The Lets Read Podcast - 359: MY CHILDHOOD BFF WAS PURE EVIL | 9 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 345

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Hostels & Creepy Childhood FriendsHAVE 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 --> Code: [READ]

So, my name's Joel, too, and in September of 1996, I was an 18-year-old gap year student living here in England. Most kids go into their gap year with a travel plan. But not only did I not have a plan, I really didn't have much money either. I knew that if I flew somewhere like South America, my money would go a lot further, and so initially, I was looking at places like Colombia, Peru, or even Chile, because it meant spending a few weeks somewhere exotic where the weather was nice and the food wasn't bad. But then, sometime in late November, I saw a news report about something called

Visit Myanmar Year. Now, the BBC showed a big parade filing past some presidential-looking fellow, but not a military one, and this was more like a cultural exhibit. Then the reporter talked all about how the country was opening itself up to visitors for the first time in years. It was this huge event, apparently. enough to warrant a few minutes on the nightly news, but all I found myself asking was, where the bloody hell is Myanmar?

It turns out Myanmar is what Burma changed its name to in the 1980s. It was initially colonized by the British and then became a big battleground between us and the Japanese during World War II, and then after a brief period of democracy after independence, the country's army seized power. And then, after closing themselves off for a business, about 30 years, they decided that they wanted a bit of tourism, hence visit Myanmar year. It was billed as this untouched paradise of white sandy beaches and lush green animal preserves.

Only trouble was, it had a wildly authoritarian military dictatorship that did things like use political prisoners for slave labor. I heard Myanmar's government had built half a dozen brand new hotels using that same unpaid workforce, which gave rise to a counter-tourism campaign led by human rights campaigners called Don't Visit Myanmar Year. Now, it probably sounds horrible, and I'd never visit a place like that these days, but back then, all I was interested in was how far my money would stretch there, not to mention being one of the first tourists to visit the place in more than three decades.

And so when I heard that I could live like a king for as little as a tenor a week, that was all I needed to hear. After a 17-hour journey, which included a short stopover in the Middle East, I landed in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon. I didn't stay in one of those fancy slave-built hotels. Not even five stars of luxury could have swayed me into that one, I'm glad to say. But I did book myself into a nice little hostel near the city's Chinatown, which was priced at a head spinning 80 pence a night. The British influence on the place is quite evident in a lot. The British influence on the place is quite evident in a lot of the architecture. But Yangon also had some of the most incredible Buddhist temples I've ever seen, and the city's pagodas were something else entirely.

Imagine a huge spire, almost 400 feet tall, and it's quite literally covered in solid gold plating. Then imagine how it shines in the midday sun in Southeast Asia, when temperatures are touching 40 degrees in the shade. Needless to say, the Shwedagon-Pold. Algoda is one of the most incredible things I'd ever seen, and since I was one of the first waves of tourism to hit Myanmar since it opened, I got a lot of stairs. I didn't mind. In fact, I sort of knew that was going to be the case, so it wasn't a surprise either. Then after a day of walking around Yangon, trying out different foods and practicing my Burmese from the phrase book I'd bought, I made my way back to the hostel. It was a narrow side street, and it looked quite rough from the

outside. But on the inside, past these two rickety wooden doors, it was actually really nice. The hostel's owner and operator, a guy called Min, was very proud of the place, and his wife helped do the cooking, his daughter helped with the cleaning and the laundry, and that was how they made their money. Min's English was really good, and he made me laugh when he quite deftly described his hostel as unassuming. And that was exactly the word for it, unassuming. because when he showed me up to my room, it was so much nicer than I expected. The place was spotless. The bed was small, but comfy and clean, and while the toilets and showers were communal on each floor, there was no one else staying on mine,

so I had a section all to myself. And by about day three, I figured that I made the best choice of travel destination possible, not just because the weather was lovely and the food was so good, but because the place was just so weird. It had been isolated for 30 years, and Myanmar still didn't properly open itself up until about 2011. So when I was there, it was almost like going to North Korea or something like that today, with a place having developed its own little microculture. Going to temples and all of that was fun, but it was a buzz just meandering around and soaking the place up, too.

At night, I'd open up the windows of my room and then work my way through a bottle of beer or two, smoking cigarettes and just sort of listening to the city hum. But that's how I noticed how late at night, men would walk people through the hostel, out into the backyard, and into what looked like a small storage shed. And from my perspective, it didn't look like anyone ever came out again. I say shed, it was made of concrete and had this big iron door with one of those letterbox-style peep-holes on it. But the structure itself couldn't have been any bigger than the structure. a garden shed. Men would walk them up, chatting like he was old friends with whoever he was with.

He'd knock on the door, the peephole would slide open, and then so would the door once the guard or whoever was happy, everything was cool. Now, I reckon that there must have been some stairs heading down into a basement or something because one night, men took around 20 to 30 people out to the small concrete structure, enough to make me think that there was almost maybe a party going on down there. Then, the night before I decided to ask him about it, Min had caught me watching him from the window at about half one in the morning. He stopped, gave me a sort of blank stare, and then just carried on walking. Now, the following afternoon, Min was at reception when I returned from lunch.

Now, he gave me this playful look as I approached him and then said something about how it was doing a bit of spying that previous night. He wasn't confrontational about it, so I confessed that, yes, I had been a bit of a little bit of spying that previous night. Yes, I had been a bit curious about what was going on in the back. Min said he hosted gambling nights down there. Nothing too extravagant, just a few games of cards played among friends for some pocket change. But then, being the curious soul that I was, I asked if I could join him one night for a few hands of whatever they were playing. Min laughed and said that while he understood my sense of adventure, he didn't care to mix business and friendship, especially not when there was money on the line.

But I wouldn't hear it. I very crassly proposed that I buy my way into the casino. But men wouldn't hear it either. And in the politest way possible, he insisted that I stop asking because the last thing he wanted was for me and him to have a fallout. Now, I took it on the chin. He'd been a great host and his wife's cooking was phenomenal, so the last thing I wanted to do was disrespect him.

But then over the next few days, My curiosity grew and grew until after the incident with a crying man, I could no longer help myself. I was doing my window watching routine one night when, at one point, the door of the concrete shack opens up, and Min steps out with a guy who was crying. Min was silent, and the crying guy was doing all the talking around his sobs, staring off in whispers at first, but then getting louder and louder until Min barked something at him, and the man went quiet. Min then took what looked like a big roll of money out of his pocket, peeled a few off and then stuffed them in the man's shirt pocket. But the crying man didn't seem interested. He just kept whimpering things to Min and Burmese.

Now watching on, I thought the crying man had lost all of his money or something like that and that the backyard casino had way higher stakes than just a bit of pocket change. It might sound mental to anyone older than 25 because it most certainly sounds mental to 47-year-old me these days. But I just had to know what was behind that door. I mean, what was really behind that door. It took a couple of days for that blister of curiosity to really fester away in me. But when it reached bursting point,

I went to one of only two banks in the whole of Myanmar that allowed access to international bank accounts. There, I withdrew exactly one million kiat, which I think was about 50 to 60 quid back. then, give her take. And the teller gave me some really funny look as she counted out the cash, but I didn't care. My only concern was thinking of something I could occupy myself with for the next few hours, until the sun went down and the night drew in, and Min started welcoming his friends down into that shady basement-looking place. Because when he did, I was going to knock on the door,

asked to speak to him, and then offer him a cool million to let me in. I had this idea in my head that it'd be some wild Asian gambling den, with fellas smoking opium in one corner and playing ancient and indecipherable games of chance in another. And after seeing the shiny happy side of Yangon for ten days straight, I was ready to see its underbelly in the final few days I had left there. And so, around one in the morning, just like clockwork, Min started walking people out towards the concrete shed. I waited until he walked about two dozen people through the yard. and then after chugging half a bottle of beer for some Dutch courage, I made my way downstairs and out into the yard.

My heart was going a mile a minute by the time I knocked on the door. The letterbox-shaped peephole slid open, and an angry-looking pair of brown eyes appeared before their owner barked something in Burmese at me. I just asked, Min? A few times, hoping he'd understand. But all the guy did was slide the peephole closed again. I was left standing there, money in my hand thinking, they're not just going to let me in, are they? And I also reckon Min might get so annoyed that he'd threaten to kick me out of the hostel.

But the idiot teenager in me thought that it'd be a good idea to try knocking again. And I thought if Min won't come to the door, then I'd try bribing the doorman. But then no sooner had I knocked, it swung right open, and I was faced with a very angry-looking men. No, it was very frightening to be honest, seeing this kindly Burmese bloke suddenly turn on me. I honestly had no idea what to say, and so I did the only thing I could think of, held out the wad of cash, and told him he could have it if he let me into the casino. I honestly thought it was the money that it changed his mind, but when he finally did relent, he told me to put my money away and save it for betting.

I was elated, but then Min suddenly threatened me with what he had. he'd do if I didn't stay quiet about what I saw. He said, if I went to the police to talk about what I'd seen down there, he'd arranged for them to find some pills in my luggage. He didn't specify what kind of pills, but he didn't have to. I knew what he was getting at. If I grasped him up, he'd have to punish me. But if gambling wasn't completely restricted in Myanmar and men's little backyard casino wasn't illegal since he wasn't profiting from it, then what the hell was he threatening me for. I didn't dwell on that, though. I couldn't. Min was standing right in front of me waiting for an answer, and I told him that I accepted his conditions, and that I wouldn't breathe a

word of what I'd seen. I neglected to mention that I intended on telling everyone once I got back home, because, of course, I was going to regale them with the tales of my adventures. I just wouldn't say anything to the Burmese police. But then, in what I consider to be a very delicious, twist of irony. It was years before I was able to talk to anyone about what I saw that night. Min gave me this look, like he was weighing up his options and weighing me up a bit too. And then after telling me to follow him, we walked past that big iron door together and down a long flight of winding stairs. I stayed close behind, Min, with a guard giving me all kinds of funny looks as I passed him. We walked down steps for what felt like a couple of minutes before the

stairs stopped and we were faced with another corridor. At the end of it was another thick door and from behind it, I could hear muffled sounds of shouting and commotion. Min turned to me before he opened and asked if I was sure I wanted to enter. And while it seemed so bizarre to me looking back on it all these years, there wasn't anything I wanted more. When I said yes, I thought he might give me a smile of approval or something, but he didn't.

