The Lets Read Podcast - 355: SHE HAD A DARK SECRET | 9 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 341

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about people with dark secrets & freaky fairgroundsHAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?[e-mail] ME ON -►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/♫ Music & Cover art: INEKThttps://www.youtube.com/@inektToday's episode is sponsored by:- Betterhelp --> Use Code "READ"

Long time ago, almost 20 years in fact, a female friend set me up on a blind date with a guy named Ryan. He was a buddy of her boyfriends, one he spoke very highly of, and for reference, I was a 28-year-old woman when we met. Well, he was almost a whole 10 years older at 37. My friend promised me that he was good-looking and that he had a good job, all that jazz. And while I hated the idea of a blind date and how it made me feel so incapable, I didn't regret going. Ryan was a truly beautiful man, but then once we got talking, I understood why he was single. First off, he sounded like a legit workaholic, and while he admitted that that was something he needed to work on, it leads me to the second thing, his poor communication skills.

I called my girlfriend on myself from the bathroom, and then she says, oh, he's just shy, let him warm up a little, and at the time I thought that she was right. I was patient with him, told him he didn't have to worry about offending me or upsetting me, I mean, not within reason anyway. And then over the next month or two, Ryan really opened up to me. He didn't become some social butterfly overnight or anything. He was always kind of soft-spoken and reserved, but what I found out about him, I liked. He was super into ancient history, and I'm Greek on my mom's side, so I thought that was really cool.

And then he was super into cooking, too, which was really attractive for all the obvious reasons. But the thing, or rather place, that Brian seemed to have the... the most passionate for was the Philippines. And when I visited his place, I saw all kinds of photos, souvenirs, and traditional Filipino artwork. I asked him why he was so interested in the Philippines, and he said he'd vacationed there a bunch as a child, as well as an adult of his own volition. His grandpa served there during World War II, so he'd brought Ryan's dad over a bunch to see how beautiful it was. And from the pictures, it was clearly one of the prettiest places on earth. There were pictures of Ryan standing on white sandy beaches in the company of various people,

and then photos of him out in the jungle that he said were from nature tours. All the food looked amazing, the people all sounded super friendly and welcoming, and I totally understood why Ryan and his family had such a huge love of the place. The relationship went from strength to strength. I met his parents, he met mine, and we went on a wonderful weekend vacation together in Mexico around the eight-month mark. Now, everything was going amazingly. And then just short of our one-year anniversary, Ryan asked if I wanted to move in with him.

I wasn't 100% short at first, because I've never lived with a boyfriend before and figured that was something couples only did after maybe two or three years of dating. But since I did really like him and he was everything I was looking for in a long-term partner in terms of cleanliness and having his crap together, I accepted and then moved in the following month. We spent our one-year anniversary together in our apartment, and I know I keep saying this, but at the time, I was very, very happy. Ryan and I seemed like a really good fit for each other, and all my girlfriends kept asking, when's he going to pop the question? I think if things had continued for maybe another year or two without incident, I'd have accepted any proposal he offered me. But, and as I guess you've already figured out from the way I'm talking about, Ryan, things didn't stay all hard.

hunky dory, and it was long before things got really, really dark. Okay, so remember when I said Ryan was a workaholic? Well, he never really got a handle on that. He worked in the city at some financial firm, running accounts or whatever the hell they'd do in those kinds of jobs, and I understood why he took it so seriously and why he worked so hard. And then at the risk of sounding shallow, he wasn't shy about spending money on me, so I tried my best to make it up to him in various ways. And one of those ways was cleaning the apartment. Ryan really appreciated me keeping our place looking nice, and we didn't have much in the way of boundaries either, so there was only one place that he didn't want to mess with, and that was this

one particular cabinet in the closet that he kept in his office. It wasn't some super sinister thing, with him getting all weird in telling me not to dare go prying around or whatever. He didn't even bring it up. It was me after I saw all the delicate little trinkets that he had in there. The first time I cleaned his office, when I opened the top left-hand cabinet on this big old mirrored closet-type thing, I saw it was full of little wooden figures. They've been carved to look like man and wife, wearing traditional clothing and holding traditional weaponry, and the carving was so intricate and fine that I was scared to break them. I asked him if he was cool with me not cleaning that part of the closet since I didn't want to break

anything. And then when he said that was fine, I just moved on to other stuff. Now, this happened maybe six or seven times more. I can't remember exactly, as I'd given the apartment a deep clean about once every two weeks. And then one day, I opened up the little cabinet thing that houses those figures and found it pretty damned dusty. Those little figures, all coupled up like they were, look kind of sad covered in so much dust. But still, I didn't want to risk breaking them so Instead of cleaning them off, I decided to just take them out of the little cabinet very carefully and give the inside of the cabinet a clean instead. And so at the very least, they had a nice place to live, even if Ryan was neglecting them directly. Now, I got the little footstool out of the bathroom and then took it into his office so I could get better access to the cabinet, which was just about arm's reach without it.

I then took each set of figures, pair by pair, and set them carefully down on his desk, before getting back on the footstool to, the cabinet. I pushed the duster inside and I was trying to get it all the way to the back when I suddenly felt the tip of the duster tapping against the rear wall. It felt pretty solid, so I figured that it wouldn't do any harm to really get in there, you know, because I couldn't exactly scratch the wood with a duster, now could I? But when I did start trying to dust all the way to the back, I suddenly felt the rear of the wall give way. Now obviously I'm freaking out, thinking I just broke my boyfriend's cabinet, which was an antique passed down from his Austrian grandmother, too, I think. And so my first thought was to go get my computer chair,

bring it into Ryan's office, and then stand on it so I could maybe reach into the cabinet all the way and fix the part of the cabinet I broke. But when I did, I shined a little flashlight into the cabinet to see exactly what I was working with. I realized that I hadn't broke the back of the cabinet at all. It was a false wall, and behind it, there was a little wooden box. And now here's where I kind of get an existential crisis right there in Ryan's office. I knew he was hiding something from me. I mean, there was a chance that he didn't know that stuff was there, but considering it had those familiar sort of Filipino designs carved into it, I considered that a highly unlikely scenario. And so the only logical explanation was he was

hiding something from me. And now I knew it could have been pictures of old girlfriends, maybe even nudie pictures, and while I do think holding onto stuff like that is kind of obviously in bad taste, I totally understood that he had a past, just like I did. But then, if it wasn't souvenirs from old conquest, then it had to either be drugs, weird adult images, or worse. And I wasn't going to risk that being the case and me not knowing about it, not in a million years. I removed the box from its little hidey hole, then set it down on Ryan's desk, and then saw it had a little padlock keeping it closed.

One that was small, but very sturdy looking. I thought that was me out of luck, but just on a hunch, I checked the little hole for a key, and, hey, presto. There was something shining at the back which fit the padlock. I took it off, opened up the box, and prepared myself to face whatever it was. but when I saw it, it was worse than anything I'd imagined. Far, far worse. When I first saw pictures of a grinning Ryan posing with naked children, you can imagine what my first thought was.

I dropped the photo back inside, shut the box, and then found myself thinking, that's not what I saw, and you've got to make sure. Besides, whatever kind of illegal activity was going on, it was going to the police in its photographic form, and so either way I needed to open it up again and look inside. And so I did, and that's how I saw that they weren't being touched, or at least not in the photographs anyway. Because the kids Ryan was posing with and the photos I was 90% certain were taken in the Philippines

were dead. And I'm not talking dead like died in a disaster or something, and Ryan was documenting it for evidence or something. I'm talking like they showed obvious signs of being violent. murdered in various different ways. There were heads missing, arms missing, legs missing, and some kids had been propped up to display huge holes in their chests or stomachs to show that they'd all been hollowed out.

Some kids had what looked like wire around their necks, so tight there were bruises from it from where they'd been strangled to death. Others just had these big slashes across their throats and blood caked up their faces from where I think they'd been hung upside down and slaughtered like animals. And I say that because I've had a long time to think about what I saw. And there was one of Ryan smiling with this kid who had his little arms tied behind his back, but with just this ungodly amount of blood on his face. And I could never figure out why.

Until much later that is, when I realized that he'd probably been hung upside down before having his throat cut, just like they do with pigs over on farms. I saw it once I was on vacation how the pig's head was drenched in blood and put two and two together before having sleepless nights with a lot of crying. I'm sorry for telling you all of this. I guess I got a little too emotional there and I decided to take a quick break. But now I'm back to writing and I don't want to write about those photographs anymore. I can't think about them without crying. And so if it's okay with a submission, I'm going to focus on what I did after I'd put one of the photos in a book.

I didn't have an envelope handy, and I drove straight to the nearest police precinct to show them what I'd found. As you can imagine, that made for quite a scene. But I couldn't bring myself to walk inside for almost a full 15 minutes because I had a full-on mental breakdown while sitting in the parking lot and wondering how the hell I could have been so stupid. Ryan was not who he made himself out to be, obviously. Or at least he had a deep, dark secret that he really didn't want people to know. about. And at the time, I told myself that there must have been a thousand clues along the way that I just didn't pick up on because I'm a total freaking idiot. I don't see it quite the same way these days, but I still regret not cleaning that mother-effing cabinet out sooner. And I also

regret not biding my time a little and then going to the cops the next morning while Ryan was at work. That way, they could have actually arrested him and not showed up to an empty house with his suitcase and a bunch of clothes missing. I think I must have driven over to the police precinct at maybe 4.20 to 4.30 p.m., meaning I was still crying in the parking lot when Ryan arrived home a half an hour later and realized his little box of keepsakes had been found. And then by the time the cops showed up, he was gone. And they couldn't exactly track his car down because he'd left it right there in the driveway.

I was questioned extensively on where he might have gone to hide out or where he'd might have fled the country to. My answer was the same to both if I had to put my money on it. I'd have bet on him being in the Philippines. Six times a week and twice on Sundays, as they say. And they never did find him. The cops, I mean, and I heard they even linked up with the cops over in the Philippines to try and track this Ryan Down. I don't know if they could connect him to any actual murders, but if those photos really were what they appeared to be, then there must have been rumors or something. Either way, Ryan was never found. At least to my knowledge, he wasn't, and my best guess is he's living someplace far away, maybe not even in the Philippines, but definitely under

an assumed identity. So I'm a big horror buff, as you can probably imagine, since I'm a longtime subscriber of your channel. Love your stories, the scarier the better. And when I was a little kid, I used to persuade my babysitter to let me watch my parents' horror collection on VHS, or have her bring tapes over herself. I'd promise her that I wouldn't have nightmares, and I never did. I handled everything perfectly, except for one freaking movie. One movie that terrified the absolute living crap out of me and gave me nightmares for weeks. If any of you have seen it, you're going to laugh your asses off. Goolies, too. I mean, I guess at least it wasn't goleys go to college, but still,

Goalies, too, wasn't even freaking serious horror movie, really. It's a comedy horror, and not exactly the most celebrated eventries in the venerated Goolies franchise. Now, I won't explain the whole damn movie, but it involves a group of little critters, the Goolies, and one of them

is a little bald, green fish dude with sharp teeth. The movie takes place mostly at a fairground, and there's a scene where a clown is on one of those dunk-tank attractions. You know the kind where you throw balls at a target, knock the person into the water. And ghoulies, too, the clown gets dunked, and the fish googly bites his arm off and then kills him.

