The Lets Read Podcast - 364: I'M NEVER HIKING ALONE AGAIN | 6 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 349

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about National Parks & Private InvestigatorsHAVE 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:- Mint Mobile

I've been an employee of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission for almost 10 years now, and while I love my job, it's hardgoing sometimes. Now, to cut a long story short, we're the agency responsible for taking care of the state's wildlife, along with the various habitats that they call home. Now, it's also our job to issue licenses to hunters that we deem safe and responsible, and we handle a lot of the educational materials regarding stuff like hunting and boating safety. Now, we also run conservation programs to ensure the state's natural beauty can be enjoyed for generations to come, but it's not all rubber stamps and giving lectures to elementary school kids.

There's a dark side to the job, and that dark side mostly consists of investigating hunting accidents. Our wildlife officers investigate reports of animal attacks, but also accidents like tree stand falls, and then we try to integrate what we learn into prevention programs so repeat incidents don't occur. But in more severe cases, especially those involving criminal negligence, which, God forbid, result in fatalities, we coordinate with local law enforcement for more thorough probes. Now, I've been unfortunate enough to have been involved in about two dozen investigations of that nature, and each and every one of them involving serious injury or loss of life, were both physically and mental, challenging. But there's only one such incident that manages to send shivers down my spine,

even all these years later, and it's this one. Just over six years ago, we got a call one day from the Marion County Sheriff's Department saying that there had been a real nasty hunting accident up near a place called Yelville. Accidents are rare, so we were shocked just to get a call like that. But once we heard the details, we just about had to pick up our damn jaws off the floor, afterwards. Apparently, there had been two hunters out in the woods, and they'd been stalking this old buck for hours and hours. They'd noticed it had been acting a little funny while they'd been trailing it, but nothing too out of the ordinary, so they kept on its tail till they had themselves a decent shot. Now, one of the hunters lines up his sights, takes his shot, and the buck goes down.

But then instead of walking straight over there to take their pictures and haul it away, They stopped, watched, and waited. You see, hunters can't just walk up to their kills after they go down because sometimes the deer is just stunned and can wake up and choose violence as soon as the hunters start poking and prodding around. Our safety briefs advise folks to wait at least 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the animal and where the shot landed. This way they can ensure their prey is passed on

and won't be a threat to them during trophy pictures or transatlanticians. Our two hunters up near Yellowvale weren't cowboys either, so I believe them when they said that they waited for the full 30 before approaching their kill. And then after standing over it for a minute or so and making damn sure that the thing wasn't breathing anymore, they started fixing to take some pictures. But then no sooner had one of the hunters kneeled down behind it, the buck that they were quite certain was dead, suddenly leapt to its feet, and gored the man closest to it, really, really bad. He suffered three very serious puncture wounds to his stomach and chest, and since it was all close quarters chaos, his buddy didn't have the time or the accuracy

to shoulder his rifle and try to put the buck down again. Luckily, the thing took off just as fast once it gored the guy to the ground, so he didn't receive any additional injuries. But unfortunately, his buddy's shot missed. Now, I never rejoice when an animal is killed. It was frustrating not getting our hands on its bodies so we could further analyze it and potentially figure out how it appeared to come back to life all aggressive like that. A lot of figuring out what's going on with flora or fauna ends up in a lab, so no samples meant no answers. But the most important thing was that our wounded hunter was airlifted to a hospital where the doctors managed to save his life. Now, some said it was nothing short of a

miracle, considering the damage that Buck's antlers had done. But if you notice, folks never seemed to question the miracles. It's always the mysteries that keep them up at night. And the mystery in this case was how in the world that Buck had jumped to its feet after two experienced hunters were so sure that it was dead. Now, after we talked with the wounded hunter and his partner, I was one of the wildlife officers dispatched to the scene. It was eerie as all heck out there, just knowing that we were in a place where something like that had happened. But since the buck in question was already shot, we figured it'd only be a matter of time before we found it laid out somewhere, dead as a doornail.

But we searched for hours, up and down in every direction, and we didn't find so much as a pile of poop. And that didn't make a lick of sense. Now, our wounded hunter said that his aim was good, and he put a bullet through both that buck's lungs. But if that was the case, now we should have found that. a dead within less than a mile of the incident site. Now, by the end of our search, me and the other wildlife officers had ourselves a really bad case to the Willys, wondering how in the world the supposedly dead Buck had the strength to inflict such damage to our hunter and then ran off without keeling over after only a couple of steps.

One of the tasks that we were issued after the fact was to figure out how we could incorporate lessons into our hunter education programs and habitat management strategies to hope that we hopefully help prevent similar tragedies. When it came to it, I had no idea what in the hell I was going to write. The hunters did exactly what we asked in terms of giving their prey a wide birth after their kill. So apart from something akin to try not to shoot one of them, their zombie dears, there was nothing much I could say in terms of safety or prevention. All we were left with were a series of unanswered questions and pretty damn creepy ones at that.

I lived with my family on Redacted Street for a few years. It was a close-knit, lovely community full of diversity and friendship, and a whole bunch of us became fast friends, and we'd regularly host barbecues and get-togethers at each other's places. The guys, me included, would often watch football regularly, and we'd generally just have a good time. And that's why it made total sense to set up a neighborhood watch. It seemed like fun at first.

The neighborhood was extremely safe, and there wasn't much to really watch out for. But a bunch of us hot-blooded guys thought that it would be a badass idea, and so we went about filing the correct paperwork and completing the correct registrations. And soon, every house had one of those neighborhood watch stickers in their window, and we had a menacing sign attached to a lamp post at the opening of the street. Now, I was very impressed that absolutely everyone in the community signed up. Not surprised, really, but still.

Of course, nothing happened for a while. We set up a neighborhood watch email group and tested it by using it mostly for group chats. Sometimes we do tests. One of us would alert the others that they were going to fake an emergency, and then we would, just to test our reaction times. It was completely silly and really achieved nothing, but it was fun. And that's why I didn't take it entirely seriously when I got Mike's email to the group. Mike was the elected head of this neighborhood watch, and he was a bit of a joker.

He was a serious, dependable guy when it came to it, but he was always down for a laugh. His email read like he'd either forgotten to warn us that this was a test, or that he figured it was so silly he didn't even need to warn us. Now, I've still got the email archived in my old hotmail account, and here I'll just read it for you. I've tried to fix his many typos, but Mike wasn't the best at grammar. It read as follows. Guys, there's been a sighting of something effing weird in the neighborhood. I heard from Mrs. O'Bannon and Ms. Perks via two separate emails

that they'd seen an old, withered, dirty-looking homeless guy walking down the middle of the road. Now, okay, we don't judge. Homeless people are allowed to cut through our area. That wasn't the issue, though. The guy was walking a pet on a leash, a pet alligator, according to Mrs. O'Banon. and a crocodile according to Miss Perks. Now, they're both willing to admit that as old ladies, they don't have the best eyesight, but they are certain that this is what they saw.

Now, as you all know, we live absolutely nowhere near alligator country, and I believe crocodiles only live maybe somewhere south of Florida when it comes to mainland America, so I have no idea how this man would have a pet alligator slash crocodile. Either way, be careful out there. you don't want to find yourself as reptile chow regards mike now immediately i was on the phone to mike asking if this was some kind of goof i could instantly tell that he was serious he was skeptical sure like he'd said the old ladies didn't have the best eyesight but what other animal could they have mistaken for a crocodile or alligator mike and i tried to come up with some alternatives a huge crawling dog now that hardly'd

seemed likely. A Komodo dragon? Now, that would have been even worse, really. A snake? That's still not great. And after that, we were out of ideas. We knew one thing, though. The neighborhood watch had to be extra vigilant at night until we were sure that we'd seen the last of Crocodile Bum D as we took to calling him, a pun on the movie character Crocodile Dundee for you youngsters out there. You should watch it, though. Thankfully, my kids were both at some. summer camp for the next month, and my wife was currently working nights at the hospital. So I was being a bit of a night owl myself to make sure that I got to spend some time with the love of my life instead of missing each other like the ships in the night. And I told Mike that

I'd keep an eye out. Unsurprisingly, I saw absolutely no sign of any reptile walking homeless guy. I did see a disheveled figure staggering down the street at 3 a.m. one night, but soon realized that it was the Peterson's teenage son, clearly drunk and clearly sneaking home. I'm pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be underage drinking, but I didn't report him, though, I'm not some snitch. Now, the next night was actually a full moon. It was a beautiful night, warm without being oppressive, and the kind of night that you really didn't want to stay stuck inside on the computer. I've been neglecting my morning jogs to make sure that I was home to greet my wife, so I decided that at 1 a.m., that was a decent enough time to go quietly jogging around the neighborhood.

Everyone knew I was on crocodile bum-dee watch duty, so I figured I wouldn't alarm anyone with my presence jogging around. Now, I've been jogging around for about 10, 15 minutes, cursing my dad-baud and feeling frustrated at the fact that I'd let myself go a little. I took a break to sort of bend down and control my breathing, and you know the way that joggers do where you rest your hands on your thighs? Well, feeling invigorated, I looked up and immediately saw a figure at the far end of the street. I was standing in the shadow of a tree, so I don't think he saw me at the time, and I watched him for a

moment and then realized with horror that it was the infamous crocodile bum D. The old ladies that warned us about him had not done him justice. He was an absolute mountain of a man. I could see him pretty clearly because he was strolling down the road in the middle of that lit up by streetlights on either side. And he wore this huge, filthy coat that was even taller than him, with a hem dragging along the surface of the road. And he wore these huge black boots,

and I could hear his stomping footsteps even from over 200 yards away. Now, he had long, straggly hair and a wild-looking beard. I couldn't tell what race he was because of how much hair he had covering his head and face. and in between his footsteps, I heard a scraping and a sort of scuttling too. I must have seen it already, but my mind had refused to process it. The man was, as the women had said, was walking an alligator on a leash. If it hadn't been for the full moon and the streetlights, it would have been hard to see the creature in the dark. It was almost black, just sort of scraping along the street on a long leash some distance from its menacing walker.

