The Lets Read Podcast - 351: THERE'S SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH MY NEIGHBOR | 9 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 337

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Bad Neighbors & Texas.HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?[e-mail] ME ON -►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/♫ Music & Cover art: INEKThttps://www.youtube.com/@inektToday's episode is sponsored by:- Omaha Steaks --> Go to https://OmahaSteaks.com and use promo code READ at checkout for $35 off. Minimum purchase may apply.

I was raised in West Texas, a trailer park by a single mom, and the rest is summed up by a couple of lines from a Merle Haggard song. Dear old daddy, rest of soul, left my mom a heavy load. She tried so very hard to fill his shoes, working hours without rest, wanted me to have the best. She tried to raise me right, but I refused. People said my daddy was wild, and I guess I sprung from that same bad seed. but while my buddies were picking poisons like dope or booze or women, I got hooked on something altogether different. Adrenaline.

I was a junkie for it ever since I stood up to my middle school bully. He beat seven shades of crap out of me, but I landed the sweetest right hook right on his fat face before he did, and afterwards I felt so good I could have strut sitting down. He didn't bother me anymore after that, and I didn't see enough high school for anyone else to make the same mistake. But when I heard my little cousin was being hassled at high school, I'd just about jumped at the chance to trim some tail feathers, so to speak. And that, ladies and germs, was the first time I robbed anybody.

My freshman cousin had a toy cap gun shaped like a pearl handle revolver, and it was his pride and joy, but I guess it was his own damn fault for taking a toy into high school because he got it snatched off of him almost right away. He kept his trap shut about it for weeks, so by the time I found out, there was no getting the cap gun back. But when I found the bully, I made him empty his pockets. I took his sneakers, and I even took the shirt off his damp back. And that was an even bigger rush than stalking my bully in his fat pudgy face. And I guess that was my career decider right there.

The way other kids see a Marine and his dress blues are a roughneck manhandling his rig and think, damn, that's what I want to be when I grow up. I robbed that kid and I thought, hell. I could get used to this. I started off in earnest when I was 16, stealing cars and robbing houses so I wouldn't have to get a real job. And then by the time I started hanging out in bars and meeting the right people, I got involved in much more organized sorts of crime. I started robbing trucks with a guy who called himself T.J. Because all we had to do was wait to see which truckers picked up a lot lizard and then raid their cargo when the cab was shaking.

And that made us some good money for a while. but as we got older and started racking up bills, we needed to graduate to something a little more rewarding. We started robbing gas stations, bars, and pawn shops, anything that would net us a clean four or five figures if we hit the safe on deposit day. And then as we started hitting bigger and bigger places, we brought on a guy called Jody for crowd control.

Now, this was my crew for about three years, and we hit a place maybe once every couple of months if conditions were just right. But then for the first, this one job of robbing a small credit union, Jody wasn't available, and after shopping around, T.J said that he'd found a replacement in the form of a guy named Vincent. Before we did anything with Vincent, I wanted a face-to-face.

And so we met for some steak and potatoes over at this little place outside of Odessa. And T.J. said that he was a big guy, pretty sharp, too, meaning that he'd be the perfect replacement for Jody while he was out of state. And then when he walked through the door of that steak place, I couldn't have agreed more. The guy was terrifying, not just because of how big he was, and he had to be scraping at least seven feet with his boots on, but because of the way he carried himself,

like he was meaner than a skillet full of rattlesnakes. I'm not easy to frighten, but having Vincent sitting across from me with his long and wild-looking beard, it had me feeling like Dobby in a glue trap. He had this way of looking at you that felt like he was peeking right into your head just sort of quietly figuring you out. Vincent said he had some military experience, just not with a U.S. military, and that he had connections in the Aryan nations after doing a little time over in New Mexico. He didn't have a problem working in a crew, and he didn't mind doing things our way if we

organized the job right. And the only thing that struck me as sketchy was when he said that he couldn't talk about the time that he served in that other country's military. That kind of set off my bullcrap detector, but if all we needed him to do was stand there and look mean, then he'd be just fine. We ended up hitting this little credit union about a week later, and unlike a lot of the bigger unions or bank chains, the manager proved a tough nut to crack. A teller in a big bank chain is just there to collect a paycheck, but a small town credit union manager, that's his whole life that you're stamping on. He knows his customers, there's neighbors, and he likes them too. But what he doesn't like as no account robbers like us, thinking that we can have something for nothing.

A small town credit union manager might think twice, maybe even three times before handing over the keys or codes, and in a profession like mine, seconds meant safety. And the more you racked up during that crucial part of a job, the more danger of getting busted there was. And the one of the job that I'm talking about was no different. It was my job to get him to hand over the keys while T.J. and Vincent watched the door and worked crowd-custom. control, and right away, just from the look in the manager's eyes, I knew that he wasn't going to play ball. I ended up bashing him over the head with my pistol a few times just to show that I was serious. I can't say that I'm altogether proud of that, but like I said, seconds mean safety.

He took one hit, and then another, and then another, and he still didn't break. I was getting worried that he might not break at all until Vincent pointed at one of the two tellers working at the place and asked if she was the man's daughter. Now, the manager was a lily white Texan, while the teller looked like her parents came from Mexico or maybe further south. So when Vincent first suggested that she was the manager's daughter, I thought to myself, what he was smoking? But when I turned back to the manager, he had this look of pure terror in his eyes. Vincent smiled, jumped over the counter and then started tearing at the buttons on the girl's blouse, saying that he was going to do all this obscene stuff to her right in front of her dad.

The manager just about lost his mind and promised a hand over the keys if Vincent promised not to touch her. And that was all it took. And we were out of there with a whole bunch of cash just a few minutes later. I later asked Vincent if he was serious, if he really would have done all those things that he talked about to make the manager hand over the keys. Now, he just smiled that big, wolfish smile of his and said, whatever it takes to get the job done, brother, whatever it takes. Now, I had no doubt in my mind that he meant what he said, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who was so obviously a dyed-in-the-wool psycho.

But little did I know. I hadn't seen nothing yet. The next job we did with Vincent, we hit up a little savings bank just outside of San Antonio. One of the Mexican supervisors, who we needed to open up the safety deposit boxes, had some kind of meltdown and forgot all of her English. Maybe she did it on purpose to slow us down, or maybe it was genuinely. who knows. But what I do know is that out of nowhere, Vincent steps up and starts straight up speaking fluent Spanish to her. Now, he's not just talking Spanish either. He's talking to this chick

like he's her damned uncle or something, trying to almost soothe and relax her. And you know something? It worked. She freezes up, stops screeching like a whistle, and then just looks at him as he gives his little speech. And then when he's done, she hands over the keys to the the boxes and once again, we're making our getaway in minutes flat. We all wanted to know what he said to that lady, but Vincent calmly explained that all he did was tell her what would happen if she didn't hand over those keys. That San Antonio bank job was the last we saw of Vincent for a little while. He said he had some business out of state, but that he was working on something in the meantime, and he'd let us know if he could use our help. And we said we appreciated him keeping us in mind,

But to be honest, we were more than happy to go our separate ways. Vincent got the job done all right, but at the same time, he felt like a liability. Like it was only going to be a matter of time before he did something terrible. Like what he said he was fixing to do to that guy's daughter right there in front of him. And maybe nine months later, T.J. gets a call from Vincent about that job that he said he was casing. I was in T.J.'s place when he got the call, and the second he said, Oh, hey Vincent. How's your mom in them? I got to roll in my eyes thinking, oh crap, here we go again.

Now, there came a point in the conversation when T.J. started sounding a little skeptical, saying stuff like, I don't know, Vincent sounds like a lot. But then Vincent said something to him, something I didn't hear, which made him look like Jesus Christ himself had just talked down that phone to him. Now, his eyes went very wide and his jaw dropped a little, and he stayed very quiet for a long time, for setting up a meeting. And I remember driving out to the diner with T.J.

And trying to figure out what was going on. He kept saying stuff like, you wouldn't believe me if I told you, or you're better off hearing it from the horse's mouth. He also said if he told me what Vincent had in mind, I'd probably duck and roll out of the car, and that's when I asked him to at least tell me what kind of job they'd talked about.

T.J. kept his eyes on the road, but told me the last one before we retire. And after that, it was my turn to stay quiet and just stew in the mystery until we got to the diner. And when we got there, Vincent was leaning over this big plate of steak and eggs, eating it like he hadn't in weeks. And we asked him where he'd been, and he tells us, Mexico. And then explains how he's been eyeing up the score of a goddamn lifetime, just like T.J. said. He'd been tracking these cash couriers south of the border for weeks, casing their routes, figuring out their schedules, and then putting together enough firepower to make the job doable.

I asked him what kind of firepower we needed, if all we wanted to do was scare a couple of couriers. But he said to do that, we needed something that it pierce armor. The golden rule of armed robbery is to not kill anyone, because then you're a murderer and the cops will hunt you like one. We don't use armored piercing anything because the best jobs are the kind where bullets don't get fired, and so when Vincent mentioned armor piercing, my ass was halfway out the door.

But then he started talking about how to get the couriers to stop. We needed to at least demonstrate that we could pierce the armor on their trucks. And without that, they just roll through the ambush without stopping and they'd get away. Now, I guess I had it in my head that this was a regular job, and when I say regular, I mean your standard armored car job. So when Vincent said that the couriers were carrying some cash illegal. across the border, and we're doing it for the Sinaloa cartel. I thought he'd lost his damned mind. Now, I feel like just about everyone in America knows who the cartel are these days, but the Sinaloa

stand tall even among their fellow Narcos. They're one of the oldest in Mexico, and at the time, they were by far the most powerful, too. They were led by the El Chapo guy for a while, and they don't mess around when it comes to protecting their operations. And so when Vincent suggested we rob them, I figured it'd be quicker to just shoot each other in the face right there and then, because we robbed the cartel. That's how we were going to end up, dead as buzzard bait. But Vincent said he had a plan. At the time, the Sinaloa cartel was at war with a Juarez cartel. Curriers were getting robbed and their hitmen were dying by the dozen, but it was all just one big mess down there. But that meant, at least according to Vincent, that the Sinaloa wouldn't suspect a

force him of gringos to be responsible for robbing one of the couriers, at least not unless directed by their enemies in Juarez. And to him, it was foolproof, and if we did the job right, we could bring home enough laundered cash to retire on. We wouldn't have to worry about washing it. We wouldn't have to worry about anyone coming after us. All we'd have to do is figure out what kind of porch swing we wanted to sit our asses down on until we were old enough to die, and figure out which kind of beer we wanted to drink while we were doing it. I didn't realize how much I wanted out until I saw the crack in the door, and I guess it was the same for TJ and Jody, too, because after thinking on it for all of 30 seconds, we decided to go for it.

About a week later, we all met up with Vincent just before midnight for the long-ass drive down to the ambush site. Vincent's plan was relatively simple. At dawn, when the couriers approached our position in their two trucks, we'd pull up a heavy chain across the dirt road, kill their engines with our armored piercing bullets, and then keep on shooting until any guards were dead, and the drivers surrendered. When I asked him how he was so sure the drivers would just surrender, Vincent said that they were just that. Drivers.