Now, somehow, in my stupid kid mind, this was what the dunk tank at a fairground was supposed to be. Some kind of device where the person getting dunked was at least under threat of being murdered. And I guess I thought that the tank usually had piranhas or sharks or something in it. God knows, really. Now, I was about six when this happened. I was horrified and completely mortified to discover that my dad, who was the town sheriff deputy, was going to be up on the duck tank at the local fair. Now, I couldn't tell why I was so horrified.

I asked him why he'd risk his life like that, but he didn't seem to understand what I was saying, and I was too scared of getting busted for watching goolies too, so I guess I couldn't really explain myself very well. I wasn't the most logical or elephant, I mean eloquent kid. Now, the night of the fair comes, and I'm absolutely crap in my pants at the idea of my dad being dropped into the tank of piranhas or sharks or goolies. And I kept crying that night until Mom threatened to ban me from the fair, and I knew that I had to attend just in case that there was something I could do to save my father. Now, watching with horrors, they filled the tank, and he climbed up onto the seat. The tank was about eight feet high, so neither I nor anyone else could really see the monsters that I was certain lurked within. Now, I got this genius idea that every time someone would take a throw, I'd cough or sneeze or make some kind of noise to disrupt their aim.

Now, this actually seemed to work, or maybe some people in my town were just terrible shots, or they were just too afraid to dunk the sheriff's deputy. And the whole thing was just ridiculous. Dad was dressed up like a sheriff clown. He had this Stetson hat on and this huge ruff around his neck that meant that he couldn't really do anything but look forward. and the whole point of being the dunk-tank clown is you're supposed to goad the missile throwers into hitting you. Every time dad chided them on, I remember saying no, and doing my best to disrupt their aim. In the end, a local guy realized what I was doing and joked with my dad that his kid was trying to save him from his fate. Now somehow I got it into my head that this meant that everyone, including my father, knew that it would be the death of him if he fell into that water.

Why would he even agree to it? I was baffled. I had no idea what to do, so I crept around the back of the tank looking for a solution. Now, sneaking through the bushes, I saw three teenagers. I knew that they were trouble. They had a reputation as bullies, and even my older sister, who was their age, didn't always keep the best of company, had also told me that these guys were bad news. I watched them from the bushes for a bit, and I realized that they were piercing the tank with what looked like knives,

and allowing it to drain into the large drainage ditch that ran along the edge of the trees lining the carnival. One of them said something like, this will put a stop to that monster. And in my head, I was thinking, finally, someone else who knows. And these guys know about the gooly and they're going to help my dad out. And then one of the teens turned and saw me. He started to look angry, but immediately I assured him that I wouldn't tell and that they were doing a good thing. I think I even thanked them, and this made them last. laugh a lot and continue hacking away at the back of the tank, letting the water flow out even faster.

Now remember, the tank was around eight feet high, so nobody playing the carnival game could see the water level lowering, and I didn't realize this at the time, but the rough dad was wearing as a part of his clown costume prevented him from looking properly downward, and thus also noticing the dropping water level. Now, the teens told me to keep quiet, and I said, don't worry. you've saved my father. And they looked at each other very confused like. I didn't understand at the time,

but I ran back around the front to witness what? I'm not really sure. A few more players later and someone finally hit the target and the seat collapsed under my father and I guess I expected him to land in the bottom of the pool like some kind of ninja, safe in the knowledge that the googly or shark or whatever had been swept out into the ditch.

And instead, Dad disappears from sight into the pool and the next thing I hear is the loudest, most horrific cracking sound and then a scream that should have woken the dead. People were running up the poolside ladder and trying to climb in and see what had happened. I was jumping, trying to get enough traction in my tiny frame to apparently clear an eight-foot wall, and all I could think was that the googly had gotten him after all and that we'd been unsuccessful in our attempts at saving him. Of course, what had really happened is that Dad had fallen around 10 feet into a pool that was no longer having water in it. Being completely unaware it no longer

had water at the bottom, he wasn't even able to brace himself for the fall. He just landed straight onto his legs, shattering one ankle and breaking the fibula of his other leg. No, eventually, after much chaos and screaming and crying and frantic action and paramedics, our realized that I'd screwed up big time. And my dad wasn't a strict dad, the opposite in fact, and that's maybe why I felt even worse that I'd just stood by and let these teenage delinquents basically try to murder my dad. In my defense, and theirs, I really don't think they intended to cause him as much harm as they did. I think they were just as dumb as I was for believing in ghoulies and thought that he'd fall into the pool and just hurt his butt or something. Now, he spent some time

in the hospital, during which I know that there was an investigation. to who drained the water and slice the tank. Now, I was petrified and kept quiet. It's not like I'd done it myself after all, but I did keep dropping hints to my sister and my mom saying, hey, remember those kids you told me about, sis? Do you think they could have been involved? Eventually, people kept telling me to just shush because I was probably only five or six at the time. Now, I finally admitted the truth of my dad on my wedding night, slightly drunk at the reception, and the fall had caused him to take early retirement from the police force, and he'd gone into local politics instead.

At the time of my wedding, he was sitting pretty as the mayor, and he'd done well for himself, and I confessed everything toward the end of the night. I looked from my dad to my sister to my new wife. Sadly, mom had passed away some years before, and never got to celebrate the big day with us, sadly. Dad began to absolutely roar with laughter, and so did my sister. As it turns out, they'd caught the kids who'd done the crime after a couple of weeks. They'd admitted to everything and been surprisingly remorseful and also mentioned how a little

kid had been there, talking about goblins or ghouls or something. My mom, dad, and sister had put two and two together and allowed me to live with my secret because in their eyes, all I was really guilty of was not wanting my dad to be grabbed by the goolies. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health more openly, now, but asking for help can still feel hard, and BetterHelp's latest research confirms it. BetterHelp's 2026 state of stigma report surveyed 2,000 Americans and revealed that 85% of

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Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash read. That's BetterH-E-L-P-com slash read. The following story was narrated to me by my grandmother, about 20 years ago now. We were given a middle school assignment to ask an elderly person to tell us a story and then write it up, and so I hit my grandma up thinking that she'd share some cheerful tale of her youth. And instead, the story she told me was one of the most effed up things I've ever heard. I got a fantastic grade for it, though, so thanks for that, grandma.

But anyway, she was just over 70 when she told me the fall. following tale, and she's still around at 90, and she's not quite so communicative these days, but chatty and coherent enough that she gave me permission to send it to my favorite scary stories YouTuber once I explained to her who you are and what you do. And so the following story is written from the perspective of my grandma, Carol, and well, prepare yourself for one of the most screwed up stories I've personally ever heard. My name's Carol. I grew up in a very small town out near Rochester, Miner, and I grew up in a very small town, out near Rochester, Minnesota called Plainview. It was a very quiet place right in the middle of a

farm country, and back in the 40s, maybe only a thousand or so people called at home. We'd swim in the creek during summer break and then sled down hills in the winter, but all year round, Sundays were special. Come Sunday, everyone in town went to church, and then afterwards it was home for potluck dinners with neighbors who helped each other when things got tough. Budget running a little thin, people pitch in and leave a blank envelope of cash in your mailbox. Barn burned down after a lightning strike, folks would show up with hammers and food. I remember that.

I learned to work hard and love my neighbors, and of all of our neighbors, no one was loved quite as much as Edith Olson. From what I remember of her, she was the kind of woman who could make you feel warm, even on the coldest of winter days. She was graceful, tall and pretty, with light brown hair and a big smile that always carried to her shining blue eyes. She was a god-fearing woman, too, and every Sunday you'd see her standing out front of the Lutheran church with an old, near-worn-out Bible that she was oh so very proud of.

But life hadn't been easy for Edith. Back in the 30s, when I was still a little kid, Edith's husband, Lars, had a terrible accident at home. Word has it that he was up on top of the barn fixing roof shingles after a big storm, when he suddenly slipped and fell to his death. His sudden passing left her a widow at just 38 years old, and with a young daughter to raise too. Little Ruth Olson was still being breastfed when her father died and when he passed. The whole town descended on Edith's home to help take care of her and the baby, not with a breastfeeding, though, I'd imagine. Now, despite her being half an orphan,

it seemed like little Ruth had a bright future ahead of her, as a little girl who had a very special place in everyone's heart. But then, when she was just a couple of years old, little Ruth got sick, really sick, and she never quite recovered. Now, by age five, it was clear that she wouldn't grow up the same as other children and would most likely be confined to a wheelchair. She was also clear that she'd have to live on a cocktail of medications in order to keep her various conditions in check, all of which were down to the illness she suffered within her infancy. God was challenging her in a big way, but Edith never complain. She'd always say,

the Lord provides, and so do good neighbors. And wasn't that just the truth? The wheelchair, the medicines, and all the home modifications Edith needed didn't come cheap. And so to pay for it, Edith put on bake sales down at the church or set up tables outside the hardware store

covered in pies and cookies. Now, I've had many a happy memory of walking past Edith's pop-up stalls, but as I came to learn, it wasn't all her work, about 90% of it was baked by other people who happily donated their goods for Edith to profit from. Thanks to her husband's life insurance, she didn't even really need the money either. It was just extra to make sure that little Ruth had the most comfortable life possible.

And besides, someone who'd been through that much in their life needed to keep their hands busy, lest the devil make work for them, as the saying goes. For years, Edith was the recipient of endless charity, like in the first. wintertime when Ruth's medication was paid for by the Christmas quilt raffled down at the town hall, as well as the 50-cent hot-dish suppers after church services. And things stayed like that for years and years and years, because Edith and Little Ruthie by extension, they were like the town's talismans. Despite all Edith had been through, she still kept a smile in her face and she still praised God. But as Ruth got older, her condition got worse. I remember there was a time

when no one saw her for a while. And then when Ruth re-emerged, she was completely mute and immobile, being pushed around in her chair by her mom. And it was so sad to see because before, Ruth had been able to move her arms and hands to complete simple tasks, and had even been able to get a few words out here and there. People assume that she was dumb, but she wasn't. She just couldn't express herself very well. But then, by the time she was maybe 13 to 14, Ruth could barely even move her eyes anymore. Edith would push her around the grocery store asking her questions, but getting no answers and it tore people up inside to see it getting to her.