Now, a lot of the following information I learned after the fact, but I'll just fill you in now. While the alligator looked intimidatingly big to me, it turned out to be a juvenile American alligator. And trust me, the fact that it was juvenile, and was only about half its full size, was a blessing. Those things can grow on average to 12 feet in length. Apparently, this one was set to be on the bigger scale, maybe as long as 14 feet, and I think I might have dropped dead of a heart attack if I was faced with a 14-foot alligator in the middle of my street in the middle of the night. Not that a seven- or eight-foot alligator was really much better,

as I was just frozen there, hiding in the shadow of the tree completely unsure of what to do or say. Now, I knew it was my duty to do something as the designated neighborhood watch reptile hunter, but holy crap, what could I do? I was not approaching that thing. But suddenly I had a stroke of genius. When we'd set up that neighborhood watch, a police liaison officer had come to talk to us about the do's and don'ts.

He gave us advice on how to operate so we didn't become an armed militia. You know the things. Now, one thing he did mention is that our state, and specifically our area of the state, had adopted a fairly new system. This system basically meant that you could text a 911 instead of calling. It's a lot more common across the states now, but back when this took place, we were one of the first states to adopt it. Go North Dakota. Now, naturally, I was concerned about calling 911 and alerting crocodile bum D, who was starting to look more threatening than the name suggested.

I quickly slipped behind some tree, pulled out my creaky old smartphone out of my jogging fanny pack, and fired off a quick text to 911. Now, I can't remember exactly what I said, but it was something frank. and silly like giant man with an alligator walking down redacted street alligator is big man is bigger send help thankfully as a registered member of the neighborhood watch mike's deputy no less i was known to the local cops so i figured that they wouldn't dismiss me as some prankster no i was also hoping that maybe they would have received other reports about this guy and he must have come from somewhere i decided to wait behind the tree for alligator man to pass or for the cops to show up. Unfortunately, my plan did not work out. A few moments after texting 911, I heard a sound that I swear

echoes through my nightmares. Now, if you've never heard the sound of an alligator before, then lucky you. I've included a YouTube shorts link because in case Joel wants to play the sound to illustrate exactly what I heard, but you can look it up. If you didn't play the audio or you can't hear it, then it sounds like a dragon growling. Now, tell me that doesn't sound like a freaking dragging. That's what I heard that night. Now, I know in retrospect that this sound isn't actually an alligator even being aggressive. It's just the sound that they make to be curious or on alert. But in the middle of the night, as the creature and the man got closer than I realized, hearing that nearly made me poop my jogging shorts. I'm sorry for the image, but it's true. And then I

heard the huge man rasp in the deepest voice I've ever heard asking his alligator friend what she heard. Now, I'm pretty sure that he already knew he was there because he was saying things like, are we being watched, Princess? Is there someone up ahead, Princess? Maybe behind that tree. Now, my first thought was, no way. The alligator's called Princess. And my second thought was, I can't just keep staying hiding here. At the time, I had no idea how fast alligator really were, and I had no idea of this monster of a man was going to release Princess to chase me down if I ran. And so I did the bravest thing I could. I stepped out from behind the tree, greeted the man as cheerily as I could, and told him that I'd just

been out for a late-night jog and was taking a breather. The man grunted at me in response, and Princess let out another one of those menacing bellows. Now, I knew I couldn't just say, nice to meet you by i'm off to bed now i didn't want alligator man to see where i live for starters and so i decided to try and strike up a conversation with him so uh taking your gator for a walk huh and the man grunted again in response i started to ask some questions about her like where he'd gotten her clearly somewhere illegal what her name was princess i already knew that all that sort of crap and then i heard bull both the most blissful and terrible sound I could hear. Sirens in the distance and getting closer. The monster of a man looked at me,

and the anger on his hairy, filthy face was impossible to ignore. He grunted out something accusing me of calling the cops on him and then called Princess to his side. He began to kneel, no mean feet at his size, and I realized with horror that he was moving to unleash Princess. Princess don't like loud noises, he said. I did not stick around to see whether he actually did unleash princess or not. I turned tail and sprinted back to my house, which was almost the entire length of the street.

And I had never ran that fast before or since. As I fumbled to get my keys into the lock, I was sure that I heard the sounds of the alligator sprinting towards me, although not that I have any idea what an alligator sprinting really sounds like. I managed to finally get my key into the lock and dive inside and kick the door shut. At the same time, I heard the sound of multiple cop cars pulling into my streets and my hallway being bathed and flashing lights. I peeked out the window to see a standoff between the officers and that huge man. Thankfully, Princess was on her leash. Maybe she always had been.

And it turned out that multiple people had called the cops because a pretty seriously armored animal control duo were also on the scene. One of them was holding one of those devices that let you wrangle an animal around the neck. Now, I couldn't hear exactly what was being said or yelled, but the next series of events was relieving, sure, but it was also one of the most heartbreaking things I had ever seen. I guess the cops managed to persuade the man to let animal control take charge of his alligator, because he knelt down and began to pet her as one of the animal control officers approached, and, in his defense, very gently wrangled princess around the neck. That alligator must have been the most tame alligator in existence, really,

because she didn't writhe or wriggle or a death roll. Instead, she almost obediently allowed animal control to guide her into the back of their wagon. Meanwhile, this probably seven-foot-tall monster of a man meekly allowed the cops to handcuff him and guide him into one of their cars. I watched as I drove off. He could barely sit up straight in the back of the cop car. He was so tall. And so this had gone from the scariest most effed up night of my life

to something that left me conflicted and kind of sad. I'm a bit of a softy when it comes to animals, and even though this massively intimidating man had an illegal, leathly dangerous pet and was taking her for a walk down my street, I couldn't help but feel bad. I guess in his eyes, Princess was no different than, a dog or the many legal, dangerous, exotic pets that people can keep. On the other hand, I was the absolute hero of the neighborhood watch when I told them everything

that had happened. We had a meeting the next day over beers and snacks, and I was definitely the man of the hour. I still had this nagging sadness for princess and crocodile bum D, though. Thankfully, I was able to get some updates in the story over the years, and the man, whose name actually was Warren, was indeed in possession of an illegal juvenile alligator. However, as he was able to prove, he'd found her as a baby, abandoned by whoever had originally purchased her as a pet. The two had bonded, and he'd looked after her ever since. He admitted to the cops that he had no idea how large she'd grow, but accepted that she was clearly growing too big for him to manage. Princess, for the most part, had never harmed anyone or committed

any crimes. Given the circumstances, nobody involved wanted to euthanize the animal, and eventually an animal sanctuary not too far away was found. The sanctuary had both the means to look after an alligator and a spare space to nurture one who hadn't acclimatized to other members of her species. Now, not only that, it was discovered that Warren had previously worked as a zookeeper many years ago, and while he'd been living homeless and unemployed for some time, he had the necessary qualified and free time and the ability to relocate, so Princess and Warren went to live and work at the Animal Sanctuary together. Unfortunately, Warren passed away a couple of years ago due to cancer, but I occasionally exchange emails with the owner of the Animal Sanctuary, and Princess is doing

extremely well. In captivity, she's looking at a good 50 or 60 more years of life, and I know that wherever he is now, Warren is looking down, watching over her. When we were kids, Summer meant freedom. No homework, no teachers, no school, just a whole lot of time to do whatever you wanted. And honestly, I think summer still means freedom as an adult, especially when you can free yourself from an overpriced wireless bill. That's why Mint Mobile's summer sale is pretty exciting. Right now, all of Mint's plans are just $15 a month, even unlimited. it. Mint took what's wrong with wireless and made it right, giving you premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. You get high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, all delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.

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capable device required, availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. I grew up in a little town in Barber County, West Virginia, during the late 50s and early 60s. Now, it was a lot like you might expect, really poor, very family-oriented, and lots and lots of Jesus Christ.

There were a lot of backyard vegetable patches, people made a lot of homemade wine and liquor, and if you couldn't afford to put meat on the table, well, you went out and hunted it for yourself. I know of certain college towns that are crazy over football, but around here in Bellington, Alston, hunting was very much the local pastime. Now, I guess it carried on from the Great Depression, and it was very much a right of passage for young men like myself to head out with their paws and grandpaws and try to bag a deer. We learned hunting safety as early as elementary school and how you never went out into the woods during hunting season

without blazing orange somewhere on your uppers. And we were also raised to have respect for the men who put their bodies on the line to feed their families and neighbors, because Lord knows you get a heck of a lot of meat out of a full-grown deer. And so when two hunters from around Bellington went missing, back when I was 12, I remember it being a really big deal. My dad joined one of the search parties

then went out looking for the two missing men, who turned out to be two regular hunting partners named Mo and Larry. Now, they used to get called the two stooges on account of them lacking or curly, but no one made that joke after they disappeared. And after that, it was just poor Moe and Larry, or those missing hunters. Working with local cops, men from all over Barber County

mounted three different search attempts, each one combing over the wooded hills near a place called Stringtown. Now, not a single trace of either hunter was ever found. We used to pray for them every Sunday in church, prayed that they'd return home and safe and sound one day, having come back from wherever they were. But after a while, folks started to accept the cold, hard truth that both Mo and Larry were probably dead. As a kid, I remember finding it all very very. very confusing. There was no sign of what you might call foul play, which gave folks a lot of hope. And then when the searchers didn't find any bodies, people started talking like Mo and Larry were just on vacation or decided to leave town for some reason. Now, I remember why they'd do something like

that just up and leave town without telling anybody. And there were all kinds of rumors, too, just nothing anybody talked about in public and nothing that fit neither. But then one day, there was suddenly a little memorial outside the church, and I saw Mo and Larry's families all dressed in black on two consecutive weekends. One day they were just off someplace, then the next, they were gone for good. This was many years after they went missing, and I later learned that Mo and Larry's families decided to declare them dead in absentee for legal and financial reasons, but doing that meant giving up on them and accepting that they were gone. And then, when the town finally accepted that Mo and Larry were really dead, and not just missing, it was like this whole second wave of

grief that I remember much clearer on account of being older. Now, I guess it was how everyone was feeling for Mo and Larry's kids because they left two widows, but five orphans. It twisted people up inside to see so many kids grieving like that, having all that hope ripped away from them after it kept them warm for so many years. And then people got bitter. and mad, and started looking for someone or something to blame. Now, it was at a town meeting when someone suggested the volunteer search teams hadn't done their jobs properly, and all hell broke loose. There was a lot of yelling back and forth, and I remember Dad switching from beer to whiskey that evening as he sat on the porch watching the night roll on.

