The Lets Read Podcast - 41: Episode 039 | Kidnapping & Highway Horror | 27 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

Welcome to the thirty ninth 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 Kidnappings, Highway Horror & Six Flags Stalkers.  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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BetRivers is the place. Over, under, money, line, same game, Paul A. gets all fine. We'll put a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with bet river sports book take a chance must be 19 plus available in ontario only please play responsibly if you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connects ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge This happened a little over five years ago. I was around 12 to 13 when me and my four friends, Jenny, Mary, Kelly and Diana decided to have a girl's day by

going to the mall. Jenny's mom was our ride and we had a great day shopping and eating at the food court. We ate at the mall for around four hours and it was starting to get dark out. Jenny's mom decided that now would be a good time to head home. We all piled into the minivan and started our drive home. We're talking and laughing, a majority of the ride home, when we all get the idea to hang out at Jenny's house as I had to be home by 9pm and it was only 8pm. Mary and Kelly wanted to sleep over but I couldn't stay the night as I had school the next day. Mary and Kelly's parents were much more relaxed than mine so they allowed it. Jenny wanted to stop at a store to grab some snacks for her new guest so we decided to stop at a dollar tree.

We parked, hopped out and started walking towards the entrance. I have to preface this by saying that behind this dollar tree is a big forest with a big hill that leads down to us along with a park. We were oblivious to our surroundings as we were walking our way to the doors when all of a sudden we all stop. We all heard a weird noise. It sounded almost like a seagull or something. We all live in a peninsula beach town so we are used to seagulls squawking but we were in the next town over which is a forest town that's covered in trees so there would be no seagulls flying around here. We all try to adjust our ears to the noise and it keeps on repeating.

It seems to be getting a little louder too. Simultaneously all of our blood drains from our bodies when we hear a woman scream. Help me! Help me! He's after me! He's after me! We couldn't see the woman anywhere. We all turned in circles trying to find her but it was no use. She was nowhere in sight. We realized that she was behind the store possibly running down the big hill from someone or something. Our feet were glued to the pavement as we didn't know what to do, so we just listened. The screaming carried closer and closer to the back and eventually we realized she finally managed to get behind the store. She was so close we could all hear her panting and

screaming. It was absolutely terrifying. My stomach dropped to my hips and I couldn't breathe. She lets out one more blood merry scream but halfway through it cuts off and she goes completely silent. We heard heavy footsteps behind the doors. We heard what sounded like a man grunting and huffing. Then we heard the sound of tires screeching and a car door opening. A man gets out. Let's go. Get her in. Get her in here. The car door shuts again and we hear the tires screech away along with the honk of a car horn. This sounds like it took about five to six minutes in total but all of this happened in around 50 second max. We were now standing there in front of the Dollar Tree and were in total shock. Did we just hear somebody get kidnapped? We all looked at each other and

bolt back to Jenny's mom's car and start explaining everything that happened. We all agree that Jenny's mom calls the police and that we wait until they get there. We still needed to go and get snacks so we head into the store, pick up some snacks, along the way tell some employees our story and book it back to the car. I don't know if the cops ever arrived because we ended up leaving because Diana was supposed to get home by 8pm and it was now 8.15. She called her parents when we arrived at the Dollar Tree to tell them that she would be a little bit late home. They did end up being mad at her.

We all arrived back at Jenny's house and proceeded to talk about what just happened until my mom pulls up. I explained the whole story to her and she is just as shocked as me. After this incident we all tried to research any persons or kidnapping stories in the local news but nothing was ever found or broadcasted. I am now 17, almost 18 in a couple of months and leaving for college in 5 months. I'm going to college in a different country so I'll be very far away from home. I'm going to college in a different country so this story kind of sticks with me whenever I'm alone or walking home at night, and I hope that I or anyone else doesn't have to witness anything like this again. My school is of the only schools in the area that accept kids with autism.

I have no problem with these kids. They're mostly pretty nice and pleasant people to be around. I will call this kid Wyatt for privacy reasons. Wyatt is one of these kids with autism and he is terrifying. At first I didn't have any classes with him but I knew who he was because he always sat at my table with me and my friends. Until the semester changed and so did our classes. I have him in my English and Science class now and he does some pretty terrifying stuff. I'll tell some of these stories.

The first story happened in my English class. I was forced to pair up with him for a partner thing. I was doing some of the drawings on the poster and he asked me, Is it creepy to stare at people and think about watching them through their window at night? I froze and slowly looked up at him. Excuse me? I asked. At this point, I was really uncomfortable. Is it creepy to want to watch someone sleep?

I for some reason thought maybe if I answer he'll stop. Yes Wyatt that's very creepy. I shifted to my seat and went back to drawing. He just let out a smile. Oh. Before beginning to stare at me unblinking until I got too uncomfortable and stood up and then went to the teacher and told him my partner was making me uncomfortable. When the teacher asked why I told him and the teacher took him out into the hallway. I didn't see him for the rest of the day. The next story happened in science class when we were playing a game. I don't have time to explain it but I will say it involved high-fiving people. When the teacher told us that Wyatt started laughing maniacally and when I say that I mean

full-out psycho laugh. We were lined up in two lines in the parallel formation and he was across from me and was staring at me the whole time. Everyone around him shifted uncomfortably and the teacher had to remove him from the class again to get him to stop laughing. I could see through the door with the position I was in and watched as one of the counselors came down and took Wyatt away. He was still laughing. The next story happened in English. We had to write poems that set a mood i chose to write a sad poem and the teacher made us all share our poems when i said mine which was about a woman crying under a veil either an unwilling bridesmaid or a mourning woman at a funeral it was one of those it's what your mind makes it kind of poems anyways Anyways, Wyatt looked at me after I had shared and said,

I hope you were in the casket. The teacher didn't seem to hear because I was sitting in the same row as him and I could hear him whisper. My friend who sits in between us heard it and looked at me nervously. The teacher doesn't really care where we sit so I silently stood up and shifted away from him his poem was the disturbing part I remember it word for word but this is kind of what it said the body of the girl I had just murdered looked at me with dead eyes and I proceeded to cut her into tiny little pieces I shuddered and the teacher took him out of the class again I could hear him laughing all the way down the hall to the counselor's office So I guess I will start off with the backstory of my childhood

I had a loving mother and a brother and a sister. My brother and I are full-blooded siblings and our sister is only our half-sibling. Now my father on the other hand, he is a full Filipino and they don't want girls. They want sons. So when I was born my father had wanted me dead. He wanted my mother to abort me as soon as he found out that I was a girl. My father had mental issues and was an abusive drunk. My mother, my sister and myself had to endure daily beatings while my brother was always showered with love. During my school years I was

in search of acceptance from teachers and students. I had friends in just about every group in school. I hid my feelings well and thrived to make others never feel like I did. I had boyfriends but I was always quick to fall in love. Thankfully I never went all the way till I was 18 but when I left high school things got worse. My father died the same year and month I graduated high school. My friends were only my friends because I had money from my dad's passing. During one party, my friends got me incredibly intoxicated and took advantage of me. I was so afraid to say anything to the cops or my mom and stepdad. No one ever knew. I locked myself away and closed off from everyone. Finally, I joined the CCC, California Conservation Corps. You live in the building when you work there. It was a three-story building with dorm

rooms, movie room, game room, cafeteria, offices, and a nurse's office. This building is where I met the one person that would change my life forever. This is where the story begins. After being in the corps for a few months some new recruits came in and that is when I saw him. He was handsome and strong, we'll call him Lucifer. He had told some of my friends that he thought I was pretty and by word of mouth we began to talk. Once we started dating I started falling like all other relationships before, too quick and I had no idea that falling for this guy would end up almost fatal. A few months later I ended up getting fired for something that would need more explanation but it isn't important to the story. Having to leave the building because I could no longer live there due to not working there anymore. I ended up in Texas with my grandfather. I had to break up with Lucifer because I had to move so far away. After a few months of living there in Texas I got a job as a correctional officer at the all-male high security

prison. I was only 19 at the time. I made friends with the guards fast due to them wanting to protect the young only female officer there. It made me feel better to have so many people behind me and keeping me safe. Shortly after starting there, I got a gift waiting for me at the front door of my grandfather's house. It was from Lucifer. As I opened it, a note at the bottom caught my eye. It said, Turn around.

I turned and there he was. He had told me that he quit his job to come here to be with me. Now I told him that he could not live here at my grandfather's house. He told me that he had a place to live. He would come and visit after work and hang out but we never went to his place which was very weird. After a year of dating I got my own place and he moved in with me. Only then did he tell me that he had been living in a storm cellar that whole year. Red flag number one. But as I had said before I fall hard and early and could not see it at the time. Throughout the next year we had to move a lot to new places all because of his temper that I had never seen before. He yelled and punched walls

and slowly began to start hitting me too. Red flag number two. He started hanging out with this couple in the apartments that we were living. They did everything together. They got him into drinking and smoking and who knows what other stuff. After a while the abuse got worse and he would call me names and tell me that he was going to cheat on me with his friend's girl. I began to talk to my friends at the prison and tell them that I needed help to leave. Very soon after that Lucifer's friends were talking about how they had to move, that they wanted us to go with them. I said no that I wasn't going to leave such a good job. That night Lucifer made dinner to say that he was sorry and that we would stay. I had made plans with some friends that night to come get me in the middle of the

night and take me away from there. I sat down and ate the dinner he had made but that was the last thing I remembered was eating. When I woke up I was in the trunk of my car. My hands were tied behind my back and my mouth was taped. I tried screaming and kicking but I was packed into the trunk like I was luggage. The car came to a stop and I heard talking outside of the trunk. I tried moving around and screaming again with no success. The trunk door opened, the sunlight burned my eyes and blinded me for a few seconds but when I could see again, there stood the three worst people I had ever met in my life. They dragged me out of the trunk and I looked around and there was nothing around us. I thought that he had drove me out into the middle of I looked around and there was nothing around us. I thought that

he had drove me out into the middle of the desert to end my life. He pulled out a knife and I began to cry, thinking I was about to die. He cut the tape off my hands and told me to keep the tape on my mouth. He walked me to some bushes and told me to go to the bathroom now and he put a collar and a leash around my neck so that I could not run away. I did my business because I had been holding it for who knows how long. He yanked the leash and dragged me back to the car where he gave me water and more food which were both drugged, passed back out and back in the trunk. This happened a few more times before we came to the house. It was a big house, two stories high and bars on the windows and metal doors. It was night by the time we got there.

He pulled me out of the trunk and started to drag me inside. I took this time to rip off the tape and scream for help. Mid-scream I felt a sharp pain across my face and everything went black. I came to in the basement of the house. No windows, just cement all around me with big wooden pillars around the room. I no longer had tape on my mouth but I had a metal collar around my neck and a heavy metal chain connected to one of the wooden pillars. There was a small bathroom set up in the corner. It had a toilet, sink, and a big bathtub. No walls for it and no door. In the other corner there was a mattress there for me to sleep on. I started

screaming again hoping a neighbor would hear me and call the cops but when the doors opened it was not the cops that were standing there. I jumped back and as far as I could into the corner. He slowly made his way down the stairs like he was trying to make me even more scared than I already was. This guy, the guy that was my boyfriend, who I told that I loved once upon a time, he was now my kidnapper and I had no idea what he wanted from me. He got so close to my face that his lips were touching my ear. He whispered in a low, deep voice, do you really think that I would just let you leave me? That I would allow my property to just up and walk out? You were mine and now you will never be able to leave me again.

But don't worry, you will still be making money. And with that he stood up and walked back up the stairs and slammed the door. What did he mean that I was going to be making money? Little did I know at the time that I did not want to know what he meant. There was a clock beside the bed that read 3am. I could not sleep, I was so scared. I heard footsteps coming towards the door and without thinking about it the tears started to flow. I was not ready for him to come down here again.

The door slowly opened, but it was not Lucifer standing there. It was a tall man. I could not see his face. I had never seen him before. I started saying, help me, please, help me. But as he came down the stairs, I saw his face. He wore a smile across it, and just behind him was Lucifer. He quietly said to Lucifer, she will do just fine.

How much for an hour? Lucifer replied with, 100. If you like her you can always come back for more. I was in shock. What was he paying him for? An hour of what? Lucifer said I loved you and walked back up the stairs. The next hour was horrific. I will spare you the details. I will just say that I did not consent. After the man left, Lucifer came back downstairs and saw me laying there, naked, in a weeping heap on the floor. Face was bloody and I was in so much pain that it hurt to breathe. He picked me up and brought me to the bathtub and ran a hot bath and cleaned me up. He explained that if I was a good girl, I would get to eat. The food was almost always drugged, which I began to want. It numbed the horrible thing that I endured. That was my life now.

Being chained up in a basement and becoming a punching bag for guys who didn't want to beat their girlfriends and nothing but a doll for those who paid for it. The time went by so slowly. I have no idea how long I was put down there. He stopped giving me drugs and just left me there in pain. One day he came down to make love to me as he put it which he hasn't done since before he told me that he wanted to move. When he was done he removed the collar which he did once in a while to allow me to wash underneath it. I washed and got dressed and laid in bed. I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up he was gone but the collar was not on. I ran to the door and listened to see if I heard anybody there. I heard nothing. I opened the door

and tiptoed to the front door and my car keys were there. That meant that he was still in the house. I quietly grabbed my keys and opened the door and ran to my car. As I drove off I looked behind me and there he was running out the front door after me. I drove around for about an hour till I got to a McDonald's and called my mom. I told her everything and she told me to stay there that my stepdad was going to be on the next flight it was at least a day before he showed up and I just cried I thought I was going to die there my stepdad drove me in my car to Arizona Lucifer had drove me all the way to Ohio once I got there I moved in with my sister and went to the doctor to make sure that my health was good

And I didn't have any more drugs in my system And to make sure that I did not have any STDs Which, thank God, I didn't and that I was okay We contacted the police and after years of searching for him They still have not found him I will always remember what happened and I only hope that one day I can sleep without thinking that he is following me again. Throughout the years he left notes and gifts outside my doors and I would move, but thankfully these last few years I haven't gotten

any. I hope that this is now the end of him and he will never bother me again. I don't want to fear for my life ever again. So my dad loved sharing this story that happened many years ago when I was around five years old or so. I'm originally from South Africa, Johannesburg, and we lived in a more less dangerous neighborhood. Although, let's be honest, the whole country is pretty dangerous. At five years old, I used to have imaginary friends, but the only time I ever played with them was in the middle of the night, in the living room, and in the pitch black dark. I was too small to reach the light, I think I was too young to remember details to be honest so all of this is from my dad and mom's side. So my dad almost every night would wake up from the

ruckus, go to the living room, fetch me and put me to bed. This had become a routine and just a normal thing. One night my dad wakes up around 4am or so and hears a ruckus coming from the living room. So as normal he gets up, groaning and stretching and proceeds to the hallway to fetch me. Making his way down the hallway he can hear toys and stuff being tossed around. In a tired voice he says, Darren, go to bed, it's four in the morning. I called back, what? Except I'm not in the living room, I'm in bed still, in my bedroom behind him. So my dad just realizing where my voice is coming from is still hearing noises coming from the living room in front of him. He makes his way to the end of the hallway and, in the darkness, he makes out a lone silhouette.

Hastily he flicks the light switch on and standing in front of him is this guy wearing a balaclava mask and shoving various heirlooms and picture frames into a plastic bag. The intruder and my dad stare at each other for what feels like forever. Now this was a different time when you were allowed to shoot on sight and ask questions later. This guy drops everything and bolts out the door he pried open. We moved out of that house soon after. My nightly playtimes with my imaginary friend also stopped. I soon started to tell my mom about the old lady in the cupboard, though that's a story for another time. When my daughter was seven, she's now fifteen, she was shown some pretty strange visions.

She's always been mature beyond her years and the elders in the family would regularly tell me that she has definitely been here before. One day she comes and tells me about a dream she had. She starts telling me about an Egyptian princess named Princess Nefertiri. I correct her telling her, you mean Queen Nefertiti? She says, no mommy, it's Princess Nefertiri. I still think she's wrong at this point but she's adamant so I tell her to continue. She tells me that Nefertiri's daddy owned slaves and that ill treatment of the slaves made her very sad and tears well up in my daughter's eyes. She says Nefertiri would try to talk to her father about it but he would just yell to her and

wouldn't listen and this makes Nefertiri even sadder. I asked her what is Nefertiri's daddy's name. She said she doesn't know but she can draw a picture of him. She draws an absolutely perfect picture of a pharaoh. I googled the name Nefertiri and according to Google, she was the niece of Queen Nefertiti. But wait, it gets better. A couple of weeks later, she tells me about another dream. She starts to tell me about Paesden and Hades. I'm like, who?