He kept this steely look on his face and then, turned and cranked the handle of the big iron door. The second men pulled it open, I realized that it must have been soundproofed or something because I was hit with what I can only describe as a wave of sound. I'd seen men welcome about two dozen people into the shed, but down in the actual basement, there must have been more than a hundred people, all surrounding what looked to be a dog-fighting ring. I realized that there must have been multiple entrances too, and that MINS was just one of a network of entrances that led down into a space the size of maybe a secondary school gymnasium.

But before I could really take in what I was seeing, Min told me to follow him again. As we weave through the crowd, it was like every single person turned to look at me. They were positively flabbergasted to see a foreigner in their midst, and I can't say I blame them. I imagine I looked pretty shocked, too, especially when I looked down into the little ring in the center and saw a guy hosing would look like blood into a sewer grate. I couldn't stare for long. I had to keep an eye on men in front of me as he took us towards a collection of bookmakers. I was convinced I was about to witness either a cockfight or a dog fight.

Now imagine my surprise when two young Burmese men were led into the pit, one with a white headband and one with a black headband. men smiled for the first time and shouted, Just in time, to be heard over the noise of the crowd. Some of them rushed to the edge of the pit, staring intently at each man, and then a veritable frenzy of betting kicked off next to us. And then once the crowd thinned out a bit,

Min asked who I wanted to bet on, black headband or white headband. I told him it was hard to place a bet without knowing what they were about to do, but Min told me it didn't matter. They were about to play a game of chance, not a game of skill or test of strength, and while some gamblers claimed that they could see the winner before the game was even played, Min assured me that that was nonsense. As I handed Min 10,000 Kiat, I asked him which contestant he recommended.

And without a beat, he said blackhead band. Then as I watched him hand the money over to the bookmaker and I placed my bet, I started to be reminded of a film I'd watched sometime before, a little film called The Deer Hunter. I remember watching the film thinking, no way does that actually happen, and I had a similar thought in that big, loud basement. I asked him in the name of the game that he'd be playing, and I hope that he'd name some sort of local blood sport. But when he turned to me, raising his voice again to be heard over the crowd, he confirmed my deepest, darkest fears when he said, Russian roulette.

I was stunned. I mean, absolutely gobsmacked. But I made a right tit of myself because all I could think to say to Min was, this is just like the deer hunter. Obviously, Min hadn't seen that movie. He hadn't even heard of it. And so he gave me this funny look and asked me to repeat myself.

I told him it didn't matter. And looking back on it, I think that that was some attempt to disassociate from what was actually happening. And then, when everything went down, that it was all actually real, I realized what a huge mistake I'd made. I didn't want to see anyone get their head blown off in front of me. But at the same time, I knew that turning to men and immediately saying, I want to leave, would only make him furious. He'd warned me on multiple occasions not to get involved, so instead of making even more of an idiot of myself, I kept my mouth shut and watched the game unfold.

I thought the organizers might go grab each man a chair and a table to put between them, but they didn't. I mean, why would they? It wasn't a movie that didn't need the concealed tubes that made blood squirt out of Christopher Walken's head. The only kind of theatrical thing that happened was when the, I suppose you might call him, referee, walked around the edge of the pit, showing everyone how the bullets and the gun weren't fakes or anything. He walked slowly, shouting something in Burmese every so often, and then once he'd completed the full loop, the two contestants stepped face to face with one another.

The referee shouted something, and then everyone went quiet. He then flipped a coin before presumably asking one of the contestants heads or tails. They answered, the ref checked the coin, and then after a word from the contestant, the ref handed the revolver to his opposite number, meaning the man in the man in the same. the black headband would pull the trigger first. It was easily the most surreal and frightening experiences of my entire life, thinking to myself, this can't be happening, while my inner monologue screamed, but it is, and you need to leave right now.

But I just, I couldn't. I'd made my bid and now I had to sleep in it. The referee put one bullet in the revolver, and after spinning the cylinder around and around, he slammed it shut and he handed it to black headband, and then the whole place went from raucous to silence in the time that it took for the young man to raise the gun. I could see him shaking, and then after scrunching his eyes closed, he pulled the trigger, yet nothing but a dull click was heard. The room erupted, with people cheering or shouting, and men explained how all kinds of bets were made on when or who

or if. But the rules were that each man took five shots and the cylinder was spun before each and every one. If someone died, they died. But more often than not, they didn't. It wasn't like fictional depictions of Russian roulette I've seen where someone's demise seems like the absolute goal. The crowd were just gambling, albeit in a very high-stakes environment, and the contestants stood to gain a lot too. They could bet on their own survival. or their opponent's death. Some even bet on themselves to die, as it meant their family got a bit of money if they did. But I've also no doubt that there were people there who wanted to see someone get their head blown off, and I think Min was one of them. When the man in the white headband

put the revolver to his head, the room went quiet again. And then after a second dull click, the cycle repeated itself. The room went crazy. The revolver's cylinder was spun, and then it was handed back to the man with a black headband, but once again, pulling the trigger yielded nothing but a dull click. I actually started to relax a little bit as each man completed his fourth trigger pull without a shot. I'd once been convinced I was about to watch someone die, but just like Min said, it seemed like it was actually kind of a rare event that someone was killed playing with just one bullet. It was still horrifying to witness those guys doing what they were doing.

I just didn't feel like I wanted to run anymore. But then, as the man in the black headband was due to take his final shot, it looked like he was hesitating. Both contestants were shaking pretty heavily by trigger poles four and five, but black headband was shaking like a leaf by his fifth attempt. Now I thought he was psyching himself up to finish the game, but after shaking and shaking, and scrunching his eyes closed just like he did the first time, his hand dropped away from the side of his head, and he whined something in Burmese that could have been, I can't. And the crowd went ballistic,

not with cheers this time, but with anger. And as the referee began shouting something at Black Headband, two bigger guys, who were obviously security of some kind, jumped into the pit to join them. Black Headband put the gun to his temple again, but again he failed to pull the trigger. I started wondering what might happen in this sort of situation but was quickly provided an answer. The two security guards rushed black headband, pinning him to the concrete floor.

I thought he might try and shoot them as they rushed him, but he didn't. He just dropped the gun and then backed up with his hands raised like he was pleading with them. Seconds later, he was pinned, and then they held him there while the referee picked up the gun. The ref shouted something at the crowd who immediately fell silent, and then he put the revolver right against black headband's forehead and pulled the trigger. But once again, it was nothing but a dull click. The crowd burst into cheers and laughter that black headband had been scared of an empty chamber. Even white headband was laughing, and he stayed laughing as the referee spun the revolver's cylinder one final time

before handing it to him. Black headband was lying on the floor in a puddle of shame, quite literally too, since he actually peed his pants around the time the referee put the gun to his head. Then, white-hand band raised the gun, and the crowd fell silent again. He was still chuckling at Black Headband as he pulled the trigger. Then bang.

His skull all but disintegrated. If you think the crowd might have reacted any differently than before, For, with any bloodthirst, for example, they didn't. White headband's head exploding was nothing more than something that won or lost the money. Some cursed. Others cheered and waved their bedding slips in the air. But me, all I could do was stand there, staring at what remained of white headband's head until finally I heard men in my ear saying, Congratulations! You won!

And that was the second time I saw him smile, when realizing I'd made a terrible mistake as it was written all over my face. He told me to follow him so I could collect my winnings. And then once I'd shove that big bundle of blood money into my pocket, Min was still smiling as he asked me. Have you seen enough? When we were outside again, walking back across the yard, men reminded me of what had happened if I told people what I'd seen.

Not in a rude or overly intimidating way, he just asked if I remembered our arrangement regarding discretion. And when I said yes, he didn't say anything else until we parted ways. He wished me a good night, but I was in no mood to sleep. Instead, I went out drinking, and I ended up giving away that blood money in pieces to a series of beggars I encountered, and I drank until I could only stay. stagger and then almost got myself arrested when I tried to sleep on the steps of a temple I found

myself at. The police drove me back to the hostel and thankfully the reception was deserted, and then I staggered up to my room and crashed out on the bed. The next morning's hangover was abominable, and it wasn't until about lunchtime that I stopped vomiting and was able to keep water down. I wanted to pretend the whole thing had never happened, and apparently Min was only too happy to oblige me, because when I finally trudged downstairs to get some of the in-house food, Min was just as warm and cheerful as ever. I ate in silence, and then went back up to my room to sleep off the rest of my hangover. And then in the evening, I went to a Buddhist temple and stayed there until late at night. Now I won't get into everything I meditated over. I'm sure you

can all probably guess the kinds of things that I was thinking about, but I'll just say that I realized for the first time in my life just how full of darkness and horror the world really is and how sheltered I'd been from growing up in the leafy green suburbs of England. Growing up, I wasn't a small kid. No, I'm not going to be ashamed to say it. I was fat. Medically, I qualified as obese, and I suffered from some pretty severe depression following my parents' divorce. There was an emptiness in my life when my mom went off and left us, and I filled the void with food. I'm not that person anymore, but I'm not going to be ashamed that I was either.

That's the kind of thing that leads down the path that I followed in the first place. And by the time I started high school, I welled way over 200 pounds and I was very big. I hated gym class and I dreaded the showers even more. It's not like everyone in my grade was some jock or anything like that, but I was by far the biggest boy in freshman year. The only upside to it is that I was a tough little guy as well. The bullies soon gave up on any kind of physical violence against me because I could take it. Shove me against the lockers? I'd just bounce back. Literally too, I guess. Slap my fat rolls, I had a very high pain threshold. Call me fat? Well, yeah, I knew I was. I could

hardly deny it. I didn't love hearing it, but just pointing out that I was a big boy only stung internally. And so yeah, I was bullied and it did upset me, but I was great at not showing it. and I think a lot of the kids respected that. There was one kid, though. His name was Neil, and he was as skinny as I was fat. Now, I was pretty short for my age, but he was a whole head shorter than me, a really tiny guy, but he wasn't some adorable little shorty. Neil was a mean one, and no mistake.

