The Lets Read Podcast - 40: Episode 038 | Walmart & Crazy Family Stories | 26 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

Welcome to the thirty eighth episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Walmart, Crazy Family & Haunted Retirement Homes.  HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON- ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music: Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFvrqVSJE8E PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead 

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. My local Walmart is in Quincy, just outside of Boston. It's a short drive away, and up until about a week or so ago, I would make a weekly trip to the huge superstore to pick up groceries and cheap stationery items for school. So after driving over I park my car and start making my way towards the main entrance when I start hearing some jerk cat calling me from across the lot. I'm not the most beautiful girl in the world, not by any stretch, but I still get whistled and hollered at by half-drunk nobodies. I just kept walking, totally ignoring their shouts and whistles as I approached the Walmart.

That's when I heard his footsteps. The guy who had been shouting at me had jogged over to the parking lot. I know that's hardly the most terrifying thing you've ever heard, but it really did have me on the verge of panic. What did he want? Why had he run all the way across the parking lot? If it was just to try and mack on me then this guy was way more pathetic than I'd first thought but I don't deal well with conflict so I was dreading having to tell him to back off or whatever. He then starts calling me by this other girl's name. My name is not Allie but

somehow he's calling me that name and kind of talking to me like he knows me. I told him that's not my name but he just laughed like I was joking or something. This is when I got super confused. I honestly couldn't tell if he was serious or if this was some kind of prank or dare that his friends had put him up to. When I finally told him to go away, he murmured something about seeing me around. After a few days, I realized I forgot to pick up a USB stick that I needed for college. I am literally raging with myself because I figured that the only reason I forgot in the first place was because of that weird creep in the parking lot. He seemed harmless, sure, but I have to admit to being pretty rattled from the encounter.

So I rolled into the parking lot again, parked my car, look around this time to make sure the same gang of dudes isn't hanging around, but like something out of a bad movie, there they are, hanging in the same spot. Only this time as I'm looking over, I happen to make eye contact with the same dude that was bothering me. I know, I messed up. As you can guess, he comes running over in the same way he did the previous time, only this time he's distinctively more aggressive. He starts calling me Allie again, but he's now accusing me of owing someone money, like a lot of money by the sounds of it. I tell him to go screw but he just gets wicked mad at this point and starts cussing me out in front of everyone watching. I shouted back a little but like I said I don't do well with

conflict. I felt myself tearing up as he roared all kinds of stuff at me about how he'll get the money out of me if it's the last thing he does. He only left me alone when, in a shaking voice, I told him I was about to call the cops. I didn't go to the Walmart for a little while. I was really freaked out by what was going on so I thought it was best just to avoid the place and let this whole mistaken identity stuff die down. Maybe it was just a big prank, but the guy got so mad last time it really didn't seem like he was playing around. So when I'm pretty sure all is blown over, I finally decide to pluck up the courage to hit the Walmart again.

If the guy is there and he gets weird, I'll just call the cops. Easy. No getting upset in front of a crowd of strangers again. I drive through the parking lot slowly this time, just making sure that the guy and his friends aren't hanging around again. Nothing. No big group of creeps with bottle and brown paper bags. I was safe. It felt so liberating to not have to look over my shoulder. I practically skipped into the store to grab more graph paper, treating myself to some cheap candy since I was in such a good mood.

Still smiling, I exit the store, relieved that the whole ordeal seems to be over. I was wrong. Somehow they'd seen me driving into the lot. There were so many of them, guys, girls, some looking angry, some looking excited at the prospect of a public whooping. I've never known fear like it in my life. All I wanted to do was run back into the Walmart and hide, but I was frozen to the spot. Hey, where's my money? One of the girls was livid with rage, bounding towards me with her hands balled into fists. She too kept calling me Allie, Allie, Allie, Allie.

I hated that name so much I never wanted to hear it again. The angry girl screeched about how I was dumb to think I could get away with robbing them, how I was a thieving little rat that get what's coming to her. I tried to protest my innocence that they'd gotten the wrong person but all my pleas were drowned out. Phones were out and filming. The crowd expected this screeching monster to start hitting me at any moment. I remember just closing my eyes and waiting for the blows to land. But they didn't. Instead, a pair of strong arms threw themselves around me, pulling me away from the fray. A deep-accented voice began barking at the

thugs to keep away from me, how the cops had been called and were on their way. It was the Walmart security guard, this huge black guy. He'd seen the whole thing and jumped in before it was too late. He led me to the security office away from the screaming mob and waited with me until the cops came. I broke down almost immediately, a kind of ugly sobbing. I tried to say thank you, to tell him how grateful I was, but the words wouldn't come out. I just hugged him and he shushed me as the cops dispersed the crowd. Two state police detectives ended up visiting me at home a week or so later. They explained that the thugs in the Walmart

parking lot had mistaken me for some addict who was indeed named Allie. Allie was a lady of the night and part of a drug dealing gang that had disappeared a few months prior when the detectives showed me a photo of her, I understood why they'd mistaken me for her. She was like my twin, same brown eyes, same curly brown hair. The way she smiled even reminded me of myself. It was spooky, seeing almost my doppelganger right there in the photo. They explained that she had robbed her coke-de dealing boss and absconded with a large chunk of cash but that she's overdosed on fentanyl not long after she escaped and that's why the gang were convinced it was me they'd not seen or heard anything of ally when they found me and i guess

they just saw red i think about this alley girl sometimes and wonder how it came to be that the trouble she caused would come to outlive her and end up hanging over my head instead. I work as part of the loss prevention team at my local Walmart. No, I'm not saying where, I don't want to lose my job. I really need the money. The incidents I'm about to tell you about actually made national news too, and with the loss prevention team being so small, this whole story could be easily traced back to me.

I hate my job. Yeah, I know I said I needed it, but that doesn't mean I don't despise it. I don't like spying on people, but unfortunately that's just what the job entails. Wandering around the aisles, staring at the CCTV, watching for someone walking too fast or acting nervously. It can get really boring sometimes. Sure, there's a little action every now and then. Some meth heads tries to steal a DVD player or something.

We get to play cops and robbers for like half an hour until the real police show up. But half the time it's just sad. Some young dumb addict breaking down in our office, telling us she didn't want it to be this way. Yeah, I didn't either. No one did. That's not even half of it, too. You know how angry a lone black guy can get if he thinks I'm following him around the store. I've been called racist more times than I can remember. I'm not. I'm just trying to do the job I hate so much, but it still sucks. You really see the worst in people working in loss prevention.

But the weirdest thing I ever saw while working for Walmart wasn't a junkie thief or an armed robber or anything like that. It was something else entirely. So this guy comes walking through the doors one afternoon. Nothing particularly unusual about him, nothing to give us loss prevention guys any suspicion. I take my eye off of him for a little while patrolling the store as it was my turn to do so instead of watching the cameras. I just sort of forget about the guy, you know? I mean, you try to take note of little details, but you do it with so many people that no one in particular stays in your mind, unless they're like, really shady looking. I wander back around towards the meat aisle, casually keeping an eye on various shoppers when I see this guy again, the normal looking dude.

He's balding, has a blue shirt on and is just standing there checking out all the steaks, chops and cutlets sitting in the fridge units. Again, nothing unusual but here's where it starts getting weird. As I'm walking past the dude his head sort of snaps towards me. I remember he had light colored eyes that looked almost empty. I said hi or whatever, just greeted the dude and this big wide smile stretches across his face. The guy had no teeth, not a single tooth remained in this guy's head, Just two rows of disease-looking gums that I had to stop myself recoiling from. I just tried not to react. I felt kind of sad for him.

Maybe he's lost his dentures or something. I wouldn't judge, you know. So I do another loop of the store, watching families to try to rein in screaming kids as impatient singletons tut in their direction. I thought about how much I want kids myself, even if they can be rascals, it's something my mind wonders too often when I'm bored on the job. But as I'm coming back towards the meat aisle, something immediately strikes me as abnormal. The blue-shirted balding guy is still looking at the meat. Only this time, he's not just, like, looking at all the meat, he's staring at it.

It looked like maybe one steak in particular had caught his eye or something. They weren't darting around like they were before. This time when I walked past him, he doesn't look up, he doesn't even move. He's just frozen to the spot, staring down into the fridge units with this dead look in his eyes. I mean, I seriously don't think he even blinked and I watched him for a good few seconds. After this guy I didn't take my usual loop around the store. I stopped at the end of the meat aisle watching this guy slyly out of the corner of my eye. He didn't move an inch. It was seriously like one of those street mimes. Normal people

never really stand still. They fidget, shift their weight from foot to foot. This guy was honestly as still as a statue. It was really creepy. I called it in on the radio asking a co-worker about the balding man in the meat aisle, if he was known to the loss prevention team. Came back negative, the guy I was working with that day had never seen our toothless friend before in his life. So as I'm watching the guy still listening to my buddy on the radio, the toothless man begins to reach into my meat fridge and pick up a large sirloin steak, still packed in plastic. I start feeling like an idiot, Maybe the guy just likes to take his time selecting his steak. He is toothless after all. Maybe he needs the right

kind for his dentures. I don't know. Go figure. Then he brings the steak up to his nose, taking a long deep sniff of this thing through the plastic wrapper. Now I know this guy is obviously nuts. I know the crazy kids when I see them and this is classic crazy. But he's still not stealing anything. He's technically not even doing anything wrong. Being a little nutty isn't exactly against the law. He then rips off the plastic wrapping and that's my cue to step in. Only when I see what he does with the steak, I freeze in my tracks. The toothless man stuffs the raw steak into his mouth. Straining his jaws, he tried to mush that thick piece of meat up with his bare gums. I was stunned. It was literally the last thing I expected a guy with no teeth to do.

I actually thought he was going to stuff it down his pants or something. I've seen shoplifters stealing weirder stuff and hiding it in weirder places. But to see him actually push that steak right past his lips and start chewing. God, it was the freakiest thing I had ever, ever seen. His eyes start rolling back into their sockets. His cheeks caved in as he started trying to suck all the fluids out of the raw piece of flesh. And the noises he made, good god if the noises he made didn't scare the life out of me. Like a kind of moaning or something like he was getting off trying to swallow that piece of raw steak whole, more and more of it being stuffed

into his mouth with greedy hands. Watching him spit the meat out, panting and gasping for air I rounded the corner of the aisle, actually terrified at this point that he would see me as the sole witness to what he had just done. I waited, having somehow managed to half freak myself out watching that weirdo doing that. He quickly escaped the meat aisle, his back to me as he walked quickly towards the main exit. I know I should have stopped him, it was my job to, but we're trained to keep our distance from offenders that we deem violent or unhinged and

just let the cops deal with it. However, part of me wanted to know why he did something so gross. Is that why his teeth were missing? What kind of person was he that he couldn't be trusted with However, part of me wanted to know why he did something so gross. Is that why his teeth were missing? What kind of person was he that he couldn't be trusted with his own teeth? The cops picked the guy up eventually. Turns out he was a mental patient off his meds, old guy too, so probably lost his teeth through simple lack of care. I mean, that's what they thought the deal was. Whatever was wrong with

this guy, he certainly had previous convictions for retail theft. The cop that we spoke with said it was his fourth offense, that he was likely headed to federal prison for re-offending. I wonder how a guy like that would handle prison. Anyway, I don't know if you guys will find this particular story scary, but maybe it's just gross or sad, a poor old guy losing his mind like that, but either way, it's definitely the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me working for Walmart. In October of 2017, I managed to land myself a part-time job at my local Walmart here in Thornton, Colorado. A fairly large suburb of Denver, Brighton, is many things. Close-knit, homely, but it's hardly the most exciting place in the world. I think that's why Halloween is one of my favorite times of year.

We take the holiday pretty seriously, so the anticipation and build-up to the spookiest night in the calendar is something I really look forward to. The majority of work at Walmart during that time of year involves sorting and arranging displays for all the novelty Halloween products that are stocked during October. It was hard work, sure, but getting to mess around with all kinds of masks, costumes, and ghoulish accessories was actually really fun, even if it did cause our grumpy old supervisor to glare at us down the aisles. Halloween came and went, but I found myself kind of enjoying working at Walmart. I know that sounds crazy, the customers can be awful and the hours are pretty long but I had grown close to my co-workers. There were even one or two that I would go so far as to call friends. So naturally when one of the store managers asked if I wanted to extend my contract into

the new year, I jumped at the chance. It would be one of the biggest mistakes of my life so far. The morning of November 1st, 2017 was a grey one. One of those mornings where the world couldn't be any less inviting. All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep away the day. But still, I dragged myself into the shower, washing away the cobwebs and preparing to face the day. I was due on from 10.30 until 6.30 that evening. I hated the longer weekday shifts, they had a tendency to drag, but the thought of getting a cup of coffee from my co-worker Teresa, who happened to make the best flat white this side of the Rockies, spurred me on to make it work on time. I was right. The day dragged on so

bad I thought I was going to go crazy. The part-time weekend shifts were busy, but at least the activity made the time fly. Spending hours at a time counting endless boxes of merchandise as part of some pointless make-work-stock take is enough to make your brain congeal. By the time 6pm rolled around, I was about ready to give up. With so little time left on the clock, I found myself watching the minutes roll by, wandering around the store and pretending to look busy. I saw my friend Miguel hanging around near the front desk and struck up a casual conversation with him in an effort to kill another few minutes. That's when I saw him. I'd like to think I'm not an overly judgmental person,

but this guy gave me the creeps right away. He was dressed pretty normally, a black leather jacket and reddish shirt, but it was the man's face that drew my eyes away from Miguel and caused a nervous feeling to run through me. He was pale, almost sickly looking. His cheeks were gaunt, his eyes ring by black circles, sunken back into their sockets. It looked like a skull with nothing but a thin layer of flesh to disguise it. Miguel must have noticed the look on my face because he too turned to look. I suppose it was for the best that I reacted that way to seeing him. I think it might have saved both our lives. When I look back on it now, it's like time kind of slowed down for a few minutes. I know that's like a super cliched thing

you only find in movies, but now I think there's kind of some truth in it. I remember every little moment, every little detail of those few seconds. The way his jacket, a few sizes too big for him, looked almost silly as he reached into the inside pocket. The way the polished metal of his handgun seemed to glint in the bright, artificial light of the store. I watched as the man looked around for a second or two, scanning the shop floor for his first victim before he raised the pistol and fired. I was completely and utterly horrified. I would come to understand that there are three common reactions to a sudden rush of fear, the first two being the well-known fight-or-flight responses, but there's also one that no one ever seems to talk about. Total shutdown.