She repeats the names, pronouncing them Paesden and Hades. I tell her I don't know who she's talking about. Clearly annoyed, she says, Yes you do, mommy. He's the god of the sea, he has a trident. I asked her, do you mean Poseidon and Hades? She gets excited and says, yes that's them. She goes on to tell me all about them. Poseidon is the good brother and Hades is the bad brother. Hades wants to make humans his slaves on land and in the sea but Poseidon wages war on his brother to stop him. Now it's been a long time since I've read or studied any Greek mythology.

Probably not since high school or college and I was around 32 at this time. So again I googled this and she's right on the money. Curious. I ask her is she awake or asleep when she has these dreams. She says she's usually awake but sometimes asleep also. I tell her those aren't dreams then. They're visions. I ask her if she's scared when she has these visions.

She says, Well, some of the things I see are very scary, but I'm never afraid because the big angel is with me. He's the one that shows me the people. He writes their names in the air with his finger. Which is why she was mispronouncing Poseidon and Hades. I believe she was referring to the Archangel Michael. She said he's huge with big beautiful wings. She asked why the big angel was showing her these things and I tell her that I don't really know but that it seems like he's preparing her for some kind of leadership role in the future

and showing her where past civilizations have failed so that she does not repeat their mistakes. These were the last visions she told me about. If anyone has any further insight I welcome your input. After telling me these things I decided to look up the meaning of her name. This is normally something I do while I'm pregnant but she's named after my aunt Elena except my daughter's name is spelled A-L-L-E-N-A. I changed the spelling because her father's stepfather died a month before she was born and his middle name was Alan. I'm a 5'1 female.

A month after I started undergrad in Texas, so around September-ish of 2014, I was 18, I was walking home from class to change before driving to work. It was technically on campus but down the road through a very busy intersection from the uni itself when I noticed someone walking parallel to me but about 50 feet or so apart toward my campus apartment. I didn't think much of it and ignored the guy until he walks up the opposing side of the stairs to the second landing like I did. I gave that weird flat smile thing we all do when we politely pass strangers. Then he started speaking as he walked toward me. I was already at

the wall beside my door at this point. Hey, how are you? He steps closer to me, stopping me in my tracks. Hi, I'm good. Hope you're doing well too. I'm sorry, but I've got to go to work. Do you think we could be best friends? I'm sorry? I've been watching you and you're really beautiful. You always walk in from the back entrance. I noticed you were coming here and I thought I'd ask.

At this point, I noticed what he looked like. He was probably 45 or so, but he was wearing what looked like teenage trends at the time. Khaki cargo shorts to his knees, a superman in blazoned tee, a flat bill cap, long lanyard dangling from his pocket, decorative mid-calf socks and colorful vans. Odd for a grown man. Also, what went through my head following this was, why was a grown man in my university apartment complex? I couldn't muster up a proper response, so I let out some unintelligible, non-committal sound. Oh, you're so pretty. I can't wait to be friends. Do you live here? He points to my door. Is this your room? Do you have roommates? I give more incoherent mumbling. Here, let me take your things for you. I can help take them in. He tries to grab my books but I hold tight so he puts his arm up to prop himself

against the wall behind me, effectively pinning me to the wall, his body inches from mine. I smiled politely and finally managed to get something out. I'm so sorry, I really gotta go, this, um, this friend's house, bye. Our locks were the kind where you slide your ID in like a hotel room, so I got in quickly. Hey, let's hang out soon. I can't wait to see you. I made it in, deadbolted the door, and cried. None of my roommates were home. I didn't know what to do. I texted my boss and said class ran late while I panicked. I decided to finally go to work but then I would take a knife from the kitchen as

self-defense as I walked to my Toyota in the parking lot should it come down to it. This would be truck knife number one but truck knife number two is a different but little similar story. My supervisor ended up forcing me to make a police statement. I was young, embarrassed, and shy, the way a lot of girls are. I'm so thankful for you, Jeanette. She let me go without clocking out because the last thing she wanted to do was punish a victim. Long story short, at the police station, I ended up learning I was the third story just like this in my building. From an RA I learned later that this was a guy the university had hired on from a landscaping company and that he was fired. He had been trying to dress young as a sort of poor disguise to get the young girls to interact with him and let him in.

None of us were hurt but he tried to get into each of our rooms each time, the RA included. I'm so grateful for the supportive staff at my university and the campus police who believed young girls, something that doesn't seem to happen often. This happened to me about 10 years ago or so. I was 23 years old living in a one bedroom apartment. I had recently moved there from another apartment complex on the other side of town but I wanted to be closer to my brother and nephew so I decided to move to his apartment complex. I felt safer plus it was cheaper. Whenever I would go out with my friends I usually left my lights on because I didn't want people to know I wasn't there. I had a TV that I didn't use but I would occasionally

watch a DVD and also had a laptop on which I would let Pandora play. Being a single female I always made sure my door was locked and the chain latched. I was living there for several months and I went out drinking with my best friend. I came home at around 3 or 4 in the morning and passed out on my couch. I don't know how long I was asleep but it felt like 15 to 20 minutes when I could feel myself waking up and I could see the dining room light peeking through my eyelids. My eyes sometimes open slightly while I sleep. It's weird. I could see the dining room light but I could also see a man looking at me through my door. He was looking at me and slowly closing

my door as if he knew I was about to wake up. As if I had caught him leaving my apartment. My heart was racing but my body stayed still and my eyes would not completely open. I could see the door inching closer to its frame and I could see his face and his hair color but he did not look like anyone I knew. He was of average height, he had a mustache and his hair was a reddish color. Finally I started to feel my body react to what I was seeing and as soon as he closed the door I jolted up and it was as if a power surge went through my apartment. The dining room lights went off then on again and the TV turned on to static and my laptop, which was closed, proceeded to play Pandora. I wasn't scared though, possibly because I had awakened

so abruptly. I was out of it and confused but I definitely had sobered up after that adrenaline rush. I immediately checked my door. It was locked and latched. You can only latch the chain from the inside. I couldn't comprehend what I had just experienced so I went to my room, locked the door and went to sleep. I woke up around noon, I made some coffee and I proceeded to check my Facebook. There was a post that caught my eye. It was a post from my cousin which said something along the lines of, rest in peace grandpa, I know you are not in pain anymore. He had apparently passed away the night before. The thing is I don't remember my grandpa. I have only seen a picture of him and I sitting next to each other but I can't recall meeting him. He did have a mustache and he was bald but the few

patches of hair he did have were already white. I haven't had the chance to ask my aunt if my grandfather had brown or reddish hair. I'm not sure if my grandfather passing had any connection to do with what I had experienced hours earlier, but I'd like to think so. It was my sophomore year of college when I met Alex. Typical of any college student we met after matching on Tinder. He seemed perfectly charming and our conversations were long yet never dull or boring. For anyone that frequently uses the Tinder dating app, you probably know how infrequent a connection like this can be. He was a few years older than me and a much more

worldly individual, so I instantly became interested in him. He was an international student coming to America for his education in computer sciences, and he seemed to know a lot about computers and computer hacking. He sort of had a bad boy with a soft side of charisma to him, all of which only drew me in more. He told me all about his travels and I told him about my much less exciting ones. Not long after matching on Tinder we made plans to get dinner and a movie together that following weekend. When we first met he was even more attractive and charming in person. His dark hair and soft eyes made my heart flutter in anxious excitement.

One thing I first remember about meeting him was that he was noticeably quiet which I naturally assumed was simply due to nerves. The first date overall went really well. He seemed to take an actual interest in my life and he was an extraordinarily good listener. Not long after that night we decided to make it official. At first everything seemed to be going well in our relationship. In fact things seemed to be moving much quicker than I had ever expected them to. Part of me felt as though I should be careful to not get my heart broken but then again there were no alarm bells going off in my head that

made me think that there would be anything wrong with Alex. He texted me goodnight and goodmorning and always paid for my meals at dinner. After a few weeks of dating, I began to notice some things about Alex that just seemed off. I figured that maybe it was just me being paranoid or that I was simply falling out of the honeymoon phase, but there were some things that I just couldn't ignore. For example, he seemed overly protective of his electronics. He had multiple computers, laptops and other technology scattered across his bedroom and I didn't know what most of it was for. That I assumed was just a part of his computer science major and didn't really seem out of the ordinary.

However, one day he went to the bathroom and left me alone in his bedroom. Out of curiosity and boredom, I aimlessly roamed around the room and picked up some of the stuff on his messy desk. I was startled when he came from seemingly out of nowhere and snapped at me for messing with his computer. I assured him that I did nothing of the sorts and was simply looking around but promised I wouldn't touch his stuff again. I also couldn't help but notice that every computer in the room had a thick layer of tape covering the camera lens. I figured he was just the paranoid type of person when it came to computers but it didn't stop there. The longer we were together he became more and more controlling and seemed constantly paranoid about where I was and who I was with. Once when I neglected to answer

his phone call he immediately came over to my apartment. Although I was out with a friend and not there at the time my roommate answered the door for him. He demanded to know where I was. Naturally this led to a big argument and I seriously considered leaving him but I realized that perhaps he was just making sure I was okay because he loved me. Unfortunately that turned out to be very very untrue. Our relationship quickly took a nosedive as he became extremely emotionally abusive towards me and then even turning physically abusive. I finally came to my senses and accepted the fact that he was not the same man that I had fallen for when we first met. One Saturday, the day after an especially bad fight, I drove over

to his apartment to break up with him. He greeted me at the door joyfully as I got the sinking feeling of guilt in my stomach knowing what I was about to do. I sat down on the couch with him. He greeted me at the door joyfully as I got the sinking feeling of guilt in my stomach knowing what I was about to do. I sat down on the couch with him and wasted no time getting to the point of why I'd come there. In all honesty I sort of lied about why we needed to break up. I told him something like I was too busy for a relationship and that he deserved someone better than me. He looked noticeably upset when I got the words out and we sat together in awkward silence for a moment as I decided when the best time would be for me to get up and leave. Out of nowhere he leaned in and tried to kiss me. Surprised I

disgustingly said, what are you doing? We're over, don't you get that? In the brief moment between when he leaned in and when I processed it, I noticed something that made my blood run cold. His breath reeked of alcohol, and I instantly knew that things were about to take a horrible turn. He was furious and things instantly turned physical. To spare you the gruesome details he drove me home after his angry outburst and left me utterly broken outside of my apartment building. The next thing I remember clearly was being in the emergency room with my horribly upset mother sitting at my side. I sighed a breath of relief knowing that I was safe and being taken care of. For the rest of the night I was poked, prodded and had pictures taken of me for evidence.

The whole situation was rather uncomfortable and I was beginning to wonder when I would be allowed to go back to my cozy apartment surrounded by my roommates. Once the nurses left the hospital room I was in, my mother stood up from her seat and told me that she was going outside to call my dad and let him know that I was going to be alright. I nodded and occupied myself with the TV in my room, flipping through channels. A few minutes later, my mother came back. I turned over in bed to face her and noticed that something was clearly wrong. She looked as pale as a ghost, visibly shaken. What is it? I said, concerned. What she said next shook me to my core. Alex, he's outside. He's just standing in the parking lot looking at me.

My mother explained. By now it was very late at night and I had no intention of leaving anytime soon if he was out there waiting for me. The strangest part of this situation was that I was in a hospital outside of town and nobody told Alex where I was. How did he find me? I later found out that he was tracking my phone and followed me to the hospital. Not long after realizing this I got a new phone and it was never a problem again. Thankfully, my mom notified the police officers working in the ER that night, so they kept a close eye on me, everyone entering and exiting the building. When I finally left the hospital, much to my relief, Alex was nowhere to be seen.

In the end, he only tried to get in contact with me a few more times. Once he tried to get into my apartment building late at night when I wasn't there. Thankfully my roommates were smart enough not to buzz him in. I'm not sure what he was planning that one night while waiting outside the hospital for me but deep down I know it must have been something sinister. What bothers me the most about the situation is that he got to walk free even after all of the evidence they took in the hospital. The case was never brought to trial. Recently I was sharing childhood stories to my boyfriend about some of the traumatic events I

went through as a child so I thought I'd share some of them on here. Looking back I wish that my mother and I had paid more attention to the red flags instead of choosing to ignore them. So it all started when I was around the age of nine. My mother and I would attend a Christian church often. It was a very small church so everyone pretty much knew each other. I had a few cousins that went there and one of them had introduced my mom to a man they knew who attended our church. At first she wasn't interested and was kind of creeped out by him because he would follow us at church and wouldn't leave us alone but they began talking more and started dating. Now this guy who we'll call Tom seemed normal at first but as time went on we saw his true colors. Tom had two older daughters who were teenagers around the time and didn't live with him

but lived with his mother. I always found this a bit odd but his reasoning for them not living with him was because he worked a lot so they stayed with his mother. His daughters were always jealous of my mother and I and would constantly try to spew stuff up. For instance at Tom's and my mother's wedding one of them pretended to faint in front of everyone right before they were saying their I do's and the other one claimed she was possessed by a demon which we'll get on later in the story. Over time in my mother's marriage we noticed how controlling and manipulating Tom was to us but no matter what my mom stayed because she wanted to have a father figure in my life

since my biological dad left when I was two and I had never met him. Tom would always bully me about my weight saying how I weighed more than my mother and that it was no good and that I need to eat less and exercise more. Obviously this hurt me a lot and made me so very self-conscious about myself which made me very sad and so Tom went to extremes and would make me take a handful of vitamins a day and controlled what I ate. He would make me eat the same thing every single day and nothing else. I would have to be in bed at 7 each night and most of the time I would go to bed starving so my mother would sneak me food into my room when he wasn't paying attention because of how hungry I was.

Tom would let me close my door, not even to change, so I would go into my closet and change so he wouldn't be mad for me closing my door. If I was in the bathroom for too long, he would start banging on the door and yell at me to get out. I couldn't even touch the TV remote or get a paper towel to wipe my hands off. He had to do it for me because I would mess everything up. I never understood why Tom was like that and I always tried my best to please him because nothing was ever good enough for him. He would recite the same exact bible verses over and over each night and always had the same routine. Nothing was ever different and nothing ever could be. He was so strict about everything being perfect and would be mad if it

wasn't his way. If my mom did something he didn't like, he would blow up in her face and would call her mean names which would make me cry when I would overhear them argue all the time. There was one night when my mother and I tried leaving but he wouldn't let us leave and block my mother's car so we couldn't back out. That night was terrible. He was so angry you could practically see the veins popping out of his forehead. It was traumatizing to say the least. Tom's actions were unbelievable, including his daughter's. One of his daughters, who we'll call Sarah, was very the church went to this church camp out in the woods we stayed in cabins and after getting all settled in we headed to the main building where they held worship as the night goes on everyone is praying and Sarah starts breaking

down and crying everyone goes to comfort her and all of a sudden she drops to the floor and starts screaming. I was so terrified and thinking, what is she doing? The youth leaders started talking in tongues and started to cast this demon out of her. Everyone in the room was crying and claiming they could see it and they opened the door to let the demon out. My 11 year old brain didn't really know what to think. All I knew is that it was most likely nonsense and that I just wanted to leave after that the next night we all sat around to talk about it and they pretty much made the demon up as an excuse of why she would always misbehave and was scandalous as she had sent nudes around the church to a bunch of guys and some elders had

found out about it. I remember calling home and telling them that I wanted to leave but I ended up staying the whole time. Once getting home I told Tom what had happened and he just said uh-huh. I could tell he thought it was a bunch of nonsense as well. Time went on and my mom and I finally left him a few months later there's so much more to tell but it could take forever to write out so Tom you and your daughters were abusive to my mother and I hope that you get a bite of karma This is a shorter story but nonetheless still quite chilling. My family owns a pretty isolated cabin in northern Minnesota. It pretty much fits all the criteria for being in northern Minnesota.

