The Lets Read Podcast - 63: Episode 056 | Scary Ocean & Garbage Man Stories | 21 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

Welcome to the fifty-sixth 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 Oceans, Scientology & Garbage Men.  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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So this one group books me. They're a mixed group in their early 20s, couples and friends. Good people. Silver spoons galore, but I'm not one to judge. Our first activity was underwater walking. Now, I had never tried underwater walking since it was relatively new at the time but I'm keen to try it. So we pile into a little boat and take a short trip out towards the mothership. Now this is just a naval term for

a larger boat that smaller ones like ours can work from but we go one step further to justify this, having spray painted one of those huge gray alien heads onto the hall. It looked awesome and naturally the kids loved it. Underwater walking itself was similar to the time I did snuba, scuba plus snorkeling equals snuba, in the Caribbean, in that the oxygen tanks float up on the surface of the water instead of being on the diver's back. The other major difference to regular diving is that instead of having a scuba mask to breathe out of, we had these big old sci-fi looking helmets on. I mean, they looked like they were props from that old Lost in Space show that used to be on TV. I went first and the procedure was pretty simple. I hung onto the ladder with the majority of my body in the water. They placed a small foam rubber ring on my head to cushion the helmet and then they finally put the helmet on.

The second that it was on my body it felt like its weight was forcing me to the bottom of the ocean. It was kind of scary because I went down pretty fast which caused the pressure to build up quickly. I made sure to swallow and yawn a bunch to negate the effects of the pressure and I was fine. Also I could never really get a deep breath of air because as I breathed in the helmet began to make a vacuum and I would have to stop to let it fill in with more air. Then two members of the mixed group of teens followed suit before a scuba diving man came down to be our guide. He handed all of us a piece of bread in the plastic bag which drew all of the fish to us. That was a lot of fun watching otherwise timid fish practically swarming

us. There were metal guiding handrails in the ocean floor which I followed. The two kids followed behind me. It was very difficult to walk because the current was surprisingly strong and the helmets were quite heavy. We found it all incredibly enjoyable though. I had been diving for years and even to me it was a novelty. As I breathed there was a constant loud whirring sound as the water put pressure on the oxygen tube. It was kind of annoying but it meant that I was getting air which was obviously good. That's why it was so scary when the sound suddenly stopped. I was confused but it quickly came back on after about two or three seconds and I could breathe again. It happened one more time and again it came back on very quickly. I rationalized it by assuming that my tank had run empty and they were switching it to a different one.

No big deal. I didn't understand how they would run out so quickly but I didn't think too hard about it. It soon came back on and I could breathe so no big deal. After about 10 minutes or so, I'm guessing I have no idea how long we were down there, the guide points at me and indicates that he wants me to climb over the railing. I was very confused but I did it after he made it very clear that that was what he wanted. It was kind of hard to see out any peripherals out of the mass so it was easy to get lost. I looked back behind me to make

sure that the teenagers saw where I went and didn't get lost. We made eye contact so I assumed we were all good and then turned back around to follow the guide. He had me walking in a very small path between two corals so I went very slowly to make sure that I didn't cut my legs up on them. It was hard due to the strong underwater current, my unwieldy helmet, and an occasional tug by the air tube as I pulled it taut. As I reached the guide, my air stopped again. I figured it was no big deal, like the previous two times, and continued on. I followed him for a bit, but it still didn't come on. Five seconds without oxygen,

then 10. I started to get confused. Was this some kind of joke? If so, it wasn't funny at all. 15 seconds. I thought to myself, don't panic. They always tell you not to panic. But I panicked. I started taking quicker and quicker breaths, but I forced myself to stop that. Thanks to previous training, I knew that that was the worst thing I could do. I spun around to the guide and started pounding my fist on my chest. That was the sign for I can't breathe. He seemed to notice and started walking away. I could only hope that he was taking me to the boat. I thought maybe I should just try and shrug off the helmet and swim to the surface. I didn't know if I had enough air to make it. I didn't know if the boat was above me. I didn't want to hit my head. I didn't know if I could actually shrug it off and

I didn't want to get the bends, so I figured it wouldn't be a good idea. 30 seconds. I started to notice that I was getting less and less oxygen with each breath. Water was starting to seep into my helmet. I had to look up to breathe with the little air that I had. I grabbed hold of the guide's arms so that I wouldn't lose him and also so that he would understand the gravity of the situation. I gave him quite the death grip. Forty seconds without oxygen, my lungs burned for air. I saw the ladder of the boat. I knew that all I had to do was make it there and I would be okay. I must have gotten some sort of adrenaline rush with the renewed hope because I almost forgot about my lack of air.

I fumbled for the ladder for a few seconds. It was hard to tell distances through the helmet because it had a bit of a magnifying aspect to it before I grabbed it and started pulling myself up. As I broke the surface, air came rushing back into my helmet and I took a nice deep breath. Breathing had never felt better. It was definitely the scariest experience of my life and I categorically would not recommend underwater walking to anyone. Being that I live on the coast of Mississippi, I have been on and around the water my entire life. I have countless stories of crazy experiences and bizarre happenings while being on the water. Most involve dealing with bad weather, such as lightning storms, water spouts or rough seas. Those can be awesomely frightening but the craziest things that I've seen have happened while working on fishing charter boats. But the one job that

always sticks with me and the one I would consider the biggest eye-opener occurred back in 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew and began spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. BP, after realizing to a certain extent how vast the spill was, began a program that allowed owners of boats to register and participate in the cleanup efforts along the coastline. Those that were lucky enough to be accepted into the program sometimes took advantage of an awesome opportunity to do something good for the environment and made some serious money from it while, the same time preventing others from getting into the program who would have actually helped. That's somewhat mentioned later but overall is a story for another discussion. So being that the water that I had basically grown up on was being destroyed I couldn't just

sit back and not do anything. I went and got hazmat certified, then through certain contacts I first started working on a 127 foot charter boat that would normally go out to the Chandelure Islands located off the coast of Louisiana for several days and nights and drop skiffs in the water where clients were guided around the islands to fish. Also, I would suggest if anyone has the opportunity to go out to these islands, please do. It's absolutely incredible there and the fishing is always superb. Anyway, back to the story. I was working on this boat for about two weeks before I was transferred to an offshore division that consisted of about a dozen

boats. These boats were strictly personal fishing and commercial charter boats with the largest being 57 feet and an average price of around $100,000. A couple of the other boats had to be worth well over a million dollars conservatively. Our job was to leave at the crack of dawn and go out looking for oil or any marine life that may have been impacted by the spill. If we found crude oil, slicks, or anything else out of place or not normal, we'd log it, take pictures, and report it. For about a month, all we ever found were slicks. But one day, we went out about a hundred miles or so, and I'll never forget the sights or smells that day. The crude oil, which we called mud because that is exactly what it looked like, was everywhere and ridiculously thick, on average 6 inches and in some places up to 1 foot. It was like super thick putty and to be honest is actually

really hard to describe. To put this into perspective though, if you've ever been mud riding or seen a truck get stuck in the mud, that's exactly what it was like to these boats but out on the water and a lot worse. Over time it destroyed the boat's hulls and caused significant damage to pretty much whatever it touched. We were the first group to find the crude and report it coming in that close to the shore. Also during this time we found a life jacket belonging to one of the poor guys who actually worked on the oil rig when it blew. Words honestly can't describe what that was like. It was a haunting moment to say the least. So we eventually get back to shore and that's when things started to change. The operation had now shifted to how are we going to clean this up and what are we going to do with it.

It wasn't until this point when we all realized how serious this was. Not only for the coastline but for the environment as a whole. The next morning at the dock we noticed that pallets of skimmers and absorbent materials had been dropped off. We were to use the skimmers to round up as much crude as we could, tie off the skimmers into a circle, and place the boom together with the crude inside. That would then be brought to the decontamination stations by another division who was assigned that job. A little reminder, our job originally was to just spot, find, take pictures and report back, not necessarily handle the oil if at all possible. But it got to the point where instead of myself

being the only one who could handle the crude on my boat, everyone else working the boats eventually ended up in protective suits handling this toxic, sludgy substance in 100 plus degree temperatures for 12 hours a day. A little side note, each boat had to have at least one hazmat certified person on board at all times who was supposed to be the only person handling the crude. Also, only four people were allowed to work on each boat in our division. We also ended up getting stranded twice by the shrimp boats who decided to call it a day, leaving us with no way to move the crew while also not allowing us to leave because we couldn't just leave the routed up crew unattended. It was absolutely miserable. Nobody could have ever imagined what we were getting into. BP

themselves had no idea what they were getting into and their claims of being prepared were completely overshadowed by the fact that they truly did not know how to run and contain an had no idea what they were getting into and their claims of being prepared were completely overshadowed by the fact that they truly did not know how to run and contain an operation of this magnitude day in and day out. This became a day-to-day challenge up until the point when my shady boss got caught being greedy, charging BP for every miscellaneous thing he bought which caused all of his boats to be shut down. During this time both the employer and employees were making some serious money. What ruined it were the greedy jerks who just couldn't get enough.

This in turn caused less boats that were actually doing it for the right reasons from being able to make a change out on the water. In total, we worked a little over three months. Going out every day and seeing schools of dead fish, dead sea turtles, was disheartening to say the least. Although it was one of the most awful experiences of my life, I do feel like we made a difference out there, even if it was just a little. On one of our last trips, we were about 20 or so miles out past the barrier islands when we could see from a distance what looked like the water boiling and had a red, orange and yellow color to it. When we got close, we realized it was a school of thousands of redfish and drac crevalli that stretched as far as we could see and was about a hundred or so yards wide. Being in the middle of that, surrounded by these fish, just cannot be described with words. It was incredible and that was the one moment that

gave us hope that what we were doing was not a waste and that we were in fact doing something worthwhile. Still to this day it is the most incredible thing I'd ever seen on the water aside from the oil spill itself. Lastly, just to throw this out there, there are still tons of oil out in the gulf regardless of what people say. It's just buried and on the seafloor due to the so-called dispersants that BP claimed would break the oil up. It still can be found on the islands, beaches, and marshes. The marine life is just now getting back to normal again in the past two years and it's only going to get better as long as some nonsense like this doesn't happen again.

The year 2001 marked the 60th anniversary of the sinking of the British HMS Hood and the German battleship the Bismarck. But 1941 was a faithful year for countless other ships that were lost at sea, including the SSS Britannia, on which I happened to be a passenger. At the beginning of 1941, I was in Cornwall working on a small team providing power for a new station for cable and wireless being built in two tunnels in Perth, Cornell. It was there that I was offered an extremely well-paying job that involved aiding in the construction of Tehran University all the way over in Iran. So in March of that year, I left the team to begin the journey that would take me from Britain to Bombay in India, and then on Basra in Iraq for the land journey to the Iranian capital. I had no idea that I would never make it that far. My wife saw me off from Euston Station in London. As there was a war on I did not say I was embarking for Liverpool

as this would have clued her into the perilous nature of the voyage and worried her immensely but she told me later that she saw it on the side of the train as it left. The SS Britannia was used as a troop ship and there were a lot of Navy, Army, and RAF personnel on board. But luckily for me, I was a first class passenger. We sailed from Liverpool on the 11th of March 1941, bound for India via Sierra Leone in South Africa. We had an anti-submarine escort consisting of three destroyers and an armed merchant cruiser. The destroyers were stationed one ahead and one each to port and starboard of the convoy. The armed merchant cruiser was a large passenger liner that

acted as our rear guard. I jotted down details of my journey including my expenses in a small diary that I still have. The ship rolled quite a lot to start with and I was seasick for a few days but once the sea had calmed down a bit I found the voyage much more pleasant. The ship rolled quite a lot to start with and I was seasick for a few days, but once the sea had calmed down a bit I found the voyage much more pleasant. Then one day I found that the Britannia had become separated from its armed escorts, they were now nowhere to be seen. But we figured we were safe as it was thought that we were sailing too fast for U-boats to catch up and attack. It was a Tuesday morning, the 25th of March 1941. I had just taken a morning bath and was lying on my bunk trying to cool down. Never had I ventured outside of England before and I must admit I was

having a terrible time adjusting to the heat. Suddenly a series of huge booming sounds shattered the tranquility of a morning at sea. I looked out my porthole and splashes in the water. Something was falling into the water around the ship. I threw some clothes on quickly and made my way over to the starboard side. That's when I heard the Tienoi announcement. A voice echoed around the ship from the small, tiny speakers located on each deck. I'll never forget how terrified I was when I heard we had come under attack from a German raiding vessel. My fellow passengers were panicking as the military personnel aboard

began to rush into action, screaming at us to take cover away from any outward-facing bulkheads. As we cowered under tables and prayed for our safety, we could hear the whistling of enemy shells as they flew over the ship. It was a sound I still hear in my nightmares. Our civilian liner had been reinforced with a small gun at the rear of the ship, and it brought us hope to hear them returning fire for a moment. But when the ship rocked under the force of a direct hit, our gun fired no more. We later heard they had taken the full force of the incoming shell, with the entire gun crew killed in an instant. I can remember the officer, Rowlinson, racing to and fro, carrying the wounded to the

first aid post, with more and more blood staining his uniform with every trip he made. I thought very highly of that man. After another devastating direct hit from the German warship, there was another announcement over the ship's tannoy ordering us to abandon ship. We found some lifeboats damaged when we arrived on deck, which was very worrying, but we still managed to find one intact boat on the starboard aft. I inflated my life jacket, threw my overcoat into the lifeboat then climbed down and got in. In theory it was supposed to be women first followed by first class passengers. In reality it was every man for himself. There were too many people climbing down the ladder and some of the crew were jumping overboard.