Once again, they rallied to her cause and helped put a smile back on the face of a woman that had so often made themselves smile. But then, just when it seemed like things couldn't get any worse for poor Edith, they somehow did. Now, like I said, Edith was a little bit of her. well taken care of by her neighbors, so much so that, so much so, that when a strange man was noticed to be parked outside her house for a few hours, one of them musied on over to ask him his business. The man was very rude in response, so rude in fact that Edith's neighbor decided

to call the Washabawah County Sheriff's Department to report him. The sheriff sent out one of his deputies who told the guy to move along before he got himself arrested for loitering or some such offense. The guy made tracks after grumbling something about being an honest citizen, but then a couple of days later, he showed up again, and that time, he was banging on Edith's door. Once again, the sheriff is called, and once again a deputy heads over to tell the guy to move on. It turns out, Edith was cowering inside with Little Ruthie, who explained that she'd met the man after answering a personal's ad for lonely widows. She's spoken to him on the phone if few times, decided that she didn't want to date, and then tried to break things off, but the man

didn't take it well, not at all. She had in charge with trespassing on the property, and he was warned that if he showed up in town again, he'd spend the night in jail. But apparently that didn't deter Edith's spurned telephone companion. Not even a week after the man had trespassed, he was caught sneaking up Edith's driveway in the middle of the night by a man letting his dog out front to use the bathroom. The cops were called for a third time, but instead of fleeing once he'd been spotted, the man continued his attempt to break into Edith's home. When the deputies arrived, the sheriff himself was with them and as promised. Edith's ex, if you can even call it that, was immediately taken to jail. I heard he left town the next morning with a black eye and a busted

lip, all the result of his uncooperative attitude while in custody. And that was the official story anyway. The unofficial one, as in the truth, circulated much slower. While in custody, the sheriff wanted to know why Edith's ex couldn't take no for an answer, and so he asked him. And when he did, what came out of the stranger's mouth made the sheriff so furious that he beat the living hell out of him, and he had to be dragged away by his deputies. I don't know if Anyone but the sheriff heard exactly what was said, but word had it that the man had made a very serious accusation regarding Edith Olson and her daughter Ruth. One so foul and disgusting that not only did he refuse to repeat it, but the sheriff felt the need to defend Edith's honor with such ferocity. The years went by, and as little Ruth blossomed into a young woman, her conditions only got worse.

She became completely catatonic, with Ruth having to bathe her, feed her, and change her diapers. And then whenever she needed to get housework done or cook dinner, Edith would sit Ruth in front of the radio and would tune the dial to whichever station was hosting a radio play. Ruth loved radio theater, and I remember loving them myself around that time, too. I used to imagine her listening to Lights Out, the Man Called X, or my personal favorite, The Lone Ranger. I used to enjoy the old reruns of mail call and the March of Time too, stuff from back when the war was on, but I imagine Ruth got more of a kick out of Little Orphan Annie than old war stories. But on that point, I could not have been more wrong. One day, Edith was out pushing Ruthie around when they stopped by the post office for some reason.

I don't know what the heck Edith was doing in there, something money-related probably, but as she's standing there doing whatever she's doing, a nearby clerk noticed Ruthie was looking right at him. Herb Cooper was a kindly older man, and so he smiled and waved at Ruthie without expecting anything in return. He knew Ruthie could barely move by then, and so imagine his surprise when he noticed her finger, tapping on the arm of her wheelchair.

Herb said later that he didn't know if she was doing it on purpose or if it was just a reflex thing, but all the same, she's staring right at him as he's leaning on the counter waiting for a customer. But then, Old Herb notices something about the way Ruth was tapping, something that had a strange rhythm about it that was instantly familiar to him. She was tapping out three quick taps, three long taps, and then three quick taps again, and then she'd wait, staring right at him, and then do it all over again. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap.

Tap, tap, tap, tap. Herb knew that pattern anywhere because he'd learned it during his time in the military. It was Morse code, the kind that they used to tap out over the wire, and it meant S-O-S. When Edith wheeled Ruth back out again with a big smile and a cheery goodbye, Herb had to force a fake one. He couldn't quite believe what he'd just seen, even though the evidence of it had been right there in front of him, and when he went home for dinner that night, he told his wife what had happened. It was Mrs. Cooper who told him to search his soul and to go talk to the sheriff if he thought he needed to. Well, Herb did some soul-searching all right, because the very next morning he drove to the sheriff's office

and told the sheriff himself what he'd seen at the post office. Herb was as reliable as the rising son, so coming from him, the sheriff knew to take it seriously and went over to Edith's home to have a talk with her. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when the proverbial cat was let out of the bag. The sheriff figured something was wrong when Edith refused to let him inside and insisted they walk out on the step for everyone to hear. And the sheriff told her what he had to say wasn't something that she wanted people to hear, but Edith insisted and it took the sheriff promising to return with a warrant

for her to step aside from the doorway and invite him in. And while once he was inside, the sheriff caught a glimpse of what was really going on in that house. And let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. Despite keeping the outside of her home spotless, the inside was another story entirely. It was filthy, with moldy food in the refrigerator, dying houseplants standing in vases full of stagnant water, and what could only be described as a stack of Ruth's dirty diapers just piled up in the kitchen. I heard Edith tried explaining it away by saying that she hadn't had time to clean in a couple of days, but somehow she managed to keep her own bedroom clean as a whistle while keeping Ruth's like a damned pigsty.

He later said it looked like the poor girl's sheets hadn't been washed in years, and how what had once been bright white cotton was tinged in this faded yellow. Edith continued to make excuses as the sheriff toured her horror show of a home, but the final straw was what passed for her medicine cabinet. Edith claimed that Ruth needed all kinds of medications, including blood thinners, kidney regulators, and all kinds of other stuff like that. But upon looking in her medicine cabinet,

the sheriff didn't spot anything of the sort. He wasn't a doctor, of course, but he'd confiscated enough pills for enough pill heads over the years to recognize a tranquilizer when he saw one. He knew Ruth needed sleeping pills, too, as she sometimes found it difficult to, get arrested night. But Edith must have had two dozen bottles of farm animal grade tranquilizer in there, the kind of stuff that they give to bowls before they go under the knife for whatever reason,

along with a ton of anti-anxiety meds and strong pain medication. There wasn't a single medication meant for any of Ruthie's so-called conditions, only stuff to keep her still and placid while her mom pushed her around in a wheelchair. The sheriff had his suspicions right away and he couldn't arrest her for child abuse right there and then. Instead, he put her in handcuffs for some kind of narcotics violation for owning regulated medications that she didn't have a prescription for. But then once Edith was in custody, he ordered a full investigation into Ruth's treatment, and that's how the cops discovered that Edith's entire life was little more than a lie.

She'd been pretending her daughter was sick ever since she was a baby, and then by the time Ruth was old enough to realize she wasn't sick, Edith needed to ensure her continued compliance. And so, she started drugging her. She didn't just drug her daughter either. She beat her, starved her, and psychologically tortured her by telling Ruth that everything, and I mean everything, was her fault.

Everything from her father's death to her condition was Ruth's fault, and if she ever tried to escape or alert anyone to what her mother was doing, she'd be killed. And this was all discovered after Ruth was placed in foster care and was being taken care of by people who genuinely cared about her. They fed her to get her strength up and helped her through the withdrawals from all the medication that she was no longer being given. And then slowly but surely, as the drug cycled out of her system, Ruth began talking again, and she told her story in full. It turns out Edith was telling the truth about the telephone companion who tried breaking into her house. She had met with him, after responding to a lonely heart's ad, one which claimed to specialize in widows.

The man himself was a widower, and apparently she and the stranger had shared something of a budding friendship. But then somehow, and for whatever God-forsaken reason, Edith let slip about the way she treated her daughter. She didn't tell her new companion everything. In fact, it was just one little line that aroused her suspicions. and that line involved her taking great pleasure and punishing little Ruthie for what her mother called her sins of the flesh. I guess with him being a religious man, Edith expected her companion to understand. But just like any other sane person,

he questioned how a severely disabled young woman could ever deserve such punishments when she was too weak to talk, let alone walk. Apparently, in under the guise of offering Edith some financial assistance, he has to come over to check out their living conditions. Edith was all for taking the man's money, but when she'd refused to let him anywhere near the house and said that she'd shoot him if he tried, he naturally grew more and more suspicious.

He knew Edith lived in plain view. He just didn't know where. But all it took was a little ride around town, talking to folks about the town's very own angel in human form to figure out where her house was. After that came the sightings of him. him, and apparently he was only rude to Edith's neighbor because he believed the whole town was in on Ruth's abuse. She talked at length about this big support network she had and how everyone

in town loved her and would do anything for her. And so our telephone companion assumed the whole town was bad, hence why he kept on coming back despite warnings from deputies. He ended up telling the sheriff right to his face that Edith Olson was subjecting her own daughter to a living nightmare of hellish proportions. But like we already covered, the sheriff had been so well fooled by Edith's act that he'd beat the living crap out of the guy for even suggesting she was bad.

I don't know if the sheriff ever got around to apologizing to this guy, but I guess not, as doing so would be an admission that his injuries weren't the result of a bad fall or bumping his head while they were trying to get him into his cell. But I know he apologized to the people of Plainview for not figuring it all out years ago and saving poor little Ruthie a whole world of suffering.

Edith ended up going to jail, and for a heck of a long time, too. So long, I heard that she died in prison back in the 80s. And then aside from being set up with a foster family someplace, I'm not sure what happened to poor Ruthie. I hope she's living a good life somewhere with a good family by her side too, and I hope all the physical and mental wounds have healed, but if there are anything like the psychological wounds suffered by the folks of Plainview, then they took a long, long time to heal.

And see, it wasn't just the suspicions that destroyed the social fabric of my hometown. It was the guilt. Folks realized that they didn't really know their neighbors, not in the way that they liked to imagine they did anyway, and that did its own damage. But the guilt, the crushing inescapable guilt of knowing they'd stood by and done nothing, it destroyed them. People blamed each other, blamed themselves,

blame God for allowing such a nightmare to continue for years and years unabated. And by the time I graduated high school and started looking at colleges to attend, I couldn't wait to get to hell out of town and to some place that didn't have this big, dark cloud hanging over it. I've been back since, and like I said, things finally seem to have changed around town and reverted back to the wholesome, peaceful, and trusting place it used to be. people still tell the story of the evil old witch Edith Olson, but to the kids, it's nothing more than a scary story from a different time, something that can't affect them or hurt them.