You could tell from the glint in his eye and the perpetual smirk on his face, and rumor had it that Neil could be such a bully that he once made a senior guy cry. Nobody really seemed to know exactly how Neil was a bully. Kids just knew to be wary of him and keep away from him, and this resulted in a couple of things. One, Neil had no friends. Nobody wanted to actually spend time with him because he was so unpredictable and supposedly volatile.

Now, sure, people would be polite to him and nod hello in the halls, but nobody wanted to sit with him at lunch or invite him to social events or anything like that. And two, it meant that some of the more physical bullies had it in mind to take Neil down, and that's where I came in. One day I was sitting alone, eating lunch in the courtyard because, like Neil, I also didn't have any actual friends, and so who should come and sit beside me, but Neil himself? He asked if I wanted half of his sandwich, and to be honest, it did look really delicious. I really didn't know what to do. Neil, this famous idiot, was offering me food. Was there some catch to it? Like it was filled with

razor blades or something. In the end, I decided that I was more scared of what would happen if I said no, so I took the sandwich, and this seemed to make Neil happy, and even more so when I actually ate it. I didn't really know what to say after that, so I just sort of asked him if he was having a good day. Neil ignored my question and told me that he had a proposal for me. Neil basically proposed that I act as his bodyguard, and in exchange, he'd make sure that I wasn't the target of bullies. I told him I wasn't really bullied anymore these days, and he grinned that sort of snide grin that he had, and pointed out that this was because he had left me alone so far. It was a good point. Neil had never bullied me, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to find out what would happen if he did, and so I agreed

to be his friend and bodyguard, and this arrangement somehow lasted all the way to junior year. Neil used me to cause all kinds of trouble. He'd pick on certain kids, really vile stuff, and then have me threatened to fight them, or in most cases, take any blows that would have been aimed at him. Sometimes he'd force me to beat up younger kids, younger than myself as we got older. In junior year in particular,

we saw a few freshman targets that Neil took great delight in having me hurt. Now, you may be wondering how Neil managed to have such a hold over me, especially since I wasn't that particularly thin-skinned. Well, Neil managed to find that chink in my armor, my mom. Anytime I tried to push back against Neil or deny him, then he'd throw a barb in my way about how my mother had left because of her disgusting fat son and her autistic daughter and her fat arsler husband.

Neil also seemed to know pretty intimate details of the man my mother had run off with and what she was doing now. When I asked Dad about this, he got really quiet and just sort of asked me who I'd heard this from, which was all the answer I needed. Neil was able to use my mother against me quite often. That hurt. It really hurt. And so I took the path of the coward.

I chose to hurt other people instead of letting Neil hurt me. And I know this makes me a bad person. I regret all of it. But it is what it is now. Like I said, I'm going to call things as they are, although in this case, yes, I am ashamed of who I was. Neal's influence over me almost ruined my high school career as well. My report cards went steadily downhill. Dad never punished me. He just got kind of sad. One time, he was a little bit drunk, and he asked where he was going wrong with me and what he could do to help me to get back on track.

And it just about broke my heart. And instead of facing up to that, I said something incredibly mean to him that I still apologize for to this day. I told him he could stop being such an embarrassing loser. Now, meanwhile, I developed a reputation at school for being a bully and someone to avoid, so Neil was my only friend, really, for years. And somehow, Neil managed to twist things so it looked like I was the ringleader and he was my sidekick, so any trouble we got into, it was usually me who took the brunt of it. I remember one time, Neil persuaded me to scratch up the paint on the car belonging to one of the most popular seniors in school. If this guy had caught me, I think he was one the few people in the school who would actually outdo me in a fight, and he would have pumbled me

into the ground. Thankfully, we got away with that one. Towards the end of junior year, Neil developed a crush. The girl in question was an unassuming bookish girl who was quiet and kept to herself, you know the type. Now, she was also the girl that I'd had a crush on for the last year as well, and I'm pretty sure that Neil knew this. Neil told me that he had a plan to ask her to date him. He just needed some time with her in the art classroom, and I had to stand guard to make sure nobody came along and unlocked the door. Now, I might have been a dumb kid, but I wasn't stupid. I knew that there was absolutely nothing good about what Neil might have planned, and so this one time, I said no. And Neil went nuts. Apparently, there were a lot of things that he'd been holding back,

things that he knew about my mom, and according to him anyway, how my stepdad had been abusing my sister. And then he had all this evidence on his phone of my involvement and all the bullying, cut and edited in a way that looked like I was the sole culprit. In particular, there was minutes of footage of me vandalizing the senior's car. Neil threatened to reveal this to them and to reveal to the whole school the kind of loose woman my mother was and how she was allegedly pimping out her own daughter. And at that moment, I saw red. By this point a lot of my fat had turned into muscle and

I had a huge growth spurt. Neil was still tiny. I picked my bully up by the waist. I slammed him down on the table into the empty classroom we were conspiring in. And the crack I heard was almost as terrifying as Neil screams. I knew I'd done something really, really terrible, something even Neil didn't deserve. And when it all came out, I didn't protect Neil, but I didn't try to protect myself either. I deserved a lot of the blame, and I wanted to take it.

After this, being sent to a military academy was my own choice. I'd scared myself stupid with my own rage, and I'd hurt people and I'd gotten out of control. Neil's family wanted to press charges, and the military academy also served as a compromise. And this is also how I found out that the man my mother had left a family for was Neil's father. This whole time, my new stepdad was Neil's biological dad who walked out on Neil's family when Neil was just a baby. And I can only guess that the whole thing was intended as some sort of roundabout revenge against me in the end. Military school was the making of me, really. And I took it like a duck to water.

I graduated and then joined the military where I'd stay there to this day. I hate the person I used to be, but I'm proud of the person I've become. And I heard that Neil took a very darker path and never tried to better himself. To a larger extent, I blame myself for this. I certainly see him as a victim and, many circumstances. I try to make up for who I was every day. I serve our country. I donate to charity. I send money back to my dad to help my sister's care. Thankfully, Neal's claims of abuse towards my sister were lies aimed to disgrace his dad. Apparently he's not even that bad of a guy.

I don't want to know him, though. I just want to keep making amends for allowing one of the most effed up people I've ever known to dictate, dominate, and destroy my childhood. You may finish this story by hating me and thinking I'm a terrible person and I wouldn't blame you, but I'm trying. I wish Neil had done the same and from what I understand, he's done some pretty terrible things in the years since I've known him, and I can only hope that one day he takes his first steps onto the road to redemption that I'm attempting to walk myself. You can't take back the things you do, but you can try and make amends for them, even if it's too little and too late. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

You've probably heard me talk about BetterHelp before, but I don't know if we've ever really talked about why so many people seem to love using the service. If you're curious, you can actually see what people are saying for yourself at BetterHelp.com slash reviews. The reviews are updated every day with hundreds of people sharing their experiences and talking about how helpful BetterHelp has been for them. BetterHelp currently has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5, based on more than 1.7 million client session reviews.

And honestly, that kind of feedback from people who have actually used the service speaks for itself. More than 6 million people have used better help around the world. And their therapists have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience, along with the required education, training, and certifications across a range of mental health specialties. Getting started is pretty straightforward too. You answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and if you don't feel like you've found the right fit, you can switch therapists at any time. See the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit BetterHelp.com slash read.

That's Betterh-H-E-L-P dot com slash read. So a little while ago, I was talking with my two teenage granddaughters when the subject of travel came up. One of them suggested that a youthful sense of wanderlust is a relatively new thing, spurred on by cheap flights and Instagram posts depicting influencers in paradise. I agreed with her to an extent. It's easy to develop a thirst for adventure when your feed is filled up with videos of people canoeing between tropical islands or hiking up to Machu Picchu. But I also assured her that wonderlust has existed for as long as people have. I know it's a bit cliche to start giving it the back in my day thing, but it's true.

In days of yore, people only needed to look at maps or hear tales of far-off lands to want to board a ship and sail into the unknown. And in my youth, the same was true for me too. My grandkids couldn't believe their sweet old Irish granny had gone off to see the world, especially not all alone. But it was true. And while I told them all kinds of stories from my time in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, there was one I saved till they were a little bit older and were of traveling age themselves, because it was one of the most frightening things that I was ever involved with. I left Dublin in 1971 when I was 19.

I got a job in London to save some money for the journey ahead, and then use that time to see Buckingham Palace and Big Ben and all. of that stuff. From London, I made my way to Paris where I managed to get a job in a little Irish bar and did the same thing I did in London for a while before moving on to Spain. And Spain was beautiful. All the food was absolutely out of this world, but my original plan was to head to Italy via the south of France. Yet when I got to the Straits of Gibraltar, looked out across the water, and saw Morocco just a few miles away, it was like it was calling to me. I could go to Rome and Greece, and see all the places I'd seen and read about in history books,

or I could head to a place where the people, the food, the music, and the culture were a complete and utter mystery to me. And when I thought of it like that, my mind was made up for me, and off to Morocco I went. I arrived in Tangier after a rough overnight ferry and an even rougher bus ride. I grew up in Dublin, so I thought that I was familiar with the hustle and bustle of a big city, but Tangier made my home city. looked like a sleepy little village out in the countryside.

The second I stepped off the bus at the big central station, there were fellas all around me and the other passengers offering hotels, taxis, hashish, you name it. I had one guy actually try and grab my bag off of me so he could carry it, and I had to shout and bat him away so he'd leave me alone. I don't think he meant anything by it, because some of the other wannabe helpers started laughing at him and poking fun in Arabic, but it made for one heck of him.

an introduction to Morocco and the intensity level never really dropped. The old city was like a sensory overload, a maze of tiny white streets with technicolored washing flapping on lines overhead. Then the marketplaces were absolute bedlam. Sacks of colorful spices were everywhere with piles of oranges and lemons adding to the medley of all of it. There were all kinds of shiny copper trinkets and jewelry, then rugs so intricately stitched that I just had to pick one up on the way home. And the whole thing was soundtracked by endless haggling, which only stopped when the call to prayer rang out,

loud and haunting over flat rooftops. The smells were amazing, too. Everywhere smelled like cumin, cinnamon, and ginger, and in certain places I smelled this very strong, fragrant, but almost oily smell that I later found out was burning hashish. Now, I got a taste for the sweet mint tea that they drink over there, and my favorite spots to drink were this cafe Baba up on the hill and Cafe Hafa right on the cliff edge. In a night, the square came alive with acrobatts, snake charmers, and storytellers, and I'd head out for a whole meal of tijin or cus-cousse, which back then cost less than a dollar. Then when I was too tired to keep my eyes open anymore, I'd head back to the hostel that I checked into on my first day I arrived,

and I'd catch some sleep before doing it all again the next day. My hostel consisted of two dorms, one male, one female, with each having space for about 12 mattresses. You got a little foot locker to lock things in, and there were communal showers and toilet facilities too, but that was about it. It was a place to rest your head. Nothing more, nothing less,

but some heads needed more rest than others. It tended to be those who mixed booze and hash that suffered the worst hangovers, and it wasn't uncommon for me to have to rise, shower, and dress in silence, so as not to disturb some very cranky partiers. One night, I came home really late myself to find someone passed out under a blue sheet. Now, I reckon that they'd probably had a little too much and needed to sleep it off. But in the morning, they were still there, covered from head to toe in that blue sheet.