He was talking to just about anyone who'd listen, and he told me all about how there was something off about how the search went on. How Mo and Larry should have been boots on the ground, but how it was just like they just hopped in a truck and took off somewhere. Now, that wasn't out of the question, but the issue of why bothered some more than others. Some of those nasty rumors I mentioned involved Moe and Larry batting for the other team, so to speak, meaning some treated the disappearance like it was radioactive and didn't want to touch it.

But then other folks, my dad included, had a way more frightening idea, one that involved poor Moe and Larry being forced into said truck against their will, as in at gunpoint. According to my dad, all liquored up on the porch that night, there was no way in hell either man would just abandon their wives and kids like that, not without at least a note on the kitchen table. And if they'd been murdered out there, there'd be some shred of evidence to prove that they weren't all in one. one piece, be it at a scrap of clothing or a scrap of them. And then according to my pop, anyone who said he and his boys didn't look hard enough were liars, because they turned over every leaf in those woods looking for Mo and Larry twice over, and they didn't find squat. It was just a real sad state of affairs and the whole thing hung over the town for years and years and years. And then one day, the county sheriff comes to visit Moe and Larry's widows and starts

It starts asking them all kinds of questions about any business that they might have had with two farmers over in Tucker County. Neither widow knew what they were talking about, so they had nothing to share. But when they asked if there had been any developments in their search for their missing husbands, the sheriff gave them chicken feed, and that he was just talking to some farmers over there and Tucker about the disappearances. Well, he wasn't just talking to anyone over in Tucker. He was working with the sheriff's office over there and digging on. up whole patches of land on this hog farm owned by these two brothers. It took a couple of days for word to spread across county lines, but when it did, someone from Alston drove over to see it

for themselves. Lo and behold, the cops were all still there, stripped to the waist with shovels and pickaxes, shoveling their way through mountains of dirt. They were looking for something all right, and by that stage, it had to be Moe and Larry's bodies. But since they refused to make any announcements regarding what they were doing, there was an uproar back home in Bellington. Folks wanted to know what the hell they were doing out there, digging up some hog farm, or more specifically, what kind of tip-off they'd received that led them to put all that work into digging the place up. It was radio silence for weeks on end, and then when the Barber County sheriff finally told folks what he was doing, they were even less happy than before.

He said it was some kind of anonymous tip-off in that the whole dig had amounted to nothing. but people didn't believe a word of it. They didn't believe that they dig up a whole farm based on nothing but a tip. But the cops wouldn't budge. They said that there was nothing more to be done regarding that avenue of investigation, and there would be more updates as and when they rolled in. But there were no updates, there was no news, and neither Mo nor Larry bodies or otherwise were ever found.

The mystery of what happened to those two hunters stayed hanging over Bellington for as long as I lived there, and since I don't imagine people have forgotten about them, I don't imagine that dark clouds about to disappear anytime soon. Do you like fire, Joel? I used to. I used to enjoy bonfires and campfires. I used to love staring into the flames and imagining I could see all kinds of magical things in them. Now, fire just fills me with fear.

Not just because of one event, but because of two. They occurred a few months apart, but they are almost certain. certainly linked. The first event happened when I was walking home from town one day. I live within walking distance of the shopping district, yay for the UK in its tiny landmass, so walking into town was a weekly trip for me. I live in a no-through terrace street with footpaths on one end, one leads from the town slash train station, and the other leads to the suburbs and further out of town. I was walking down the footpath leading to my street when I noticed a group of three very drunk, very loud people just ahead of me. Two men and a woman. I could hear them over the sounds

of Ramstein playing through my headphones, but I shut off my iPhone so I could hear them clearer. They were some of the most vulgar, unpleasant people I have ever had the misfortune to follow, and I prayed that they didn't stop, turn around, and see me. They were clearly 50,000 sheets to the wind, and from the sounds of their jabbering, they were looking for a fight with someone, anyone, probably. Thankfully, they were too focused on heading to wherever to stop and turn around. As I reached the turning into my street, they crossed over to the next footpath. I watched with disgust as one of them tossed a cigarette butt into the hedge of my neighbor at the end of the street. As soon as I got home and unpack my shopping, I headed upstairs and checked out the window.

I was a little concerned about the discarded cigarette butt because it was a dry summer and the hedge had started turning brown and dry. and before I even had a chance to scope out the end of the street, I knew something was up. It looked like it was snowing, in August, and I quickly realized that ash was blowing past my window. I quickly looked out to the right and saw that flames were licking up my neighbor's hedge. I grabbed my phone and called a couple of neighbors, ones that I knew were members of the neighborhood watch, and then I immediately ran outside. Before I even had a chance to get halfway down the street, the entire hedge, and I'm talking an extremely large, deciduous hedge here, had caught fully ablaze. Other neighbors started emerging from their houses, and we felt helpless as we realized that there was pretty much no way to get any kind of water towards the hedge.

A bunch of us had called the fire brigade, but we had to watch in horror as the fire spread across the garden and caused the large tree in the center of my neighbor's front garden to suddenly erupt. into flames. Now, it seemed like it took mere seconds for the tree to turn into a smoldering, blackened trunk and dead branches. Thankfully, that killed this part of the fire, but there was still the hedge to contend with, and with the danger of the fire spreading to the house. Thankfully, the fire brigade got there and managed to control the blaze. Once things had calmed down, I drew one of the firemen aside and told him about the trio that I'd seen tossing a potentially lit cigarette butt into the hedge. as it was clear that this had caused the fire.

Not to my surprise, the fireman seemed completely disinterested. In fact, he acted like I was an annoyance or like he didn't believe me. And this really infuriated me because I guess I was a younger person at the time and obviously young people, and when I say young, I mean mid-20s, apparently can't be taken seriously. And this event is what caused me to finally, properly join the neighborhood watch. I did pretty well in my first few months as a fully fledged member. I recruited other neighbors and persuaded them to join.

As someone who often works nights, I kept an eye out and was able to scare off at least one or two potential vehicle vandals. I saw a guy dealing weed on the corner a few times, but I'm not that much of a narc, so I let that one be. And then one night, I was up very late playing video games on the computer in my room at the back of the house. Now, I forget what I was playing, but it must have been something quiet because despite wearing headphones, I was able to hear what sounded like fireworks coming from outside. Now, it wasn't remotely fireworks season, and when I heard a second bang, I realized that it sounded more like a gunshot than a firework, but not quite that either. I climbed over my bed and peered out the window.

A disturbing orange glow was coming from the back garden of one of the houses on my side of street right at the end. Now at first I wasn't sure what I was seeing until I heard another explosion and a pillar of flame shot up into the air. Immediately I called the fire brigade and then the leader of the neighborhood watch. I still wasn't sure which garden was on fire. My friends live at the penultimate house and the terrace and I was worried it was their garden. I ran outside and was surprised to discover I was alone. The first thing I did was run to the end of the street and that's when I realized that it was the side garden of the final house in the row, number 20, which was on fire. And from what I could tell, it was the garden shed, but the flames were licking dangerously towards

the house itself, which was pretty dilapidated, and in particular, had a wooden balcony which could easily catch fire. I ran straight to number 19 and knocked, waking them up, and started yelling that the next door was on fire, and it could spread to their house, and they needed to get out of there right away. Now, as soon as I left number 19 with the family in tow, I was met by other neighbors who had also heard the commotion. A few of us had already called the fire brigade at the same time, and we were assured that they were on their way. I looked around, and I could not see the guy who lived in number 20. I assumed that he would have been first to evacuate, but no. Entering his garden was impossible, as he had a big wooden gate which was locked and would

have been too slow to climb over. So in my infinite wisdom, I decided to head down the footpath that headed into town and try and yell for the guy who lived there, and also his cat, who I was very fond of. I took a few steps down from the footpath when suddenly there was another explosion from the shed. A huge, billowing wall of flame rolled over the wall and came thundering towards me, and the fire got so close to me that it singed my eyebrows and the hairs of my arms. I jumped backwards. If I had taken one single step forwards, I would have been hit by that wall of flame. Now, I'm certain that someone was looking out for me that day because I was so close to being immolated that, damn.

It's honestly scary to even think about to this day. Now, the first brigade showed up and then the cops. And when the fire was put out and all the commotion had died down and some time had passed, we eventually discovered through our neighborhood watched liaison that it had been an act of all. Arson. Someone had set the neighbor's shed on fire. Unfortunately, the neighbor had been storing a whole bunch of aerosol cans and fuel in his shed, which he really wasn't supposed to do, which had led to the fire being far more serious than was likely intended and far more dangerous.