But to folks like me, who are old enough to remember all that evil, hatred, and mistrust, it feels as close as yesterday. I live in a small town in the United Kingdom, and all I can say is that it has hill in the name, and therefore every year the town council do this oh-so-ironic sort of thing of hosting a crappy street carnival that we all jokingly call the nothing hill carnival get it hilarious right almost as funny as hanks giving in fact i'd actually prefer that well i'm just being salty because of what happened to me there i used to have a good laugh

there even if it sucked balls and was a bit of a laugh with my mates a good excuse to buy some overpriced handmaid tats look at nice parade floats all three of them usually and get a bit tipsy Now, this year in 2014, I'd recently started dating a new guy, now my husband, James. And he was my boyfriend at the time, but I know I'm going to slip up in the story and call him my husband, so you get the point. Now, I went to the carnival with James, and there were some decent cheese stalls this year, actually. James is a cheese fanned, and I've been known to partake in the devil's milk from time to time, too, so we spent far too long sampling different cheeses. And I kid you not, we spent over 80 quid on cheese.

that day and nearly 20 quid on bread. There's this one local farm that just makes the most insanely good cheese. Now, anyway, this isn't important. What is important is that we were lurking around the cheese counter when the parade started. The first entry in the parade was a local marching band, and holy freaking sugar babes did they suck. They were all these old fellas wearing what looked like 1940s marching band gear, and I guess it was some tradition that they do in conjunction with the local museum.

but some of these old boys playing the bugle and the French horn and things like that, and they looked like they were about to drop dead. They tried their best, bless them, but imagine a group of pensioners marching along under the blistering sun playing marching band instruments. It sounded about as good as you'd expect. And so good, in fact, that I whipped out my phone and started filming them, because damn, this would have made for a good content back then when you were still allowed to make fun of people in a nice way.

and I wish I still had the video, but my entire phone got smashed that day for reasons you'll soon find out, and the video hadn't uploaded to iCloud on my local towns than crappy 3G back then, so yeah, lost media, I guess. Now, I was so caught up in filming these old duffers giving it there all that I didn't even notice something my boyfriend had done. He was looking at the procession following behind the marching band, a group of tumbling, cartwheeling clowns. And by tumbling, I mean, struggling, and by cartwheeling, I mean, some of them could do it, sure, but half of them look more like lads who'd stumbled out of the pub and were accidentally doing acrobatics. Now, one of them was proper good at it. He was kind of a big fella, so I didn't expect him to be as spry on his feet as he was.

But he was doing these sort of front flips and all sorts. It was absolutely fascinating. And that's who I thought my boyfriend was pointing to at first when he kept tugging on my elbow and telling me to look. But no, it was another clown that he wanted to check out. This other guy was thin, a lanky lad with a bald cap and green tufts of hair above his ears. Something about his gait seemed familiar, and he came pushing and shoving through the parade of clowns, storming in our direction like someone over here had actually pissed on his VHS tape of killer clowns from outer space or something. And he shoved a trumpet player out of the way, who let out a sort of goodness me, and came barreling right forward.

us. And that's when I realized that we were this bozo's intended target. He stormed right up to us in these huge clown shoes with this crappy face paint dripping down his face with sweat, clumping up on his dark facial hair. He accused me of moving on from him pretty quickly. Oh God, no, surely not. But there it was, my ex-boyfriend, Am. Now his definition of moving on from him pretty quickly was certainly an odd one. We'd broken up nearly two years ago. James wasn't even the guy that I dated since then. I told him it was a long time ago, and then he got all sad.

He said he'd never gotten over me and that I broke his heart. And then he did something even more unexpected. He quoted that freaking nodding hill scene, that famous one you might remember. Only remember he was dressed as a clown, and he also didn't get it right. And from the best of my memory, this is what he said. I'm just a guy, hanging out of him. with a girl asking if she'll let me love her. I did probably the worst thing I could do, but he dressed like a half-ass clown, and I hadn't even thought about this guy in years.

He was a brief college romance from what I recall, and so I kind of just laughed in his face, to which he responded by reaching in his back pocket and producing a jar of a very cloudy liquid and quickly unscrewing it. Now he said something like, if I was going to laugh in his face, then how would I like this in my face instead? And for a second, my mind went somewhere gross. But when he took the lid off the jar, I could sort of smell it. A caustic burning smell. Now remember that other clown I mentioned,

the larger lad who was actually acrobatic and putting on a good performance? He was right biased now. Now, James, bless him, hadn't quite worked out what Am was going to do. He moved to tackle him, and I remember saying don't, like I think he's holding acid. And the other clown, whose name that I'd find out later, was Len, had already realized something bad was going down,

but when he heard this, he came leaping out of the crowd right towards me, and I felt him slam against me just as Am threw the liquid towards me. I suddenly felt a burning sensation on the shoulder of my t-shirt and immediately ripped it off. Only a splash had hit me, and I'll tell you now, thankfully whatever substance Am had cooked up, which we found out he'd stolen from the chemistry lab at the school that he worked as, as a janitor, wasn't that potent.

But it was potent enough that it caused some genuine damage to my bare flesh and particularly my eyes. It didn't hit my face, though. It hit Lens. Len, who it turned out was wearing thick, homemade grease paint that he swore by in his career as a clown compared to the, in his words, sticky, sicky crap that they sell at circus supply shops, I don't fully understand the science, but I know the makeup he used involved a combination of water-based lubricant and baking soda, and he swore by it for makeup that wouldn't run in the heat. It also meant that the acid, instead of destroying his face, was almost neutralized by the damn grease paint.

He did end up with a few small scars, especially around his hair line where the grease paint met the wig. But Len, who is now a lifelong friend, is some kind of genius, I think. he kept his eyes shut, screamed for something to wipe his face with, and some water, and he quickly asked me to soak the t-shirt and use that to wipe his face clean, and it really did manage most of the damage Amm would have done. Meanwhile, as all of this was going on, James was acting as my hero in another way. Now, I don't want to be one of those wives, but my husband's a bit of a hard nut, especially back then. So he was beating the absolute living crap out of Am, who, let's not first not for him.

forget was dressed like a rubbish clown. And in one point he had Amm down on the ground and was genuinely concerned that he was going to end up getting murder charges for curb stomping this guy. I mean, if someone had tried to acid attack him, I probably have done the same thing, but, you know, I yelled at him to stop and dragged him away. And thankfully, there were so many bystanders and witnesses, including the local Bobby's that James really didn't risk much. Am was comfortably convinced not to press charges in exchange for a bit of leniency in the charges against him being dropped down to something a little less serious. Now, I'm not sure how I feel about that. The guy tried to permanently scar me for breaking up with him nearly two years ago.

But hey, you take what you can in the legal system, I guess. Now, he did go to prison, and he's probably out now, but thankfully I have a restraining order against him that my lawyer ensures stays renewed and active. And so to Am, I hope you've become a better person, because to me, you'll always be a steaming pile of crap and an insult to clowns everywhere. People are always quite surprised when I tell them, but I used to be in a band. Not just a pub or garage band either, although I have the most utmost respect for working musicians everywhere, but a band that was right on the cusp of being signed. Now, yet right at the moment of truth, something came along and burst our bubble in the most horrifying way imaginable. And long story short, I ended up playing a little acoustic set at this gig during my first year of uni.

I got the crowd going with a cover of American Pie, turned it into a bit of a sing-along and then had a few pints with my guitar case next to me watching the other bands play. One of the groups was a three-piece who covered songs by artists that I liked, things like Zeppelin, Hendricks, a bit of Dylan, stuff like that. And we got chatting after their set, and they invited me to come and jam with them, and the rest was history. And the three-piece became a four-piece. They really needed someone who could do backing, play rhythm, and essentially play second fiddle to their singer and lead guitarist, Richie.

Richie could sing like Robert Plant and shred like Jimmy Page, the kind of frontman that every great rock band needs. And so I was only too happy to be the sort of polish that made him shine kind of thing, and shine he did. The bassist and drummer said that I was like the missing fourth piece of the puzzle. Two lads who, funnily enough, were both named Andy. The Andes, as I started calling them, were both great lads and talented musicians in their own right, but they both agreed that I was a great addition, and I loved them for how welcome they made me feel. Anyway, we started gigging together with a new set list, and one that we were really freaking proud of, too. And then we started kicking

down doors all over Sheffield, Manchester, and Leeds at whatever gigs we could get our names on. And very quickly, we started attracting attention. At one gig, we had an A&R guy ask us for a demo, and then it wasn't long before we got a call back from a bloke inviting us down to none other than Columbia Records. Columbia is a huge label, so as you can imagine, getting an invite from them was as flattering as it was exciting. We went down to London for what was basically an audition, and then after sitting down with some big wig and the A&R guy that we'd met,

we were told to basically go away, write eight songs of our strongest possible material, and then get ready to record them, toward the country, and then release our debut. It was what you'd call a development deal, something record companies do to make sure that you're all but locked into a contract with them before any others get their greedy little mitts on you. But at the time, we were all over. over the moon and the future looked very bright indeed. But those next few months, my God, they were exhausting. We kept on going to uni, but no one went home for Easter break and pretty

much all of our free time was spent in our practice space writing songs and trying out said songs at various gigs that we were now being sought out to play. It was honestly one of the happiest and most fun-filled times of my entire life. And thanks to the little stipend Columbia paid us, so we had money to write the album, I had real cash in my pocket for the first time in my life. We all did, and it was fantastic. But burning the candles at both ends, jamming all night and then going to uni the next morning, it started to really take its toll on us, but especially Richie. Richie was the driving force of the band, and without a doubt, and although we were all excited about the development deal, etc., Richie seemed to literally high on the excitement. He didn't sleep

for almost 50-something hours over one weekend because every time he tried to doze off, he kept getting ideas for licks or lyrics that he just had to record or write down. He seemed like he was getting into a real state at one point. Like, he seemed all frazzled and scatterbrained from the sleep deficit. It didn't help that we were drinking a lot, too, but then one day, Richie met this girl who quickly became his girlfriend, and he was suddenly his old self again. Now, we were thinking, oh, I, he's probably sleeping like the dead after rolling around. around all night with her. But we weren't complaining, not when he basically wrote the entire

album in three weeks, with our contributions, of course, and it was fantastic. But then, not long after the album was accepted by our A&R guy and he started looking for a producer for us, Ritchie started acting all strange. He'd either be super upbeat and positive or ultra-moody and negative, like totally bipolar, and the same could be said for his energy levels. He was either raring to go and full of beans or nodding out in his chair like he hadn't slept in days. It was obvious that he was taking drugs of some kind. We just didn't know which ones, as we were actually very naive and innocent for four lads on the verge of being rock stars.

