A chair, some board games, and a couple of piles of her clothes in a wooden rocking chair that used to be in the same. the garden. I motioned for my daughter to join me in the room to show her that it wasn't scary, but she refused to enter and kept well back. Now, I was beginning to wonder at this point, as she was always very sunny, a very smiley little girl, so I asked her why she didn't like the door or the room, and she said one word, died. I left the room, shut the door, and got her dressed. Two weeks go by, and she still won't go near the door. But I asked her, I asked her,

either hurry her past while talking animatedly to her or carrying her. And just to clarify, I wasn't scared myself, unnerved definitely, but my daughter clearly was, and as I didn't want her to be, we just tried her best to deal with those moments quickly. Now, during one night, Flo slipped away in her sleep with my wife and daughter next to her holding her hand. We obviously didn't tell our daughter, as it would be a lot to process for a two-year-old. I kept her upstairs, got her dressed, and packed our day bag as usual, and just got us ready to head downstairs and right out the front door so we didn't have to enter the lounge. As we got to the bottom of the stairs, Flo's adult daughter walked into the hall and saw us. Immediately seeing my daughter, she lit up

and said hello to her in her cheeriest voice, considering the circumstances. My daughter suddenly took her hand and said, Nana Flows with the angels now. And her daughter just be began crying and smiling quietly. We have no idea how she knew she'd passed. She'd passed maybe three hours previous, and my daughter and I had been maybe awake half an hour. And what's more, we're not a particularly religious family. My wife and I were both baptized, but we don't really attend church. And the first time my daughter attended church was eight months later at a wedding,

so we have no idea where she got the notion of angels from. and that will honestly stay with me forever. The craziest thing is, is that when my daughter was born, she didn't cry. She was so calm, and she also didn't cry on the way afterwards with my wife, even though all the other babies were. One older nurse commented to my wife, she's been here before that one. Maybe. I really can't get my head around why someone would actively want to hurt and scare children

in the way that some people do. I guess some people just have something wired wrong in their brain, and maybe their own children were so terrible that they want to spread that pain to others. I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, although sometimes I wish I was. I especially can't wrap my head around the kind of person who would try and ruin Christmas even further for kids who already have nothing. And this whole preamble is a set up for a story about an incident that occurred when I first started volunteering for Toys for Tots. you'd be surprised how many gifts that we'd receive that were either damaged, non-functional,

or otherwise simply not following the rules that allow us to pass the gifts on to needy children. Most of the time, it's just people trying to get rid of their unwanted junk, looking like a saint while doing so. That's why these initiatives usually don't allow open products or anything that could have been tampered with. I see people complaining online that we're ungrateful for not accepting anything but brand-new sealed toys, but trust me, there are good reasons. And when I first started volunteering for the initiative, it wasn't a big official toys for Tot's group.

It was a small, hastily cobbled together idea from the town officials, in particular the mayor who was set up for re-election the next year. And as such, the whole thing wasn't very well organized at all, and not only did we allow unsealed second-hand donations, we also allowed people to bring in pre-wrapped gifts, ready for the kids to open, which looking back now is the stupid, this oversight we could have made. Now, it happened about a week before Christmas. I was carting a

pile of gifts to the storage room when I felt a sharp stab in the palm of my hand. It was immediately obvious that something in the gift itself had stabbed me. I placed the pile down on the table and inspected the offending item. A needle was sticking through the corner of the box and had jabbed me as I carried it. Now, my second thought was, holy crap. I've been stuck by a syringe and I need a blood But my first instinctual thought was, why is there a syringe in the children's gift? And so I opened the wrapped present carefully, and then the entire thing was a box of empty syringes. They look like diabetic insulin needles with all the caps removed so that anyone who excitedly tore the package apart, a young child, for example, would almost certainly end up stabbed by these needles.

One of them had penetrated the corner of the box, which is what had stabbed me. I called my supervisors in who immediately insisted that I go to the hospital to get checked out because who knows what those syringes were infected with. And I'm pretty sure that they were brand new needles for insulin designed to scare and hurt rather than infect anyone with anything. But I'd promise I'd go to the emergency room just as soon as we checked out the other gifts. Now, this part of the story isn't that exciting, so I'll just tell you now. I was fine, and the syringes were clean, and my suspicion was correct. and we unwrapped every gift that had been donated pre-wrapped.