The reason that the owner hadn't fled the house was because he was actually away, staying with his son upcountry, and you'll be pleased to know that the cat was fine and was the first to flee. Now, I can't be sure, but I'm absolutely certain that the trio who set the fire to the hedge were also the ones who burned the shed. When they've been walking past number 20, some of their vulgarity had been directed at the man who lived there in the house, so they clearly knew him. And there was a nearby pub, which had CCTV cameras, and of course it wasn't working

at the time, so nobody was identified. The arsonist, or arsonists, were never caught, but I know who it was. It was the drunk alcoholic smokers who recklessly threw burning cigarette butts around, and so just after our street had stopped stinking of a burning hedge, it started stinking of a burning shed. That was a fun year, with the smell of burning everything permeating our lives. At least nothing else had caught fire for nearly two decades now, and if it does, and I'm going to leave it up to other members of the neighborhood watch to go heroically diving into those flames. I don't recommend it, and I think I exhausted my luck when I almost caught on fire the first time.

But you know, if I'm ever forced to save a cat from the flames, I can't promise I won't dive into that inferno again. More than 35 years ago now, back during the hunting season of 1992, my buddy Josh and I drove out to Belmont County to try and bag ourselves a couple of wild turkeys for Thanksgiving, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 22, he was 23, and we both had jobs in a mill down in wheeling, him on the line and me hauling scrap. And the pay wasn't great, but it kept the lights on and fridge stocked, and since we each worked four on and four off, it gave us plenty of time to head off hunting once the season started. That year, I told my mom that I'd bring a turkey over on Thanksgiving morning so she could have it

stuffed and roasted come dinner time. But then, like I said, to save a couple of bucks, we figured that we'd kill two birds with one stone and turn what should have been a grocery store run into a hunting trip. Now, I had this old 78 F-150 at the time, a total rust bucket, but tough as an old boot, too. So after loading it up with our shotgun and cooler full of beers and cold cuts, we hit the road before dawn, heading east out into the woods before the sun had even risen. And we got to where we planned to park the truck just after dawn, a spot at the end of a dirt road, which petered off at a thick patch of woods. Now, we've been out there the year before,

and Belmont's got the most perfect mix of rolling hills and oak-rich forest, which mean there'd be plenty of acorns dropping to fatten up those turkeys. Look into it. It gives them this natural flavor that the store-bought ones, I'll tell you, are lacking. Now, we were walking and talking, sipping on some coffee as the birds started getting pretty noisy.

Then about a mile in, we threw together a, a blind with some camo netting and a bunch of larger fallen branches. Now, I had a box call with me, one that my grandpa actually carved. So, for the first hour or so, I kept on letting out the odd yelp or cluck type of sound, trying to sound like a lonely young hen. But the most we got was a few squirrels rustling around or the occasional deer snort off in the distance. Josh ended up cracking a joke about how we'd end up having to shoot a possum and call it a turkey when we get home. But then not even a couple of minutes later, we heard that first gobble echo over from a ridge.

Now, finally, after what felt like forever of us just sitting there freezing our nuts off, we spotted a small flock scratching their way through the underbrush about 50 yards ahead of us. Me and Josh are as excited as two little kids on Christmas Eve, watching them get closer and closer, totally none the wiser that we're sitting there behind all that camo netting. We waited, and then we waited some more. Then right when the time was right, I brought up my 12-gauge and then made this one turkey drop like a sack of potatoes as I got a really fine hit on him. Josh got another, but mine had been the bigger Tom,

strutting all proud with his feathers fanned and his beard swinging. But all it took was one pull of my trigger, and he flopped off in a puff of feathers. Now we traded a few high-fives, got to dragging these birds back, to the truck, which made for one heck of a workout, as I'm sure you're familiar, and then started on the field dressing then and there, and then so we wouldn't have to mess with it back home. Now, we were knee-deep in feathers and guts, squatting by the birds and trying to get them cleaned up before the sun got too high and warm things up, because Lord knows poultry smells

like ass when the warm air starts getting to it. Now Josh started talking about how gutting turkeys made him wish that we stuck to fishing and and how it's easier to gut certain kinds of fish than it is to get the wrapper off a slim jim. Now, that part made me laugh, and I turned to ask him what in the hell kind of slim jims he's been eating, but I didn't get a chance to get the words out, because before I even opened my mouth, a bullet flew over our heads, and a shot rang out. Now, I think it was a tree that stopped the bullet, but I can't be certain. All I heard was this chunk sort of sound as it landed somewhere behind us.

And both me and Josh just froze up for a second. And while I can't tell you what he was thinking at that moment, I couldn't imagine why anyone might shoot at us, so I assumed it was an accident of some kind. Now, we were both crouched still as I yelled out something, What the hell? Hey, dumbass, watch your aim! No, I didn't really figure it was just some idiot greenhorn

who couldn't tell a turkey call from the goddamn echo of one, and I expected to hear an apology, but instead we got nothing. No answer at all. Just the wind rustling dead leaves. And then suddenly, another crack split the air and a second bullet hit even closer than the first. When it kicked up a clumped dirt no more than three feet away from Josh's boot, we both screamed and ran for cover behind the truck. For a second, I thought I could run for my gun, which by then was leaning up against a log nearby.

But I was also pretty sure grabbing it meant giving whoever was out there a very clear, shot of me, so I realized pretty quickly that we had no choice but to stay crouched and hope the shooter didn't have an angle on us. Now, Joss kept trying to figure out where it was coming from, but it only took a couple of seconds for us to figure out that, at the very least, he wasn't behind us. He was somewhere out there in front of us and on the other side of that truck. Now, the best we could do was look out into the truck's side mirror and hope that we could catch a muzzle flash or something should the shooter choose to fire. again. Josh leaned down at one point two, trying to peek out under the truck, but I told him to stop

being so dumb before he got his freaking head shot off. He then tried reaching for his gun, and I swear I thought I was about to watch him take a bullet right then and there, but he managed to reach and grab it without the shooter firing a third time. And that's what gave us hope that whoever had fired had just simply ran off, so after a couple more minutes of waiting there, we decided to make a break for it. We counted off a quiet three, then scrambled up and dived into the truck, leaving those half-dressed turkeys laying there as we sped off as fast as we could. I didn't even think about going for my gun, not well, Josh had his.

And then while leaning over in the seat so as not to expose myself through the windshield, I started up the truck's engine, and off we went with the wheels spinning and not even bothering to close the doors. I kept waiting for a shot to shatter the windshield or ping off the truck. tailgate, but there was nothing but the sound of my engine as we hauled ass down that dirt road. We didn't slow down until we hit the highway, but even then, it took another couple of miles before our hearts stopped pounding like they were fixing to explode, and we drove right over to the county sheriff's office, so wired on adrenaline and how surreal it all was that we forgot

to wash the blood off of our hands. One of the deputies later joked that he thought we'd walk in to confess a murder and hadn't ever been so relieved in his life when we said it was turkey blood and he saw the little white feathers kicked in the mud on our boots. Now, once we got as clean as we could in the department bathroom, we both sat down with the deputy I mentioned and walked him through the whole insane ordeal. It felt like talking about a dream. Like it all happened so fast and it made such a little sense that describing it all to that deputy felt almost like I was talking about someone else.

The deputy took our statements, asked us a bunch of questions, mainly on the location of where it all happened, and that's when leaving the turkeys behind became a good thing because if the cops found two half-dressed turkeys, then they'd had our spot. The deputy told us that they'd send a patrol out to check, but with it being hunting season, he was betting on it being anything from a stray bullet to some fool playing games. And to us, it felt way more personal than that. but we also figured that the sheriff's department would do a better job figuring it all out than we ever could. And I guess they did exactly that too as it took them a couple of years. After we gave our statements, Josh and I grabbed some coffee at a gas station, and he talked me out of going back to where he had been shot at so I could retrieve my shotgun. Although if I had chosen to go back, I'd have found what the deputies did a couple of days later,

which was two half-dressed turkeys, but no shotgun. And that's what was real creepy, thinking whoever shot at us hadn't run off or run out of ammunition or whatever. They took two shots, then watched us drive off all scared before walking up on where we'd been and stealing my gun. And the whole thing sure did ruin a good hunt. That's for damn sure. And my mother ended up buying a store-bought turkey which tasted like cardboard compared to what we could have had. Now it felt like we'd lost something, something even bigger than the same. those turkeys and that shotgun. We just never realized how lucky we'd really been until about

three years later. So during the summer of 1993, a man named Thomas Dillon was convicted of five murders, all of which took place in eastern and southern Ohio. As you can imagine, it was huge news, but it wasn't the number of bodies or even where they killed, which really got mine and Josh's attention. It was how this guy killed his victims, because he didn't stab them, or bludgeon them to death, he shot them instead. But he did it from a distance and with a long rifle, like he was hunting people. I heard it from Josh before I put it together myself,

and when he called, it was the only time of my life where I genuinely felt my legs turned to jelly. I remember sitting back down on the couch with a phone in my hands, thinking, holy crap, we got shot at by a serial killer, and we could have been two of his victims. Again, we didn't know how lucky we really were because I think maybe four or five days later after our hunting trip,

Tom Dylan killed a kid, just a few years younger than us in almost the exact same spot. Now, he didn't just destroy lives by killing people either, and there's no way that he killed just five. In fact, there was such a strong evidence that Dylan had killed two hunters in Michigan in the same year that we got shot at

that another person falsely accused of killing them was led out of jail after spending 18 years in a cell. Now, that'll never fail to be crazy to me how this guy managed to ruin the lives of people he'd never even met, and how by some miracle I narrowly avoided being one of his victims. I'm going to start this by saying that I love the idea of the Neighborhood Watch Initiative. I've moved house since the story took place, and I'm part of an unofficial neighborhood watch. watch myself. I regularly help out and I'd say that I'm a proud member. Now, it wasn't always the case. I used to live in a small ranch-style house in a relatively rural neighborhood. I didn't know much about the concept of neighborhood watch groups at the time and even less so about the type of

neighborhood watch group in my area. I don't really want to name the group or explain who they were because it'll open up a can of worms, but let's just say that they were a specific type of neighborhood watch group where all the members were of a certain heritage, which I was not. And therefore, I was never invited to join or be any part of their group. But within a day of moving in, I did receive a surprisingly professional-looking pamphlet detailing who they were and what they did. In short, they kept an eye on the neighborhood for undesirable, bad behavior, and any threat to their way of life. My vague understanding of a neighborhood watch group was that they were a group of people who kept an eye out for crime or vandalism, but that didn't seem to be the case here.

