The Lets Read Podcast - 361: MY TERRIFYING ENCOUNTER WITH THE PARANORMAL | 16 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 347

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories happened after dark & Paranormal EncountersHAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?[e-mail] ME ON -►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/♫ Music & Cover art: INEKThttps://www.youtube.com/@inekt

Now, I've never posted anything on here before, but I'm at a loss for words this morning. My son, whose four, told me this morning, me, 26-year-old female, that his ghost brother has told him that he has to kill me. Now, let me start this out by saying, my son does not watch graphic television shows, nothing violent, and he's a dinosaur-loving kid and mostly watching Lamb Before Time in the occasional Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movies with me and, my fiance, who's a 31-year-old male. Now, we recently just bought her house, about two months ago now, and I started to notice little things, but nothing that was sounding any sort of warning bells. I've lived in haunted houses before, so I just went on with my day and essentially ignored it, until one night at around 11.30, I heard whistling. Now, I live in the Appalachas, so whistling at night is a big no-no in my house,

so I call out to my fiancé and tell him to stop whistling in the house who will invite weird spirits in. He comes into our bedroom and I said to him, Why the hell are you whistling at night? And he goes pale and says, I'm not whistling. And I'm thinking he's messing with me, so I just say, yeah, okay, and go to bed. Now the next morning I'm in the shower and he comes in to says, Be honest with me.

Were you pranking me last night? And I, of course, tell him everything that happened and assure him that I was not pranking him. He is a skeptic and always has been, and he again goes pale and just says, okay, and drops it. Nothing happened for about two weeks until three nights ago I was on a phone call with my cousin and heard a loud crash. My fiancé works night shift, so I immediately go into a protector mode and assume someone was breaking in. That's how loud it was. I'm still on the phone with my cousin and she is witnessing everything that's happening. I call out asking if anyone is there.

I know, I know I'd be the first one killed in a horror movie, but if someone is in my house, I wanted them to know that I was coming and not afraid, even though I clearly was. I get to the bottom of the stairs and at first I see nothing, so I'm starting to feel less on edge until I walk out into my kitchen. I notice a candle, one of those three-wick ones that you can buy at Walmart, halfway across the room. I look at the entry table where I had it sitting and a painting I also keep there was knocked over. So my first thought was, okay, the house was settling and it just

knocked the candle over, no big deal. I picked everything up and set it back where I had it, though I thought it was strange that it mysteriously fell over, especially since I have a four-year-old who runs all over the house all the time and the vibration from that hasn't knocked it off. And so I decided that I'd test to see what it would take to make it fall. I'm running, jumping, doing everything I can to try and get it to fall the way it did and it's not budging. I even hit the table and it still didn't fall. So of course, I'm a little spooked but decided to just go to bed. Last night, as I'm falling asleep, I heard loud banging coming from downstairs. Of course, my fiancé is working again, and so I have to go down and check it out for myself.

I go down and get a very unsettling feeling. All of the hairs of my body are standing up, and I feel like I'm being watched. I don't know what came over me, but I just said out loud, I don't care that you're here, but please stop doing the things when I'm home alone, okay? And then turn to walk up the stairs. Now, you know that feeling where you have to run up the stairs

because it feels like something's chasing you? That's the feeling I get. I turn around and say it's enough and that I will not be scared in my own home and walk to my bedroom. I continue to hear things during the night and my cat is very on edge. She's acting as if she was guarding my bedroom door. About an hour later at around 1 a.m., my son wakes up and asks if I will turn a movie on for him so he can fall back asleep, and so I do. Instead, I hear him mumbling in his room as if he's talking to somebody. Now, this is not abnormal for him, as he has a very big imagination and loves playing and coming up with his own worlds, creating stories for them as he goes.

Now, about an hour ago, he's sitting with me and looks at me with a straight face and says, Mommy, my ghost brother says I have to kill you. But I would never do that because I love you so much. I'm completely in shock and say to him, What did you just say? and he repeated it. I then prodded, asking for more information. He's been going through this phase where he's been more defiant,

but again, he's four, so I don't think anything of it. But he tells me his ghost brother tells him to break toys, hurt animals, stomp on flowers he wants to pick for me, etc. My son is very kind and very empathetic, and him saying all of this to me is very out of character for him. He's the child who won't kill a bug because what if they have a family and they miss them? That kind of little boy, so I'm in complete shock. I'm not sure if this is a made-up fantasy for him or if I should actually be concerned.

I come from a long line of people sensitive to the paranormal, so experiences are something I'm very familiar with, but not to this caliber. And I'm also worried for my son's safety and well-being, especially if it's something I cannot see to protect him from. If anyone has any advice, please tell me. My name's Andy. I'm a professional videographer, and my fiancé likes listening to your podcast while she cooks. Now, I've heard one or two absolute banger stories, and although my fiancé doesn't have anything to contribute, thank God for that, I do.

Because even though I've filmed in dangerous high-crime areas of the U.S. and U.K., as well as many, many conflict zones all over the world, Nothing has frightened me like what happened at an old Welsh castle one night back in 2009. So back on I was still freshly graduated, I used to advertise on Facebook and in newspapers. I mostly did stuff like weddings and secondary school dances, low-level stuff for what I considered to be reasonable prices. But then one day, I got a message from a guy that immediately piqued my interest. because instead of being soon to be married or a secondary school's head of year, this guy's profile said he was a paranormal investigator. Sixth form dances are nice, but trust me when I say that you can only do so many before they get a bit boring.

They're also weirdly hazardous because a drunk six-former can cover an impressive distance with her projectile vomit, and while it makes for a fantastically disgusting photo, the last thing I want to do is spend the wee small hours cleaning spew off my expensive camera. Now, the same applies to weddings. Some people think that their Martin Scorsese after a couple of drinks asking, let me have a go then. And then they almost dropped your camera on the hardstone floor of some rental country house. And that's half the reason the job interested me so much.

It'd be the same pay for the same time, but it'd be in a sober environment with a guy who claimed to hunt ghosts for a hobby. Now, I know his family quite well these days, so I don't want to name and potentially embarrass him, so I'll just call the guy Ray, which is the first non-silly name I could really think of. Ray seemed a bit quirky. I mean, a person has to be a bit quirky to call themselves a paranormal investigator, but he also seemed really nice. He explained how the job was at Kidwelly Castle in Wales,

which was about two hours' drive from where I was based at the time. But Ray said he was willing to pay for my person, petrol, and an overnight stay in a local B&B, which he assured me wouldn't bite into his budget too badly. Now, he was a wealthy guy, apparently, operating a large cleaning business in the day, while indulging in his preferred hobby of ghost hunting on weekends. Now, I didn't believe in ghosts at the time. I still don't. But like I said, I reckoned hanging around with a ghost hunter and his crew would make for an interesting job, and it did, in a manner of speaking. Just not in the way that I first thought it would. So Ray's team consisted of himself, a personal assistant named Sophie, and a technician

named Phil. I put technician in quotes because I don't mean to sound disrespectful here or anything. He just wasn't anything of the sort. He had a few weird-looking detectors with him, things that measured air density or electrical signals, but when I asked how they worked and how they'd help us find ghosts, he gave me a kind of jimble-jamble response that made it clear that he had no real clue. None of that bothered me in the least bit, though. He was a lovely person, just like Ray and Sophie were, and since they were paying me, I was only too willing to provide the best camera work possible, while hopefully having something of a laugh while doing it. I drove out to Wales early on Saturday afternoon, and then arrived at Kidwelley on the south coast of Wales just in time for a late pub lunch.