Four of the others used the same wrapping paper as the syringe box. Admittedly, it was a popular design, so we had to hope it was just a coincidence. Unfortunately, only one of the four was legitimate, a bug's life jigsaw puzzle. And here's the delightful list of things we discovered that some deranged soul had tried to pass on to children in need. At least, I hope and pray, it was just one person. Firstly, we found a copy of Shell Silverstein's The Giving Tree. The first few pages were normal, but then the darkness started. All the illustrations had been glued over with adult images, some of it being pretty

graphic and hardcore. Now, give this book to a little kid and it either traumatized them or get them into some heavy weird stuff at a very young age. And next, was a doll that had been scrawled on and modified in a way that I'd rather not even get into explaining. It had been placed back into the box with a blanket wrapped around the toys so the modifications weren't immediately obvious either. And finally, and most disturbingly, there was a pretty expensive teddy bear. On the surface, this seemed fine, until one of my colleagues noticed some slightly incongruous stitching on its back. We didn't unpick it ourselves, but when we

called the cops and handed the offending items over, we were later told that the teddy bear contained a medical blood bag filled with pig's blood. This happened in the 90s, and security cameras and due diligence were all a bit lax back where I worked then. And we were all devastated that our good deed, collecting gifts for the local orphanage, had been so corrupted by hopefully just one person looking to absolutely ruin Christmas for kids who already had a hard, grueling life. It just destroyed us all.

We hadn't exactly received a lot of donations in the children. first place, so the meager offerings that we had for the children's home just felt extra pathetic now that this individual, who was never identified or caught, by the way, had absolutely destroyed something so wholesome. We proposed to the mayor in the township that next year we'd be far more vigilant with the gifts we accepted, refusing to allow pre-wrapped gifts and insisting that the toys for the kids had to be new and sealed. But ultimately, they decided that no, This had put a strain on the whole thing and the initiative would be canceled going forwards. Thankfully, there are other towns, and these days there are much more official toys for Tot's initiatives that are well managed and carefully vetted.

But if you're one of the many people who thinks were too picky or demanding over what will accept, then please remember my story. There are some people out there who are just so sick and depraved that their idea of a good time is permanently ruining the festive season for little kids who already live difficult lives. I just hope that those people face judgment in the next life are better yet. One day karma will bite them in the butt in this life. So just some background in my family's beliefs. I am spiritual and my mother is Christian Orthodox, but a more spiritual denomination of it. and my father is absolutely atheist.

The first encounter happened this time last year. I was home alone and sitting in my kitchen at the dining table. And from where I was sitting, I was able to see the front door into the living room and the back door into the living room leading into the garden, just to give some context to the layout. I was eating my food and looked up and saw a black, shadowy figure

standing inside the house by the back door. I was instantly paralyzed with a sense of impending doom. Every time I looked away, it seemed to reach towards me, so I was unable to move and unable to look away. One thing to note is that after about five minutes of me looking at it, my cat started yowling at the front door to be let in. One thing about him is that he rarely meows, and on the rare occasion he does, it is extremely quiet, and this is the first time that I had heard him meow like that. After a few more minutes, I became hysterical and started screaming and crying. And the entire thing lasted about 40 minutes until my mom came home and got me out of my hysterical state.

Now, another thing to note is that when the front door opened and my mom came in and I did not recognize it as her, nor as a human, and I fell to the floor and fear. She immediately got me up and cleansed the entire house and all of the doorways. Now, I put this experience down to being a stress-induced hallucination, as I was going through a very stressful time then, or due to the new hormonal medication that I've been put on, hallucinations being a very rare side effect. Now, this was until the second encounter. I had been away from home the past two days, and when I got back today, my dad told me that he had seen a ghost, and when he took a picture of it, it disappeared next time he looked. Now, I was taken aback as he doesn't believe in the paranormal at all and does not joke about things like this. I asked to see the picture, and in the picture, I saw exactly what I had seen this time last year. I will attach the image that he took where you will see to the left of it the back door where the original instance occurred.