It seemed more like a homeowner's association, but they were adamant in their literature that they were a neighborhood watch group, and boy, did they send a lot of literature. Almost every week I received a neighborhood watch newsletter, but these mostly consisted of lists of things I should or shouldn't do as a good member of the community. The pamphlets I received seem specifically designed for people like me, i.e. people who didn't quite fit in to their culture. I don't want to say that they were outright hostile, but they made it very clear that I didn't entirely belong and I wasn't one of them. I had no idea which of my neighbors actually belonged to this neighborhood watch group, but almost every neighbor I

tried to befriend or even be remotely friendly with seemed to snub me or look down on me. They were all a fair bit older than me, with the youngest pushing 50 aside from a small handful of families who kept her themselves. And there was one neighbor I befriended, though. I'll just call him Devon. Now, he was a black guy who had lived in the neighborhood with his wife until she tragically passed away a couple of years ago. We became buddies, and I soon found out that he'd been made to feel as ostracized by the neighborhood watch as I had. And according to Devin, they'd barely even offered sympathy when his wife had passed. Their biggest concerns seemed to be informing him that if he was holding the wake at home, he'd have to limit how many cars parked in

the street because otherwise it might become inconvenient for the others. Now, I was horrified at this. The man had just lost its wife, and the neighborhood watch, as they called himself, were concerned that too many people might want to support him and pay their respects. And so we kind of bonded over how much of a bunch of expletives this neighborhood watch group was. Now, we took to calling them the homeowner's A-hulls. anytime either of us did end up speaking to one of the members of the Neighborhood Watch, particularly a very elderly man called Elijah, we intentionally refer to them as a homeowner's association

after realizing how much they seemed to irrationally anger them. Now, it wasn't long before I started receiving personalized letters on their pretentious, customized Neighborhood Watch letterhead complaining about various things. My lawn needed trimming, my car was parked too far from the curb, and I should only ever park in my driveway, never mind the fact that I was applying new asphalt at the time. Now, I wrote back informing them that this seemed like something an HOA should be concerned with, not a neighborhood watch group, especially one of their persuasion, and shouldn't they

be on the lookout for crimes and vandalism? Mike's garden shed had been broken into a few weeks before, and there certainly hadn't been any neighborhood watch keeping an eye then. They didn't respond to this, But two weeks later, I received another letter informing me that an untoward-looking gentleman had been seen on my property on multiple evenings. Now, this confused me at first until I realized that they were talking about Mike, their own neighbor. Now, we couldn't outright come out and accuse them of racism because they never specified details of who they were talking about other than saying he appeared suspicious. But, you know, it wasn't hard to read between the lines.

I think I was angrier about this than Mike was. I guess he was used to the neighbors being kind of hostile, which he said had been going on ever since he and his Iranian wife moved in. As an Iranian guy myself, this made me even more angry for a bunch of reasons, and Mike really had to work hard to calm me down. And that's when he hit me with the news. He was moving out in three months. Now, I was kind of mad at him.

He was going to leave me with these people who clearly didn't. want us here. And that's when he suggested that I sell up and, for the time being, move in with him as his roommate. Now, it felt kind of juvenile, as men in our late 20s and early 30s, respectively, but Mike was moving to my dream city, San Francisco, and I had family there. It wasn't actually a bad idea, so it was decided. We'd leave this weird, creepy neighborhood watch cult in our rearview mirror and move out. And that's when things got really crazy. I started receiving no Notes, again, on the neighborhood watched letterheads, and this time they were accusing me of running a meth lab in the basement. At first, that's all they were. Statements and accusations.

And then they escalated. I could call the cops and shut you down, but I won't. Not yet. That kind of thing. And the next, I received an ultimatum telling me to shut the meth lab down or something terrible would happen. Now, this was all insane. Obviously, I was not running a meth lab. my basement, and the biggest piece of evidence in my defense was that I did not even have a basement. I guess some of the other houses and the spread-out neighborhood did, and whoever was accusing me of this was one of those basement owners. Presumably he or she assumed my house was just the same. I showed Mike and what started off as a kind of joke soon turned pretty scary. We were counting down

the days until the move, just six weeks now. And that's when I got the most terrifying letter yet. Still written on Neighborhood Watch letterhead paper, and the writing was scrawled, erratic, and somewhat mental. The writer threatened that if I didn't shut my meth lab down within a week, which I was clearly running with a friend, who the author identified with a slur that I won't repeat here, then both of our houses were going to be cleansed by holy fire, quote-unquote. Mike and I debated whether this was a metaphor or something more. our question was answered when the hedge bordering my front yard was set ablaze in the middle of the night. The next morning, after a sleepless night and some wonderful aid from the fire department,

I was met with another insane note claiming that this was a taste of what we were to expect. Now, obviously, I informed the cops at this point. They took all the notes for evidence just in case they could find any trace fingerprints, and I made photocopies before the cops took them and decided enough was enough. I was going to confront the leader of the neighborhood watch, a man I thus far completely avoided, and his name is Samuel. Now with Mike's backup, we went storming over to Samuel's house. Now, the wind was knocked out of our sails a little when the door was answered by his adorable daughter who invited us in.

And then Samuel's wife offered us hot drinks and cookies, and it was like cultural whiplash. Eventually, Samuel arrived home from his round of golf and sent the family away. We confronted him with the letters, angrily thrusting them right at his face, and we hit him with everything. How the neighbors had made us all feel unwelcome, how this kind of insanity was not the type of thing a neighborhood watch should be engaging in. And we asked if the organization was even registered with the local police or officials in any way. All the while, Samuel was just sitting there, quietly taking in our rage as he read over. the notes. Now, when he was done, he looked at us with a face as pale as a ghost, and to his credit, he admitted that he and the neighbors had felt like myself, Mike, and his wife had not been the

best fit for the neighborhood. He admitted that the pamphlets we were sent were intentionally hostile, that there were a number of neighbors, particularly the old folks who like to keep things culturally insular. Now, I'd just like to reiterate at this point that this wasn't a regular sort of white thing. It wasn't even just a group of white people, just trying to drive us out. It was a lot more complex than that, but I don't want to go into the whole story here due to the current events. I'll just leave it up to you to decide what I'm talking about, but it wasn't a case of random white people acting hostile towards Bipok folk. It was weirder than that, which is all I'll say on the matter. Now, back to Samuel, he swore blind on his faith and his family that he had no knowledge of these handwritten

threatening notes and had no idea who sent them. I believed him. They'd been so bluntly honest with us to that point that I had no reason not to. Now Mike was less convinced, but I managed to persuade him. The one thing that did disturb us both was when Samuel said he had an idea and that both Mike and I should be very, very careful. He asked if there was any way we could escalate our move. When we told him there wasn't and that we were locked in for the next six weeks, Samuel told us to leave everything with him. Remember the old man Elijah who I mentioned earlier? Well, he died of a heart attack three days after we confronted Samuel, and the note stopped. The neighbors started being more friendly towards us, so much so, in fact, that some of them went out of the way to bring Mike and

I these delicious food dishes, and Samuel invited us for dinner multiple times. Mike was still suspicious and didn't accept invites, but I at least tried to play nice with Samuel. Mostly I was curious to dig into what might have happened with Elijah. Samuel never let anything slip. He was a very slippery, intelligent character, but he dropped enough hints for me to know that Elijah had been the one sending the notes and that maybe, just maybe, his little heart attack had been a lot more convenient than coincidental. All in all, it was like living in Twin Peaks or the Twilight Zone. I was extremely. I was extremely extremely happy to get out of there with Mike. Now, I stayed with him for around six months before moving

into a place of my own with a wonderful woman that I met in Frisco, who I'm now proud to call my wife. We live in the city, and Mike lives nearby, and there's absolutely no official neighborhood watch to speak of. We all just look out for each other and act like good neighbors to each other. And that's all you need, really. The rest can work under the right circumstances, but when a group of people like our former neighborhood watch get together, there's a danger that it can spawn folks like Elijah who take things way too far, or people like Samuel, who in many ways were the most chilling characters of them all, even if his actions might have saved us in the end. Frankly, I just don't want to meet any of them again or any of their ilk. I'm pretty happy with my diverse melting pot of city neighbors. Thank you very much.

In what was very much a spur of the moment decision, I decided to join the British Army when I was 18. I'd fallen in with a bad group of lads back home, and after almost dying on the road one night while we were all drunk, I knew something had to change. Now, the army should have given my dad a recruitment bounty because it was him that talked me into it. I could learn some discipline, get fit, earn a wage, and shoot a few guns while I was at it. And that was all he needed to say. I ended up in infantrymen, the Sheshire's, which is what we called the Sheshire Regiment. at the arse end of the Cold War. It was all Russia, Russia, Russia back then, so not much has changed, I suppose.

But then the USSR fell apart and suddenly we had no one to fight. Things were looking up and for young soldiers like myself, it seemed like we'd be spending the rest of our careers in peacetime. But then not even a year after the USSR went tits up, another Eastern European country decided to crap the bed. And this time, it was Yugoslavia. Now, long story short, Yugoslavia was a country made up of people who hated each other's guts, and the only thing keeping a lid on it all was a dictatorship.