And then after a slow pint, Ray and his team arrived, and I joined them on the short drive up to the castle. built by the Norman invaders, it's in ruins these days and for good reason, because as Ray quite accurately informed me, it was the site of over 200 years worth of battles between the Normans and the native Welsh. It was built, attacked, taken, retaken, besieged, relieved, and then finally destroyed. And while Ray had no doubt that the ghosts of dead soldiers reenacted those ancient battles on a near nightly basis, they weren't our reason. for being there. Now, I apologize in advance for the name, and it'll no doubt cause you a bit of trouble pronouncing it, but I'll try and help you out a bit. According to Ray, we'd come to Kid Wellie to

hunt the ghost of Gwynlyan Vergritheth, a 12th century Welsh princess who led a rebellion against the Normans. Now, I'm not some history buff. I have no idea who he was talking about or how to spell or pronounce her name, but as Ray told me her story, I was captivated. Apparently, Gwenlian was the great, great, great-granddaughter of the High King of Ireland, and her beauty, along with her skill with words, inspired many a man to follow her into battle. She gathered up an army to attack Kidwelly Castle and won herself a couple of battles in the surrounding area. But one thing the Normans were never short of, thanks to constantly conquering and absorbing other forces, was men. And so when she and her army finally marched on Kidwelly itself,

the Normans were ready for them, and after her soldiers were soundly beaten, the Normans took Gwenlian captive. Now here's where things get dark. After the Normans captured Gwendoan, they wanted to make an example of her. And so with all her surviving soldiers gathered in a field not far from the castle, the Norman commander condemned her to death by beheading. I pictured an old wooden block and a big executioner's axe, you know, like how Sean Bean gets.

It's a little off the top in the first season of Game of Thrones. Spoiler alert. But according to Ray, that's not how it happened. A Norman soldier, right there in front of all of Gwynlian's men, took a dagger from its sheath and sliced through her neck so slowly that she drowned in her own blood rather than enjoying a quick and painless death. When the dagger reached Gwen's spine, it wasn't sharp enough to cut through,

so the soldier resorted to twisting and polling, breaking the wretched woman's neck before he quite literally tore her head from her shoulders. And by the end of his retelling, I remember thinking, no wonder the poor woman's spirit can't rest. And Ray agreed. He said her ghost still wandered the castle walls, racked with the guilt of failure and plagued by the agonizing memory of her own brutal execution. Now, naturally, Ray thought that his best chance of getting an actual ghost documentation,

as in like recording one on camera, was a knight in Kidwelly Castle. I told him I couldn't promise anything, as I had no experience or belief in recording otherworldly spirits, and so he assured me that that wasn't a problem. All I had to do was stay close, do as he asked, and point the camera where needed. Everything else was on him.

Now, to my surprise, Ray was actually really professional. He had ideas for scenes. He had little speeches memorized when he hit different parts of the castle, And he even had us rehearsed little drills for whenever Phil the tech guy got readings on his instruments. I was impressed, like really impressed. And as the sun went down and a shooting started, it felt more like we were making a proper documentary than just filming an amateur ghost hunt. They had a lot of fun doing it too, and that definitely transferred onto the footage. I remember thinking their viewers must have had a lot of fun watching, but in terms of seeing any actual ghosts, no prizes for a sort of.

assuming we didn't see any. We'd made her way around the castle grounds with Ray talking about all the various battles that had been fought over it, as well as the brutal beheading of Gwynlyan. But like I said, there were no real ghosts, no or no unusual readings on any of Phil's equipment, and we made it all the way up to the battlements, which by that point was just a small stretch of walkway hemmed in by iron railings for safety accessible by a spiral staircase that was as deep as it was narrow. And before we went up, Ray instructed Phil to do a loop on the castle at ground level with his equipment just to see if there were any readings he might have missed. And after that, me, Ray, and Sophie ascended the stairs, very carefully, I should add, and then started to shoot a

scene on the battlements. It was obviously dark out, but my camera's light illuminated the battlements quite nicely, and we ended up with a really nice shot as Ray pointed off into the field and spoke about the spectral battles that locals claim to see. It was all a lot of bollocks, if you ask me, but I wasn't there to pass judgment or offer an opinion. I was there to shoot, nothing more, nothing less. So when Ray suddenly stopped talking in the middle of the sentence and looked out into the dark field away from the battlements,

I did nothing but keep filming him. With his flare of dramatics and not believing in any of that ghosty stuff, I honestly thought Ray was just sort of pretending to see something when he said, Oh, oh, oh my gosh, I see something. Sophie started looking out towards where he was pointing, asking where, where, but Ray didn't respond. He just kept on looking out into the darkness with this shocked look on his face. Keeping the shot on him, I looked off into the darkness to try and see what he was looking at, but there was nothing.

Just this big, dark field. barely lit by what little moonlight made its way through the clouds. Ray suddenly turned to me and told me, rather frantically, to get a shot of the field in what he was looking at. I obviously did as he asked, but there was nothing but darkness, and my camera didn't pick up anything at all. I kept the shot on the field for a couple of more seconds, purely to please Ray, and then as Sophie asked what he could see, I instinctively turned the shot back to them to capture the exchange. Without taking his big frightened eyes off the field, Ray started explaining to Sophie how he could see Gwenlian out there,

kneeling in front of her Norman executioner. And Sophie asked where. Then Ray, pointing again, all frustrated and shouted, Right Bloody there. Sophie didn't say anything in response. Something I suppose she often did whenever Ray claimed to have seen something. I assumed there were a lot of exchanges like this with Sophie keeping her mouth shut.

for the good of her job, and I followed suit and simply paned back towards the field to where Ray was pointing. I heard him say, it's her, it's her, no, no wait, it's, and then he went quiet for a second. I paned back to him, hoping I could catch whatever he was going to say next, and the look on his face was nothing short of haunting. Ray looked terrified. I mean truly and dramatically terrified, more so than I have ever seen on the faces of soldiers coming under fire. Then, in a voice that shook with the fear that he was feeling, he said, and I'll never forget the sound of it. That's Eva down there!

That's my little girl! I lost the shot completely as he barged his way past me, with Sophie calling after him as he went. He reached the top of the stairs, then started hurtling down with them with Sophie close behind, shouting, Ray? Ray, slow down. I tried my best to capture what was happening, but I got nothing but a shot of Sophie chasing after Ray as he ran for the stairs.

I tried to follow as fast as I could, but it's not easy to hold a camera steady if you're moving faster than walking speed. And then before I could get a single steady shot of anything, I heard a brief yelp from Ray before Sophie suddenly screamed at his name. Or more like she screeched it, so loud and was such terror that it was a little. like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. And that's when I heard the sound of him tumbling down stone stairs,

like a scuffling, a yelp, and then these doll cracks as he hit the literal rock hard steps over and over. I stopped trying to record things after that. Thankfully the stairs were in a spiral shape, so he didn't go flying all the way down. But I knew he'd picked up a nasty injury before I saw him because Soapie's screams somehow shifted up a gear when she saw the blood. At least I thought it was just blood she could see, because when I got down to where she and Ray were,

with her standing over him as he was splayed out on the stairs, I realized that the damage was way worse than just a few cuts and bruises. Ray must have smashed his head against a step on the way down, and while they'd been worn down after nearly a thousand years of use, they still had these sharp, almost jagged edges in places and were made of the hardest of local stone. Corrella Stone, in fact, stone that was obviously considered harder than Ray's skull. I don't think I'll ever forget following Sophie's torch beam with my eyes only to see a horrifying amount of blood pouring down that same stone steps. Ray had cracked his head open,

and I don't mean that with any sense of exaggeration. There was a clear and terrifying split to a scalp, through which I could see blood, bone, and something paler and whiter which glistened under the light of Sophie's torch. Phil had heard the scream too by that point and had come running to see what was going on. He was the one to call 9-99, the one to rush off to where we'd park the cars so he could guide the paramedics to where Ray was lying, bleeding. That's mostly why I still feel a lot of affection and respect for the man.