Unfortunately, that's what I experienced as the deafening bang of the first pistol shot echoed around the building and an unsuspecting customer collapsed to the floor. The older man dragged his shopping cart down with him, the contents spilling out as he lay bleeding on the ground. I couldn't move. I was just frozen to the spot. I had never seen anyone shot and only ever heard a gun fired like once or twice. I felt myself trembling. But for the life of me, I couldn't bring myself to flee the horrific scene of violence unfolding before us. Thankfully, Miguel did not have the same reaction. He grabbed me by my arm, so hard it left a bruise,

and dragged me behind a display of kitchen appliances to take cover from the shooter. All I could do was hang on to him and pray that the shots would stop. They didn't. Over and over again, the skull-faced man fired at staff and customers alike. I remember hearing this horrible cracking sound, like right next to us as we crouched behind the heavy appliances. I would later learn that this was the sound of the high-speed pieces of lead breaking the sound barrier as they traveled within a few inches of us. Just the thought makes me feel sick, even today.

Suddenly Miguel was pulling me by the arm again as we rushed towards one of the emergency exits that line the shop floor. Shots were still ringing out as Miguel crashed into the metal bar that opens the door. The pop of the bullets still heard as we spilled out into the freezing Colorado night. Before us were two young children, maybe only about seven or eight years old. They were crying, asking for their dad. Those poor things had no idea what was going on, only that a bad, bad thing was happening and they couldn't find their father. We tried to comfort them for a few moments while the sound of police sirens grew louder and louder until the parking

lot was awash with the blue flashing lights of cop cars and other emergency vehicles. We eventually reunited the kids with their father and he openly wept as he thanked us for finding his children. Miguel was struggling to hold back the tears, but I had completely broken down by that point. Many people had. In the aftermath of the shooting, a 48-year-old man named Scott Ostrom was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Ostrom was handed down three life sentences for the three people he shot and killed, plus another 48 years for the other victims that were lucky enough to have survived his bullets.

During the sentencing, the presiding judge said that the killer had a black and malignant heart fatally bent on spreading fear, misery, and death. It was also brought up that Ostrom's sister said that he had never been the same since trying LSD in the 80s. No other motives were given for his crimes. I quit my job at Walmart and went to therapy for a while after the shootings. I felt a lot of survivors guilt at first, wondering why Ostrom didn't choose me for his first victim, why those other people had to suffer the way they did while people like me got to walk away unscathed.

But I mostly just thank God that Miguel was there to save me. Life is very precious, a fragile thing that can be snuffed out in an instant so I try to live as full a life as I can, if only for the people who innocently shopping that day, unaware that they would never see their loved ones ever again. Last year I lost my dream job. I'm sort of a gearhead. Cars, trucks, bikes, you name it, and I'll drool over the engine. So when the local customs shop I worked for decided to close down, I was absolutely devastated. The boss man explained that business was not coming in fast enough,

and he was moving his operation out to the Florida coast. He said if I ever wanted to move out there, then there would be a job waiting for me. But my girlfriend was pregnant at the time, and I just couldn't afford to pack up and move at such short notice. He was an awesome guy and I was sad to see him leave Georgia, but it wasn't nearly as depressing as the situation I was left in. Literally nowhere else in town was looking for work. Recon is kind of small and there's not much in the way of industry here. When I was a kid there was only about 3,000 people living here, but today there's more like 9,000 calling Reekin home. So, like I said, jobs are seriously hard to come by.

But there was one place that was hiring, and it happened to be the one place that I really didn't want to work. The Reekin Walmart. The interview was a breeze. I'm pretty sure the store manager just wanted to make sure I wasn't either brain dead or criminally insane before he threw the job offer at me. Sales associate. I can take apart a V8 engine and reassemble the thing with my eyes closed, but there I was. Now nothing more than a sales associate. By the time they gave me the navy blue waistcoat thing to wear I was seriously regretting not taking up that job offer in Florida.

Like I said, it was utterly depressing but Christmas was on its way so as you can imagine I had very little choice but to just shut up and power through so I could afford presents. The last thing I wanted to do was look like a bum in front of my pregnant girlfriend. As December rolled around, I started to notice job adverts for a Walmart Santa. You know the kind. An older dude who sits in the little grotto so screaming kids can sit on his lap and present him with a list of demands. Having to work at Walmart sucked, but it could have been worse. A few months down the line, that could have been me applying for Walmart Santa. We built a little grotto out of painted cardboard, scattered fake snow around,

and weaving Christmas lights around the horns of fake reindeer. I've always been a big kid when it comes to Christmas, so for a little while, working at Walmart didn't suck quite so bad. I reminded myself that before long, I'd be setting up Christmas decorations for my girlfriend and a kid. Little thoughts like that helped me get through the day. When the grotto was built and December 1st rolled around, it was time to open it up to public. I was in a kind of good mood, tired from the early morning starts, but full of Christmas spirit. Georgia isn't exactly a winter wonderland, but that's never stopped me from feeling festive. On my way to the staff

locker room that morning, I passed a very grumpy-looking guy who was wandering up and down the aisles. I greeted him with a cheery Merry Christmas, sir. It was pretty much mandatory for staff to do that, but I never had any problem with it. But all he did was scowl at me. He had the kind of face that looked like it hadn't smiled in decades, like it might crack his facial features if he even tried. I just shrugged off his rudeness. I get that some people aren't into Christmas, and I try not to hold it against them.

But you can imagine my surprise when I stopped by the manager's office a short while later only to find that same dude being given the old moth-eaten Santa costume we kept for the yearly Christmas grotto. The same guy who looked like he didn't have a festive bone in his body had been hired for Santa's job. I think I might have laughed if I wasn't so stunned. Walmart management makes some dumb decisions on a daily basis, but this was like a masterpiece of bad hiring. When the sour-faced old dude left the manager's office without a word of thanks, I gave my boss a look of confusion as if to say, this guy? Really? The store manager replied with something about him being willing to do the job for free. Otherwise, they would have hired someone a little better suited for the role. Elwynn's a volunteer. He's doing this out of charity.

Elwynn, no wonder he was in such a terrible mood all the time. Poor guy's parents gave him that dumb name. As you imagine, the guy sucked at his job. He wasn't festive or cheerful. In fact, I'm pretty sure he upset a few kids whose parents soon made complaints to the management. Our manager didn't care though. As long as his costs were down, he really didn't care if the fake Santa made a few bratty kids cry. But that was what really confused me. This Elwynn guy obviously didn't like kids. In fact, he was so bad at dealing with them that I wondered if he even had any of his own. Why would someone want to be a Walmart Santa if they hate the idea of being around kids all day? Especially if the whole thing was for literally no pay.

I mean, he had the job for the entire month too, not just one or two days. Stranger things have happened though, right? But less than a week before Christmas, the Walmart Santa stopped showing up for his shifts. We panicked at first since the other fake Santa we hired wasn't willing to work anymore than he was contracted. In the end, we managed to convince one of the older electrical guys to don the costume and bellow out a few ho-ho-hos. He was actually pretty good too, a dramatic improvement on that Elwynn guy anyway. A few days later, we found out why Elwynn had stopped turning up to work. It seemed like any other normal day as I wandered through the store towards the staff area when I walked inside, something immediately struck me as wrong.

A gaggle of staff members were gathered around one of the couches, all reading something off of someone's phone. I mean, that's not unusual in itself, but usually it's a bunch of people laughing at some viral video or whatever. This time, there was no laughter. Everyone just had this look of horror on their faces. They were reading a news article. The picture was of a face that we had all seen before. It was Elwynn's face. It turns out Elwynn did have kids, but they had gone missing not long before.

When the police questioned Elwynn and his family as to the whereabouts of the children, they told them their missing daughter had gone to live in South Carolina. It didn't add up. This led the police to search the family home for any clues regarding the whereabouts of the missing kids. And that's where they found them. Buried in the family's back garden under just a few feet of dirt. Before their lives ended, each of the children were beaten, abused, and forced to live in a cage in the backyard. The news article went on to describe the unimaginable cruelty that both

children were subjugated to before their deaths. In the aftermath, the store manager was fired, and he was found to have put hundreds of children in danger, all in an effort to save a few dollars around the holidays. It seemed like Elwyn Crocker had used the Santa job as a cover for his crimes. No one could expect someone who volunteered with children to be capable of such horrific acts of sadism. I quit my job at the Recon Walmart not long after, having saved up a little money, enough to find somewhere temporary to live in Florida while I got my job back at the custom shop. It wasn't hard to convince my girlfriend to move out of Georgia after the whole terrible series of events. In fact, she was almost as keen to move as I was. I work the custom shop now, reunited with my old boss. My girlfriend is due

to give birth next month and I absolutely can't wait. I can't wait to raise my future kid, give them all the things they could possibly dream of, and make sure they never suffer the same fate as those poor, tortured Crocker Kids Ever work night shifts? I know some of you have. I've seen a few posts around here about people stuck working during the midnight hours, and they're definitely my favorite. Normal people don't really know what it's like to be wide awake when the rest of the world is sleeping peacefully. It's lonely, sure. I find it difficult to keep up with daywalker friends and I'm pretty sure it costs me one or two girlfriends, but above all, it's weird.

But due to my own dumb mistakes, it's pretty much all the work I can get. Yeah, I got a record. Not many places will take me on, let alone give me any serious responsibility. So when the local Walmart here in Nogales, Arizona offered me a position as a third shift security guard, I pretty much jumped at the chance. The pay is awesome. Well, as awesome as it's going to get for a guy with my kind of past. So I'm sat in the security office one night, trying not to pass out from boredom, having given up on trying to read this gigantic Stephen King book I got for my 30th birthday. I keep telling myself to read more, but it's tough.

I didn't exactly do good in school so I feel like I missed out on so many cool stories. Yeah, I've seen The Shining and all of that, but I get sick of people telling me how much better the book is. It makes me feel dumb for not having read it. Anyway, I'm dying of boredom, so I decide to go on a little foot patrol. Maybe grab a smoke at one of the emergency exits or something. The boss man checks the CCTV occasionally just to make sure we're not sleeping on the job, which some guys actually get fired for doing. So I get up and wandered around the store and clear a view of the cameras before ducking out an exit to light up. Now, Walmart parking lots can get pretty crazy. I've seen full-on fistfights between customers over stuff as small as a parking

space. I've had to chase away couples getting a little too fresh in their cars, although that can be hilarious sometimes, and it only gets weirder at night. Meth heads, drug dealers, people who have met on Craigslist selling each other weird stuff, for some reason they all choose to meet in Walmart parking lots. So as I'm lighting up, a single parked sedan catches my attention. In the deserted lot, it stuck out like a sore thumb. This old battered Ford just sat there all by itself. Oh god, what now I'm thinking, just preparing myself for whatever bout of crazy was about to unfold.

I watch the car for a minute or two, seeing the driver clearly in the front seat. Not like perfectly clearly, it's almost pitch black obviously, but you know when you can see like the outline of a person in the front seat? Yeah, that. Only he's not moving at all, he's just sat perfectly still in the middle of the parking lot. I started making little bets with myself and a game I like to call drugs, nookie, or mental illness. Pretty much every encounter I ever have during a shift can be put into one of those categories. Either they're high, horny, or just insane. Now my first thought here was nookie, the guys waiting for a lady of the night, calling one of those dumb 1-800 numbers or just jerking it to something gross on his phone. Either way, it's nothing I'll need to call the cops for, so I just finish my

smoke and head back inside. An hour or so later, the same deal occurs. My eyes are closing and I'm finding it harder and harder to stay awake, so I make one of those terrible tasting instant coffees and head out for another smoke. Only, when I get to the emergency exit and step out into the night, that same car is there, having not moved an inch. Obviously, I'm getting a little suspicious about it now, but mainly because I had no idea what it was even doing there. I can spot a deal or some shady stuff in a meetup going from like a mile away but they tend to be over and done with kind of fast. They don't hang around in the parking lot,

sat still in their driver's seat. Then it hit me. The exterior cameras. They're all night vision capable with zoom lenses. All I had to do was head back to the office and mess with the settings and I'd pretty much have a sniper's look into the interior of the car. So with the Mission Impossible theme playing in my head, I rush back to the office and start spying on the sedan. Zooming in on the car, the scene lit up by the light-sensitive cameras, I could clearly see this guy's face. Along with a big vintage mustache, the dude has sunglasses on. Sat in his car in the middle of the night with shades on. Hmm, this guy must have been high as a kite. So if it's anything drug related, I'm pretty obliged to get out of the car and wave them away. No one wants the cops called on them when they have a vehicle full of something

illicit or whatever so it's an easy enough task. I wander out to the car, taking it pretty slow. Nine times out of ten as I'm approaching, the lights will turn on and the car just speeds out of the parking lot. Only this one just sits there, the guy not moving at all. I tap on the back window, only gently, and say something stern along the lines of, Hey, time to leave buddy, this ain't a motel. Still, no movement. I turn on my torch and I see why. I didn't take in much detail.

I didn't need to. There was blood everywhere. Things that should have been inside this dude were festering on the car's floor. Little trickles of blood appearing from under his shades where whoever had done this had apparently taken his eyes too. I ran about as far as I could before I vomited hot coffee onto the parking lot surface. I was still retching when I called 911 from the security office. It all seems like a blur now, looking back on it, but what I saw in that car still appears before my eyes sometimes when I close them at night. It's burned into my memory and

I don't think I'll ever get it out. Now, Nogales is a border town, and it doesn't take the cops long to work out that the body was some kind of cartel-related incident. God knows what this poor guy had done, but he must have messed up bad enough to warrant this sort of punishment. These days, I carry a.38 on the job. I've never been interested in firearms, but I feel like I should carry one now, especially when I go out into the parking lot of the Nogales Walmart, just in case I run into the guys who turned that old sedan into something that'll haunt me was in the parking lot of the Walmart in Mount Dora, Florida. It wasn't scary because it was life-threatening or some big unresolved mystery. It's scary because it's true. It's scary because we did get answers regarding the incident that had us running from a dark parking lot on a warm summer's night almost ten years ago, and those were answers that I still swell on sometimes in my darkest of moments.