As I said, I was used to being extra quiet in the mornings, and so I completed my morning routine with all the energy of a dormant. mouse and then headed out to do some more exploring. Now, I had another amazing day in Tangier, but I wanted to get some of the Marrakesh, too, so after visiting the bus station to inquire about ticket prices, I went back to the hostel to take a shower and a siesta before the evening. But then, when I arrived, I saw two police cars outside. I eyed them curiously on my approach, and then as I walked into the hostel,

one of the officers shouted something to me in Arabic. and while I couldn't understand exactly what he was saying, I figured it was more or less translated to halt. Now, I turned around in time to see the hostel's owner across the way, and it looked like he was comforting one of the other girls that had been staying in the dorm with me. His English was really good thanks to all the tourists and backpackers who came through, so after excusing himself from the girl, I think she was Dutch,

he rushed over to explain what was going on. There was a lot of drug smuggling going on in Tanshe. at the time with backpackers just like me bringing hash back home to make some massive profits. And while people smoking hash was somewhat tolerated by police, they did not like smugglers. So you'd hear stories from backpackers and being stopped, searched, and sometimes even arrested if they had a large amount of hash on them and not enough cash to pay the bribe. Now, I thought it was something like that because it was mostly solo backpackers, and I obviously fit that profile. But then instead of asking to look through my things,

things, the police started asking me questions about where I'd been the previous night. The owner of the hostel was doing all the translating, so it was a bit slow going back and forth, but they kept asking where I'd been and what I'd done. But most of all, they wanted to know if I'd had any interactions with one of my dorm mates, a French girl whose name had sadly slipped my mind. I think it was Molina or Salina or maybe even Celine, but whatever it was, they wanted to know if we'd spoken and what was said. I told them I'd hardly said a word to anyone I was staying with, and there were girls from all over Europe passing through and staying on those beds, so I didn't even know who they were referring to in the first place. One of the police officers then asked how I'd slept that

previous night. I was confused, so after telling them that I slept just fine, I asked why that mattered. The same officer asked if I'd noticed anything the next morning, anything at all about my dorm room. and that's when it hit me. And when it hit me, it hit me all at once. I've been so programmed for privacy that I didn't see the lump under the blue sheet for what it was, how no one could pass out under a sheet in the Moroccan heat for nine hours without once getting up to pee or even get a drink of water. Not unless they were dead.

I started to panic, realizing that not only had I slept all night with a dead body just feet away from me, but I'd casually showered and dressed without even paying the poor girl a second thought. Then on top of all of that, the police thought I'd killed her. Or at least, that's what it felt like when they asked to speak to me down at the police station. It led me away to my car. The hostel's owner was nice enough to come down to the station with me to act as translator, and there I saw a handful of other guests, all sitting on plastic seating and would pass for a kind of waiting room. They didn't put us in cells, although I suppose they could have if they wanted to. They just wanted to ask us some questions, so that's what they did.

And I'll be honest, I was distraught when they were asking questions of me. Not so much because I was scared that I get the blame for the girl's death, but because I felt so terrible for her. The feeling sorry for myself only lasted a minute or two, then after that I just, I broke for her. They didn't say how she'd been murdered. Only that it was a murder. But I suppose from my reaction, they could tell that I wasn't the one who did it.

I mean, I was just one of three girls who slept near the body that night, but for whatever reason, none of us were considered suspects. None of the guys staying in the hostel got arrested either. And since there were obviously no security cameras, there was no CCTV footage to identify who the girl had been hanging around with before she was killed. The police told us that we couldn't leave the hostel until they'd done some investigating. and us girls asked if there was anywhere else we could sleep. And the owner wouldn't let us sleep in the men's dorm with them, but the guys volunteered to sleep outside in the backyard so that we had somewhere to sleep that wasn't home to a corpse just hours before.

A few days later, the police came back and said they'd arrested a suspect, so we were all free to leave Tangier if we wanted to. They wouldn't tell us anything more, only that we weren't suspects. The experience formed a... little bond in the group that ended up staying in the hostels after the girl's body was found, and I ended up traveling down to Marrakesh with them. We had a really good time, especially in the daytime, when we could do things to distract ourselves. But at night, while we were smoking and drinking, someone would inevitably bring up the girl's murder and things would obviously get quite dark.

I still think about that girl sometimes, and being reminded of her through telling my grandkids about her had her on my mind for days and days on end. I told them so they'd know to be careful, so they'd know not everyone out there as just a friend that they haven't met yet. When I was growing up during high school, we had a quiet kid in class. You know the type that I'm talking about.

This was post-columbine, so quiet kid jokes were told, but kind of in a whispered tone. Nobody wanted to actually trigger the quiet kid or generally cause anything really bad to happen, and Kenny never actually showed serious signs of violence. Well, mostly anyway. Occasionally, some of the cool kids would give him crap,

and he'd lash out and sort of yell at them. And whenever he got angry, his voice became incomprehensible, which really didn't help with people calling him an R-word or slow or a prospective danger to society. Now, a few things about Kenny that were actually true, his mom cut his hair in a bowl cut, and the 2000s you'd think that she'd absolutely have to know that this was going to bring the wrath of a thousand high schoolers down on him. And he also carried a Spider-Man backpack at all times, one from the animated series,

and it was before people thought things like this were retro and cool. And so that was another reason people dunked on poor Kenny. He could barely communicate if you spoke to him. He'd spend so long thinking about what you said that it felt like he was almost ignoring you, and you had to learn to just stand there and wait, and eventually Kenny would reply, most times anyway. Sometimes he really would just zone out, and you'd have to sort of yell his name to snap him back to attention.

Looking back, Kenny shouldn't really have been in school with regular kids, or if he was, he should have had some kind of helper or something. And instead, this probably autistic, probably mentally ill kid, was just left to fend for himself in the Thunderdome that is high school. I was so relieved when the new kid Bradley joined the school, and he was one of those tall, blonde, wholesome American boys who got along well with pretty much everybody. He excelled at sports, he was smart, the works, and I might have been a little jealous, I got to admit. And so Bradley became friends with basically everyone in no time, but of all the people he hung around the most, it was Kenny. And I guess he could say that he took him under his wing, but it didn't feel patronizing or protective or anything like that.

that. He really brought Kenny out of his shell. It turns out that when he wasn't ostracized and constantly made fun of, Kenny was actually pretty funny, pretty smart guy. He was deeply intelligent and he was an absolute whiz at chess, and so was Bradley. And Bradley slowly integrated Kenny into various friendship groups. And for his part, Kenny, shockingly, integrated right back. And it was like this strange, unique, beautiful kid had been waiting beneath the surface for someone like Bradley to evolve him, and it was absolutely utterly tragic that it just couldn't last. Now, one day, I came in a little too late to school because I didn't have class first period, and as soon as I got there, I could tell some commotion was going on.

Cops were there, and it looked like they were searching lockers, Kenny's locker in particular. I watched as they bag something up and removed it from the premises, and shortly after that, a sniffling crying, Kenny, was marched down the core. door and handcuffs. Now here's the story we were told. Bradley, as his best friend, had discovered that Kenny was planning to dose the food in the school cafeteria with some type of poison. This plan had been underway since well before Bradley joined the school, but instead of making the most of his newfound popularity, Kenny decided to go ahead with it anyway. Bradley had seen the poison in Kenny's locker and despite his friendship with Kenny couldn't let this slide in

reported it to the school. One kid's dad was high up in the force and kind of snuck a look at the notes on the investigation, and it looked like they didn't have much on Kenny. He was claiming he didn't even know what that substance was. And then Bradley found the manifesto. It had been hidden behind a false wall in Kenny's locker that he had, and Bradley had somehow dug it out, and it detailed Kenny's plan to poison the food and how on the same day he was going to bring three pistols school belonging to his dad and finish anyone off that way. Bradley brought this manifesto straight to the dean, and I guess he really hadn't thought this through. One, why was Bradley able to access Kenny's locker, find that wall, and discover this manifesto

when the cops didn't? Two, Kenny's dad had died many years ago, and while that didn't rule out the idea of him owning guns, he had been a staunch anti-gun campaigner, so the idea of Kenny accessing his father's guns seemed ridiculous. Three, the manifesto was supposedly written before Bradley even came to the school, but the food that Kenny claimed he was going to poison had not been on the menu until that year. Naturally, this made the school authorities and the cops suspicious. Kenny had been suspended from school at the time since there was no actual proof he planned

on committing a crime, and then the next thing we knew, Bradley was no longer in attendance either. It turns out Brad was a psych. psychopath who had been kicked out of his last school for antisocial behavior. His father owned an exterminator firm that specialized in killing rats. One of the few remaining uses of that poison is in rat poison. Kenny would not have been able to get his hands on that type of stuff easily. Bradley would have. And eventually, with warrants served, the cops were able to prove that bottles of this stuff

were missing from Bradley's dad's inventory. And not only that, they were able to get access to the family computer and what they found was very damning, a saved file containing the whole manifesto. According to the kid whose dad was one of the lead detectives, Bradley broke down and sang like a canary, not a remorseful one, but a proud one. When he arrived at the school and first saw Kenny and heard the quiet kid jokes, he was curious. He wanted to know what kind of punishment would be dealt out to someone who might be a school-based criminal, and he was curious about the effect it had had on Kenny. Rumor has it that,

When asked, Bradley coldly admitted that he was curious if Kenny would commit some kind of act against himself. You know what I mean? I don't know exactly what happened to Bradley. He was expelled, but I'm not sure what kind of criminal charges were brought against him. His father doubled down on the misplaced poison having nothing to do with his son. And so we never saw Bradley again. And we never saw Kenny either.