Long, cold, snowy winters and surrounded by acres and acres of woods. With our nearest neighbor being about one and a half acres away it's easy to feel quite alone and isolated back in the woods. Aside from rational fears like the numerous wolf and bear sightings I have also been quite afraid of a crazed drifter walking through the woods and eventually ending up at my cabin and slaughtering my family. However, between these two fears, rational and irrational, I never thought a third option could actually occur, a visit from the paranormal. On a cabin trip, everything had gone as it usually does except for this one night. A fan of all things vintage, my family often enjoys nights in the back garage

watching old movies on the VCR. My dad and sister sit by the tv at our large collapsible poker table as my brother and I lay on a bed half falling asleep as sounds of the 1987 predator lulls us to bed. The room we're in used to just be a cluttered back room we never used but since we had spent that summer cleaning it out and decorating it with various world war ii and old indian artifacts we had begun using it much more we usually only use it in warmer months however as it is not meant to be used as a room and is not insulated my My eyes open and close every few minutes as I grow more and more tired. Sure I was not going to finish the movie. My younger brother next to me shares the same problem as I, falling deeper and deeper asleep with every minute the movie goes on.

I finally begin waking up and sleeping in short intervals and just fall asleep. Not caring I was in this cold back room I was too tired to move which was a big mistake. If I could go back in time and finish that movie I would have gotten up and gone into the main cabin to fall asleep. Hours later in the middle of the night, not sure exactly what time because I had no phone or clock. I awoke in a daze. Knowing I was falling asleep but angered my dad or sister hadn't woken up my brother and I to go to our usual beds. I lay there for a minute or two trying to remember what had happened prior to my falling asleep. Suddenly I realized something was off. There was someone watching me. I looked up to the doorway leading into the main cabin to see a man's

figure just standing there. It looked as if a light was on behind this man's silhouette and he was just standing watching. I was certain there was someone there. Not totally awakened and alarmed I began to call out. Dad? I called to the figure. Megan? I yelled for my sister though I was sure it was a man. Nothing changed however. He just stood. Not moving or responding just standing. Thirty minutes or so had passed and he was still there. Hoping it was just my dad or my sister, I had continued calling out to it every so many minutes, waiting for it to move or at least do something. Suddenly, it did do something. It disappeared. Like a light being shut off, it suddenly just vanished into the darkness. I wasn't sure where it went. Into the cabin, by me or nowhere at all, I felt frightened but

also quite tired suddenly. Next thing I knew I had fallen asleep again. Morning came and I slowly began to remember all the memories from last night. That man, who was he? Maybe it was my dad or sister after all. I walked into the main cabin and began describing it and questioning them over breakfast and they both agreed it wasn't either of them that had oddly stood watching while my brother and I slept. It was then my brother revealed to me that he had awoken to me calling out various names and had also seen the spirit. Creeping me out but also assuring me it had been real I was not just seeing things I used it as leverage to convince my dad that I had really seen something but it was clear he didn't believe me. Months later my dad, older brother, my uncles and my older brother's dog went back up to the

cabin for duck hunting season. With lots of people there my older brother ended up sleeping in that back room with his dog. Since my father didn't believe my brother or I from the prior months, I'm sure he failed to mention the ghost experience I had had. Hours later, the men in their beds and my older brother settling into his bed in the back room with his trusty hunting dog, they began to fall asleep. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, my brother was awoken by the sound of his dog barking, standing near the doorway howling away at the figure of a man, just standing. Yelling and calling out to it just like I had, my brother awaited the figure to do something but just like before, it did nothing. Unlike before however,

this time when the spirit left, instead of disappearing into thin air it turned and walked into the main cabin leaving my brother confused and a bit shaken in the dark room. Upon morning's return he too questioned the men demanding to know why they had stood in the doorway just watching but yet again everyone was in denial. There hadn't been any of them. And finally, my dad believed the story. With now three accounts of the doorway spirit and a dog bark to confirm it, it seemed like we had a ghost in the cabin. To this day, neither of my brothers or I have slept out there again.

Whether it was my grandpa stopping by to check in, a distant relative admiring my dad's work to clean up that back room, or a spirit attached to one of the old artifacts, we may never know. While that room has been smudged and others have slept there with no morning spirit reports, I can assure you I will not be sleeping out there anytime soon. MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at michelin.ca. Find a Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadexperts.ca. To be continued... This whole story started about 10 years ago when I was a senior in high school. As a freshman, my best friend and I had made a plan to take a road trip across the country to Vegas, where we would gamble and celebrate our graduation from school. Despite several close calls with my math classes, I still managed to get the credits I needed to graduate with my class. It was something that I must admit I wasn't sure was going to happen. When I came to Glenn, my best friend since I was four and the other guy involved in the scheme, there was never

any doubt he'd make it through with the rest of us. He ended up graduating second in our class after all. Even though the plan had been in the works for four years, we had yet to okay the trip with our parents. We also had the logistical problem of neither one of us owning a car we felt could be trusted on a trip that long. Then, like a gift from the gods, my parents gave me a brand new convertible Mustang for a graduation present. The day my parents surprised me with the car, my dad happened to ask me what I had planned for the summer. Since we had yet to unveil our plan upon our folks, I saw this as the best opportunity to drop it on mine. After I laid out the whole deal to my dad, he stood silently for a moment with a look of deep concentration on his face. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, he said,

well, you two are about to go off to two different colleges and won't get to see each other for at least four years. I don't see why you can't have two weeks to celebrate and blow off some steam. Have a good time, but be careful. I was so excited I could barely say thank you, but I pulled it off in the end. When I called Glenn to give him the good news, he told me his mother had already okayed him to go on the trip. This really wasn't much of a shock considering his mom had given him anything he wanted since his dad had left them five years before. She gave him $500 that she called a graduation present, but we knew that she knew that he didn't have a dime to take on that trip with him. He was well aware that the moment he told her about the trip she would give him money, but he let her continue on with her graduation present

ruse to make her feel better about it. The Monday after the commencement ceremony, we packed up the car and headed out. Although we had two full weeks to enjoy ourselves, we wanted to get to Las Vegas as fast as possible. We had invested in a radar detector so it could be less likely to get pulled over for speeding and, believe me, we were speeding. Averaging around 100 miles per hour ensured us we got across the state in record time and this was our plan for the entire drive back and forth. We managed to make it to Las Vegas in less than seven hours but we were so tired when we got there we decided to crash out so we'd be fresh when we hit the casino. After eight or nine hours of sleep we hit the town. I'm not sure how long we managed to stay up for but at the end of a week-long binge of girls and gambling I felt as if I had been awake for a year.

By the end of that week we'd lost anything we had managed to win five times over and we were dead broke. I may have lost every cent I'd saved for the past four years but I'm confident I'll never have more fun in my life than I did that week in Vegas. Unfortunately Glenn managed to ruin all that fun with one dumb action. An action that would destroy our friendship forever. We had just about enough money left to pay for gas back so the morning after a 10-hour rest we loaded the car and made for home. I was sure I need at least a week just to recuperate from the trip so I was in a hurry to get back to Albuquerque. Halfway home we came across a guy hitchhiking. Obviously if I had been driving I wouldn't have stopped but Glenn thought he was going to be funny and he pulled over to let the guy in, or so I thought. He pulled the

car over despite my many protests. The hitchhiker began jogging toward the car. When he got about a foot from the back of the car, Glenn slammed on the gas and took off, blasting the guy with rocks and dirt. He'd done some sorry things to people before, but this was beyond funny as far as I was concerned and if it would have ended there we'd probably still be friends today but it didn't. Less than a mile down the road we realized the car was running on fumes so Glenn pulled into a gas station not far ahead. While he pumped the gas I went in and paid and while I was there picked up some snacks and drinks. On my way out I happened to notice someone running down the side of the road. He wasn't that far away when I realized it was the same hitchhiker Glenn had just sprayed with rocks.

He was still around 50 yards away from the parking lot when I pointed him out to Glenn. Apparently not caring if we had an encounter with a guy or not, Glenn continued to watch as he drew closer in the rearview mirror. He finally put the car in drive and began slowly pulling out of the gas station lot. I wasn't sure why he was driving so slow so I yelled at him to go ahead and stop taunting the guy. He was acting as if though he wanted the guy to reach us so he could continue to mess with him. The hitchhiker could obviously see us. I could hear him yelling in the direction of the car. When Glenn had circled the car around the pumps and was pulling from the lot

the hitchhiker was within spitting distance from us. Now I could hear what he was saying and he was definitely angry. Hearing this only proved to make Glenn laugh but the look on his face quickly changed to one of terror when he noticed the hitchhiker pulled a gun from the back of his pants and aimed it at us. I only heard, you sorry mother, before he started firing. The gunshots finally got Glenn to press the gas. We were out of sight of the gas station in a matter of seconds. To say I was mad would be an understatement. Not only had he got my car shot up, but we also ended up the same way. All just because Glenn thought it would be funny to antagonize a complete stranger. We made it home a few hours after that and I didn't talk to Glenn

the whole remainder of the drive. When I dropped him off at his place he attempted to make a joke out of the whole experience but I wasn't laughing. The incident had showed me how cruel he could be and I didn't want to have anything to do with anyone like that no matter how long we'd known one another. Once I'd make it back home and explain to my dad what had happened he was mad but he understood why I wanted to deal with the repairs myself and not get Glenn involved in any aspect of my life from that day forward. The repairs we handled and a few months later I went off to school. Glenn did make a few attempts to patch things up with me but each time he called I let it go to voicemail. I never bothered to call him back,

and we still haven't spoken all these years later. If there was anything I took away from this part of my life, I learned that people may never tell you the type of person they truly are, but they almost always will show their true face if you pay attention. It probably sounds petty that I would end such a long friendship over something so small but that incident showed me that even after all the years of being friends he had no respect for me or others for that matter. If he couldn't say sorry after all the carnage that he had created. I couldn't respect him. It's one of those things that has always been important to me and should be the basis of a good friendship. My hope is that he learned from this and has become a better man but

when it comes to people one thing I discovered is that they rarely change. My mom always told me that I was a restless soul, and if my life has shown me anything, she had me pegged. Since my 20th year of life, I've moved at least 10 times, and that's a conservative estimate. Ever since I can remember, I was foaming at the mouth to move away from my hometown. Things just got worse as I grew into my teens. Being exposed through television and movies to the bigger world outside made staying in my little world suffocating and that was before the internet. I can only imagine the misery for a teenager stuck in a small town America brimming over with hopes and dreams in this small world of the world wide web. The story I'm going to share with you occurred during one of those 10 plus moves and once you hear it I'm sure you'll understand why it stuck with me all of these years later. I'd been living in the capital for over two years and although I love my life here, this

was 1994 and despite the fact that jobs were on the rise because of the upcoming tech boom, the price of living and low number of places to live made finding a new place to live almost impossible. My current roommates had made the wise decision to kick me out. At the time my drinking was out of control and I did something that they couldn't look past so I had no other option than to move back to my hometown. It was the last thing I ever wanted to do but I wasn't made to live on the streets. When I got back to town I would be living with my parents in their house which

made it even more humiliating. My ego had to take a back seat to the safety of having a roof over my head so I rented a U-Haul and loaded up my few belongings and waved goodbye to my new home. The drive would take about four and a half hours and I was in no hurry to get where I was going so I took my time and kept to the speed limit. I stopped at a few places as I left town to say goodbye to a few people that I'd managed to and kept to the speed limit. I stopped at a few places as I left town to say goodbye to a few people that I'd managed to befriend in the time that I was there. My only hope was that someday, before I got too old, that I'd get back there at least one more time, at least a visit. The last stop was for one final goodbye to my girlfriend. We decided to not

try the whole long distance romance thing. It wouldn't be fair enough to either of us considering I didn't know if I'd ever see her again. After three hours at her place I finally pulled myself away and hit the highway. The majority of the journey for the next few hours was agonizingly boring and the few times I felt myself losing my grip on the road I'd stop and take a break. Even if it was just for a couple of minutes I got back on the road refreshed. Later that day I did spend the good part of an hour stuck in a traffic jam. Me dragging meant that I had not been paying close enough attention to the time and I ended

up catching the after work rush hour. Even though I'd spent the past few years in the big city, I'd been taking public transportation. I'd been out of touch with the daily commuter's grind just long enough to forget when it started and ended, but I guess it wasn't that bad. It broke up the monotony of the drive and kept my mind engaged. The slow-moving party of cars eventually began breaking up little by little until I was able to get back up to the speed limit again and move away from the few remaining cars still bunched together.

It still amazes me when most drivers are given the chance to break free from a mass of cars that they chose to stay bunched together like a group of sheep. I've always loved being the only car for miles with no one around me. This also has prevented me from wrecking into another car, so it seems to work for me so far. I see no reason to change it. Once I'd gotten away from the traffic jam, I was about 45 minutes away from my destination. The few cars I'd passed stayed to the right to let me go by them. This was until I came up upon a small group of three box trucks, not much larger than the U-Haul I was driving. Because of their sizes I was unable to see what was slowing them down but I assumed it had to be coming from a vehicle in front of them.

We were all spread out roughly 30 yards apart from each other in the right lane but I was closing fast and knew I needed to slow down so I did. At this point we'd gotten within three cars lengths from one another and out of nowhere the leader slammed on his brakes. The truck in front of me and myself had to make a quick decision. When a fully loaded box truck is doing 45 miles an hour and someone stops in front of him he has mere seconds to make a choice or everyone will end up dead. Now I'd always been talked or maybe I just decided one day that it's safer to pass a car on the outside if the road has a paved shoulder. I don't know if this is actually the proper way to avoid a wreck but this day it proved to be the

right one. The guy driving the truck in front of me chose to pass on the left and on any other day this would have been fine. There weren't any other cars in the left lane but there was a man. As I came around the front of the stop truck I saw what I think was the reason he stopped so quickly. When I passed I looked back to see some type of Japanese motorcycle laid over in the middle of the road and the driver crawling on his side for the left-hand shoulder. Unfortunately for him, he didn't make it. I wouldn't have time to comprehend what I was seeing before I witnessed the horror that stuck with me all of these years.

Just as I'd taken in the scene, the truck that had been in front of me mere moments before blew past the stopped one, running the crawling rider over in the process. The air was yanked from my lungs instantly and my jaw dropped into my lap. Everything had happened so fast it wasn't until I began hyperventilating that I fully grasped what had just happened. I continued on the shoulder for another half mile or so trying to determine if I should go back but it was obvious that after what I had seen I wouldn't be of any help to anyone. I took one more look in my rear view mirror to see the carnage. The two trucks sat still in the middle of the highway and no people were moving.

Saying a short prayer for all the poor men involved, I pulled onto the road and headed for my hometown, begging to God to remove that awful image from my mind the whole way there. When I finally pulled up to my parents' house, I was strangely happy to see it. I didn't tell them what had happened. They were over the moon to see me again and reliving it so soon was the last thing I wanted to do. We move forward 25 years to today and this is the first time I've told anyone other than my wife about that day. Although I've done my best to put it behind me, it still holds a prominent place in my subconscious mind. It shows up in my dreams from time to time, sometimes drastically different from

how it happened but usually as clear as the second I saw it. I've beat myself up occasionally now that I've grown up for not stopping to help but if I'm honest with myself I was still a kid and I wasn't mature enough to handle a situation like that yet. After all, what do you say to a guy that's just ran over another guy at 40 plus miles an hour? Sorry, dude. It just doesn't cut it. I'd like to preface this story by saying that in my youth I was not a good person. People's opinions had a strong effect on me. The neighborhood I grew up in was riddled with crime.

As a result, most of those surrounding me were criminals. Seeing the smooth cars they drove and clothes they wore made me believe breaking the law was a cool way to move up in the world. Most of my friends thought the same way. When they got involved in some bit of villainy I was right behind them. Not joining in their crimes didn't seem to be a choice. The few times my gut told me their schemes were a bad idea, their questioning of my manhood put me back in line. They knew how to push my buttons and exploit my low sense of confidence. Growing up without a father can often do that to a man and it took me a long time to learn how to overcome it but this story isn't about that. Throughout my younger life I spent a large

amount of time in some kind of jail or prison. It took a good 20 years to realize that path in life was a dead end. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a violent offender. Most of us weren't. My meaning is only to say that that kind of life gets you nowhere and that was just where I was when I heard one of the sickest stories I've ever heard. On one of the many stints at a prison in Texas, I was moved from the local county jail to serve the remainder of my three-year sentence. I had learned over time that when sharing a cell with another man, it was important to be respectful and friendly, but to remember that no one was truly your friend. My new cellie was a quiet, heavyset guy in his forties. When I was moved in, he pointed to the bottom bunk and I put my stuff down. I introduced myself and he just sort of grunted and nodded his head.