Back in 2011, I was just 17 years old, a dumb kid who cared more about smoking than getting educated. Life was good in our small, well-off Florida town. Mount Dora is kind of known for its small-town charm, being home to a handful of museums and the many antique stores that sell quaint little trinkets to tourists. But that doesn't exactly make for an exciting nightlife,

and there's not much for me to do as a teenager looking for excitement. So instead of finding something productive to do, me and my friends would just cruise around in the evenings, getting stoned and wasting time talking about the band we would never end up forming. So we're chilling in the Walmart parking lot one night, passing around a J and listening to some Zeppelin

on my buddy's car stereo. The place is pretty much deserted, except for a few parked cars and some raccoons pillaging some nearby garbage cans. We're laughing at the little critters, watching them use their hands to rummage through torn up, open trash bags, when one of the nearby cars catches my eye. It was an 87 Cadillac. That detail was always stuck with me. It was filthy, like seriously nasty, looking like the only washes it's ever gotten were from the heavy Florida rains. What's more, the inside of the Cadillac was filled with trash. Not like a few fast food wrappers on the dashboard and some junk

in the trunk. I mean like pretty much all you could see inside the vehicle was all kinds of garbage. Legit the kind of stuff that belonged in the trash bags that the raccoons were ripping up. I wondered what kind of bum owned that thing. How they'd let all that stuff just build up and build up until their car looked more like a dumpster than a sedan. But I didn't really think any more of it, not until I saw something moving among the garbage. I told my friends, pointed over at the mobile trash can and told them something was moving around inside it. They instantly laughed, telling me I was seeing stuff and that I shouldn't smoke so much if I couldn't handle it.

At the time I just laughed too, thinking that they might have been right. I mean it was late, it was dark out and yeah I was pretty lifted. A little time passed, enough for me to relax again and we're arguing over whether to hit up White Castle or Arby's or something when I see it again. A pile of garbage in the rolling trash can shuffling around again. Only this time I'm 100% sure what I saw. My eyes weren't playing tricks on me and I didn't care if my friends saw it or not. They asked me what I was doing as I slowly opened the car door and got out. I walked quietly across the dark parking lot, slowly approaching the filthy Cadillac to peer inside. It was just a sea of junk in there.

Old soda cans, newspapers, plastic bags. I still remember just how badly that thing smelled too, like old milk and rotten meat. Nothing was stirring now. The whole mess was perfectly still. I reached up and wiped a little of the grime away from the window with the sleeve of my jacket. Yeah, it was gross, but I needed to see inside. There was something hiding in that car, something that was watching us and I needed to know what it was. Nervously, I reached up with a fist and began to lightly tap on the car's grubby window, hoping it would spook whatever it was in there into revealing itself. But still, nothing moved, nothing stirred. The only sound was the tripping

of crickets and the sound of my friend rolling a car window down. Dude, it's probably rats in that thing. Get away from it. Of course it was. Of course it was rats. There I was, stoned out of my mind, freaked out about a dirty old car full of rotten food. What else would be attracted to a mess like that? What else could find its way into a locked car and scuttled around among the trash? Feeling pretty dumb, I turned back to my buddies in the car and started to say something about maybe being a little too out of it, but their faces. I'd never see them look like that, the way they did that night. Their eyes were so big, giant white circles bored into their heads that had their hair standing on the back of their

neck. They were looking behind me, at the dirty old Cadillac. I didn't want to turn, I didn't want to turn to look, but I had to. Just for a second, just to see what it was. A creature with pale, scaly skin pushing its grubby claws against the window smiled back at me as I felt my guts tighten with fear. It blinked, licked its lips, and then cocked its misshapen head in my direction. I ran. I ran to the car with my buddies screaming at me to hurry. I practically dived into the passenger seat as we roared off into the night, tires screaming on the tarmac as we escaped. We were terrified, too freaked out to think about eating. With our highs totally ruined we headed home early to sleep it off and try to forget.

The next morning I was eating breakfast watching the local news when a story came on that almost made me spit out my cereal. On the TV screen was a dirty Cadillac, the same dirty Cadillac that was filled with a pile of garbage and rotten food. The news anchor was talking about what had been found among the junk, something that had been living amongst the trash that had caught my eye just the night before. It was a kid. Three kids, actually. Children left to sleep in that car by their neglectful, addict parents. The scales I thought I saw on the one kid was actually secondary burns from where the parents had spilled hot coffee on the poor little guy.

The news anchor explained that because of the drugs and alcohol found in the vehicle, there was little to no chance that the kids would be returned to their parents. Part of me was kind of glad for that. It got me thinking. We obsess over fictional monsters, things that lurk in the shadows, things that go bump in the night.

But the things that we really should be afraid of aren't the fiends that haunt our imaginations, but the monsters we create in reality through gluttony, sloth, and indifference. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your dread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Dread Experts.

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And that my mom had not spoken to her since she was about 10 years old. To be honest, I didn't even know this aunt existed. One day when my brother and I were about 6 or 7, my parents sat us down. They showed us a picture of our aunt and told us that if she tries to talk to us around the neighborhood, to immediately run to the closest house and called them right away. They said that she is dangerous and to treat her as a stranger. My brother and I were so confused because it was my mom's sister but okay. Fast forward about a year and my family is at my cousin's basketball game. This is the daughter of the aunt in the story. My aunt walked out in the family about 10 years before so there was no reason to think that we would see her. My brother and I begged my mom to let us get something from the snack stand so we went over and stood in line.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. It was my aunt, at least it was the woman in the picture. She said, hey, I'm your aunt. I said, hi, because I did not want to be rude. She said the same thing to my brother, but he didn't respond. She then said, well, this line is so long. How about I take you guys out for ice cream? I didn't know what to say to this. This was my aunt, and I really didn't want to be rude. My brother responded, Uh, no, we have to get back to our mom now. She said something along the lines of,

Your mom said it's okay. You're my niece and nephew. I would never hurt you. Nope, that was it for me I said sorry we gotta go I then felt a tight grip on my wrist and was being dragged with my brother for the door I didn't yell I don't know why I was a kid I had a piercing scream but I just froze I heard let them go those Those are my kids! Someone get them! My mom was running full sprint across the court. I had never seen that kind of look in her eyes. People immediately grabbed her and got my brother and I away from her. Apparently she got charged with attempted kidnapping since my mom did press charges.

We have restraining orders against her now. I'm 23. My cousins took my brother and I to get food so I don't remember much of the police part besides telling them what had happened. I only learned once I got older that the reason my parents sat my brother and I down was because at the time my aunt was blackmailing my parents into paying all of her bills, phone, rent, medical, etc. and sent pictures of our house and my brother and I saying she would take care of us if the money stopped. Her grabbing us at the basketball game was right when my mom and dad approached her ex-husband about the blackmailing and he is a lawyer so they were coming up with some kind of plan. I work as a secretary at my mom's office and a year ago

I picked up a typical call but it wasn't typical at all. mom available i said no i'm sorry can i take a message and she said just tell her i'm a free man now and i know where she is i know where you all are and hung up i told my mom she told me it was okay and that I shouldn't worry but I still worry she will find me or just show up at any given moment. This happened a good few years ago. I was in my early 20s, single and living by myself. Most of my family lived about a 4 hour drive away from me. I was working for a small call center that provided, among other things, phone services for a 24 hour plumbing company, so they needed someone on the line at all times. My shift ran from 8pm to whenever my boss showed up to pick up the line which was usually 6am. I worked in a building that housed several

businesses of the same sort, call center work mostly, though we were the only one that had 24 hour service. Because of budget cuts I was always the only operator on my floor. The only people in the building at night were myself and the security guy who came by to do his rounds twice a night. Because the line had to be on 24-7, I was never allowed to disconnect while I was there. I ran to and from the bathroom, ate meals sitting in front of the computer and every once in a while sneaked a cigarette at the window within sight of the screen. Only the light above my computer was on. Everything else was turned

off when everyone went away around 10pm so I was left in this half darkness beneath a spotlight. I desperately needed that job to support myself so despite the terrible conditions I kept repeating that it wasn't that bad. Things were usually quiet after 10pm. I could use the extra hours on my paycheck and didn't need to get a second job. I did a lot of reading and even considered going back to school because if nothing else the night shift would afford me plenty of time to study. So one night around 2am or so I got a call. I introduced myself as I always did. Hello, you're talking to so and so, my name is Jill, how may I help you? The guy on the other side repeated my name and hung up. Working phone services on the night shift

you get used to a lot of weird stuff so I shrugged it off and went back to my book. Then he called again and asked if he was speaking to Jill. I said yes, repeated the company name and asked how may I help you. He hangs up. The third time around he asks if this is Jill on the phone and I ask to whom I'm speaking. He hangs up again but next time he calls he's breathing hard on the phone and tells me he wants me to talk to him and he's not going to hurt me. I jot down his phone number and I start hanging up whenever his calls pop up, which was the better part of an hour. This went on for months.

When he realized I was hanging up every time I saw that number he began calling from a restricted number, meaning I never knew if it was a legit call and ended up answering. All the time this guy keeps saying he wants me to talk to him and that he's not going to hurt me. The one time I counted I hung up on this guy over 200 times in one night. Every time he would call I'd say the company name and as soon as I'd hear him I'd hang up. I complained to my boss and she did nothing. Instead she laughed the whole thing off because this guy obviously didn't know where I was and he was only a voice on the line and I was perfectly safe.

Sometime into this I started talking to a co-worker and here's where it started getting really creepy. He never called on my days off when someone else would be covering my shift. Indeed at one point I changed shifts with a co-worker to attend a wedding and he didn't call that day. As time went by I was getting pretty spooked by the whole situation and the fact my boss did zero to try and stop this. My co-workers were sympathetic and told me that if my boss did nothing I should file a complaint myself but I'm not sure if I could since this wasn't happening on my personal number. None of them could really walk me home since I was the only operator in night shift. Everyone else was gone by the time my boss arrived and I left

the office. I got a little paranoid because obviously this guy knew my schedule pretty well and even if I changed shifts he would only call if he knew I was on the line. It had to be someone who could see me. I started doing the commute with my cell phone in hand at all times with the emergency number dialed in. Sometimes I did the whole commute on the phone with friends or relatives to keep calm. Since it's illegal to carry pepper spray here, at one point I considered walking around with a box cutter in my purse. That's how afraid I was. One day before my shift started I was at the entrance of the building smoking a cigarette before going up and I see this security guy come by. Same fellow who usually did the night shift. This huge guy. I didn't really know him, never

spoke much to him, only said good evening and goodbye when I went by his desk and whenever he came to my floor to do his rounds. I usually kept to myself and never really made small talk or anything, just greeted him out of politeness and he greeted back. He asked for a light so I gave him my lighter. He told me he'd been fired and was going home and he went on to tell me he always got the impression I was afraid of him since I was never friendly or welcoming, exact words. Then he told me he was never going to hurt me and just walked away. I lost every drop of blood I had in me. I went inside to tell my boss the whole thing and

discovered the guy got fired for harassing women and other floors, going as far as trying to corner someone in one of the elevators. The complaints piled up and he lost his job. Most of the time his shifts matched mine so he would see me come in at 8pm and left before I did. I asked my boss for that phone number again to come forward on this guy and ask the security company if that was his number. She told me she threw it away. When I told her the whole story, she found it cute, exact word. Then she asked me if I was sure it was him, because the voice on the phone is different and maybe you got it wrong, exact words. Quality assurance told us time and again that our every call was recorded, so I demanded recordings. That's when I found out

that, again, because of budget cuts and whatnot, the night shift was never recorded so I had no evidence. Once the guy was fired, the call stopped. I didn't work there for much longer after that. This encounter happened in the summer of 2006 when I was 20 years old. I didn't get my driver's license until January of that year and driving opened up so many doors for me that I took a lot of solo trips to my friends houses in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. I also look young for my age and was often mistaken for a high school student in my early 20s. I was driving alone on I-78 on a random July day on my way to visit my friend in southern PA for a long weekend. Her parents were away and we had the house to ourselves and were planning on drinking and hot tubbing and watching planet earth. Maybe run around some cornfields at night. I was so excited and had a great drive listening to good music and it was a beautiful day for driving. Right after I

crossed the border from New Jersey into Pennsylvania I stopped at one of the first rest stops to get gas and snacks for the last part of my drive. I have tried to figure out which rest stop this was and can't identify it but it was a gas station with a large mini mart. Opposite the gas station was the on-ramp back to I-78 west and parallel to the on-ramp was a dirt road which comes into play later. I was heading into the store when a man in his late 30s early 40s approached me. He was a stocky guy, decently tall, I'm 5'1", had on a plain black tee and jeans with dark brown hair and a mustache goatee.

He had come out of a black pickup truck parked a few spaces away from my car. He had a super intense gaze and immediately creeped me out. He just had a crazy energy about him. I don't really get vibes from people that often, but this was so strange. He stood too close. His gaze was crazy, direct, and focused. His word choice was strange. It immediately set off all my alarms.