We never shared anything stronger than a bottle of Jack Daniels before going on stage together, so imagine our surprise when after staging a little intervention on Richie's behalf, we find out that he'd been juggling both a speed habit and a sleeping pill habit all in pursuit of getting the album written. Now, it was quite an emotional intervention, really, because we knew that he was only doing it for the benefit of the band. It wasn't like he was out there doing coke and sharing needles in the pursuit of hedonism. He was staying up for days writing music while doing speed to keep him awake,

and then taking loads of sleeping pills to put himself down so he didn't have a complete mental breakdown. That stopped for a while, surprisingly effectively, in fact. But then one day, it stopped working. and both his body and mind really started to suffer. He'd kept it a secret from us because he knew that we put a stop to it, but he was so completely terrified of losing that development deal. There are loads of clauses in them, time frame being one of them,

that he turned to better living through chemistry, as it were. And the point is, we had to get him clean, and at least partially sober before we went to sign that deal and cut the record, or Columbia would drop us like a live hand grenade. It wasn't easy. We had to cancel gigs, lie to the A&R guy, and delay our next meeting, and then make sure that Ritchie didn't relapse or lean too heavy on the booze or the weed. It wasn't pretty either.

It got really ugly at times, but in the end, Ritchie emerged clean, sober, and ready to fulfill. What I firmly believe was his destiny. We arranged that second meeting down in London, got ready to show off what we'd put together then, and then off we went. Just not as a group. For reasons I can't quite remember now, only me and Andy the bassist were getting the train together.

Richie was getting a later train with his girlfriend who had to work, while Andy the drummer was going to drive down to London early the next morning, as he had to give drum lessons and didn't want to cancel. It's also worth noting that Andy the drummer had recently broken up with his girlfriend, Laura, and while he was a bit down about it, it in no way looked like it was going to compromise the deal, so no one was worried. Now anyway, me and Andy got to our hotel and then spent all night chatting because we were so excited. We showed up at Columbia right and early the next morning and at first we're the only ones there. This didn't bother me at first as we'd arrived early like I said, but then as the minutes rolled on and there was no sign of Richie, me and Andy the basis started to worry.

Now we're thinking he wouldn't relapse and mess this whole thing up the night before, Woody. And while we wanted to say no, there was this real, sense of, actually, we don't know. And it was a pretty horrible feeling, let me tell you. Imagine our whole future falling apart right there before our eyes, but then just as I was starting to really despair, who should show up, but Richie? I don't think I'd ever been so relieved or pleased to see him, and we both gave him and his girlfriend big hugs when they got out of the taxi right there in front of us, but then after the hugs and the smiles and the thank God you're here, Richie asks, where's Andy? And it was only then that we realized that no one had spoken to him.

It was one of those, I thought you texted him. No, I thought you texted him kind of situations, but no one had. No one had called him either, but we still weren't worried at first because Andy the drummer was always Mr. Reliable. And that's half the reason they had him as the drummer in the first place, before I joined the band, I mean, because without a drummer, you pretty much got nothing. If your bassist doesn't turn up, you can get by with just a guitar and drums. Look at the white stripes and the black keys. You could even do an instrumental set if your singer doesn't turn up and get the audience to do the singing. And with the rest of the set list, that works surprisingly well.

But if your drummer doesn't turn up, you're buggered. And since Andy the drummer always bloody turned up, we had absolute faith that he was going to show up and it was simply running a little bit late. But then, despite all three, of us calling him in turn, Andy picked up his phone. In fact, when he gave the second round of calls just minutes after, someone had switched it off. We waited five minutes, and then 15, and then we had to go inside or risk being late for the meeting. We lied to the ANR and company man's face saying Andy had gotten sick with food poisoning, and he was 100% reliable otherwise, because again, it was still mega important to make good impressions and not make ourselves look unreliable.

They ate it up, as the three of us were clearly really excited to be there, but the whole time I've got this heavy, anxious feeling in my chest thinking, where the actual freak is Andy? Everything went fine at the meeting, and we arranged to meet again less than a week later to sign all the actual contracts, at which point Andy really needed to be there. We felt like we dodged a bullet at first and that it was, simply a case of getting hold of Andy before A, finding out what had happened, and B, making sure he wasn't going to pull the same crap the following week when we needed to put pen to paper. So literally, the moment we got back to Sheffield, me and Andy the bassist thumbed down a black cab

and asked the driver to take us to Andy the drummer's address. Andy was actually from Sheffield, so he lived with his mom and dad in a nice house near the steel bank. And then when we pulled up outside, Andy's car was in the driveway, so we assumed. assumed he was home. But when we knocked on the door and as mom answered, I recognized immediately that something was wrong. It was the look on her face, the one that says, I've got bad news to tell you, and since she knew us quite well at that point, she just told us, I think you two best come inside. Now, as we walked through the living room and Andy the drummer's mom asked if we wanted a cup of tea, all I could think was, oh my God, something happened and he's either down. He's

or he's in hospital about to die. And so when she told me he was fine, at least in terms of his health, I felt this sort of premature feeling of relief. But that feeling disappeared entirely when Andy's mom explained that her son had been arrested. The first question out of our mouths was what for, and looking back on it, I think his mom knew exactly why, and she just didn't have the heart to tell us. I don't blame her. I'd be horrified if my son's.

son was arrested on those kinds of charges, but the police always tell you why you're being arrested, don't they? So unless he was home alone when the police called around, there's no way his parents just didn't know why he'd been arrested. But like I said, I understand why she didn't tell us anything, and after we left, we had to kind of wade through the rumor mill before we found out what he'd actually been charged with. My first bet was drugs, because if Richie kept a secret habit, so could Andy. But it so much worse than that, because Andy had been charged with both possession of indecent images of children and assault on a child under the age of 16. We found out when a news article was shared around Facebook with people either saying, Dirty Nuns, or, oh my God, I know this guy. Part of me believed

it was all just some horrible mistake, but when Andy disconnected his phone, packed his bags, and just disappeared, we realized it was all true. The next thing we heard is that he pled guilty and received a very lengthy prison sentence due to aggravating circumstances. Apparently what he did to the kid that he met online was so bad, the judge gave him the maximum possible sentence. And then after that, it was gone. But so was the band and so was our future.

The record label didn't want anything to do with us after they found out what had happened to Andy, and the whole thing messed with Andy's had so much that he ended up getting mad into the drink for a while before he dropped off the map. Me and Andy the basses tried putting a band together for a while, but the stink of what Andy the drummer had done was so bad that it followed us wherever we went. And in the end, I just sort of fell out of love with playing live music and jamming with other musicians. I still like playing guitar.

It just became much more of a private thing before I swapped the guitar for a weight rack and started on my fitness journey. It became impossible to think about playing music without thinking about playing with my old band. And whenever I thought about playing with my old band, my mind would inevitably turn to what Andy the drummer had done. And more specifically, the kid he'd abused so horribly. I ended up trying to reach out to the victim in their family, but the courts are really strict on identities. So I didn't get the chance to, and maybe that's for the best. I just hope Andy didn't do too much psychological damage and that they've found a degree of happiness in the

their lives because they're the reason I'm very careful about my own kids having access to the internet. Are they imperator, Joel? That means hail the emperor in Warhammer 40K speech and yeah, I know it makes me a massive effing nerd. In my defense, A, my boyfriend told me to write to you and B, it's relevant to the story. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I'm sure that you said in one of your streams that you're a huge nerd, so I think you'll relate to this.

If that actually was one of the other narrators I listened to, then I deeply apologize, and for what it's worth, I think nerds are cool. Now, I'm going to call my boyfriend Hank, which is a bit of an in-joke, and when the story happened, we'd only just started dating. We were in college, and I didn't know him all that well, and all I really knew was that he was on the football team, and I kept encountering him when we'd play various pickup basketball games on the college courts in our downtime. We were both decently good at casual basketball, and our first date was actually

shooting hoops one-on-one against each other. And then many dates later, let's just say that strip basketball in the middle of the night, is a pretty fun partner experience. Now, this came a bit later, though. An earlier basketball experience that we shared was when we went to the state fair with some friends. Hank and I had been dating for around six weeks by this point, and one of her buds was seeing one of his girlfriends, so there was a lot of social crossover out of the blue. And it felt like we'd finally really found a solid, friendly bunch of people, all of whom were into sports and physical activities and shared interests. I had no idea that Hank had another side to him, a side that I knew nothing about, a side drenched in blood and dust and rivalries that could

spill over into our perfect life. The state fair was always awesome. We always went in the evening, and when there were fewer kids running around. The glowing neon lights of the rides and attractions just felt so magical, even as a college kid. The state I went to college and wasn't where I'd grown up. I've been raised in a much more urban location, so this kind of fair was both a novelty and an extremely exciting treat. And this was the first year that I'd gotten to experience it with Hank and my new friends, so I thought everything was going to be perfect.

It was, at first. We went on a really scary roller coaster, which I love because I got to squeeze up to Hank. And then we went to the Ferris wheel, which bothered me a little because I thought that it would be an excuse for a little make-out time. but Hank seemed distracted by something or someone in one of the other carts on the Ferris wheel. Now, I asked him what was up and what he was looking at and he said it didn't matter, just that he could have sworn that he recognized a guy, but there was no way that it could have been him.

I didn't press him on it because he seemed so serious, and I was still at that stage where you were kind of courting, I guess, so I wanted to impress him and not just piss him off. And so we met back up with our friends, and next we headed into the Hall of Mirrors. And we all found this hilarious, looking at ourselves all distorted and weird and ugly looking. And again, though, Hank was distracted. I asked him again what was wrong, and this time he looked at me very serious and said that he thought we were being followed. I asked it would be following us, and he just shook his head and said, yeah, it can't be.

Now, at this point, I tried to press him on it, but he just laughed and said that he was being a dumbass, as usual. I couldn't help noticing, though, that he kept looking over his shoulder in the heart. hall of mirrors and turning quickly as if to catch someone following us. Now, the place was pretty busy, so it was hard to tell if there was even anyone with reflections all over the place. And in the end, Hank sort of laughed it off, and I did my best to distract him by pointing out some cool stuff that we could do next. And the next thing was a haunted house attraction that you walk through. I love horror, and I was excited for this one, but I pretended to be terrified by every

jump scare and silly face-painted ghoul, so I had an excuse to grab. hold of Hank and play up my scream queen aspirations. The haunted house was busy too, and there were six of us trying to stick together in the cramped corridors. Hank was absolutely insistent that someone was following us again, though. And when a creepy masked actor burst out of a closet, he almost punched him in the face on instinct. I was starting to get a little more nervous, honestly. Who could be stalking Hank that could have him so spooked? After the haunted house, we began walking down Carnival Alley, stopping to play some of the games. Hank won me a little plush fox, which I still have to this day, and we're all having fun going off and playing the different

games, many of which were surprisingly easy to win. And then Hank saw him. A guy with spiky, iced blonde bleach hair, wearing a corn t-shirt, these sort of punk jeans, and weighing probably at least 250 pounds. It's him, Hank said. I knew it. Now his face had gone almost white. What? Who the hell was this nerdy-looking guy, and why was my jacked boyfriend acting like the devil himself was on his tail? Hank said that he had to tell me something important.