I'm very worried, as my friend pointed out, that it has moved from the back door to the living room window, and due to the layout of my house, the entrance slash viewpoint is my glass front door. And I suppose I'm looking for an explanation or any advice. I'm very frightened and I'm just not sure what to do. I never particularly enjoyed the company of my neighbor, Ronnie, back in the day. I can't say I disliked him or anything, but he was one of those cheerful, larger-than-life middle-aged divorcees who always wanted to stop me and chat about sports that I didn't watch.

or whether I didn't care about. And he was the neighborhood gossip, too. And frankly, I didn't care that Mrs. Henderson was having an affair with a pool boy, or that Lucy de la Roche was on antipsychotic medicine. The problem with Ronnie was that being my direct next-door neighbor, he seemed to enjoy my company. And he also took it upon himself to be the life and soul of the neighborhood party, which meant that he hosted regular barbecues or arranged safari suppers,

or invited us boys around for movie night at the home theater that he'd built in his basement. Now, okay, maybe that part was kind of cool, and I don't mind those, but I often had to force myself to attend the cookouts and all of that. Now, living next door, new to the neighborhood, and freshly divorced myself, it's not like I had a good reason to avoid Ronnie and his hospitality either. So I just kind of saw him as a necessary evil, an overly friendly and overwhelming cross that I had to bear in order to live in the otherwise fantastic, high-quality home in a lovely gated community that my

parents had left to me when they retired to Arizona. And I still don't get why they retired there, of all places. Now, everything Ronnie did was just a little too loud and a little too obnoxious. He was always working on some DIY home improvement project, and he always had to start just a little too early and end a little too late and make a little too much noise. And when he had family over for their get-togethers. His grandkids were just a little too loud and a little too obnoxious as well, and he had this shed where he did his projects. I would say that Ronnie's shed reminded me of that song, what's he building in there? I don't know if you know it, but there was no secret about the crap Ronnie was making. He'd brag about it and show it off at any given opportunity.

Picnic benches, refurbished recliner couches, reframed paintings that he'd found at the Goodwill. And then we, his lucky neighbors, would end up as the recipients of those half-finished, half-good refurbished projects that he managed to make a crazy amount of noise working on. Now, I feel bad talking crap on Ronnie like this, and I know that I seem like an a-hole, but would it help if I told you that Ronnie's here right now as I'm writing this and kind of goading me into making myself look like a jerk? You see, Ronnie and I are best friends now, ride or die, and I love him like a brother despite the 20-year age gap. And it's all because of one Christmas a few years ago, where he drove me mad by playing that simply having a wonderful Christmas time by Paul McCarthy on repeat. And like I said, Ronnie did everything just a bit bigger and just a bit louder. And this included Halloween and Christmas. As soon as October 1st rolled around, he'd go all out decorating

the exterior of his house for the spooky season. December 1st, the same. Ronnie would be out there stringing up lights and setting Santa up on the roof, doing this whole grand display. And you got to hand it to him. He did a great job. It was probably the highlight of the neighborhood each year, and if he wants some context as to how much people liked Ronnie's Christmas decorations, consider this. They broke numerous HOA rules, and the HOA let them get away with it without a peep. And do you know how beloved in the community you have to be in order for the Home Owners Association to turn a blind eye to something, yeah. And so, twas the night before Christmas and all through the neighborhood,

not a creature was stirring, except for the animatronics on Ronnie's lawn and the glowing flashing lights. I'd learned to just tolerate it by then, invested in a sleep mask instead of being the local neighborhood cramudgeon at 27. And what I couldn't stand, though, was the fact that he decided to play Christmas music at what felt like a pretty unreasonable volume at 11-18-18. p.m. Wonderful Christmas time by Paul McCartney. And only that song too. And I heard it on repeat four times. There hadn't been music blaring from his house either. Was he having some kind of late night family party? This just seemed weird even for loud, proud Ronnie. And then the song started for the fifth time and this time it was louder. Sixth, louder still. And eventually when Paul freaking McCartney was