I'd rather foolishly believed him, useless with all of those strange little gadgets and gizmos. But without him, without his cool head where my own and sophies were lost in a panic, I'm almost certain Ray would no longer be with us. And at that moment, I was almost certain he was dead. It seemed impossible to me that anyone could survive such a horrific injury, but somehow he did. After the mad rush to the hospital was Sophie joining him in the ambulance and Phil telling me to jump into his passenger seat, we were told that the chances of Ray's survival were relatively high. I think they said something about him being put into a coma so they could handle the swelling to his brain,

but the bottom line was that after a couple of days, he'd be awake and most likely healthy again. That was obviously really great news, and so great that I was able to start driving back home with enough peace of mind to keep from crashing, but sadly, we didn't get the happy ending I thought we would. I kept in touch with Sophie and Phil hoping to carry on hearing all the good news about Ray's recovery,

but as I said, the news wasn't good. Apparently he had this thing called post-concussion syndrome, and by the sounds of it, it was bad. Ray was having trouble remembering things about the recent past. For example, he couldn't remember what he'd seen that had frightened him in the minutes before he fell down the stairs at the Kidwelly. Sophie said that no one ever told him the full story, that he'd seen the ghost of his daughter out there,

and to be honest, I should have probably seen this coming. I thought Ray was hallucinating, that he was ill, mentally, I mean, and he'd legitimately hallucinated something like the way people, with brain tumors do. But Ray really did have a daughter, and she'd lost her life as a teenager many years before after a long battle with leukemia. Sophie said the loss of his daughter was the whole reason Ray had become interested in ghost hunting in the first place, to prove to himself that there was some kind of afterlife or method of communicating with his deceased daughter. It was only once I was told this that I realized how in a manner of speaking, I've been right about

him being mentally ill. Only it wasn't some condition or a tumor driving him mad. It was grief. Grief that was making him see things and react in ways that were quite literally putting his life in danger. So I'm just a normal guy living in the Pacific Northwest. I have two dogs and I often hike around in the spring and summer days. There is a particular hike that I like to do with my dogs because the trail is along a river and they love to swim and it's one of those trails that no one really knows about. I've been hiking it for about six years now and I've never seen another person out there. One of my dogs is reactive, so having a place where I never have to worry about running into another person or dog is perfect for me. April of last year, I loaded my dogs up and

drove us to the trailhead. We got out and started hiking around. About two miles in, I come across a tree that someone had used red rope and large nails to tie up what I think is, a cow's tongue, just nailed it to a tree. The tongue itself was tied tightly or bound with rope, and then they used big nails to nail it to a tree. There were two of them on one tree. And next to the tree in the river water, there was large, again, assuming cow, bones just scattered.

And the dogs definitely started to act different. They seemed very uneasy. I looked around a bit to see if anyone was out there or if there was someone who was maybe homeless and had found camp there. But there was nothing around and no signs of someone camping, no trash, no tent, or fire. And my dogs kept tucking their tails in and would stop and look out as if something was near, but I couldn't see anything. And so I decided to turn back.

Once we were fairly far away from that tree, the dog started to loosen up again. And that night I couldn't stop thinking about it. A, it was all just very weird. and B, I had never once seen anyone out that way. It was one of those hikes where there's this bit of a hike to the trailhead, and then the trailhead doesn't look like a trailhead really, and the hike itself isn't very easy. It's rocky and wet, and it's worth it once you get about three and a half miles in,

and you get a nice flat beach all to yourself. Now, I kept thinking about it every night for about a week, and then I decided to go back. I packed up my dogs, got ready for the hike, and when I got back, I couldn't find it. But not just the tongues, but the tree itself. I couldn't even find the tree where they were, and I was looking all over. The tree had a somewhat unique lean to it, but I couldn't find it,

and I felt around in the trees looking for the nail holes, but nothing. Now, I tried to look up what this could be online, and all I could find was maybe witchcraft or satanic spells. And in short, it seemed like some kind of ritual to keep spirits or people quiet. I'm not sure if this story exactly fits here at the sub, but I'm just so curious to know if anyone is familiar about this. I did attach some pictures that you can see now. To start the story, I just want to say that I saw what I saw. I don't care if people don't believe me, and my sister saw it too, and many people in my area have said that they've seen the same thing.

I just want to share my experience, and if you don't like it, I don't care. So, back when I lived in Nevada, we lived in a manufactured home or whatever you might call it, sort of like a double-wide but nicer. Now, anyways, my sister and I had rooms directly across from each other. We both had windows facing the backyard, and one night I was standing in front of my vanity that had a mirror that was facing the window, and it was late at night. I saw a very tall man with a paper white head and no features skipping past my window. It moved very fast.

I was only able to catch a brief glimpse. But for long enough that I could recognize these features, it was very skinny, tall and dressed in all black, maybe a suit. Not terrified, I go into my sister's room and tell her what I saw. Now she says, oh God, that's scary. Basically, and we go back to our rooms. And then my sister comes to my room wide-eyed and breathless and told me that she just saw the same thing.

and then I saw it skip past my window one more time. My dad taught me from a young age, if that's all they do, they're weak. Don't let them put fear into you. Now, he would scream at things when I was a child like he was angry, but I don't let that stuff get to me. And also, the earth keeps spinning, I guess, so I just let it go. And frankly, I subconsciously thought that it was just my eyes seeing things, and we went about my life as usual.

But I would bring it up sometimes and call it. conversations with friends, and to my surprise, they've seen that creature as well, like apparently a lot of people around here. But I'm curious, has anyone honestly seen this thing too? Now, I call it Slender Man because that's kind of what fits the description. But I can't imagine it's truly that. My name's Rick, and I grew up in Boyle Heights, pretty much the most Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles. Mom and dad came up from Micho Khan, but I'm a little bit of a lot of before I was born and had me as an anchor baby. Me and mom were close, but I never knew my dad.

And he split when I was still in diapers and actually gave my mom a variation on the old heading out for a pack of smokes line when he told her he was headed out for beer. Now, it must have been a rare brand because I've never seen or met him since. And I dropped out of high school in 10th grade, and while I'd like to be able to say

that it was so I could support my mother, I was mostly just sick of the bull crap. The teachers didn't give a damn, that there were kids trying to get me to join gangs, and I was failing every class anyway. So, rather than repeat years and prolong the agony, I quit and then started working right after. I did stuff like wash cars or haul drywall, and then I worked night janitor ships at some warehouses downtown. That was probably the worst one, because I sometimes had to mop up all the piss and puke from the drunks who slept in the loading docks. The guy who owned the warehouse was

really appreciative, and he'd sometimes leave an extra 50 bucks in my pay whenever he heard about a bad one. And that's where I learned how it pays to be able to clean things nobody else wanted to touch. So when a cousin of mine told me how well it pays to be on a cleanup crew that worked crime scenes, my ears pricked up. This wasn't a job working for the cartel or anything crazy like that, getting rid of the evidence and cleaning after the guy they killed. This was a legitimate private company that took jobs cleaning up after someone died in a way that, well, in a way that required cleanup. Sometimes it was a shooting. Sometimes it was stabbings. Sometimes it was ODs where a guy had been left in a sweltering apartment with no air conditioning for like six weeks. And when the

cops were done, that's when we moved in, sometimes doing jobs for private citizens, but mostly doing jobs on city contracts. Pay started at $22 an hour and back. around the time I joined, that was more than I could ever expect to earn any place else. And then add on the hazard bonuses and all that sweet, sweet overtime pay, and I was practically jumping at the chance to do a job most other people refused to do. I went down to the office there and filled out some paperwork, and then after about a two-week class, I was good to go. They taught us about the dangers of blood-borne pathogens,

had a bag biohazards, what chemicals eat through carpet stains, and how to wear the Tyvec suits so you don't bring the crap home on your shoes. The instructor was this old Korean dude. He'd been doing it for like 20 years, and he didn't sugarcoat anything. He told us around 1 in 20 of us would walk off the job by the end of our first week, and that a third of us would be gone within a year. We were going to see things that unless we were cold-blooded psychos would cause us extreme amounts of distress.