He grabbed me and gently pulled me into the alley between two of the carnival game tents, and he held my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. His expression was grave, to say the least, and I swear to God it looked like he was about to confess a series of murders. And instead, he said something I could have never, predicted. I'm... I'm a professional Warhammer 40K player, he said, like at a national tournament level. He stared at me like he expected me to spit in his face or slap him or something, and then I was like, oh, my younger brother would love to talk to you about that. He plays the other one, the fantasy one.

I help him paint them sometimes. So, wait, what's the panic here exactly? Hank looked equal parts relieved and terrified. Later, he'd admitted to me that he was worried that I think that he was a loser and a dweeb if I knew how into Warhammer 40K he was. And okay, yeah, he is really into it. Even when he told me that night, I didn't quite understand the extent of his involvement. All those weekends when he'd said that he was off on some hunting trips or had tournaments or training, most of it was Warhammer tournaments. And so he wasn't lying, but like the guy was an almost pro-level college.

football player. I didn't know that he even had the time to play tabletop strategy games. But I found it kind of hot, honestly, and it later made it easier for me to admit to him that I collect American girl dolls from time to time. We all have weird hobbies, right? But none of this is scary. My boyfriend is a National Warhammer 40K tournament champion. Isn't the horror twist that I brought to you today? The horror twist was that when he told me that the guy that he'd kept seeing was the guy that he'd beaten in the finals he won over the summer. Finals that took place halfway across the country. An opponent who lived even further away than that. A guy who'd been sending him messages online ever since acting like a salty little man-baby saying that he cheated and his army was

OP and he only won because he was attractive. Is that even a thing in Warhammer? And that one day he'd find him in real life and show him what real combat was. Now, I maybe didn't take this quite as seriously as I should have because I'd seen the guy and I knew my boyfriend. And if it came to it, I was pretty sure that my boyfriend could one-punch this fool into oblivion. And so I proposed an idea. Let's make him even more mad, I thought. Hank was hesitant about this because he's a soft baby sweetheart.

And I asked him if he was 100% sure that this guy was the Warhammer opponent, and he said yes. Now I let him buy the hand out into the carnival alley and saw the guy. He was glowering at our friends standing by the shooting range. And I walked over with Hank and said, loud enough to be heard, I can't believe you were worried that I think that you were a loser for playing Warhammer. Like this chump, for example, looks like he plays. I bet you could take him down in round one.

And then I flashed the Warhammer loser this big grin. And he knew that I knew. It was obvious. His face flushed red, and he pointed at Hank and started screaming about how he'd promised this day would come and reckoning was upon him. I then sarcastically said, Blood for the God! Which I thought was a Warhammer catchphrase, and Hank just gently whispered, It's blood for the blood god, babe.

And I just blushed an embarrassment. And that's when that Warhammer loser, angry, spitting with rage, said that if we liked blood so much that maybe we should experience some blood of our own. He whirls around, grab one of the guns from the shooting gallery, aimed it at Hank, and pulled the trigger. The gun made its usual laser bleep-bloop noise, and I saw the mistake dawn on this Warhammer loser's face as he made it. These were not BB guns or air rifles. They were laser target guns completely light-based, and he just tried to shoot my boyfriend Hank in full view of an entire group of people, including at least three cops with what he believed to be a deadly weapon but was actually a toy gun.

That's still a crime, buddy. Now, we were standing by one of those stalls where you grab a baseball and throw it to knock cans down. Now, I didn't hesitate. I grabbed one of the balls and threw it as hard as I could at that Warhammer loser, and it smashed him square in the face. And within seconds, this Warhammer guy was tackled by a local sheriff's deputy who happened to be the brother of one of Hank's best buddies. And so then, to cut a long story short, this is how things turned out.

Warhammer loser, real name Elias, had a history of unhinged posting on certain internet forums, obsessing over how his opponent, Hank, had cheated and was going to get even with him. He'd eventually been banned from all, but the most fringe communities for toxic behavior. And so basically, he traveled across the country after finding out where Hank went to college and took a gamble that he'd find him at the local state fair since it was a popular car. college-kid hangout. From what we could gather, he'd been there on the lookout the entire day. This meant that when he grabbed that toy laser gun, there was clear intent to harm, and had the weapon he'd chosen been an actual weapon, it could easily be legally determined that he would

have used it. And this meant that he'd be facing a pretty serious charge simply for pointing a toy laser gun at someone and trying to shoot them. In the end, we did him a solid, especially because I didn't really want his dumbass trying to counter Sue me for breaking his nose. We agreed with the prosecutor that we drop our own charges against him as long as he was forced to undergo mandatory anger management. Hank also used his connections in the Warhammer seen to ensure that this Elias was banned for life from a number of high-profile national tournaments. It was all very silly and almost comical. But if you think about it, the fact that he traveled across the country and was willing to fire at least a BB gun or an air,

rifle at my boyfriend in revenge for sucking at Warhammer is actually pretty freaking terrifying. And it's a reminder that there are some absolutely unhinged people out there. On the plus side, though, Hank and I bonded even further over his nerdy hobby, and he helped my brother evolve from the Fantasy Warhammer to the 40K universe, and now they both help run a local tabletop gaming group. Sometimes I even hang out, and I mostly just play Pokemon. Anything else is a bit too violent for me. Way back in the day when I was still in my early 20s, I used to rent a bed sit and Croydon.

Now, for you Americans listening, Croydon is a part of South London, and a bed sit is what we call a studio apartment. Now, basically just a bed, a kitchenette, and an attached bathroom, all in one room. Now, I found it after my mom kicked me out. Now, long story, we have a better relationship now, and I was really grateful to the landlord, a guy called Vic. who basically fast-tracked the whole application process so I could keep a roof over my head. Vic turned out to be a really chilled out fella. He wasn't the kind of landlord to hold surprise inspections. He always got repairs and maintenance issues sorted as quickly as he could, and he was great about warning other tenants about loud music or late-night get-togethers,

and so naturally I didn't mess about when it came to rent with him. I had it ready, all 400 quid of it, on the first day of every month, and me and Vic always had ourselves a little chat and a catch-up whenever he came over. Now, this went on for nearly five years, and although it wasn't strictly the nicest place to live, West Croydon can be a bit rough, I was very happy there. I was able to patch things up with my mom. I had somewhere to take girls, and I had my freedom. And then one day, on the first of the month, Vic didn't show up to collect the rent.

I got a bit worried about him because it was the first time in literally five years that he hadn't showed up to collect. At least the first time where he hadn't warned me in advance that collection would be late. Now, it wasn't exactly desperate to part with my rent money. I mean, who really is. But I liked Vic, and I was a bit worried about him, so I tried to give him a call. Now, his phone was busy the first time I tried and then busy the second time, too. And then when I tried about an hour later, I got one of those automated, this person's phone has switched off messages. The only thing I could think of at the time was that, he'd been taken ill, seriously ill too, by the looks of things, and that I'd have to just be

patience and wait for him to show up and collect the rent. A few days later, I got a knock on my door from a guy claiming to be Vic's nephew, who's there to collect the rent. Now, right away, I'm very suspicious. I've never seen this guy before in my life, and I still can't get Vic on the phone to confirm whether or not this was his nephew. Now, I ended up telling the lad in the nicest way possible to just F off and not come back till he had proof that he was Vick's nephew. It was definitely in the mentality of this has to be a scam of some variety, but the guy, claiming to be the nephew, actually seemed to respect my position. And that had me questioning myself a bit, but I still thought that it was best to only hand cash over to Vick. And so I waited

and waited, but Vick still didn't show up and he still didn't return any of my calls. It wasn't until the first of the next month that I started to get worried again. I told myself Vic would be around with an explanation and to collect the two months' worth of rent that I owed him, but as you can probably guess, he didn't show up and he didn't call, and I expected another knock from his nephew, but that didn't come either. Now, a whole third month rolled around, and I still hadn't paid anyone any rent. And then you guessed it, there was no sign of Vic or his nephew, who I now believe was legitimately his nephew. And then a few days later, I got a knock on the door.

I'm expecting it to be Vic or his quote-unquote nephew, but it was neither. It was a woman from the council, and she'd come to serve me an eviction notice. The only clue that she gave me was that she told me the property had been seized by the government, and since it was due to be sold at auction, I obviously had to leave. I asked her what was going on with Vic, but she said that she didn't know. All she knew was that the building was due to be seized to pay for money that he owed. At the time, I assumed Vic had been fiddling with his taxes or something. I paid him all the rent and cash, and so I'd assumed that he wasn't reporting all of his income,

probably. And then when I got worried about the seizure, I thought his luck had finally run out. But it wasn't taxes he owed, and while I had to wait quite a while to work out what had happened, it wasn't any less shocking for me when I found out. Basically, Vic had the outward appearance of a legitimate landlord, and I suppose to me, he was just that. But as it turns out, Vic had another tenant of sorts, one he didn't tell another living soul about outside of his immediate family.

This tenant didn't pay any rent, but technically he didn't make any money either because Vic was using the guy for slave labor. Now, to cut a long story short, a young man had arrived in the UK illegally from Vietnam about 10 years prior. He heard about the flats that Vic was renting, but didn't have any money or papers to be able to move in, and while most landlords wouldn't be interested in entertaining someone like that, and might point them in the direction of a homeless shelter, Vic did the opposite.

But for reasons that were anything but charitable. As it happens, Vic wanted to get into growing weed in the basement of his house. It turns out a friend of his was involved in the drug trade and told him what a perfect spot his basement would be for growing some ganja. Now his wife and grown-up son were fine with it, as it meant having loads of extra cash coming in. The only trouble was, none of them knew how to grow it. And so when he asked the Vietnamese fellow what skills he had

and the Viet guy said that he'd worked on a vegetable farm or something back home, Vick saw an opportunity. He enlisted the Vietnamese guy's help in converting his basement into what was basically a one-bedroom flat, with one portion of it dedicated to a living space and the other converted into a small-scale weed farm. Now, the Viet guy stayed in Vick's basement, whole time and then once all the growing supplies were there, he was offered a job, or rather, a job that very quickly turned out to be no job at all. The Vietnam guy was told that if he stayed in the basement and grew weed for Vic, he'd be able to stay in the country. Vic would keep him safe

in secret down there and would pay for all of his meals, et cetera, without charging any rent. He was free to explore the back garden so long as it was at night, but he obviously couldn't freely go walking about because the police would arrest him and send him back to Vietnam. Or at least, that's what the Vietnamese guy was told. Vic made out like he was doing the guy a favor, and that he'd sort him out with false documents and all that once he'd grown a few grand's worth of puff for him. But then once he'd sold his first crop and realized how much money he could make, he started lying to the Vietnamese guy and basically saying that he couldn't leave.