He appeared to be a quiet guy. That was fine with me. Being a reader, I hated sharing a cell with a guy that talked constantly. He didn't offer his name and I wasn't going to push. If he wanted to know me, he'd tell me. The first few days were quiet. We did our own things. Ciao and rec, usual prison stuff. On my third afternoon in, we were locked down after some gang members stabbed another. Expecting the usual silent treatment from my cellmate, I rolled onto my bunk and cracked open a book. Minding my own business and focusing on my book, I hadn't paid attention to what he was doing. I was shocked out of my own world

by a low, gravelly voice above me. It was my celly. He began by asking me what I was in for. The shock of hearing him talk after all this time made me forget momentarily. Oh, yes, sorry. Manufacturing. Meth and stuff. The usual for me. I knew he wanted to see my papers to verify, so I passed them up before he asked. Good to hear. If you were a

pedo, I'd have killed you. This wasn't a surprise to me. The usual attitude toward any guy that came in with any sort of child charges was kill on sight. Man, if I was some kid diddler, I'd deserve to die. He let out a low grunt in agreement, and I expected that to be all he had to say to me for God knows how long. But he was far from through. I've killed multiple men in my life, but I like killing pedos the most. I was surprised a little by this. A dude at Chow told me my first day there that my cellmate was inside for making meth too. So his talk about killing and talking so freely at that surprised me.

Guys usually avoid talking about that stuff. There was a snitch around every corner. Maybe he was testing me or thought I'd be too scared to tell. Regardless of the reason, he didn't hesitate. Being too curious to speak, I just listened as he told me the whole thing. Back in 72, I was hitching across Texas. My dad had moved in with his girlfriend to New Mexico. Since my mama had kicked me out once I got expelled from school, my daddy's was the only place I had to go. I ran into a dirty old beater every now and then, but not like the last one to pick me up. A long-haul trucker had just taken me as far as the New

Mexico side of the state line and I was hoping to get to my daddy's soon because I was running out of money. After not seeing anybody for a couple of miles I managed to get picked up by this old man in a Ford truck. He seemed like a regular type of old man, not the kind he turned out to be. We had driven about ten miles and he turned to me and mentioned that he could take me the rest of the way to Santa Fe. Being tired of walking, I was one happy fellow to hear that. Then he told me that I'd have to help him out, if you know what I mean. I was only sixteen at the time, so I was somewhat confused as to his meaning. That was until he began unzipping

his jeans. Then I caught on real quick. I had no intent on doing anything like that and I told him so. The look on his face made me angrier like he didn't believe me. I noticed he was pulling the truck to the side of the road and I thought he was going to let me out. Instead when we stopped he turned to me and insisted I could ride all the way to my daddy's if I just did this one thing. This time the tone of his voice was more desperate. Of course I was furious by now and I told him he could burn. When I turned to open the door to get out he grabbed me and tried to force my head down. There was no way I was going to let some man treat me like this.

So while I fought him off, I stabbed him with my buck knife until he quit fighting. Since I was sure no one had seen me stick him, I got out and pushed him over the passenger side I'd been on. I took his place behind the wheel and drove about a mile up the gravel road until I saw a big cliff I could push him off of. I took some work seeing as the old man had a good fifty or so pounds on me but I managed to get him over the cliff. His body fell around fifty feet and I seen his head smash against some rocks and if that stabbing didn't get him going, over that cliff sure did. I washed myself off into the little creek further down the hill. Considered taking the truck the rest of the way to Santa Fe, but I knew the law would be looking

for it if someone reported him missing. Seemed a shame to be leaving that nice little truck out there to rust, but I sure didn't want to get caught driving it. The walk back to the highway took a few hours. I managed to make it to my daddy's about a week later and that's why I stayed until I got locked up on a gun charge. I'm still not sure to this day if that story was true. Regardless if it was or not I made sure to watch my cellmate for the remaining time we bunked together. When a man does something so cold, you can't turn your back on him. Some small slight could be blown out of proportion and you could end up dead. A lot of years have passed since I heard that story. My cellie and I never discussed it and I've never repeated it until today.

As I said before I'm not sure if it ever really happened but as you get older maybe nots mean a lot less. Thinking that some family out there never saw their family member because of a murderous psychopath matters a lot more. In my younger years, before the divorce of my parents, we often spent our summer holidays taking road trips to various tourist spots across America. We of course hit all the usual places, the Disneys, the Grand Canyon, and even Hawaii once. The Hawaii one wouldn't qualify as being a road trip, but it only seemed right to include it anyway. Spending so much time on the highways and back roads means you're more than likely to have at least one memorable experience, if not more, but today, I will share one in particular so extreme it would prove to be the

undoing of our happy family. This specific summer I have in mind my dad wanted to change the regular routine up and do something a little different. At first, he wouldn't let on to what he had in mind, but once each of us had our own theory, he filled us in on the complete plan. He booked us into a dude ranch in Wyoming. Not yet a teenager, I loved the idea and my younger brother felt the same. However, when it came to my mom, she was much less enthusiastic, at least at first. She had no idea how to ride a horse or how to do anything related to it considering she'd grown up in Chicago, but the moment my dad reminded her that none of us did either and flashed her his charming smile,

any misgivings she had disappeared. Dad always knew how to bring my mom over to his way of thinking. She told us once that your dad is so charming he could sell ice to an Eskimo twice. I guess this meant that she was unable to hold her own ground against a man she found so handsome. This is why their separation just a few years later surprised me so much. We rejoined the story on the road to Wyoming. That morning we had left Phoenix bright and early and dad said we would make it to the ranch somewhere around dinner time the next day. The drive itself was normal until we got a flat tire someplace in the middle of Utah or Colorado. I don't remember which state we were in at the time. My brother and I had been in and out of sleep most of the ride and when you're 10 every state looks the same or at least it did for me. I do remember specifically that the time was about an

hour before sunset. I had just learned in Cub Scouts how to estimate time using the sun and your hands and I estimated it to be about a whole hand's width. So the moment dad realized he had the flat he pulled over onto the rocky shoulder and started to unload the jack and four-way he had in the back. We were on one of those old two-lane highways in the middle of nowhere and he had plenty of room to get out of the way of other cars. I guess the noise of the flat had roused my brother from his slumber and he was soon becoming his usual annoying self. In an attempt to give me and herself some relief, my mom suggested that he go outside and help my dad change the tire. This suggestion excited him of course. Being a seven year old he loved doing that kind of stuff

even though he wasn't really any help at all. Since I'd been spared the trouble of my little brother I was soon falling asleep again. The last thing I remember was the image of him kicking something at the barbed wire fence about 10 feet away from the car. When I awoke again, I was laying face down on the floorboard of the back seat and my chest and face was hurting a lot. Everything was ringing at first, but soon I began hearing my mom moaning. After I lifted myself from the floor, I saw that she was injured for some reason. There was bloody cuts all over her face and the windshield was busted into a big spider web shape. When she noticed me she reached over the back seat and asked me if I was okay. My chest was still hurting but as far as I knew I

was fine. I still wasn't sure what had happened at this point. That was until my mom told me to get out of the car and check on my dad. I agreed but I didn't know why I would need to. When I opened the heavy door I looked back and saw my dad sprawled out on the gravel covered shoulder. Other than a little dirt on his clothes and a bloody nose he looked like he was sleeping but he wasn't. I jumped out and went over to him. This is when I started to realize what had happened. The back of the station wagon was smashed in and moved a good ten yards. Not far away was a black Camaro smashed into one of the big fence poles holding the barbed wire, but the door was open and no one was inside. This is when I started taking things a little more serious. I kept shaking my dad but he wouldn't respond. My greatest fear was beginning to look like a reality. Soon however a couple of men ran up to me and said that the ambulance was on its

way and that they'd help my dad. If I wasn't already overwhelmed I heard my mom's screams behind me. Turning to look I saw her holding my brother in her arms, wailing. I didn't know then but he was dead and no matter what the doctors did they couldn't change this. The remainder of that day was a blur. The only things I can really recall was the ride to the hospital and my mom sitting with me as we waited to get the news about my brother and dad. Later that evening they notified us that my brother had passed. This news hit me harder than I think. My mom had known the second she saw him that he was gone but I couldn't stop the crushing feelings of guilt that I had for all those times I'd hit and yelled at him.

My dad did end up pulling through. He'd had a punctured lung and swelling on his brain but after a couple of emergency surgeries he was eventually able to make it back to 100% health again. However, when it came to his emotional health I think the loss of my brother changed him and a lot of that came from guilt. It wasn't until much later that I found out that he told my brother to go play because he didn't need any help. I didn't believe that he was being malicious towards him in any way but regardless of this he blamed himself for my brother's death for the rest of his life. My personal belief is that my mom knew what he had done and she blamed him too or maybe she blamed herself for sending him outside.

This was never said out loud as far as I know but it had to be something like this that would cause her to divorce him and leave me to live with him. It seemed after the wreck that every time she looked at me, it made her sad. Maybe I look too much like my dad and I reminded her of his unforgivable sin. I have no clue. This all happened back in 1982 after all. Since they both passed now, I guess all my theories and questions can never be addressed. Maybe that's for the best anyway.

Like they say, a wound can never heal if you keep poking at it. I'm not sure if that's really true. I'm probably not the right guy to ask about those things but from my experience talking about something painful can sometimes make you feel better. After all that's what I've been doing here haven't I? I had some free time today and thought I would share a story about a scary incident I experienced while on the road with my brother's band about 20 years ago.

Even though my brother and I shared the same parents, I inherited none of their prowess when it came to music. We both started lessons on the piano and guitar around the same age and my brother showed from the beginning that playing music came to him naturally. When it came to me, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get the hang of it. I continued with guitar all the way into high school but realized soon after that I was never going to get any better. About the same time my brother who was two years older than me got together with one of our friends and some guys from the next town over and formed a band. It wasn't long before they became one of the most popular rock bands in northern Florida and the time seemed right to take the show on the road.

The initial group of shows stuck to the southern part of the country, Alabama, Georgia, etc., all of the old confederate states. Since their style was often compared to Skinnerd and the Allmans, who were honestly two of their biggest influences, this plan seemed to be the most logical and financially sound. The mini tour of the south lasted for about six months until the decision to try booking a few gigs out west was made. Considering I was now the road manager, the task of booking these dates fell upon my shoulders. Still unsure of the reception we'd receive out there, I only booked a small handful of shows. If I remember correctly, it was no more than six. Surprisingly, the shows went far better than we could have ever hoped and at least for the first five, everything went off without a hitch. That would all end at

our last show in California. I'm not going to name the town or venue specifically because I don't want to get them a bad name and I still have to do business with these people. What happened wasn't their fault. At least not that I think or can prove. If I have picked up anything from managing bands for the last 22 years it's that you don't want to burn bridges with the clubs. They are the lifeblood of the touring band.

It'd be stupid to anger one of them over something like that. I suppose I should tell you what that actually was and how it came to be. We pulled into the town that afternoon but since we didn't play until that night, we did a little sightseeing and other touristy things to kill time. That evening we arrived at the club around 8 and loaded in our gear. Being the opening band we didn't get much of a sound check, not much more than time to tune before they opened the doors. It being a weekday there wasn't much hope that we would have much of an audience but to everyone's surprise including the club manager

the show sold out. Usually the opening band is who they are there to see but we ended up with a really good crowd. Gotta love the internet. I can't imagine how hard it was for the little bands back in the dark ages to get a national audience without it. The guys started just after 10 and they stole the show. After our set, we were all on cloud nine because of how well the tour had gone. We hung around and watched the headlining band play. Although I still think we stole the show that night they were pure professionals and gave us a picture of what a well-fitting and hard-working band could achieve. Once the show had ended and the crowd was starting to trickle out

I picked up our pay out from the manager and headed straight for the van to stash it. I had found a place the first day we set out to hide it and that was where I was headed when I ran into my worst nightmare. The area that we had parked was directly behind the club and despite this it was dark and quiet. I guess that's why I'd chosen it in the first place but it'd proven to be an expensive mistake. As I approached the passenger side door of the van I felt something, probably a gun, stick in my back and a deep calm voice tell me not to move or turn around. The second I heard him I knew why he was there and what he wanted. I did my best not to move at all but I was shaking so bad I thought he'd get mad

but he managed to stay calm the whole time. It seemed like an eternity before he spoke again. He told me not to turn around, just pass the money over my shoulder to him. This was the moment when I got the idea that there was more than one thief even though I never heard or saw another person except people in the distance walking around the front of the club. Doing what he told me to do I pushed the envelope over my right shoulder and felt it being pulled from my hand. For a brief moment I didn't want to let go but logic won out over greed and I did what I was told. At that moment I could swear I heard him say yes under his breath as if he was answering someone but like I said I never heard anyone else with us.

Once I assumed he was pleased with his booty he instructed me to stay where I was and count slowly to 200 before I moved. He made it clear that if I tried to turn around before then he would shoot me so I did what I was told and even added another hundred just to be safe. When I finally got up the courage to move he was long gone. I was furious. I felt like a wimp and thought of losing all that money made me steam. With my head down I walked back into the club and told the guys what had just happened. They were so cool that their only concern was that I was okay but other than just being robbed at gunpoint I was great. We headed to the front office and let the club manager in on the robbery. At first I think he thought I was pulling his leg but apparently my white paler was an indication

of my honesty. He called the police and when they arrived I told them what had occurred at the van. Of course I couldn't give them any description of what he looked like but I did tell them that I thought that there was another person with him. I still wish I could have given them more but I had nothing to offer the investigation. They told us not to hold any hope that we'd get our money back and gave us their cards before they left. The only positive to that night was that we still had the money from our merch sales and what was left from the prior dates. At least he didn't know where I'd hidden the rest or maybe he didn't care. Once we made it back home from the tour we

decided we'd do certain things different in the future. Unfortunately there didn't end up being a future for the band. A giant mess of reasons why it all fell apart can be blamed but it doesn't lessen the sadness of losing such a promising band. Then again that's the story of rock music. Many more great bands have and will be destroyed for the silliest of reasons. To this day I still have no idea how that guy knew I'd just been paid the chance of the club setting me up was considered but no decent club wants to get the reputation of being thieves the best and most probable theory is that he'd just been watching me the whole evening and

waited for his chance to pounce and I gave it to him. It's been almost 20 years since that night and I do business much different than I did then. There are chances I took then that I wouldn't dream of taking now and I do everything I can to be aware of my surroundings despite the fact that I have others around me now to help me. If there is anything I could recommend taking away from this experience, I guess it would be to be vigilant and aware of what others are doing around you. If you meet eyes with another person and they get nervous or look away, they're probably up to no good. No matter what your job or class, you can become a target for criminals. Please just pay attention to others and be careful.