He asked if I was from the area, despite my Connecticut license plate, where I was heading and if I knew of anything fun to do because he had plans later and time to kill beforehand. He invited me to go play mini golf or watch a movie with him. I didn't answer any of his questions, declined his invitation to hang out and told him I didn't know the area and walked away towards the store. I was blown away that he asked me to go somewhere with him. It was so random and uncomfortable. As I was walking away he actually screamed out, you're gorgeous and the volume and tone made my hair stand on end. It was so aggressive and inappropriate and he started a family walking out of the store, it was so loud. I didn't turn around but went inside. He came into the store shortly after and was staring at me so I went to use the bathroom and stayed in there for at least 10

minutes texting my friend about this creep. When I came out he wasn't in the store anymore so I took my time buying drinks and snacks, sour bright crawlers and trail mix being my obligatory road trip food and went out to gas up my car. I was relieved his car was gone and started thinking about the rest of my drive and getting excited to see my friend. When I pull up to the road to get back on the highway I hear someone persistently honking his horn and see this creep show on the dirt road parallel to the on-ramp and his trunk honking, shouting and waving at me to drive over to him. He was directly facing the gas station and had been waiting for me to pull up. I immediately freaked out and jumped on the on-ramp back onto I-78. He pulled onto the

highway after me and I called my friend extremely scared. I drove so fast and probably dangerously and looking back I'm lucky that I didn't get into an accident but I didn't know what to do. He didn't follow me for that long and I think after a few exits he pulled off. My friend and I had a backup plan that if I saw this car again she would direct me to a police station the next town over from her house instead of me going directly there and leading some freak to us. I didn't see the car again and went to my friends but the last hours of my drive I was extremely tense and anxious. I remember checking my mirrors regularly for this black pickup truck. It all ended well. I got to my friend's house safely and

we had a nice weekend. The encounter was definitely creepy but over the years I didn't put much thought into it. A few years ago, in 2014, I was talking with another friend who was big into serial killers and mentioned my encounter jokingly suggesting that he was one that I had met and told her my experience. She was fascinated and wanted to google active ones in the Pennsylvania area at the time. The first hit was Adam Leroy Lane and he looked almost exactly like the man I met back in 2006. Obviously it could be my mind filling in the blanks but the basic characteristics, 40s, tall but stocky, brown hair with mustache and goatee, and the time and area all match. In my memory, he was a little bit slimmer than the pictures, and it was 2006, not 2007,

when he was actually convicted of murdering women. Still, it's an odd coincidence, and one I've never forgotten. This story begins when I was in fourth grade. So, I was about nine as I was a bit young for my grade. Because of me being younger than the other kids, I didn't get along with them very well. So, whenever we would go out to recess, I would make sure to bring whatever book I was reading at the time. I had my own special place I liked to sit and read. It was a little corner of the playground where barely anybody went. It was a large patch of clovers and other overgrown plants and had a large bush with

a gap between it and the fence. I used to love to sit there. One day I went over to my normal spot and sat with my back facing the bush. I had been reading for a while when I thought I heard a rustling sound behind me. Sometimes squirrels and chipmunks would hang out in the gap between the bush and the fence so I didn't think much of it. That was until I heard heavy breathing and something tugging on my pigtails. Surprised, I whipped my head around, thinking my hair had gotten caught on a branch or something, but instead, there was a boy. He was sitting hunched in the gap between the fence and the bush, leaning forward between the branches with his face mostly obscured by leaves and his arm outstretched, trying to grab at my hair. I screamed, bolted for the picnic table area where the supervising teachers were.

I was a very shy little thing back then, so I didn't say anything. Instead, for a long time after that, I sat and read by the teachers during recess. About three quarters of the way through the school year, I made a friend who we'll call Matt. Matt was also a bit of an outcast and when we got assigned to be in a reading group together, we became fast friends. He was nice enough, but even my nine-year-old self could tell that there was something off about him. He was way too clingy, barely ever leaving my side and constantly coming up with excuses to touch me. I of course didn't have any other friends then so I ignored it. However one day he told me that he liked me. I had no idea how to react to this and just said nothing. He apparently took my silence as yes because he called my home phone later that night.

My mom handed me the phone saying that a friend was asking to talk to me. Since my parents were watching TV downstairs I decided to go up to my room so I wouldn't bother them. It was Matt. I could barely even say hello before he started saying some seriously weird stuff. He started saying things like, what do you want to name our kids? When we get to high school, let's run away and start a family. I bet you look really cute when you're asleep. Now, this would be creepy for anyone, but I was nine. I had no idea how to handle the situation so I just stayed away from him. He was not happy about this, constantly glaring at me and just being all around super

creepy. A year later I was halfway through fifth grade and had a serious bully problem. That's a story for another day. It got so bad that my dad decided one day to not wait until the next school year and instead switch schools the following Monday. Fifth grade at my new school was great and starting in sixth grade, my parents got me my first phone. Of course, I called up Clara, who became my friend after the Matt incident, and let her know about my new phone. A couple of more months passed and one night night I got a call from an unknown number. Picking up the phone I froze when I heard Matt's voice. I still vividly remember what he said. Hey baby, I miss you so much. Why do you leave me?

Not even a second after he said that I hung hung up, blocked his number and called up Clara, as she was the only person at the old school who had my number. Apparently after school, he had asked to see her phone to call his mom, as he had forgotten his at home. She handed it over to him, as she was a very kind but quite gullible girl. Soon she noticed that he was taking a while and that he added a pen and was writing something on his arm. She yanked her phone away and he panicked, sprinting off. Looking down at her phone she saw that he had opened my contact info. I was freaked out but felt safe as I had blocked his number. That didn't stop him though. He would call me every single week from a different phone leaving at least 10 messages each time.

Every time I would block one number he'd somehow call from another one. When I got a new phone the calls stopped and I forgot about it until freshman year. At my high school there were a couple of kids from my old school and I suddenly remembered Matt. I asked one of the boys, Harry, if he knew what happened to Matt. According to Harry, he got expelled. Teachers had caught him smelling and touching girls' hair, groping female students and trying to sneak into the girls' locker room, and writing extremely explicit stuff about himself and other girls in the grade as well as a few other things that I can't remember.

The realization hit me like a semi-truck, smelling and touching girls hair, the boy hiding in the bush when I was just in fourth grade. So I'm at a club with my then best friend. Near the end of the night, we're approached by a random guy who was alone. He has a heavy accent and tells us he just moved here from Russia. He tells us his name is Jesse. Doesn't sound like a very Russian name and I'm immediately on guard. This friend of mine has a tendency to pick up the worst guys. I'm talking like in a room full of people she will somehow manage to pick out the single craziest guy in there and start dating him. And being as close as we were, I always managed to

get sucked into it, and this night is no exception. I pull her away from Jesse, but not before he manages to get my friend's phone number. Later, as we are in her car ready to drive home, she gets a call from Jesse. She answers and his voice rings out on her car speaker. Can you give me a ride home? No, I immediately mouth from the passenger side. She's silent. I just live around the corner from the club. He persuades. She reluctantly agrees and hangs up.

I asked her why he can't take an Uber or walk if he's that close. But it's my friend's car and she wants to be nice and give him a ride so we pull back in front of the club and he hops in during this short car ride he manages to get out a sob story about how he moved here to start over with his one-year-old son his wife back in Russia died in childbirth my friend is eating this up I hate him almost immediately the next day he's texting and calling my friend asking her out she at least has the sense not to want to go out with him alone asking me to come along with the guy I was dating at the time so we go to the beach and drink a few beers Jesse takes his and wanders off alone. My guy joins him and I see them chatting for a while. I distinctly remember him describing Jesse later that night. I like the guy,

he just seems a little lonely. I'm wondering why no one can see the red flags but me. Then again, I always did have a sense for these things. The night goes relatively smoothly as the weeks go by. The four of us hang out a couple more times. Jesse keeps trying to invite himself over to my friend's place. I beg my friend to, if nothing else, keep her address private. Do not let him know where you live. Thankfully, she thinks this is a smart policy. He seems oddly fixated on going specifically to her home.

As the weeks go by, he shows us pictures of his son and he even shows us a picture of his son's birth certificate, which seems a bit overcompensating. But I never meet this supposed son and have no idea where he is during all of these outings Jesse was going on with us. I asked him plenty of personal questions trying to figure him out and I think he knows I'm on to him but soon enough my friend starts dating someone else who is an entire other story in itself and Jesse wants to be the only guy in her life. He becomes possessive and makes her choose, him or the other guy. Unfortunately for Jesse, she chooses the other guy. He is furious. The next day, Jesse is blowing up her phone. Texts, calls, voicemails. When we

finally listen to them, they are increasingly violent, full of cursing. The last voicemail reveals everything. It was all a lie. There is no son or wife. He calls us idiots. The last word he speaks, say that she'd regret it, and he will make her explode. I shudder to think of it now. So she blocks him, and life goes on. But due to the next boyfriend being even crazier than this one I eventually need to take a break from this girl. We go our separate ways and yet

the nagging feeling about Jessie never goes away. Jessie often pops into my head and I get the worst eerie feeling. A while down the road I end up catching up with her over text. Even after our falling out she can hardly wait a few texts into reconnecting to ask me if I remember Jesse. My blood instantly turns cold. I say yes. She sends me the link to a news article. It's about a Russian man arrested for a crime while trying to flee the country. He has a very Russian name that I've never heard before. As I read the details of the crime I'm horrified. It turns out he murdered his ex-girlfriend by shooting her five times. I look at the photo of the suspect.

It's Jesse. He got life in prison after making a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. But I'm hopeful that we never see Jesse ever again. I'm a girl and I was 15 when I was in the 11th grade, 5th form, because I'd skipped a year in primary school, so I was a year younger than most of the other kids in the class. When I was in that grade I was not exactly the most healthy or athletic person, but I genuinely enjoyed PE class and I liked to run around in the gym and play games and such. So when I had to pick courses for semester 1 of grade 11, I made sure to pick PE just like I had done for grades 9 and 10. I was a little shocked when I got to the first day of PE and found out that our old PE teacher had gone back to Canada because his work term here was over. He had been with my school for four years so it was understandable once someone told me that he hadn't gotten fired. We meet our new PE teacher.

He looks to be around 30 something with light skin, blue eyes and blonde hair that was shaved on the sides and styled but short on top. A lot of the girls immediately liked him and said he was handsome but I didn't see it because I wasn't interested in boys or men. This PE teacher liked to take us on walks and runs so we would leave school at lunchtime in a bus and come back as school was ending since PE was last period. One time we went to a place that was known for its howler monkeys. It was a paved path through a forest and it went up and around a hill. We started walking, PE teacher in the back. When we reached as far as we could go in the time that we had, we turned around and started going back down the trail. I was slow and not very fit so I was in the back with my teacher.

The whole way down we were talking about what we knew about the howler monkeys and animals in general i was an animal nerd growing up so i had a bunch of things to talk about i was so happy to get to talk to an adult and have them take me seriously i know it's kind of dumb but i am the oldest grandchild to a very traditional chinese grandfather and i'm a girl not a son like he wanted. He pushed me hard to get good grades and never really wanted to talk to me and my parents were always working so I just wanted a grown-up to actually listen to what I had to say. On the bus ride back I sat in the front of the bus so we could continue talking. I only got more attached to him when he let me talk his

ear off about whatever I was obsessed with at the time, which was usually some comic book, TV show, or movie. I think at the time it was either Transformers or Pokemon, but whatever it was, he let me actually talk about it. I didn't see anything wrong with that at the time. I was always in the back of the group during our walks, and so was he. I figured we might as well chat. He liked to touch my hair sometimes but I was used to that because my hair was so long it was past my butt. After a few days of just walking and going places to do jogs we played field hockey. We did it with two teams and our teacher playing as just someone who would pick teams as he played,

so he was kind of like a third team all on his own. He would help the losing team score points and I don't think it was a coincidence that the losing team was mine, seeing how non-athletic I am. It was during this game that the other girls started to see something wrong with the way the teacher played. He would pat girls on their butts with his hockey stick in order to get them to jump or get startled, leaving the ball open for him to steal. The girls later were complaining that what he was doing was gross and wrong, but I said that I didn't see anything wrong with it. It took me some time to realize that he really shouldn't be doing that, the realization coming when he started to use his

hand to pinch the girl's butts instead of tapping them with a hockey stick. Next thing I knew, the dude was fired. He didn't quit. He was fired. One of the girls must have told the principal or something, but I know that it wasn't me. I was actually so upset when he wasn't there anymore. And looking back on that and knowing that I felt that way makes me feel disgusting. I started taking extracurricular drama classes when I was 12. We had a small class of about 6 or so. The eldest boy in the class was about 14. I'll call him X.

I never felt comfortable around X. He was much larger than me. Think of a very large boy in a leather jacket, which he always reminded us was real leather. And he was always doing a fake Russian accent and pretending to choke people in our skits. Thus I didn't go out of my way to speak with him. He took a particular interest with me and would try to speak with me about everything that he had done since last time he saw me. I didn't like being around him. He was off-putting for some reason. I would complain to my mother all the time about how I found him creepy and she found it amusing As the years went by and our class got larger he would still try and talk to me quite a bit every lesson However things only got worse

It started when I noticed that he would follow me around the room We did these exercises where we would do different styles of walking Such as we would run like our baby buggy had started rolling down the hill. Once I noticed he was always behind me I would start to do crazy random patterns to try and lose him. I never did. I thought this was odd but I found it a bit funny. I was only 13 at this point. I again would complain to my mother and she suggested that he had a crush on me. I soon noticed that he would try and sit and stand as close as possible to me.

If he was already sitting down and I chose to sit somewhere else, he would stand up and move to where I was. I was starting to get really unsettled around him by this point but I thought he would stop eventually. He only ever did small things like this and I didn't think anything was seriously wrong. Then we got to the start of last year. By this point I had a boyfriend though I hadn't publicly said this to my drama group because why would I have? I was 16 and X was 18. My mother had started to drop me off half an hour early at drama because she had to get ready for work. I was fine with it as I had time to do some reading on my own. That was before X had realized that I was coming early on my own. X started to arrive even before I did. My mom's car would drive

up and I would see him patrolling. I'm serious when I say this. He would walk up and down the street watching for my car to arrive. When he saw me, he would then walk up to the door to my drama class and hold it open, waiting for me. It filled me with dread to see this, but my mother brushed off my complaints and said he was just being nice. I would have to wait alone with X for at least another 15 minutes every week We would sit on a bench and I made sure I sat with the wall on one side of me and my bag on the other so he couldn't touch me By this point I had grown quite afraid of him He had a tendency to get angry and had recently yelled at a group of students for not thanking him when he held the door open for them Then one day he attempted to ask me out.

He was all stuttery and was clearly trying to ask me something and I knew immediately what he was trying to do. I begged for someone to arrive and funnily enough my boyfriend arrived and X was interrupted. I wasn't out of the woods yet though. Due to drama exams we started to have two classes a week. I was fine with the second class as my mother did not have to work but I was still stuck seeing him. I didn't tell anyone that I thought X was trying to ask me out as I had no proof that he was and I thought people would think I was silly. The following drama lesson he did ask me out and I tried to gently reject him. I was slightly relieved because he just went silent before another classmate arrived. This just made things worse.