We obviously wouldn't see any bodies, but there would be blood, lots of it. And sometimes there'd be stuff that used to be blood or used to be skin. It'd be tough work for tough people. But if you could hack the gore, you were golden, and you can make a ton of money without having so much as a GED. When my first day on the job, they threw me and one other guy into a one bedroom where some guy had apparently blown his head smooth off.

Now, the smell hit me before I even opened the door and I almost puked in my mask. We didn't have full-on gas masks, just cloth ones, so they didn't even altogether keep the smell out. Hey, friends, when I learned to plug my nostrils with Vaseline, and there was no other way to do the work, but we got it done. We cut out the soaked carpet, scraped the walls, and sprayed the enzyme stuff that breaks down the proteins, and the whole job took us six hours, but when we finished, the place looked like nothing had ever happened. I was seasoned, and then after the landlord paid the city, the city paid the company, and I got my check that Friday. About six months later, I was on a crew with two guys named Choi and Randy and our supervisor, Frank. Now, Frank was hardcore.

He was another one who had been on the job for 20 years plus, and while he was definitely crazy in his own ways, he was a good guy, and he was good to work with. We were also very lucky to be working with a guy with that amount of experience as it helped you get jobs done faster and safer. And safety in a job like that is absolutely. everything. But on this occasion, when we got a job a little further out, Frank wasn't available. We could still do the job, we'd just be a man down and without all that experience. And then after

getting word forensics would be done at around three in the morning, we all met up at the depot at around 2.30 and then rolled out maybe 10 minutes later. Some nights it's nothing but hosing down a little blood. Other nights, it's a whole apartment full of needles and piss from a tweaker who died in the bathtub. And that night's job was more like the former and involved hosing down an alleyway where some poor hooker had been stabbed to death. We were grateful for what seemed like a simple job, but what we didn't know was how that one was going to turn out to be far from simple. We arrived at the scene a little later than expected, meaning the cops guarding the scene were pretty pissed. We completed the handover, then after they went off to get their donut fix or whatever

they were doing, we started suiting up and getting ready to begin cleaning. But then, just as we're about to start, some older dude, this white guy in a dark trench coat walks up and introduces himself as a local pastor. Now, me, Randy, and Choi are just standing there, listening as he talks about being the family pastor of the girl who had been murdered. Apparently, they'd heard the news somehow, and he'd been the first person they called. He'd also agreed to head over to the scene to take a look at it for them, on the assumption doing so personally would be too damaging and traumatic for them. The girl's parents said that she'd been led astray while she was still in middle school and ended up selling her body and becoming addicted to drugs. They'd be reunited with their daughter for the

first time in years at her funeral, but in the meantime, they wanted him to head over to the scene and pray in the spot that their loved one lost their life. Now, the guy looked legit, and he talked legit too, then after telling us the girl's story, we couldn't exactly go telling him to get lost. None of us had the heart to. And so, instead of starting up right away, we gave the guy like 10 minutes to do his thing while we went and got some coffee and donuts of our own. Or rather, not all of us, because someone needed to stay behind and keep an eye on the guy because we could all lose our jobs if someone found out that we just let a guy hang out near a cleanup site without the proper protective clothing. But then here's the thing.

I didn't really give a damn either. I didn't think some man of God was going to be a problem, not given the circumstances, and not given all he'd told us about his connection to the girl's family. And why would I? So instead of standing with him and watching him like a hawk, I decided to just sit in the truck and get a little shut-eye while Choi and Randy walked to a 7-11. But then, as I'm sitting there on a sort of spur-the-moment type thing, I decided to look over at the pastor guy and see how he was doing. Only to see, see that he was past the tape and on his knees. Now, right away, I'm thinking how this dude should not be past the tape, and we'd definitely

get in trouble if the bosses found out that that had happened. But I'm also thinking, the dude's a pastor, praying on his knees at what must have been a very emotional time for him seeing as he was the family's pastor. But then, I see the guy reach forward, right? Like he's sort of sliding his hand across the ground right where all the blood was, and that was a big no-no. Not so much because why the hell would you do that? Because people do crazy things out of grief,

but because, and I say this with all due respect for the dead, there was no telling what diseases that girl had. I hopped out of the truck and yelled something like, Yo, Padre, you can't just go touching stuff like that. No, I thought yelling at him like that would at least grab his attention for a second, but it didn't. He just stayed kneeling down as he brought the hand that he'd wiped on the ground, up to his face.

Now, I swear that old Korean instructor of mine would have popped his goddamn pants if he'd witnessed something like that with his own eyes too, and I was pretty worried myself as well. It was probably the most dangerous thing you could do at a crime scene like that, second only to triggering a booby trap or something. So as he can imagine, I wanted to warn the guy that no matter how bad he was grieving, it wasn't worth catching HIV over. Now I shouted over him a second time saying, Hey, stop!

As I picked up the pace and started jogging towards him. He stood up as I got close and then turned around as I started to warn him about how dangerous that was. But I don't think I got more than about three words out before I saw the blood around his mouth and stopped talking. It was on his lips too, and he had this crazy look in his eyes, but he wasn't like mad or spook that I'd run up all. on him, the total opposite, in fact. The guy looked happy, like he'd just done something amazing when all he'd done was put himself at risk of some seriously disgusting diseases. Now, I knew that he must have been a freak or a headcase by that point, so I started yelling

at him to get lost before my crew showed back up and we called the cops. Now, we started backing off as soon as I stepped to him, which was a huge relief, seeing as I really did not want to fight a guy with a bunch of strange potentially contaminated blood on him, but his expression didn't change one bit. He seemed really pleased with himself, like he'd done something that he'd love to do. But although I'm yelling at him to get the hell away, he didn't turn. He started talking to me instead and some language I couldn't understand.

Now, I'm no expert, but I can safely say it wasn't English or Spanish, but it did sound a lot like Italian and that there were a lot of rolling ours and a lot of ch' sounds. Now, I met a guy who said it might have been Greek or something like that, but I don't know. Maybe it was. Hell, it might have even been Inochian. Either way, he started pointing at me with his index finger and pinky extended and started saying all this stuff with big eyes and a big smile on his face.

I was getting kind of freaked out. Not because I thought the guy was sort of putting a curse on me or something, but because he thought he was putting a curse on me. Now, come to think of it. I guess the real fear came from not knowing at all what the hell he was doing. He didn't seem crazy, and I mean like he wasn't raving and ranting and taking his clothes off kind of crazy. He was able to spin what I'm guessing was this big lie about being the pastor and knowing the family and the tragic past of the dead girl.

So there was this sort of horrible overtone of this guy knows what he's doing. He's just not a rabid dog doing whatever from moment to moment. Now, eventually he did turn and walk away. And the whole time I'm yelling about how I'm going to call the cops or the EMTs or maybe even both because he needed help from all kinds of doctors after what he did, you know. But all he did was walk away, still kind of laughing to himself while speaking in that weird language of his. I couldn't bring myself to call the cops. Not until Randy and Choi came back with our coffee and we got our story straight. Now, we didn't want to say the guy talked us into letting him do something so dangerous as we could lose our jobs, so we agree.

read on the story that he just kind of ran up while we were all distracted. The dispatcher said that she'd send someone over to go looking for the guy, but since he wasn't actually breaking any laws, there wasn't much they could actually do. Now, I question that, but the dispatcher explained that the crime scene had already been investigated and sealed off, so all he was really doing was getting in the way of the crime cleanup, which was an annoyance but not a criminal emergency. Instead of looking to arrest him, they were more looking for him to get him potentially, checked into an institution for 24 hours for a psych evaluation, and we all agreed that he needed

one of those. We got the scene cleaned up, talked about what the hell that guy's problem might have been. Randy joked that I'd had to run in with a vampire, which was kind of funny at the time. But these days, when I think about it, it creeps me out even more than it did in the moment. I guess that's because it's had all this time to bounce around in my head, with me wondering why the hell he did what he did and take a huge risk like that. I obviously don't think he was a vampire, and even if he was a member of some satanic church or something that doesn't really scare me. What scared me is how happy he looked, how putting his own health in danger just didn't seem to face him, and he was just so damned happy that he got to lick some poor girl's blood off his

fingers that it brought this wild look of satisfaction to his freakish face. Even though I never saw anything paranormal in the direct way many people claimed to, like clearly seeing, hearing, or feeling things, this specific experience left a mark on me nonetheless. I'll keep it brief because I don't want my post to get taken down, and when I was little, my bedroom was in a somewhat isolated part of the house. Right next to it, there was a smaller room, the laundry room, that didn't have a door. The darkness coming from there was terrifying, and to be honest,

I've always been a bit of a fearful person that I couldn't call myself a coward. Now that day, I was just watching Adventure Time on one of those old-school box-shaped TVs, not like the ones we have now. And I remember I was watching the episode with the Lemonhead guy, Lemon Grab, I think. And eventually I decided to turn off the TV, which would be a normal thing for anyone else. But that night would trigger a trauma that stays with me to this day. As soon as I turned off the TV and laid down, I hadn't even had my eyes closed for two minutes when a woman's face appeared right in front of me.