The whole incident broke him, and I wish I could say that he'd overcome his experiences, returned to school and been embraced by us again. I know we would have welcomed him back, but Bradley broke him. Kenny spent the rest of his high school career in some kind of mental institute, and for all I know, he's still there. I've tried to find him a few times, but I've never been successful. And on the chance that you're living your best life, Kenny, and also somehow hear this, I wish you the best.

Bradley, you seem to be a psychopath, and I hope you ended up locked away for the safety of everyone. Spending my teenage years around someone like you was the most chilling and horrific thing possible, and the way you tortured poor Kenny is unforgivable. Adults can be awful, but kids can be truly, truly evil. My name's Devin. I'm from Ohio, and I think you could probably shoehorn this story into a video of yours, because it's easily the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. So back in 1999, I decided to do a little traveling before college. The Philippines was beautiful, Vietnam was awesome, and Malaysia turned out to have some of the best food I've ever tried.

But it was in Thailand that I got a tip from a fellow backpacker, and that tip was to head to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is this little island off the coast of India, and while it has many of the same flavors as its much larger cousin, it got a very different feel. At least out in the coast it does. The capital, it's called Colombo, and it's sort of like a big human filing cabinet in places. Definitely not my scene, but the little coastal towns were almost like paradise. It was all sun, sea, and surf, and then after deciding it was good enough of a place to spend a week or so, I checked into this little beachside hostel, and that's where I met, Mika. Mika was from Finland, and Mika was crazy.

Fortunately, I mean that in the best possible way, as in he was probably the most fun-loving, party-going person I had met on all my Asian travels. He was the one who showed me all over Hikadua, and, like, where the best food was, and where the beer was cheapest and coldest. And he also showed me a place that did some really good iced coffee, something I think I might have lost my entire mind without. He also showed me a place that did good iced coffee, something I think I might have lost my entire mind without,

and he also showed me where all the surfer girls liked to party once the sun went down. Now one morning after waking up, we decided to blast away the cobwebs with a local hangover cure of eggs, eggs, and more eggs, with a huge side of red chili sauce. And then when we got back to the hostel, it was someone in our room. The hotel was divided up into maybe five different communal rooms and each one had three beds. I met Mika because we were sharing a room, and the third bed is. had been empty, but when we got back from breakfast, someone had taken it. We had to wait a minute before they returned from using the communal showers, and when they did,

a giant walked through the doors to, well, I was going to say greet us, but he didn't. This huge, fat-as-how red-headed dude walked in wearing nothing but a towel and some flip-flops, and he then gave us some blank stare and then started unpacking the rest of his stuff from some roller case. Mika was the first to say, hey man, how's it going? but he did the same thing. He just sort of looked up, gave us both a blank stare, and then went right back to unpacking in a way that wasn't just rude. It was weird.

I gave Mika this sort of look when the fat guy's back was turned, as if to say, what the hell is this guy's problem? But then, after a moment it would look like deep thought, Mika asked the guy, Ruski? Only then did the guy speak and say, The Ruski. and reply.

It turns out the guy was Russian, and since Finland and Russia share a border, Mika knew enough Russian to explain that he spoke a little before asking the guy's name. I mean, I didn't understand what was being said. I just saw that the guy got very defensive before Mika raised his hands as if to say, okay, I'll stop.

It turns out when he asked the Russian guy his name, he replied with the Russian equivalent of none of your business. And then Mika basically asked him what his problem was, and the guy told him to back off, and so Mika did, and then recommended we leave. He filled me in as we walked along the beach towards a bar we like to hang out at, and then he laid out our options over some beers. And by that, I mean, what to do about that Russian guy, since he was clearly probably going to be a problem.

Mika said if he was a total a-hole, we could just pack up and move hostels. We'd lose out in the days that we'd already paid for, but everywhere was so cheap that it kind of did. didn't matter if we just pitched up someplace else. But then Mika also said that since the guy was Russian, there was like a 50% chance that he'd end up being chill as hell once he was drunk and figured out that we didn't actually hate Russians. Now, we figured stay one more night, see if he's cool, and if not, then we'd move on.

And then we kept on drinking on the beach till the sun had set and it was time for the real party to start. Now, to cut a long story short, we met up with some British girls, who obviously drank like sailors. And then since both me and Mika ended up hitting it off with the two of them, he slipped away to his girl's hotel room after wishing me some good luck. Now my girl and I can't go to her friend's place because they shared a hotel room, so I invited her back to my hostel hoping that the Russian guy wasn't there. But then right as we're trying to get a tuck-tuck, which is kind of like a motorized rickshaw,

the British girl starts projectile vomiting into the street. So not to sound mean, but I knew it was a write-off. And so instead of bringing her back to the hostel, I bought a few bottles of water from a nearby store, both for her to drink and to rinse the vomit a little, and then joined her in the Tuk-tuk back to her hotel so I could make sure that she got home safe. It was the right thing to do, so that was cool, I suppose, but the real bonus was knowing that Mika's alone time with his British girl was about to get interrupted. It was a nice night for a walk, so I saved her a moment.

a little money by walking the mile or so back to my hostel. But then instead of taking the road, which got kind of sketchy at night, I walked on the beach. The night sky is incredible out there. Another reason why I chose to walk instead, but then maybe about halfway through my walk, I see these two Sri Lankan guys standing on either side of someone sitting on some lounge chair. And even from a distance, I could tell it was the red-headed Russian. The Sri Lankan guys were standing, but the Russian was almost as tall as them sitting down, like he was this huge lump just sitting there silent while the Sri Lankans were talking among themselves. Now, I'm in a pretty good mood, right?

So I see the Russian guy and I say, hey, buddy, how's it going? And then I asked the two Sri Lankans what's going on. They explained that they closed their bar for the night, and when they tried to get the Russian to leave, he ended up sitting his butt down in one of their loungers. the same lounge chair that they needed to clean and stack before they could get home for the night. The Russian guy was already a big proponent of blank stares and few words, but when I looked at him, he looked near blackout drunk. His face was all red, eyes, bloodshot, kind of panting too like one of those fat English bulldogs.

I remember what Mika said about him maybe being cool, so I took it upon myself to do those Sri Lankan guys of favor by moving him on while he, befriending him in the process. I tried almost everything except physically pushing him off, that lounge chair, but you know what worked in the end? Saying the word vodka to him. His eyes lit up, and then after repeating the word back to me, he hauled himself to his feet and we were on the move. The Sri Lankan guys were very grateful and were yelling, thank you, good night, as we walked off. Then, being drunk out of my mind, I started just yapping at the Russian guy in a language he couldn't understand just for fun of it.

Now, I remember saying, What's your deal, dude? I bet your parents made you wrestle bears in the circus, because you're built like a freaking tank, aren't you? Now, he didn't say anything in reply. He didn't even look at me. He just kept staggering along the beach at my side as I kept on yapping away.

We walked for maybe five or ten minutes, and then the hostel we were staying at came into view. But when the Russian realized that I hadn't taken him towards vodka, he got mad. He turned and then started staggering towards me saying something in Russian. I told him to chill, that we could get some drinks another time, but nothing stopped him. I didn't think he'd do anything, so when he did, I reacted way too slowly and ended up basically wrestling with a dude who was easily 30 to 40% larger than me.

And as you can imagine, that didn't go well. It quickly overpowers me, puts me in a headlock, and then starts smashing the top of my skull with his fist. And his punches hurt like a mother-effer, and all the while I'm yelling at him to stop and get off of me, but all he does is keep pounding. I was able to slip out of the headlock with a lot of struggling once he'd tired himself out a little, but I was so drunk that when I did, I immediately fell on my ass again, and when I did, that Russian guy was on top of me with his hands around my neck. I don't think I'll ever forget the feeling of terror for a as long as I live, the one I felt when I realized that this wasn't some drunken scuffle anymore,

and that if I didn't get his hands off me, I was probably going to die. I tried pulling his hands away by the wrists, but that was no good, and then I tried throwing punches up at him, but nothing that landed seemed to have any effect on him. I kept punching, and punching, trying and failing to fill my lungs, and then when they started to burn, I thought, Jesus Christ, man, this is it. This is how I die. I remember trying one last thing where I reach up and started trying to gouge his eye, but still this Russian guy didn't let go of me.

But then just as I was starting to get weak and feel my head start to spin, I heard this voice shouting, Oi, and this human missile flies in on the Russian and knocks him square off me. I was still rolling around in the sand, trying to catch my breath, as this voice and some heavily Australian English started yelling, what's wrong with you, your dog? And then when I rolled over, I saw two of his friends join in, and all three of them were built like football players.

And one of them starts asking me, Are you all right, mate? Look like a nasty bit of business. Are you two mates or what? I could barely get a word out, but I managed to rasp out at no, as two of the Aussies proceeded to pin this rush into the sand by sitting on him, while the third said he'd go and get the police.

I asked if I shouldn't hang around, so I could tell the cops what had happened, but they said that they'd sort it in their words and then told me to get myself home and shower to get the sand off me. That's when I realized how covered in it I was. How there was sand in my hair, in my mouth, even my nostrils, too. And to this day, I have next to no idea how it all had gotten there. Now, I have no idea what happened to that Russian. he was arrested, charged, or deported, or anything like that, because after telling Mika one hell of a

story when he got back later that night, we ended up moving on down the coast the next afternoon. We just didn't want to risk it, you know. There had been enough bad vibes already, so why risk even more of the off-chance the Russian managed to skirt his way out of trouble? And the rest of my trip was fine. In fact, nothing like that has ever happened to me since, but even now I still think about what might have happened if those three Aussies didn't show up for me and I'm just as grateful for them today as I was when they first showed up and saved my life. I've been meaning to submit this story to you for a while now. I don't have many scary memories or stories, but there's one that always stuck with me

ever since I was a little kid, which is when this happened. I can't remember what state we even lived in at the time, but I know we lived in a small town that felt kind of quaint and pleasant to me. I was probably three or four when this all happened, so obviously my memories are a bit hazy on the details, but the main plot of the story, I definitely remember it perfectly. I attended this kindergarten in town. It was a pretty small one with maybe 15 little kids, and it was basically what you'd expect. A corner for toys, crappy art on the walls, nap time, a little recess in the yard,

and the absolute typical kindergarten. And it would have been completely normal except for the fact that from day one of me attending, that school, there was this one strange kid. And we'll just call her Annabelle. She wouldn't join in with the class. She wouldn't read aloud or paint or come outside for recess. She wouldn't do anything except sit in the corner, which everyone referred to as Annabelle's Corner. And she didn't just sit there either. Oh no. She sat there making little figures out of Play-Doh and then smashing them with her little fist over and over. Or sometimes she'd pull the limbs off and then the head. Sometimes she'd lie them down and slowly roll the little plastic rolling pin over them.