Vic said the immigration people had been sniffing around. They hadn't. and that it wasn't safe for him to come out. He also said the Vietnamese guy owed him money for rent and food and energy bills and all of that, so he couldn't leave until he paid them off. It got to the point Vic would start locking the door to the basement and putting a bookcase in the way so nobody could see it, and so within just a few short months that Vietnamese fellow had gone from illegal immigrant

to a modern-day slave. Apparently this went on for literally years, with conditions for the immigrant guy getting worse, and worse till one day, he snapped. Vic was in his 50s or 60s, and the Vietnamese guy was in his 20s by the time he escaped, so he easily overpowered him when Vic came down in the basement one day and then said he could either release him or die. And Vic chose not to die.

The article I read online said the Vietnamese lad ended up getting picked up by the police for stealing a sandwich from Greg's. And then after he told his story, the police went to check if what he said was true, and that's when they found Vic's Little Grow operation. He hadn't even bothered to dismantle it, having most likely assumed that the Viet guy was too scared to talk to the police. But he was dead wrong about that, wasn't he? Because this Vietnamese lad was so pissed off

that he'd been lied to and mistreated for so long that he sang like a canary once they got him down at the station. I suppose he was looking for revenge for what Vic did to him, and you can bet you're ours he got it. Not only did Vic, his wife and his son go to prison for a mix of drugs and modern slavery offenses, but the Vietnamese guy ended up getting tens of thousands of pounds in compensation. A lot of it generated from the sale of Vic's rental properties. No, I'm not sure what happened to him after that.

If he stayed in the UK or went home with his payout, because I imagine he could live like a king back in Vietnam with the exchange rate being what it is. Either way, I wish him all the best, but for me, The scariest thing is how Vic came across as this nice, laid-back fella, when in reality, he was probably the only person I ever met that I can comfortably describe as evil. So this happened back in the 80s before health and safety was really quite as severe as it is now. We were just a group of thrill-seeking kids heading to the county fair and excited to ride the most dangerous, unstable, poorly-built rides we could find.

The more rickety and unsafe it felt, the more we loved it. Weren't a lot of us like that as kids? That was the thrill of the fair, really, wasn't it? The idea that these gruff, greasy men operating the rides genuinely didn't give enough of a crap about you to care whether you lived or died, and that there was every chance that the Tilda Whirl or bumper cars could go flying up the tracks in some fiery wreck, killing you instantly. I guess that was just part of the fun.

Or maybe we were just idiots. We were at a theme park one day, and it had a reputation for being a bit unsafe, and it was in our local area, so of course we hung out there a lot. It was a coastal fun fair and brought in so much money to the town that I'm convinced that brown envelopes changed hands to get safety checks signed off, because let me tell you, there were so many minor injuries and breakdowns in that place. Nothing like the incident that happened to our buddy that day, though. We were strolling down the boardwalk, just taking a break between rides.

It was five of us, four guys and one girl, and we were all sort of alternative to. The girl, Layla, had huge permed hair sprayed green. I had a spiky mohawk. You get the picture. People kept away from us, even though we were just really posers, honestly, and wouldn't have heard a fly. Our one buddy, though, the real thrill-seeker, had decided that the real punk move was dressed like a 50s dad with a beige tank top, braces, chinos, and thick-rimmed glasses.

It was honestly hilarious. These four stereotypical alternatives and this one guy who looked like if he were any more square, he'd be a Tetris piece. The square one, obviously, but it was hilariously ironic. He was the wildest one of us, and while I wouldn't say that he was the leader, he definitely was the linchpin that kept us all together. His idol was Andy Kaufman, and if that gives you any idea as to what kind of guy he was, in fact, hey, let's just call him Tony, as in Tony Clifton, the beloved Andy Kaufman character. Our buddy was always doing that impression, and he'd get a kick out of this. And so we were just wandering around chilling when Tony stopped us all, acting all covert like, and ushered us to duck into this little

alleyway. I went to ask him what was up, but he put his finger to his lips theatrically and pointed towards this little shed where he could hear two carnival workers talking. They were talking about one of the roller coasters, a fairly mid-one, not even one that we'd usually bother with. One of them was telling the other one that the safety bars in the second was being a bit screwy. And so to make sure that they told the other guy running the coaster to really slam it into place, or better yet, not use that specific carriage at all. Now, Tony looked at the rest of us and just whispered, we're doing this, and then took off into a sprint running toward the coaster. We jogged behind him, completely aware of what he had planned

without him even having to explain it to us. He was going to ride the coaster without the safety bar down and figured that if he could get there before the employee could warn the current guy on shift, he'd be able to make sure that the bar didn't lock. It had been one of his weird life dreams to ride a roller coaster, bearback, as he put it. We got to the coaster, which didn't even have a line because it wasn't that popular, and the rest of us were like, no way, man, we're not stupid. You do it if you want to, and so we did. We watched from the ground as Tony let the employee push the safety bar down,

and then he gave us a wink and a thumbs up, and sort of cheekily showed us that the bar wasn't locked in place properly, and the ride took off. We could see that Tony was holding the bar steady and, God damn him, he was managing it, and he was using one hand to make sure that the bar didn't fly open and the other to hold himself in place against the coaster. It was honestly really impressive. We really thought that he was going to do it. The absolute maniac was going to fulfill his dream of riding that coaster bear back.

And then came the incline in the big drop. At the top, Tony leaned down towards us, a speck in the distance and gave us another thumbs up. I guess he misjudged exactly when the roller coaster was going to shoot downward because he wasn't actually holding on when it did so. And so the roller coaster shot forward to begin its descent, building speed over the arch at the top, and Tony went flying out of that cart and through the air. And I swear it felt like slow motion. Our friend's body catapulting out of the roller coaster and through the air. And I swear I saw a smile on that Dufus's face, but that could have just... been wishful thinking. Screams were erupting around me as people saw the body flying off that

roller coaster, but it all sounded underwater to me, and my eyes just followed my friend as he ragdawed through the air. For a moment, I wondered if maybe he'd land in the sea, it'd be fine, but I could see that he was heading toward the forested area just behind the park. I ran faster than I'd ever run before, and by now, Tony's body had disappeared from sight beyond that tree line. Now, I was. I was, was the first to reach the scene, and what meant my eyes wasn't so much a human body anymore, it was pieces of a body, like a person had exploded from within. I don't know if this was because he'd hit some trees on the way down or what, but I can only imagine from the amount of damage that it was very quick and he didn't really

feel it. I felt it, though. Deep in my heart and soul, and I've been feeling it ever since. I see that scene in my dreams at least once a month, and yet I somehow know that our goofy, ridiculous friend Tony would absolutely get a kick out of dying by being catapulted off of a roller coaster. Just maybe not 21 years of age. I think he would have liked to live a bit longer than that, honestly. Unsurprisingly, this death was a bit of a step too far for that theme park

and was forced to close down. It eventually reopened a few years later under new ownership. Tony's family tried suing the park, but it turns out that the workers who had been talking about the damaged ride had overheard Tony's declarations about riding it. And eventually under oath, a couple of the group had to admit that Tony knew the ride was faulty, but that he'd intentionally ridden it unsafely. Now, I really don't think that Tony would have wanted that park to get in trouble for his own actions. His family did still get a payout, and the owners dealt with some hefty fines. but I think the alternative would have left them liable for manslaughter, and I know Tony wouldn't have wanted that. He died doing what he loved, riding a roller coaster in the most dangerous way possible,

and while I miss him every day, I can't help but hope that he's up there somewhere, laughing his ass off with Andy Kaufman at his own stupidity. I grew up outside of Phoenix, Arizona. We lived rough, played rough, and we were poorer than dirt and had the survival instincts to prove it. Shortly after the events of this story, I joined the Marines, and it was the making of me. I'm a different man now with lovely kids and even lovelier grandkids. My kids will agree it's fine. And back then, though, we were rough little bastards who thought nothing and no one could knock us off our pedestals.

But I suppose we hadn't reckoned on any carnies. Now, I always say, if you ever want to meet men who live harder than you, play rougher than you, and show loyalty to a found family more than you ever will, then you have three options. Join the military, ride with a biker gang, or become a carney. Traveling carnival folk are like nothing else. They will literally kill for each other, and while their code of morals might differ from yours or mine,

I respect and understand that. I most certainly did not when the Stanfolk family carnival pitched up in the Pottington's field just outside of our crap-hole little town. We saw the carnival as an excuse to go cause a bit of trouble, maybe pick a pocket or steal a purse or two, show what double-hard bastards we were on some of the rides to impress the chicks. And most importantly, we were absolutely determined to disprove the myth that carnival games were impossible to win. They were rigged, sure, but we were better.

We'd clear them out, or so help them God, we'd make sure that they never conned another small town again. Now, this was all before we even went to the carnival, mind you, so, We definitely didn't just roll up there that night and my buddy's pickup with the best of attitudes. It was me, two of my male buddies, and then my girlfriend and her friend, who my buddy Pete, the one who owned the truck, was trying to hook up with. Now, don't think that she was too interested, but that didn't stop him from trying. We tried a couple of rides, but mostly we were determined to look good to the girls and win some carny game prizes, so we got hopped up on churros and soda and headed to the games area. Now, the way it worked there was that there was a prize booth where you could exchange tickets for prizes. Each carnival game let you win tickets, and there were big signs saying win 20 tickets here and get 50 tickets there,

so it looked like things were doable. Me and my girlfriend wandered over to the prizes tent first, and she set her eyes on this big, fat, plush octopus. She was absolutely in love with the damn thing. This big green chubby dude, big as a St. Bernard. I can remember it perfectly. and it was only a hundred tickets. Holy crap, I thought. That was like two or three major wins on the carnival games.

Now, first, I headed to the shooting range, where you had to shoot some moving metal ducks with these BB guns, and each down duck was worth one ticket, and if you got ten, then you got a ten ticket bonus. Firstly, I'm a good shot. I grew up dirt poor and with nothing to do, so shooting cans with an air rifle was an actual genuine pastime of mine. I spent $3 to get 30 shots,

which was a decent amount of money. money back in the 70s, and I managed to down 10 total ducks. I was pretty furious because I'd missed the first four or five shots due to the gun being incorrectly calibrated, a well-known carnival game trick. Now, I knew this, and it still took me a while to adjust, and eventually, over the next 25 shots, I'd down 10 ducks. The game attendant handed me 10 tickets with a wide-eyed look, like I'd somehow broken their all-time record, and then I say, hey, buddy, I got 10 ducks, though, aren't that 20 tickets? And that's when he pointed out that tiny small print,

which stated that it had to be 10 ducks in a row and also within an individual clip. So you have to spend a dollar and hit every target using the bullets from that dollar. Clearly, some absolute BS designed to prevent you from basically ever getting the bonus tickets. The next was the ring toss, and this was just straight up outright impossible.