It scared me so bad that I snapped my eyes open and jumped out of bed immediately. I ran out of the room and luckily ran into my dad in the hallway. I told him I wanted to sleep with him, and the rest of the night went by normally and nothing like that ever happened again. Now the face was, from what I remember, white and completely. completely expressionless. Everything around it was pitch black, and it was as if this pale face just emerged from the void. However, it only happened while my eyes were closed, and to this day, more than eight years later,

I cannot sleep without some kind of light or background noise. Now, what I do is set a sleep timer on my television, and it stays on for a few minutes while I drift off and then shuts down automatically. I know it sounds crazy or hard to believe, but that's how it happened. I never had another experience like it, and by the way, in that house, my dad supposedly felt his bed being moved. And apparently, the original owner's wife died in the room my dad was sleeping in. Now, I attached a reference image, and the face I saw didn't have such a terrifying smile. It simply had no expression at all.

But I want to reiterate that this image is only for reference, just to give you an idea. And this happened many years ago, and I hope I can get some feelings. back here. So this just happened a couple of hours ago and I'm pretty freaking shook, not gonna lie. So I bartend at a dive bar in a pretty terrible part of San Francisco, Soma, for those of you who know. Now, I was doing my usual chain smoking nightcap, catching up on some text messages that I missed when I heard some glassware rattling in the kitchen, which is only like 30-ish feet away from where I was sitting at the bar, and so it was very obvious and loud. Now, at first I thought it was maybe a rat or something, or at worst, a crackhead that snuck

their way in while I wasn't paying attention. But the second I stepped into the kitchen to check it out, I heard the same exact rattling sound coming from the bar, which I had just been sitting at, but hella louder and way more aggressive. So I pulled my knife out, still thinking it was some homeless guy or a crackhead or something, but the exact second I walked back into the bar area, I got hit. with this huge wave of goosebumps. The temperature dropped.

I was shivering. All of my hairs were standing up, and I had this feeling that you get when you know somebody is watching you. No, there was nobody in the building except me. I quadruple checked every square inch of the place, and it's not like a huge bar. It's actually quite small. Now, once that happened, I just knew that we are not alone out here. So the Bell Witch case might be the most documented haunting in American history. A future president got involved and left terrified.

So in 1817, the Bell family in Tennessee started experiencing things they couldn't explain, knocking sounds on the walls, bed covers being pulled off at night, and a faint voice that got louder over time. The voice could quote scripture, sing hymns, and eventually started addressing family members by name. It hated John Bell specifically. It said it would kill him. Now, the story spread, and in 1819, General Andrew Jackson traveled from Nashville to investigate.

According to multiple accounts, his wagon froze on a dry road and couldn't be moved no matter how hard his men pushed. Jackson reportedly said, by the Eternal Boys, this must be the witch. Now, a voice from the woods replied, All right, general, let the wagon move on. I will see you tonight. Now, his men were so shaken after one night that they left the next day. Jackson is quoted us saying that he'd rather face the entire British Army than spend another night with the Bell witch. In 1820, John Bell died under very strange circumstances.

A vial of dark liquid was found in the house, and the family tested it on a cat which died instantly, and the voice claimed that she poisoned him. What makes this case unusual is the amount of a child. documentation. There are named witnesses, dates, and written accounts from people who were there. Most hauntings from this era are vague stories passed down with no names attached, and this one has a real paper trail. The Bell Witch Cave in Adams, Tennessee is on the National Historical Registry, and is still open to visitors today. Hey, friends, I was just minding my business, re-watching Game of Thrones, loving life, and

heard a weird noise. I looked around and realized that it was coming from my phone. I picked it up and held it to my ear, and I heard what sounded like labored breathing and footsteps and snow. Now, at first, I thought something was just playing in the background. I looked through all my open apps and there was nothing that would be playing sound, and I forced closed all the apps and the sound persisted. Another weird thing about it was that my volume was in the middle.

I turned it up and turned it down and there was no change, just a low breathing in these snowy footsteps. It didn't sound like a loop either, and the breathing was pretty inconsistent. I restarted my phone, and the sound went away. Like five minutes later, I got that feeling in my mouth like I was going to puke, and I did, violently, and then I felt fine. It just came out of nowhere, and I don't ever just throw up for no reason, so in my head I'm connecting to whatever was going on with my phone.

I don't know if this is related and I kind of brushed it off until now, but the other night I was walking my dog, and it was getting closer to my house and I heard footsteps behind me. I instinctually turn around to see who it was, but no one was there, and my dog also turned around and looked alert. I'm just kind of weirded out right now. Maybe there is a logical explanation for everything, but I can't seem to think of a good one. So a little background info before the actual paranormal speculation. I got my girl five years ago. She's nine now in the pride of my life.

And this picture above is my cat Beatrix. Now we actually have two cats. We had only planned on getting one, but we fell in love with both. When adopting Beatrix, we were told a bit about her past, and she has a history of seizures and certain allergies, but has been returned four times each time within a month. We speculate that it's probably due to our seizures,

but she has them very infrequently in their, not that difficult to deal with. Now, with the actual speculation, right after we got her, she immediately started roaming the house. She's a very curious, Kitty, and we love her for that, and the layout of my house is as such. We have two floors. The basement is relatively unused, but we keep the cat's litter boxes and food down there. In the upstairs, we have a large space with the kitchen, dining room, and the living room. Attached to the dining room is a large sliding glass door that leads out onto a back porch. and then we have a long hallway with a few rooms attached.

The bathroom, my room, my mom's room, my mom's office, and then a spare room. The interesting thing about that spare room is that I used to sleep in it. From ages zero to ten, that was my bedroom, but I suffered from extreme night terrors, and I could never get a good night's rest in that room, so I moved into a different room, and the nightmare stopped immediately. Now, back to my cat, Beatrix explored the entire house, and I kind of followed her around while she did so. She got to that spare room and immediately started hissing and didn't stop until I closed the door. Well, that was weird.

Now, throughout these five years, she has refused to step foot into that room. My dog and other cats sometimes sleep in there, but Beatrix refuses. It was odd, but whatever. Now, after about a month of having her, we noticed that every night she had the same routine. She'd go back to the back sliding door and stare outside for about an hour. every night. And then she would explore the whole house like she was a warden or something. And then come into my room and cuddle for the rest of the night.

It was kind of creepy. And at first we assumed that maybe she was interested in going outside. She likes to sunbathe and sit by our bay window, so we trained her to use a harness, and we took her outside, and she hated it, so we shrugged it off. Now, the next part is the weirdest part. It is a constant ongoing joke in my family that she is a portal jump. And there are many, many instances where I'll walk into the living room to grab some water and see her on her cat bed and then immediately walk back to my room and see her in my bed.