They'd give themselves up once they realized that they were in trouble. Now, I started getting doubts, because if those drivers lost all that cash, the cartel weren't going to just slap them on the back and say, Better Luck, next time, André. They torture those guys first just to make sure that they weren't in on the scam. And then even if they weren't, them up and hang them from a bridge just to make an example out of them. And the more I thought about it, the more I got this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

But even when that feeling got so intense I wanted to puke, I push it back down again and tell myself, get this right, and you're home free. No more jobs, no more Vincent, no more worrying about anything ever again. And it was that which kept my mouth shut during that drive across the border. It was still dark as we set up, tying the chain to a tree before covering it with a thin layer of dirt. We dug little holes, too, on a low rise near the road, with one a little closer than the others, so whoever was in it could pull the chain up and block the couriers. And after that, it was just a case of waiting and watching, and hoping those couriers didn't decide to rearrange their run at the last minute. Now, we waited hours, watching the sun get higher and higher and feeling the air

get warmer. Now, Vincent said the trucks would roll by about an hour after dawn. But then two hours had gotten by and there wasn't a truck to be seen, and I started to doubt that they were ever going to show up at all. Now, by around 8 a.m., we were all sweating buckets, barely able to hear our own thoughts above all the noise that the cicadas were making. But then after maybe an hour of sweat and frustration, I remember seeing this glint of light on the horizon as two white trucks came into view. We started hooping and hollering a little, having sat in those dusty holes for so damn long, and Vincent told us to shut the hell up and be ready. Now, as we watched the trucks getting closer and closer, T.J. took hold of the chain, waiting for Vincent's signal to start

yanking it up into the roadway. But when it came, and T.J. forced those trucks to hard break as it rose up. Vincent didn't aim for the engine blocks. He aimed right for the truck's tinted windows. and then unleashed hell. Someone in the second truck managed to get a few shots off, but Jody was ready with his AK, and it was pure chaos, but it was over in seconds. So quick that me and T.J. didn't even get time to fire a shot. And then once the smoke had cleared and everything went quiet again

except for the groans of the dying couriers, we made our move. As we ran towards the trucks, I remember T.J. yelling about Vincent not having to shoot everyone. Vincent said what's done is done, and he should shut his mouth and get to work. T.J. had only just unlocked the second truck storage, and we were about to go rummaging around in the back, when we suddenly heard the sound of a child crying. In a way that only a kid's cry can grab your attention like that,

me and T.J. ended up spinning around on the spot to see where the voices were coming from. I remember seeing Jody, wide-eyed, looking into the truck in front and then seeing Vincent open. open up under the back doors and start speaking in Spanish. T.J. had a daughter who stayed with his mom, so realizing that there had been kids in that lead truck just about sent him off the handle. He marched over to where Vincent was speaking Spanish to them and asked what he was doing. Vincent said he was telling them to stay in the trucks because someone would be coming by to get them before long. T.J. didn't like that one bit on account of we all know what happens to kids or dogs when they're locked in hot cars. Him and

Vincent went at it for about a minute, going back and forth about how those kids needed to be safe, and Vincent thought about it for a moment and then said we could just drop them off at a gas station or something once we got back on American soil. T.J. didn't much like that idea either, but just like the whole surrendering drivers thing, I don't think Vincent was ever really planning on doing what he said. Because as me and Jody are hauling a big bag of cash back towards the place we'd hidden our own truck, we heard two gunshots, and then the same. sound of T.J. screaming. We dropped the bag of cash where we were, and then ran back to see what was going on. I thought T.J. might have gotten himself shot, possibly by a courier who wasn't dead as we

thought he was. But when we got to the top of that rise and we saw why T.J. was still screaming at Vincent and calling him all the curse words under the sun, he'd taken those two Mexican kids out of the truck, and he'd shot them both in the head. Vincent was probably a head and shoulder taller than T.J. and almost twice as heavy, too. But after what he did, shooting those two kids, T.J. went at him like a monster. Vincent had to point his pistol just to get him to back off, but T.J. lost his vertical and was yelling, why? Why? What they do to you, huh? What'd they do? And Vincent started saying how the cartel could be on her asses if they talked. But this was after telling us about the war between the cartels and how they'd never know it was us.

I still don't know for sure if that was really all nonsense or if he just switched his plan up at the last minute. But those kids, man, they didn't have to die. Only one person had to die down at that dirt road in Mexico and it sure as hell wasn't those kids. And when Vincent finished giving his little speech on how this was just too much money at stake to take any chances, he turned his back on T.J. to go grab one of the bags. T.J. then pulled his pistol and shot Vincent about four or five times in the back. And he hit the dirt, gasping for air. Then walked over to him.

T.J. put him down with one shot to the head. Me and Jody didn't freak out. Not like we'd done when we saw those kids lying there with the dirt soaking up their brains. What T.J. did felt natural, almost. No one questioned him. We just grabbed all the cash we could carry. loaded it into the truck and then took off back towards the border. We didn't celebrate the money. We couldn't.

Even when we got someplace safe and realized our shares tallied up to just under a million each, we were too exhausted to do anything but sit quietly with a few beers and wonder how the hell it all went so wrong. Those kids weren't like 12 or 13. They were small. Too small to even talk, I really think, and they wouldn't have been able to tell us four gringoes apart from the boys in ZZ Top. So why'd Vincent kill them? I remember asking that question out loud, but T.J. had had enough. And after stomping out a cigarette, he told me it didn't matter, because that son of a

bitch was dead. And then off he went to pack his share of the money. Now, once we were all packed up and we agreed to lay low for a while, Jody went to stay with his parents in Oklahoma while T.J. took an extended vacation in New Orleans. And I went to stay with a girl that I'd been seeing for what amounted to a while. a very low-key retirement party. I didn't tell her about Vincent or the kids. I just said I was done.

Now, she'd always wanted me to walk the line and get a real job, so the news was music to my ears. And she told me to stay as long as I needed, and then maybe three weeks later, TJ shut up again driving a new Dodge. No, it wasn't new, new, but we couldn't exactly go driving around in the same truck we used for the robbery,

so it was a practical purchase. We went for a drive and caught up on things, and then TJ asked if I wanted to go get a burger or something later. I said, sure, and we arranged for me to stop by his place around seven. Now, it felt like we were starting fresh. We wouldn't have to look over our shoulder anymore. Work wasn't a topic of conversation we'd ever really have to touch on again, and we'd had more money than we could ever spend without pissing it away. It felt like we could just stop surviving and start living,

and it was strange to find myself grueless. grinning like a mule-eating cockle-ears over nothing but a burger with an old buddy. He dropped me back off at my place, and then after a few hours of chilling with my girl, I drove over to T.J.'s place and knocked on the door. And that dodge was parked in the driveway, but when I knocked on his door, there was no answer. It was almost exactly seven, and he wasn't the kind of guy to flake on plans like that. And so assuming he was probably just running late and was in the shower or something, I walked around to the yard and tried the back door.

T.J. never locked his back door ever. He always left it open in case we needed a place to crash, and he also wasn't keeping his share of the money there either, so right away I knew something was off. I'd crash there a bunch before, so I knew that there was a way to Jimmy open a window or the first floor, but after getting it open and climbing inside, I felt my stomach drop. And that old cliche about the smell of blood, how it sort of hangs in the air, very heavy in places where a lot of it's been spilled. It's as true as steel, especially on a warm Texas evening. And the smell of blood in T.J.'s house was so strong I felt this shiver run up my spine, as I realized something really, really bad had gone down.

And as I ran through the house, I started yelling out his name and asking where he was. I found him in the upstairs bathroom, curled up in the tub, and he wasn't just dead. It looked like someone had tried to take him apart. I didn't look for long. I couldn't. But from what little I saw, he had his fingers missing. Part of his face was gone, and someone had carved off a big patch of skin away from his side, so much so that I could see a couple of his ribs peeking through. That's the snapshot I can't ever get out of my head, even though I must have looked for no more than a second. I didn't stay long. I just slipped out the way I came in, ran back to my truck, and drove straight over to Jody's place to tell him what I'd found.

Someone had come looking for us. We knew that much, and we agreed the best thing to do in the meantime was hide out someplace. Jody said he could find us a place in Oklahoma, somewhere real quiet and out of the way, but we still needed to square some stuff away at home first. We needed to get the money, and we warned folks who needed warning. Then we could meet at a motel just outside of town and drive to Oklahoma from there. Now, it sounded like a smart enough plan, have a base of operations just to, outside of town for a few hours and then be gone by the evening. But after driving all over town

and making sure my girl got herself to her moms, I arrived at the motel to feel my stomach drop a second time. There were cops outside the room Jody said he'd be in and police tape across the open door. There were EMTs too and I didn't see them walking around, but their ambulance was there and it was all I needed to see to know that they'd gotten Jody too. I left town right away, tail between my leg, but with the money sitting in the trunk of my car. I planned on going back. I still got family down in Texas, but once I got to Oklahoma and found a motel,

I saw a news report on TV. It was about Jody, but it wasn't just hearing about his murder that scared me so bad. It was the description a witness had given the police, which became the basis for their person of interest appeal. But it was that which made me feel like the devil himself was standing right there next to me, laughing his ass off,

at a joke I didn't get. Because when the newscaster read out the man's description, being that of a tall, stocky man with long hair and a wild-looking beard, it sounded almost exactly like Vincent. Someone matching that description had been seen in the motel's parking lot, acting strange. Then around the same time as the murders, the same person was said to have hopped in a truck and driven away from the scene at some very serious speed.

But then, Vincent wasn't the only guy in Texas to have a long-ass beard and a ponytail. So that all could have been a coincidence, right? But then, what are the chances of the same person sporting an oversized hat and a bunch of bandages around his head? I had never been so freaked out in my whole life, and I'd never been in a situation where I actually considered pinching myself because I was half convinced that I'd wake up to discover that the whole thing was just some horrible nightmare. But it wasn't a dream. It was real. And I found myself faced with a very real possibility that Vincent had somehow survived T.J.'s attempt to kill him and had come to get his revenge.

Looking back on it, I realized that it was much more likely to be the cartel and that somehow they figured out a way to track us down. But just the thought of some half-dead Vincent walking around looking like he'd crawled out of a grave, it sends shivers of my spine even all these years later. I live someplace else now, just about as far from Texas as it's possible to get without having to learn another language. So let's just say that whenever people speak here, is sure as hell, ain't Spanish. Do any of you have someone who you'll never forget, even though you never really knew them that well? Someone who was a constant in your life, just sort of a background character who isn't around anymore.