Either way, the end result was that she repeatedly made these Play-Doh people who came to a very sticky end. And from the day I arrived at the kindergarten, I started in the middle of the year because we just moved to the state, the teachers had already taken to ignoring Annabel and just letting her do what she wanted. She wasn't causing any harm or hurting anyone after all. Naturally, none of the other kids were friends with her. Maybe they tried back in the day, but as far as I knew, they all just ignored the creepy girl on the corner in her Play-Doh playtime. Now, I had a cousin with Downs syndrome,

and while I could see that Annabel didn't have Downs, I got it into my head that she had some kind of condition, and it was my duty to be friend her and be nice to her. And so after a couple of weeks of attending the kindergarten and a few more days of building up the confidence, I approached Annabel in her corner. I was ready for her to just hiss at me or act hostile or ignore me altogether. What I didn't expect was for her to greet me with this big smile,

introducing herself and asking me to sit down and suggest that we become best friends. And yet, that's exactly what happened as a little kid. I remember being slightly taken aback, but hey, this was exactly what I'd wanted, right? So I introduced myself too and sat down, and almost immediately, As if she assumed it's what I wanted, Annabel began showing me how to make the Plato figurines, and the various ways in which I could crush them. She didn't explain why we were doing any of this. It was like she figured that I already knew.

But she had some particular instructions on how to make what I assumed to be random humanoids. This one had to be short, this one had to have a big nose, and this one needed some big old ears. And as soon became clear that we were making figures of both children and adults. And I'd say that there were maybe an 80-20 split between kids and grown-ups. Now, I went along with this for days because I was just happy that I'd managed to become Annabelle's friend out of all the kids in class. And it took a while for me to ask why we were doing this and what all this Play-Doh violence was for. And the answer Annabelle gave was not something I'd ever heard of before.

It was voodoo, she told me. A little kid was talking about voodoo. Now, I'd just like to add here that Annabel was a Caucasian blonde kid, and as far as I know, she wasn't from anywhere that really practiced voodoo or any sort of religion like that. And I am as convinced as I can possibly be that this wasn't some cultural thing and that she'd heard about the concept from one of her older brothers, of which she had three, two of whom were into horror movies and all sorts of weird stuff like that. And I say this very non-judgmentally, because obviously, as a Let's Read fan, I am too.

too. And Annabelle explained what Voodoo was to me, which I won't bother recounting because you all know what it is, but the key part here was that we were making these little effigies of our classmates and teachers, and one day, if we were lucky, the gods of Voodoo would smile down on us and cause our actions against the dolls to be transferred to the person they represented. I asked Annabelle why did we even want to do this, why did we want to hurt our classmates and teachers, and she just looked at me like I was some idiot, actually rolling her eyes and said something like, because they're awful, you dummy.

I didn't really agree, but the look on Annabelle's face made me feel like I really shouldn't voice that disagreement. Once she explained everything to me, I found out that one of the kids were regularly making dolls of what was another girl, who would just call Kirsty. Kirsty was popular, kind of bratty, and I guess I can see why Annabelle disliked her,

even though we were just little kids. And the more Annabel opened up to me, too, the more I became to understand her. It seemed like when she first joined kindergarten, the other kids had actually bullied her a bit. I only know this now as an adult, but there was this whole thing with Annabelle's family where they were regarded as pariahs in the town. Unfairly, for reason I won't get into, and so the kindergarten teachers had never really bothered to put a stop to the torment. Instead, Annabel had found out about voodoo one day, and that's what said her on this path.

I was torn. I didn't agree that any of the people really deserved to be dismembered or smashed or squished by gods, but I felt sorry for Annabel too, so I just kind of humored her. And then one day, I noticed Kirsty hadn't been in class for a couple of days, and then the teacher took us aside and told us the bad news in as sensitive a way as you really could. Kirstie had something called leukemia, a rare kind and it was very likely that she wouldn't be coming back to school and we might not see her again. They didn't explain the concept of death to us exactly and at least in the way that I remember it that they didn't handle it very well. But the short version is they told us Kirstie was dying of leukemia.

And to me, who didn't really understand how these things work, it felt like it had struck her out of nowhere. Obviously, you can see where my brain went as a kid. One of the gods of voodoo had smiled upon us and given kirsty leukemia thanks to all the voodoo dolls that we kept making her out of that Play-Doh. And to me, Annabel and I had effectively sentenced someone to death. And then the next week, my most disliked teacher, Mrs. Malley, slipped in the recess yard and broke her leg. We made voodoo dolls of her a lot, too.

I liked making those because they were big fat dolls and they were fun to smash and smush and squash, and I didn't like them anymore, though. I mulled over everything in my head for a few days. I was the kind of kid who built up internalized trauma real easy. I have no idea why. My parents weren't all that strict and I never really been in trouble for anything. But I would feel sick with guilt for days or weeks over the dumbest thing. For example, thinking a swear word silently in my head.

And eventually, I either move on from it or confess it to my mom, who wouldn't inevitably just tell me not to worry about it? Now, this time, though, I was certain that I was right to worry about it, and I didn't think it was my mom that I needed to confess to, but our main kindergarten teacher. And so one recess I went inside and told her everything, how me and Annabelle had making voodoo dolls and that we'd given Kirstie leukemia, and then we hadn't stopped there, and we'd broken Mrs. Malley's leg.

Now here's where I think the teacher really messed up, whose name I generally forget, despite how many years I'd spent angry at her. Now, she must have been able to tell that I was sincere. She must have. I was crying and struggling to get the words out. I was clearly having a really hard time, but instead of gently explaining to me that this isn't how things work, that you can't create voodoo dolls out of Plato and give classmates sicknesses, and that you can't make Miss Malley break her leg, this teacher screamed at me. She told me I was disrespecting Kirstie and Mrs. Malley, and that I was being a horrible little child, and she was seriously considering calling my parents in. I think the only reason she didn't was because she knew that she'd handled that badly, and she shouldn't have let her anger control how she reacted to me.

Now, of course, this all made me feel really, totally awful, so I vented to my only friend, Annabel, and then as soon as I had, I realized I'd just admitted to Annabel that I'd ratted her out as well. and so then I started apologizing deeply for that too. And Annabelle just sat there in silence for a while, like she was thinking really hard. I kept talking, suggesting that maybe we should just make a voodoo doll of the teacher because the gods would definitely smile on us this time. And eventually Annabel just shook her head and asked me if I really was sorry that I tried to rat her out.

Now, repeatedly, I insisted. I told her I'd do anything to prove it. And Annabel just kind of smiled, she said she had an idea. We wouldn't make a voodoo doll of the teacher. Instead, there were other ways to do the voodoo god's bidding, and I could prove my support and love at the same time. Now the next day, she showed me the means of our revenge. It wasn't anything really complex, and it wasn't some elaborate voodoo ritual. Instead, Annabel had a huge kitchen knife in her backpack, and she wanted me to take the knife, come into the classroom when the teacher.

teacher was alone at recess and stab her 16 times. This, apparently, would make amends both to the gods and to Annabel. Now, the story has probably illustrated that I was a pretty naive kid, and it probably makes it clear that I'm neurodivergent myself, but nothing, in no way, would have convinced me that taking Annabelle's huge knife and stabbing our teacher repeatedly was okay. And instead, it made me realize that Annabel was some blood-thorgette. thirsty psychopath who had a capacity for violence as a freaking kindergartner. Now, I know this because when I refused and told her there was no way that I was going to stab the teacher, Annabel pulled a pair of small sewing scissors out of her backpack and

stabbed me in the leg with them. It wasn't a little poke either. It was a deep, rough stab that caused blood to start gushing from my thigh. Obviously, I began to scream, and then so did a bunch of other kids when they saw the bleeding. As soon as it clicked in her brain what she'd done, I think Annabel just gave up. She pulled the kitchen knife from her backpack and lunged at me. However, thankfully, she was just some little girl, and our teacher was not.

And she was able to grab Annabel from behind and very easily pulled the knife away from her. I had to go straight to the hospital, so I didn't get to see the aftermath. My parents shielded me for most of it, too, but what I do know is that, Annabel had to spend some time in an institution and even received some serious therapy. There are things my parents still won't tell me about the aftermath, even though I'm in my first

year of college at this point, so I can only assume that something pretty bad or tragic or both ended up happening with Annabel. We moved away to a totally different state right after this, and of course, it's not like you could just Google for news stories about a mentally ill little kid. Now, really all I know is that for a couple of months, my best friend at kindergarten was a potential killer who believed that she could do magic. And also, that I was extremely lucky not to get killed. And that's the part that I don't like to think about. Whenever I tell this story, I try to play it off like I was some badass hero, dodging knife swings and surviving some murderer. And it's the only way that I can really stay sane.

I know that if I start thinking about it too hard, I'll just dwell on what could be. have happened, and I've refused to do that. And so this is my story. It could have been a lot worse, but the fact that it wasn't and the fact that I'm still here to tell the story is something I'm going to focus on above anything else. When I was younger in high school, I admit that it was a bit of stoner, a sort of emo goth type who probably didn't take care of herself that well and smoked a little too much weed. Now, this was before weed was legal, too, so we couldn't just walk to the store and pick some up. We'd spend our weekends hanging out in this sort of cubby hole under a bridge, not like the one from that famous dancing video you probably remember, and we'd turn it into a bit

of a hangout space. Rugs, magazines, a battery-powered stereo, the works. Now, one rule was if you showed up, then you brought snacks. And it was one guy who didn't follow that rule, or any of them, really, and his name was Birmingham. And that wasn't really his real name. I imagine that, but that's what he insisted we call him. Because get this. He'd been to Birmingham in England once on a vacation for like a month. And there were a bunch of ways Birmingham didn't fit in. He wasn't a goth or emo.