My name is Mike and I'm here to share a story involving a very dangerous and scary situation I went through just the other night on my way to my girl's house. I'm not doing this to cause fear in other members of the sub. I only want to make you all aware of the dangers of driving alone at night, especially when no one else is around. Like I said at the time I had this encounter, I was on the road to my girlfriend's place about 20 miles from mine. Most of the area I had to drive through is heavily developed however there's a stretch of roughly five miles that is probably just as rough as it was when people settled in the area just after the civil war it doesn't really matter how long it's been this way I'm only attempting to convey

the idea that it's completely undeveloped to you I sometimes get too wrapped up in the history of the area and ramble on about it. I'm sorry about that and I promise I'll do my best to be brief as possible when giving you the facts of what led up to this occurrence. Regardless of the history of that road there are no business or houses along that stretch of road, mainly just open fields and woods. Not to mention at the time of night when I usually am going back and forth on the highway there are little if any cars on that particular stretch. It's usually a quiet and enjoyable part to drive on and the entire time I've traveled on it, which has to have been hundreds, I never imagined that

anything scary or violent could happen to me. Man was I wrong. That night I'd clocked out just after midnight and sent my girl a quick text to let her know I was on my way. The plan was to spend the night at her place so after a stop to get gas I hit the road. That late in the evening I didn't see many cars going my direction so I floored it in hopes to get to her house fast. However, just in a matter of minutes I came up behind two cars driving next to each other at a slow speed. I'm not sure what they were doing and I didn't care. I just wanted one of them to get out of my way so I could continue on my journey. In my haste I honked at the car ahead of me in the passing lane. I'm not an idiot, I didn't lean on it. I just gave them a sort of

beep to announce my presence. To my relief, the car sped up and moved over in front of the other car to allow me to pass. I was thankful to them for doing this, so I gave them a little kind wave. You know, the kind you give to a passing neighbor. Eager to get to my destination, I floored the gas again, but before I could even get 20 feet down the road the car behind me turned on his brights and blinded me. This made me mad but I flipped up my rear view mirror and tried to ignore it. If being blinded wasn't bad enough the driver crossed the line to dangerous. Out of nowhere I was rammed in the rear and almost lost control of my car. I realized then that I was in

big trouble. There didn't seem to be any way to get out of this other than to outrun them so I put the pedal all the way to the floor and prayed I could get away. Before I could gain enough speed I was rammed again, this time much harder. My head was thrusted forward and back by the collision. The pain came almost immediately. Thankfully I was able to pull away and leave the other car behind but I could still see them about 60 yards in the distance trying to catch me. This was the moment I was saved. Most people wouldn't look forward to being caught speeding but in the circumstances I was relieved. I'd just lost sight of the car in my mirror when everything was

lit up with blue and red colors. Overjoyed, I quickly pulled my car over and got out to greet the cop. He was a little nervous when I jumped out of the car but soon enough I was able to get him to understand what I was doing. When he shined his flashlight on the back of my car we would see the damage and it was bad. Of course, both of my taillights were busted and the rear clip was crumpled up like an accordion. I told them what had just happened and he had me follow him up the road to file a more in-depth report. He told me he'd do his best but the odds that they'd find the driver were low and that's what I figured when I made the report. I was just relieved to be alive and out of danger. My neck was still hurting so

my next stop was the emergency room. I called my girl from the waiting room and she almost had a heart attack when I told her what had happened. She soon met me there and she made me let her follow me on the drive to her house. Like I expected I had whiplash. All they could do was give me some prescriptions and tell me to come back if the pain got worse. Despite the sore neck by the time I finally made it back to her house I fell asleep instantly. Since then I've had my girlfriend stay over at my place and as far as I know the cops haven't caught the driver. Like I said I'm not telling you guys this story to scare you. I'm sharing it to remind

you to be careful on the road at night and always be mindful of the way you treat other drivers. Just because you don't intend to make them angry doesn't mean they won't get mad. I used to be really into street racing and often participated in the local scene. On the weekends we'd meet up in the parking lot of an abandoned or closed store then, around 10 or 11, I'll drive out to a secret location to race. Sometimes we would go to a nice straight piece of highway or an old deserted airport in the country. We would usually not know our final destination for the night until we were all on the highway out of town. Generally, we would get our instructions over the portable radios that we all kept in our cars.

There were a few of the older guys that had become the de facto leaders of our group, and they were the ones that got together to decide where we'd race that night. The plan was to not gather in the same place too often. We hoped this would keep the police on their toes and out of our hair. If I remember right, this happened on a Saturday night sometime on the summer vacation. It was a hopping night and everyone was enjoying the break from school. A friend of mine had just done some major mods to his S4 and was stoked to put it to the test. We'd chosen to race on a quiet place of highway at the edge of the county line. When my friend's turn came up, he was running against one of the older dude's civics that was known to be one of the fastest cars in our part of the state.

They were racing for a couple of hundred dollars. Not sure the exact amount but it was mainly for bragging rights and my friend thought his chances were good. They lined up about a fourth of a mile from the bridge that crossed over the highway that we all watched from. Off the line the older dude's Civic was faster and had a good two car length lead slowly, my friend's Audi started catching up and soon they were side-by-side on the road staring each other down. At that point, we're not sure what happened, but my friend's Audi seemed to have swerved towards the Civic once, but he was able to get control. Unfortunately he must have lost control again as he was unable to pull out of it and slammed into the side of the Civic. The Civic then was slammed into the left-hand side concrete wall but to our surprise my friend's Audi swerved back all the way across both lanes and slammed into the right-hand wall. Both cars slowly rolled to a stop and everything fell silent.

It seemed an eternity before somebody got the courage to run down to the cars and check on the drivers. At the speed they had been going, which was surely well over 100 miles per hour, no one had much hope for their survival. I knew everyone would be on me if I didn't go check my friends so I took a big deep breath and let it out and headed for his car. The walk to his car must have been the longest I've ever taken. In the distance, to my amazement, the dude in the Civic was moving and yelling something. I could see before I even made it to my friend's car that he wasn't moving. The front of it was crushed all the way to the driver's compartment and beyond. Upon approach, I couldn't even see his body at all, but once I got within a foot of the

car, the true horror of the situation hit me like a sledgehammer. His body was laying slumped over sideways in the seat with the seatbelt holding it in a somewhat upright position. The really awful part was that his head was gone. At first, I thought it was being blocked by his body, but sadly, I was wrong. When I was at touching distance from him, I could see that it had been completely severed. How, I'm still not sure,

but after a more intense search, the paramedics discovered it wedged in the passenger side floorboard. As soon as the reality of the horrid sight really hit me, I found myself overwhelmed. Lightheadedness came over me and I had to sit down on the cement wall to regain my composure. As I sat there, I watched as the driver of the Civic continued to yell about what I finally could tell was the pain in his leg. The crash had apparently caused the car to pin his leg between the dash and floorboard. Some of the others on the bridge continued to call me and ask about my friend but I couldn't bring myself to answer. They'd find out on their own eventually. The ambulances and police showed up soon after I sat down and began working on getting the guy in the Civic out.

The second they all saw my friend's condition, they moved on to the Civic. At first everybody tried to lie to the cops about what had happened, but I saw no point. So when they spoke to me, I told them exactly what I saw. The fireman did manage to get the guy in the Civic out, but he ended up losing his his leg anyway i couldn't bear to look when they removed my boy from the car thankfully most of the other racers were already gone when this happened the cops cut me loose soon after and when i got home i told my parents about what had happened they'd been worried about my participation in the scene for quite a while and they were very happy to hear when I told them I was never going to race again seeing my friend die in such a horrible way made it all look so silly I couldn't see the point of spending so much money on something so dangerous and soon after I sold my Supra to another guy I knew and put the money in my college stash. From time to time I see a friend

from the old days and they tell me about the death of another racer. Meanwhile I'll be graduating this fall with a degree. Most of those dudes haven't even gone to college and probably never will. I'm not saying I'm better because I have but I certainly feel safer with the choices I've made. I worked at Six Flags last spring and summer. Well, technically a freelance arts company leasing vending spots there. I was one of the oldest people hired, I was 18 at the time, attending college while most of my co-workers were in high school. I took photos in a sort of old-timey dress-up shop. It was honestly one of the most fun jobs I'd had. I was hired back in March 2018 and started to work in April, when the park was open on weekends only before the

official opening. I had been working for about a month and the park was open on weekends only before the official opening. I had been working for about a month and the park was now open during the week for less than 10 hours per day, so I was able to work all day, but was unfortunately the only one in the shop as college was on summer break and high school was still in session until mid-June. You can see where the story is going. I was alone all day during the week and had some co-workers on the weekends. I was so terribly alone during the day that I'd walk across the path to go see my other co-worker out of boredom. When I was outside of my shop during the day I began to notice a man hanging around my area. I had mainly seen him walk by very slowly staring at me. I presumed my shop the whole time.

I figured he was just shy, wanted a picture inside and was too afraid or socially awkward to ask for pricing. Deep down he gave me an uneasy feeling but I decided to ignore it because he was a customer in the park and was probably just very antisocial. I kept a smile and tried pulling in customers all day every day. One day I smiled and waved at him. That was probably my big mistake. He walked over briskly to stand in front of me and stare at me. I was creeped out. I was scared. He then asked about prices after days of walking by me and staring I breathed a sigh of relief and started going through my memorized sales pitch

After I finished he started to smile Not a normal smile, one that made my skin crawl He leaned in so close that I could smell his breath He asked how much it would be for him I was confused as I'd just gone through my price list so I stated that prices were set to non-negotiable unless you were an art company employee or a park employee. He shrugged and walked off. When I ran through my pitch a family had grown interested and wanted some pictures so I gladly took them into the shop and had a

wonderful time photographing them. While I was checking the family out and collecting payment I looked up and the man was back, leaning against the chain barrier in front of my shop. The family collected their things and walked to the chain. The man had to move to the side for me to open it for them. I immediately closed it behind them as he tried to push his way into the shop. I told him I was sorry but only paying customers could come in. He wasn't allowed in unless he was considering a purchase. He frowned and walked away. I waited a few minutes, tidied up the shop and stepped back outside. It was almost closing time so it was pointless but

I had to stand outside or else I'd get into trouble with my boss. I noticed him one last time that day. Across the way from me was a game and I saw him hiding behind it, peeking his head out and looking at me. I can't tell you how scared I was, I wanted to cry. He continued to do this for the entire week and I eventually began to ignore him which he did not like on that Friday as soon as the park opened he made a beeline towards me I was out front organizing outdoor props and I froze I hastily dropped what I was doing and went inside closing the chain behind me he paced back and forth in front of the chain muttering to himself and looking at me I was so terrified I was going to run to the phone and call security if he didn't leave

he suddenly lurched forward grabbing the chain in both of his hands i'll never forget this moment because my heart stopped and my blood ran cold his eyes were wild and that same menacing grin was back he started whispering about things that he wanted me to do to him. It was disgusting. He was talking about how he loved me and all of the things that he wanted to do to me. He wanted me to put him in a dress and said he wanted me to humiliate him in front of all the people in the park. I was slowly backing up to the wall in my shop as he started yelling and laughing. I told him to go away that I would call security if he didn't leave right away.

He got even more angry and said something that keeps me up at night even a year later. I'll be waiting for you when you get out. Meet me by the employee's exit on your way out or else. He gave me that most disgusting smile and walked away. I went behind the counter and started sobbing. I never imagined I'd have something like this happen to me and now that it had, all of my knowledge of what to do went out the window. I was crying like a little girl. I decided to tell my manager at the end of the day because I didn't want to be afraid of coming to work. When I told him, he was mortified that I hadn't told him sooner. He walked me to a secret exit to the employee parking lot so I wouldn't see the man.

The next morning, we went to the security office and I gave a description to all of the park's security of what he looked like and what he normally would wear. I went back to my shop with two co-workers and not even five minutes later here he came strolling over with an angry look on his face. I hadn't met him and he was furious. My co-worker noticed my panic as I ran and hid in the back. I hadn't told them of my situation yet and when I did, they told me they wouldn't leave me alone even after their shift was over, seeing as I was closer and they didn't want me to be left alone. I called security and told them what he was wearing so they updated information.

They posted a security officer outside of my shop. He seemed to disappear because of that. When the officer left to take care of something, he came back. Security realized that every time a clothed officer was around, he would hide, so they posted a plainclothes officer across from my shop posing as a customer. I was being used as bait ultimately, but I felt it was important to get him out of the park. Security eventually apprehended him later that day as he was headed towards my shop. They asked me for identification on him and I remember

breaking down and sobbing. The officer comforted me. Finally, this nightmare was over. He never physically threatened me or wielded a weapon but he was doing enough verbal threats to make me fear for my life. They banned him from all six flag parks around the country, revoked his membership status and took him into custody. Unfortunately as there was no violent act committed they had to let him go. As I drove home that night I saw him walking on the side of the road and I immediately sped away in fear that he would see me through the window and chase me. At least he couldn't get to me at work anymore. I found out a couple of weeks later from one of my security friends that he saw my stalker being arrested in a town over. I went and looked up arrest records for that town later in the day and saw that he had been arrested for indecent exposure, public endangerment, and public

intoxication. I know what happened to me is not as severe as other stories, but it was one of the most terrifying weeks of my life. You really don't think something like this will happen to you until it does. So please everybody, always notice who's around you at all times and be cautious of everyone. I used to live in a seaside town in California. Living there most of my life I had seen a lot of strange people but never really had a bad experience until the story I'm about to tell you. Perhaps it was because we were young that we never paid attention to the things around us. Things were probably happening but we never saw the horrors of our town. All I know is that we felt safe all the time, even though we shouldn't have.

I was 14 and both of my friends had been the same age. One of my friends Sarah had been my best friend for 4 years prior and is still my best friend today even after 14 long years. My other friend Alice had known me for only a year or two prior and was new to our shenanigans but fit in all the same. You see me and my best friend Sarah had been avid role players since the day that we had met. I remember all the recesses we spent in elementary school pretending the play structures were castles and that dragons resided in them. When we met Alice, we introduced her to this and she fell in love almost instantly. All of us had created a world where we could be anyone and do anything. As time had gone on, we began LARPing by dressing up in capes and costumes as the characters we had created. We even collected

sticks that we swung around and sword fought with, accidentally ending up a few times with bruises and scrapes. Roleplaying had become a large part of our friendship and even now we still partook in some of this, but as life goes, when you grow up, you rarely find the time to do things. Back then though, whenever we could, we would band together and go on our own adventure. But time was always limited unless we had a sleepover together at one of our houses. Most of the time we would all stay at my place. I think why we chose to be at my place so often was because of the freedom we had. My father wasn't a terrible father but he wasn't the most traditional parent either. He let me and my friends do whatever we chose to do

as long as we weren't getting ourselves into trouble. Because of this we would walk around at night a lot because it was quiet and the streets were mostly empty of people. Many of our roleplaying sessions mostly took place after dark for years without incident. Sure my friend's parents didn't like it when they realized we had been doing this but we had done it anyway. At the time we had specific places that we designated for perfect roleplaying session spots when we didn't feel like wandering. One of them had been the park near my apartment. This park when you walked into it had a hill with a walkway that led down into a sandy play area below. This play area had swings, a slide and some upright pipe looking things that looked like they could have been from Mario but blue.

But the one thing that I always thought was strange about this play area was the giant cement sculpture that was meant to be climbed on and inside of. The sculpture had holes all over the place, even ones on the bottom where you could climb up and underneath it. It kind of reminded me of one of those sculptures that Delia Dietz had in Beetlejuice. Lastly, beyond that playground, down a little hill, it flattened out into a field. This field was huge. It had a bathroom all the way at the other end opposite from the park and was big enough that it contained two baseball diamonds. Because of the baseball areas, there were cages above the pitcher's mound and the entire field

was fenced on one side. The path that led to the play area continued on the other side of this fence and the field was on the other. So as you could tell, this was a role player's perfect spot to go all out, especially with LARPing. And when it was at night when no one was around, you could do whatever you wanted without being looked at funny or being told not to flail giant sticks around. One crisp night, we three girls had a sleepover at my place. We decided that night was a great time to go out and adventure. We threw on our capes and grabbed our sticks that I kept near my front door and we headed out to that grand old park. It had already been dark at the time, the street lamps glowing with their eerie golden glow above as we had made our way to the park,

which had only been about two blocks away. When we reached the park, we made our way down the path while we talked excitedly about our game. I remembered as we approached the top of the hill that overlooked the play area. I had the feeling that we weren't alone, but we continued into the park anyway, making our way down the hill. A moment after I felt uneased though, we noticed we really weren't alone. Seeing the strange sculpture from above on the walkway, I had seen a dark silhouette of a man sitting inside. This person looked large

compared to us and they certainly weren't giving off good vibes, although they weren't doing anything. Because of this we decided to bypass the park and continue on through the giant grass field. At this point all three of us continued on talking about our game. We didn't think anything of it. This park often had teenagers messing around at night drinking or the random homeless person just trying to sleep or take a break. We had already made it about halfway across the large dark field when I had this nagging feeling to look behind us. I turned and saw the dark figure of the man we saw in the sculpture making his way down the small grassy hill onto the field.

I told them both what was happening and they too looked behind, seeing the man walking. At that point we all started to get uneasy. At this point I had just hoped that he happened to be walking in the same direction, that this guy just then decided to get going somewhere for some reason but nothing about it really felt that way, especially when the silhouette's pace began to quicken. With how rigid this man walked and the strides he took, he looked like he could have been on drugs and looking to possibly start trouble. He looked like he could start charging at us at any moment. Thoughts of this guy mugging us or assaulting us flooded my brain but I tried to reassure myself that this guy would be really stupid attacking three girls. Especially when they all had sticks the size of Gandalf's staff.