Someone you find your mind drifting back to every now and then, because even though, you didn't know them that much, you just saw them all the time, and they were like an interactive, friendly part of the furniture. Now, I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's like a beloved lazy boy that you get from Goodwill. You don't know its backstory and you never will, and you don't ask about its past and it doesn't ask about yours. Christ, this sounds dehumanizing, but it's how I think about it. It's in a fond, loving way, trust me, and I hope one day I'm someone else's goodwill lazy boy, someone who touched a person's life just by being there and someone who always remember. Now, I remember Mr. Browning. I'll never forget him, and even though the

last time I saw him was probably 1985, I think I remember him fondly regardless of how things ended. Now, I sure know that I always thought fondly whenever this guy crossed my mind. Me and the wife often talked about how we should invite him over for dinner. We wondered if he was lonely after his wife had passed a decade or so before. We wondered if his adult kids called often because they never seemed to visit. But we just never got around to asking Mr. Browning. Hell, I don't even remember what his Christian name was. It was always, good morning, Mr. Browning, and he'd respond with, good morning, Ted. He was my elder. We understood the hierarchy, and I do know that he was a former teacher, so maybe he thought of himself as Mr. Browning. Maybe it didn't even cross his mind to ask me to call him by his first name.

Amos, that was it, Amos Browning, and I remember from his obituary and later the funeral, and I think those were the only times that I heard his first name spoken, and one of the only times that I saw his adult children. His son was a very doughy-faced man who looked bored to be at his father's funeral. His daughter was one of those sharp-faced women with a meek, sycophantic husband, and the kind of bratty son who wanted to be the center of attention, even at grandpa's wake. We didn't stay long. We'd gone to pay our tributes to Mr. Browning, but we couldn't stay. We didn't want his family asking us questions about his death,

and they likely knew that I'd been present when it happened, and I'm not a good liar. I would have struggled to give them the answers they wanted instead of the horrible haunting, traumatizing truth. Me and Mr. Browning used to chat over the fence. Well, I'd lean over the fence, and he'd mow the lawn, and he was always mowing his lawn. He had one of those old push mowers and electric mowers.

one and I just kept trying to persuade him to buy a ride on, but he said his yard was way too small for that. It wasn't. And besides, at his age, probably early 70s, it was a great way to get some exercise and a little peace and quiet. Peace and quiet from who, I'm not really sure, since he lived alone after his wife had passed before me and my family moved in, but that's what he said. We'd talk a lot, but never really get to know each other, you know. We talked about the Detroit Lions a bunch. He was a die-hard supporter, and I was just a pretty casual one. We talked about the weather. We talked about politics, but never too seriously.

And sometimes we'd watch the same shows at the same time, and we talk about those, too. We both loved Miles Davis and The Who and Kiss, and he told me about his first ever concert, sneaking into watch Kiss play, but I was never sure if he was telling the truth or just recounting the plot of that one movie where that exact thing happens. It was a fun story, anyhow, even if he told me about five times. And occasionally he'd ask about my wife and how she was doing and how her job was going, but I think he wanted to talk about his wife in exchange, but couldn't bring himself to do so, apart from that one time. Sometimes my wife would bring him a lasagna or some other baked goods, and he'd thank her like a perfect gentleman.

And he always handed the dishes back to me over the fence, never once brought them to our door, always over the fence. Now I chatted to him so much that by the time we moved out, there was a groove in the green. where grass had stopped growing in the place where I had always stood to talk to Mr. Browning. Now, I remember exactly what we were talking about in the day it happened. My wife had just had a minor operation to remove a benign cyst from her breast, and he was asking how she was doing. I told him she was doing fine and would be home from the hospital the next day, or even that evening if things went well. Mr. Browning looked at me then as he was mowing the lawn and then told me that I was lucky, and I should hold on to a good woman like that.

And then he said, and I'll never forget it, not least because they were his last words. He said, I miss her so much. And then he sort of looked down away like he was about to hide tears, but I saw a look of alarm and then fear across his face. Maybe I'm just imagining, but I swear that I saw him try and stop the forward motion of the mower as he pushed forward. I'm not sure at how it happened. He was always so careful running the electrical extinction cable, around the edge of the lawn, making sure that he was mowing nowhere near it, being careful like it was muscle memory. But I heard the crunch and whir of the motor running over the electrical

socket and the cable. I don't know how or why, but there was no grounding. The mower's rubber handles just sort of weren't there anymore, and the live electrical cables got tangled into the motor blades, mangling and electrifying the mower as Mr. Browning held onto it. And hold on to it, he did. I watched an abject frozen horror as his body began to confulse, as smoke rose up from his hands where he was gripping the metal handle. I could smell the cooking flesh and electrical burn. I watched as the grass around him singed and blackened, and I knew I had to knock him away from the mower, but couldn't touch him myself. I searched for something, anything that I could safely use to shove him off the mower. My eyes settled on my old wooden baseball bat, but by the time I'd hauled myself over that,

fence, I knew it was too late. Mr. Browning had collapsed the ground, finally letting go of the lawnmower, and I knew that there was no saving him. So I ran over to the outlet and switched off the electricity. Then I went back over to my neighbor, my friend who I knew so little about, and he was blackened and charred. His face was horrific. His eyeballs had somehow survived the electrocution and they stared white and frozen out of a face that looked like it had been sucked clean from the inside. One detail I remember, one grim detail, is how his mouth was open and how I realized that he had false teeth because they had fallen down into his throat. I ran into his house and called 911 and the rest was a blur of paramedics and police and being

questioned. And at first when his daughter got there, she seemed to somehow blame me for her father's death, as if she'd ever given a crap about him in life. He may not have opened up to me, but Mr. Browning certainly made it clear that his kids did not play a big part in his life. And so fast forward to the funeral, the son gave a eulogy, and it was like he barely knew his father any better than I did. It made me so sad and devastated that this man who seemed like nothing but a nice, amicable gentleman could have been so forgotten and discarded, except for the neighbor who gave him some

friendly, superficial banter over the fence, the same neighbor who was forced to watch him die. I swore then that when I had a kid, I would do everything I could to make sure that they wanted me in their life forever. And as it turned out, my wife was unknowingly pregnant at the time of that funeral. We had a son and then later two daughters, and they were the loves of my life. They're all grown themselves now with families of their own and my wife and I are grandparents, and we make sure to keep our family close, regular meals together, Christmas and Thanksgiving being particularly huge affairs. Now, maybe Mr. Browning hadn't been a great father, and it's not for me to judge his kids

for distance themselves from him. I don't judge them for their relationship with their father, it just sort of makes me sad. But before the sadness came the trauma. We bought her home with the intention of starting a family there, but every time I so much his stepped foot in the backyard, I was met with flashbacks of Mr. Browning cooking alive. I could smell that electric burn and see those bulging dead eyes. We made a loss selling, but we moved, and my son was born in a smaller house, but it was one filled with love and closeness, and I was no longer haunted by the sight of my neighbor's final moments, at least not directly.

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promo code read at checkout. That's Omaha Steaks.com Code Read. Terms apply. See site for details. I've been a home renovations contractor here in the great state of Texas for coming up on 35 years now. And in that time, I've worked on a new. some incredible homes and met some incredible people, too. But I've also worked one or two jobs that have come to haunt me, and this is the story of one such job. In March of 1994, I got a call from a guy who just purchased a falling down home near Laredo Ranchettes, about six miles outside

of Laredo. He said I'd need to stabilize the foundations, shore up the framing, and swap out any rotting beams or walls to align with state building codes. The roof needed re-shingling, all the doors and windows would need resealing, and the whole place needed a massive utilities overhaul, including an HVAC replacement. Inside, I'd need to insulate the walls and attic, refinish the wooden floors, make sure all the bathroom fixtures were in good working order, and all after securing the right permits from the county courthouse. And all in all, it was looking like a three-to-six-month job that had set the owner back

between $50,000 and $100,000 or possibly more. And so as you can imagine, I accepted the contract pretty much there and then, and signed it after two quick read-throughs to make sure everything was up to code. Now, I drove out to the place on a Monday morning, having signed the contract and received the keys on the Friday before. It was a big job, so I was pretty excited to get started, but when I arrived, I found out that my key didn't work. Now, I think I just rolled my eyes, then took out my phone to give him a call, but since it was pretty early in the morning, I was neither surprised nor a new. annoyed when he didn't answer. I left a message on his voicemail asking him to call me back because

he'd give me the wrong key. I wasn't rude about it. I just said it like it was, and how I'd appreciate if he could get me the real key as soon as humanly possible. Now, being there wasn't a complete waste of time, because I could still survey the building's exterior and get a real feel for what I was dealing with. So for about the next half hour or so, that's what I did. Right up until a black SUV came tearing up the road behind me, and a guy dressed in a security uniform got out of it. He asked if I had permission to be on the land, so I explained who I was and why I was there. Now, once I explained I was the contractor, he softened up a little, but went on to explain how I couldn't be there just yet because the safety inspectors hadn't been around yet. Now, I thought I was doing the safety evaluation, but he went back

to his truck to grab the paperwork for me. And then since it all looked legitimate, with the name of the owner on there and everything, I got back in my truck and drove back into town. Now, I was having lunch by the time the client called me back, and while I figured it'd be a simple case of getting me the right key, it was anything but. He sounded annoyed when I picked up the phone and insisted that he had indeed given me the correct key.

Now, I very calmly assured him that wasn't the case, but it was easily rectified, especially since he had a whole week before the safety inspectors could finish their work. Now, the client immediately says, what safety inspectors? And so I explained the whole encounter with a security guard that he hired. And once again, the client immediately responded with, What, security guard?

And this was when I realized something weird was going on. I told the client as much and how from experience there was probably some kind of illegal activity occurring in his vacant property. He sighed, then asked if I could meet him out at the house the following morning, with a locksmith and a sheriff's deputy. The next morning, I did the same thing as the first and arrived at the vacant house around 8 a.m. And then over the next 10 to 20 minutes, the client, the locksmith, and the deputy rolled up one by one. The client goes over the situation with the deputy and the locksmith just making sure that they're up to speed about what he might be facing inside.