But then when that fell apart, everything kicked off. There were massacres, sieges, bombings, you name it. And then the UN decided a peacekeeping force should go in to stop it, and that's how we ended up in a place called Serre d'Ivo. Being the biggest city in all of Bosnia, it had the highest concentration of people in the whole country, country living there, and when the war kicked off, it was immediately surrounded by Serbian forces. They tried to take the city, but the Serb assault force was massively outnumbered by the Bosnian defenders, so the assault failed. And that's when the siege started, and it didn't let up for

almost four years. By the time we arrived, Sarajevo was one of the most dangerous places on planet Earth. There were rocket and mortar barrages, both incoming and outgoing, sniper duels between Serbs and Bosnians, and sometimes both water and power would be shut off for weeks at a time, which made the city smell like an unwashed arse in the summer. It was hell on earth, and it was impossible for your heart not to break for the civilians' forced to live there. People lost family every single day, like when the Serbs sent a single 120-millimeter mortar shell into a crowded marketplace one day.

More than 200 people were either hurt or killed, just from that one little shell, and the Serbs did it on purpose. Their snipers had the same strategy and didn't restrict themselves to uniform soldiers or even armed civilians. If they could see you, you were fair game, and I'll never, ever forget watching a Serbs sniper gunned down this lone elderly woman

as she tried to cross the street one day. The shelling was horrendously scary, but the Serbs were using old Soviet kits, so for the most part it wasn't very accurate. But the thing we really worried about, were the snipers, especially the good ones. They could get much closer than the mortar or rock crews, and I'd say about 50% of the time,

if they had you in their sights, you were done for. And it's a story about a sniper that I've got for you today. So, in April of 1993, my section and I had been given the job of guarding an intersection in our two armored vehicles. Jobs like that are usually quite boring. this one was the polar opposite. And aside from the already 300 artillery and mortar shells, which hit Sarajevo on a daily basis,

the snipers were incredibly balsy. But while me and my section mates were safe in our armored cars, civilians, especially the old or infirm, were incredibly vulnerable to their fire. We kept watch, but it was also our job to provide mobile cover to civilians should they come under fire. Then if possible, without undue dame, danger to innocent life, we would return fire until the incoming ceased and the snipers fled. Where we were stationed, we managed to identify four different snipers based on the location of their firing points and the caliber of ammunition they used. It wasn't a foolproof method,

like they didn't shoot at us and we'd be like, oh, that's Dave, but we could usually figure it out pretty quickly. So when one day we had someone open up on us from a brand new firing point and a derelict high rise, we reckon that a brand-new player had joined the game. And he must have been brand-new because his shooting was shite. The first time this new sniper shot at us, we didn't think it actually was directed at us. It wasn't until the second shot landed a bit closer that we realized that we were the target. We did our usual thing and returned fire after identifying the firepoint. Now, all it took was a bit of machine-gun fire and then our checkpoint went quiet again.

The next day, the same thing happened again, and we got shot at from the same place, and the shots were so inaccurate that we honestly felt embarrassed for whoever was up there pulling the trigger. But then the third day, the snipers started targeting civilians and not just our armored cars. So with one of us providing cover, the other car rushed off towards what turned out to be the derelict apartment building to flush out that sniper. I was with the car who stayed back to provide cover to the civilians, so I was. didn't get to see all of this, but the lads in the other cars said that when they found the abandoned apartment the sniper had been using, it was empty. There were casings all over the floor, alongside a small hole in the wall that overlooked our position. So while they might have been a terrible shot,

they were pretty good at picking fire points, meaning it was only a matter of time before a bullet finally hit its target. Knowing the situation was akin to a ticking time bomb here, with a derelict high rise being much closer than the surrounding hills, our sergeant asked our troop commander if we should set up a listening post in an adjacent flat. A car full of lads could sneak up there before dawn, take a concealed position up, and then when the snipers fired, boom, they'd pounce. When the boss okayed it, we were chuffed to the bits. We'd been sitting on our arses getting shot at for weeks, and with F all to show for it. So, as you can imagine, we were well up for. We were well up for getting our own back. Now, the next morning, the wagons arrived at the checkpoint, but only

mine was occupied. The other only had its driver because the lads who normally occupied it had their listening posts set up in the high rise. We waited, and we waited. Checking in with each other every so often, then around 11 that morning, our radio men up in the listening post started tapping on his receiver. And none of us needed to figure out the code that he was tapping out to know someone was in the building with them. We were all on tenterhooks waiting for something to happen, and when it did, we were relieved to hear none of our blocs were hurt after the shooting stopped. Our lads up in the high rise had taken down two-thirds of a three-man sniper team, most likely

belonging to a Serb militia by the looks of them. The third, who was unarmed, dropped to his knees and begged for his life. And seeing as a prisoner would be handy, the lads brought him back to the lads. to the checkpoint with his arms tied behind his back. But before that, we heard something over the radios that had us right shocked. So, after our lads killed two-thirds of the sniper team, then took the third-blow prisoner, they searched the bodies of the two dead men to see what they had on them. They had a bit of money on them, cigarettes, lighters, bits and pieces like that.

But then in the pocket of one dead man, our section mates found a passport, an Italian passport. They obviously compared the picture to the dead man's face just to make sure it was really him. But there was no mistake. The now deceased sniper did indeed seem to be an Italian citizen, and not one of Serbian extraction either, if his name was anything to go by. The Serb we captured had a load of cash on him, so at first we thought the Italians might have been mercenaries of some description. But once we got hold of someone who spoke Serbian to act as a translator,

the captured Serb told a very different story. It was one I didn't believe at the time, but after seeing the article I've attached to this email, I realized that he might well have been telling the truth all along. Through the translator and having sweetened him up with some siggies, water and a little ration packs, our Serb prisoner was only too willing to tell us what was going on. And when he did, we were shocked. The two Italians hadn't been mercenaries, which made sense since the Serbs weren't exactly flush with cash. Instead, it was them that had been paying the Serbs for a chance to shoot at UN soldiers and Bosnian civilians.

And we couldn't believe our ears, and neither could our translator, because at one point, their expression went from deadpan to very, very confused. We asked the woman to double check for us and get the man to confirm that what he was organizing was effectively war tourism. The Serbs said that he was just following orders and had to be. no choice but to do as his commander told him, or to be him who got a bullet. He couldn't tell us much about the Italians that he was escorting, only that they had a lot of money with them, and they knew absolutely sawed all about soldiering. My words, not his. Now, when all was said and done, we had little choice but to report evidence of war tourism to our troop commander. He was shocked,

just as we'd been, especially once we showed him the Italian passport, we'd found on the dead man. But frustratingly, we needed a lot more than just one man's word in a passport to prove an accusation like war tourism, and that's aside from the fact that it's not strictly a war crime. Our sergeant asked if it was worth going back to collect the two men's bodies, but our true commander didn't think it was worth the risk. If it was true, then those two Italians were tourists paying good money to kill people, then they'd already received the most suitable punishment possible. Our lieutenant also said that there was very little chance the Italians would even claim them.

They'd say the passports were forged, that no good Italian would ever do such a thing, and they might actually be right, too. The passports might have been forged, and the bloke's we'd killed had actually been Russian advisors or something. But that contradicted what the Serb prisoner had told us, but the boss was basically right. We didn't actually know anything about the two blokes that had been killed in the high-rise, and there were much more pressing matters at hand than identifying two idiots who straight into a war zone. And that's where it stayed. Officially nothing but rumor for more than 30 years,

and then an old mate of mine sent me the Al Jazeera article that I've included in this email, and my jaw just about hit the floor. I suppose I should briefly summarize what it says so your audience knows what I'm on about. But long story short, there's an Italian journalist who's gathered so much evidence of what he calls sniper safaris that an Italian prosecutor had brought the case to court. The journalist reckons it was advertised among darker corners of Italian society, most likely with mafia involvement, and that participants paid what today would be worth about $100,000 euros or about $120,000, U.S. Now, we weren't the only soldiers to notice it happening either, because according to that

Italian Derno, a Bosnian intelligence officer reached out to his Italian counterparts and asked them put a stop to it. People in Sarajevo had apparently long suspected that there had been sniper safaris, as in foreigners paying vast amounts for the chance to shoot at them. One person quoted in the article says that the snipers always seem more active on weekends, which implies people flying over on the Friday and then leaving again on the Sunday evening, which is exactly what an unnamed plastic surgeon was said to have done back in 1993, the same year I was there. The article doesn't mention anything about any tourists losing their lives, but I suppose it's implied, isn't it? Not all the rounds were incoming. We fired back quite a few at the Serbs from inside Sarajevo,

so I wouldn't be surprised if even more sniper safaris came under fire and ended up paying a hundred grand for the privilege of losing their lives. Unsurprisingly, I don't have much sympathy for them. It was us that they were shooting at, but having it all but confirmed for us gave me mixed feelings. I suppose I just didn't want to think about people being capable of stuff like that. People who saw a terrible tragedy unfolding and thought, I can take advantage of that. And it's not just about making money on war, though that is bad enough. But to be capable of taking someone's life, a total stranger at that. and then getting away with it, Scott Free.

Grief can do some strange things to people. That's what I was always told anyway. My mom first told me that when one of my high school friends lost her sister and started dressing up and acting like her sister. It made sense to me then, and I went out of my way to befriend her. Now, we're still close BFFs to this day, incidentally, and that's relevant to the story because she's a bit of a let's-read fan girl, and she's the one who encouraged me to write in with this tale.

Now, don't worry. She won't mind that I've included the personal little bit about her. She's proofreading and approving the whole thing, by the way. Now, this incident happened when I was 19. I've taken a year out after high school before going to college so I could work and put together some savings to avoid my student loans from being sky high. It didn't really work, but at least I tried.