We kept walking in the direction of the bathroom and decided among ourselves that we would stop at a picnic table not too far from it. I honestly don't remember why we decided to do this. I think we were trying to pretend we didn't notice this guy and play it cool. Or maybe it was because we wanted to be ready and facing this guy if we wanted to start something. Either way, the bench was sitting directly under one of the street lights so we were in the direct view of anyone who could have been watching what might take place. Whatever it had to be, this had been our plan. We kept looking behind us and the man was getting closer and closer, gaining on us. This bench wasn't much

further but it had felt like we were walking across a huge expanse. Although it was dark, we could see him doing something with one of his hands. At the time I'm pretty sure I was afraid of him having a weapon but as he got closer I started to get the picture of what he might have been doing. At this we had sped up our pace a bit, rounded out one of the open gates on the fence and made it to the bench. We quickly swiveled and sat on the bench so we were facing this guy. He made it to the gate and stopped at the opening. Now illuminated by the streetlight we could see him. He was playing with himself. He was tall, thin and

was almost completely bald. This guy had a blank thousand mile stare and although this guy was touching himself his eyes flashed murderously. This guy was most definitely tweaked out than thinking about doing something bad. But to our relief, the crazy idiot stood there for a minute looking at us and then just disappeared back into the darkness towards the playground. We waited for a while until we saw the guy disappearing out of the park up the road and far away before we moved from the bench. I could tell all of us were uncomfortable and kind of freaked out about what had happened but we kept making jokes about it. We joked about how he was rolling dice very intensely because he wanted to play an RPG with us. Yeah, we were kind of messed

up kids. We were fully aware of what happened, we just didn't take it very seriously. After that though, we decided to go back to my place because none of us felt like it was worth sticking around after that. Plus the mood was utterly ruined. None of our parents heard about it after it happened though and things went on as normal. We started to go to that park less at night. It never really felt the same after that. We talked about it now and again, but over time we put it out of our minds. I remember for the longest time we normalized it, and in my mind it kind of set in as not being that big of a deal. Nothing happened, you know, but even then, and after all those jokes we made looking back on it, it's pretty messed up. How we took it, what the guy did, how stupid we were, but thank God we had those sticks or who knows what he would have done to us. It's scarier now than it was at the time it happened. I had this boss, who I'll call Mike, and he had come in to fill in for a few months while my

regular boss was on maternity leave. He was pretty amazing. He inspired me to work harder and even ended up promoting me. The two of us, and a third employee that I'll call James were always working shifts together. It was fun, just laughing and kicking butt because we all had a similar sense of humor and James and I were definitely the best employees there. After Mike's time to fill in was over, James and I were super bummed because he was seriously the best manager. He was fair and rewarded hard work and truly cared about employee satisfaction. Plus, he just made everything fun, even though we were working harder. We both looked up to Mike as a manager and as a human being.

We had the utmost respect for him and we vowed to keep in touch when we parted ways. Well, fast forward a year or so, James and I ended up dating. We kept in touch with Mike and he was so happy we ended up together because he thought we were both great people who deserved each other. We saw Mike a few more times and kept in touch over the years through social media. When James proposed and we started planning our wedding, we knew we wanted Mike to be in it. He was part of our trio back before james and i even knew we would be together and the three of us had a bond we asked him to read something during the ceremony and he accepted expressing how honored he felt well when it got

to the day of the wedding mike was nowhere to be seen We kept calling him as the ceremony was quickly approaching and finally James got a hold of him. Mike told him he couldn't get out of work and wouldn't be able to make it. We were both taken aback a little because the Mike we knew and looked up to would never bail like this and not even let us know. We figured there had to be some reasonable explanation and were pretty disappointed but the wedding had to go on. We had James' niece to do the reading even though Mike's name was printed in the program. Well, fast forward again a few more years. We'd only spoken to Mike a handful of times since the wedding, but he had also taken the time to write me a beautiful, lengthy recommendation letter in that time period.

There was no hard feelings about the wedding and James and I still shared the highest of opinions of our friend. Then Mike kind of disappeared off of social media and the next time we tried calling him his phone number had changed. James and I exchanged sentiments of concern and hoped he was doing okay but I didn't go much past that. One day James got a random call from a number that wasn't in his contact list. He answered it and it turned out to be Mike. So he put it on speakerphone so I could say hello too. We had our brief pleasantries, but then Mike got into the reason for his call. He wanted to know if he could stay with us for a day or two.

My initial reaction was, of course. But James shot me a sharp look so I added, Well, let's discuss it and we'll call you back. Before concluding the call, James inquired about what was going on. Mike said that he had been living with his father to care for him because he was terminally ill and that he couldn't stay there another night because he'd checked the camera footage in their home and seen his dad on tape standing over him with a knife while he slept. When the call was ended James said he thought something was off. I didn't really get why he'd instantly be that suspicious. I mean the story was insane and all but it was Mike. James said something like

we haven't heard from him in forever and now he's just calling us for a favor? He lives two hours away and we're the one he calls? Why wouldn't he be seeking the help of someone closer? I mean he has family in the area too. I agreed that it was all odd and it definitely conjured up a lot of questions including why there were even cameras inside their house but I still didn't like the idea of leaving Mike hanging if he was truly out of options. I told James we should call back and probe a little more. When we called back, James asked if it would be easier to have someone closer help him out and asked about family in the area. Mike gave a vague explanation of why everyone in his life had turned against him. Then, with the most mopey, disappointed voice,

he said it was okay if we couldn't help, that he understood what was going on and wouldn't bother us anymore. James and I looked at each other and said we'd call him right back. We quickly discussed that this was all very strange but that he had to be pretty desperate to contact us for help. We acknowledged that this little bit about understanding if we were unable to help was meant to manipulate us and we felt conflicted about everything but ultimately decided a few days couldn't hurt. We called him back, told him he could come and figured we'd give him the address and that would be that. But he said he no longer had a vehicle and would need to be picked up. We asked about catching an Uber and he said he had no money he could access at the moment which we didn't pry him on. It was getting late and it was a long drive to his location so we asked if

he had anywhere to stay for that night and we could make that trip in the morning. He said he'd just sleep on a park bench or something which again we knew was meant to manipulate us, but we didn't cave in on that one. We asked where we should pick him up the following day and he gave us his dad's address. Immediately after we got up the phone, we're like, what? What's been going on with Mike that has ostracized him from all his friends and family and caused him to lose his car. He's been making four times our salary when we all first met, had a brand new car and now he didn't even have money for an Uber? We went and picked him up the next day and I got out and ran up and gave him a hug. He seemed oddly unresponsive to my affection so I just shrugged

it off and showed him to the front passenger seat where I'd been sitting. He was super tall so I let him sit up there and I hopped in the back. When we got back to our house we showed him to our guest room and he put his things down and then immediately asked if we could take him to the grocery store. James says he was done driving for the day so I said I'd take him but commented that I thought he didn't have any money on him. He told me that he had food stamps which there's no way he would have qualified for this with his old job so I knew something was up but I wasn't going to dig into the personal details of his finances so I just logged it in my mind and kept my mouth shut. You might be thinking it just sounds like

someone who fell in hard times and that was basically Mike's story as well but it was just very vague in important areas and full of story after story about people that seemed determined to destroy him for no known reason whatsoever. One or two bad eggs is believable but no one is the innocent victim in every scenario. He was telling us that he had no idea why his life had fallen apart and why those close to him seemed to turn on him out of nowhere. Or why so many people were out to get him without seeming to have any motivation. Two nights turned into a week and finally James asked Mike what his plan was. Mike acted hurt and said that he would be gone by the morning. We told him he didn't need to leave immediately but we'd like to have some kind of idea what his plan was going forward.

That night in bed James and I discussed it and decided we'd tell Mike that he could stay for as long as he needed if he wanted to help out around the house and keep his room relatively clean because it contained several antique items of James's mother's. We also were going to ask him to help me with some entrepreneurial decisions as Mike had claimed to have been a totally self-made successful entrepreneur before his streak of bad luck, series of unfortunate events, and I had recently been laid off. We presented our offer the next day and Mike excitedly accepted. We thought it was going to be a rewarding trade-off for all parties. Now, this isn't a story about my marriage, so I'm not going to go too far into the wealth of problems James and I had, but a little info will be necessary. James was

highly critical of me and often talked down to me and seemed to have nothing but negative opinions. I wasn't perfect but I wanted to be loved and work my butt off for James's approval. I was constantly trying to make him happy but no matter what I did I would fail in his eyes. After a few weeks Mike clearly started to see the cracks in the marriage despite the fact that James toned it down in Mike's presence. Trying to be a good wife, I acted like all was fine in front of Mike and never mentioned any dissatisfaction in my marriage. Mike and I started to spend a lot of time alone in our entrepreneurial pursuits. He was supposed to be teaching me the tricks of

the trade within several avenues of making money but we kept coming out with little success. He had excuses and explanations for why his wisdom didn't seem to be progressing us forward at all but he was someone I greatly looked up to as a professional and a friend so I just believed that it would all pay off soon, like he said. After living together for weeks, enough talking among all of us had been done to start noticing weird contradictions to many of the things Mike had told us, but he always worded things in a way that left a slight amount of room for doubt if you were to question any of it. There was never a way to straight up catch him in a lie. Mike also wasn't fulfilling his end of our deal at home. He kept saying he'd take his turn to do the dishes and such but

probably only did it once or twice and he completely trashed the guest room. Not only was there garbage everywhere but he'd bring in food and drinks and they'd be lost in the sea of clothes and trash and we could smell things rotting. There was a melting tub of ice cream sitting on the bedside table for weeks. I didn't care as much as James did, and I suggested we just remove his mom's things from the room, and I did agree that it was disrespectful. Meanwhile, things were getting more and more icy with James and I, and one day when I was out with Mike on a job, I broke down in tears about how much I was hurting about how James treated me. Mike offered words of

comfort and reluctantly admitted that he picked up on how mean James could be to me and said he was very sorry and that I didn't deserve it. Mike having been possibly the only witness I ever had to what I had been going through in my marriage, this was amazingly validating. Mike agreed that it was incredibly unjustified, but made me promise not to tell James that he'd said anything because he didn't want to appear like he was taking sides. The next day, Mike once again volunteered to take a turn doing the dishes, so I didn't do them. I hate doing dishes and happily left them for Mike when he assured me that he'd handled it. Well, Mike got a call informing him that his dad didn't have long to live so he wanted to go see him. James didn't seem at all interested in helping

so I volunteered to take him in to stay for moral support and we headed out. On the way to see his dad Mike started telling me his dad has dementia and makes up weird things so he advised me not to take anything to heart. He cited a few examples of things he previously said and they were all more like accusations. One of them being that Mike had stolen all the money in his savings. I thought it was pretty odd but couldn't really reconcile the vast difference between the Mike I had met 8 years before and someone who could rob his dying father. While we were visiting his dad I didn't say much as I didn't want to insert myself into a private family moment. But I kept noticing things that were weird.

Like that his dad was fully conscious and talkative and didn't seem like a dying man at all. He even asked us to get him Burger King in the middle of it all. I kept trying to justify things in my head like who am I to say a dying man can't want a final meal at Burger King. A few hours in, James called, irate that I had left again without doing the dishes that Mike promised to do. He chewed me out and threatened divorce, which was always his go-to to try to whip me into shape, and having the recent affirmation from Mike that I wasn't the only one who saw James' emotional abuse, I said, fine, divorce won't be thrown in my face anymore so divorce it is. Back in Mike's dad's room his dad was yelling about how his will and money and such and Mike looked at me in a way to signal that the dementia was talking.

I had started to really question what happened with his dad and if he was really dying at all but it wasn't something I could really handle investigating at the moment given that I'd just separated from my husband. When we left the hospital Mike's dad was still alive and eating candy bars. I had nowhere else to go so I went back home and slept upstairs on the couch. I didn't speak to James for two whole days and then Mike said that he talked to his mom and I could stay there for a week. I wondered why his mom wasn't the one helping him if they were in contact and on good terms, but I just accepted the offer. I couldn't take being at that house anymore. Mike said that he was going to go with me and stay

there too, which I thought looked really bad, but he said he spoke to James and that he understood and was fine with it. I spent the entire week crying and talking to Mike about how I felt and he even woke up in the middle of the night with me if I woke up and started spiraling downhill. He made no advances on me or anything of the sort. After the week I went to stay with my parents and Mike went back to stay with James. I eventually saw them both when I'd come over to get things and in talking with James he was very much ready for Mike to leave. They barely seemed to talk and did not seem on good terms whatsoever. One night I got the weirdest impulse to ask James if Mike ever

said anything about me that made him promise not to tell me. James hesitated for a second but said yes. Through a series of questions we inched through both of our experiences with Mike. He had been playing into our rapidly declining marriage and using everything he observed against us. He had been going out and teaching me things to make money and he did the same thing he did as my boss all those years before, told me my strengths and complimented my ability to catch on to things quickly. We didn't have much success, but it was very obviously not on account of me. However, he was going back and feeding into James' terrible opinion of me and claiming we weren't making any money because I was so dense and hard to teach. Mike would also comment on the very

things he told me were unacceptable that James did, except he'd tell James he doesn't know how he lives with someone like me and that he'd go insane. He was carefully and strategically forcing our marriage to fall apart by exacerbating our personal fears and insecurities and systematically validating and encouraging our resentment for one another. He did it in such a way that neither of us doubted his sincerity for a moment until I finally got a weird feeling and decided to ask that night and even then I didn't really anticipate finding out that he'd been two-faced and manipulative to that extreme. James kicked him out that night and neither of us had talked to him again, as far as I know. I haven't spoken to James in one and a half

years. I proceeded with the divorce despite this, because even though Mike was incredibly insincere, he caused me to get enough distance from James that I was able to see I deserved so much better. Last I heard about Mike was from his mom. He called me to see why that he had been asked to abruptly leave James' house. I told her what he'd done and she didn't seem surprised. I asked if she was aware of any mental problems he may have and she said she didn't want to betray her son by giving details but that he isn't right in the head. I asked about several of the traumatic events Mike had claimed to be the victim of and she said there has never been evidence that any of it really happened. I don't know why he actively

initiated the final downfall of my marriage because I've never felt it was an attempt to be with me. I don't get what his motivations or gain would have been. Mike's mom texted me a few days after he left James' house to tell me that he had been admitted into a psychiatric facility and wouldn't be out for a long time. This happened six or so years ago when I was 16 years old. I didn't even realize how unnerving this all was until recently. When I was 15 to 16 years old, I went through a phase where I would constantly get hair extensions put in. I had a favorite salon that I always went to. The two ladies were lovely and would always

compliment me on my appearance. Stuff like, you're so pretty girl, do you have a boyfriend? I cannot believe you're only 15. In which I felt absolutely flattered. However, after my sixth or seventh appointment, they started asking me more about why I was single and if I was interested in having a boyfriend and I would always reply with the whole, yeah, when the right one comes along, spiel. During an appointment, they started chatting about me being single, again. This time one of the ladies started talking about her brother. She said that he lives in Africa but he would absolutely love me and that I should meet him one day. I asked her how old he was and she said he was in his early 20s. I was 15. Due to the age gap and the fact that my older brother would have killed me for even

talking to a guy in the year above me, I politely told her that I was not interested in meeting her brother but thanks for the offer. She got visibly upset and said, why? Come on, he'll look after you. Let him take you back to Africa and we'll make you the African queen. I just shook it off because they were always so nice and I just assumed that they were joking around. I remember telling a few friends about it and having a laugh. They said I should have taken the offer. It was soon forgotten. Fast forward two years and I was around 17 years old at this point and had just gotten my driver's license. It had been a while since I had hair extensions put in and I thought that I would treat myself to change up my look and of

course see my old stylist for a catch-up. I went to the salon. They went smoothly. I went from short hair to long hair in a matter of two hours and I was on my way. Before I left one of the ladies asked if I wanted to come back tomorrow to try out their new hair oil serum for free. So I was like yes, nothing is free in this life. Sadly I was like a moth to a bright light. I went in the next day, super keen for this oil because my real hair was super damaged. When I arrived there was a man in the salon too. I assumed it was their friend. I didn't think too much about it and sat down to get my free serum. The whole time this man was just staring at me and when I say staring, I mean staring. He did not say a word the entire time but just stared and did a strange giggle

every time I said something. His vibes were not sitting well with me. After they finished I just wanted to leave so I gathered up my things, said thank you very much, good day ladies and sir. One of them stopped me on my way out and said, this is my brother I was telling you about. Oh, let him walk you to your car. Unfortunately my car was parked literally 10 minutes away and I did not want this stranger walking with me for 10 minutes, so I politely declined. They kept insisting in which I kept declining. I said no, no, no, no, no, no, no thank you. I do not need nor want your brother to walk me to my car, thank you for offering, and for free oil, bye. I left the salon and started walking. However, I was not alone. The brother was walking two

meters behind me, and where the salon was located was practically like an alleyway leading into a car park leading into back streets. I turned around and told him again that I really did not need him to walk me to my car. I was very capable. Thank you. Goodbye. His reply was short and to the point. No, I come with you. Um, no worries. So I walked briskly all the way to where my car was and not a word was said. He just walked two meters behind me. Sometimes he caught up and would walk next to me and this went on for ten minutes. I felt so terribly awkward and uncomfortable and scared as it was getting dark and I could not see anyone else. When I was near my car I had enough of this grown man, so I turned around and said,