Then, once that was all out of the way, the locksmith got the door open and the deputy led us inside. And the first thing that struck me was how clean the place was. It was still run down and I could see a bunch of junk and old dusty furniture in one of the rooms, but the hallway looked like it had been swept meticulously, as did one of four rooms on the ground floor. But when the deputy walked into that room, he saw something that had him calling it in on his radio just a few seconds later. It was a chair, a metal one, and it looked like it had been bolted to the floor. It wasn't alone either. There was a bunch of chains piled up in one corner.

and the deputy mentioned that too when he made his dispatch call. It was obvious that something bad had been happening there, something really bad by the looks of things. We just didn't understand the extent of it, not until we got upstairs and saw what had been done to the shower cubicle. Now, the bathtub was in one corner, and the shower was in the other, and much like the hallway in the room downstairs, it looked like someone had taken a great amount of care in cleaning the place down.

but that's not what stopped me in my tracks. What had my mouth open, in shock, and horror, was the fact that someone had reinforced the shower cubicle with concrete slabs, and these concrete slabs looked like they had bullet holes in them. Not all the way through bullet holes, but almost like damage where bullets had hit the concrete. And as soon as he saw that, the deputy told us that we better go back outside

because the place was almost certainly now some kind of, crime scene. We just did as he asked and walked back outside in silence, and with this chill in the air despite that Texas heat. We knew we'd just been someplace where folks had been hurt and then killed, and there was no telling just how many folks that had happened to either. And it all made sense why the place was so clean, too. At least the rooms people were using for their business there and why they'd most likely been scrubbed down during the previous 24 hours following my first visit to the place. Now there was a real sense of they were just here, which only added to how damn creepy it all was, and I'll never forget the look on that deputy's face either, like he'd

never seen anything like that before. The poor guy figured he was going to chase out some squatters and ended up walking around a freaking torture and execution chamber. And as you can probably guess, renovations were delayed until the cops could comb the house over for any evidence. But they didn't find a lick of it inside those four walls, and they didn't find anything around the property either, especially digging the place up so much that it looked like the surface of the moon. Just craters everywhere. I obviously wasn't told crap by the cops. I was just the contractor, but when it came time for the job to start back up again, the client filled me in on what they told him. And like I said, the cops didn't find anything. But based on how clean the place was,

in relation to how run down the home was, it was likely the house had been occupied during my first visit. And when I tried to unlock the door, there had been torturers and murderers inside, and maybe even victims too. And that gave me a whole second helping of all that creepy they were just here feeling. Only as you can imagine, it was way worse that time thinking that I'd been so close to such terrible evil, and it had been quietly lurking inside, while I've been completely none the wiser. Evening, let's read, I'm a normal, regular-ass guy with a wife and kid, I lead a quiet life, I work in a bank,

and I'm the last person to get involved in drama or scary situations or anything that you might want to hear about on your channel. At least, that's how I've always wanted to live my life anyway. Sometimes you don't have a choice, and that lack of choice doesn't come from your own actions, but from those around you. In my case, it was a house, and even before all of this happened, we used to call it the nightmare house. We, being me and the other neighbors who were mostly friends, we do safari suppers, quiz nights at the local bar, all sorts of stuff like that, and apart from a handful of residents who had good reason, everyone got involved, and it was a nice, friendly community.

And then there was the house next door to mine. The owner never joined us for events or hung out, and he never attended street parties or barbecues or singing carols during Christmas, not because he was antisocial, but because we never once even met him. He'd never lived in the house, not since any of us could remember. Old Mr. Peterson said he could vaguely remember the owner from when he'd first bought the property a few decades back, but since then, nothing. And for whatever reason, this guy had bought the house and then just screwed off to sell. South Africa are some such place, and just left the property to gradually fall into ruin. And there must have been a caretaker at some point, because ever since any of us could remember, all the windows were boarded up and the doors were sealed with planks, but beyond that,

it was clear that nobody cared for the property. The yards front and back were both overgrown and almost jungle-like, and the neighbors sometimes considered trying to maintain the outside a little, but good God. We all had our own lives and properties, and it wasn't like we were so. some uptight homeowners association. It was just kind of annoying to have this eyesore right in the middle of our normal suburban neighborhood. We kind of joked around about the owner, like he was a vampire who lived in the basement and the abandonment was some ruse or gallows humor, and he died years ago and nobody noticed. And this joke kind of weighed on us, and one of the neighbors contacted the

district for, I don't know, some kind of international wellness check. Now, we were assured that the owner was perfectly fine and living abroad and had every right to leave his property the way it was, as long as it wasn't in danger of collapsing or causing a safety hazard. And then the graffiti started, and we knew that it was a few of the neighborhood kids letting off some steam, including, I suspected, my own 15-year-old son, and so none of us really did anything about it. But slowly and surely, the building started to get tagged, scribbled at first, and then some genuinely kind of impressive artwork, and it was better than the squat brick monstrosity with the boarded-up windows, I guess.

One piece was a parody of that British artist Banksy, and I am absolutely certain that one was my son, because he'd conveniently been asking me about Banksy a few weeks before the art appeared. And so, yeah, we called it the Nightmare House, but it was all in good fun. And if the owner cared about the graffiti or the yard turning into the Amazon, then he certainly never let that on. And for all I know, there was nobody in the vicinity who was... even in touch with him, and he simply didn't know or care. Why he bought the house and left at the

rot was anyone's guess. I know the answer now, but that can wait until the end of the story. We first noticed that something was up with the nightmare house when one day the boards over the front door disappeared. That was all, nothing more, just that. Murmurs spread through the neighborhood. Had the owner finally returned after his decades-long estrangement from his poophole of a house, had he employed a caretaker, had he sold the property. Sadly, none of the answers were this positive as we'd soon learn. Squatters had moved in. And looking back, it's wild that this hadn't happened before now.

The place was rife for squatting, and yet had remained untouched. Not anymore, though. A few of us kept watch. Yeah, yeah, I know this makes us sound like curtain twitching cairns, but some of us had young kids and we wanted to know what kind of squatters we were dealing with here. And we counted four regulars who clearly lived there and a bunch of others who came and went. And it was pretty obvious from the get-go that these weren't student squatters or struggling homeless people who just wanted a warm place for the night. One of the guys, the leader, I would call them, was bald and covered in tattoos.

He had about five visible teeth, and when he was shirtless, which was often, you could see vicious purple track marks running up and down his forearms. And he wasn't the kind of addict that you could feel sorry for, though. This guy was nasty. If he saw one of us even glancing in his direction, he'd hissed and let loose a torrent of abuse. He really wanted to establish the fact that this was his neighborhood now, and none of us better F with him. The other squatters called him Crunk. What a name, though. And then there was Blippo and F jockey.

Not exactly how that name went. Then there was Blippo and F jockey. Not exactly sure how that name went. And they were almost as bad as him. F. Jockey was missing a leg just below the knee, and sometimes he'd hobble around on a rusty prosthetic, and other times he'd traverse the broken pathways of the nightmare house in a cranky old wheelchair, and I'm amazed that thing even really moved. And finally there was Finlay, who was the least worst of the four.

He had at least occasionally offer mumbled apologies to the neighbors, while sort of skulking around wearing the same gray hoodie that he always wore. And he also clearly never washed it because you could smell him coming a mum. mile off or smell where he'd been. And this is why I say that he was the least worst rather than a good guy, because when the theft started, the crime scenes often reeked of Finlay, and he was the smallest and thinnest of the squatters, and we were certain that he was the one sneaking into neighbors' houses and stealing food and essentials. Never anything valuable, nothing that could cause too much of a rage, but someone was stealing our bread and our twinkies, our detergent, that kind of

stuff. And of course he somehow managed to slip in and out unnoticed without violently breaking and entering. And so whenever we reported these thefts to the cops, it sounded kind of pathetic. Oh, hey, officer, yeah, someone stole a bunch of bananas from the counter or, excuse me, detective, but our mop's gone missing and I can smell the aftermath of some homeless man. When we did try doing was reporting the squatters to the authorities, but apparently there are laws and protections for squatters, particularly ones that require the property's owner to make the report themselves. The cops told us that the owner wouldn't even respond to them about it, and he was almost impossible to track down in whichever foreign country he lived in anyway,

so for all they could prove, the squatters were legitimate tenants. They weren't, of course, you could just tell, but without the owner actually confirming this or filing any kind of charges, they were free to come and go in their adopted home as they pleased. And they would do all sorts this stupid and creepy crap that gradually wore us down. My family, me, my wife, and my two kids were their direct neighbors, so we got the brunt of the hassle. And it started with dumb stuff, like connecting my garden hose to an outdoor faucet, and then swiping the hose and using it to fill their outdoor pool.

And this was during a time when using hoses would ban, so I only found out about this when I received a letter warning me about my property's water usage. And even though I couldn't prove for sure that it was a... the squatters, but the hose had been left right by the fence and they mysteriously had a full pool in their backguard, and not an actual one or anything. It was like a large kitty pool, but still. Now, one time I did catch them. They'd connect an extension cord to our outdoor electricity outlet and snaked it over the fence to plug in what appeared to be an in-progress stereo stack system like you'd find in the 80s. And it seemed like they were building some kind of outdoor

sound system under a makeshift gazebo they directed. and in retrospect, I should have been more alarmed by what this implied, but I was too mad about the electrical theft. I just unplugged the extension cord, and despite my wife pleading for me to just let it go, I stormed next door. F. Jockey answered the door, laying it on heavy about how hard it had it been for him to answer the door trying to play the victim, but I was having none of it. I demanded to speak to Crunk. F. Jockey told me to wait and then shut the door in my face. I could hear him yelling for Crunk inside and then heard Crunk's response, and he sounded pretty heavily high on whatever. And when he eventually came to the door, his eyes were bloodshot and he still had a rubber strap tied around his upper arm.

To his credit, it was the first time that he'd ever been polite and amicable. He apologized very sincerely for stealing my electricity but told me that he thought that I wouldn't mind because I seemed like such a nice, generous guy who clearly cared for his neighbors. And then he started going on about how we were all children of Gaia and how electricity was a tool of the man. And if we didn't share it and spread it around, then we were just doing what they wanted. It was nonsense, but the way he spoke in the cadence of his voice, there was something hypnotic about it. I somehow found myself agreeing to let him use my outdoor outlet. And as I walked away, I kind of realized how Charles Manson managed to get so many followers.

Some people just have something about them, no matter how about. noxious and vile they seemed to be, and Crunk was clearly one of these people. The more I thought about it, the more dangerous I realized he could potentially be. I knew that we either had to drive those squatters out or somehow integrate them into the community. At our next hangout with the neighborhood guys, we decided that we'd try the latter. We'd invite them to our next cookout and try and make them feel welcome. Maybe they could help. And I was the one hosting the neighborhood cookouts, so they could just hop the fence and join us for burgers and be.

years. I didn't have the opportunity to invite them to the cookout, though. As the next day, I went to get the barbecue grill set up for the summer and give it the usual routine maintenance and a good clean. And to my surprise, the space it usually occupied on my back porch was just empty. It wasn't a tiny barbecue grill either. It was a good four feet wide, a decently expensive piece of kit. How they got it over the fence and into the nightmare house's yard is beyond me even now. But steal it they did, which I confirmed by glancing over the fence, and saw Crunk and the boys grilling burgers on my grill, which they hadn't cleaned, so was giving off a bit of a stench.

When Crunk saw me looking, he waved and gave me a whole, Hey, neighbor, want to come over for some patties? Now I kind of just let out that it was my grill, and Crunk sort of beamed this wide, toothless smile and said, Yeah, he knew. He thought he'd give it a trial run for me before barbecue season started actually. And that was, of course, that they'd clean it all up and return it unharmed when they were done with it. I just felt helpless.