Now, this was back in, I think, maybe 2012, when Facebook was still really popular. We had a local neighborhood watch. I wasn't really a member as such. I didn't go to meetings or get involved, but I was their honorary mascot, which meant that I was a member of the Facebook group. Now, one day, I logged on to find the group totally a buzz.

A whole bunch of the neighbors had witnessed something straight out of a horror movie, apparently. As the previous night, an elderly woman had been walking up and down the street, pushing an industrial-style shopping cart. No harm done, right? Well, the shopping cart contained a full-sized coffin. And she wasn't just walking down the street once. She was walking down the street, disappearing for a while, and then walking back the way she came.

One of the neighbors, a night owl guy that I knew, his name was James, decided to follow her at a distance. He discovered that she had been walking in a circle around a few blocks and then turning around at a certain point in repeating the circuit in reverse. Everyone's posts were rife with speculation. Why was she carting a coffin around? Was that even legal? Apparently it looked like a fairly bad or dirty coffin, and some of the theories were wild. Now it took me, a 19-year-old girl, to provide a grounded suggestion. It was a Halloween prop. It was the start of October, so it wasn't out of the ordinary. Now, James immediately shot my idea down.

I hadn't seen her. Why would this extremely elderly lady be walking a circuit around the block with a spirit Halloween coffin and a shopping cart? That's a good point, James, but had he considered dementia? Maybe the old lady lived on the next street over and she was suffering from sundown syndrome, which causes dementia sufferers to start acting weird right after nightfall. It was as good an explanation as any. But whatever. It had happened.

It was over. And I guess we'd never know, I said. But wrong. I was very wrong. And the next night, the old woman was back walking her little loops, and this time, James called me up. Now, I'm sure he'd been waiting for an excuse to call me. The guy actually did have a crush on me since middle school, and he told me to look out my window. Now, sure enough, the old woman was there, and she was really, really old. I was amazed that she had the strength to push a shopping cart around at all, let alone one with a coffin in it. And she wasn't pushing it slowly either. She was striding around like a woman half her age. Now, one thing I noticed that

nobody else had seemed to peck up on was that this coffin really did not look like some Spirit Halloween prop. If so, it was the most realistic prop I'd ever seen, and it looked a lot more like a film or TV prop than anything else. At least it couldn't be a real coffin, could it? Now, this whole fiasco went on for another few days. I was on vacation from work, so I was happy to play night owl for a while, and then, that Sunday night, the elderly woman didn't show up. I breathed a sigh of relief, and perhaps this was the end of it. No. The next day, Monday, she was back, and I couldn't help but notice that the coffin was starting to look a little worse for the wear. It had been raining almost constantly for a week, mostly some light rain, but heavier in the daytime, and I wondered

if she'd been storing the coffin outside because it certainly looked like the wood was starting to get mold and splinter a little bit. Tuesday came and went and I saw her again. Now the old woman was starting to fall apart. I really started to pay attention to her appearance. She looked almost confused and scared. Her gait, which had been strong to start with, was really starting to falter, and I was beginning to be more and more convinced that this was dementia. Now, the rest of the neighborhood watch seemed hesitant to get involved, even James. I think he even spooked them out a little. When I kept insisting that we should do something, the adults kept telling me to leave it.

She wasn't doing any harm, and there must be a good explanation for it. Now, a far cry from the first night, which had set the whole of the neighborhood watch abuzz. On Wednesday, the woman was really struggling. I'd become used to her role by now, and by my reckoning, it was taking her about twice as long to do her route. Now on Thursday she was struggling even further because one of the wheels on her shopping cart had gone all gimpy and she really had to struggle to keep it straight. On Friday night, I decided I was going to go outside and actually approach her. Now my parents were away for the weekend. I didn't tell any more about what I was going to do as she was an elderly woman who must have been

at least her mid-80s. It was the worst she could do. And so I left my house shortly before I knew that she'd show up and pretended I was outside having a smoke, and I bumped into her by complete accident. It was very clear to me that she was confused. She kept calling me Gloria, which isn't even slightly my name, but eventually I managed to persuade her to open up, and the story she told me was heartbreaking and tragic. The old woman used to live somewhere around here with her husband many years ago. He passed sometime in the 80s, and they'd frequently gone for evening walks around the block, and she had it in her mind that if she started taking those long walks again, she might be able to reconnect with him.

At first, her story brought me to tears. The whole thing was so tragic, and she reminded me much of my great-grandma, who had succumbed to Alzheimer's when I was younger, and I wanted to hug the old woman, who told me her name was Ethel, but it felt like it would be intrusive. Now, I was so focused on the story that she told me

that I almost forgot about the coffin itself, and suddenly it struck me. She was walking the neighborhood to reconnect with her husband, but she was carting this coffin around. It couldn't be, could it? I allowed myself to actually look at the coffin. Now, I've been avoiding looking the whole time as I suspected that the wood had started rotting into places,

and there were a couple of holes in the coffin lid that had led me into the interior. Thankfully, I couldn't see much, but I could see enough. there definitely was some type of bones in that coffin. My hands started shaking, and I told Ethel to wait where she was because I wanted to help her. And then I stepped away a little, call 911, and whispered to the dispatch about what was happening. I told them that if they send the cops, please don't send them with sirens because she was very old, vulnerable woman, and I didn't want to give her a heart attack or anything.

However, it wasn't Ethel who risked having a heart attack. When I turned back to comfort her, I was absolutely horrified to see that she had opened the coffin. Years in the ground had not done her husband justice. It was mostly bones with patches of shriveled skin in places. His clothes had all rotted off, and one thing that stuck with me was that his scalp was partially intact and strands of hair hung down one side of his skeletal face. I almost screamed then and ran, but I didn't want to startle Ethel. She seemed so proud to be showing off her husband, as if opening the coffin to show me,

had suddenly reunited her with her beloved. It's very strange, this feeling of terror and revulsion and grief and sympathy all at once. But I can safely say that I've experienced that combination. I talked to Ethel for a few minutes, trying to keep my eyes off the corpse next to us, which holy hell did it reek. When the cops pulled in, without the sirens on as I requested, and I was unbelievably relieved. Everything was quiet, controlled chaos after that. They took poor Ethel away in a police car and she stayed fully silent.

They called a coroner to come for the coffin in the body, and meanwhile it all suddenly hit me and I started shivering and convulsing in shock, so I was actually carted off to a hospital eventually. It turned out that Ethel's husband's coffin had been stolen five years ago. Ethel was 93 at the time that I met her. It was very clear to all of us that an 88-year-old woman was not capable of exhuming a coffin and transporting it out of a graveyard. Whoever helped her has, as far as I'm aware, still never been identified. Ethel fell into a catatonic state immediately following the events.

She spent some months in a nursing home during her. which I visited her at least twice a week. Now, eventually pneumonia took her, and I hope she's finally reunited with her husband, who I found out was named Clive. Thankfully, I was able to find some photos of him with Ethel in her room that her granddaughter had brought for her, and it was much better a way to picture Clive than the rotting, decomposing corpse he'd been when we first met. Now, I don't think I'll ever get that sight out of my head.

It was horrific. tragic and a terrifying series of events, but it did make for one heck of a story for the Neighborhood Watch Facebook group. Bonjour, Joel. My name is Lorland, and I'm from Sharawa here in Belgium, and I believe I have a story you may be interested in. Now, it's not a personal story of a frightening experience, but rather a story that is personal to me that frightens me very much to even think about. Now, perhaps that is my English failing me, in which case I beg your pardon, but all will become clear as this email progresses and I promise it'll be worth your time to read. My grandfather, Leandro, was born in 1890 and spent his formative years being educated or working on my great-grandfather's farm. He planned on attending university with an aim of

becoming a doctor, but the Great War changed many destinies. He was too young to serve in the Army during the First War, then volunteered as a junior officer shortly prior to the outbreak of the second. Yet the speed at which Germany invaded Belgium meant that his unit was overrun and he was forced to flee to Britain to become part of the free Belgian forces. His dream was to be present in the army that retook his homeland, but instead the government in exile had other plans and sent him to the Congo. Now, despite its motherland being overrun by Germans, the Belgian colony of the Congo remained in free Belgian hands, yet the government was in dire need of people to aid in the country's colonial administration, which is why my grandfather was given the job. He traveled to the Congo in 1940, spent five years living and working there,

and then when the war ended, and it was time to return home, my grandfather refused. He claimed to have not only found a home away from home, but also a private enterprise by which he could richly support himself, and that of a hunting guide. Grandpa was based in a place called Kisangani, which is a city in the eastern portion of Congo's central basin that is surrounded by dense rainforests and jungles. Many wealthy Belgian and French hunters used to visit Kisangani and would pay vast amounts to hunting guides who could safely lead hunts for forest buffalo, red-coasted bongo, or the semi-aquatic sitatunga antelope. My grandfather had been an avid hunter both at home and in the Congo. so after risking his life for the freedom and liberty of all,

he decided a life of leisure was in order and began a hunting enterprise so he could profit from his passions. My father and aunt would travel out to visit him in the winter times and they witnessed firsthand how their father funded their lavish lifestyles back home in Sharawa. And the grandfather hosted a great number of Belgium and French celebrities, as well as diplomats and foreign dignitaries. He would throw extravagant parties with drinks, and dancing after returning upriver with his clients from the hunting grounds.

I have seen many photographs from those times, and to me he seemed like a happy, fun-loving, and remarkably unserious person. But that all ended in 1960 when a period of violent instability culminated in the Congo gaining independence from colonial rule. Many Belgians returned to their motherland, including my grandfather. But according to my father, his return marked a dramatic shift in his personality. Gone was the fun-loving, field sports-loving socialite who hunted by day and partied by night. And instead, a doer and bitter man had taken his place.