I do not need you to follow me anymore. Thank you for walking with me. My car is in the car park. Goodbye. He finally started talking. Where's your boyfriend? And me, being an incredibly smart woman at age 17, said, I don't have a boyfriend. Dumb. What he said and did next I will never forget. There was an elevator right where we were standing that went to the upper level car park. He summoned the elevator which I thought was strange. When it reached us he looked me

straight in the eye and said, you need to come home with me or I will make you my African queen and grabbed my arm and started to drag me into the elevator. Obviously I started screaming and fight mode kicked in. He was a lot stronger than me as he was a male in his late 20s and I was the small 17 year old with a fresh weave but boy you best believe your girl can scream. My heart was in my throat. It felt like I was in a movie and I genuinely started bracing for assault in this elevator. An amazing gentleman who must have been in the car park somewhere heard me and ran over which made the salon lady's brother let go of me and absolutely legged it ran away very quickly thank you to the kind man who saved me that day i did not know what would have happened in that elevator and to the salon

ladies and their brother for the thousandth time thank you but no i did not want to be the african queen African Queen. So this story takes place in Fayetteville, North Carolina near Fort Bragg, North Carolina where I went to college for four years. Anyone who is familiar with the area knows that Fayetteville has a large population of homeless vets near the base, also known locally as Fayette-Nam. I had just turned 20 years old and had moved out of the house for college over two hours away. I had previously worked at a nursing home for two years, so I had a special place in my heart for the struggling elderly. My roommate and I had moved into a little apartment near the college and bought a rinky-dink washer and dryer set off Craigslist. Well, the washer didn't last a week until it went out and we had

to start using a laundromat. My roommate was busy with homework so I offered to do his laundry for him if he would do mine next week and he agreed. So I grabbed a bag with laundry accessories, my phone, school books, about $15.25, and our clothes in a dirty hamper and left. The layout of the laundromat was, at the front of the store there were two rows of washers and then two rows of dryers near the back, then dryers on the walls on the left-hand side near the front. There were two tables kitty-cornered to each other, one at the front left-hand side, one at the back right-hand side, then chairs lining the left of the walls. At the laundromat I threw all of our laundry into a machine and pulled out one of my books for school to start studying. I was sitting at the table closest to the exit towards the front. Out of the corner of my eye a woman with a child sitting down on the chairs to

the left and I see an elderly man with a military hat standing in the middle aisle getting frustrated with the machine. It was really hard to watch and I felt obligated to help him. I grabbed my bag with all my laundry stuff to come to his aid and asked him if he would care for some help with a washer. He said yes and I looked at his washer and he had no soap and was missing a quarter in the slots. As I got closer I could smell his very potent stench of body odor coming from his laundry. I offered him a Tide Pod and gave him a quarter. He thanked me then walked back over to the front tables. I pick up my book to start reading and he catches the corner of my eye again. He was up my book to start reading and he catches the

corner of my eye again. He was taking all of his clothes off and putting them in the dryer. He was now in only a white undershirt tank top and his shorts. At this point I am realizing that this man is indeed homeless and might have a few screws loose so I should be careful. I watch him walk to the other table near the back of the store, then walks towards my table with a big trash bag and sits down on the other side of the table. I smile at him and he smiles back, showing that most of his teeth were missing and that his canines were very decayed. He starts small talk with me until there was an awkward silence. I could tell he was really lonely and wanted to talk so yet again I feel so bad for him I try to strike up a conversation. I asked him about his

military hat and he got a flash of pride in his eyes and tells me that he was a veteran that fought in Vietnam and starts to tell me about all the things he used to do for the military. When he was finished telling me I told him that my stepdad was a Korean vet and I had a lot of respect for those who served and thanked him for his service. He asked me how my stepdad was and I told him he died from cancer when I was younger but I loved him very much. He looked me dead in the eye and tells me that he was sorry about my father but I could call him daddy anytime. Then puts his hat on me. I start freaking out thinking this man has lice so I took it off relatively calmly and handed

back to him. I wasn't sure if he was trying to be funny or not but I told him that he was making me very uncomfortable and I wanted to be left alone to my studies. He nodded and took his bag over to the other table. A few minutes passed and the lady and her kids that were sitting to the left leave and just like clockwork he comes over to sit with me again, this time without his bag. He came over and apologized to me and explained that he didn't mean to be rude and gave me a bag of candy. I try to decline it, telling him that I have a dairy allergy. I do, but he refuses and puts it inside my bag of soaps. I say thank you and he nods and sits back down. I try to ignore him and he started to make these noises like he's in pain to get my

attention. Like he was having a fibromyalgia flare up or something. I ask him if he was okay and he said, yeah I'm just getting old. I giggle when he tells me, I'm sorry but I have to tell you, you have the most beautiful red hair I've ever seen. You remind me of my girlfriend. I ask him to hold on and I switch my clothes over to the dryer. So I ask him about his girlfriend and when I return, he tells me that she died of a heroin overdose two months ago. I tell him I'm sorry. He then asks if I would be his girlfriend and without a second thought, I then try and convince him that I am underage and that would be highly inappropriate.

I'm 4'11 and about 100 pounds so I figured it would have been believable. He then tells me that he doesn't care and he can keep a secret and then touches my hand that's on the table where he sat across from me. Shivers went up my spine and I told him, I'm sorry sir but no I have a boyfriend and pulled my hand away to text my roommate to come help me at this exact moment. At this point his gaze seems rather predatory and my heart is beating out of my chest. I put my book down inside my bag and start gathering things to get out. I am trying to be slow enough not to alarm him or provoke unwanted behavior. I was wearing a tank top and sweatpants at the time and he then comments that he can see my cleavage and that they look like nice breasts and he wished

to suck on them. I stopped acknowledging him and threw my bag into the bottom of the hamper, started walking to the dryer where my clothes were, still sopping wet, and started shoveling them as fast as I could into the hamper. All during this time he is telling me that he would take me to a hotel and do all these horribly graphic things to me if he had the money, and that he had sixty years of experience in pleasuring women. I still am trying to ignore him and have almost gotten all of my clothes. He then either picks up the underwear that had fallen on the floor in my scramble or had taken them from the hamper while I wasn't paying attention. The bright blue thong catches my eye then I look at him. I look him dead in the eye as he flicks his tongue through the

space of his missing front teeth like a snake. He starts bringing my underwear to his face which I snatch so fast it startles him. He starts hightailing it to his bag to the back of the mat and I panic and head to the door with all my belongings. I have never seen an old man run so fast. He grabs a bag and runs towards me asking for a ride to a nearby town and if I would wait for him. He grabs my shoulder in my struggle to open the door and then I scream, loud, and I have some pipes on me. He freezes. I make it out the door and then my car without hearing him behind me. My guess was that he was looking around the parking lot and laundromat making sure no one was around. I'm not sure if I wasn't paying attention. I threw my laundry into the

back seat and then he starts walking out to my car. He arrives at it just as I was getting in and locking my doors, asking for a ride again, pulling on my door handles, begging and crying. I leave having a total panic attack. I get home and wake up my roommate and just start bawling my eyes out. I tell him everything that happened and made him promise me that he would go with me next time. I am not sure why I didn't just leave without the laundry then come back with my roommate. I'm not sure why I did a lot of things that led to it. I guess it's hard to have a clear head in stressful situations. All I know is that I'm so glad that I made it out and avoided that Vietnam vet.

This story happened a year ago when I was 15 and on a school trip in San Francisco. At the time I was very immature on a school trip in San Francisco. At the time I was very immature. Not in the sense you'd normally think, but in the sense that I didn't really know how the world worked and how scary it could be. I attribute this story and a few other scary things that happened in the past year to me growing up and realizing how the world really works. I was rooming with two other girls in my room, both who were a year older than me, so I didn't really know them well. The way our trip worked, so to say, was that breakfast in the hotel was between 7 to 8, but the chaperones on the trip wouldn't wake us up, so if we wanted to have time to get ready and eat before we left to explore the city for the day, we had to do it on

our own. This meant that in the morning, me and the people in my room didn't see the chaperones till we all went down for breakfast, usually around 7.45 since we all took a long time to get ready. However, this day was different. We were tired of arriving late and having to eat quickly so we woke up a bit early to go down for breakfast right when it opened. We ate breakfast with pretty much the rest of the kids on my trip and all headed to the elevator together. This was a mixed boys and girls trip and my twin brother also happened to be on the trip so the people in the elevator was him and his friends, me, the girls from my room and a few

of their friends. The elevator door was almost closed when two Indian men stuck their hand through the door and stepped inside, squeezing themselves into an already packed elevator. They looked young, maybe 19 or 20. Eventually we arrived at our floor and all got off. So did the men. The way the hotel rooms and hallways were situated was essentially just a square. You could go any way around the floor and eventually make it back to the elevator if you turned left and right three times. The people on my trip went right and the men went left.

Eventually my brother and his friends trickled off into their rooms and it was just me and one of the girls on my trip. The other one had went into one of the boys rooms. We were right at our rooms when we encountered the men again. At first we didn't notice anything wrong. They were probably just trying to find their room. I turned away from them and tried to find my room key in my wallet. Now at this point my immature brain didn't notice anything wrong but my roommate did. I could see the panic in her eyes. As I turned to look at the men I realized they weren't looking for a room.

They were looking for us. My heart began to race and we panicked. Each fumbling for our room cards to get into our room as quick as possible. But they were moving towards us too quickly. We were standing there, pressed against our door as these two men stepped closer to us and got within half of a foot of our faces. Their English wasn't the best so they slowly asked us what we were doing. I couldn't speak. I didn't know what to do in this situation so my roommate spoke up. She tried her best to not let them know that this was our room but

it was obvious at this point. She stuttered something about trying to get into a friend's room but these men clearly weren't there to know what we were doing. I could tell that they were there for something more sinister. One of the men continued to stare at me and eye me up and down while the other got really close to my roommate and asked for her number. She stood up tall and quickly said, no, I'm sorry, you can't. But her voice trailed off as her confidence wore off. At last I spoke explaining to them that they were underage and that we were on a school trip, that we couldn't. They didn't take no for an answer. At that point I slowly started to pull my room key from my wallet. Luckily my friend pushed the card back into my wallet and made me

push my hand holding my wallet behind my back. At the time I was confused why she didn't let me let us go into our room but now I realized she had more intuition about these men than I did. She knew that if we opened our room door with them right there they'd likely force themselves in there with us and who knows what would happen. Eventually they backed off enough where we felt we could escape from them. She grabbed my wrists and pulled me along the hallway as we sprinted towards the elevator. Along the way we ran into my brother and one of his friends. We quickly explained to them what happened and they sprinted with us to the elevators. Once we were there, quickly pressing the elevator buttons to get downstairs where our chaperones

were we encountered the men again. I clutched onto my brother's arms and my roommate did the same with my brother's friend's arm. They just stood on the other side of the hallway, staring at us and quickly walking towards us. It looked like they were pretending to be just normal hotel patrons in front of the boys, but we knew that they weren't just normal patrons. They were creepy and we weren't risking it. Finally, the elevator opened and I don't think I've ever clicked the close door button so fast. Right as the men got to the elevators the door closed, thank god. We thought our ordeal was over, but it wasn't. There were multiple elevators in the hotel.

My brother, his friend, and my roommate and me had just gotten to the breakfast hall where most of our group and chaperones were when we realized that men were there too. They had followed us. They started off staying across the room from us but were getting closer. We left the room and went back up to our rooms. Once there, my roommate and I were panicking. They knew where our room was. They knew our floor. They could find us at any time and we didn't know what they would do. Our panic was cut short when the phone in our room rang. At this hotel you could call other people's rooms and we thought it was from one of the boys rooms playing a joke on us. We were wrong. When we picked up the phone it was just heavy breathing and quiet laughing. We hung up after 20 minutes. I called my brother and his friend and asked them to meet us outside our room. They walked us to the elevators and back

downstairs. On the way, we told them about the phone call. My brother's friend took responsibility for it. My roommate believed him, but I didn't. I knew they wouldn't freak us out like that. They were just trying to calm us down. Once downstairs again, still shaking, we told one of our chaperones about the two other men and they freaked out. We told the front desk about the men but since we didn't know what room they were in or their names they told us they couldn't do anything about it. They tried to reassure us that there was a group staying there that were probably a part of and that they were probably leaving in a few days. Unfortunately it didn't calm us down.

I'm a girl and I'm not good with talking with people and in high school it was even worse. This is important even though I was a sophomore at the time. I had a free last period. My antisocialness was pretty bad. I'd hide out in the library during lunch unless it was odd days and my friends would catch me and made me socialize. The first time I met him it was one such a time. They brought me over to their big group and a guy I didn't recognize was there. Let me tell you, dumb 15 year old me even got the nope vibes from this guy. My creeper was named Craig. First thing off about him was his hair. It was long, blonde and beyond straight, like unnaturally so, almost wig worthy. It was long, blonde, and beyond straight, like unnaturally so, almost wig-worthy. It was just a weird curtain of golden hair which hung around his pale face. Secondly, his eyes, bright

blue and beady, you could feel them looking at you, and they always stayed the same, looking so cold and glassy. I had to sit next to him because it was the only space available. He seemed polite and I was always taught not to judge a book by its cover. So I tried my best to ease the vibes I got from him mainly because everyone seemed to think he was a great guy. What a bunch of idiots they were. After the first lunch I didn't think much of him. I was dumb, naive and frankly couldn't care that every lunch he happened to sit by me. I decided one day, because there was a breakup in the group, that I was going to sit with the girls consoling my friend Jessica. We were in the hallway right outside the cafeteria, which sometimes kids ate

their food at. They had a stick out on either side where doors used to be when it was a bomb shelter before it was converted into a school. A lot of kids used to use their phones there to hide from teachers. We sat right behind one of the stickouts, Jessica sitting in the center, me resting against the stickout doing math homework. The bell had just rang and I went to pick up my bag only to turn around and see Craig, standing there, less than a foot in front of me. He has a blank stare and small smile on his face. I oddly say hi and pull my bag straps over my shoulder. He doesn't say anything and just stares. I sigh, just waiting for him to ask where my friends went so I could nope out of there. Without saying or even blinking, he suddenly steps closer. I step back, swallowing and looking around for any help.

Of course, everyone is rushing off to class, so there I am, alone with Craig. He doesn't say anything, doesn't blink, and I'm staring up at him. He was a grade older than I was, so though I was tall for a girl, it really didn't help me there. I feel his hand skirt around the edge of my shirt and I jump into flight mode, racing past him quicker than I have ran before. From then on, I try not to sit by him, get to the odd lunches earlier so I could pick a seat and get sat next to by my actual friends. He started standing behind my chair, resting his soul patch adorning chin on the top of my head

and letting his slender man long arms hang down and touch my hips. Sometimes when lunch would end, he'd squeeze me, hugging me right below my breasts while I died inside. My friends thought it was cute and that I was blushing because I liked him. I started hanging out with Jessica and the hallway group more often. The wall thing happened again but this time he had his arm out blocking me running by him because I was stuck between the stick out and him. He had curled his fingers through my hair and was murmuring some stuff I couldn't understand. It was a full two minutes of him going from touching my hair to rubbing my hip all the while I was having a panic attack.