The rings were too small to fit over the boxes, another famous carney trick. And of course, when you accuse them, of that. They dropped the ring over the box and show that, no, it does fit. Yeah, it fits when you're dropping it from above, you person, but it's pretty much impossible to land a single target. The guy even gave me a free ticket for, in his words, sucking worse than anyone else he's ever seen play the game. I knew that he was trying to bait me into spending more or getting violent, but I wasn't having it. Instead, I gathered the boys together and sent them off to try winning

these tickets. I could see my girl looking at me like, why am I with this loser? Or at least I felt that way at the time, and I was damn well going to get those hundred tickets I needed. I had 11. It would be doable. And here's how it went down. My buddy, who was a star baseball pitcher, managed to get a measly four tickets from tossing baseballs at cans. The hookah duck was even worse, and we got one ticket from that. Throwing darts at playing cards, we did well at that, only to be told afterward that the rules stated that you have to hit them in numerical order for them to count. Sure, it was written there, but put it this way. My vision was strong enough that I passed the military entrance exam flawlessly,

and there was no way that I could have read that sign. We tried the basketball game for a while, but it was obvious that the hoops were too small for the balls. Why had we decided that we could beat the carnies at their own game? I have no idea. And at this point, we had 20 tickets, a fifth of what I needed for that octopus. Now, it was enough for a prize. We could have gotten a little toy Spider-Man or some doll or used the tickets for free rides.

But no, I was determined to get my girl that freaking octopus and I was about to run out of money. I made one last attempt. I persuaded my friend to take my girl elsewhere and then when crawling to the prize tent and begged them to let me just buy the octopus from them. I had $20 left in my name for my paycheck, and that was meant to last for almost a month and I offered them the entire. $20. He told me that he'd been my age once, and he knew the value of impressing a chick, but his dad, who ran the carnival, would kick his ass if he sold it to me for $100, let alone 20. He was trying to be nice. I know he was, but I was an arrogant little crap, so what I did was turn, point at the ferris wheel, and yell, holy crap, that rides on fire! And the prize

tent guy instinctively turned just for a second, and I shoved him over, leaped the counter, grabbed the octopus, and then off I was running. I screamed to my friends to follow me, that we had to get back to the truck. They saw me hooning it down the fairway, waving this giant octopus plushy over my head, and they knew crap was about to go down. And suddenly, I stopped in my tracks. This huge guy holding a chain stood in front of me, and I could see this corporate-looking name tag stuck to his leather jacket that read Stan Stan Folk. And I guessed he was the owner. He accused me of trying to take off with his octopus. And I said I wouldn't have this if this carnival games weren't rigged and if they had any honor. And this is how I know Carnies do have

honor. They just see those of us who play their game as entering into a tacit agreement to be screwed, I guess. I've since talked to other Carnies about this, including a couple I met in the service and I feel like I understand where these guys were coming from a lot more now. I didn't at the time, though. Stan Stanfolk was so incensed at me calling a spade a spade that he told me he and his family were going to chain us up behind their bikes and drag us through our po-dunk little town until we were begging for our lives. And then chaos broke out behind me.

My buddies had taken in upon themselves to start smashing up the rig booths until whatever they could get their hands on, garbage cans, benches, baseball bats, from one of the games, all sorts of stuff. Stanfolk and the carnies had no idea who to go after first. As he was momentarily distracted, I shoulder charged him and snatched the chain from him, and then I ran to the offending shooting gallery and slammed the chain down into the counter. All in all, I don't think we did that much damage, but we did enough so that in our minds we'd cause the carnies who'd been ripping off honest folk

a decent hit to their income. And like I say, I see things differently now, and I, I think it was our own damn fault for willingly playing games that we knew we couldn't win and deciding that we deserve to win anyway. Maybe others will disagree and think that the carnies got what they deserve. All I'm going to add to this is, after I joined the military and had a wage, Stan Stan Folks Traveling Carnival received a small, mysterious donation every month from an unknown source. Now, back to the story, though, me and the buds floored it.

I grabbed my girl and practically carried her to the truck, leaping into the back with her and her friend. Pete got into the driver's seats and another buddy and the passengers, and we kicked us and flew out of there. We were not home free, though. At least three or four carnies on motorcycles began chasing us and shouting things we couldn't hear, but they were certainly threats, I would think. And the chase felt like it went on for hours, but it couldn't have been that long. And this was where I made my fatal mistake, though. Being a cocky a-hole, I semi-stood up in the back of the bed of the truck and waved the plush octopus at them as if to taunt them. and I freaking lost my hold of the thing, and it flew out of my hands and off into the desert. All that effort, and I'd lost the goddamn octopus anyways. Eventually, the carnies clearly gave up, knowing they'd come off worse than us if the law got involved,

and unsurprisingly, they did report our act of vandalism, and the next day the traveling fair had mysteriously left town. Me and my buddies tried to backtrack over the route that we'd traveled during the chase, but there was no sign of that freaking octopus. The girl that I've been trying to impress broke up with me that next day. Needless to say, she was not impressed by someone who flew off the handle and smashed up a carnival just to steal her a toy. And last I heard, she'd married someone in software, I guess.

Now, like I said, I'm a very different guy now. I'm ashamed of that night, and I'm sure there's a carney out there, probably the owner's son that I shoved and stole the octopus from, who tells the same event as his own scary story of the night a group of Arizona rednecks smashed up their carnival. And I can't say I'd blame him. All I know is the military set me right, and I avoided any real legal trouble in my idiot youth, and for both of those things, I'm deeply grateful.

And for any carnival folk out there or any fellow Marines, Semperfy, fam. So this happened to my grandma, but she's given me permission to share it with you because I think it's a creepy story people should know. She narrated it to me, so I'm writing her words down, but I wanted to preface this so it makes sense why an 83-year-old woman is sending you a story.

I mean, maybe you have a lot of 83-year-old female listeners, but I don't see them in the comments that often, so I assume not. Now, anyways, I was a fine young Philly in the 1960s. At least that's what the men folks said. So beautiful that I could win prizes, they said. And so I says to them, well, why can I? Don't we have a state beauty pageant? My folks were against it at first, but as soon as I turned to me,

18, they let me enter. And surprise upon surprise, these men hadn't just been flattering me to get under my petticoats, for which I might add, they would have had to have had my hand in marriage first. I really did have the looks that could win prizes, apparently. I made it to the state finals, and it was an absolute honor, and it was part of the state's grand fair, and this was back in 1967. There were three judges, the state governor, the mayor of town in which the finals were being held and a local businessman who did something with oil. All of these men were perfect gentlemen. I have nothing but nice things to say about how all three of these men treated us girls. They made us feel like beauty was something to be proud of, not something tawdry, and honestly,

the whole thing was a lot more wholesome and respectful than you hear about in the average beauty pageant. I don't think that I could have seen it through to the state finals if I'd been nothing but a sex object. Now, this event is what killed it all for me, though, and it was thanks of the most unlikely of sources. There were five of us girls, and we were all local winners, so we were all used to the game and all very nice to one another. We were prepping for our first round, which was a catwalk round wearing dresses from a local dressmaker.

We were on our drawers when the door burst open and the man stood there. He was a bit on the muscular side, with long hair, and I remember a very attractive jawline. He said he was the sheriff's deputy. Us girls, we were all 18, got a bit shy, of course and started covering up. And the deputy laughed and told us not to worry. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before.

He had a wife and two daughters around our age, and that should have rung alarm bells by itself. Anyway, he said a prowler had been seen in the area, trying to peer in through the dressing room window, which was a tiny little thing eight feet high, and we'd certainly seen nobody peering in there. And so we uncomfortably put our dresses on while the deputy unashamedly and openly watched us.

And over the next three months, he was there every time, watching us, undressing us with his eyes while we were forced to actually undress in front of him. And then finally, it's the swimsuit round, and of course, to change for this, we have to get fully naked. Surely the deputy wouldn't be there for that, but he was. One of the more outspoken girls told him that she wasn't comfortable with his presence, and he got a little angry. He whipped out his badge and asked her if she really wanted to risk her place in the competition, or even face obstruction of justice by posing as a problem. Now, of course, none of this really rang true,

but we were in a rush for the final round of the competition. And after a quick whisper, what we did was this. One of us changed while the other four blocked her from view, and we repeated that four times. The deputy was clearly furious about this, but what could he actually do? He had no legal precedent to command us to show him our naked bodies. And so we performed the final stage of the competition.

The girl who'd spoken out against the deputy actually won, and I came third, all of which I was thrilled about. And when we went back to change a final time, the deputy was thankfully gone, and we changed back into our regular clothes to mingle with the judges and audience. Now, a couple of us girls met the sheriff and mentioned the deputy being present the whole time, and he got very quiet. We pushed him on what was wrong, and he asked us if we were absolutely sure. only it was the deputy's first day, and he hadn't checked in for work. He was due to work security at the pageant, but he had certainly not been authorized to be present in our dressing room, and there had been no reports of a prowler. He asked us to describe the deputy, and we did, and the sheriff went pale and said that

that didn't sound anything like the new deputy. It was his nephew, a pretty large red-headed guy. Later, they found the deputy. He stumbled in from the wilderness, his ankles and wrists. tied together, wearing only a vest and his undergarments. He'd been knocked unconscious, stripped, and had his uniform and firearm stolen. And the firearm was later found discarded in the garbage bin near the hall where the pageant was held. Now one final twist of the story, and this is a part that I can't be sure about. By 1978, I had a family and a husband, and at this point a young

son. My husband and I were watching an episode of A Favorite Show of ours when I suddenly pointed at the screen and yelled, that's him. My husband asked who, and I said that I was sure as shells were shells that one of the contestants on this game show was the fake deputy from the beauty pageant terror. My husband laughed about this, and so did I. Realistically, what chance was there that a guy who knocked out a sheriff's deputy and then faked being him just to creep on women in the 60s, was a contestant on the dating game on the 13th of September 1978. And like I said, I can't be sure. But all I'll say is that when I identified him, all I believed I was looking at was a contestant on the dating game, a contestant they introduced as Rodney Alcala. Now, the more I think about it as time goes on, I do think the creep who perved on me just look like him.

But there's still a chance, a terrifying chance, that the fake deputy we met was the dating game killer. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episode. 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.