on his ninth loop of singing the parties on and the feelings here, my windows were rattling and I was just about ready to go over to Ronnie's and remind him about Mark David Chapman and the fate of another Beatle. Okay, maybe not quite that drastic, but I was gearing up to go over there and finally yell at the guy. Yes, even on Christmas Eve. And I could see the lights going on in other houses in our small gated community, too, silhouetted figures peering out at Ronnie's place. and as I was pulling on my coat and boots, the song looped again even louder this time, and I knew that there was no going back. Time to pay my neighbor a visit and tell him and whatever guess he had that they needed to keep it the F down.

Some of us had Christmas in the morning. From the way our houses are positioned, I can't see Ronnie's front porch from any of the windows I've been looking out of, so when I arrived on his lawn, I could immediately see something was off. For one thing, one of his beloved light-up Sanas had been smashed. For another, his front door was wide open. Now, I thought about heading back to get my gun, but something told me that this was too urgent. Instead, I grabbed an axe resting against Ronnie's firewood pile and made my way into the house. The inside was a mess.

The whole place had been trashed, like someone was looking for something. In particular, a lot of the pictures that he had on the walls have been pulled off and thrown to the ground. I followed that sound of wonderful Christmas time into the living room, and I'll never forget the sight that met my eyes. Ronnie was just lying there, in a pool of blood, somehow hooked up against the cabinet that held his old classic stack-based stereo system. His eyes are just sort of coming in and out of consciousness, and his hand rested on the volume knob. His fingers were slippery with blood, and he'd been trying to increase the volume to get someone's attention, he told him. me later. He managed to get the collar of his shirt hooked on the cabinet so he was being held up, but I could immediately see why he wasn't able to move any more than he was. The man had been

beaten within an inch of his life. Both of his legs were broken, one of them so badly that I could actually see the bone protruding from both ends of the brake. One of his arms was broken too, and his good arm was just about capable of occasionally upping the volume on that player. Now, I could barely recognize the guy. His face was so swollen, caused by what I later discovered, was an aluminum bat to the face over and over. And urgently, I looked around for a phone, but Ronnie started convulsing and playing with the volume again.

Now I shot them this look, and through the pain, I could see that it was glancing upstairs. And just when he lowered the volume, I heard it, footsteps upstairs. Again, I tried to find Ronnie's landline, but he started acting frantic again. He wanted me to leave, but like hell was I leaving him to whatever fate the intruder had in store for him. Now, I was still holding that axe. I had no idea where Ronnie kept his guns, and to this day I have no idea why I behaved so recklessly and stupid,

but it was Christmas Eve, so why not? I decided to rush upstairs and confront whoever had done this to Ronnie, armed with some rusty log-cutting axe. Now immediately I saw the guy. He was short, and I had a good 80 pounds on him, and he was pulling pictures off the wall and opening cabinets, which I later found out was an attempt to find Ronnie safe. I didn't even think. I didn't even feel like going down for murder by attacking a man from behind with an axe, so I flipped the weapon in my hand, and with all the force I could muster, I charged the intruder and cracked him in the side of the head with the handle of the axe. I expected him to fall immediately, but instead he turned to face me, fury in his eyes, as much as I could see through the ski mask anyway. I also saw that he was holding a pistol.

Screwed this, I thought, and swung the axe at him again, this time not caring about using the business end. Now, in my grand incompetence, I hit him with the butt of the metal axe, and this time he did fall. Now, the first thing I did was swipe up his gun. Next thing was, realizing I was in Ronnie's office. I grabbed up as many USB and Ethernet cables as I could and put my Boy Scout training to use, tying the guy up as tightly and excessively as I could with goddamn computer cables. I didn't really know what to do next, so I kind of just sat on the couch in Ronnie's office with a gun trained on this intruder, and eventually realized that I was in shock when one of the other neighbors was standing in the doorway,

shouting my name over and over to get my attention. Now, the story's getting hell along now, so I'll just summarize the rest. The intruder was Ronnie's estranged son, who decided that Christmas Eve was the perfect time to rob his dad of the valuables that he kept in his safe. It turned out that Ronnie was a pretty rich man and kept a lot of valuables on hand for whatever reason,