We were forced to lower the lifeboat early to prevent it from being dragged down with the sinking vessel. So many of the crew had to climb down the ropes to reach safety. Some slipped and scorched their hands, causing horrific blistering to their palms and fingers. Two men were still climbing down the rope as we began to push the lifeboat away from the burning ship. The terror in their eyes was something I'll never forget. They must have thought they were doomed. All the occupants of the lifeboat called out to them to jump into the water and swim to us. Thank God we waited for them, as one of the men was a Sri Lankan doctor by the name of Das Gupta.

May God bless him, for he treated the injured as best he could. As we rode away from the burning wreck of the Britannia, we watched as the German raiding ship closed in for the kill. She was flying the swastika. My heart burned with hatred as she fired shells below the waterline and sent the Britannia to the bottom of the ocean. After two days at sea, we found a waterlogged boat with four men in it. It suddenly tipped over and they managed to turn it over and got back in. This happened two or three times. The commander agreed to take them on board. The days at sea did affect some people. After a few days, one man put on his overcoat and threw himself overboard. He had lost his mind from the stress of the whole affair.

The commander turned about to pick him up, but it was too late. His heavy clothing had dragged him down into the briny depths. We had sharks with us virtually all the time. They could smell the blood from the wounded and circled us with their fins protruding from the water. It was nerve-wracking. They swam right up next to the boat sometimes and I could see their dead eyes staring up at us as they did. It was horrible thinking that certain death was only a few feet away at any given moment. After a few days without washing or access to toilets, one or two people suggested that we have a swim. They put oars across to hold on to and a couple at a time went over. We were told to be alert and looking back we must have

been mad. I went in but I didn't swim. As soon as I did so, we were scared by a pod of whales which had these great whacking fins. The sharks were the worst but the sheer size of these whales was something to behold. They could have smashed our lifeboat to smithereens with one flick of their tail. I learned later that officer Rowlandson was picked up off a raft by the Cabo de Harnos, a Spanish vessel, and he and the French baroness, who was a passenger, persuaded the captain to continue searching. On Saturday the 29th of March, we saw the Cable de Hornos lit up and put up a flare that was spotted by a lookout. We rowed towards the ship, which in turn made for our original position. When we met up, the lifeboat was going up and down with the swell. We climbed the rope ladder, but we flopped when we got on deck and had to be carried to tables.

We wanted water, as this has been greatly rationed in the lifeboat. They then came round with sandwiches, but took them away when we had one each. It took a week or so to recover from the experiences which was the worst of the war for me, but I thank God every single day that I survived, as there were many poor souls who did not. In 1981, American mariner Stephen Callaghan was taking part in a single-handed sailing race from Penzance in England to the Caribbean island nation of Antigua. Having studied as a naval architect, Callaghan was an expert in the design and construction of all kinds of seaborne vessels, and had spent most of his life living on board racing and cruising ships. Yet not long into the race, bad luck and even worse weather had damaged or sunk many of the participants' boats, including Callaghan's own self-designed Napoleon Solo. To his dismay, he was forced to abandon the race. But Callaghan was not a quitter, not by any stretch of the imagination. He was determined to complete the voyage, even if the prize was no more than his own sense of satisfaction.

And so, after making the necessary repairs to Napoleon Solo, he continued down the coast of Spain and Portugal and out into the Atlantic towards the Canary Islands. Several days later, Callaghan found himself sailing in gale-force winds that had waves crashing over his small one-man boat. The storm continued into the night, with Callaghan fighting to keep the vessel afloat. Suddenly, among the darkness and howling winds of the mid-Atlantic, something huge smashed into the side of the Napoleon Solo. The boat rocked into the ocean, a huge hole in a lower compartment causing the boat to fill with seawater. Callahan fought to keep his beloved boat from sinking, but it was no good. The small craft was overwhelmed by the crashing waves and strong winds. Callahan was forced to abandon ship, alone. When dawn broke, Callahan found himself drifting on the Atlantic in a small lifeboat, but he was determined to survive the

disaster. Just before the Napoleon Solo had sank into the dark depths of the ocean, Callahan had made several trips back onto the boat to secure several pieces of crucial survival equipment, including a sleeving bag, emergency rations, a small spear gun, and a pair of solar stills that would produce roughly a pint of clean drinking water per day. Being the experienced sailor that he was, Callaghan had determined that his raft was drifting steadily westward due to ocean currents and trade winds. Trade winds being the pattern of surface winds that have taken ships from Europe to the Americas for centuries. If he stayed alive, he knew he would eventually drift back into the realms of civilization, but staying alive would be no small feat. It wasn't long before Callaghan had exhausted the meager food rations he had managed to salvage from Napoleon Solo. He couldn't find an alternate source of food. He would slowly and painfully die

of starvation, alone and afraid in the open waters. But Callaghan had no intention of dying in such a hideous manner. He took the speargun that he had managed to grab from his sunken vessel and set to work. An interesting point about flotsam that drifts into the open ocean is that they often become small ecosystems in their own right. Barnacles that become attached to floating debris and the microscopic sea life they foster will in turn attract surface feeding fish such as mahi-mahi or triggerfish. It wasn't long before Callahan found himself surrounded by an evolving ecosystem that would provide him with just enough food to stay alive. Callahan must have been delighted to discover that feeding himself was much easier than he had first anticipated. Entire schools of fish

presented themselves to be speared, killed, and eaten as a valuable resource of protein. But wherever there are smaller fish, larger fish are inevitably drawn. Callahan awoke one day to hear a gentle lapping among the calm waters around him. He emerged from the canvas shelter of his life raft, expecting to see more of the mahi-mahi fish that were sustaining him so effectively, but it was something else, something which made his blood run. Circling the boat at almost perfect intervals were three large dorsal fins. Sharks were circling the life raft. They could smell him. As the sharks drew closer, Callahan could hear their sandpaper skin scratching against the thin nylon sides of the lifeboat.

The noise must have been terrifying to him, a stark reminder that there were things in the ocean that were actively seeking to consume him, to end his life and render all his efforts pointless. What's more, there was every chance that the sharks would lose patience, attack the raft and cause irreparable damage to the only thing that was truly keeping Callahan alive. He would have to go on the offensive. Taking the speargun in hand, Callahan must have been shaking with terror as he leaned over the side of the lifeboat and began jabbing at the circling sharks with the sharp point of the spear. But sharks are tough, and his speargun was poorly made. It wasn't long before the rubber propulsion band and jagged spear tip had broken off, rendering the speargun useless. But Callahan simply lashed

a knife to the shaft of the broken spear and carried on his brave defense of his lifeboat. Yet, it wasn't the sharks that would become the biggest threat to Callahan's life, the largest of which would come from his own survival needs. On the 44th day drifting aboard his lifeboat, Callahan was fishing using his improvised spear when he caught a large mahi-mahi fish, but as it wildly flailed during its dying movements, the mahi-mahi caused the spear shaft to rip into the raft's bottom tubes, seriously compromising the lifeboat's buoyancy. Despite his best efforts, the hole wouldn't stay patched. In his endeavors to patch the boat up,

Callahan often had to reach under the lifeboat itself, working with his arms underwater to reach repairs. This caused the sharks to return. Callahan was forced to balance defending his lifeboat with the essential repairs it required. The stress was too much for him, and he snapped. By his own admission, he descended into a fit of rage and grief, unable to accept that he would be torn apart in the open waters of the Atlantic by sharks that had been tracking him for weeks. But then it hit him. A small plastic fork in a Boy Scout mess kit he had managed to salvage could be stuffed into the nylon near the tear in the raft, then bent inward to seal the tear to secure the vessel. Too weak to attempt the idea at the time,

Callahan tried for what little sleep he could manage in such a stressful situation, resounding himself to try it in the morning. It worked. It was the victory of a lifetime. He had come back from the brink of insanity and death to ensure that he would survive for that much longer. That was, until the solar stills on the life raft began to falter. Over the course of a few days Callahan watched in horror as the one thing that kept him from dying of dehydration began to pack up and cease to function. By that time, he had only three small cans of fresh, purified water. His body and mine were shutting down. He began to hallucinate, feeling as if though all those people lost at sea were surrounding him, calling him to join them.

He simply had no more fight left in him. Then, after 76 full days lost at sea, Callaghan saw a small fishing vessel on the horizon. As it grew larger and larger, he deduced it was headed right towards him, attracted by the seabirds that circled over his lifeboat. The fish guts he had thrown back into the sea after successful catches has caused the small ecosystem around his lifeboat to grow exponentially, now including a small collection of whale and gulls. Where there are seabirds, there are fish, and where there are fish, there are fishermen. As the fishing boat pulled up alongside the raft, they must have been amazed to see the skeletal figure of Steve Callahan lying half dead before their eyes. The men were from Guadalupe. Callahan had made it to the Caribbean, just as he predicted. By the time the fishermen reached and rescued him

from certain death, Callahan had lost a third of his body weight. He was so emaciated that it took six weeks before he could walk properly again. Bizarrely, he claimed he doesn't regret his 76 days spent alone in that lifeboat, drifting in the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, Callahan had been quoted as saying that he felt enlightened by what he went through, that it changed him for the better. In fact, he once described the night sky, unpolluted by the bright lights of big cities, as being a view of heaven from a seat in hell. The most deadly shark attack in recorded history began on July 30th, 1945. The USS Indianapolis, a Portland-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy,

was taking part in a top-secret mission of the utmost importance. It was tasked with carrying enriched uranium to the island of Tinian in the South Pacific, along with other parts required for the assembly of the world's first deployable atomic bomb. As history shows, the crew of the Indianapolis were successful in their mission, completing the delivery in record speeds that are unbroken even by modern naval vessels. However, as they sailed back towards Leyte for training before the invasion of Okinawa, tragedy struck. Just after midnight on July 30th, the Indianapolis was spotted by Japanese submarines. Without any escorts to defend her, the Indianapolis was a prime target and the Japanese closed in for the kill. The Indianapolis

did not have sonar to detect submarines. They were completely unaware of the danger in which they found themselves. At exactly 15 past midnight, two Type 95 torpedoes smashed into the right hand side of the vessel, instantly killing dozens of American sailors and causing obscene amounts of damage to the ship's structure. It took just 12 minutes of panic and terror for the ship to sink completely, taking down over 300 of the crew along with her. The surviving crew members, lacking life jackets and lifeboats, were set adrift among the waves in almost complete darkness. Many thought the worst was over, but their nightmare had only just begun. Naturally, the sailors floating among the debris were expecting to be rescued in a matter of hours, days at most, but the horrible fact was that no one was coming to their rescue. Despite sending several emergency signals before

the ship went down, the Navy had somehow lost track of the Indianapolis. Nothing was made of the fact that the ship failed to arrive at Leyte, and many of the Indianapolis. Nothing was made of the fact that the ship failed to arrive at Leyte, and many of the emergency messages that were received by nearby ships and naval bases were completely ignored. Declassified records later showed that one such commander in the Philippines was drunk and had told his staff not to disturb him. Another wrongly assumed the SOS calls were some kind of Japanese trap. The roughly 900 men who had actually survived the torpedo attack were now exposed to a new, perhaps even deadlier danger. It was dawn when the survivors saw the first sharks in the waters

around them. The pure carnage and chaos of the sinking had attracted hundreds of oceanic white tips and tiger sharks from miles around. Some were apparently as large as 15 foot long. It must have been absolutely terrifying for the survivors, seeing huge dorsal fins emerging from the water as the predators began to surround them, circling, picking out the weakest links, those too weak to struggle. At first the sharks focused on the dead bodies floating on the water. Many men had died from exposure, salt poisoning or thirst and it was these corpses that provided the easiest meals for the circling sharks. But soon the lifeless bodies among the survivors had been completely devoured by the hungry predators. It wasn't long before

they turned their attentions towards the living. The survivors later reported that they were losing at least three or four men to the sharks every single day. At some point, they counted 20 to 30 sharks in the water, their dorsal fins breaking the waves to form an almost impenetrable barrier around the surviving sailors. The sharks would often swim towards the survivors, bumping into them to test for signs of life. The sailors never knew exactly when the attacks would come, and this took a serious toll on their sanity. Men would kick and pound the water, screaming bloody murder in an attempt to deter the sharks from tacking. But this only served to attract

more and more of the fishy fiends, as it mimicked the thrashing of a wounded sea creature that served as a natural dinner bell for the hungry beasts. Every so often a shark would lose patience and strike without mercy, rushing up from the briny depths to drag down a screaming survivor. Imagine it, hearing the man next to you let out an ear splitting, blood curdling scream before disappearing beneath the waves, never to be seen again. Some survivors recalled that the elements were perhaps just as deadly as the circling sharks. During the scorching heat of the daytime, men would pray for darkness, their faces blistering as the harsh Pacific sun beat down upon them. While at night, the water grew so cold that their teeth would chatter as hypothermia set in.