This happens a lot, where you'll walk into one room and see her and then walk into another room and she's just there too. Cats have a reputation of being sneaky, but not that sneaky. And one time she even managed to get outside without us noticing, and we weren't sure how she does that. My mom and I were recently talking about all of this, and I told her that I think that she's genuinely paranormal or has some weird connections to the other side, and my mom agreed. We're both somewhat superstitious, and we have our handful of ghost stories and stuff, but we also try to be logical. All of this combined, plus the general consensus that cats are spiritual beings, has us very, very convinced. But what are your thoughts? Almost a decade ago, my boyfriend, now husband, ended up getting into a pretty serious car accident.

And during his recovery, I had to pick up extra shifts wherever and whenever I could. And the only extra shifts available were night shifts at an alternate site that required a long drive. I didn't mind at all, and that's what made me think, wow, maybe I loved this guy enough to start a family with him. But it was also on one of these nightly commutes that I went through the single most traumatic experience. of my whole life. My route took me through some pretty desolate patches of Arizona, and although I'd climb into my driver's seat with a sun still above the horizon, it'd be full dark outside by about half hour or 45 minutes into the drive.

Now, I hated driving at night, and even more so these days, because it reminded me of this whole thing. But back then, I was kind of adjusting to the whole routine of grabbing a bucket-sized ice coffee and then listening to my morning playlist at the total opposite side of the day. But then, on this one particular journey, I remember the feeling of horror I felt when, on a particular desolate stretch of road, my engine started to seize up.

I didn't know much about cars at the time. I still don't really, but I knew the sounds my car were making were not normal or healthy. Now, being the idiot I was, I didn't do anything but hope the issue would resolve itself. but it didn't. And I don't think that I made it more than a couple of miles further before I started to see either steam or smoke coming out from under the hood. I pulled over and turned off the engine,

thinking that if I just left it a few minutes to cool down, I'd be able to start her up again and just keep driving. But when I turned my key in the ignition, the engine did nothing but turn over a few times before dying. I tried a few more times, hoping things would unscrew themselves in there somehow, but nothing worked. And then after letting out a stream of curse words that to make a sailor blush,

I called ahead to work and told them about my engine trouble. Now, my boss wasn't happy, but he wasn't mad either. He just told me to take care of it, get to work whenever possible, and keep him updated on how things were going. I hung up and was just about to call roadside assistance when I noticed a dark-colored van pull in ahead of me. I got this feeling of hope, thinking someone had pulled over to help out. And then when I saw the van back up so it was much closer

and watched a guy climb out of his driver's seat, I felt this wave of relief and appreciation thinking some good Samaritan was going to help me get to work on time. I opened up my car door just as the guy was fully lit up by the headlights and saw a man in a dark jacket and beanie waving and smiling all friendly. Arizona nights get cold as heck, so I'd didn't think it was unusual that he had his hat pulled down to its brow and was all bundled up against that cold. Now, the first thing I said was, thank you so much, to which he replied, No problem. And then asked me if I was having engine trouble. I told him I was, and that his timing was nothing short of a miracle as I was on my way to work and in a real jam. He made some joke about

how cars always picked the worst times to give you trouble like that, and then after explaining that he was a mechanic, he asked me to pop my hood so he could take a look at the engine. Now, once he'd opened up the hood, I joined him in taking a look at that engine, but like I said, I had next to no idea what I was looking at. There was this moment of awkward silence, and so I introduced myself to the guy. Now, he said his name was Clay, and we shook hands. And then he went back to staring at my engine for a couple of seconds under the light of a little flashlight that he had before he said something about how things weren't looking good. When he asked him if he could fix it, or if it was better calling a tow truck,

he told me to give him a minute, and then he went back to it for a minute or two before exclaiming, aha! Now, I've never understood car speak, and I guess that was written all over my face, too, because the more he talked about what the problem was, the more he got this smile on his face. He cut himself off at one point and asked if I understood what he was saying, to which I obviously said no, and then told him how it was usually my boyfriend who dealt with all the car stuff and I just drove the thing.

Now, the guy laughed and said something about how his wife was the same way. But then instead of trying to break it down so I could understand him, he kept on using all of those super technical words. Now, I guess this might sound kind of hard to describe because how do you put a feeling into words? But the more the guy talked about what was wrong with my engine, the more I got this weird feeling that he was sort of making fun of me. I obviously didn't accuse the guy straight up.

After all, I was still under the impression that he was doing me a favor and figured that I was maybe just being paranoid. But then at one point, he used a word that in my head got me thinking, did he just make that up? Now I let him carry on talking for another minute or so, watching as this big grin grew on his face, and then he used another word that was so, on the nose silly, that I had to be like, wait, are you, are you making fun of me right now?

Now, the guy who called himself Clay gave me this look like he was half hurt and half confused, as if to say, why the heck would I do that? And then right as I was about to apologize, he says, eh, and then burst into laughter. He then admitted right to my face that the only reason he stopped was to, and I'm using his words here, mess with me. Now, I have expected him to sort of actually fix my engine once he was done playing his little prank, but he didn't. He just kept on laughing, like duping me was the funniest thing in the world. And then I remember asking him, so, are you even a mechanic? Or? And he acted like that was a punchline to his whole joke. He took a few steps back, bent,

doubled over and weased with laughter, and I had to stop myself from yelling about what an a-hole he was. I was mad as hell, like so angry I was practically shaking, because who the hell does something like this? But I was also aware that I was a five-foot-to-one-pound woman, alone on a dark road with a guy that was clearly getting a lot of joy of screwing with me. And all that came on my mouth was dude. And then I cut myself off because I knew it was either that or insult the guy so badly that he'd get mad and actually turn on me. Then right as I pulled my phone out,

and I was about to dial 911 to report a breakdown and some a-hole harassing me, Clay spoke again, and he said something like, Okay, okay, I'm not a mechanic. I admit it. I'm an artist. Now that was the angriest I got. with him because I'm thinking, dude, for real, what the hell is wrong with you? Now, his laughter slowly petered out, and he raised his hand with the palms flat like he was about

to apologize for something, but he didn't say sorry, far from it. He then says, for real, I'm an artist, I swear. And then he started telling me how he made pretty pictures, but not for a living, just for fun. And then I remember how he said word for word that he would make a pretty picture by blowing your brains out all over the blacktop. There was a shift right there. This horrible shift from him laughing and me being angry to me being terrified and him enjoying it in this sick, sadistic way. Because right as I looked at my phone to dial 911, the guy pulled a gun from the back of his waistband and pointed at me. Ah ha ha, not so fast. He reached from my phone and then, he reached from my phone and

and took it from my hand, sort of like, I'll take that. And I wanted to run, to scream, to do something. But I couldn't. The sight of that gun had me frozen to the spot like I'd suddenly turned to stone. It was cold out, really cold, and my brain was telling me, don't move a muscle, don't give him a reason. But still, the shake started and they got bad. When he said, Keyes.

I was so shook up that all I could say was, What? And he went from amused to furious while shouting, Keys, where are they? I stammered out that they were still in the ignition of my car. And then after telling me that I was dead if I moved, he took them from the ignition and tossed them into the darkness of the road. And if that sounded like the perfect time for me to run, it wasn't.

He kept the gun trained on me almost the whole time. If I tried to run, I'm 99% sure that I wouldn't be around to write this right now. He must have seen it written all over my face, sort of like, why did you do that? My car is busted. Why would you toss my keys away like that? And seeing it, the big grin found its way to his face again, and he told me how in that kind of situation it's better safe than sorry. I didn't say a word in reply.

I couldn't, not even if I wanted to. As he slammed my car door closed again, he asked, Who's going to miss you? And at first I thought he meant sort of like the folks at work. Like if I didn't show up, who was going to notice? So that's what I said. I told him the people would work, would call the cops if I didn't show up,

or at least call to tell them where I was. But that's not what he was asking. He was asking who would miss me if he killed me. I started to cry. I thought about my now husband recovering at home, wondering where I'd gone if no one found me, thinking that I'd sort of abandoned him because I couldn't handle taking care of him anymore. I've been picturing what it would be like spending the rest of my life with him, getting married, having kids, growing old together.