What the hell was I supposed to say? I felt positioned on a knife's edge. Like everything was just about balanced right now, but a single nudge in my entire life would collapse straight into the blade. I don't know if I'm expressing just how intimidating it all was, but ever since they moved in, it was just these looks, these sneers, these snatches of overheard conversation that I couldn't prove were about me and the neighbors, but we're definitely talking about how they'd mess things up for

anyone who gave them a hassle. And Crunk had these eyes, these eyes that had a sort of dead glint to them, crazy eyes, just like Manson or any of those cult leader guys. Maybe I'm just a pussy, but I genuinely felt like if I dared to fight back in any way something terrible would befall me and my family. My cowardice changed that weekend, though. I've been working late into the night, so I didn't get up until just past midday, and my wife was out at her job. My son was camping with some buddies, so I called for my daughter to say hi, but she was nowhere to be found. I brewed my morning, now afternoon coffee, and stepped into the yard for a little cigarette. I know, I know, smoking will kill you. Don't start it, kids. Anyways, I could smell cooking meats and the pungent

smell of my unclean grill, and I could hear music playing on the stereo system that the squatters had set up using my electricity. And I could hear voices. Crunk, F-jockey, Blippo, Finlay, a couple of unfamiliar male voices, a few female voices, and then a very familiar voice sounding kind of unsure and nervous. It was my daughter. My now 16-year-old daughter is somehow next door with these filthy squatters. And feeling like a kind of weirdo but not wanting to look like one, I looked over the fence. And there she was, and that weird kitty pool that they'd filled using my hose.

She was wearing a bikini, one that I'd had no idea she even owned because if I had, I would have had severe words for her about wearing it out, considering it barely covered anything, and she was 16 for Christ's sakes. And there she was. In that pool with Crunk, who I could unfortunately see, was completely naked, sidling up to my daughter and trying to persuade her to free herself and lose those clothes like the rest of them. And that's when I noticed the other three naked girls lounging around that yard. They looked older than my daughter, but only just, and there were a couple of guys, and F. Jockey and Blippo, all completely nude, sprawled out around the garden, eating these greasy burgers and smoking what I definitely could smell was pot.

And how the hell they talked my daughter into going over there and just that scrap of bikini I'll never know. Following the event, she didn't want to talk about it, and I could tell that she was ashamed and scared, so I never really pushed her on it. All I know is that she implied that Crunk was incredibly persuasive and exactly the way that I'd considered when I compared him to Charles Manson. A red mist overtook me. I grabbed the first weapon I had, a shovel, and managed to pull myself over the six-foot-high fence and leap into the squatter's garden. With a blow that impressed even myself,

I punctured that kitty-pool with a shovel and then pressed it up against Crunk's throat before anyone had a chance to react. I saw Blippo, the biggest of the guys, start to stand up, and I told him that if he moved a muscle, his buddy would be missing ahead. And all the while, I noticed Finlay standing in the corner of the yard kind of shaking, looking like he was going through H withdrawals. Jesus Christ. What a life these people led. And Crunk raised his hands and started on about how it was freaking out over nothing. And it was being a controlling father that my daughter was an adult in her own person and could do what she wanted. Now, at this point, I was shaking with rage and struggling not to deprive my kids of a father by committing first-degree murder.

I told Crunk, through these gritted teeth, that my daughter was in fact not an adult and was a 16-year-old child. Meanwhile, my daughter was crying and begging me to forgive her, saying that she was sorry, begging me not to think less of her, things like that. It broke my heart, and I told her that it didn't judge her at all. But I couldn't look at her in the moment. Not that I wouldn't, but I was just too hesitant to take my eyes off a Crunk. I told my daughter to get out of the now deflated kitty pool, grab a towel, and head back to our house now.

Crunk had the absolute gall to moan that it was his towel, and we couldn't steal it. And I responded by pressing the shovel, brand new and unblunted by lack of use, right against his stupid throat. And I think he knew I was serious. And then when I was sure that my daughter had left the backyard, I said, I'm going to go now. And I slowly backed away. As I was leaving, I left them with one final warning.

I suggested that they find a new place to squat because my patience was at an end, and I wouldn't be so forgiving next time. I said a bunch of other stuff, too, like if they ever came near my daughter again, it would be the end of them, and that they were no longer going to steal my crap, that kind of thing. And I swear to God, Crunk just smiled at me and said, May the Lord bless and watch over you. And I remember shivering as I left their back gate and followed my daughter. daughter back to our house. For some reason, I didn't think that the Lord, which Crunk referred to,

was the same Lord I worshipped in church most Sundays. And the squatters didn't move out. We had a neighborhood meeting in which we discussed potential ideas of getting rid of them. None of them were any good. They either involved violence or had no chance of working. And we all left feeling very dejected. But then a mysterious stranger solved the problem for us. One evening, all the squatters were out doing God knows what people like that do. And at least from when I overheard them suspecting, a drug dealer they'd pissed off, sent his goons around, and firebom that house with a couple of Molotov cocktails, or something. And the goons somehow got in through the backyard, hurled those cocktails through the back windows, which the

squatters had removed the boards from sometime previously. By the time the time the fire department put the blaze out, the house was a charred husk. Nobody would be living there anytime soon, and No security camera captured footage of the culprits. No arrests were made. No evidence was found. The squatters moved on, and the neighbors all celebrated their departure despite the scare of the fire. I celebrated too, but it was something that I kept to myself. I'd installed an outdoor security camera after the incident with my daughter,

and it captured the neighboring property's yard, and I'd told the cops that I hadn't gotten around to setting it up yet, but that was a lie. You see, the camera didn't capture a bunch of drug dealer henchmen showing up to burn the place down. It captured a single figure, leaving my house in his beloved Nirvana hoodie, and it showed him vaulting over the fence and was shaking hands, throwing that Molotov into the property, and then it showed him climbing back over the fence and disappearing back into my house. My son and daughter are twins, and my son is incredibly protective over his sister,

and we never spoke about the incident. After I viewed and deleted that footage, I spoke to my wife in front of my son and said that they are very lucky that the fire hadn't spread to our house. The fire bombers needed to be more responsible. Responsible, my wife asked and laughed. I just nodded and gave my son a look. One day, I'm going to have to talk with him. I'm going to have to tell him that he must never, ever do anything as insane as that again, that violence isn't the answer. that no matter how sure he was that the squatters were all out, he couldn't be a hundred percent sure.

But not just yet. For now, I'm just still celebrating their departure in the return of the owner who, due to the structural damage, was able to have the property demolished. Now, for one final sting in the tale, the owner of the property joined us in the bar one night, and he apologized profusely for how things had played out. He explained that he grew up in that house, as a foster child, and while he didn't go into detail, he told us that he suffered there, and he called it the nightmare house, which caused us all to shoot each other a look. He explained that he'd grown up and put the past behind him and become a successful software engineer back when the internet was first taking off. And then, when he saw the house was up for sale in the market,

he bought it with the intention of having it demolished then. But he was denied permission by the district for some reason or another, and instead he was left owning the property filled with this cancerous memory like a and albatross around his neck. And so his way of getting revenge on the house was to let it rot, and again he apologized profusely for not considering the effect that that would have on the rest of the neighborhood. But now, with the damage to the house, he'd finally been granted permission to have it knocked down, and had decided that he was going to turn the land into a graffiti art area and a skate park,

having seen photos of some of the graffiti before the squatters moved in. He ended the night by saying that he wished he could thank the arsonists, and looked around at all of us. Now, I'm sure he thought one of us had burned the place down, and honestly, even knowing a hint of the dark memories that that place held for him, I'm not surprised that he was grateful that he could finally wake up from the nightmares of the nightmare house.

As for what became of those squatters, who knows? And frankly, after the crap they pulled, who cares? My name's Charlene, and I'm from Austin here in Texas, and I think I got a story that you might be interested in. It's one I've followed for the past 34 years now, and as of September of last year, it might finally have come to an end. But don't just take it from me. You can come to your own conclusions, as I tell you, from my own perspective, about the yogurt shop murders.

So in December of 1991, I was working at a store with a little strip mall in North Austin, and I had to open up the store on a Saturday morning. We were just down the strip from a branch of, I can't believe it's yogurt, a place that I used. used to stop by sometimes whenever the heat got a little too much. Now, mornings were usually nice and quiet, even on a Saturday. But on that morning, I noticed a whole bunch of police standing outside the yogurt shop. I knew not to be nosy, but I couldn't help but ask if everything was all right, as smoky black stains suggested some kind of fire. One officer told me it was fine, and that I should just go about my business.

Now, he said it in a friendly voice, but a smile didn't quite reach his eyes. The police were still standing outside the yogurt shop when I clocked out and began making my way home. Only that time, there were men in shirts and ties standing with them, talking and taking notes. I caught a ride home with a friend, got to work on making dinner, and then later on while watching the evening news, I got a new report on what had happened at the yogurt shop, and I don't think that I'd ever been so horrified in my entire life. The newsreader described how, just the previous night, a fireman. had been reported at the yogurt shop. That didn't really come as a surprise, as I'd already seen the scorch marks and the soot.

But the newsreader went on to say that after putting the fire out, firefighters were horrified to discover the naked, lifeless bodies of four young women. On the shop floor, a 15-year-old girl named Sarah Harbison laid dead on the tiles. Her body was joined by those of 17-year-old Eliza Thomas and Sarah's 17-year-old sister. Jennifer Harbison. All three had been shot in the head after being stripped and gagged with their own underwear. And then thanks to the fire that had no doubt been started by their killer, each of the girls had extensive burns all over their bodies. In the back of the store, police found the body of a 13-year-old girl named Amy Ayers. Her burns weren't as bad as the other

girls, but she'd been shot, execution style, same as the other girls. And the whole of Austin was shocked to its core by what had happened, and there were all kinds of tributes and vigils and whatnot, so people could mourn the girl's passing and console their families. But once all that sadness was gone, once all the tears had been cried, it was replaced by this sense of anger and fury toward whoever had taken the girl's lives. It was so bad that a couple of days later, when some teenager was found carrying the same kind of gun as was used in the murderers, everyone was convinced the cops had found the guilty party. I think a hundred years prior, and they'd have broke into the county jail and lynch that poor kid. And I say poor kid because

he was innocent of the murders and tried lying his way out of trouble because he was scared to catch a gun charge. But then once the police rolled him out as a suspect, there was this shared sense of frustration, like it was back to the drawing board, as it were. And we all hoped a new suspect would be found and soon, but we had to wait years for any developments to this investigation and when they arrived, it made no sense at all. When a new detective took over the case, he decided that the most likely suspects were actually the poor teenager I mentioned, along with three of his friends. You see, when they were first picked up, the cops were so convinced of their innocence that no record was made of what was said during their interviews, but that

meant that this new lead detective wanted to interview them all over again. And the entirety of Boston was confused as hell because if these kids, who were by then in their 20s, had already been cleared, then why the heck were they being interviewed all over again? Now, we thought that it was some big waste of time and that the real killer was still out there. So imagine our shock when two of the boys, Rob Springsteen and Mike Scott, confessed to the murders during the second round of interviews. They went to trial and were convicted of capital murder and both ended up receiving life in prison. We thought that was the end to the story, that those poor girls' killers had been found,

and that they were where they belonged. But then in 2008, we got another shocker when the court appeals overturned both boys' convictions on account of improper procedure. It was a shocker, all right, but we still felt trapped in that same terrible spiral, if that makes sense, because the state announced that they were seeking a retrial. I felt like tearing my damned hair out when I heard the news, but then, Then came the DNA announcement, because after all the analysis of all the samples, there was no evidence whatsoever that any of the four boys had anything to do with the yogurt shop murders.