Some would kick their legs and thrash their arms in futile attempts to keep warm, but again, this only mimicked the death throes of a wounded sea creature, making them a target for the circling sharks. As the floating sailors fought to survive, many of them succumbed to the horror of their experiences and began to lose their minds. Some men would even begin to hallucinate, seeing islands that weren't there or claiming that they had heard rescue planes searching in the skies above. One such surviving sailor recalls the heartbreaking moment that one of his shipmates finally lost his grip on sanity. The man claimed that he could see the Indianapolis floating in the water just a few feet below them, and that he could access the mess hall stores of purified water. He made repeated trips beneath the surface,

inviting his comrades to come join him in drinking the cool fresh water that he had found but the man was drinking pure salt water he died shortly afterwards from the effects of saline poisoning then in the fourth day of their harrowing survival a navy seaplane happened to be passing overhead when they spotted the groups of surviving sailors floating in the waters below. One of the aircraft's crew members leaned out of the central hatch, waving down at the men. And that's when the tears came. Tears of pure relief and salvation.

They were saved. But out of the crew of almost 1,200 soldiers, just 317 survived the ordeal. But for some, the horror, pain, and tragedy of the sinking would never end. Captain Charles McVeigh, commander of the Indianapolis, was one of the last to abandon the sinking ship. In November of 1945, he was court-martialed for failing to order his men to abandon ship in time resulting in 300 or more sailors that sank with the ship to the bottom of the pacific ocean cleared of this charge he was instead convicted of hazarding the ship a naval term which describes the failure of a captain to properly maneuver his vessel to avoid the likelihood of a direct torpedo strike yet aspects

of the trial were controversial as even the commander of the direct torpedo strike. Yet aspects of the trial were controversial, as even the commander of the Japanese sub that sank the ship said that zigzagging the Indianapolis wouldn't have made a bit of a difference and that he'd have always found a way to sink her. The disgraced captain was cleared of all charges, was reinstated to his position, and retired as a rear admiral four years later in 1949. Yet while many of the Indianapolis survivors agreed that Captain McVeigh was not to blame for their ship's sinking, the sentiment was not shared by some of the grieving families of the fallen soldiers. Captain McVeigh would often receive Christmas cards from the relatives of

his dead crew members, but they did not have a remotely festive tone about them. They would say, Merry Christmas. Our family's holiday would have been a lot merrier if you hadn't have murdered my son, read one card that McVeigh had received as late as the 1960s, despite being clear to blame. Captain McVeigh never forgave himself for his failures as a commander, even if it was during the most brutal and decisive war that mankind has ever known. Eventually in 1968, McVeigh picked up a small toy sailor that reminded him of his naval service, walked out onto his front lawn, and shot himself with the very same revolver that the Navy had issued to him upon entry into the service. He was 70 years old.

Over 23 years later, the largest war in human history had senselessly claimed yet another life. The End mankind's imagination in ways comparable to the way outer space has today. The ocean represented the greater unknown, but perhaps mankind's most potent fear is just that, fear of the unknown. Perhaps the greatest maritime mystery of all time is that of the Mary Celeste, yet there is another, arguably just as curious event that took place mere decades ago, just after the end of the Second World War. It is a story filled with intrigue, terror, and death in the tropical waters of Southeast Asia. This is the tale of the Orang Medan. The Straits of Malacca is a narrow 550-mile stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. As the main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, it is one of the

most important shipping lanes in the world, and is named after the Malacca Sultanate that ruled over the archipelago between the 15th and 16th centuries. In late 1947 and early 1948, a number of ships sailing through the straits began to pick up a series of unusual radio signals. Divided into two separate parts, sandwiching a cluster of indecipherable Morse code, the message read as follows. All officers are dead, including captain, lying in chat room and bridge. Possible that whole crew dead. I die. Despite their best efforts, radio operators found it impossible to determine the exact geographic source of the radio transmission. Nothing else was transmitted, just those two clipped but haunting sentences. Two American merchant vessels picked up the cryptic radio messages and were compelled to investigate.

Sailors feel a certain solidarity for their own, but the mysterious messages must have piqued their curiosity even more and driven them to try to uncover the truth. With the help of British and Dutch listening posts, the coordinates of the vessels thought to be transmitting were triangulated. After some deduction, it was determined that there was only one ship that the messages could be transmitting from, a Dutch freighter named the SS Orang Madan. One of the American merchant ships by the name of the Silver Star was ordered to investigate the coordinates in question.

Obviously, given the nature of the distress call, the captain of the Silver Star wasted no time in setting a new heading and steaming towards the potential rescue site. It took several hours of hard sailing, but eventually the lookout on board the Silver Star spotted a stricken ship in the distance. It was indeed the Orang Medan. No signs of life could be discerned when the rescue ship pulled up alongside her. The crew screamed and bellowed with all their might, trying to communicate with the unseen crew. After no response was received, it was evident that a boarding party would have to be organized in order to properly search the ship for survivors.

From the very moment that the boarding party climbed onto the deck of the Orang Medan, it was clear that something was horribly wrong. It was soaked with blood. The entire upper deck of the ship more resembled a slaughterhouse than a sailing vessel. The broken dead bodies of the Dutch crew were strewn about the scene, their faces frozen in death's mass of pure terror. Their arms horribly contorted as if though they'd spent their final moments trying to fight off some mystery assailant. Even the ship's dog was unable to escape the carnage, still snarling in death at whatever had massacred its master. Just as the emergency transmission had stated, the captain was also dead, lying face down in his private quarters in a pool of his own blood and guts. He too had an expression of complete and utter terror etched into his lifeless features,

almost as if he'd been witness to some kind of unspeakable horror in his final moments of life. What little remained of the bridge officers and engineers was found in the wheelhouse and chart room. They had been completely torn apart and were only identifiable by the insignia on their gore-soaked, shredded clothing. The ship's radio operator, the very same crew member who had sent out the distress call in the first place, was still sitting at his station,

radio handsets still in his grip. He was no exception, the same terrified expression preserved in the rigor mortis that had set in not long after death. As the boarding party searched the gorge-wrenched ghost ship, they began to notice several things that immediately struck them as odd or strange. Firstly, during the time the Orang Medan was found, it was summer in the southern hemisphere. Outside temperatures were in excess of 100 degrees, yet members of the boarding party noted that they had felt an ominous chill emanating from somewhere aboard the ship. Additionally, the condition of the corpses were scarily unusual, as they were decaying much faster than was expected, even in the tropics.

What's more, aside from the mess made of the bridge officers, many of the victims displayed no visible wounds, nor had the ship suffered any damage associated with the hostile boarding party. The Straits of Malacca are known for Malay pirates that attack in small, fast speedboats equipped with grappling hooks and grenades, but there was no indication that piracy was to blame, since it is common practice for hostages and cargo to be taken, yet nothing was missing. When the boarding party completed their search and return to the Silver Star, the captain made the quick decision to tow the Orang Medan back to port for salvaging purposes, but it was only once the ships had been tethered together that smoke was discovered below

the Orang Medan's deck. This confused the men who had been part of the boarding party since they'd searched the boat intensely and no sign of fire was discovered. The crew of the Silver Star rushed into action quickly severing the ropes keeping the two ships attached before disaster could strike. Just minutes after, the Orang Medan exploded with enough force to lift it clean out of the water before sinking to the bottom of the sea. The first official accounts of the incident were recorded by the United States Coast Guard in May 1952. In addition to the witness testimony which detailed the sorry state of the crew themselves, the published account added that they were all found with their frozen faces upturned to the sun, staring, as if in fear. The mouths were gaping open and the eyes staring.

But many naval historians argue that the Orang Medan never even existed, and officially speaking, it didn't. At the same time the Orang Medan was supposed to have suffered its terrible fate in the Straits of Malacca, the Silver Star was operating under another name entirely, the Santa Juana. The Graceline Shipping Company had bought rights to the ship and renamed it way after the late 1940s. In contrast, there are some that insist that Orang Medan was a real ship and insist that she was registered in Sumatra. Sumatra was a Dutch colony that formed part of what was known as the Dutch East Indies. In Indonesia, Orang means man, and Madan is the largest city in the island of Sumatra. Hence, the registered name, Orang Madan, literally means

man from Madan. However, no records have been produced to prove this claim. Even the UK-based Lloyd Shipping Registers and the Dictionary of Disasters at Sea, 1824-1962, has found no mention of the Ourang Medan. But there may be a rational, albeit horrific, explanation for the lack of official records. A strong theory that attempts to explain the bizarre demise of the crew of the SS Serang Madan is related to biological weapons designed and manufactured by Japanese scientists, led by Japanese bacteriologist Shiro Ishii. Ishii was the head of Unit 731, a secret Japanese military facility that performed insidious experiments on mostly Chinese test subjects. These tests were even more sinister and insidious than the Nazi experiments at Auschwitz and included creating dangerous biological and chemical weapons to help Japan eliminate its enemies. It is believed that in the aftermath of the war, these biological and chemical weapons had to be shipped back to the United States to be studied.

However, some high-tier government agent must have decided that these were best shipped secretively on civilian vessels in order to avoid possible interception by the Soviet KGB. There could have been an incident involving their secretive cargo, unleashing the full force of the nightmarish arsenal on the unsuspecting crew. The truth behind what really happened on the Ourang Medan has been buried since the 1950s, and it is entirely possible that we will never, ever know the real story, or if the ship ever existed in the first place. But it is not the first maritime mystery to capture the public's imagination, and doubtless, it will not be the last.

Brighton It is Saturday morning in the affluent Australian suburb of Brighton, just over five miles from Melbourne's city centre. Brighton is well known for its Dendy Street Beach, the location of 82 colourful beach boxes. Sixteen-year-old Sam Cazanet has been playing soccer and his feet are sore, so he decides to take a walk down to the beach to soothe his aching feet. He spends half an hour in the cooling, shallow waters listening to music and feeling the pain in aching feet. He spends half an hour in the cooling shallow waters listening to music and feeling the pain in his swollen feet slowly ebb away. But as he wades out of the water to retrieve his sandals, he feels a strange sensation on his feet and ankles,

almost like pins and needles. When he looks down, he sees they are covered in blood which drips onto the golden Australian sand. Sam walks back into the ocean hoping to wash away the blood and allow the salt water to disinfect the wound but on his return, he finds his legs will not stop bleeding. His father rushed him to the nearby Dandenong hospital. As Sam sat patiently in the hospital waiting room he was driven to, blood continued to pool beneath his feet from the thousands of tiny pinprick wounds that dotted his legs and feet. To his family's horror, no one at the hospital could identify exactly what was the issue. Hospital staff contacted numerous toxicity and marine experts throughout the city of Melbourne, but none of them could shed any light on the nature of Sam's injuries. However, it is not just sharks that hunger for flesh in the waters around Australia,

and one solid suggestion was made, sea lice. Known by their Latin name as Lycianocid amphipods, sea lice are marine parasites that feed on the mucus, epidermal tissue, and blood of host marine fish. They are somewhat related to shrimp and prawns but are smaller in size, ranging from 6 to 13 millimeters. They are not venomous and their bites do not cause any lasting damage. Sam's injuries were consistent with those made by the small mite-like creatures when devouring organic tissue, but marine experts claimed that there was no way that such tiny organisms were responsible for such extensive tissue damage. Sam's father had an idea.