He started to come really close to me in class and would shove himself in between anyone I was sitting next to. When I would talk to a friend he would stand directly behind watching me, waiting for an opportunity to speak to me. I was utterly terrified. The pinnacle of this was the day of our drama exam. His exam was two hours before mine, yet he was there when I arrived for mine. Once mine was over and I went to leave, he followed right behind me. I sprinted down the road to the train station to get home and he was right behind me. I sprinted down the road to the train station to get home and he was right behind me. I don't know how long he followed me for but I hid in the girl's

bathroom at the station for about a half hour. I worked up the courage to tell my drama teacher who subsequently called his horrified mother. His mother knew what was happening and was just about to call my drama teacher. X had told her that we were all going out for lunch when the exams were over, yet another person's mom had told her we weren't. Thus, she parked her car near the exam and waited to see what was going on. She saw me, looking hysterical, running down the road. X had already told her of my rejection. I don't know when she confronted X or what she said or even how long X was following me before his mother stopped him. Our next drama class was three days after the exam and two days after I told my drama teacher. My teacher arranged

an intervention between me, X and his mother. I was pulled out of drama to talk to them. His mother apologized to me and thanked me for not calling the police, as he was an adult and could have been charged. I don't recall much of the conversation as I was in such a state at the time, but I do remember X calling me the most stunningly beautiful girl that he had ever met, and that I was wonderful. He apparently thought that he could get me to break up with my boyfriend before the end of the term. The one sentence that has stuck with me was his mom telling me that he would apologize to my parents at the parents' evening, the last night of term where we would show off our skills to the parents which happened to be the following week, for the grievous harm he imposed upon my family.

He and his mom left. I stayed as far away from him at the parents' evening as possible. He apologized to my parents, but I did not stay to hear that, and I have not seen him since. 17 or so years ago, I worked IT for the large local hospital in my city. We also provided IT services to seven other smaller hospitals in towns across the whole of our county and the neighboring county. My job was to build, install, and fix computers and provide support, in person and via phone and email, to our 6,000 users. It was an incredibly stressful job, made even worse because I was the only person in the IT staff who lived in the city where the main hospital was located, so I was often on call after business hours too. When I began here, I was straight out of university and very, very young, as I had graduated high school much younger than most kids do. I was also very shy and rather anxious. While I was unquestionably geeky and awkward,

I'm autistic, high-functioning autism, so my social awareness and skills are rather poor and I find social contact of any sort intensely uncomfortable. Remember this as it has bearing on what happened. I was still young and reasonably cute. I would never have been called beautiful as I was plain and a little bit overweight but I was cute. I dress in loose baggy masculine clothing and do not wear makeup at all despite being female as I have sensory problems that make fitted clothing and the oily feel and scent of cosmetics very hard to tolerate. Not exactly a runway model. I was in my very early 20s when this happened but my shyness and immature social skills made me seem more like a young teen than an adult. I'm also asexual, someone who does not experience sexual attraction or sexual needs

so I choose not to date. The hospital where I worked was going through some repairs and upgrades and one of these being the replacement of the antiquated HVAC system in the main building on the hospital campus. They brought in a the main building on the hospital campus. They brought in a major company to assess the hospital's needs, choose an appropriate system, and install it. This meant that one of the representatives from that company would be present at the hospital daily. He was given an office beside that, belonging to the head of the hospital maintenance, and I was directed to get him a computer and set him up on the network. When I got to this office and began installing the computer things started getting weird. This was the first time I had even met the man, who I will call Andrew here for the sake

of my own safety and privacy. This guy was at least 20 years older than I was, rather reedy looking due to being very tall and quite thin and very average in appearance. You're a typical forgettable middle-aged man but he would not take his eyes off of me. Being autistic I am naturally very uncomfortable with eye contact especially the prolonged sort and this man was just openly staring at me as I worked. He introduced himself as Andrew X and began asking me innocent work-related questions but these soon morphed into very personal inquiries that had nothing to do with work like asking where I lived, whether I had a boyfriend, that sort of thing.

I told him that I lived in the same city as the hospital but not exactly where as I actually lived right across the road from the hospital and didn't want him knowing that. I lied and told him that I had a long-term boyfriend too. Any question that veered in that direction of dating or romance got a curt, uninviting, bald-faced lie as an answer. I was getting very uncomfortable at this point but I didn't react as I would. Nowadays I would tell a guy asking that sort of question that it was none of their business and inform him that he was being inappropriate and I wanted it to stop or I would complain to HR. Back then I was very uncertain, petrified of confrontation and afraid to make any sort of complaint about anything so I just kept working.

I ended up having to sit down at his desk to install the correct software accesses, and while I was seated, he walked up behind me. I thought, he's just watching what I'm doing to access the programs he needs. Nope. He put his hands on my shoulders and began to massage them. I froze, stiffening up. You're stiff as a board, he said as he kept kneading my shoulders, all full of knots. Yeah, well, if I hadn't already been tense and bothered by his intrusive questions,

it most certainly was after he began touching me. It is very common for autistic people to deeply dislike being touched. I tried to squirm out of his grasp, afraid to tell him to stop directly as we were in a rather secluded, untraveled part of the hospital's basement and I was afraid to make a scene and anger him. I hurried through getting everything done, told him to call our help desk if he needed any other help, and practically ran out of his office. I should have told HR right there and then, but I didn't. It was creepy, yeah, but I didn't think HR would be any help. It was so borderline, I thought, just treading the edge of inappropriate. I did tell my boss that Andrew made me uncomfortable but my boss forgot about it nearly immediately. Fast forward a couple of weeks, I was working in the medical imaging

department installing some terminals in the CT scan suite. I was visible from the hallway. Andrew passed, walking with two men from building maintenance. As soon as he saw me, he began loudly telling his companions that I was cute, pretty, sexy, smart. Laying it on thick, he walked past again and again, loudly praising me and saying he wanted to date me every time he went by. The two men he was with knew me a little and I could tell that they were bothered and embarrassed by this guy's inappropriate behavior. Finally I finished up and ran back to the safety of my own department. Another week passed and I was heading home late. I was using the underground tunnel between the main building and a smaller one used for solely

administrative offices. It's a long tunnel, passing below a busy road and I often took this route going home as the smaller building was very close to my apartment complex. I heard someone call my name and turned to find Andrew hurrying to catch up to me. It was after hours and the corridor was otherwise totally empty. I did not want him finding out that I lived right beside the hospital. I turned and ran, hearing him call my name over and over again. Being younger, I was faster and I managed to find a good hiding spot inside the administrative building without him knowing where I had gone. I had hidden myself in the network hub closet behind the tall rack of networking equipment

I had locked the door behind me thankfully as I heard him walk up that hallway trying the doorknobs of locked offices calling my name as he proceeded he jiggled the doorknob of the door of the hub closet as he went by I remained there silent and, long after I heard his last yell. After I was sure he had gone, I snuck out and raced home. Things calmed down for a bit after that. A few months went by without me having any contact with him, though I still saw him around the halls of the hospital more often than I thought I should. I vaguely wondered if he was trying to follow me,

but there was nothing conclusive enough to prove it one way or the other. Then came the scariest part. I was working in a part of the hospital that had been patients rooms but was being remade into offices. I had to pull network drops into these offices to allow computers to access the network. I lost track of time while I worked and the other people working there with me, the painters and the men setting up the new desks, went home without me noticing. Eventually I was completely alone. When I happened to glance at my watch it was almost 6.30 in the evening. I usually left at 5.30, packed up my tools and left the room where I had been working. I stepped out into the long hallway, tired and thinking about what I would make for supper. I hadn't gone very far

when I heard footsteps approaching and looked up. There was Andrew, hurriedly walking towards me. I hoped that if I switched to the other side of the hallway he'd rush on past as he did seem to be hurrying. No such luck. He veered over to me, grabbed me hard by the biceps and forced me up against a wall. He then proceeded to pin me there with his whole body while he groped my breasts hard, easily pushing away my hands as I punched and slapped, trying to get him off of me. For a thin man he was surprisingly strong. He leaned down so that his face was close to mine and I thought in horror

oh god no he's going to kiss me. So I twisted my neck and turned my face as far from his fetid breath as was possible. Instead he growled into my ear. normal girls like it when guys want them normal girls let guys date them all the while i was yelling no no no finally my brain got itself out of frozen mode and i became angry i shoved him hard and once i had enough space to make the move, I kneed him hard in the groin. He doubled over, wheezing and moaning and I ran and locked myself into one of the rooms I had been working in. The doors were solid hardwood and the locks were strong and I knew I would be safe despite him starting to pound and kick the door. Only one problem, I had no way to call for help. I didn't carry the on-call phone during the day, didn't own my own mobile phone and back then mobile phones were not allowed

into hospitals anyway and none of the rooms that were being renovated into offices had telephones installed yet. I was trapped and my only way to call for help would be opening the window and yelling out. Meanwhile, Andrew continued pounding and kicking the door, screaming insults and entreaties. Five minutes passed, then ten, and he was still beating and battering the door, slamming hard against it with full weight. I began to fear that I might be trapped there for all night, with him on the other side of the door trying to break in. I don't know what finally made him give up. Maybe he heard someone approaching or something. Suddenly the yelling and banging at the door stopped completely and I was left in breathless silence. I remained there,

listening at the door, trying to detect the telltale rustle of clothing or squeak of a shoe that would tell me that he was still there waiting for me to open the door. Nothing, just sweet, lovely, safe silence. I slowly undid the lock, then inched the door open and peered out. No one. He was gone. I knew he might be hiding out of my view in another office but I had to do something. I couldn't just hole up in an office for the next 14 or so hours. Knowing it was a risk I bolted for the stairwell and raced down to my department. I felt safe there as my workspace was in the code access controlled server room and my only co-worker and I knew the combination needed to get in.

Only one person was still in the department, the woman who handled the help desk calls. I began to cry the second I saw her and she frantically asked what was wrong. She held my hands as I told her what had just happened and she was the one who convinced me to report Andrew to HR I knew that HR would be empty at that hour so I sent an email rather than calling then I went home and became a little ball of tears worry anxiety and horrified nausea I called in sick the next day the HR staff called me at home that afternoon and reiterated all I had already told them in my email. How he had been kind of inappropriate from day one and how things

had escalated so horribly. The HR director asked me to come in and write out a formal complaint form, which I did. Because Andrew didn't work directly for the hospital itself, it was difficult for HR to handle this, I guess. They did contact the company he worked for, and he was not fired or even transferred to some other client site. He was given a tiny slap on the wrist and told to never come near me or attempt to communicate with me in any way. I still had to see this guy at work nearly every day, and I felt very unsafe when my tasks took me away from my busy areas. This added to the stress of the job and I began to suffer from stress-related medical problems like migraines, depression, and anxiety. I felt very unsupported

and unprotected by HR too. About 18 months after that event, I quit that job. I am 19 years old, 18 at the time. I work at a small amusement park arcade in a semi-rural area which generally will have a good amount of people. This happened during our summer season so we were open until 9pm but we generally only have at most 10 families around 6.30-7. I mostly work outside as a ride attendant so I get a lot of customer interaction from people all the time and don't usually think much of it. I had come into work at around 3pm and my day was going normally. At around 3.30 I was running one of the roller coasters which has a big box for the operator to run the ride from. These two kids show up. One looked about 8 years old and the other was about 15 or so. They seemed very sweet and very funny so I was

just enthusiastically telling them the rules and just being as kind as I possibly could so they could enjoy themselves. As soon as the ride would finish they run from the exit right back into line to go again which isn't unusual because I get the kids that do that all the time. Sometimes I'll even have kids who will do it over and over again for an hour or more. Soon enough they stopped riding and waved me off as they ran to some other rides to have fun. At some point afterwards one of my co-workers came up to switch positions with me and sent me off to the Tilt-A-Whirl, another ride we have. As I'm walking down I see from a distance a man in a black shirt standing at our gem mining station. It's just a smallish water tower that constantly

releases water so kids can sift through sand and get cool rocks and such. He was just holding his hand in the water so I was going to ignore him as I made my way to the ride. As I'm getting closer he looks me up and down and asks for my name. I couldn't lie about it obviously since I had a name tag on so I just told him. He then proceeds to say, do you think I can see you later tonight? To which I respond no. I walked away to the ride I was operating and told a co-worker about what happened. We laughed it off as if it were nothing and I sent him on his way to the ride he had to run. Not even five minutes later the guy shows up to my ride with the two kids who I let on the roller coaster I was previously running. I'm of course not looking forward to letting him on but

I toughed it out since the kids were just trying to enjoy themselves. They walked up to the entrance of the ride and I asked the man if he could hold the fence door open as I scanned his wristband. The fence door opens inward and the scanner is on the opposite side. So I asked customers to hold it open so I don't block them as they try to get to the ride. He responds with, of course, I'll do anything for you, whatever you want. As I scanned their wristbands the scanners showed that they had run out of credits so I made sure to tell them. The younger kid with him looked upset so I told them that they could get on the ride this one time and that they could just go talk to the front counter after. I put them on and explained the rules of the ride and ran it as usual.

The entire time that the ride was running I noticed the man was staring at me. He never let his eyes off of me so I tried my hardest to avoid his gaze. I tried not to seem alarmed because his kids were in other carts joking around and making funny faces and gestures at me trying to make me laugh so I just pretended I didn't notice the man. Once the ride finished the youngest kid stood up and said he wanted to go again. I felt bad for him and since there wasn't any people in line I told him he could go on again. The older kid felt dizzy so he just got off the ride while the man and younger child stayed on.

I ran it again and noticed the man was still not letting his gaze off of me. Toward the end of the ride I saw he was lifting up his lap bar so I told him to leave it down. It acts as a second brake to slow down individual carts. Later once the ride came to a stop I looked over at him to tell him about the front counter only to notice that he had put his hand in his pants to make his crotch more noticeable. I was highly disturbed of course because I was literally not trying to be forced to look at some dude's excited face. I quickly made sure they left and just avoided looking at the man the entire time. Later, once I had no more customers, I made sure to go to my supervisor at the time.