And after that, it was that same back-to-square-one feeling, but it was much less hopeful. Almost 20 years had come and gone, the trails had no doubt gone cold, and many of my friends and neighbors were resigned to the fact that the killer would never be caught. and maybe about a year later, one of the original suspects ended up getting shot to death by police after a traffic stop went horribly wrong. Maurice Pierce, who didn't go to trial and wasn't sent to prison, ended up stabbing a police officer in the neck during a traffic stop. Another shocker, only a really nasty one that time. The officer almost died and it got us all wondering if there had been some kind of mistake with the DNA testing.

I mean, the guy tried to murder a cop by stabbing him in the neck, so even if he wasn't proven guilty, he sure as hell didn't seem innocent, you know. Now, we had to wait another 11 years for another development, by which time we'd next to given up on the yogurt shop killer ever being caught. And it made me sick to think that he was out there walking free after doing such a terrible, evil thing. But then, in December of 2021, we got one heck of an early Christmas present. when the yogurt shop case was once again reopened.

Advanced DNA techniques were going to be used, meaning that even though so much time had passed, we were closer than ever to finding out who did it, because as I might have said, the cops had a DNA sample from someone they believed was the killer, and it was simply a case of finding a match. Now, even more resources were dedicated to the case in 2022 and 2023, which had us all praying that the murders would be solved once and for all.

And then finally, in September of last year, so 2025, Austin police announced that they'd solved the case. After running DNA samples alongside the one from the yogurt shop, they realized that it was a near-perfect match for a man named Robert Brashers. Brashers was a serial killer who had been previously linked to the yogurt shop murders by DNA, and as early as 2018, if memory serves. But without the proper technology, police couldn't put it beyond reasonable doubt until just months ago. It was nice to finally know who was responsible, but it hurt knowing justice would never be truly served,

as Brashers took his own life during a shootout with police in 1999. After getting the DNA results, police managed to get a hold of the gun that he used during that shootout. They test fired it and then compared the bullet casing to one found at the yogurt shop crime scene. and it was an exact match. The news marked the end of a long, painful, and frightening story in the history of this town, one we could finally put to bed. But for some of us, who've been forever affected by what happened to those poor teenage girls, it's not over.

And I recently read that under Texas law, if someone is imprisoned and later the conviction not only gets overturned, but the person has also declared innocent, they get up to $80,000 for each year they were wrongfully imprisoned. The article I read had a quote from lawyers of Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott. They said that they were hopeful that they'd receive the proper amount in restitution. But for me, it's that hope. That's all we can ever really hold on to. So recently I moved into an apartment block in a pretty artsy area of a pretty artsy neighborhood.

I won't docks myself, but you can probably guess one of two places I mean, and it's not the New York one. I love this apartment building. It was more of a boarding house, really. Only eight apartments and the top floor belonging to the building super. And all the neighbors were really friendly, and most of us were artists of some sort. And there was me, a painter, and then we had a singer, a couple of writers, two more painters and a mixed media artist, and apparently a sculptor. The sculptor was the neighbor directly across the street. from me. Nobody knew his name or even if he definitely was a he. He just went by the moniker TTT, all capital. The rest of us would often have sort of group brainstorm evenings where we'd chat about art and set the world to rights in the common room or TV room that we all shared on the

ground floor. Triple T never joined us, of course, and soon the mysterious sculptor became the subject of fascination for a group of creatives with hefty imaginations and too much time on our hands, obviously. Nearly all of the theories about TTT's true identity were ridiculous. Most of them were supernatural, and one of the painters absolutely swore that Triple T was Shia LeBuff, and claimed that she'd seen him when he moved in. And when we showed her a photo of Shia LeBuff, though, she said it was the other Shia LeBuff, and we can never quite work out what she actually meant by that. One of the writers decided that Triple T was a ghost, like in the movie ghost,

and that his sculptures were all clay pots, and he was waiting for his demi-mour to sit at the the pottery wheel so he could finally create again. The singer claimed the Triple T was a beautiful woman whose face had been disfigured in a terrible car accident, which explained why some of her sculptures displayed in local galleries showed various figures and states of damage. Me, I just thought the Triple Tee was a reclusive sculptor who valued their privacy, and whenever TTT had a new sculpture to display, it would be found standing outside their apartment and men in some suits from a certain gallery would come to collect it. Triple T always displayed at the same gallery,

which I can't name for the same reason as not wanting to reveal myself. I did try knocking on Triple T's door a few times. Once or twice, I heard signs of life, and one time I was absolutely certain that I was being watched through a peephole. Just a good feeling, but it did make me shiver, but if Triple T wasn't answering,

I wasn't going to keep prying in there. And that's why it shocked me when one Friday evening, I stepped out of my apartment ready to attend one of our weekly brainstorming sessions, only to see T's apartment door open a crack. Only darkness spilled from within, and I didn't want to enter without permission, so I just said, hello? Through the gap. No answer, although I was sure that I heard movements inside.

The door was open. Someone could be in trouble, I thought. That was just sort of a justification enough to take a peek inside, right? And I turned on the flashlight app on my phone, but covered it with my palm just in case. And when I stepped inside, it was completely pitch black in there. I raised my phone, warning whoever was in there that I was about to light up the room, and then I slowly moved my hand away from the lens. I was not prepared for what I saw.

The room was entirely bare. The walls and floor were sealed in plastic wrap, you know, the kind that they use in Dexter or some serial killer movies, when they're about to kill someone in a room and don't want to leave blood. blood splatter. And that wasn't the creepy part, though. The real creepy part was the statue that stood in the center of the room. It wasn't some kind of horror mannequin. It wasn't some horrific effigy of myself or anything else in the building. It was a classic-looking statue of the Holy Mother Mary, the kind that you find in a Catholic church. The only strange thing about her

was that instead of a normal face, she'd been painted up to look like, of all things, a mime. I can't explain it, but I was absolutely certain that the statue was watching me. I was certain somehow that Triple T was the statue. The statue was Triple T. I took a tentative step forward and tapped the merry statue. It was porcelain, and against my better judgment, I started to reach up and touch the face. It looked like flesh, and it looked so much like human flesh. My fingertips were less than an inch away, and I was about to touch it.

I was about to touch TTT. And then I heard a noise in the room behind me. It was sort of like a muffled cry, like the word help. And I snatched my hand back from that statue and hurried to the door directly behind the statue. It was the only door in the room. And before trying to open it, I called out hello again. No response. I grabbed the door handle and twisted it.

The door was locked, but the moment I twisted the door open, I heard a loud, shattering crash behind me. Quickly whipping around, I saw the mother Mary statue shattering and collapsing to the floor. I had no idea what to do, and I just destroyed some priceless artifact. I walked up to that debris as carefully as I could, and the face was just laying there, and I've been right. It was skin, sort of. It was a latex ball with Mary's face painted on it, and then a voice spoke from an unseen speaker somewhere in the room.

I am TTT. This is art. You are the art. Please leave. And so I left. I left and ran down the stairs and cursed myself a million times for not filming what I'd just seen. I told everyone what had happened and we all rushed upstairs, but TTT's door was once again locked. And once again, I was certain that as we all stood there, someone was watching us through that peephole.

And two days later, there was a small portable safe left outside of TTT's apartment, and the same guys in suits came to collect it. Two days later, after that, I received a gilded invitation in the mail to attend a private showing at Gallery redacted, before it opened to the public. The invite was from Triple T themselves. Of course, I went, hoping to meet the reclusive sculptor. No such luck. Triple T's agent was there and informed me that Triple T's five.

piece was being unveiled that night. Unlike all there are other pieces, it was a video. It was a video showing me entering the apartment, a black bar across my face to protect my identity. It showed me from various camera angles, cameras that must have been hidden in the walls, in the ceiling, and then it showed me from the perspective of Mother Mary's eyes. And for a second, just a few frames, the sensor bar disappeared in my face was replaced by that of a skull. And then it showed me rushing for the door, and here, the camera split into two joint shots, one showing me turning the doorknob, the other showed the statue trembling and collapsing, clearly triggered by some kind of mechanism in the door. Then the rest mostly played out

how I described it. Except as I picked up Mother Mary's head, again the sensor bar disappeared from my face, and this time briefly showed an angel, like a Greek sculpture. And the final A final shot of the video was simply text saying, Life is Clay, and you are all my sculpture. Goodbye. T.T.T. That was the only time the video was shown. I've tried to track down a copy for this last year. If anyone out there has any leads at all, please let me know in the comments.

But holy crap, this was the creepiest and most bizarre thing to happen to me, and I am obsessed with getting a copy of this video. If anyone has any leads, anyone at all, please comment. I need to see it again. I need to understand why Triple T was trying to say this and what it says about me. All the other artists in the boarding houses have theories, and I'll leave you to make up your own. But there's one thing I've learned from all of this, one universal truth that speaks to us all in our very soul. Artists are freaking weird man.

As a younger man, I was a Texas ranger for the better part of two decades. And in that time, I saw and heard things that would quite be. it literally haunt a man until he's lying in his grave. But out of all of those things, there's only one that haunts me more than most, and that creeps into my mind on those cold and lonely nights, when I wonder if I ever really made a true difference. It was the early 80s. I was a much younger man,

and I was essentially working as an understudy to a veteran ranger, who had a heck of a lot of wisdom to impart to me. Then one day, we were asked to go visit a guy named Wolf, Paul Wolfe, to ask him about his wife's ex-husband. A Mr. Billy Staten and his current partner had been missing for a few days, having apparently last been seen paying a visit to Mr. Wolf's house. Mr. Wolfe was by that time married to Mr. Staten's ex-wife, and had shared custody of Staten's daughter, Melody.

He also didn't think her father treated her very well, most likely on account of his wife talking trash about him when he wasn't around. Wolf would sometimes become aggressive with Billy Staten whenever he showed up to pick up his daughter, sometimes very aggressive. And so Mr. Staten decided that he's going to slip a small tape recorder into his pocket prior to pickup so he can prove to a judge just how hostile Wolf really was. Now when we arrived at Wolf's home, he claimed no knowledge of Staten's visit. He said Staten and his fiancé, a lady named Letitia Castro, hadn't been by in almost a week

and since they hadn't stopped by to exchange custody, they just kept hold of little Melanie until they decided to show. Now, we knew that wasn't the case, so we knew that we caught him in a lie, and that was all the grounds we needed to arrest him on suspicion of murder. And then, surprise, surprise, once he was in custody, Mr. Wolf changed his tune and admitted that Staten and Castro had stopped by his place. He started claiming that upon trying to remove his daughter from the property,

Staten became forceful and started yelling at her. Wolf said he stepped in and tried to calm Staten down, but Staten began yelling and shoving him away. A fight broke out, but while Wolf was merely trying to restrain the angry Staten, Staten was straight up trying to murder him. Wolf said he tried, and he tried, yelling for his wife, Staten's ex, to call the cops,

but Staten overpowered him and forced him to escalate. Wolf said that in order to save his own life, his wife's life, and the life of her daughter, he began striking Mr. Staten around the head with an iron bar. Now, he said he blacked out, like the red mist had descended on him, and then when he woke up, Mr. Staten and his fiance were dead. Wolf said that in a panic, he threw the two bodies into the back of his truck, and then drove out to a nearby river to dump them. He told us where the spot was, so we drove out to see if he was telling the truth.