and for whatever reason his son, who has become estranged through the whole series of events that isn't really another man's business to share here, decided to finally cause his old man to croak and take everything. Ronnie decided that he owed me a life debt for saving him, and after that I couldn't get rid of him even if I wanted to. And it surprised me to realize that I didn't want to. I liked Ronnie, quite a lot, in fact,

and eventually we became best buds. Like I said, he's here while I write this, encouraging me to do it, in fact. And now his wheelchair abound sadly, but his injuries really took a lot out of him and his son won't be getting out of prison any time soon. Ronnie struggles to be the master of ceremonies for cookouts and Halloween and Christmas now, so I help him, almost like a robin to his Batman. And he refused to move out despite all the bad events and memories, and honestly, I'm just so glad that he stuck around.

He's one of the best people I've ever known, and I still feel like a jerk having such a negative opinion on him early on, just for being larger than life-friendly. but he says it's my penance that I have to share this part of the story and Ronnie loves nothing more than giving me a hard time. So every Christmas now since the events of ten years ago I help Ronnie decorate for Christmas. And my now wife joins in too and my two-year-old daughter already calls him Uncle Ron Ron. Life's very different now for both of us and it was a terrible harrowing experience, but we came out of it with a kind of lifelong friendship you'd be extremely lucky to find.

and there's only one rule that we have between us, though. Never, ever again are we going to listen to a wonderful Christmas time. Screw that song, but Merry Christmas. I never thought to Google what this is until discussing it with my wife today and strongly believe that we had a mimic growing up. Reading some of your accounts of very similar events brought me to actual tears, and I've told these stories to people throughout my life and have never forgotten it. It presented itself several times in the house over the course of many years, twice in very similar ways, and stopped after the final one.

And when I was very young, probably six or so, I woke up late at night to see my mom cross by my door. My parents' bedroom and mine were next to one another at the time with a bathroom across the hall. It was very specifically my mom, and she had a specific nightgown on. I called out to her, and it arched its back, and covered it arched its back, and covered. contorted itself in a way that I can only describe as like when a cat does it. I put my head back down and covered my head, and when I looked again, she was gone. Now fast forward a few years to maybe middle school. I'm downstairs alone and the power goes out in the middle of the day.

The house was a bit older and had ratty drop ceilings in the basement, so whenever I was down there, I could usually tell where everyone in my family was. A second after, the power goes out. I hear a solid minute of what sounded like very heavy boots stomping around upstairs and thuds and rattling as if things in the house were being dragged and thrown around. After it stopped and I eventually went upstairs, there wasn't a thing out of place. Now the third physical event was another few years later near the end of high school. I sometimes would doze off on the couch in the basement on the weekend staying up too late. I woke up, looked over the back of the couch, and what looked like my dad was sitting at my family computer.

The lights were off downstairs, but I could see him in the glow of the monitor. This was pretty unusual as my dad was not really a night owl, and I called out to him and the same thing as the first time happened, as I can only describe it as bristling and changing its posture to be deeply hostile looking without turning to look at me. I put my head back down for a second to compose myself and try to get a grip and make sure that I wasn't just freaking myself out or making absolutely sure that I was awake. And I got back up and was gone. Now, I was not sleeping. I stood up and went upstairs after that and was up for a while.

And the last thing, after a few years ahead when I was a partway through college, I got home pretty late and the hallway near my bedroom was unnaturally, weirdly cold in one area, much more so than the rest of the house. Now, I knew full-on something was strange, but tried to put it out of my mind and force myself to be rational. I got in bed and felt someone sit on the edge of the bed on the side away from where I was facing. Totally frozen in shock at this point, it put a hand on my shoulder and said, Hey, wake up. And what sounded like my dad's voice, who was pretty soft-spoken and, not threatening sounding at all. Mind you, I was not asleep at all. And I shot up at this point and nobody was there. The last occurrence felt sort of final in a weird way that I can't exactly