He was more of a hippie. And he was this white dude with dreadlocks, although I'm not sure if they were dreads or whether his hair was really just that unkempt. Birmingham would never arrive with snacks either, and he'd never contribute free stuff to the den. He'd just stroll in and hang out while the rest of us put work in. And while some of us might not have the best kind of hygiene, Birmingham had absolutely

reeked of B.O. And whoever got stuck sitting next to him, usually one of the girls would have to develop a tolerance to his smell. Oh, and did I mention that Birmingham was 32? A 32-year-old stinking hippie hanging out with high school goths and emoes, and he was not shy about hitting on some of the girls in the group. So, you're probably asking, why did we tolerate him? And the answer was simple. We were young, dumb, and he would buy us alcohol and provide us with weed. For a price, mind you, which he made no secret about skimming a profit from. He'd just shown up one day, told us that he could hook us up just as we'd been wondering how the hell to get into substance abuse.

Spoiler, just don't. And he sort of just stuck around ever since. And so Birmingham, despite all of his flaws and age gap and being a creep, was very much always at our hangout. He acted like he was the king of the castle when we were his adoring servants, especially the women. Even though all of us resisted his quote-unquote charms,

he behaved as if we constantly lusted after his stinky-ass body. He was gross, to put it mildly, and we were dumb enough to let him stick around anyways. And there were maybe eight of us, including Birmingham, on and off, four girls, three high school guys, and this Birmingham guy. Two of the guys were far too of losers to really ever stand up against him, and one of them was as much of a predator creep as Birmingham was.

So between Birmingham and this other weirdo, whose name was Josh, us girls really had to watch ourselves. We just moved into junior year when Birmingham ramped up his behavior. He singled out a couple of the girls, they were named Sandy and Bridget, and started trying to get them to engage in some really strange actions with him. At first he offered free joints, in exchange for this, and then it was an entire free baggy of weed. And then it was weed and unspecified pills.

He must have been really desperate to get touched, as that's all he was aiming for, to start with anyway. And a rumor went around that Sandy did actually give in and even did some strange stuff with him for a bag of weed, and we didn't see her for about a week. And when she came back to the group, she seemed down and ashamed and wouldn't look anyone in the eye, and we got the impression that whatever experience she'd had with her, him had not been a good one. And knowing how pressurizing Birmingham could get, I could only imagine. Now, none of us wanted to bring it up with Sandy in case it wasn't that, but behind her back,

most of the boys were not sympathetic, especially Josh. Well, obviously the girls felt bad for her. And we began talking about how to get rid of this Birmingham, but the boys were having none of it. He was our free ticket to weed and alcohol, and we weren't losing that just because Sandy wanted a freebie. These little assholes. I'm not going to pretend Sandy was innocent in this whole affair, but if you knew Birmingham, you'd know how far he'd try to go to get what he wanted. And the fact that it had taken until now was a miracle. The thing that changed everything was when this new girl joined junior year and quickly became a member of our group. Her name was Summer, and ironically she had almost jet black hair, completely natural.

And she soon became one of us, and Birmingham was smitten, and so was Josh. This was the first rift. Summer was one of those girls who was confident and she'd dressed provocatively, but she had no interest in doing anything with a dude. And so began a competition between Josh and Birmingham to be the first one to get Summer without clothes. They weren't trying to sleep with her, not yet anyway. They just made a bet to be the first one to consensually see her. And the consensual part wasn't out of respect or anything.

It was just for bragging rights between these two weirdos. Naturally, Summer didn't appreciate this from the start, having two guys, one of whom was literally 32 and stank, trying to get her to do something like flashing. And she began asking some of us privately why we tolerated this weirdo, and so we explained. And then she asked why we tolerated Josh, and we started realizing that there really wasn't actually a good reason for that. He was a creepy idiot, too, but he normally targeted girls outside the group. There were all sorts of rumors circulating about the way. he'd treated past girlfriends. Summer decided she'd try to handle it,

and her solution was to offer some kind of vague incentive to Josh or Birmingham to whichever one beat the other in a fight. And very clearly beat, no question that they'd won, i.e., she meant one of them to put the other in the hospital. Summer had expected them to say no, that it wasn't worth it. But apparently this high school boy and this 32-year-old man were willing to risk killing each other overseeing some girl's body, and so it was decided that the fight would be that Friday night.

Summer had become my personal best friend, really, so she was panicking to me on the telephone about this. And of course she didn't want anyone to get hurt. She just wanted both of them to just screw off. We couldn't think of any solutions other than to try and de-escalate the fighter call the cops if we really had to. And ultimately, none of that needed to happen. We all showed up to the hangout on Friday. Birmingham made some disgusting crude comment about how he was going to win the fight, and summer would be compelled to do all sorts of unspeakable things. And that's when he attacked.

Only the attack didn't come from Josh. Now remember I said the other two guys who were too much of babies to ever stand up against Birmingham? Or it turns out that wasn't true. One of them, a guy named Craig, suddenly went flying across the room, slamming Birmingham against the concrete wall of the hangout and pinning him there by the throat. Craig was a big guy, tall and large, and he had no problem holding this skinny, wiry, Birmingham guy in place. And it all came out.

How much we all hated Birmingham, and how he was a stinking, vile parasite, who could only get with women by trying to bribe children with drugs. How none of us could stand him, basically everything we'd ever wanted to say to him. You see, we found out later that Craig had been developing a burning, powerful crush on summer, and the more Birmingham and Josh talked about her like that, the more quietly and fuming he got. And then he just snapped. We watched in silent awe as Craig headbutted Birmingham square in his nose, audibly breaking it, and we listened as he threatened to gut him violently if he ever showed his face around the hangout again,

or even around town. And then he pulled the hunting knife out of his belt. That's the exact moment Josh walked in, looking sick and nervous, presumably for his fight. You'd expect this to distract Craig, but it didn't. He held the knife up to Birmingham's throat so tightly that it drew beads of blood and told him how serious he truly was. And then Craig dropped some info we didn't know. He mentioned the name of his family,

a well-known Irish-American gang in town who were, to say the least, serious business. And when Birmingham heard that, that's what finally broke him. He began to cry, begging forgiveness and apologizing to Craig. And Craig said it wasn't him who deserved the apology. It was Summer. And Summer just shook her head and said she didn't care. She just wanted this guy out of there. So Craig let him limp away.

And that was the last we ever saw of that creepy drug dealer again. Now meanwhile, Josh had been watching the whole thing with a sort of sick look on his face, as I said. And Craig turned to him, tucked the knife back into his belt and just gave him this look that sort of said, you could be next. And the group kind of dissipated after that. nobody really had the energy to hang out with each other with all that violence hanging in the air and summer and i stayed friends and the other girls and guys sort of drifted away we're still friends to this day and sometimes summer and i talk about how we were regularly hanging out with three different guys who were scary in their own way and there was josh who i later found out got kicked out of college for his conduct with a female student

and then there was birmingham who looking back was more terrifying than i truly realized an adult male trying to use intoxication to get underage women into bed with him. And while he was maybe the least dangerous, Craig was definitely the scariest. Nothing suggested he'd explode that day, and nothing gave away that he was the black sheep of an extremely violent family. And all we can be grateful for is that Craig's first outburst of rage was directed at the right target. I know people like to fall asleep to your videos, but I have a story that sometimes

still gives me nightmares to this day. I don't know why it creep me out so much that as an adult, I still sometimes have night terrors and sleep paralysis that revolve around it, but, hey, I guess it takes all sorts to scare us. Now, this story wasn't a serial killer or a gunman or a home invader or anything like that. The scary thing here was a little girl I grew up with. Her name was Bethany, and we grew up together, and we were supposedly best friends. At least, that's what our respective parents insisted anyway. Now, this is going to make me sound like an idiot, but the truth is that I was Bethany's best friend, but she wasn't mine.

Now, before you write me off, though, stick with me. I was Bethany's best friend because even from an early age, she didn't have any other friends. The reason for this is because she weirded all the other kids out. None of the other kids in the neighborhood girls or boys would play with her. She scared them with her odd behavior, and the strange things that she would say about ghosts and witches and all tons of nonsense. Mostly, though, she had this habit of hiding in places and then jumping out and yelling at you to scare you.

Other little kids don't really like that, and since Bethany made, quote, freaking our friends out her entire personality, they didn't really like Bethany either. Unfortunately, Bethany's parents and my parents were best friends. They made a group since college, and they stayed very, very close ever since, and they both had their first kids,

me and Bethany in the same year. We were born just about one month apart. And so our parents decided that we were destined to be best buddies, just like they were, and ever since we were tiny little babies, we were forced into being a pair. Now, Bethany took this rule of friendship very seriously, and that meant that she stuck to my side like glue, and as a little kid, I had no hope of having any other real friendships when Bethany was always there, creeping everyone else out and behaving like a total weirdo. She was also insanely protective and jealous of me, so any chance I might have had it at establishing other friendships basically went out the window.

Bethany just seemed to have no shame and no sense of decorum or restraint. She'd pull weird faces at other kids, and she had no hesitation about breaking wind or burping in front of anyone. She'd say extremely hurtful things to other kids, calling larger kids fatty and that kind of thing, and as we moved through elementary school, her vote. vocabulary developed into calling people various slurs, usually things that just made no sense and didn't even apply to them. And the fact that I was associated with her as her best friend, it was an embarrassment and absolutely destructive thing to any social life that I might have had.

If I even tried to bring up the topic with my parents, they acted like I was being so mean because Bethany was a little angel, and they just wouldn't see the fact that she was some creepy weirdo. The one strange exception to Bethany's behavior was church. Both of our families were Christians and we attended the same church. And in church, Bethany was like a totally different person. It was as if God genuinely calmed her and soothed some kind of devil in her. Thankfully, the kids at Sunday school mostly weren't the same kids from our neighborhood or our elementary schools, so we did actually have some other friends there.