It turns out the bodies were exactly where he said they'd be, bloated and half-rotten from laying there in lukewarm river water. But I guess Wolf was counting on the bodies being too rotten to really analyze, because when we found them, Miss Castro's corpse showed that she'd been shot in the head at close range and was something of a large caliber. Now, this directly contradicted Wolf's story, as he insisted only the metal bar was used to defend himself and his family. But that wasn't the only thing that proved Wolf was lying, because when we dragged Billy Staten's body out of the water, we found something hidden on his person,

a small tape recorder with a tape still inside it. And since restoring that kind of tech was way beyond our capabilities, we sent the tape over to the FBI lab in Washington to see if they could pull anything off of it. The tape was actually moldy at the time, and you'd think that we'd have dried it out and cleaned it off before sending it, but according to the folks over at the lab, drying it out was the worst thing that we could do to it. And we ended up mailing it to them in a little plastic jar of water, and then a couple of weeks later,

they mailed us back a fully working copy of the original. And the audio wasn't exactly crystal clear, but it was clear enough to make out individual voices, as well as what they were saying, and what they were saying contradicted Paul Wolfe's entire story. Now, right away, we could tell his story had been a bold, face lie, almost right from the jump. It's possible to hear Mr. Staten asking his daughter to come with him, at which point she began to cry. Now, we figured this lined up with what Wolf had said about Staten being such a poor father that his daughter dreaded being in his company. But as she cried, he wasn't angry or aggressive with her. He merely attempted to calm and console what sounded like

a tired and cranky kid. Yet as Mr. Staten tried to calm his daughter, it was Wolf who became aggressive, and then after what sounded like a brief struggle, a series of very deep thumps can be heard. The next you hear is that Mrs. Wolf, Billy Staten's ex, who begins yelling, get him, hurry up and get him. Mrs. Wolf then yells, hit him again, and then the front door. And that last part was in reference to the fact that Miss Castro was trying to escape. Somebody ran to block the door and then Miss Castro's life was ended too. Mrs. Wolf then begins yelling, get him up, get him out of here. At which point Mr. Wolf enlisted the help of one Glenn Henderson,

who later confessed to his part in disposing of the bodies and was sentenced to life in prison. Sometime later, apparently during the cleanup process, Paul Wolf can be heard saying, Ah, damn it, Glenn, look at the mess you made. And we later found out that Mr. Henderson had failed to actually wrap one set of remains, and while lifting up to carry it out of the house, a large amount of blood leaked onto the hallway carpet. And this ended up being a crucial piece of evidence even after the Wolves hired an industrial-grade vacuum cleaner

to try and get rid of it. And we ended up putting both Paul Wolf and his wife away for a very long time. Now, during my time in the Rangers, I came to witness a lot of very disturbing crime scenes, but we get there when it's all over and the dust is settled. We occasionally watched pieces of security camera footage, and I understand that these days they come with sound and color, but back then, it was all black and white and grainy, and it ran like a silent movie. I realized that I'd seen a lot of dead people, and I'd seen quite a number receive fatal injuries.

I'd just never heard anyone die before, so the sound Billy Staten made on the tell-all recording that groaned that he let out as his skull was being caved in. I think it might haunt me for the rest of my natural life. Long-time listener, first-time writers, they say, and this happened about a year ago, and holy F, I never thought something this messed up would happen to me and my family. So it all started when my parents, both recently retired, decided to use their part of their life savings to go away on a six-month world cruise.

Not really my jam, but they were psyched about it and I was psyched for them. and even better, the lease in my apartment was up the week before they left, so I was free to house sit for them the entire time they were gone. This was a relief to my mom, who would have spent the whole cruise in a state of neurosis, calling me or my brother to check on the house every five minutes. And knowing that I was living there ironically meant that she wouldn't worry at all. Oh, mother, if only you'd known. In the week before they left, as I moved my things into my old childhood bedroom ready for the next six months,

My mom gave me the rundown of the house as if I hadn't grown up there. I barely paid attention to all the things that she was telling me. Yes, Mom, I know where the fridge is, I know the Wi-Fi password, I know how to use the TV. I know the guest room is filled with Aunt Joni's art while she's between husbands and that I must not dispose of any of it. What I didn't know about, though, was the new neighbor. His name was Mr. Samuels, and he moved in a few months previously. If you believe my mom, Mr. Samuels was an angel sent from heaven.

He was the loveliest, sweetest old person, mom said, despite the fact that he was only a couple of years older than my dad. Now, he baked cakes for the neighbors, so I shouldn't be surprised if he dropped by with some muffins or maybe even some red velvet cake. I admit, I do like a good red velvet cake, so maybe Mr. Samuels was okay by me. Mr. Samuels had a nurse who came by every other day,

so I didn't need to worry about him apparently, not that I'd been planning to. Mom did enough worrying for the whole family. I didn't actually see Mr. Samuels before my parents left for their crews because he was away staying with one of his kids. And so I bid my parents farewell at the docks, waving a handkerchief, and sobbing like a wartime bride. Not really, but then headed back to the house,

ready for six months of hardcore freelance art commissions, and watching all the subscription services that my parents subscribed to and I didn't want to pay for. Mr. Samuels returned home a few days into my newfound alone time, and imagine my absolute surprise when the gentle Mr. Rogers-esque fella that I pictured was absolutely nothing like that at all. Mr. Samuels may have been 75 years old, but he was the kind of 75 that looked ex-Navy seal, and in fact was, and who probably had a home gym, and he did, and he was a muscular, confidently spoken, weirdly charming man, and at first I, wondered why he needed a regular nurse, and then when I first saw the nurse show up for his first appointment, I remember that my mother can be rather naive sometimes. Let's just say that she was the kind of nurse who is paid good money to relieve someone's tension via massage, and just leave it at that.

But hey, the man was single, and just because he was old, it didn't mean that he didn't have needs. And every other day, at 75, damn, I was almost in awe. Now, he did bake a very event. very good red velvet cake, and one of his first acts as a welcome gift was to bring a cake over and introduce himself. I'll admit, while he was charming, he also made my skin crawl. I'm a 32-year-old woman, and this 75-year-old man, it looked like he had easily overpower me without a moment's thought, was very clearly trying to riz me up, as the kids say. And I usually hate the phrase undressing me with his eyes, but there was no better way to describe it here. And Mr. Samuels made no secret of it. He'd make remarks like, Gladys never said her daughter was so cute, or how he'd

wished that he'd known my mom when she was my age, things like that. It would have been flattering if it wasn't so intense, and he wasn't quite so, I don't know how to describe it, but he had this aura where it was obvious that he wanted me to know that he could take me. And I've known guys like this since high school, but never once was he ever twice my age. And he wasn't so much a silver a fox as a white wolf, and once I got that image in my head, I couldn't shake it. Thankfully, I didn't have many dealings with Mr. Samuels outside of him bringing over baked goods, and in the end, as much as it hurts me to have to do so, I ended up tossing them out because I was becoming paranoid that he might be slipping something into the baking.

I'd watched an Instagram short about a predator who did some fairly gross stuff like that, and I got it inside my own head about it a little. looking back, I am pretty grateful that I didn't risk it. And so after a month of catching up on art commissions and emailing editors begging for work, I began to go a little stir crazy. Surprisingly, Mom didn't call anywhere near as much as I expected, and I found myself missing my goofy parents a lot. We had a few Zoom calls, but the internet on the cruise ship wasn't exactly reliable,

and so half of the time it was like watching my folks in stop motion while Mom yelled, what was that? What did you say, Sel? Over and over, as my name is Celeste, but she calls me Sel. I decided to surprise my parents by giving the house a little bit of a decluttering, or at least the parts that I knew that I was allowed to touch. On Joni's paintings could stay, but I knew that the attic was an absolute crap show of disorganization. Plus, I figured that I'd find a bunch of fun childhood memories up there, and maybe some stuff that was worth a bit of money. I remember my brother having a bunch of old consoles and action figures that surely had to be worth something, and God knows that we both could have used the money since we were both artists. I wasn't in the attic for long before I came to two realizations.

One, this was going to be a mammoth job, and two, someone had cut a hole in the drive wall between our attic and the adjoining one. And of course, it was Mr. Samuel's attic. Not only that, cables were snaking through the whole. hole, followed them through the maze of boxes and old Christmas decorations, and I was horrified at what I found. Holes had been drilled into the floor, very recently by the look of the sawdust, and two wires snaked down into two rooms. Now, without going into technical details, I traced the wires to the bathroom and the bedroom that I was staying in and discovered that small cameras had been set up, hidden within fake smoke alarms. Now, following the wires back up and

creeping into Mr. Samuels' attic, I found a laptop running with active feeds of both rooms. The bedroom camera was angled so you could see the whole room, and the bathroom camera was angled at the shower. And so in short, dear sweet old Mr. Samuels had literally been spying on me for God knows how long, and it violated my privacy in the most diabolically disgusting way. I minimized the live feed and found a folder on the dead. desktop marked, quote unquote, best of. The contents horrified me. There were a number of videos of me showering, of me changing, and even a couple of where I was, for want of a better term, relieved some tension of being single in bed. Now, without thinking, in utter disgust, I deleted the

entire folder and emptied the recycle bin, and then immediately realized the idiotic move I'd made. Subconsciously, though, I think my brain drove me to do so in order to avoid consider. law enforcement, and more on that later. I wanted revenge on Samuels, but I also wanted him to live with fear of the revenge. Now, my first step was to sever the wires connecting the cameras. My second step was to head downstairs and reach out to a friend of mine who was, how do I put this, good with computers. He sent me a piece of software to install on Mr. Samuels' computer via a USB stick

that would completely mess up not only his laptop, but any computer connected to the same router. Irreparably, my friend promised. Now, I should add here that I knew Samuels was out of town for a few days, supposedly visiting his daughters again. Now, who knows what he really got up to? It could have been literally anything. And he was due back the next day, so I hurried and installed the virus on his laptop via that USB stick. I followed my friend's instructions and then forced myself to leave the attic and wait a day or so for Mr. Samuels to return. And I could tell when he discovered the outcome of his deception. From his laptop speaker, a robotic voice began blaring,

I'm a voyeur pervert and I also F kids over and over again. Above me, I could hear Samuels freaking out until he slammed that laptop shut. Then I heard his footsteps thundering down the stairs, presumably to his other main PC, and I waited, and then, I'm a lawyer pervert and I also F kids! According to my friend, there was absolutely no way to get rid of this unless she were a tech genius or whatever. Something about writing it to the root of the bios or something,

so even a hard drive wipe and windows reinstall wouldn't fix it. And something told me that while Mr. Samuels might be capable of setting up a pervert spy network, he wasn't capable of fixing this. I was right, because the next weekend, I saw his entire desktop PC smashed into little bits sitting out on the sidewalk for the garbage collection. hilariously they wouldn't take electronics so it was just sort of left there until the HOA contacted him about the unsightly garbage and the next day a snapped laptop joined the pile now i'm sure he suspected me because the baking delivery stopped and he also avoided eye contact with me whenever we pass each other coming and going now i still felt sick that

this dirty disgusting old purve had gotten away with getting off to me at my most vulnerable though I kept consoling myself with a reminder that he was 75 and would be dead long before me, but then I had nightmares about how he might have sent the videos to other like-minded perverts. No matter how much I reminded myself that the low-quality, grainy pictures made my identity impossible to discern, it didn't help because Samuels could easily have doxed me. I live in fear of something else happening, but nothing else did. I confess my fears to my friend, though, who suggested one fine, idea. I don't know exactly what he did, but a few days later, a smartphone arrived in the mail.