That same day, he took a net down to the section of beach where Sam had suffered his mysterious wounds. In that net net he placed some slices of beefsteak. He lowered the thing into the water and waited. When he pulled the net out he discovered something horrifying. Hundreds of tiny crustaceans were clinging to the raw meat and they weren't just devouring the flesh, they were draining the raw steak of its blood. The marine experts were wrong. It was indeed sea lice that had attacked Sam's feet and legs, and they had done so in their thousands. Sam's father recorded the video footage of the lice devouring the slices of steak and took it straight to the hospital where his son was receiving treatment.

But the details surrounding the manner in which these organisms feed is simply terrifying. In the creature's infancy, sea lice are not aggressive and produce food via a process that occurs inside the creature's own body. But once it finds a victim, the organism begins to grow and change as it accesses a valuable source of protein, its victim's flesh. Adult sea lice, especially females, are aggressive feeders, and in some cases feeding on blood in addition to tissue and mucus. This explains why the injuries to Sam's ankles and feet were so incredibly severe. The wounds stunned marine biologist Dr. Walker Smith. It's impossible, he disturbed, a feeding group, but they are generally not out there waiting to attack like piranhas. But Jeff Weir, the executive director of the Australian Dolphin Research Institute, said he too had suffered a similar experience. The marine biologist had

taken part in a night dive and was taking pictures under a nearby pier when he found his forehead and cheeks were bleeding profusely when he surfaced. But he frankly admitted that Sam's case was the worst that he had seen in his entire career. These are very important little critters that live in the water, just like garden slaters in the garden that clean up the breaking down debris. These things are a really important part of the ecosystem. It's a bit annoying for the young lad, he must have been there for quite a while and not realizing he's getting nipped away. It's not life threatening but it's a great tale to tell.

But before you go thinking you're safe if you don't live down under, you might want to hear this. A series of itchy experiences down in the Virginian beach area had caused a panic among frightened locals and tourists alike over a so-called sea lice. Beachgoers posted numerous social media updates over the course of a week describing tiny bites and itching in bathing suits and all over their arms and legs. Many rushed from water to the closest shower but were horrified to report that the itching lasted longer. Many rushed to local hospitals, terrified they were contracting something horrible, some unknown disease.

But thankfully the tiny creatures responsible for the itching, commonly referred to as sea lice, aren't actually lice at all. They're actually blue crab larvae. One day destined to grow fat and large, potentially winding up on a plate at your favorite crab feast. The Virginia Aquarium's Vice President of Education, Christopher Witherspoon, tells us the so-called sea lice are a larval form of the blue crab called the megalops. It looks like an alien lobster and its pincers are just big enough to irritate people's skin and maybe cause a rash, he explained. Getting sea lice in your bathing suit is uncomfortable but harmless. Encounters with the larva are expected around summertime, mainly due to the timing of the

blue crab's life cycle. In late spring, eggs hatch at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay before surface currents push the tiny larva out into the ocean, where they transform into megalopi. Those in turn sink to the bottom of the ocean and ride bottom currents back into the bay, where they need to be to develop into young crabs. Megalopi are, not to be confused with sand fleas, tiny crustaceans that live in the beach sand and also make vacationers itchy. Witherspoon says we should welcome crab larvae back to the bay, not fear them. He went

on to explain that it takes millions upon millions of larvae for enough to survive the journey and avoid predators for us to have adult blue crabs to harvest. Without megalopi appearing along shores and in the bay each summer, there would be no blue crabs here. Sam Kazanay's encounter with the flesh-eating parasites may have been an incredibly rare occurrence, but it illustrates just how little we know about what lurks beneath the waves. How we well and truly roll the dice when venturing into unknown waters. How the planet's oceans are just as brutal and nightmarish as the densest jungles or driest deserts. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires?

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Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. This happened when I was around 17 years old and is still happening now. At 17 I felt lost in the world and stuck in a job I disliked with work colleagues that didn't like me. This had to do with my accent as I was quite well spoken so they thought I was a rich kid. It all started on a Friday after work. The factory I worked in had a half day on Fridays so I would spend just the rest of the day wandering around the city I lived in.

It had been a tough day of relentless mocking and I was reaching my breaking point. I went around the city looking for a new job. I visited the police recruitment center, the army, navy and air force centers and even the international red cross. I just wanted to get away from it all. After a few hours I had a bag full of career pamphlets and still no idea what to do with my life. I turned a corner and immediately saw a sign sitting in front of me. I can remember it so vividly now. It said, free personality test. Are you curious about yourself? Come in. I then looked at the building and a big fancy sign outside it said, The Church of Scientology.

Now before I continue, yes, I already knew about Scientology. However, I had a morbid curiosity about it. I had heard all the horror stories and goings-ons inside the church, but Tom Cruise was my favorite actor and he seemed to have his life sorted out pretty good. My famous last words right there. So I went inside. I was immediately greeted by a very nice lady. She asked me how I was doing and what she could do for me today. I asked if I could speak to somebody about the church and the personality test. She smiled and said, I'd be happy to. Please take a seat and I'll get you someone to speak to somebody about the church and the personality test. She smiled and said,

I'd be happy to. Please take a seat and I'll get you someone to speak to. After a minute, I was introduced to an older man named Alan, and he was the head of my city's Scientology center. Alan took me to a small room to talk privately. When we entered, I immediately noticed the large picture of L. Ron Hubbard on the wall. We sat down and genuinely had a nice talk. I told him about how I was unhappy about where I was going with my life. I told him about how I wanted to leave plus all the trouble I was having at work. He seemed genuinely concerned for me and I felt like he wanted to help. After a while of talking, I agreed to do the personality test. He gave me the test and left the room saying to give the test to the receptionist after I had finished. Two hours later, I finished. Not joking, that's really how long it took.

It was around 500 questions about anything and everything. I handed it to the receptionist and she told me it would take some time to process. In the meantime, Alan had told her to take me to their private cinema and show me a film. I thought it was just going to be some old room in the back with the TV on the wall but no, They indeed had a private cinema. They could probably seat around 50 people and had a large screen in the front. I did feel a bit weird just being by myself in a cinema owned by Scientology but I bet that hasn't happened to many people or maybe it has. I sat down and they played me the film. It was about 30 minutes long and consisted of a narrator explaining those strange feelings you sometimes get with some mediocre acting following along.

I remember a section of about how much you doubt yourself, knowing you have locked a door but going back to check multiple times. At one point the film showed how a past event that happened to your mother while she was pregnant with you Could affect your life in a negative way For example, your mother was sick on a flight, so you're scared of flying I also vaguely remember something about rotten eggs and how much an event involving them can hurt you I know it sounds absurd, but in some ways the film really made sense to me When it was done, I was taken to Alan's office and he told me my results.

He told me I was extremely depressed, one of the most unmotivated people he'd ever met, lacking cognitive thinking and I was a waste of talent. Now this made me very upset but Alan said he could help me. He gave me about four books and a DVD. He told me to read the books and watch the film before my course. I asked, what course? And Alan told me he had signed me up to do a course at the center. He convinced me that if I didn't do the course that my life would soon spiral out of control.

He made me hand over quite a lot of money for the course and said I would receive an email about the course, which was in a month's time. I left the center, ran home and immediately started reading the books I was given. This happened all over the weekend. I had basically locked myself in my room and did nothing but read and re-read those books and watch the DVD over and over again. Over the next week, I began taking notes about myself and my family. I emailed Alan with questions and concerns. I started resenting my mother for my life. I began to think that she was the problem, that everything bad that happened to me was the result of her. I started to treat her badly, swearing at her and did the best I could to ignore her.

When I emailed Alan about my mother, he told me that if she was the catalyst for my problems then maybe I should consider disconnecting from me. And I took all of that seriously. I made plans to totally leave her out of my life. A week before my course I developed some kind of God complex towards everyone around me. What I read in those books told me what I would become. I saw everyone in my family as below me. I really became a truly spiteful person. Just days before my course I was confronted by my mother and father. They said they were concerned about me and they searched my room. My dad took out all of my Scientology books and the DVD. I was outraged. I screamed and cursed at my parents. I said horrible, wicked things to them. I told them how I was going to leave them and

how I never wanted to see them again. Hours of arguing back and forth, tears and crying. However, in the end, they did convince me that the church was a bad place. They said, if I was so miserable at work, I should have told them, and that is true. To this day, I can't believe I didn't say anything to them. Instead, I went to Scientology. That night, after the arguing had stopped, they sat me down and comforted me. I really couldn't believe it. After the way I had treated them for the past three weeks, they still cared for me.

The next day, I emailed Alan and told him I would not be coming back to the church. He quickly got back to me, asking why. Asking if it was my family and if I was being forced not to go. However, I ignored them. The emails I received in the next few weeks were mad. He told me stuff like, I should leave my family now and I could stay at the church. He tried to convince me that it was all because of my mother. He even emailed me to say something along the lines of, he won't be surprised if he read in the papers that I was found dead by ending my own life. I'm very sure he crossed a line there but I just kept ignoring him. The strangest email I got was

one in all binary code 001101011 this and 10001010110. I used a binary code translator but it all came back as mixed up letters and numbers. None of it made sense. I eventually blocked him. However, it still hasn't stopped. About two or three times a year I'll get an email from the church. It's either asking how I am or asking about my family. When I get them I immediately block the email address but they just keep coming. It's always someone new saying they heard about my case and they were worried about me. The whole reason I'm writing this is because I just got one the other day and I thought it would make a good warning. Please, I beg of you, do not go to a church of Scientology Center. If they can make me into a spiteful degenerate in just a few hours, then what can not go to a church of Scientology Center. If they can make me into a spiteful

degenerate in just a few hours, then what can they do to a person in a few months or a year? If anyone has any idea how to block an entire religion or cult from my email, please let me know. And if you're lost in life, sad or upset, then please, please talk to your family, friends, or a doctor when you're down don't let others make you into a monster take it from me after this event I got help and I'm a happy confident person now This took place when I was 19 years old. My family was moving to a new house and I was moving out of state. I had stayed a week longer to help my family get everything moved to the new house before I left.

We lived in a very poor neighborhood, the ghetto honestly. We were used to shady encounters and creepy crackheads around the area unfortunately. My mother was moving from this area into a very rural country area as she didn't want to raise my brothers in a dangerous neighborhood anymore. It was July and we had spent a good two weeks loading trucks, throwing things out, moving furniture and cleaning the house. We had U-Haul trucks and family friends trucks loaded with our furniture on our dead-end road all week back and forth. The last couple of days of moving everything to the new house, my mom and brothers began sleeping at their new home.

I wasn't too thrilled about the lack of Wi-Fi at the new house and seeing it was in the boonies, the cell connection was awful. At that time my boyfriend and I were long distance so my cell phone was my only means of connection to him and I felt the need to be in contact with him all day. I also was having a hard time leaving a house that contained so many memories. That was a mistake. I begged my mom to let me stay alone at the old house as the wifi was still up and my bed was still there. I told her I wasn't ready to leave yet. I would finish cleaning it up so she didn't have to.

And that I wasn't comfortable at the new house, etc, etc. Every argument in the book. My mom was hesitant and said no multiple times. She hated the idea of leaving me alone in a near empty house in a bad neighborhood. Finally, I convinced her. I reminded her that my uncle lived just down the street, a three minute walk. I told her if anything happened I would call him. He was reliable and always up at crazy hours and my mom finally obliged. Around 8pm my family set off with another load of boxes and headed to

the new house for the night. I was completely alone. I laid on my mattress on the floor for a while and I distinctly remember watching Catfish for at least an hour or two. I eventually got up and took a shower and put on my pajamas. As I walked back into my room after my shower I flicked my bedroom light on. I stopped. I heard crunching outside, distinctly the gravel on the right side of the house outside my window. I paused, trying to strain my ears to hear anything else. I began to convince myself that it was me trying so hard to hear something that my mind was making things up and my senses were overly heightened. I took a small step forward and what I heard next made my heart very literally stop. The girl, she's still in there, a voice angrily whispered. I cannot describe the fear that flooded my veins with ice-cold intensity.