I explained to her what happened but she didn't know what the guy looked like, just what his older son looked like. As I was telling her, she saw the older son in the parking lot leaving so we assumed that they were gone for good at that point and we sort of went back to normal working. I was still on edge because I was super uncomfortable but I just talked to my co-workers to pass the time. At around 6 or so, my supervisor asked me to take cardboard down to the dumpster. I went down alone so there weren't many people nearby. The dumpster is sort of close to some rides so you could see what was going on from other points of the park.

As I'm throwing away cardboard I noticed a figure walking down toward the dumpsters and see that it's the same guy from earlier. He had come back to the park again. I start to freak out because I didn't have a walkie-talkie on me and there wasn't anyone nearby to do anything. He kept walking closer and closer, eyeballing me every so often as I internally start panicking and get increasingly nervous. I thought in that moment that I was going to be kidnapped and I didn't even know what to do Thankfully my supervisor saw him from a distance and started speed walking in my direction She walked right past him before he could get to me and he did a double take and just stood there as if he wasn't walking toward me She walked me back up and told me that she didn't know if that was the guy but didn't want to leave me there alone. She switched me to another ride and said she'd make sure he

didn't follow me around. She had told some other co-workers about what happened and a co-worker from before made sure to stay near me because the guy kept lingering at some areas looking at me and trying to be near me when he thought my guard was down. Every time my co-workers thought he was getting too close they'd stand near me to make sure he left me alone. At some point his youngest kid came to the ride I was operating and he stayed on until closing time came about so the guy was nearby for a lot of the time. Toward closing I was offered a ride home from a co-worker because he didn't want me to be alone walking to the parking lot. As we go outside, we sit on the stairs with some

other co-workers and notice this car that was still in the parking lot, even though at that point we had been closed for about 45 minutes. The guy was still there, with his family and everything, just lingering. There were no other cars in the customer parking except for them so I assumed that this dude had to have some of his own family involved because he was just waiting there. I can't see any other reason he'd be there. It felt too coincidental that his family so happened to stay later than they had to. I kept nervously looking over and looking to see what he was doing and he was just staring in a direction as he just sat there while his family was doing some other

stuff. Thankfully at some point they had left but I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at the thought of if I was just completely alone when I left. I'm so glad I have some responsible and caring co-workers because if not I have no idea what would have happened. I've had my Instagram for about five years. I post pretty simple photos, ones of me and I'm a and an artist, so a good amount of pictures that I take as well. I don't have a large following on Instagram, so considering this started about four years ago, I probably had about 2,000 followers, and most of them were friends, family, or friends of friends. One day I posted a screenshot on my private Instagram of someone random viewing my story. I'm not sure what the context was, but it doesn't really matter. Soon after, a friend of mine pointed out that one

of the Instagram accounts that was viewing my story had a profile picture that was a photo of my friend, so I immediately went to their account. When I went on their account, I noticed that all the pictures were once screenshotted from my account and I immediately started freaking out. They went by a kind of Russianized version of my name and had around a thousand followers. I was totally baffled. This account didn't last that long and was receiving probably more activity than my own account was. I was confused but I also knew that that was what happened when you have a public Instagram and some catfish isn't going to ruin my life so I reported the account and moved on.

Soon after, I started getting messages from random Instagram accounts that all seemed to be coming from Russia. They would send me messages and screenshots of different accounts. They also seemed to be Russian, of people pretending to be me. I started to panic more as I knew that not only was it not just one person, but that many people knew about it and genuinely thought that I was a completely different person than I was. I kept reporting these accounts and they would mysteriously delete and then show up under new names. But at this point my Instagram account was blocked by pretty much all of my catfish accounts. I logged into my friend's Instagram and noticed tagged

photos of this catfish of me. Drawings. Many drawings. People drawing me, who they totally thought was some random Russian girl. There was a Twitter account, a YouTube account, a VK, a Russian-based social media account, a Facebook account, all under this fake name and using photos of me. I finally got a lot of the accounts deleted and felt relieved. Then, probably about six months later, I got another message on Instagram from some other random Russian account sending me to yet another fake profile pretending to be me. The first thing that stuck out to me was the fact that they had a photo of my mom and I from when I was a baby. A photo that was only available on my mom's Facebook which is not public. I panicked, reported the account and told all my friends to do the same.

Then I got curious and started wondering who these people were that were finding and sending these accounts. I went deep back into my Instagram DMs and found that those accounts were now also catfishes of me. I don't know what part of me thought that it would be a good idea to message them but I did. I ended up having a very odd conversation with them where they told me that they used photos of me because I look like them and they were self-conscious. They even said that they show their family photos of me and pretend it's them. One day I tried to log into my Instagram and it said that someone in Russia had made numerous attempts to change my password. It was insane. Basically, I'll save the

time and effort and say that this went on for another three years, happening randomly about every six months. Finally, there was one account made using my own name. I was so furious and had completely given up. A few of my friends messaged them and told them to delete their account. They DM'd me and apologized and broke in English and then decided that they were going to turn the account into a fan page. Again, weird. I even got to a point where I was considering calling up the producers of Catfish or something, literally anything. The fan page was running for probably 3 months but it seems to me that they have deleted it.

I still got weird messages from Russian accounts that seem too similar to the others but I don't feel as freaked out by it. This whole situation sucks because I was never directly threatened or put in a situation in which I felt like my life was in serious danger so I couldn't go to the police but there were definitely times when I felt like I was being watched too closely for someone who was not famous or anything near it. Not really sure how to end this because it probably never will end but I have a Russian catfish stalker. I used to live in a 55 plus retirement building, pretty much the last place people go to live before they die. Although it's a 55 plus, the average age of the residents was over 70. To begin, I want to mention that I have had paranormal, or just plain not normal, experiences

since I was a small child. I moved into the apartment building back in 2010 with my dog, Precious. I moved out in 2016. I live in New England and these buildings used to be old mill buildings. Mine was from the 1800s and was a smaller building with about 28 apartments. There was a basement level with a laundry room and other apartments, the first floor, second floor, and third floor. I lived on the second floor so I was high up. I lived in an N unit which was nice. I had two adjoining neighbors. One shared a living room wall and one shared the perpendicular kitchen and bathroom wall. My living room wall that was shared with a very nice man was made of

brick so there were no privacy concerns. The lady on the other side was just simply never home. That was very nice. The original lady downstairs below me was very elderly. Her adult sons would come over and check on her and take care of her. One day I was using my blender making a smoothie when there was a very loud bang on the floor. So hard that I could feel it right under my foot. It was like someone banged a broom stick very hard on the ceiling downstairs. I was taken aback. Was the blender making that much noise? The bang was directly under my feet. This became relevant later. One day a few months after that around 5.30am I hear a loud bang and a rumble that woke me up. I knew immediately that this elderly lady had fallen so I called the police. It took them about

10 minutes to get into the apartment and sure enough she was on the floor next to her bed. Two days later I ran into her sons in the hallway and learned that the lady had a stroke and died that day. I also found out that she had been restricted to a wheelchair and was very frail. I mentioned the smoothie incident and apologized for making so much noise, assuming that one of her sons was banging on the ceiling. They had no idea what I was talking about. It definitely wasn't the lady, so I don't know who was banging on the ceiling. The next lady who moved in downstairs also had a dog, so I saw her in passing outside and made small talk with her, which actually turned out to be us talking to each other's dogs instead of each other. She was nice enough. Then there was the upstairs neighbor. Sigh. The floors creaked

in the apartment very much so I had to get used to that. But for the first two years it was always just your average occasional walking around. Completely easy to get used to and ignore. It took a long time for me to meet the lady upstairs, Mary. Maybe about six months after I moved in I was standing outside by the front door with Precious and Mary comes walking out of the door. Immediately I knew it was her because I didn't recognize her as someone I had met already as I had pretty much met everyone just from being out and about walking precious. She was slightly hunched and was maybe 85 pounds soaking wet, thin. She had wiry curly hair and was very wrinkled. So I smiled and introduced myself and we chatted a little. I asked her how long she had been living there. 20 years she said. I'm doing the math in my

head as this is a 55 plus building. This was a little bit shocking to me, her being there that long living by herself but hey she's an old maid, so am I. So over the next few years everything was really nice although I did notice that my dishes were going missing. But I just kind of explained it away as me being mistaken. I also started noticing that a few times for several weeks at a time, every time I went to the bathroom, Mary was in the bathroom upstairs walking around, creak, creak, creak, then flush. I totally thought this coincidence was hilarious. It would last for a few weeks, then stop for months. The end of 2013 was a very dark time,

however. In November, during Thanksgiving, Precious got really sick and started coughing and couldn't breathe and by the next week, December 4th, she passed away from heart and lung cancer that I had no clue she had. She was 8 years old. She was a Bichon Frise and should have lived until at least 12 to 14. I was devastated. I spiraled down into the deepest depression one could ever get into. I just wanted to die and go with her. My mind was gone. I didn't cry. I wailed for hours. I pulled up my son's old teddy bears and hugged, slept with, and cried on them. My heart ached. My stomach hurt. The vibes in my apartment changed. My son would tell me that it just felt different in there. Weird. weird, uncomfortable. The energy I was

giving off permeated the entire place, despair, darkness, pain. During my crying fits while on my bed, I could hear the familiar creak, creak upstairs right above me. Then it would go quiet then creak then nothing i felt so uneasy wondering if this woman was listening to me cry the separation between upstairs and downstairs was just the subfloor upstairs and a drop ceiling downstairs no insulation no cement nothing i could hear everything between floors around december 21st I found my new little girl. Her name is Buffy. She was 8 weeks old and very tiny. It was still very hard for me to get through the day and I still cried very much but the needs of Buffy helped to keep me moving. In 2014 when Buffy was around 3 months old or so I would leave her in the kitchen with gates up

whenever I left the apartment. She would have access to the bathroom where her pee pad was. My bedroom was near the kitchen so I made it a point to close the bedroom door every single time I left the apartment. This was as important to me as making sure the stove was off or the iron was off. I never forgot to close that door. She was still at the age where she got into things and my room just wasn't puppy proof enough. At times I would come home and the bedroom door would be wide open. I'm talking all the way open to where the door was against the wall. Even if I accidentally left the door open I never opened the door wide and this gave me chills. At first I convinced myself that I must have left it open but I knew deep down that I didn't. But that was the only thing that made sense because

no way someone would break in. There's no sign of a break-in and it's not like I live in a high-crime building. I mean, come on, just a bunch of quiet old people. Once I was taking a shower and of course I closed the bedroom door because I couldn't see Buffy. When I got out of the shower about 10 minutes later, the bedroom door was wide open again, all the way to the wall. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Things just kept escalating. I would be woken up in the middle of the night by various things. One night I was woken up by a man loudly saying, ahem. The sound was right outside my room, around the corner in the living room. I'm frozen thinking, an intruder's in here. I I'm wide awake feeling around for my huge hunting knife that I keep next to my bed then I hear again ahem I lay there waiting for him to come

in my room I don't know how long I wait there but after a while I got enough guts to go check it out knife in hand I slowly walked around the corner to my living room. I keep a nightlight in my bathroom so the living room was slightly illuminated. I did a quick scan of the living room and saw nothing. Then I went closer to the sofa and looked behind it and there was nothing. Then I looked in the doorway. Nothing. There was just nothing. So I went back to bed. I thought about it for a while. Then creak, creak, creak from upstairs. I'm thinking, good lord, she's nosy. It's like 3am, why is she up? And how does she know that I'm up? I was sneaking around my apartment, trying not to be noticed in case there was an intruder in

there. Okay, I'm just thinking too much. Just another coincidence. She probably just went to the bathroom. Old lady bladder. In 2015, things really hit the fan. It was the worst year there ever. Me coming home to the door being open continued. The missing dishes continued. I had more incidences where I woke up at night. Once there was a growl that woke me up. It wasn't Buffy. She was still sleeping next to me. Then another time there was a loud banging on the front door. I looked through the peephole. Nothing. Then the banging on the floor started again. One night I was in the kitchen washing dishes and there was a familiar bang right under my foot. It happened again the next night right under my foot but this time I was cooking at the stove.

How do they know where I'm standing? This is the lady downstairs of course. I didn't understand what I did. I was just standing there cooking. I wasn't making a lot of noise. I was so angry that I reported her to the office the next day. The office administrator informed me that the lady downstairs wasn't home for the past few days because she had a mild stroke and was in the hospital. Okay, so this lady had a stroke too? I would hate to live in that apartment, but I digress. I just didn't know what to make of that. I want to make a note here. Remember I said that between the floors there is just subfloor and drop ceiling? Well, how would someone bang on the ceiling if they have a drop ceiling? Well, okay. I guess they could go through the trouble of moving the ceiling tile,

bang on the subfloor and put the ceiling tile back. But I just can't see an old lady doing this. If she were home, and remember, the previous lady was restricted to a wheelchair, then the knocking on the wall started. At first it was a faint knock on my bedroom wall which is on the other side of the living room. Obviously there was no one on the other side of the wall because the other side was my living room. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It was just a faint knock every five minutes or so. Over the course of the next few weeks the knocks traveled all over the living room walls and got

much louder and more frequent, lasting all day long, coupled with the creak, creak, creak of the walking from what I thought was the lady upstairs. Those footsteps would follow me all over my apartment, I kid you not. I was woken up by what sounded like a jar of pennies or marbles thrown on the linoleum floor upstairs. Startled both Buffy and me wide awake in the middle of the night. One night it sounded like someone dropped a big heavy object that I can only describe to be like a big lead safe on the floor right above my bedroom. I was awake for that one. Remember this woman is 85 pounds soaking wet. I've had scratching noises in the wall of my bedroom like an animal was in the wall. One evening I went into the

bathroom and the familiar creaking followed me in there and then everything went to chaos. Again, it was everything. Jar of pennies on the floor, tub water on and off, sink water on and off, toilet flush, creak, creak, creak, and I'm just standing there like oh my god. Because I know that my upstairs neighbor was in the hospital for a back problem and there was no one home in her apartment. Buffy had her share of barking at nothingness. I managed to capture a video of her one day freaking out at something that I cannot see. I was crocheting, watching TV and relaxing and she was lying right next to me. She then heard a noise in the living room or saw something, I don't know. But she started barking as if she was waiting for it to come

back and show itself and boy did it. After barking calmly at the doorway for a bit, she reacts as if something just walked right into view and at times her barking starts to escalate with growls as well and she backs up as if something is coming towards her. She even ducks a few times as if though she was trying to avoid being touched. You can see the video here. There has been three people who have died in that building just in the last five and a half years that I have lived there. One guy who lived next door to the lady above me was wheelchair bound and fell into his tub.