It was so strange. And to this day, I have no idea if Bethany, was putting on some act in church, or she really did just feel compelled to be her best self. Church is important to the story, too, because it introduces the other main characters here. Marie, our babysitter, from when we were really little. Our parents would frequently go out for meals or go to see the movies on Friday or Saturday nights, and Marie was their choice of babysitter from the get-go. I think she first started babysitting us when she was 14 and we were five or six,

old enough for our parents to feel comfortable leaving us with someone else. When everything ended, we were 12, so I guess Marie was 20, although she'd never gone off to college or anything like that. Marie would also babysit us at Bethany's house. There were various reasons for this, but mostly Bethany had difficulty falling asleep anywhere but her own bed, and our parents would often be out long after it was time for us to go to bed. Bethany had this game where she tried to act as creepy as possible whenever Marie babysat us, but without Marie ever finding out.

Somehow she managed this for six years. I don't know if Marie was just completely oblivious and unobservant, or if Bethany was incredibly clever and manipulative. Bethany had three different games as she played around Marie. One was the creepy sound game. Bethany would hide somewhere in the house and make a loud clicking sound with her throat, kind of like that ghost from the grudge. And then if Marie heard, she'd convince her that she had no idea what was actually making the sound.

I even heard Marie talking about it to Bethany's parents once, asking if they'd ever heard this strange noise. They hadn't, of course, because Bethany behaved like an angel around adults. And the second game was trying to make me jump and scream. And if she succeeded, I had to tell Marie that I'd seen a spider or a mouse because, just like any other time I tried to push back against Bethany, she'd threatened to make my life a living hell. I did not want to find out what kind of horror Bethany would plan for me if she ever decided that I wasn't her best friend. and so I just went along with everything that she threw at me. Finally, the third game was called Goblin.

Bethany had this thing where she'd pretend to be a goblin, but it was honestly uncanny. She managed to sort of scuttle along the ground on all fours, pulling this genuinely horrifying face. She'd hide under beds or climb up on cabinets or wardrobes and act as demonic as she possibly could. And you know how people use that phrase, Goblin mode, I'm convinced it was invented by someone who knew Bethany. And the way she turned this

into a game was going Goblin Mode for as long as she could, without Marie or other adults, ever catching her. One time, I remember her crouching in the corner of the living room, putting her goblin face on while Marie watched television, and she managed this for an entire hour before getting bored and making me play some board game with her. As we grew up and moved from elementary school to middle school, I really thought, or at least hoped and prayed, that Bethany would grow out of her weird, creepy phases. Instead, they just got worse. Middle school presented her with a whole new group of kids to alienate and freak out. Thankfully, middle school allowed me to make a few other friends invent to them about how much Bethany

drove me crazy and how embarrassing I found her. It wasn't much, but word did start getting around that I was more than Bethany's sidekick and didn't actually approve of or indefinitely. her rude, vulgar, and insulting behavior. And this was especially relieving as she was going through her, constantly saying slurs era, usually based on nothing and totally unrelated to the person that she was hurling that slur at. I can't give examples without getting this video demonetized, obviously, but for example, imagine a slur aimed at a homosexual man being used against an 11-year-old girl, or a little white boy being called, well, you can imagine the kind of things.

Now, once again, she just wanted to be as weird and off-putting as possible, and I was starting to get really sick of it. Our parents showed no signs of drifting apart, which meant that Bethany and I were being forced to spend almost every weekend together. Nearly every Friday, they would go out to dinner with a group from church and wouldn't return home until it was well past midnight, so I would have sleepovers at Bethany's house almost every single Friday, and it was hell. I wanted to start hanging out with my other friends and living a life of my own. I could tell something had changed with Bethany on the Friday that this all kicked off, but I couldn't put my finger on it exactly. She was sort of aloof with me, acting as if she didn't care that I was there, when normally she'd behave like a hyperactive child whenever we had to sleep over.

Our parents had been gone for a few hours, and Marie was downstairs doing some kind of homework, so I guess she must have been attending some kind of school, thinking about it. And maybe she was doing college remotely. I have no idea. Now, anyway, Bethany had told me she wanted some alone time and left me in the living room watching TV, but eventually she told me to come upstairs to play Scrabble. Bethany loved Scrabble because she'd make up words and insist that they were real, so she always won. Now, she also enjoyed putting rude words down on the board. When I went upstairs, the Scrabble game wasn't set up. And instead, Bethany's Bethany was sitting at her desk, fingers poised like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.

And she stared at me for what felt like minutes and then finally spoke and told me that she'd heard from a little birdie that I'd been saying mean things about her at school behind her back. Now, at first, I had no idea what she was talking about, but then I realized. I had disavowed her behavior and bitched about her to other kids. And while I don't think anyone ratted me out to Bethany, I think she overheard her. some kids defending me or saying that I wasn't as bad as my weird friend or something like that. Bethany said that she knew that I've been calling her a weirdo and telling other kids that I didn't

like her, so there was no point in denying it. And if I tried, then she'd make things worse. And then her face split into this really creepy grin, and she told me that it didn't matter. We were still best friends, and if I promised to stay loyal to her from then on, she'd forgive me. Of course, being terrified of her and lacking much of a backbone, I begged her forgiveness and promised that I'd stay best friends with her. And for the rest of the night, Bethany constantly played two of her favorite games. She'd disappear off and make the weird grudge sound, which Marie had started ignoring years ago, and then she would constantly jump out at me from places to scare me.

This time, though, the game changed. I wasn't allowed to scream or let Marie know that I was scared. this was now suddenly part of the terms of her forgiving me for insulting her. I think I'd have pulled it off really well. If I hadn't stressed it enough, Bethany could be incredibly creepy, and she managed to squeeze into the most impossible hiding spots and jump out from the craziest areas. I think I must have stifled well over 20 screams that night,

determined not to invoke whatever hypothetical anger she threatened me with. No, I was just grateful that she didn't decide to combine it all with her goblin impression. I'm not sure that I could have handled seeing Bethany scooting across the floor out of nowhere that night. I was already jumpy enough as it was. Now, eventually, it was our bedtime, so we headed to our respective bedrooms. And that was one of the things that I did like about sleepovers of Bethany's. They had a guest room, and when I slept over, I was able to use it. Our parents didn't like the idea of us keeping each other up by talking all night

and was a rule that I was more than happy to follow now. and I guess the bedroom also had a lock, and due to Bethany's love for scaring me, I'd always locked it before I went to sleep ever since I was young. It had given me a degree of safety, but I found out that night it was completely misplaced. Bethany had always had a key to my room, I suppose, and simply waited for the right time to use it. I had no idea what had woken me up. I blink in the darkness, trying my best to let my eyes adjust, and then I heard it again. Bethany's stupid croaking ghost noise.

And that's when I realized where she was. She was standing on the wooden footboard of the bed, balancing there in some bizarre crouch. Her face was full goblin mode, and she'd done something to her hair to make it stick up everywhere. I reached out and turned on the lamp and saw the full creepy weirdness of Bethany's goblin mode. She was dressed only in her underwear, and she'd written all sorts of strange. words and symbols all of her body and what looked like lipstick. When she smiled, I saw that her teeth was also covered in lipstick too. And then she spoke in this weird goblin voice, and I'll never forget what she said.

Do you think I'm weird enough now? And with that, she leaped off the foot of the bed and landed on me. And then she began smearing something on my face, which I later found out was the same lipstick that she'd used to write on herself. and at the same time she kept spitting on me, saying she wanted to make me weird like her. I managed to scream, but I think Marie must have heard the commotion already as she came bursting into the room and then I heard her screaming. My first thought was that my savior had shown up to finally protect me from Bethany's insanity, but I could never have predicted how Marie would interpret the situation.

At first, all she did was scream at us to break it up, and then she made Bethany put on a robe. march us both downstairs and had us sit on opposite chairs in the living room until all four of our parents returned home. When Marie told them what had supposedly happened, I couldn't believe my ears. According to her, she'd caught us engaging in some kind of carnal act that she could no longer be around two girls who would behave like that. And the worst part is, Bethany claimed that this was also true, that we'd been drawn to each other and needed Jesus. As my parents took me home that night, in shame, I begged and pleaded with them to believe me that this wasn't what happened. I was way too young to even be thinking about anything like that, let alone with Bethany.

And they said nothing as I talked over and over about how Bethany had always tried creeping me out ever since we were little kids, how the other neighborhood kids couldn't stand her, and how she alienated and ostracized everyone at school, how she would say terrible words and acted disrespectfully. I told them that, and I thought Bethany needed help, serious help. Eventually, thank God, they believed me. And yet somehow, this didn't make things any better. But you see, her parents believed me too. But the help they decided that she needed was some kind of camp for wayward teens

rather than the therapy and support that I'd had in mind. And so Bethany was shipped off to what I later found out was a particularly notorious wilderness survival camp designed to scare kids straight into good behavior. And they kept Bethany there for over a year. And then when she came home, she didn't want to see anyone. She was homeschooled. She wanted to avoid me and everyone else.

Her parents had remained friends during the whole ordeal of Bethany being at the camp, but as soon as she returned, they kind of just stopped spending time together. And the whole thing conflicts me so much. Bethany terrified me and emotionally hurt and scared a lot of people, but I never wanted her to have her entire personality stripped out of her or be forced to become the shell of herself that that camp's, seemed to have turned her into. Eventually, I heard from my parents that Bethany had decided to dedicate her whole life to Jesus, and after graduation was set to become a nun. And as far as I know,

that's exactly what ended up happening. She has no social media presence, and it's not like she had any other friends that could ask. We lost touch with her parents years ago, and now she's a very strange, eerie footnotes in my life. But like I said, sometimes I have these nightmares where She crawls after me on all fours, going full goblin mode, furious at me for the path that I set her on. And sometimes I wake up with sleep paralysis and I see Bethany standing there on the foot of my bed, just like she was on that final night. Only now she isn't just contorting her face to look like a goblin. In these sleep paralysis fits, she looks fully demonic. And whenever I finally break out of them and the specter of Bethany seems to disappear, I find myself wondering,

Did I possibly make things better for my weird best friend? Or did I simply make them much, much worse? Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.