My father and aunt were grown-ups by this time and didn't live in the large family home anymore. But they heard stories from my grandmother regarding the change in her husband's demeanor. He would sequester himself in his study for days on end, sleeping and taking his meals there too. And for months he lived like that. studying thick tomes and pouring over maps before he finally shared the details of his affliction with my grandmother. And for the previous year, a business partner of his had gone missing in the field, and since the struggle for independence had slowed the process of his recovery,

my grandfather had been forced to organize the search effort from thousands of miles away, and the process was clearly taking its toll. My grandmother didn't press him on the subject, but as the effort to recover his business partners stretched into 1961 and 1962, it was clear that the search was no longer for a living person, but potentially for their body. But then, in early 1963, my grandfather seemed to become very excited after obtaining new evidence of his partner's whereabouts. He flew to Congo just weeks later and spent around 10 weeks in the jungle searching for his partner.

My grandmother said she prayed nightly for his success in a partner. Upon receiving news of his failure, she prayed that he would find a way to live with it. Yet instead of returning home in grief, having written an end to yet another sad and chaotic period of his life, his return marked the beginning of a brand new one, marked by madness, superstition, and social withdrawal. He began importing Minkeesi's statuettes from the Langola tribespeople, who inhabited the lands east and south of Kissengani. He imported them by the dozens, the quantity of which I have witnessed with my own eyes, but Minkisi are not mere decorative pieces. In fact, they have sometimes been described as portable graves.

If a person takes even a clump of soul from the grave of a deceased person and passes it over or places it inside of a Minkisi, then the soul of the deceased can travel wherever the statue goes. Grandpa Leandro has these Minkisi guardians installed over. for windows and doors, but never explained whether this was to keep something in or to keep something out of his house. My grandfather also oversaw the installation of what he called an ancestral altar in his study, but this he chose to explain. He kept it stocked with offerings like fresh water and fruits or drew symbols on it in red chalk so that the spirits of the dead might linger and offer him guidance. My grandfather also kept bowls of riverstones in his home

and ordered a pond to be dug on his lands so that Simbi water spirits might make their home there. The Simbi are spirits which guard nature and fairy souls between life and death. Perhaps it was his advanced age that sparked such a fascination with them, but each of the fountains, bird thatts, and even some of the water taps in his home bore images of Simby. Yet I think it was their reputation for warning of danger, which truly occupied my grandfather's mind. and that was how he spent his final years, fixated on antediluvian Congolese religion and living out his study like some kind of wealthy hermit. My grandmother said that, at first, Grandpa Leandro would only draw his strange chalk symbols

around the ancestral altar in his study, but as he drew closer and closer to death, they began appearing in other areas of their home and with increasing frequency. But unlike the red symbols, which he believed invoked good health and longevity, these later symbols were only ever in white, which denoted communication with the spirit world. He grew more and more agitated as his health began to fail him. The presence of owls on his property frightened him terribly, since he firmly believed that they were an omen of death. My grandmother said that in the days before Grandpa Leandro passed,

he seemed incredibly agitated and scatterbrained. He began demanding that she summoned what he called a Nang-a, which is essentially a Congolese witch doctor, so they might perform death rights on him. My grandmother suffered terribly in her belief that her husband's mind was fracturing, but did as he wished, and found a Nanga in form of an elderly Congolese housemaid who lived in Brussels. My grandmother feared the woman's presence would only further agitate her dying husband, but instead he appeared calm and lucid as the Nanga chanted and performed her rituals. My grandmother said it was a transformation.

Whatever that woman said or did with him, it brought a frightened and paranoid man to peace. And then a few days later, he died. I was in my early 20s when he passed away, and until then, I had been shielded from most of his madness with the explanation that he was very eccentric and very ill. But after he died and my grandmother could no longer maintain the veneer of wellness, I found out everything I've written about and more, and a whirlwind week of revelations. Now, as you can probably tell, I ended up doing a great deal of my own personal research

into my grandfather's beliefs and the hopes that it might shed some light on the man's mind. But for every answer I obtained prompts only more questions and only deepens the mystery. My grandfather was something of a documentarian in his way, and I have already touched on the photo albums full of pictures of his lavish parties and prominent hunting clients. Now, he also kept many diaries of his service in the Congo, both private and public. But when it comes to information regarding his missing business partner, a South African gentleman named Franchois, there was a frustrating and rather alarming absence. I found plenty of maps and invoices regarding the transportation of expeditionary equipment, but absolutely nothing on the circumstances of Franchois's disappearances, or what happened on the attempt to recover him which took place in 1916. In 1963. Discovering what happened on this trip is nothing short of pivotal to explaining my

grandfather's beliefs in his state of mind, yet I am at a complete loss to explain it. And in the absence of explanations, I find myself entertaining some very frightening ideas. My grandfather was a great man, and for a time he was a happy one. But something happened to one of his oldest and closest friends, and I don't think it was the mystery of it that drove my grandfather mad. I think it was the truth. I think something horrifying beyond reason happened to my grandfather's friend, something that only ancient religion and superstition could bring him comfort. And despite my best efforts to uncover what that thing is, I find myself wondering,

do I really want to know the truth? The same truth, which stole his sanity. I used to be part of a neighborhood watch group, and I was witnessed to an absolutely crazy, kind of creepy incident that sticks with me to this day. We live on a street just on the outskirts of a small town, which has a higher than average crime rate. Our street itself has always been pretty lucky, avoiding being the focus of the town's worst offenders. There was the occasional attempted break-in, some power tools stolen from a few garden sheds, but that was really it. Now, that was before this spate of car vandalism.

Almost every morning we'd wake up to discover one of our cars had been keyed or the mirrors had been slashed off. Now, in a couple of cases, the badges on the front of the couple of cars have been stolen. Now, this was back when that was a lot easier to do. One of the neighbors owned a Mercedes, and I swear his badge must have been stolen three times over the course of a year or so, even after we put a stop to the worst of the vandalism. Now, the vandalism is what spurred us on to start taking the neighborhood watch duties seriously. We spoke to local law enforcement, asked for the best tips we could, befriended a community officer and got a direct line to the local station.

And they also agreed to send a patrol into our cul-de-sac as many nights as possible. Now, not to belittle our boys in blue, but I don't think I ever actually saw a cop patrolling our street. I guess in fairness, they did have better things to do, like preventing murders and violent stuff in the city, so it's not like I hold it against them. And that's what the neighborhood watch was for anyway. The vandalism continued, though, so about five or six of us guys volunteered to take night duty until the vandal was caught. Now, surely, if we spent the next night watching the small cul-de-sac, we'd catch that person or multiple people in the act. And that's what you'd think anyway.

And yet, somehow, after a couple of weeks of vigilance, we didn't spot a single suspicious character. And yet the vandalism continued. It was like the culprit was speck-off. or a ghost or something crazy. But what kind of spec ops soldiers spends his time army crawling along the ground keying cars? I wish I could offer an explanation of who did it and how, but that was still something we never discovered. Instead, this vandalizer decided to retire himself and go out with a bang.

There had been a car parked at the end of our cul-de-sac for what seemed like forever. It had clearly been abandoned there, and a number of us neighborhood watch members had stuck flyers all over the car, pleading with the owner to just move along. All the tires had deflated by this point naturally, and the paintwork was incredibly rusty. And we called the city council about it multiple times, but nothing was ever done. In the end, it just became sort of a staple of the street. We called the car Christine, after the Stephen King story, because it had the vague air of being haunted, or at least kind of sinister.

Now, one night, it was my turn on night watch, and I was just a little. just working on my laptop, looking out the window, when I noticed a glow coming from the end of the cul-de-sac. My house was in the middle, so I had to look around to see exactly what it was. Immediately, I realized Christine was on fire from the inside. I ran outside, careful not to get too close, and these flames were just picking up inside of Christine's seats, but I couldn't immediately see a broken window or any way that the fire could have actually been started inside the car. I called the cops on my cell phone, so I'm glad I paused to do so because moments later, Christine, exploded outward. It wasn't the kind of huge epic explosion you might see in the movies or expect from Call of Duty or something.

I guess in part this was because the car had been sitting there for so long without any gas that there wasn't too much fuel to actually explode. It was enough to send pieces of shrapnel flying into the road or pieces of glass into the car. into the car park near Christine, though, and it would certainly have been strong enough to cause me some serious damage if I'd actually approached like I had planned to. And soon the cops showed up, as did the fire department and the vehicle's blaze was extinguished. Over the next few days, we learned that the fire had definitely been arson. A small hole had been drilled through the glass of one of Christine's windows, a tiny bit of accelerant had been poured through it, and then someone had fed a burning rag into the car.

Now, finally, the cops and the city council put up some effort into tracking Christine's owner, and this went absolutely nowhere. As it turned out, the license plate was just completely fake, registered to no vehicle on record. And the only thing they were able to trace was the engine, which belonged to a totally different, much older car that had been supposedly scrapped many years before. Now, there's no way Christine would have been able to drive at all with that engine installed, and the whole thing was just some mystery. Nobody had any idea when the car had turned up or what the purpose of all of it really was.

Had the vandalism been some kind of preamble in order to burn Christine for some purpose? Some of us half expected the cops to find a charred body in the trunk, but there was nothing like that. The wreckage of the car got towed, and from that day forward, the vehicular vandalism just kind of stopped. Various other things happened with the neighborhood watch since then. I confronted a burglar, and one of my neighbors helped the cops arrest an SA offender on the run, and we successfully chased off a gang of drug dealers who'd started operating on the corner. But nothing ever came close to being as puzzling and mysterious or creepy as a series of vehicular vandalism in the mysterious Christine, the impossible car.

Now, it's been nearly a decade since then, and I still think about it from time to time. At the very least, I wish I knew who had been responsible for the vandalism and how they'd been able to slip under my nose quite so successfully. But I guess some mysteries just never end up getting solved. 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. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.