He was dead for several days until Meals on Wheels found him. I was living there for that one. The other death was on the first floor near the elevator way on the other side of the building. I do feel kind of bad about thinking this lady was doing her best to harass me and feel even worse, mostly embarrassed and stupid, for being paranoid and thinking that she was following me around the house throwing things on the floor and possibly breaking into my apartment stealing dishes. I wanted so much to try to find a rational explanation. When I look back now me believing she was following me around was totally preposterous. I think the death of my other

dog and the darkness it brought set an already volatile environment ablaze with activity. I finally moved out, but here's the kicker. I now live across the street. I think I'm far junior high, some friends, I was 10 to 11 years old, and I decided to make a Ouija board and try to summon some spirits. We did it at school and everything went smoothly. Honestly, it was rather fun than scary and we only made a few questions until we got bored and went home. Back at home, I wanted to do it myself. I spent almost 10 years in the Catholic school, so this was a taboo topic for me. And I started to talk to a spirit of an alleged kid that had passed away very young. I have to admit that the experiences were quite exciting and at this point some mild paranormal events began to happen.

First I'd listen to a child's voice calling out my name. I also sensed him touching me while I was sleeping and saw a few shadows that I thought belonged to this kid. I honestly wasn't afraid of this so I just enjoyed the experience. Until I messed things up. One day I was trying to summon the spirit of someone that had passed away at my house, it was a rental or nearby, and somehow I reached the spirit of a woman that warned me to leave her alone. Being a stupid 11 year old I didn't listen so I kept insisting until she, apparently upset, closed the session and told me I was going to suffer the consequences. And then it all began. First there were shadows, but not the ones I saw before. These were bigger, scarier, and appeared more often than before. Also, the whole energy felt heavier

than before. Then more noises began to appear. I could hear someone scratching my pillow every night and one time my bed even shook, slightly, but it did shake. The paranormal phenomenon increased slowly. Soon after that, I actually began to see the woman. The time I remember the best is when I was passing in front of my sister's room and saw a woman undressing in front of the mirror. My first thought, stupidly because my sister was six years old, was that it was her. So I jumped into her room to jokingly scare her. Well, the scared one was me because that room was completely empty. I experienced a lot of things in this time. The ones I remember the most are when I saw a woman

walking in my mom's room when she was so tall she reached the ceiling. I never saw her face but only the back of her head and she had really long black hair. Also one time I woke up and I saw a huge shadow right above me which slowly disappeared. Another time I woke up because I was hearing a child screaming in a very horrible way and I realized I had sleeping paralysis. I might write about this later in another post because I've had several experiences. I tried to fight it back and I began to hear a woman's laugh. This lasted a few minutes until I could move again and the last one that really affected me was when I was home alone at night and I saw how my room's door started to move as if though someone was trying to enter. Also the knob was moving back and forth. This happened a lot and only stopped when my mom

came back. It was quite frustrating because no one believed me and at first only happened to me but after a while the maids told me that they also saw the woman and they actually did it without having to tell them first and my mom had to admit something was going on when she saw the tv cord rise as if though someone was pulling it and then get disconnected. This eventually stopped. After a while I wasn't afraid anymore so I think maybe it found it boring and the less afraid I was the events became rarer and rarer until I moved to another city and then everything stopped for good. The moral of this fable is, never ever try to summon spirits with a Ouija board or by any means at all. The main incident that occurred was also witnessed by my boyfriend.

It happened in our child's room. For context, our four-year-old son's room is located directly across the hall from our room and we can see it from our bed. In my son's room, there are some jackets hanging up on some hooks on the back of his door. This is a detail that comes up later in the story. We've lived in this house for about three years and never had something like this happen before. So we're sitting in bed on our phones getting ready to go to sleep when we both hear our son jump out of bed and run across his room to the door. His door is like halfway shut so I can't see into the room, but as I looked up, I saw the door move like he bumped into it. My boyfriend jumps up to go put

our son back to bed. After a minute or so, my boyfriend comes back out of the room, looking kind of freaked out and whispers, he's fast asleep, he didn't get out of bed. I climbed out of bed thinking my son is just pretending to be asleep or something and walk in to see him definitely asleep breathing slow under the covers how we tucked him in earlier. My boyfriend and I are both kind of like what to each other wondering what just happened. We sort of just settle back into bed when something that makes us so much weirder happens maybe a half hour later. My son wakes up whimpering and we get up to go check on him. He's pointing at the door where the jackets are hanging and says, there's a monster playing with my jacket. I flip on the light and look around. I can't see anything. My first thought

was maybe some sort of animal got into our house and that's what we heard and what he just saw. So I look around the room trying to see if there's a mouse or something. Our house is already small and clean so there's not many places for an animal to hide and I can't find anything. Plus my son kept insisting the monster was still behind the door playing with his jacket. Additionally the footsteps we heard were pretty loud and really sounded like my son so it just didn't make sense that there was a small animal. My son wouldn't go back to sleep alone so my boyfriend laid down with him so he would feel safe this was such an odd event my son never talked about monsters or being scared before this it was so out of nowhere and so weird that we heard the footsteps as well

ever since then my son will sometimes wake up crying talking about a monster in his room. I wish I could find an explanation for what we heard. If we hadn't heard the footsteps I would have probably dismissed my son's monster claims and not think much about them. Any ideas of what we could do or any rational explanation? rational explanation. To get this story started I'll have to jump back in time. Around 2015-2016 I was getting ready to go out with my mother and grandmother to go to Hobby Lobby and for those of you who don't know what Hobby Lobby is, it's a store that is full of art, craft items, candles, etc. It's like a Walmart for crafts and art. After I was done getting ready I sat in my room playing with my parakeet because I had some time to spare.

A bit of time had passed and my mother, whom I told to get me when she was ready to go, hadn't come to get me. I walked out into the living room, and she was flabbergasted by my appearance. Not because of the way I was dressed, but because I had come out of my room. My mother claimed to have come into my room and said the lights were off. She had checked all around for me and assumed I went to my grandma's. She lives right behind my mom's house. I told her I was in my room the entire time and we felt strange after that. Now before this entire incident my mother was very liberal as well as a few of my other family members. A bit of time

passed and when I woke up one day everything everything changed. My grandma, who was strictly against tattoos and dyed hair, began doing so. She got a tattoo and dyed her hair pink. I was highly confused and brushed it off as a change of heart. This was until my mother became this kind of hardcore conservative overnight. It was all weird. My other grandmother who didn't like tattoos either got one. Everything that I grew up with just suddenly changed. Little by little I've been noticing more differences in my family from what I had grown up with. I kept trying to make excuses for it but nothing was fitting right. I'm still stuck here in this universe that doesn't feel like my own. I've always been spiritual in the sense that spirits are attracted to me and I connect with my third eye often. I don't know what to do and

I've read theories that once you hop you can't go back to where you're from and this isn't like a political issue. I'm not even mad that my mother is conservative or whatever it's just totally different from the mom I grew up with. Things have gotten weird. Some of my lifelong wishes have come true but nothing feels right. Ever since I've realized all of this my brain has gotten strange. I suffer from bouts of disassociation which at first I thought could have been seizures except my soul feels like it's floating above my body. Nothing feels like it belongs to me anymore. My body feels foreign often. It feels as though my soul is trying to connect with a body that never belonged to it.

I know I sound crazy but I'm saying this with 100% honesty from my side. I was going to try to make a video but I don't want to upset my family or scare them by making them think that I don't care about them. I try to make this new life work for me but nothing is helping. Does anyone know what I can do to adjust? I have memories that nobody in my family remembers and I tried going to the doctors who say I should get a brain scan and test but I can't afford that right now. They say I'm coherent enough to pass the test but don't know why I'm having these episodes of disassociation and minor brain seizures. I really highly believe that this isn't my world. Those close to me can vouch for me and I can get screenshots of old texts I've sent stating

what I'm stating here. If anyone has any sort of idea of what this is, please, I'm willing to hear it all. All I know is that doctors are puzzled, I'm puzzled, and nobody besides my boyfriend and closest friends know about this. If you've read this, thank you. This was a small venting session about my situation and I hope someone might have some answers. So I'd never believed in paranormal activity. My brother had never believed either. Then he moved into my dad's for a few years after college. One night him and I were at a bar drinking and he looked at me and said, I know you're gonna think I'm crazy but I'm pretty sure dad's house is haunted. When he's out

of town I hear people walking around upstairs. I've woken up in bed hearing loud noises that get louder and louder like they're coming at me. I can't move until the noise stops. I pretty much laughed it off and chalked it up to night paralysis since I experience it myself and they're always accompanied by visual and audio hallucinations. Fast forward five or six years my dad asked me to house sit since he's going to be gone for two weeks and it's going to be vacation for my roommates for me so I accept. I stay in my brother's old room since it got converted to the guest room. First four or five days go by, nothing weird happens. Then it rained one night. I wake up and go upstairs, the light by the landing for the door and the kitchen light are both on. I chalked it up to being drunk the night before and just not turning them off.

That night I'm in the basement playing some games. I go upstairs to get a drink, come back down and notice the closet door was open that I didn't remember being opened. I attributed it to being cracked open and when I opened the front door to check the mail it was pulled open from suction. So I shut it and make sure it was completely shut. Another couple days go by with nothing. Then I'm laying in bed about to go to sleep when it sounds like someone was walking around above me. I figured it's just the house settling but I keep. I figured it's just the house settling, but I keep hearing it and it isn't the house settling. It is very distinct noises, heading in a direction, stopping, and then heading back or in another direction. Every time I yelled up that I was calling the police it would stop moving, then start back up.

I had not called the cops because remembering what my brother had said and the fact that it would only temporarily stop when I yelled up. At this point I grabbed a baseball bat and head upstairs just in case. I turn on the lights, keep talking to this intruder. I searched every inch of the upstairs and the way it is set up there is no real way to go from room to room unnoticed. No hallways upstairs, just three rooms, two of which have wide openings to each other, then a bathroom and bedroom in the corner. I searched for about an hour and then went back downstairs and shut off all the lights. About ten minutes later it started up again. This time it lasted about 30 minutes. I didn't get any sleep. A few more days with nothing then one night I was in bed again and I hear this faint 8-bit sounding music. It starts slowly

getting louder and louder. At this point I'm in full panic mode because of what my brother has said. Unlike him, I have no paralysis so I jump out of bed, grab my pillow and blanket and go out to the couch in the living room. I didn't hear the sound once I left the room. I stayed up watching TV for a bit before falling asleep on the couch. It rained again that night and when I woke up the closet that was open before was wide open again and the light above the front door landing was on again. I was sober that night and I know I hadn't opened the closet since there was no need for me to go into it and I know the light was off because it was on when you're watching tv in the basement. It kind of blinds you. After that I stayed on the couch. No more instances besides another night. It rained and the lights being on again.

When my dad came back I asked him if he's ever experienced anything weird in this house. He said he never had. I told him my story. Then he said he's always thought that there might be something because no matter what time of year there is always a fly or two in his house and never has any other bugs. A couple of weeks after he came back he called me after a rainstorm to say that the light above the landing was on when he woke up. Since then he said the only time it happens is when it rains or when my brother or I have been at the house that week. I'm still not 100% a believer by any means.

That being said, I still get goosebumps every time I tell anyone about it, even as I type this out. I'm also a lot more open to believe weird things people tell me that seem unbelievable. Just for the record, my family has no record of mental disorders such as schizophrenia or anything on record. In the summer of 2017, I was 15 at the time. I had a very vivid dream of a place that I had never seen in my life. It was weirder than a normal dream. It's hard to explain but the whole thing felt off. Sometimes dreams feel more like a reality but this was different. About a week after the dream I went on a missions trip to Texas. Throughout the week I would get a sense of deja vu at different places I went. It was the strongest sense of deja vu at different places I went. It was the

strongest sense of deja vu I had ever gotten before. It's kind of hard to explain but it was like deja vu that you could feel down to your core if that makes any sense. It would come and go throughout the week but it didn't get crazy until we left Texas. When we got to the panhandle of Florida we stayed in the gymnasium of a Baptist college for the night. We got there at about 11 or 12 at night. All of us were tired. The deja vu didn't kick in right away but I was in awe that I had seen this place before too. I kept it to myself because it was weird and I didn't want to get questioned about it. As I was taking a shower in the locker rooms of the gym

I had realized that I had showered there before with the same sharpie tattoos on my arms. A girl drew sharpie tattoos on my arms the prior night and I hadn't showered since then. After that I brushed my teeth and went to go to sleep on the gym floor in my sleeping bag. The gym is two stories tall and had a balcony overlooking it. Upstairs a light was on that couldn't be shut off for some reason. I had the urge to go upstairs. It wasn't something that was optional. I had to go up there. My soul was strongly set on going up there. I see my youth pastor walking to the water fountain in the corner of the gym and tell him that I had a strong urge to go upstairs. He was concerned and confused obviously but me, him and one other adult went upstairs in the elevator.

When we got there I was walking through the exact dream that I had a week prior. I recalled everything that I had seen. After looking around for a few minutes we decided to take the elevator back down. The other guy that was with us stepped in first and as soon as he was in the elevator doors immediately shut. That's not normal elevator behavior. My youth leader even tried to pull the doors before they shut but had to let go before they crushed his hands. He took the stairs and met the other guy on the bottom floor. He went to bed and I went to talk with my youth leader. I explained to him that I

had an insanely strong deja vu and even as I was talking to him I felt like I had had the conversation before in the same spot and everything. He didn't know what to do so we just prayed and we both went to bed. This next part was the scariest thing to ever happen in my life. Remember the whole schizophrenic thing mentioned at this post? This is the point where I thought I had lost it. I started hearing whispers around me, indistinct as if they weren't speaking English. They would close in around me. When I looked towards the source of the noise, it would come from somewhere else. Then footsteps, coming from different places and disappearing when I looked at them. I heard a low hum as well. I cried and clutched a rock with a cross drawn on it that I had gotten from Texas. I eventually faded into sleep. I honestly don't know how.