So when Clay asked me the question, it was like my life flashed before my eyes, only not just the life I'd already lived, but the one he'd taken away from me if he pulled the trigger. I told Clay how my boyfriend would miss me and then started explaining how he'd been in an accident and how I'd been taking care of him and how he needed me. But Clay cut me off by yelling at me to shut up and how he wanted an answer, not my life story. I did as he told me, and then he says, who else? And so I listed my family members, people at work, anyone I could think of. I kept thinking that if I kept on talking, I could buy myself.

enough time for someone to drive past us, noticed what was going on and call the cops. But it was like he knew no one was coming, because he took his sweet-ass time and pulling out a small notepad and a pen from his jacket pocket, keeping the gun on me the entire time. After he tossed them over to me, he told me to write down my goodbyes to the people who were going to miss me. I didn't. I didn't even touch the paper or a pen he tossed down in front of me, not even when he yelled at me to kneel down and I did. I figured that if I didn't go along with what he was telling me to do, he wouldn't kill me because his little plan wasn't complete.

But all I could think to do to stall for time was beg him not to kill me. I tried focusing on the fact that my boyfriend needed me, that we couldn't afford at-home care, stuff like that. I told him he could take anything he wanted, and I meant anything he wanted, as long as he just let me live. I kept expecting him to yell at me again, to tell me to show him to show him. Shut up, but he didn't. He got this sick smile again, and he just sort of listened as I sobbed and begged and sobbed some more.

He didn't say a word until I asked why he was doing what he was doing, at which point he just said, I told you. I'm an artist. I don't know why I was expecting him to say anything that made sense. Nothing else did. And then as I'm kneeling there with tears in my eyes, he did that thing with his gun that made it go click. before it's about to shoot. I don't know what it's called, maybe locking or loading or cocking it back,

but I was so certain that he was about to shoot me that I just shut my eyes. I couldn't look, but I couldn't move either. I just remember sobbing with my eyes clamp shut while begging him not to do it. But all he'd say was, Open your eyes! Open your effing eyes! While calling me all these vile things, I can't bring myself to repeat. Now I tried that same tact. of sort of not doing what he said, because the more I delayed his plans, the more chance I had of

someone driving past and calling the cops. But then, he said something that made it so I had to do what he said, like I couldn't physically stop myself. He said, open your eyes, or I'll make sure they never find you. I'll make sure he thinks you just left. I knew he was referring to my boyfriend, that he was praying on my own true weakness to get me to do what he said. I knew I should have kept on disobeying him, and I know that now more than ever. But at the time, in that moment, I couldn't stop myself. It was like that gun pointed at me was sort of like a magic wand or something, and my body overrode my brain.

I opened my eyes, and the way he was smiling when I did, it was almost like it was burned into my brain. It was that face I had nightmares about for literally years afterwards, waking up in a cold sweat after seeing his teeth all jagged and messed up in my mind. I don't think they were actually all that messed up. It was just the way my brain kind of replays the image to match how terrified I was. But then, as I opened them, he said, look at me. And I did.

He kind of pointed back towards his van and told me, Now, smile for the camera. I looked only for a second, but I didn't see anything. I guess it was too dark or whatever he was recording us with didn't have a telltale red recording light on it. And in fact, I don't even know if he really was making a video or if what he was saying was just another way of messing with me. I guess he enjoyed my reaction, though, because he started laughing again, harder than ever. But then even though he was laughing, I still felt sick with fear. I felt this weird relief as he lowered the gun and stopped pointing it at me.

I don't fully remember the stuff that he said afterwards. It was all about how dumb I was or looked, how I was pathetic, and a cry baby, all the stuff like that. And he said disgusting stuff about the things that he was going to do while watching the footage back, stuff that still sticks out more than the others, but I don't want to repeat for obvious reasons. I could barely move, I could barely speak, but I still manage one last... Please don't kill me. and he gave me some speech about how it was better for him to leave me alive so I could spend the rest of my life living with the trauma of what had happened. I didn't say those exact words, it was way more protracted and drawn out, but that's essentially what he was getting at.

Killing me would be more trouble than it's worth, leaving me with the memories with all the pain and the nightmares that was far more satisfying for him, and so that's what he did. He climbed back into his van and drove off again, but not without giving me me. a parting gift, one that it'd make sure that I couldn't do anything immediately. He said he was going to make sure I couldn't go anywhere, which had me wailing because I thought, this is it, he's actually going to end me. But then instead of just shooting me, he ran up to me and hit me with the gun he was holding. And the hit broke my orbital socket, which explains why it was so painful, and I guess he was trying to knock me out, but it didn't work. I fell backwards, feeling the worst pain in my life throbbing through my head.

It didn't knock me out. At least I don't think it did, but I knew better than to get up, run, or even move at all. I knew he wanted to knock me out so he could drive off without me running for help. And so to me, the best thing I could do was play possum and pretend that I was out cold from him hitting me. I remember quite literally begging God to make it a convincing act, to have him believe that I was out cold,

and I was going nowhere for at least a while. And the reason I still pray today is because it worked. I heard him laugh one last time, and then footsteps on the pavement, and after that there was a sound of a car door slamming, an engine starting, and the guy who called himself Clay took off into the night. I won't go into all the details of how I was rescued, because it's mostly me walking along the side of the highway, covered in blood, crying and shivering from the cold in the adrenaline dump until I saw

headlights coming towards me. I was terrified at first, thinking it might have been clay coming back to finish me off. But then, when I saw it was an actual Good Samaritan, I burst into tears again out of sheer relief before I climbed into their passenger seat, and they called the police for me. Gary, who will forever be my hero, waited with me at the gas station that we found while waiting for the cops and the EMTs to show up. And then it was a case of explaining what had happened, passing on as much detail as possible in the hopes that they might be able to find the guy.

And after that, I was taken to the hospital for treatment, which is how I found out something was broken in my skull. And it was there that I waited for my boyfriend to show up, which he did, limping into the ward with a friend of his who had given him a ride at a moment's notice. And that was the icing on the cake, knowing the extent that he'd go to in order to look

after me, and within 18 months, we were engaged to be married, and then we tied the knot around eight months afterwards once we had the money in the venue we wanted. It made up for the fact that clay was never found, and I needed something to make up for it because for a long time I used to beat myself up for not being able to recall his license plate number. The doctor said it was most likely a result of the concussion, and that it was pretty normal for people not to be able to remember little details about an event that they sustained a head injury in. But that didn't seem to sink in for me for a long time, and I used to cry sometimes, wondering why I was so dumb that I couldn't even remember the first letter of a number, just that dumb purple cactus that is on all

the generic Arizona plates. I'm over it now, for the most part. There's just one thing that still bothers me to think about on the rare occasion that it pops into my mind, and that's the fact that out there Somewhere, there's maybe a video of me on my knees, crying and begging for my life while some sick freak gets off on my fear. If that's true, and Clay's never been caught or punished for what he did to me, or has done to God knows how many others, then he might well watch it back sometimes, reliving those sick thrills that he felt the night he mentally tortured me on the side of a dark highway. The day that I become 100% a believer in the paranormal was when I went to the mall with my mother and sister. My mom stayed behind looking at some makeup in Macy's, and so my sister and I decided to head to Clare's, and as we were passing by a lounge area with tables and sofas, I got this feeling of being watched.

I turned my head and locked eyes with a girl who I assumed was with a family at the lounge area because she was resting her arm on one of the ladies sitting on the couch. But the more I stared at the girl, the more creepy details I saw. She was pale and grinning with her mouth closed. She wore a white dress and her hair hung over the sides of her face, almost like the grudge. She never blinked and just sort of stared at me. I finally stopped and turned to my sister to tell her if she sees that girl staring at me and she goes, What girl?