I dropped to my knees. My legs went limp with fear hearing a voice outside my window. I began to realize how bad this was. I was a 19-year-old female, home completely alone at midnight, bedroom window open, no weapons. I'm sad to say I completely froze up. The voice spoke again, a second voice. Ah, go in. Do you have it? Just weird back and forth, heated whispering. I was sitting beneath my window with my back

pressed against my bookshelf, trying to hide myself beneath the window they stood at. My curtains were very sheer and I knew they could see in the room. They obviously quickly determined I was still in the house. I heard crunching yet again, this time retreating. I waited until I couldn't hear any footsteps and dove on my bed for my phone. I couldn't dial my uncle's number because my hands were trembling so uncomfortably. I didn't think to call 911, I know, but I knew my uncle would be getting to me lightning fast anyways as his house was directly down the street. Just as I pressed the green button to call him, I heard the front door handle jiggle.

I let out a scream of pure fear, not remembering if my mom locked it behind her. I stood and slammed my window and locked it and I heard the door handle stop moving. It was locked. Dear God, it was locked. I snuck down the hall to my mom's room and peered towards the front door. I saw a shadow walk past the front door and then silence. My uncle picked up his phone and I began to instantly cry and beg him to come over. He didn't ask for an explanation. He was at the door in a minute and out of breath from running.

Shaking with fear and adrenaline, I told my uncle everything. He was on high alert and promised to stay up all night in case anyone came back. My uncle explained to me that a lot of shady characters stake out a house when they see moving trucks. They know the house will be vacant while the family is moving and try to break in and steal anything left while they see the moving trucks are gone. There's also a lot of squatters that take up surveillance on houses being moved out of so they can swoop in the second it's vacant. Judging by the fact the two voices called me the girl, my uncle thinks they've been watching our house the whole time that we've been moving things. When they saw my family leave for the night and shut the lights off, they attempted to make their move. Luckily for me, they didn't take it any further and gave up relatively quickly. Though the fact that they knew I was there and attempted to try the front door still haunts me. I'm 23, 5'2 and female. I am by no means intimidating, even when I try.

I work two days of night audit for a hotel in a heavily populated area of Houston, Texas with zero security. If you know anything about Houston, you know that can never be good news. With all that being said, last Tuesday I was alone playing stupid games online and listening to Ryan's Roses to pass the time. Around 1am, this man with a crazed look in his eyes wanders in. I have cameras right next to the desk and I saw zero movement before the door slides open. Anyways, he walks up to the desk and refuses to look me in the eyes until I ask him if he's doing alright. He snaps his head up, looks me right in the eyes and says, no, I'm not alright at all. I'm kind of taken aback so I apologize and ask if there's anything I can do.

He declines and then asks if he can get a drink from the little shop next to the desk. I tell him, yeah, of course. Go ahead and get whatever you like, the prices are listed there on the wall. Before he walks away to go get his drink, he makes sure to tell me, Don't worry, I have money, I would never steal from you like that. I didn't really say anything, just kind of smiled at him and nodded understandably. Well he wasn't lying, he for sure had money. He handed me two bloody dollar bills. So now all the alarm bells are ringing in my head.

He starts apologizing and asking me if I am mad at him and if he has upset me, all of which I say, no sir, I am not even a little bit upset, it was just getting boring in here anyways. I suddenly become painfully aware of how empty the entire hotel was at that moment he stands there for a minute takes a drink and then makes eye contact for two seconds before he tells me that he needs me to call the cops I start shaking but somehow managed to not let off that I was absolutely terrified I get the police dispatcher on the line and begin giving him all of the information in our location. Then from the background he starts saying that he was almost hit by a car while walking in the middle of the road.

Then the dispatch then asks to speak to him. So I hand the guy the phone and he starts looking around while describing himself. He stops looking around and looks right into my flipping eyes and says, Yeah, I'm gonna end my life on the freeway. No, I don't take that lightly, no matter who says it. An audible gasp left my lips and it's like it woke up something in him the way his eyes lit up. He then hangs up the phone and like slams it down on the counter in front of my computer and just looks at me. I try to make small talk, asking what's going on and how he's really doing tonight, but no.

He avoids those questions and starts asking some questions about the hotel like, what is your nightly rate tonight? He goes from harmless questions to asking if I'm all alone and when my manager will be back and if I lock all the doors around me. Now I'm afraid. I pick up what he's putting down and I want no part in whatever he was planning if he managed to get me out from behind the desk. I switch gears on conversation and tell him that he is more than welcome to take a seat in one of the comfortable chairs in the lobby until the police arrive. He thanks me and asks me again for like the 20th time if I'm mad at him. When he sits down, I get even more uneasy because he starts looking around anxiously. You know that look someone gets whenever they're working up the nerve to do something they just haven't yet. Yeah, this is the look and vibe he was giving off.

Around that time, my brain is finally piecing together what is actually happening. Another guest pulls up right in front of the lobby. His face immediately drops any excitement and he almost looks mad. In comes this woman and her son who couldn't have been more than 12 years old. They come up, no reservation so it is now a walk-in which takes a little longer since I have to put in all her information instead of just checking in and moving along to the next. Her son starts whispering something to her that neither of us can make out so he says it louder. Mom, didn't we just see him walking around the hospital?

My blood runs cold. She tells her son to hush and locks eyes with me. I hand her paperwork to sign. She takes that opportunity to secretly ask me if I am okay, if the police need to be called and if I am concerned. I tell her yes I'm terrified and the cops are on their way. I can see him straining to hear what we were saying so I stop and tell her about breakfast and all that good stuff. She tells me that she will not be leaving me alone. She will stay with me until the cops come because something doesn't feel right. God bless this woman. I will never forget her face and heart. After the cops come because something doesn't feel right. God bless this woman, I will never forget her face and heart. After the cops have come and taken him away, to a mental hospital I

presume, she comes back in from outside the doors where she also called the police. She comes up and tells me that they just left the hospital up the road visiting her sister and passed him on their way out, where he was wandering around the hospital parking lot with his head down. They came straight to the hotel. He beat them here. He swore he walked here, but there's no freaking way he walked here and beat them. She said she felt something off as soon as she walked in and saw him. She told me he likely was trying to lure me out. By making me feel bad for him.

Whatever he was planning. I never want. To find out. I dog sit for a family friend. They much prefer to have someone stay at the house with the dogs. I grew up in a town in the middle of nowhere and I love the countryside. So for me, this is like a staycation because I live in the city now and never have any time to myself. Their house is out in the middle of nowhere.

When I say nowhere, I mean this place takes two hours to get to for my work and is about 45 minutes to the nearest town or interstate. There is one neighbor within five miles and he lives directly across the street. I'm used to this where I'm from. It's supposed to give you the space you need but also help you feel safer knowing you have at least one person nearby. However, this guy has done nothing but make me feel unsafe. I get to Terry and Johnny's house and they're telling me the drill. When to feed dogs, two super cute spoiled Australian cattle dogs, when to water the plants, etc. Then as they're loading up their stuff to take it to the car, Terry says, oh don't forget to tell her about Steve. John says, oh yeah, don't worry about the neighbor across the street. He's harmless.

The guy drinks a lot and is a little off, but totally harmless. You know, the guy has lost his license so many times, all he can do is drive a moped to get to town. However, just in case, this is where we keep the gun. Steve has three don't tread on me confederate flags and two plain confederate flags, all of which are hanging from his porch, of which is a little weird. He then takes me to his gun and explains that it's loaded and if I were to use it, I don't need to cock it, just pull the trigger extra hard. At this point, I'm like, whatever, you keep a gun in your house when it takes police at least 45 minutes to get to your home. Still, I've got no worries, I'm used to drunk weirdos, I know how to handle them. I love this life in the middle

of nowhere and I've got two protective dogs that will attack on a one-word command so I'm feeling pretty safe. Terry and Johnny leave around 3 p.m. I took the dogs for a walk and play some frisbee and begin to unload my stuff while they're still worn out from all the running. As I come back out for my second load of stuff, I'm staying there for a week and needed work clothes and my Xbox to keep myself entertained in the late evenings. I hear their neighbor, Steve, slam his door and seemingly having a phone conversation. I first just hear his voice faintly and then he yells, where did you go? The dogs are hearing him now and start to growl softly. I say, calm down boys, it's alright.

Just Steve, remember? He probably just wants some privacy. Let's go inside. As I grab my stuff, I hear him yell again. I don't care about my kids. And then I hear him throw something on the unpaved road behind me. Turns out to be a cell phone. As I'm grabbing my stuff, the dogs start going crazy and run a few feet behind me, barking and growling viciously. I drop my stuff and turn around to see the neighbor at the end

of the driveway, probably 50 to 75 feet, just staring at me. I yell at the dogs to calm down and to get back at my side. They do. I then give a friendly wave to Steve. In my head I'm thinking this is kind of weird but he's probably been drinking. Plus they said the guy is harmless and I've dog sat before and never had a problem with neighbors. He then takes a single step forward and says in a manipulative sounding voice, You alright? Steve is wearing dirty jeans, work boots, a dirty red hoodie, and a red hat with a confederate flag on it. He's also got brown dirty hair to his shoulders and a beard that's probably five inches long. Yeah, I'm pretty good. My name is Pip.

Just dog sitting for Johnny and Terry this week and ready to get in and call it an evening with the boys. I look down at the dogs to see their reaction. They look like they're about to attack and I've never seen them like this before. How about yourself? We sat in silence for about 30 seconds before he stated, I'm asking if you're alright. I'm Steve. Nice to meet you Steve. Thanks for being a good neighbor and checking but like I said I'm good. Are you alright? Again silence. Now this silence lasts for probably a whole minute and I figure he's wasted. I should just get inside with my stuff.

So I turn around and finish grabbing my stuff and as I do I hear him take one more step on the gravel driveway. Dogs bark again. I turn around and Steve says, I know them. Them dogs won't do nothing to me. There's some good dogs, that's for sure. I begin to feel super uneasy, so I close my trunk and turn around to see if he's going to say anything else. I was about to tell him that I was going inside and then instead awkwardly say, Yeah, um... He cut me off. Yeah, what? He yelled. I'm shocked and say, yeah, I'm going inside now. Thanks for checking, Steve. I'm fine. I've got the dogs this week. Have a good night. I turn around and go and the dogs follow me with no problem. Steve continues to stand where I left him for literally 10 minutes just staring at the house.

Note, this house does not have a front door. There's a side door and a back door. The back door is the main door because the front of the house has those big green fluffy privacy trees so I can't even see his house through the front window. He can't see either doors from the street. You have to come onto the property to see them. It's about 6 o'clock and where I'm at the sun starts going down around then but doesn't actually get dark till about 9.15pm during the summer. The dogs and I are on the couch and I've got my gaming headphones on while playing Red Dead Redemption 2 online. All of a sudden the dogs start flipping out, running towards the back door barking and growling.

I start to feel apprehensive. They don't do that unless someone pulls up in their car and they don't know who it is. I'm not having anyone over. So I grab my knife, which is always close by, and I start walking towards the back door. The dogs are still going crazy and I have no idea what they're looking at. I don't see anything. Then I look closer. I see moped taillights in the driveway seemingly hiding behind my car. I then try and focus in and see that Steve is turned around staring at the back of the house from his moped ducking behind my car. I get the

dogs to be quiet and I hide to see what he is doing. The dogs are still growling but at least they're not giving away my location right now. I watch him for five minutes, no movement, just a creepy stare in my general direction. I don't think that he can see me but I'm not sure. He then shuts off his moped and crouches next to my car, where I can see him now peeking into my car windows. When I lived in the country, I never locked any doors. Not my house, not my car, nothing. Since I work and live downtown, I naturally keep all of my doors locked at all times. I don't see him try and get into it, but he walks around it a few times.

He's not crouching anymore. Obviously he feels like no one is watching him or cares that he's looking into my car but he's only taking a single step. Stopping looking in my car then at the house. Repeating that process. A single step at a time. Really, really creepy. At this point I text Terry and tell her that Steve is doing some weird stuff and I tell her I'm starting to feel uncomfortable.

I get a text back reading, Call the cops if you feel unsafe, they know him. They can come talk to him. Remind me to tell you about the time he was standing out by the tree at 6am when I was leaving for work when we get back. We think he has a psychotic break. How comforting, right? So I talk myself down some. This guy is just wasted. However, he starts getting closer to the door. I'm calling the cops. Dumb idea looking back because the cops take so long to get out there. I'm watching him as he's made his second round looking into my car.