Then the late bell rang. I ran and hid in the downstairs bathroom for a good 20 minutes. I was happy to go to ISS. I should add that I had been wearing long sleeves, baggy clothes, and even turtlenecks after the first incident, but I also lived in New Mexico, so I didn't need layers. And by now, I had told my friends about what Craig was doing and they had tried to stop us from having contact as much, walking me to class after lunch blocking him at the lunch table. I had even gone as far as to report it to a counselor who basically was my

best friend. She was angry about the whole situation and the fact that she couldn't do anything about it because they had the three strikes rule. Craig found a way around this. Like I mentioned before, I had a free period and I hid out in the library. The library was my sanctuary. I loved and still do love books. I would spend my half hour reading every science fiction, psychology, whatever books caught my interest that semester. I was in my sci-fi corner which for one of the reasons I chose it was completely hidden from the librarians and everyone else's view. I really didn't want to be disturbed. I was halfway through the time machine, good book by the way, and all of a sudden I look up feeling like something was off. Lo and behold, Craig had a research period. There he is, without saying anything,

he sets his bag across from me and he stands behind my chair. I couldn't breathe at this point. His hand instantly finds literally the only skin that my turtleneck had somehow gotten over. He smells my hair and squeezes my hips, his nails literally digging into my skin. Craig was mad with me. I thank god I put my bag in the chair next to me because he had to sit across from me. I don't know how long he was standing there for but when Craig stopped I nearly died of happiness. When he did finally sit across from me, leering hatefully, with his icy eyes burrowing themselves into my memory, Craig hunched over the table, leaning over to me. Can I ask you a question?

I'm literally petrified, about to pee my pants here, so my brain wasn't working well with me. Yeah, sure, go for it. But for the love of God, don't touch me, I thought. He tilts his head, smiling softly while saying, as though asking about the weather, is your mom a MILF? For the life of me, my innocent years had no clue what that could possibly be. I don't know. I don't think so. I had abandoned my beloved book and was nervously begging the bell to ring while covering up my assaulted hip with my turtleneck. He didn't seem to turn by my answer and smiled. Well, uh, what about your sisters? Craig chuckled, his voice lowering.

She a thought? My jaw dropped. Even I knew what that meant. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw this girl. A senior, tall, curvy, and staring at Craig with what I can only describe as pure shock. Thank God she was there. No? I manage to whisper as the girl places back a book and perks up, looking back at us as though she just cured cancer but it has bad side effects. Hey, do you know where I can find- For the life of me, that girl had no chance to

finish her sentence. Grabbing my bag, I jumped up and was by her side within the moment. Yep, I think it's over here. Led her to the completely outside of the library where we didn't go and instead, she and I walked out of school. The entire time, this unnamed chick held my hand. Once we were out, she hugged me and had me talk to her. I told her everything about what happened and woman told me first thing tomorrow I should report it to the counselor again. I told the counselor, Miss Gates again and she reported it changing my lunch and telling me to take my free period in the computer room. Two weeks later a blissful Craig free days and my lunches switched back. It turns out that

since Craig failed a year he was 18 and he had sent some illicit pictures as well as lewd messages to a freshman who then reported it to the counselor. Three strikes and probation, Craig was kicked couple of weeks ago. I needed a few things so I was at a store and everything was pretty mundane. Until I realized a man was walking around the store behind me, pretty close behind me. To be honest, he was closer than I was comfortable with but I wasn't sure what to make of it. I brushed it off and thought perhaps he's just not very aware of personal space. He was in a reasonably large store so I figured he wouldn't be behind me the whole time anyway. I was wrong. He continued to follow me around the store, was behind me in the queue

to pay and walked out of the store behind me as well. It was just as I was walking out that I heard a shutter sound. The sound a lot of phones tend to make when taking a photo if they aren't muted. I recognized the sound and a store doorway seemed to be a strange place to take a photo. Plus, this man had already made me uncomfortable so I looked around. He was still pointing his phone at me. At the time, I wasn't sure if he had taken a picture just of my back in general or if he was being much creepier than that. But even so, I wasn't happy about it, so I decided to say, Excuse me, did you just take a photo of me? I asked him.

He lowered his phone and glared at me. The weird part of this was that he seemed oddly familiar to me, but I guess that's not relevant. He didn't bother actually answering me, just glared at me for a while, then sneered and went back to pointing his phone right at me. I asked him to stop and he took a picture of my face. I didn't know then if he was actually breaking the law or doing anything wrong so I decided the best way to get out of the situation was just to turn back around and leave. He followed me again and I did my best to ignore him though I could hear the sound of him repeatedly taking pictures behind me. I got fed up of this and went into another smaller shop in the hope that he would go away or I could take a moment to text or call someone to pick me up in a little more privacy. I was actually a little surprised given that he followed me all this way before that he stopped then. He

lingered outside the door for a while glaring at me through the window and eventually wandered off. I knew this was a weird way to behave but I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. It wasn't until later, having talked about the situation online then done some searching, that I found various pictures of me on some very disgusting creepshot websites. Fortunately my face didn't appear to be included in those photos. I did report that he was stalking me to the police and I contacted these sites trying to get my pictures removed but apparently there's nothing that can be done at the moment. Well I put the encounter behind me as far as possible and for a few days everything was normal again. Then one day I was out with a few friends from my former

work who I still hung out with. We were at a bar getting a few drinks together when one of my friends mentioned me that someone was staring at me. Another friend looked over and said, oh yeah I remember him. He came in the other day and asked about you. This was weird enough because I quit the job a few months ago and now live away away from the premises as just about all my friends know. Plus the fact that I don't know who he is but he is weirdly familiar to me and apparently asked about me by my full former name that I recently changed away from. My friends and I talked about this a bit after a while. He appeared to have left and we shrugged it off. They were all getting a little drunk now

anyway so weren't really focused on the conversation. I don't drink but the bar wasn't a reasonable hangout place for us so I stayed with them. After a while someone started paying for their drinks and buying me alcohol too. One of my friends decided it would be a good idea to drink the drinks intended for me as well as her own and started feeling very intoxicated and ill. Being the sober one of the group I called for a taxi. When our taxi arrived and I was trying to bundle my drunk friends inside I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around to see this creepy guy. I need to leave now too.

You gross mind if I join you? He asked me. Well of course I minded since he wasn't above taking creepy photos of me and followed me around. I definitely didn't want to be in a taxi with him and three intoxicated girls. Even more so given that I was paying for this journey. There won't be room, just get your own. I told him, helping my friend into the taxi and going to get in myself. He grabbed my butt as I was getting into the taxi and then said something in a language I don't understand before going around to the front of the car and banging on the window to get the driver's attention. The driver wound his window down to tell him to stop

and he started telling the driver that he was with us and needed to get in. I insisted he wasn't and fortunately the driver persisted in telling him to go away or he would call the police. He left us alone pretty quickly after that. The third encounter with him was today. Several days after the first and second when I had pretty much forgotten about him. It's been a reasonably pleasant day and it's my day off so I decided to go out for a bit. After a few minutes of walking from my house I became aware of someone walking way too close behind me. I looked over my shoulder and it's this guy again. He was sort of glaring at me and smiling at the same time. I don't really know how to word it but he had a really weird expression anyways.

I just said go away and started walking faster until I found the nearest shop and went in. Again he followed me but just sort of lingered outside for a while before leaving. I don't really know what's going on here and I suppose he's just a creep. Last weekend my friend and I traveled to Madrid. We're both in Portugal, so the trip to Madrid would be around 7-8 hours through bus. We were pretty hyped about it. We arrived Sunday around 5-6am. The sun was yet to come out, but it was light enough that we felt we could walk from the station to Gran Via.

As we struggled with our backpacks uphill, we began hearing a wimpy meow behind us coming from a building in construction. The meows multiplied and both of us looked back without stopping. We weren't freaked out at the choir of cats yet. We crossed the street and a small cat exited the building friskily walking in our direction, tail upright and eyes sharp and focused. We both took notice of it because it didn't seem to slow down as he approached us. My friend, probably the most non-confrontational person I know, began walking faster while saying, don't worry everything's fine it's just a friendly kitty. But she was obviously terrified. At first I thought it was cute but as the cat got closer

heading straight for us without slowing down for a moment I realized something couldn't be right. What if the cat has rabies? I thought in the spur of the moment. When the cat was just half a meter away from me I let out a rather feminine war cry and began running the opposite direction scaring my friend even more and prompting her to run too. The poor cat jumped and reversed its direction when I screamed. We both laughed at our own figures but deep down our balls had risen up so far in our bodies that they now served as forehead knobs. Now in reality, I wish this was the only time we felt threatened.

At least it would have been just a funny and silly episode and not a premonition of something much more malevolent. We kept making joke about being chased by cats while we were in Madrid. It was a lovely weekend. Around 8pm on Monday, we ate dinner and headed back to the station. Keep in mind, we were exhausted as we had walked around 50 to 60 kilometers in less than two days. By the time we arrived, both of us realized we'd have to wait at least two to three hours before boarding our bus. We were tired, but decided that we shouldn't spend our last hours in Madrid just looking at the wall. My friend suggested we visit a park nearby, Enrique Tuerno Galvan Park. We'd smoke a joint, explore a bit, and come back before midnight. I agreed. I am too curious to not

explore a park at night like most of you probably are too. We got there and she's noticeably creeped out of how dark it is. We sit for a while, roll a joint, and try to enjoy the moment. I convince her to go deeper into the park, and we eventually arrive at an auditorium, where we sit for a while, smoking some more and eating. Ten minutes into chilling in the dark park, I hear something snap behind me. Being paranoid as I am, I didn't turn back immediately, but kept my ears perked for other suspicious sounds, partly because I was scared of actually finding something. I told my friends to shush for a minute because I thought someone was behind us. She didn't seem very concerned which struck me as odd.

After a while I turned my head and sure enough there was someone there, his head hovering above the neatly trimmed bush. I have incredibly poor eyesight and it was pretty dark. Also, I was pretty out of it, so I couldn't understand if the person was facing us or facing the trees on the other end. Either way, I knew that he had seen us or he wouldn't have stopped. I began to feel a bit threatened but decided against acting on it, lest I freak out my oddly relaxed friend too. I tried to dismiss my paranoia. I heard sounds again. I figured the guy was leaving. I continued eating and after a while got up and told my friend I was going to check on something.

I just wanted to make sure that we were safe. The person had moved so I knew he either had to go back from where he came or he had turned left and down the path. Either way I would have been able to see him leaving but you guessed it I couldn't see him anywhere. A bit panicked I walked around the bush pretending I'm looking for something on the floor while trying to see any sign of this person on the road going down. Where we were, there was only the auditorium which was fairly well lit and empty, a road that went down and the main road and trees surrounding every single one of these things. Because it was so badly lit, the treetops would prevent the street lamps' light from reaching the ground.

All you could make out was the dark outline of the tree trunks in the distance. That's when I see it. A shadow of a huge person, arm behind a tree, seemingly staring straight in my direction. He didn't move and was fairly far away. I had to look a few times in his direction to make sure it was a person and not my mind playing tricks. Sadly it wasn't. Shoot, now he knows I saw him. I thought. I go back to my friend and trying to remain calm I told her we should get going. She tells me she'd like to go a little further up the path and see the view. As this was on our way out and I didn't want her to feel threatened I figured it probably wouldn't be a problem to stop there for a minute. I agree and help her carry her stuff. Turns out walking fast while looking over your shoulder in the middle of the night at a park is a surprisingly scary experience. As I move the shadow of the trees closer to me would move in front of the trees

far away from me creating illusions of people moving in between the shadows. At least I thought this was an illusion. I am certain I'm seeing a human silhouette moving between the trees but just as I'm almost making out a complete human figure another tree blocks my view. I'm unnerved to say the least. Unsure if I'm exaggerating, I spill the beans to my friend. I tell her of the guy who was behind us and that he then went to hide in the trees and how I wasn't sure if he was still following us because I couldn't see properly. She took it all pretty well. I am known for playing pranks so I don't think she believed me. I also think she might have thought I was too high, which wasn't the case. This made me feel more relaxed, too. I'm probably just paranoid from smoking.

We stopped at a viewpoint at the edge of the park. Honestly, it was pretty underwhelming, as it was too dark to see anything. I noticed the path beneath us slithered left and right all the way down to the bottom. Hardly the best route to make a quick escape, I thought. We're both talking and maybe because of the haze I was in I forget about the men in the woods for a brief moment or at least I felt convinced he hadn't actually followed us. I get up and turn slightly left. My balls fell to the ground. I controlled myself not to let out another girly scream. There he was, large and imposing, completely darkened by the shade of the trees. He must have been no more than ten meters away from us. I remember thinking just how close he was and how unnatural his stance looked, like a deer caught in headlights, he was frozen in the moment before his foot was completely planted on the ground.

He was sneaking on us. The thought appeared in my mind like a raging siren. I knew the reason he was standing still now was because I was staring straight at him. That must have surprised him for a moment. Barbara, we have to go now, he's right there. Something in the way I said it finally made her snap alert. She got up and we both pretended to be walking normally down the slithering path. Surprisingly, it was my friend who jumped over the bushes surrounding the path, all the way to the bottom. I was too terrified to look back and possibly

seeing him at the edge of the viewpoint staring us down. We kept walking without looking back. We were shaken, but we got to the station without any problem. I do have to wonder what would have happened if I didn't turn slightly left in that moment. Still, Madrid was absolutely lovely. Next time, I'll avoid parks at night. So this has been happening for about a year and a half now. Tonight something happened that finally made me and my boyfriend realize that I wasn't imagining things. About a year and a half ago after living in my apartment for over five years, I all of a sudden started noticing that things would be out of place when I would get home from work. Things that almost seemed out of place on purpose to mess with my OCD. Sometimes I would notice knives that were

put back into the knife block the wrong way or little ornaments that I have around my house being turned to face the wrong way. Sometimes my clothes were hung up in my closet the wrong way. Little things like that where I would feel something was off but there was no way to prove it and in all honesty could have just been me being absent-minded when putting things away. After a couple of months of things randomly being out of place and always having that creeped out feeling, things stopped going out of place and I put it to the back of my mind and stopped being so paranoid and moved on with my life. That is until about two weeks ago. For the past couple weeks my cat has seriously been

trying to tell me something when I've gotten home from work. Any of you who have a cat will know that exact meow. It's not an I'm hungry or I'm angry because you've been at work all day meow but an oh my god you will never believe what happened, if that makes sense. I didn't really think anything of it because cats can be jerks sometimes and I just assumed he was just bored and wanting to complain. The other day when I came home from work, I noticed a pair of balled up socks that did not belong to me sitting on my bedroom floor. My boyfriend came over the next night and I told him he had left a pair of his socks here when he had stayed over on the weekend. He looked at the socks and said that they were not his. My heart sunk and so did his. We both knew that someone had been coming into my house again and that I probably wasn't imagining it the first time.

A few days later I came home from work and found a bag from a lingerie store on top of my couch. It was empty. This bag had come from inside my house as I had just bought a bathing suit from that store a couple of weeks prior and the receipt for that was in the bag. At first I thought my cat might have dragged it there but upon inspecting the bag there were no teeth marks as well as my cat couldn't have opened my closet door and gone into the paper and cardboard recycling that I keep in there on top of the shelf. The final end, perhaps the most unsettling thing happened tonight. My boyfriend met me after work and we went out for dinner. We went back to my apartment after and I went to unlock my door

and noticed that it was already unlocked. Locking the door when I leave my house is the one thing I am most OCD about. I don't just double and triple check it, I quadruple check it. It is not just a habit I have but something that is deeply ingrained in me. Everyone who knows me knows this about me as I even do it to their doors. I have to check four times or I get an icky feeling. Even my boyfriend was on red alert when he noticed my door was unlocked. We entered my house and I was checking to see if anything was out of place. He ran to the sliding glass door and tugged it, and it opened right up. I never leave that door unlocked. He witnessed me lock it on Sunday when I closed the door because it was getting too cold.

He saw me check it four times. I have not opened it since then. We are both convinced somebody has been in my house. Whoever has been coming in somehow has a key. The fact that they left the sliding door unlocked makes me think that maybe they're planning to come back with ill intentions. If they have a key, why would they need to unlock the sliding door unless they don't want to be identified by the security cameras at the front door of my building? Either way, I've already ordered a security system but unfortunately

it's not going to arrive for a few days. Any suggestions on anything I can do in the meantime to keep safe? subscribe and click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, rLetsReadOfficial, and give and receive feedback from the community, 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. Links in the bio.

Thanks so much, friends. And remember, tonight we are going to have ourselves a real good time. I feel alive, and the world, we'll turn it inside out. So don't stop me, because we're having a good time. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel,

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