explain. And I live there full-time for another couple of years until I finished college, visited for days at a time often, and then full-time another six months a few years later when changing careers and moving back home from an out-of-state job. Not a hair out of place in the house ever again. And I never told my parents about it, but I just wanted to share with you guys having spent some time tonight reading other people's stories and realizing that I wasn't alone in this kind of specific phenomenon. Why I presented itself in such a frightening way, but spoke so gently I have no idea. It freaks me out talking about it to this day. So we moved to this house two years ago. Previous owners were here for two years, and the ones before were here for a year,

and the ones before that were here for a decade. They were the original owners. I'm not a witchy person, but I know that there's stuff out there that I can't explain. I know salt, ash, and blood are powerful tools, and 3 a.m. scares me. Now, I have a preschool-aged girl. My mother watches her while I work, and my mom sent me this text yesterday saying, creepy story. A few story. A friend forgot to plug in the kid's tablet and it died. And while it was charging, she was on the floor playing with her dinosaurs. She got up, came over, and asked me, why did you open my door? And her door is closed. I told her that no one opened her door and that it is closed, and she said that a person opened her door and stomped into her room and that they were wearing

stripes all over. And I asked her when this happened and she just kept repeating the story. I stopped myself from asking if it scared her and didn't want to put that idea into her head. I wasn't sure how to ask her how it made her feel and she seemed to be more curious than scared. Now, around this time last year, my kid kept walking up crying about angry eyebrows in her walls. And I had her help me rub her walls with salt and burned a candle. Apparently it helped a lot and she hadn't been scared or said anything creepy since until yesterday. And then last night while I was putting her to bed, she kept looking at her door and quietly sobbing, saying, oh no, oh no, and hiding her face. I couldn't get any info out of her, but

I had a very icky, off feeling. Middle of the night, at 3.48, there was a loud thud picked up by our baby monitor, but nothing to cause it, and she didn't wake up. I'm trying to convince myself that this was just the cat being a cat, though nothing in the hallway was disturbed. The monitor doesn't record and it's just a cheap one, basically almost like a walkie-talkie. But what do I do? What can I do? Should I get my kid into therapy? Should I burn some sage that I grew myself? Not smudging as that's a closed practice. I just know that it's a cleansing plant. Should I salt her room again? Add ash. I tried asking in the witch subreddit and then the Spells subreddit, and they both said that this belonged here in R-slash paranormal, instead

then deleted my posts. Just help me out because I'm scared. So last October, I moved to Hawaii completely alone. I was unhappy with my life back home and needed a change. I left behind a decently well-paying job that I hated and took a leap of faith, even though I only knew one person on the island. The transition was hard. There were days that I questioned why I had come. and what I was looking for. And one afternoon, while playing pickleball, a man approached me. And it was a black man with the bluest eyes I'd ever seen. And we started chatting casually, and then out of nowhere,

he began telling me things about my life that no stranger could possibly know. He said I was from Chicago. He named the exact two streets my old apartment in Chicago was located, and he said that I had three brothers, which I told him no. And after a minute, I realized that he was talking about. about my blood brother and my two stepbrothers. I don't see my stepbrothers, so I don't even think about that right away. And he told me that I was Polish and spoke about the close bond that I have with my mother. And every detail was true. I was completely stunned. My first thought was that he might be a

stalker, but the conversation continued. He told me he had this sense, and that I was meant to speak with him. And without me mentioning my career, he said that I would soon find a job that I truly love. And then he told me that I'd meet my person and be married at 27 and that I'd have three children. I am a 24-year-old female, and those were all things that I've been quietly worrying about. And as strange as it all was, I didn't feel afraid. I felt this very deep sense of peace like I was exactly where I needed to be. And when it was my turn to play, we wrapped up our conversation, and he said something like, I'm always here. You'll find me around.

And I walked toward the court, but after only a few seconds, I turned to me. turned back to look for him, and he was gone. Completely vanished. The courts were fenced in, so there was no way that he could have just walked off unnoticed in that short amount of time, and also wired so I wouldn't be able to see him even if he did. I played there often and have never seen him again, and it was one of the most surreal and unexplainable moments of my life, and I still think about it all the time. 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.