The next day I woke up and told no one about the voices and such. When I left I recognized the buildings of the college campus vividly just like at the end of my dream two weeks prior. Since then I've had periodic dreams like this. No voices of anything like that. Usually when I get them I'm doing something out of the ordinary. For example going to a football or hockey game, nice restaurants, drinking or smoking etc. Last week I had a premonition actualize almost every day. My theory on why I've had this happen, I'm connected to a spirit or some supernatural force. Over the summer I was screwing around listening to satanic hymns lying in bed with my eyes closed. I felt like I was floating and had goosebumps and chills. Scary stuff. It was also around the time

I had the original premonition. I've had many premonitions so I've lost count. I'm keeping them to myself so this post isn't too long but if people are interested I'll do a follow-up post or answer any questions that people have. Let me know what you think could be the cause of this and if you've had something similar happen or if you have any questions. I really want to know if I'm alone or not with experiencing stuff like this. So I recently moved to Charlotte after the passing of my father in August in Charleston. I had also ended a relationship and just wanted to be on my own and living in a city. I moved to a nice apartment with a fireplace. The apartment felt good when

I toured in and moved in. After the first few weeks I began to have strange feelings. Leaving the shower, getting changed in and waking for water or pee in the middle of the night gave me the feeling that I had guests in the main room. I remember waking up one night and believing someone was sleeping on my couch. Before I went out there I made sure to put on a shirt and pants because I didn't want to freak out my guests by being in the buff. As time went on I found myself more and more self conscious about what doors I left open, like someone was there and I didn't

want to give them a show. This continued and almost has become worse. I'll occasionally shower and I can hear the sounds of someone getting ready in the bathroom. It also feels like a female getting ready or in the other room. After that the dreams came, almost weekly. I've had dreams discussing with this entity that they needed to go. Now I sleep through anything, so what I found weird was, after these dreams, I would spring awake and feel like someone was in the room with me, or the entry to the room. It often reminded me of having to talk with a roommate who was hanging out in your doorway.

After a few minutes the feeling would subside like they left and I'd go back to bed. These dreams continued, oftentimes leading to shouting matches where I was demanding it left. About three weeks ago things picked up a bit. Between the dreams and now I've had a few more situations where I felt like someone was with me in the apartment and ended up buying a bathrobe. One night three weeks ago she and I had a discussion in the dream. It was a positive dream but she wouldn't tell me what she wanted. I snapped awake and felt like someone was close, like near the bed close. After a minute of contemplating my options I spoke out loud that I was leaving. I heard a sigh in my ear like someone was next to my bed. I was terrified. I

threw the bathrobe on and drove around for about an hour. I decided I wouldn't acknowledge her or it and just go on with my life. Two days later I saw her. I was cleaning the house and doing laundry. My laundry room is a closet off the kitchen. I was in the laundry room in my boxer socks and a tee sorting laundry at the time. I got the feeling that someone had just come in the front door. Milliseconds later I look at the other side of the kitchen and saw a woman standing there. I screamed crazy loud and she was gone. She wasn't in any crazy old clothes from the Victorian era. Actually she looked like she was wearing a blue and white 80s-ish shirt and some jeans. I'm mad that I panicked because I couldn't see her face before she was gone.

I was mad so I started addressing her. First I would tell her I needed to sleep tonight and to leave me alone. A few days later I asked for a sign. Stupid, I know. Oh, I have this antique bell thing and after running out for food I came home and found it rolling across my floor in front of me. There's no way I could have left its location without force. Since then I see her more and more. I've gone back to ignoring but it doesn't help. She hasn't done anything malicious or destructive, just is here. I'm

kind of stumped on how to handle this and just weirded out. Update, March 12th, 2019. So I did some exploring this area. Without giving too much away, my complex is long and winding. I've never been to the other side because I don't need to go that way as I'm close to the main road. Well, on the other side of the complex, within a tenth of a mile was a massive high tension wires, the huge power lines, and a substation below it. On that station is a cell tower. I know nothing about the paranormal besides what I've researched and seen on TV, but could there be some electromagnetism fields or something from there? Not sure, but it was a thought. Also Also there is a small brook in the area. On that other side of the complex is a standalone ER. From that area with the power stuff I can see almost

directly into the ambulance bay of an ER. Not sure what it means but it was an interesting location. There have been no major traumas in the area that I could find but I spoke to maintenance about the unit and it seems all the tenants leave after a year. Now we have a decent transient population moving here for work and school so maybe just a lot of energy left in the place. They said no major complaints or sudden move outs. I bought Sage on Amazon and that is coming so I'll let everyone know about that and I'm looking for a psychic or medium for a session but have no idea how to vet someone for this. Any tips would be welcome. The apartment feels quiet today. I've been keeping music on low and some lights on during the darker hours before bed, mainly the hallway light. Also I only have one window and a huge slider but I've kept the shades open on both to let some light in.

Not sure what it does but makes me feel good. Finally I'd like to say thank you for everyone that's responded. I've never gone through something like this or anything even remotely close to it so thank you for the helpful comments and the occasional joke to lighten the mood. This has been an unnerving ordeal so far and being pointed in the right path is calming. I live with my Nana for the majority of my childhood. Her house is about 150 years old, give or take. The upstairs consisted of a big room, used as my bedroom. Connected was another bedroom, my parents' room, a bathroom, connected to my room, and an attic door. Like, actually a door. The attic was a room connected to mine.

In the attic there were two secret rooms which I'd never been in, it was just known that they are there. So there's been plenty of paranormal things that have happened at my Nana's house. I'm almost 16 now and when I was 4 I was playing hide and seek with my uncle. He was about eleven. My uncle's friend and three of my friends, my uncle's friend's sisters. In my room, I had a cot for a bed, so it was able to be folded in half. I chose to hide in it. My uncle came, looked around upstairs, but didn't find me. After a few minutes or so, I him yell forfeit so I came out. I was about to head downstairs when I heard something behind me. When I turned around I saw two or three dark figures walking into the closet that my uncle had left it open.

A feeling of dread washed over me and I screamed at the bottom of my lungs and went to run downstairs but I fell, injuring my arm. My nana and parents came running into the foyer to find me laying at the bottom of the stairs, sobbing. Upon investigation, the closet door was closed. Me and my parents ended up switching rooms and I'm still deathly afraid of the upstairs at my nana's. Another instance, this is my uncle's story, was when he was around nine. Him and his mom, my Nana, were sitting on the couch watching TV when he saw a pure black entity going into him in his mom's room. After that he flipped out and wouldn't go back in there for months. My aunt was about 18 now and coming home with her boyfriend through the window she saw her mom watching TV. My nana looked at them and my aunt explains that the look on her face was pure evil. My aunt turned to go inside and the TV was off and her mom was in bed.

It had only been a few seconds and not nearly enough time for an older woman to get to her bed so fast and in pajamas and asleep. The last instance is my own story. It happened two summers ago when I was 13. It was about a week after my birthday and I was going to spend the week with my nana. I was living with my aunt and her family at this point. My uncle was still living with his mom to help take care of her. I hadn't gone into my nana's room yet because I sleep with her when I come over. I had been there a few hours and was going to go to the restroom. Inside my nana's room was the downstairs bathroom connected. The room was dark and as I started feeling an overwhelming sense of fear. I can't exactly remember this

moment because I blacked out or something but I got the rest of the story from my uncle and nana. I stopped at the doorway and stared for a few moments then released a blood-boiling scream. My nana lunged over, turned on the bedroom light and I was shaking and crying. My uncle started saying, what's wrong? What happened? My nana begged me to tell her what I saw and all I mumbled was, the dark man. This is what we referred to the reoccurring dark figure. We sat at the table for hours after that and noticed that the little pool thing that comes down from the fan was spinning wildly though the fan was off. I have so many stories from this house and one of the neighbors who has lived next to her her whole life has told us so many stories ranging from a young woman who hung

herself there to people being stabbed to even a meth head family who would jump out the windows and beat people in there. Being on the fence about believing in the paranormal, I fear these things but also expect that nothing will happen, especially if I look for them. Dabbling with Ouija boards, walking among headstones late at night, and ghost hunting has probably made things worse for me, but it's always felt like stuff has been everywhere that I have been. I have experienced a significant amount of things that have been unexplainable throughout my life,

but living in the apartment I live in now has procured a plethora of interesting instances. Only one really stuck with me though, because at least for me it was the most unexplainable thing I've witnessed and really left me confused and wondering. This instance happened a while back in the current apartment that I live in. This is a description of the apartment because this will make things easier to explain. The front room connects to the kitchen and in between the kitchen and front room on a wall is a doorway without a door. This leads to a small hallway going parallel to the kitchen and living room. You can't see anything in the hallway aside from what is on the other side of

this doorway because the rest is behind walls. At this hallway to the right is my father's room. Next to that is a bathroom and on the other end of the hallway is my room. There are also a few closets in the hallway, three to be exact. I've been in the front room sitting on the couch late at night watching something on the television. This tv is right next to this hallway entrance and the couch I was sitting on faces directly towards it. This hallway, sometimes when it isn't well lit, is pretty creepy and at times gives me unsettling feelings. Strangely, everyone who has stepped foot in this apartment has felt things and even seen black figures peeking from around the corner, only to disappear back behind the wall a second later. The stove has even been turned on without the flame gas with no explanation and one instance a closet in the

hallway had opened loudly and the sound of something large and heavy falling was heard but nothing had fallen and the door had opened by itself. So as I was watching TV I saw someone go into my room. At the time I decided to keep watching TV as it had looked like it was possibly my father going to my room to maybe see where one of our cats were. This person had the same height and everything but because I had been watching TV I also wasn't looking directly at them. So in all honesty, I didn't get a good look at who it was, but my father was the only other person here. About 10 or so minutes passed and I began staring at the hallway, beginning to wonder why my dad had been in my room for so long. What was he doing? I didn't feel comfortable with him possibly poking around in my room, so I decided to get up and go into my room to look.

I walked in my room and the first thing I noticed is that no one is in my room. I stood there for a second a little uneasy and decided to check my dad's room thinking that perhaps he had walked back without me noticing and was probably up on his computer watching movies or something. But as soon as I reach his room and look in a sense of dread washes over me because I see him laying fast asleep in his bed. He'd even been asleep for a while and that's why he hadn't been making any noise. For the rest of the night I now and then glancing over to the hallway from the couch expecting to see something there. I admit it caught me off guard and scared me. I had even been afraid to go back into my room to sleep in fear of something being there that I could not see. At times when I or a friend had seen things in the hallway, especially outside

our peripherals, my first thought was that it could have been the TV's light reflecting off of her eyes, strangely or a glare, but this time I don't think it was. I don't know what it was that I saw, and I do not know if it was the same thing that me and my friends had seen on occasion in the hallway, but this is one event I won't forget. This is the first time I had seen a full body apparition. So I've had three separate experiences with the Ouija board that I cannot explain. I've posted this story on a different account on a different page, a throwaway account, and I'd forgotten the password so I figured I'd post here. The people involved in the story were me and the boyfriend, boyfriend's little sister and her friends, 14 through 16. Anyway, rewind to about 2017, my boyfriend's little sister was having some sort of get-together. Me and my boyfriend showed up to his place around midnight after doing our own thing. His little sis, we will call Ray, was playing the Ouija board with a bunch of

friends and they were all freaking out. I was bored so I figured I'd join in. As soon as I joined we all started getting phone calls from an anonymous number and the planchette was moving but I have a hard time believing someone wasn't pushing it. I found the phone calls weird because I didn't know any of these kids so there was no one that could share a phone number with all of these kids and me. I thought about the mom and my boyfriend so I grabbed their phones and put them in front of me and kept playing. Their phones got calls too. Sometimes it would be one person and other times as many as three of us would get calls at the same time. When we would answer them it would

just be static for a few seconds and then it would hang itself up. This continued happening until we finished with the board. A few weeks later I had pretty much forgotten about the incident and me, my boyfriend and a few of his friends all decided to take a late night walk, around 2am-ish, to the cemetery near my boyfriend's house. As soon as we entered the cemetery we started getting the no caller ID phone calls, all of us. It was strange because no one knew we were going to go to the cemetery and my boyfriend's friends weren't present when we had done the board. The calls continued until we left and that was it for the calls until just recently starting about two weeks ago. Ray had two of her friends over and I was there just waiting for my boyfriend to get out of work so we all decided to try the board again. We kept getting this Zozo and Mama thing

and the girls would freak out and make us say goodbye every time those names appeared. They said it was a demon or something. I still don't quite believe the planchette moves on its own but anyway we ended up contacting this heartbroken spirit named Daryl and we talked to him for a while. He seemed intelligent and knew some things the girls wouldn't know and that was strange. And this whole time we were all getting these calls. Even the home phone went off and no one had that number. We did this a few more times over the spring break.

Speaking to Daryl each time and it was whatever. Still getting the phone calls each time. But then the calls started happening on their own, all the time. They would happen on my boyfriend's phone at 7am, even though he never played. All of us girls would get them at the same time every day for days. Sometimes one of us would get them non-stop for minutes. We would ignore them and they would just keep coming, just all the time, out of the blue. Especially when two or more of us who had played were in the same room.

They were still happening. Paranoid? So here's where the second part becomes relevant. Ever since the second to last time I played the board, I've had really disturbing thoughts right before bed. I can't really explain how it really is. It's like a mini horror movie playing out vividly in my head every time I try to sleep. For instance, have you ever seen those creepy videos where it's a bunch of disturbing little clips put together to some unnerving music? Kind of like the video from The Ring, but some have commentary. It's just the

strangest thing. I've been having to play music to fall asleep too, so I can sing the lyrics in my head to keep these images out. Any advice on what to do here? I have never been superstitious or believed in ghosts before. I'm not religious so I don't think a cleansing or anything would help. Is there a possibility that there's something wrong with me? I have never seen these images while awake, and the calls I just cannot explain. They're just so strange. I don't even have Ray's number,

so I have no idea how someone could have all of these 14-16 year olds numbers that I have never heard of, and mine, my boyfriend's, and their mother's, and the home phone. Hey friends, thanks for listening. mine, my boyfriend's, and their mother's, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. All links in the bio.

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