My friend told me to stick it through Samuel's mailbox in the middle of the night and just leave it at that. And I asked him why and what the phone contained, but he told me it was better that I didn't know. I posted the phone. Whatever was on there had caused Samuels to become a recluse, and the rest of my house sitting went without incident. And after a while, I noticed that the nurse was no longer coming to visit Samuels, good. And that man didn't deserve any joy in his life. And eventually my parents returned from their crews. I didn't tell them anything about what had happened.

I was honestly just too ashamed. And too worried that my dad, the mild-mannered as he was usually, would spend his remaining years in prison for killing their next-door neighbor if he knew what he'd done to his baby girl. Now, a few months after I moved out into my own place again, mom mentioned that Mr. Samuels had been placed into an assisted living facility by his children. She said it was all very strange, like he mentally declined within the space of a year. Now, I said nothing, but I had to suppress a smile there.

I don't know if I did the right thing by not calling the cops and handling everything in this very unusual way, but here's the reason. When I was in college, I was assaulted. My experience with the police was, well, as I'm sure some of you know, not so good. And I was made to feel like it was all my fault because of how I dressed and because I'd had maybe two drinks, because I'd been affectionate with my assailant. I know all cops aren't like that. I know that plenty of cops are sympathetic, even heroic with certain victims, but I was not one of them. And the idea of trying to convince them that my elderly neighbor was spying on me, even though

realistically the evidence was all there, it just terrified me. And so maybe I handled things pretty badly. Maybe me and my friend taking justice into our own hands was an immoral decision. But honestly, knowing what that man was capable of in his 70s, I can only imagine the things that he may have done when he was younger, fitter, and more savvy at getting away with it. And knowing he's spending the last years of his life slowly losing his mind in an assisted living facility, probably being spoon-fed baby food by a tattooed male orderly who he can't sexually harass, well honestly, I sleep at night just fine. I do still periodically check for spy camps, though,

as I'm quite paranoid and you can never be too careful. So many years ago, my parents still lived in the house that I grew up in as a child. The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Morris, stuck out to me as a kid as a regimental stern couple. Now, Mr. Morris was the type of man you can only describe as blustering, and Mrs. Morris was sort of like a human square with a bullsummer. whole haircut and a mustache almost as bushy as her husband. Now, if this sounds like being uncharitable to them, hell yeah, I definitely am, and you'll hate these two by the end of the story as well, unless you're a psychopath, in which case, may I suggest that you live in a cabin in the woods

without neighbors? The Morrisers were sternly friendly with my parents, while me and my siblings grew up. They had this son, August, who was in the scouts with my elderly brother, Barry, and he was sort of like a mini version of his father. Bossy, always demanding to be the leader of the activities and would become quietly red-faced angry if things didn't go his way. Us kids in the neighborhood had a nickname behind his back and that of a certain Austrian dictator that I don't think you're allowed to say on YouTube, but let's just say that he's someone that you will not see very often. Now anyway, the son isn't the point here. He was sent off to military boarding school at some point during high and the wild thing is that he bragged about asking to be sent there. And so we just grew up

around the Morrises who were pretty stern but polite and mostly just sort of kept to themselves. Occasionally they'd complain if our music was too loud or if we had a barbecue that ran past 9 p.m. And if any of mine or my siblings' balls went into the neighbor's garden or over the boundary hedge, well, you could kiss that goodbye. They would return it, but they would puncture it. My dad asked them why they did this once, and they claim that the balls always hit some sharp object in their garden, and there was nothing they could do about it. What was their garden made of spiked pits or something? Now, eventually my brother Barry moved out for college, and then a couple of years later, so did I, and then a couple of years after that, Andy moved out to go traveling. And that just left my parents in our much, much younger sibling Sammy, who was only 10 when I was 20.

Now, one day, my mom facetimed me in tears telling me that they were being taken to court by the Morris's. And when I got her to calm down and dad joined the call, they explained that they'd received a legal letter from the neighbors explaining that our boundary hedge had been encroaching on their land for years, and then my family owed them over $400,000 in reparations for lost revenue for use of the land as expansion for an unspecified business. Now, the reason they called me first was because I was studying law at the time. Immediately, this rang a million alarm bells in my head, and I asked them what distance the hedge was supposedly encroaching on the neighbor's land, and they very meekly told me one inch. And I asked them to scan the letter and send it over.

I did some research, called a few friends, and discovered that, much as I suspected, the law firm representing the Morris's, not only was not reputable, but in fact, entirely imaginary. The Morris's had invented their own law firm and sent a fake, threatening letter. And my biggest confusion was why. It was obvious that my parents wouldn't just pay $400,000 without seeking legal counsel. And the answer came a couple of days later when a second letter from the fraudulent law firm arrived.

They presented an offer that the bill would be dropped if my parents would agree to shift the boundary hedge 10 feet back, granting a month. larger boundary to the neighbors as a sort of cost-free compensation to avoid any monetary demands. Now, this was something that knowing my parents, if they didn't have a daughter who was a lawyer in training, they may have agreed to that just for a quiet life. Now, I worked it out using some land blueprints and contacted the relevant offices and discovered that the Morrisses had applied for an extension to their house and purchased a prefab guest house, that both projects would require them to encroach into my parents' land.

And so at the time, I happened to be dating an older guy, who's now my husband, who worked for a law firm specializing in this kind of thing. And he did some digging and checked out some old records, and it turned out that the boundary hedge was, in fact, around a foot into my parents' property, meaning, if anything, the morses had been encroaching on our land this entire time. My boyfriend drafted an actual legitimate legal document stating this with the relevant proof, and the letter ended with a confirmation that my family was simply letting things be as long as the Morrises did the same to avoid any kind of escalation.

We hope that being caught red-handed would cause these fools to drop their lies. Clearly, we underestimated just how badly they wanted their extension, or how much money they dropped on this back garden prefab, presumably non-refundable. However, their next move didn't take the form of fake lawyers or legal threats at all. Instead, my parents started receiving notes written like ransom letters, with the letters cut out of various magazines. I'm not joking. They made strange, bizarre threats, such as a promise to kill our pet miniature donkey, something we never even owned. And another letter threatened to poison the coy in our pond.

We don't have a pond or coy. The letters were so ridiculous that my parents kept copies, but didn't report them to the police, not at first. But then they became threatening. My parents wouldn't show me the notes directly, but they let slip that the notes names myself and my brothers. And then finally, a note arrived promising that Sammy would never arrive home from school one day when they least expected it, which is when they finally, finally went to the cops. And of course, the cops couldn't prove that the notes came from the Morris's.

This harassment went on for five years, acts of petty vandalism, weird pieces, of graffiti on the walls of the house, hoses were clipped in the middle of the night with the faucet running so the yard flooded, dead birds and roadkill being left on the doorstep, and the Morrises, these clever idiots, obviously made themselves the victims of their own harassment too, so suspicion didn't fall on them. And then the fire started. Just small, contained fires in the backyard that scorched the lawn. Another classic was that the Morrises would play classical music at full volume at 3.33 a.m. in the morning, every single Wednesday. And when it's time for Sammy's exams, they escalated it to every day. My parents filed noise

complaints, but the Morrises denied any involvement and, in fact, claimed that they hated classical music. And when investigators were there, somehow they mysteriously managed to know and the music didn't play on those nights. My eldest brother moved home, and in no uncertain terms, threatened the Morruses. The Seawords had the gall to call the cops on him, and this further undermined our claims against them. They went so far as to try and suggest that my brother was the one committing the vandalism, despite the fact that he'd been living in a totally different state during most of the incidents, and had an alibi for most of it. Now, Sammy, meanwhile, was becoming an absolute wreck, and we all felt so hopeless, and it felt like the whole world was against us.

In the end, the entire family got together for a family, meeting, and we very tearfully decided that the only recourse that we had was to move out of our family home that had been in the family since my mom's childhood. So that's what we did. We put the house up for sale, my parents accepted the first offer they received, and they moved into a smaller house that realistically was more manageable for them, especially once Sammy went away to college. There's no happy ending here, really, at least not for us. The lesson is simply that Sometimes it's better to walk away than let your entire life be taken up with fighting the fight, even if it is a just and good one.

There is an ending, though, but I can't say it's a good one, and as much as I hated the Morruses for what they put us through, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Remember their son, who willingly went to military school and we nicknamed that Austrian painter? Well, it turns out that Augie had been thrown out of military school, then dishonorably discharged from the military, all without his parents' knowledge. He'd fallen into drugs and violence, and one day, he came home.

Augie held his parents at gunpoint with a sawed-off shotgun, zip-tied them back-to-back to dining chairs, and then he and a couple of associates robbed the morasses of every valuable they could get their hands on, and then, as a parting gift, with a butt of that sawed-off, he shattered both of his father's kneecaps. Nobody knows what caused Augie to hate his parents some of my. It's probably not hard to guess, but when he was caught, he kept quiet. And he was caught a few days later, as he admitted to what he'd done, but not why he'd done it.

He was sent to prison for quite a few years, and Mrs. Morris died shortly after, poetically said to have died of a broken heart. Mr. Morris spent the rest of his years in a hospice, unable to walk, and also never uttered a single word again since that night. And so the new neighbors who bought our family home never had to deal with the neighbors from hell. And the whole story is a reminder of just how completely messed up and pointless the motivations of some people can be, how they can live with themselves when they all cause so much pain, and how when you cause pain to others, sometimes it returns to you tenfold. I don't know if I believe in karma, but in this case,

I can't help but feel that no matter how much the Morris has screwed with my family, They got far more than they deserved, and I can only hope their son, Augie, can one day find some peace. 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.