He then gets on his moped and drives off. As he passes the window that faces the driveway, he's sped up, trying to make it so I wouldn't see him if I were just watching TV. Now it's like 8pm and the dogs start going crazy again. I look out and now his moped is parked in plain view and he is still standing on the walkway just 30 feet from the house, staring and talking to himself. I had previously turned all the lights off so he couldn't easily see in and see what I was doing. I see him take a single step towards the door, now 29 feet away. I grab the gun. I have calmed the dogs down and they are in

full-on protective mode. One dog to my left and one to my right. It's around 8.15pm now and I call the cops. I explain the situation and that the owners think that he had a psychotic break. As I'm halfway through explaining why I'm starting to fear for my safety, the operator says, ma'am, what is your address again? I tell her, I'm sorry ma'am, but you're not located in our county. I'll have to transfer you. Are you serious? The owner said that the cops in this area know him very well and know how to handle him. Isn't that you guys? Yes ma'am, that is us, but you are located in a different county that is not our jurisdiction. The guy who is bothering me lives in your county.

That is why I'm calling you. The operator then transfers me to another county. And she answers the phone with the average, 911, what's your emergency? I'm silent. I'm looking out the kitchen window and Steve has come up about four to five feet since the last time I looked out there. 911, what is your emergency? I then explain what's happening and explain that I was transferred because I'm apparently not in their

jurisdiction. She then tells me to remain calm and to turn all the lights on. I was not about to do that. This guy is waiting for me to do something like that. The doors are locked and I do have a firearm. If he enters, I will shoot. She then tells me that it is safest with the lights on. I turn the lights on. He notices and turns and gets on his moped and drives back to his house. I tell her what happened. She asks if I would still like to have an officer come out. Yes, I want an officer to come out. Apparently the cops in this area know him, but she transferred me to you. This is the third time he's come onto this property and he's getting closer and closer to the door.

I do not feel safe. Someone that is not me needs to talk to this guy. Calm down, ma'am. We will still send somebody, however, based on where you're located, it will take a while for anyone to get out there. That's fine. I just want someone out here. Thank you. I asked her if she would stay on the line until we got there or not.

She says that one is on the way, but she needs to be available if anyone else calls in. She told me if he comes back and I'm still uneasy to call them without hesitation. Now it's about 9pm and the sun is getting ready to completely set. Again, the dogs go crazy. Now I'm getting angry and walking around the house with a loaded gun so that if Steve sees me, he's going to see the gun too. I look out the window and see his moped, but I don't see him. What? Where is he? From the window in the kitchen, I can't see the back door, so I go upstairs. One dog follows, and the other is too old to climb the stairs and peek down through the bathroom window. Steve is on the back porch lighting matches and throwing them down onto the wooden porch. He doesn't seem harmless anymore.

He's talking to himself and twisting his head back and forth like he's getting warmed up to fight or having a conversation with another one of his personalities or something. I start filming him from the upstairs window, just in case I die, you know, so that I could hide my phone and when they found it they'd know that it had to be this guy. The sun is down and it's starting to get dark. He steps up to the door and starts knocking. He then starts pounding on the door. I'm pretty good at staying calm in a situation but my heart started beating so fast that my Fitbit had to change my heart rate tab to every two seconds.

If he gets in here I'm gonna have to kill this guy or he's going to kill me. I could see pure hate in his eyes. Then he stops pounding at the door, quickly turns away and runs to his moped, starts it and takes off faster than I thought a moped could go. Not even a minute later the cop pulls into the driveway. I had mentioned to the dispatch operator that I have two dogs who will bark at the officer but will not attack unless given a specific word. They are trained and I do have a firearm. I will leave the firearm inside when I go to meet the officer. I met the officer. The dogs didn't growl. Simply gave a single bark, a piece to let me know that someone was there. I went outside to meet him and told him that the guy just took off

on a moped. He says, oh yeah, I think I just passed him when I turned onto the road. I explain that he is absolutely drunk or crazy and if he sees him on the way back that he should definitely pull him over because I'm quite positive he's under the influence of something. Normal people just don't act that way. The cop basically shrugs everything off and says, Well, are you going to stay the night here? I told him no, I'll leave the dogs overnight and come back in the morning. I asked him to stay while I packed everything up. He nodded.

I go inside, give the dogs love and treats and crate them for the night. I take off and return the next day with my dad. My dad begins walking the perimeter to try and show him that a man is also staying here. I'm a 24 year old female if you're wondering. Then Steve, wearing the same dirty outfit and hat while holding a 24 case of Budweiser, is standing at the end of the driveway again. I'm watching him from the front window. I see my dad at the other end of the yard. As he comes into view, Steve turns around and walks back to his house. I see my dad at the other end of the yard. As he comes into view, Steve turns around and walks back to his house. I later learn that Steve has been to jail multiple times due to domestic abuse. His kids are not allowed to see him due to his violent nature and he bought a

four-wheeler. No one knows how he gets money to get these things. Terry and Johnny have never seen him leave for work. They only see him leave on his moped or four-wheeler empty-handed for an hour or two and return with a case or two of beer. I don't know who he thought I was, but every time he looked at that house in my direction, there was just pure hate in his eyes. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't called the cops as early as I did. Last year I started my first semester at a university far away from home. First I was very intimidated because I'm not exactly the best at making new friends, but

as time went by, it turns out there aren't as many history students, which is why everyone got to know each other pretty quickly. We ended up building an amazing group morale, where we would get lunch together, help each other out, and all that stuff. There was one guy in our group that really stuck out to me, particularly because of his weird sense of humor. Let's name him Serge. He kept making Hitler jokes on every occasion possible, which is very concerning knowing he wants to be a history teacher, or would just make very crude and cringeworthy comments towards girls in our group. We all kind of had the common understanding of ignoring him whenever he

had said something and quickly move on with another subject. However, it didn't take long for him to find my phone number in our group chat and DM me, and that's where it all began. It all started out harmless with questions a la, do we really have to know this or have you learned for this test yet? Most of the time his questions didn't make any sense but I figured he doesn't have the right antennas to sense the cringe and I happen to have a soft spot for outcasts so we kept talking for a while. One day I accidentally baptized my MacBook with an energy drink and of course it stopped working. Unfortunately there was an assignment due

that week and I wasn't sure how to manage that without a typing device. Sure enough Serge found out about my situation and had the glorious idea to meet up at the library where they happen to have computers. Of course I agreed and we set up this homework date on the coming Friday. When said Friday came around we surely enough met up to get this thing done. I have to admit it was almost an instant regret for me as he wouldn't talk or do anything while I was finishing the task. Once I was done I realized that he has written one full sentence that entire time we were there which was about three hours. As it got really late at that point, I told him I was going to look up a bus, but he kept insisting to take me home and I finally agreed. On the way

to his car, he suggested we should get drinks since it's a Friday night. I told him I wasn't really feeling too well, but he could have that one beer that was left in my fridge. He shrugged his shoulders and asked why we just couldn't get vodka. Once again, I reminded him that I was sick and asked him where the heck he thinks he would be sleeping. His answer was, next to you? Ugh, no, I was thinking, already making a plan to get rid of him as quick as possible. In my apartment I gave him that one beer, hoping he'd finish it and leave. For some reason I left my shoes and my jacket on. He asked why I didn't take it off and I told him I was really cold.

He would come closer, unzip my jacket and say, I know something to get you hot in no time. I jumped up and asked if he'd finish his beer beer not sure how to handle this whole situation he proceeded to take out his notebook turn on this weird show on Netflix which is a cartoon about World War II he said one episode come on I agreed despite wanting him to go and told him to leave once it's done of course he took this opportunity trying to come closer to me. All of a sudden he grabbed me, threw me into my bed and bit my ear. It honestly happened so quickly I barely recall how he managed it in that time. I felt like cooked noodle, unable to move. I yelled at him, telling him it's time to leave and thankfully he did, but I could tell he didn't like that I quote unquote kicked him out.

Fast forward he would send me messages while sitting in the same classroom asking if he could pet my kitty even though I don't have a cat. It kept getting weirder and weirder and I never replied but since he knew where I lived I was scared to block him because I wasn't sure if he would simply show up at my doorstep if he couldn't talk to me online. As time went on, I found out that he texted multiple other girls from uni. I found out because they would come up to me and say that he talked about me, telling other people that I hit on him and jumped on his lap while he was at my place. Seeing how strange he was, surely believed me without explaining so at least I didn't have to defend myself. One day us girls met up to talk about Serge and how to deal with him. We all decided it was best to block him so we got our phones out together and got it done. That day I walked past him looking away since I could feel him trying to make eye contact.

Right after class he followed me, blocked my way, and confronted me about blocking him. I think I've never been so scared in my life. I simply couldn't speak, and I knew this guy was unpredictable. Luckily, one of my friends saw me and came over asking if there was a problem. Serge immediately brushed it off by saying he just asked me something and booked it into the building. This event took place not too long ago. It happened on a Wednesday night when me and my friends decided to go clubbing. Neither of us are actually club people but it was free for ladies and a local rock band was performing.

They're pretty famous around here so we figured why not. It's been a while since we've gone out at night anyway. Nothing particularly interesting happened at the club as it was heavily overpopulated. When the show was over we decided to leave as it started getting even more populated with new people coming in. It was hard to keep up a conversation because we literally had to scream over each other and in worst cases even push to get past the masses. We walked around the old town and chit-chatted a bit. The old town was fairly quiet except for the ambulance trying to aid a drunk guy who hit his head on a pavement. After a while we both decided to go home. I had to get a taxi because it's quite

a long one hour trip at least and there was no way I was going to walk this path alone as it tends to get quite dangerous at night. She lived closer to the city center and in another direction so she decided to walk home instead. After I had ordered my taxi we parted ways. I had to wait 10 minutes at least so I decided to sit down on a bench nearby the bus stop. That's where it began. I was scanning the area and when I glanced over to the bus stop on the other side of the road, I noticed a dark grayish SUV parked right next to it. Right as I looked towards it, he started waving for me to come closer. I was confused and looked around again, to see if there was more people around. When I glanced again, he tried to pull the same gesture, but I didn't respond like before.

That's when he slowly started to drive. A bad gut feeling instantly kicked in and then he rolled up right next to me as I feared. He rolled his window down and yelled, I'm Ricardo. I'm not even sure if it was his real name. The guy seemed to be way older than me, almost twice my age. He appeared to be in his late 30s, early 40s and seemed to be either Puerto Rican or Colombian. Now I know sometimes people tend to pick others up if their destination is on their radar, but I had a strong gut feeling that he had other things on his mind. When I told him I was waiting for a taxi, he kept insisting that I should cancel it and get in his car. He also called me baby a few times and the red flags kicked in even more. He asked for my name and I blurted out a random name that popped into my head at the time. He took out his

hand and wanted to shake hands. I stood up slowly but something told me not to do it. That's when I got a small peek into his car. I'm pretty sure there appeared to be ropes or wires on his backseat. There was also a silver light slightly shining from a backseat what I assumed to be duct tape. I immediately froze and told him I'd rather not get too close with strangers. He tried to reassure me that he was a good guy and wouldn't hurt me. He started getting frustrated and for some reason he thought that if he would say things like, but you're so beautiful baby, at least twice that I'd cool down and get in his car. No, not happening. He seemed to get angry but as it took place in the city center and there were quite a few cars and other people around, he just asked me if I was sure for the last time, as if he hoped I'd change my mind to his offers that he had made.