I pointed toward the couch where she had been and now she was gone. I looked all around and she was completely gone. The lady she had her hand on seemed to not even notice her missing as if she never was even there. The story is completely true and that's why I believe in the paranormal. I swear on everything that this is a true story. This happened just a few weeks ago on Christmas Eve. This is December 24th, 2025 at my parents' house

and I've only changed the names for privacy. Now, for context, my brother, a 32-year-old male, is married to Amanda, a 33-year-old female. My mom wanted to bring the families together, so she invited Amanda's mother, Diana, and Amanda's sister, Isabella, to join us for dinner. Now, to organize the seating arrangements, my mom decided to be a bit formal and wrote everyone's names on little cards, placing them on the plates. She set it up so that my sister-in-law's mother, Diana and her sister, Isabella, would be seated right next to each other. Here's where it gets weird. When my mom was writing the card for Isabella's seat,

for some reason she still can't explain, she didn't write Isabella. Instead, she wrote the name Amber, and she just placed it on the table without realizing what she had done. When everyone went to sit down, Diane looked at the place sitting next to her and saw the name Amber on the card, and immediately burst into tears.

It turns out that Diana, had another daughter named Amber, who passed away tragically when she was only five or six years old. The thing is, nobody in my family knew this. We had no idea Amber ever existed, and my mom had absolutely no knowledge of this history. There was no way for her to have confused the names because she didn't know the name Amber to begin with, and we were all left in shock. Since there is no logical explanation for how my mom pulled that name out of thin air, we can't help but feel it was a a sign, maybe a little nudge from a spirit to let her mom know that she was with us that night. Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? I know that everyone has had their

fair share of weird experiences. I'm not panicking here. I just wanted thoughts and advice. I don't think I'm the chosen one or that I was abducted or something, just mildly concerned and interested. Now that said, I lost quite a bit of time last Monday. Now in the image, you can see that I messaged my mom telling her that I was at Walmart, waiting for her grocery pickup at nine minutes past four. Now, I know I didn't wait more than three minutes because I was listening to the same song when the guy came out. She lives about ten minutes from there, and I drove straight there with minimal traffic. Never stopped or stuck or anything. And when I arrived at their house, my parents were worried and asked if I was okay. I'm confused and said, yeah, why? They said, we expected you here soon. And we expected you here soon.

sooner. Now, I, of course, said, well, I texted before I left Walmart, thinking that that would be the aha moment, with them, of course, seeing that I had texted them 15 minutes ago and saying, oh, duh, that's right, and we'd move on to making some soup. Now, instead, dad replies saying, yeah, that was an hour ago. Now, still thinking that I'd price him wrong, I'd check my watch, and to my surprise, it was 457. I was surprised. I was surprised. I figured that I must have left Walmart later than I expected, so I checked our texts and saw the time stamp. Now, somehow I left Walmart at 10 after 4, and then 47 minutes later, I finished my 10-minute drive to their house. Again, I'm not panicked here. I didn't see little green men or demons or anything like that, but I don't know what happened.

Now, what would you do? Should I be worried that I may or may not have lost time? Hey, friends, thanks for listening. notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. Be sure to check out the videos right when they come out as it really helps the channel. And there are super fun live streams every Sunday and Wednesday night. I'd love to see you there. And if you got a story, be sure to submit them over in my email. Let's Read Submissions at gmail.com and you might even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations and bonus content over on Patreon or click that big join

button to hear about the extra perks for members of the channel. And check out the Lettree podcast where you can hear all of these stories and big compilations located anywhere you listen to podcasts. And I also have a true crime channel called Saturn Soul, all links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. Subscribe and hit that like button, I guess. Something unusual has been happening and I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe someone here can offer some explanations.

And to give you the full picture, we used to live in the city, but we got tired of the noise and the prices, so we moved out of Brooklyn a little over two years ago and into a quiet little area about two hours from the city bordering alongside Pennsylvania. And we're not very familiar with Roro life, so it's still a bit new to us. My house sits on the edge of the woods and we don't have neighbors on that side, just trees stretching from miles and miles.

Now, when winter, I moved my workspace to the living room by the wood stove, sitting next to a large window that looks out over the terrace in the forest. I keep the blinds closed to hold in the heat. Two nights ago, I was working on my spicy horror story when I suddenly heard what felt like a loud bang, like something heavy had fallen. I thought it came from the basement, but it could also be outside, so I ignored it. A little later, the bang repeated, and this time louder and closer. I felt the vibrations in the floors and the walls,

like someone was just outside, either on the terrace or under it, hitting the wall right next to me. Now, I got scared and decided not to open the blinds and instead just go to bed. But as I was getting under the blanket, not even a minute later, the bang happened again, just as loud and just as close as the second time. someone or something was right outside our house. I woke up my partner, told him what happened, and asked him to go check with me. We checked the terrace, but there was no one, and the rest of the night was quiet.

The next night, around 9 o'clock, it was very dark out, as we don't have any streetlights in my area, and he went outside to grab wood from the backyard pile for the fire stove, so the house would stay warm throughout the night. I stayed inside, music playing, running around to feed the, pets, and when he returned, he asked if I had heard anything. I hadn't. He said there had been a very loud, powerful bang that made the ground tremble coming from the woods. Of course, it might have been a tree falling, but there was no cracking, no rustle of breaking branches, only a sudden bang, and needless to say, we decided not to investigate. And now it's morning, and I can't help

but feel a little anxious about whether it might happen again tonight. But what do you even? you think it might be. Back in 2007, I was a fire investigator for a large paid fire department. We had a four-alarm fire at a group of six large buildings that were built in the early 1900s, heavy timber and brick construction with each being seven to nine stories tall. For years, the floors were cleaned with an oil-based chemical, so these buildings were essentially one big matchstick, and the fire came in at around two in the morning. The fire was stopped after it destroyed three of the six buildings,

and later in the afternoon, we, the investigators, were having a meeting on site when a captain from one of the engines came up to us and said that when he was looking for a fire extension in the fourth building, he heard, as he described, several blood-curdling screams coming from what he thought was the basement area. He said the water was too deep, and with limited lighting, he was unable to do a complete search of the area. And by the next day, we knew the water would have drained out of the building,

so I volunteered to go check it out, me, myself, and a big flashlight. I entered from street level, which was actually the third floor with a sub-basement, and then the basement itself, so five floors to go down. Where the light from my flashlight was not focused on, it was a total blacked-out environment. I couldn't see my hand right in front of my own face. No sound other than my breathing and the creaking and popping of the old wooden stairwell that I was climbing down. Firefighting is a pitch-black job for the most part, so I wasn't freaking out about the lack of lighting.

When I reached the sub-basement level, I heard a distinct male voice say, Stop, don't go any further. It came from further down the stairs. No, it wasn't demonic sounding. It was just a male's deep voice, maybe a little gruff. I hesitated thinking my mind was actually playing tricks on me, and I shone my flashlight down the steps, but the floors were roughly 20 feet apart, so I couldn't really see the next landing. And there was a landing at each floor's fire door and another halfway between.

I was between the sub-basement landing and the next halfway landing when this happened, so technically I should have been able to see at least the outline of the next landing, but my flashlight's glow was just eaten up by the darkness. I remember I took two more steps down and then my heart skipped a beat, or probably beats, because in a more forceful and louder voice it said, stop. It wasn't some quick stop, it was sort of drawn out, a very matter-of-fact, stop. And that did it for me. I turned around and started making my way back up to the level I came in on.

Now, I'll be the first to say that I was finally scared. and doing a little full body shaking because I couldn't go fast because I had to visualize each and every step with my flashlight's glow. I finally made it back into the beautiful sunshine and told my chief that it was just too dark to adequately do a search. I wasn't about to tell him about the voice. He probably would have told me that I was nuts. Later that week, we had to have that building demolished, and once the debris was removed down

to the basement level, we ran a cadaver dog over the area and it hit on. nothing. And then, just to say that we covered all the bases, we then had a forensic team come in and go through that area and they found nothing. I'm not sure how you would classify this type of occurrence, but I'll go to my grave knowing what I heard. 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.