I blew him off for the last time and that's when he finally left. He didn't even say goodbye or anything, just drove off like wind. That's when I realized that he must have been waiting in that spot where I had first noticed him. I didn't see any cars passing by while I was sitting at the bus stop. It's also the exact spot where most people would go after a night out to order a taxi or perhaps go to McDonald's, whatever floats their boat. The club was located just southeast from the bus stop. A lot of girls were wasted that night so he most likely wanted to take advantage of that too. When the taxi finally arrived I texted my best friend. I froze when

she texted me that a creepy guy in a large SUV had stopped and mumbled something to her. She ignored him and kept on walking. Apparently he attempted to follow her and kept shouting something but since she had her headphones on she couldn't really make out what he was saying. When she ran in between the houses, he was gone. Luckily she got home safely and so did I. The moral of the story is to always be aware of your surroundings and listen to your gut feeling. I'd like to think that it wasn't half as bad as some stories I've read here and that we handled the situation well but something tells me that it would have been

different if we were in a more private and secluded area. So this was two or three years ago in India, and my father and I were driving home from a wedding. I don't know how much y'all know about weddings over there, but this was a three-day event that involved the entirety of two middle-of-nowhere-nothing villages. It was a huge deal, and we were the only white people the majority of these folks had ever seen, so beyond the bride and groom themselves, we were the best guests. This meant near constant attention, no relaxation or any time to ourselves, and sleep came in the form of a concrete slab of a bed with a thin blanket over it, nestled snugly in between apparently every drunk uncle the village could hold, all passionately arguing for hours about something in Hindi. I think it was maybe the music, which also constantly blared

from concert-sized speakers through the whole village. It was safe to say by the time we left the wedding we were already extremely sleep-deprived and out of it. This isn't even the fun part, though. Through an odd chain of events that isn't totally related to the story, while driving home on the single lane road that had traffic in both directions, dodging donkey carts, groups of scooters, and other drivers at about 120 kilometers per hour, 72 miles per hour for us freedom unit-ers out there, we get in a head-on collision. I remember realizing what was going to happen a few seconds before it did, closing my eyes, loosening my body, making sure my tongue would

be okay, and then bam, the world turned upside down, and then again, and again, and one more time. Our car flipped four times, landing upside down in an overgrown field near the spot of the accident. The other car was mostly gone, and what was left of it was still on the road. Glass was everywhere, my dad was unconscious, my lehenga was ripped to shreds, and there were suddenly voices all around me. I remember being extremely confused and dazed. And I hurt. Why did I hurt? Dozens of people apparently stopped to flip the car back over to help the American tourists out. A few people pulled me out through the left hand broken window and immediately went back in to help my father on the driver's side.

I, extremely confused, exhausted and scared, most likely concussed, I later found out definitely concussed, wandered over to the road in the other demolished car. I could hear a siren in the distance. An ambulance? Cops? I didn't pay attention. Where were my shoes? Suddenly a man had his arms around my shoulders and was ushering me to an unknown white car a small distance from the wreck. I will take you to the hospital, he said. I asked where my father was and a few other questions and he mostly ignored me. He is fine, come on. He pushed me forward and in a daze I followed, asking about my things, my shoes, my dad. All I had was my phone, which was still in a death grip in my hand. He ignored me. Do not worry. Hurry. Get in the car. I did as I was told, though I remember asking a few more times about my shoes. I was barefoot and limping. I remember being focused on my right foot, how it wouldn't work, basically ignoring the guy guiding me away from

the accident and the rest of the people. Why did it hurt so much, and where was my bag? The man urged me forward some more, making promises that things were fine. He had them already, just get in the car. I was barely paying attention, slowly following. Where was my dad? At that point, I guess the man decided I wasn't moving fast enough. He wrenched my phone from my hand, maneuvered me into the back seat and slammed the door behind me. He was walking around to the driver's side when an ambulance pulled up. I struggled with the door saying I'll get into the ambulance instead, that my dad must be here. Where were my things? No. He slammed the door again, locking it this time. Be quiet. At this time I started crying and I was still confused trying

to open the locked door, blubbering that I needed my things. He insisted he was helping and to shut up, shut up, shut up. He rushed around, opened the driver's side door and was about to get in when I heard an almost roar-like sound erupt to my left. Suddenly my father was there, bleeding, limping, ignoring the chaos all around us and angrier than I'd ever seen him. Get my daughter out of your car! He grabbed the man, who was halfway in the vehicle at that point, and threw him to the ground, unlocked the backseat door, and rushed around to pull me out. Dad, where are my shoes? Does he still have my phone? I obviously asked a thin air as my father was already back a few feet away shouting,

hands around the man's throat, demanding my phone. With a terrified look, the man pulled it out of his pocket and threw it several feet away, causing my dad to drop him on the pavement in one swift motion and bound after the device. At that point, the man hurriedly climbed into his car and sped away while I made my way to the back of the waiting ambulance, still not really processing what just happened. My dad materialized on the bench next to me a few seconds later, my cracked phone in hand, and enveloped me in a huge hug while saying how scared he was, the paramedics moving all around us, securing everything, and preparing for the drive to the hospital. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires?

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when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local TreadExperts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca To be continued... as simple and brief as possible. I'll keep to the main points of the story. Around January of this year, the residents of an affluent neighborhood across town began noticing things missing from their yards. At least, that's how it started. As the weeks passed, their homes started to be burglarized. One by one, street by street, the burglary spread. When April arrived, barely 1% of the homes remained untouched.

Probably because most of the residents of those homes were retired and spent their days at home rather than leaving them unattended. The robberies slowed greatly but never completely stopped. Even after four months had passed, the police were no closer to finding a suspect. May was starting to look like the end of the crimes until they accelerated once again in a new neighborhood, this one just a mile from mine. While not as wealthy, these homeowners still had plenty of goodies to draw the thief or thieves to them. I say thief or thieves because at that time no one was sure how many crooks there were. Odds said it was more than one simply due to the number and

speed of the crimes. Somehow, maybe because the robberies made the cops look bad, the break-ins managed to stay out of the news. One story popped up by June but was unexplainably buried deep into the back of the paper. Just as before, the thieves blew through house after house, taking anything not nailed down and got away unseen by anyone. It's often reported all it takes is for one person to notice something small to break a case wide open. It was a little old lady who noticed something strange on her street that would lead to the resolution of this one. She reported that it struck her as strange that the garbage men, who had only just picked up her trash, returned about an hour later in another truck. This time, however, they only drove up and down streets and never stopped to pick anything up. The report wasn't taken very seriously at first, but a couple of detectives decided to follow up on it. They waited until

it was the regular pickup day and watched the habits of the garbage men working their route. At first, all seemed normal. However, a few hours into their stakeout, they noticed four men in a different truck turn down an alley in front of them. Continuing to watch the men, the detectives noticed the truck stop halfway down the alley and the men approached the rear of a house. This spurred their curiosity and they decided to question the men in the truck. When the men saw the detectives coming, two ran off but the other two stayed where they were. Calling for backup, the two had run off, were soon picked up.

All four were arrested and within hours confessed to being part of a burglary ring. They had successfully robbed over 300 homes in our city. Despite being in a different make of garbage truck, they had taken the extraordinary measures of painting the city logo on the doors of the truck, just as our actual ones are. Even crazier was the four men were arrested wearing the very same uniforms our trash men wear. The authorities freely admitted that had not the nosy old woman noticed the second truck, they may not have ever caught them. Although they did catch the men, it came out soon after that the ring that they were a part of most likely spanned the entire

country and are believed to have killed at least five homeowners during burglaries in other states. This is all the information we currently have, and hopefully for your own sake, that this group has not made it to your area, and never do. Regardless if this threat exists near you, I felt it was important to pass on this story. If anything, just let you know what to look for if the burglary rate increases in your neighborhood. Not to mention, you gotta admit, this is an ingenious way to go unnoticed. Upon the death of my mother in June, I inherited my parents' house. The house has been the one I grew up in, but I hadn't visited it for some time.

Since it was paid off, I saw no reason to stay in my apartment, so I moved in soon after the funeral. The house was in considerable disrepair, and I've devoted a large amount of my free time to fixing the little things I felt comfortable messing with. One major project I was not comfortable tackling was the garage door. It had broken on my mother and without my dad around to fix it and no money to get it repaired, it had remained stuck open for at least the past year or more. It was going to have to stay that way until I could scrounge up the money to have a handyman look at it. Much worse than the state of the house is the rapid decline of the neighborhood. It's never been an upper class area, but in the brief span of 15 years it's degraded greatly. According to the local news, a young woman was assaulted a mere two blocks from me. If I would have known how

dangerous the old neighborhood had become, I certainly wouldn't have moved in. I'm a single female myself and this amount of crime makes me feel very unsafe. Despite my regrets, this is my home for the time being and I have to move forward with my life. During the week, I usually leave before sunset and don't return often until after sundown. On the weekends, I try to adhere to the same schedule except instead of leaving for work around dawn, I visit the market and return before the residents can see me. This lifestyle has allowed me to exist separately from my neighbors and that's the way I liked it. This concept of out of sight out of mind has served me well.

I'm a homebody anyway, always have been, and so I don't mind staying inside all day. Lord knows all the repairs to this place have kept me busy. My days have been like this since I moved in, but I decided to take my summer vacation last week and something terrifying happened that Monday morning. It was a peaceful one and not out of the ordinary until I noticed the screech of the garbage truck. The sound reminded me I had forgotten to put out the can for them. On my way out the door I grabbed the bag from the kitchen. I'd been keeping the can in the garage and was about to roll it out when I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye. Turning to get a better look I could clearly see a raggedy man

attempting to scurry away. Unfortunately for us both, I was blocking his only way through the junk and out to freedom. When it became clear to him that he couldn't escape, he stopped about six feet and peered at me with a wicked snarl on his face. He may not have known it at the time, but I didn't intend on trapping him in there. It was just that I was frozen in my spot from terror and I couldn't move an inch. Another result of my fear was that I began yelling at him uncontrollably. Who are you? Why are you here? Both questions blurted out of my mouth before I even realized what was happening.

Once I started speaking I began taking back control of myself and yelled out at him again. What are you doing here? I could hear the fear in my voice as I said it. I suppose he heard it too because a smug little grin took the place of the sneer on his dirty mug. Are you okay ma'am? Somehow without either of us noticing the garbage truck had pulled into the alleyway next to where my can usually was and the garbage man was standing halfway up my driveway. I assumed my yelling had gotten his attention and he had walked up to investigate. His question caused me to jump and my fear got even worse until I turned around and saw his uniform in the truck parked behind him. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I heard yelling and saw his uniform in the truck parked behind him. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I heard yelling and wanted to make sure everything was cool. Is it? I mean, do you know this man? Is he supposed to be on your property?

I guess the look on my face betrayed my feelings. For a moment or two, we all stared at each other, unsure of what to do. Then the garbage man looked into my eyes and slowly waved me over to him. That must have been one I needed to help me move. Without a moment's hesitation, I began backing out of the garage, never taking my eyes off the man in front of me. He did the same thing. The moment I reached the garbage man, my fear started to evaporate. Now that I was safely next to, my fear started to evaporate. Now that I was safely next to him, we continued to watch the invader.

It seemed now that he no longer had the advantage over me. He had become afraid. His eyes darted back and forth between the two of us until the garbage man spoke. Hey look dude, you need to get out of here and don't come back. If you do, the cops will be called. Spread the word to your friends, this place is off limits from now on. What he said made me want to laugh, but at the same time I couldn't argue with the message. No sooner than he finished, the guy shot like a bullet out of the garage and down the alley.

With the guy out of sight, the garbage man let out a big gasp and started chuckling. I don't know about you, but I was terrified. I had no idea what to do, I know that speech probably sounded pretty stupid, but I was flying by the seat of my pants the whole time. Are you okay? He didn't get his hands on you, did he? I was in awe. The whole time, he seemed like he was in complete control and knew just what he was doing. I'm glad he had good instincts. My adrenaline slowed down about this time and the seriousness of my predicament hit me like a truck. I buckled

and fell to my knees fighting the urge to vomit the whole time. He suggested I sit still with my head between my knees and breathe slowly. He obviously knew how this sounded and explained the purpose behind it. He hadn't led me astray yet so I took the advice. I'm unsure how long we sat in my driveway talking but it was at least an hour. The talking helped me to take my mind off the nausea. I told him a bit about what had happened and the problem with the door that caused it. When he went back to his truck, I was feeling a lot better. Upon returning to the safety of the house, I locked it down and stayed in the rest of the day and the next. Sometime after 9am, Wednesday morning, a knocking came at the front

door. Reluctant at first, I eventually looked out the peephole and saw that it was the garbage man, but in normal street clothes. My run-in on Monday was still very much on my mind. Despite him being the one to help me, I still didn't open the door right away. Instead, I asked him what he wanted through the door. I'm off today, so I thought I'd come over and fix the garage door for you. If that's okay, that is. Taking a moment to think it over, I told him it was.

I didn't have the money to have anyone else do it. I watched him walk around toward the back of the house, carrying a toolbox with him. It was over an hour before I got the nerve to go outside and thank him. We BS'd while he worked and by the late afternoon he had fixed it. I made him dinner as a thank you and he left just after 7. It was the least I could do. While I'm not sure where this all may lead, knowing I have a guardian angel may make living in this neighborhood a little less scary. While I was in CVS the other day picking up a prescription I noticed the fall Thanksgiving themed things that were being stocked on the shelves. Every year around this time when I begin seeing these decorations,

I'm reminded of a horrible accident I witnessed five years ago this year. Although no one I care for was injured in it, the outright shocking nature at the scene and the ultimate result to those who were indeed involved, it still never fails to cast a shadow on the season's gatherings. I'm sure I'm not the only American that finds himself buried in chores this time of year. The particular day of the wreck, I was in and out of the office all day. The minute I was finally able to dig into work, something else was needed or went wrong. I went on a return trip from Staples, taking it easy as I went because of a recent freeze combined with the automatic sprinklers made it a slippery go.

The driver just in front of me had made it halfway through the intersection when they were suddenly t-boned by a trash truck from out of nowhere. Instead of stopping right away, both vehicles continued sliding sideways until they ultimately stopped by a bank building sitting on the corner of the block. I must have stopped myself because once they finally hit the building I noticed I wasn't moving. The wreck appeared to be moving in slow motion and seemed to have lasted several minutes, which of course it could not have. Myself and one other guy got out of our cars and ran over to help the drivers. When I reached the trash truck and opened the driver's door, both men were unconscious. The cab of the truck looked as if it was welded to the driver's side of the car.

If we're ever going to get her out of the car, we were going to have to back up the truck somehow. A pair of paramedics showed up about this time. We had a quick powwow to figure out our next move. Since the fire truck still hadn't arrived, we volunteered to help them out. Although the female driving the car was conscious, a lot of blood was pouring down her face and she was very confused. We knew the longer she sat without any medical assistance, the worse she would get. A quick glance at the windshield of the truck told me nothing had changed.

Neither man was awake. They could have been dead for all I knew, but I wasn't willing to wait any longer. Climbing into the cab, I pushed the driver aside and searched around until I found the ignition. To everyone's joy, the truck started. Finding the transmission took me a tad longer, but I did. It did fight me at first, but I jiggled the shifter until I got it to engage. As it slowly rolled backwards, the car's door ripped away from the body of the car, giving the paramedics the much-needed access to the driver we'd all hoped for.

Happy that we'd had enough room to get her out, I killed the ignition in the truck just in time for the truck's driver to regain consciousness. The fire truck did arrive on the scene soon after, having been held up by another multi-car wreck a few blocks away. Now that the pros were all there, me and the other drivers stepped aside and let them do their jobs. Within the hour, all drivers and passengers were on their way to the hospital and the scene was almost completely cleaned up. Confident I wasn't going to get any more work done for the day, I headed home. I kept my eyes on the paper and TV for any news on the condition of those involved in the crash, but it wasn't until the week before Thanksgiving that I heard anything.

Unfortunately, the female driver in the car died three days after. Although she was healing well and was thought to be going home soon, late one night she threw a blood clot and passed away. She was not the only one, however. The guy riding shotgun in the trash truck never regained consciousness. At some point during the course of the accident he had a heart attack and died right there. Even though he was the one driving the truck I don't blame or hold any ill will against the garbage man. He was just another part of many other vehicle accidents that

day. I guess if I wanted to be angry at someone I could point the finger at the businesses who run their sprinklers, even during the fall and winter, but I'm not really mad at anyone. This time of year is supposed to be about the meeting of family and all the things we have to be thankful for. Perhaps witnessing the last moments of people does cast a bit of a shadow over the season, and despite all of that, I am thankful. Had it been me struck by that truck that day, I may not have been alive to celebrate another holiday with those I love. I can't think of anything better to be thankful for. On February 24th, 1999, Michael Ruiz would be accidentally killed in a fight with one of his fellow sanitation engineers outside their place of work. The death was ultimately judged as an act of self-defense.

The other members involved in the altercation stated on multiple occasions that he was attacked from behind by Ruiz. The two men who witnessed the fight agreed with the defendant. One of them later said he pounced on Tony like he was possessed by a rabbit animal. I'd never seen him act that way before. Tony had no chance but to fight back. When Mike went for his eyes it was obvious this had become a fight for his life. The evening of his death, the police carefully searched Ruiz's home, hoping to discover a motive to the attack on his co-worker. What they would discover would shed light on the inner mind of a man and the depths of psychological collapse and the events that led to it. Unknown to anyone other than the officers there that day and Ruiz himself, Tony Campbell, the defendant, had prevented a terrible act of bloodshed from happening a mere two days later. The following paragraphs come from a notebook of papers written by Ruiz.

It documents the awful plan he was soon to set into action in the unfortunate events that he felt justified him to strike out against his enemies. Although a few names of people and locations may have been changed or omitted to preserve their privacy, all pertinent information surrounding the actions mentioned above have been left intact. Now I present to you all what the media entitled, The Bloody Plan of Micro Ruiz and the Poor Excuses for It. My life was as average as any others, I suppose. I was bullied just like anyone else. Even though I despised it at the time, it would soon be my first lesson in the dynamics of power. It's not often discussed, but we all learn our place in the pecking order eventually. No doubt my bully had been bullied by someone else in his life.

He was simply paying it forward in order for me to learn my place in life just as he had. The way in which we are reminded of our place changes as we grow. In college the professors take the place of the bullies and use their superior position in the school to do so. Once our real life truly starts, our adult one, as long as we remain among our own people, no one should have any reason to knock us back into our place. The only part of our lives this may differ is at our workplace. They're nothing more than a more serious form of school, anyhow.

Your boss should really be the one single person who can truly be in the right for correcting you. Unless, of course, he's nothing more than just another of your peers with a fancy title. At that point, he's on the same level as you and should by all rights keep his mouth shut. From the first day I learned this unfortunate lesson, I lived by this rule. I was confident that as long as I remembered my place and stayed in it for the remainder of my life, I'd have a decent one. However, on February 26th, 1998, I discovered no matter how hard I worked, loved my family, or said my prayers, I couldn't prevent the death of my daughter.

The verdict was SIDS's Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. What kind of answer was that? It in no way tells you how she actually died. It seems to me just another way of saying, we don't know. When it happened, I was ready to end it all right then, but fortunately, I still had Heather. Everyone around us said that as long as we stuck together, we'd make it through. Time heals all wounds and the rest of that empty garbage. She didn't even wait three months before she left. Something about my suffocating grief, whatever that's supposed to mean. For the second time that year I made the decision to check out but the same people gave me the same platitudes. Although I have no reason to listen, I did. Some force inside me

drove me forward. Perhaps I had attempted to get above my station in life and become too proud of the things I had so I believed them when they told me to let time do its thing. It hadn't been more than five months since my life began to collapse before my co-workers began mocking me. As with the other problems, I believed this treatment to be a reminder from my peers that I had let my pride take over. Over time though, the barbs and banter began to take a tone of vindictiveness and I took my concerns to my supervisor. Instead of the support I had expected, he made it clear that I was in some way responsible for this treatment. This is when it finally clicked in my head. It wasn't myself that had lost his way. It was those around me who had become eaten up with pride. I could see it clearly now. Fancy cars, expensive vacations to the Bahamas. We were garbage men for God's sakes. It was me who would be responsible for reminding them

of how far they had strayed. The following months flew by quickly as I first formed my plan in my mind and then put it into action. Any free minutes I had was used to create my mind and then build with my hands. As the days grew closer to my deadline, I feared I wouldn't finish my work in time. But if you are reading this, I obviously have and am no longer here to suffer. If you find yourself wondering why I chose the 26th as the day to execute my plan, I figure the anniversary of the day I lost my Anita no finer a time to remind my peers of how far they have strayed. If the two bombs I planted at the administration building have not managed to destroy some if not all my co-workers, my supervisors included, I am more than confident the one I planted at his home will, at least, end the life

of the man who has most lost his way and was responsible for his entire path of retribution I have been forced upon. Ultimately, I am only comforted by the fact that it was me who maintained his true path in life. I pray there is a place I may be together with my Anita once more. Do not condemn me for what I've done. I have simply taken upon myself a task no others had the courage to undertake. To be continued... Some are more gory than scary, but I promise everyone they are all 100% true. Well, mostly. Besides it being a subject I know a lot about, I'm writing these stories to give the world an insight to a job that most people, especially upper class ones, don't know much about. Growing up in a blue-collar family in small-town Texas gave me a positive view of hard work.

Despite that, I've always had a more intellectually leaning mind. In middle school, my biggest dream was to visit Japan after graduation. By high school, I wanted to be a criminal psychologist and interview serial killers. I never ended up doing either. See, I've always been a very lazy person. Although I could do the hardest schoolwork, except for math and the calculator's always been my best friend, I usually preferred taking a nap on my desk. Because it was the easier path, I quit school my senior year and got my GED. I was going to have to slog it out at a junior college before I moved on to a university but I didn't mind. I hated high school anyway. Two weeks later I'd taken my money out of the college and used it to move to Austin with a few friends. I had a great time there but because of problems I created

I was back at home by 1995. I continued bouncing around Texas every few years until we get to around the year 2000. Through a childhood friendship, I end up with a job working for a large Dallas suburb as a garbage man. The technical name was Sanitation Engineer, but I wasn't fooling myself. I was handling people's trash. Like I said earlier, I grew up in a working class home and I had no problem doing manual labor. The aspect of the job that had made it so appealing was the pay. Of course, I couldn't afford to live in the city I worked for, but I'd still be getting the same level of pay that had taken my father 20 years to get to,

and that was just the start. This was at the time before the economy began to take a downturn. We were given full benefits and had guaranteed raises once a year. It was certainly a dirty job, but for a 20-something kid with a GED, I was ballin'. Perhaps even better was my girlfriend didn't mind. A closer description of her would be excited. After all, we were getting out of our rinky-dink town and living in the heart of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. Looking back

on it now, life was pretty good. With all the formalities out of the way, we'll get to my first story. This initial tale takes place a few months after 9-11. In hindsight, this is about the time things began to go downhill financially for us city employees. My partner and I were working our usual route. In this particular city, we still did things the old way. We didn't pick up trash cans, but we did put bags in the back of the truck ourselves. They were supposed to stay under 50 pounds, but it was common to come across one close to 100. My three bulging discs are proof of that. I digress.

Anyway, it was my turn to pull trash. At one specific stop, I picked up a bag and noticed it was full of books and videotapes. Being a book fanatic, I had to see what was in it. After I cut it open, I knew I'd hit paydirt. A big black trash bag full of spotless goodies. In order to make a little extra money a lot of us guys would sell any valuable items we came across on our routes. Whatever books I didn't keep for myself would go to half price books. Before I decided on what to keep I waved my partner to the back to choose if he wanted anything for himself.

As he sifted through the bag we began to notice a theme start to form. Almost every book had something to do with warfare or something in history connected to it. Among them was a really nice volume of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. A history of the Third Reich and the notoriously anti-semitic fraud of a book called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fake first published in 1903 in Russia telling of a global Jewish conspiracy to control the world through the press and other media. If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the progenitor of all the crazy global Jewish conspiracies we hear today. It was also taught in the schools of Nazi Germany. So there's that too. Although this already sounds strange,

there was also multiple copies of a video with Arabic script and subtitles in English called Children of Fire. At the time, this didn't mean much. However, considering the recent attacks and the shutting down of a local charity, we were unsure if we had something connected to the two. My partner and I shared a horrific look. What did we just stumble on? I think any American could be forgiven for putting two and two together, but the fact was, we weren't supposed to be digging in the bags. It wasn't a privacy policy, more of a, you should be working not digging in the residence trash sort of thing. Even if we had the feeling that we were throwing

out these things to hide something, that was the facts. We both knew regardless of whether this was real evidence of something, if we called law enforcement, we'd get chewed out by our dim-witted bosses. After thinking about it for a moment, I decided I'd take a small selection of books and videos and hold onto them in case something occurred down the line. And that's just what I did. Now we move forward in time. And maybe a year later, or as long as two, I don't actually remember. I'm loafing around my apartment on a day off and happen upon one of the videotapes from that bag. This tape is a blank TDK or Simbler brand VCR cassette.

On the top of the cassette there's a white label with something written in pen. I don't remember exactly but it said something like 60 minutes and some date ending with the year 1993. I'd always been curious about what was on it, so I put it into one of the VCRs. The report that followed made my jaw drop. The report was a story done by 60 Minutes sometime in the 90s about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the investigation to find those involved. It wasn't very remarkable until a picture of a certain videotape titled Children of Fire popped up on the screen. Part of the report stated that some

of those involved in the bombings were inspired by the videos. Apparently it was a documentary done by a Palestinian woman recording the training and fighting of the Palestinian state against Israel. This made my mind flip back to that day. Why in the world would a person own videotapes documenting attacks against Israel that inspired acts of terrorism against the United States and own multiple books about warfare, anti-Semitism, and the history of Nazis, only to throw them into the garbage mere days after a second attack of terrorism against the World Trade Center? I had my theory, but had I destroyed the evidence that could have helped implicate them as being involved in some way, or at least showed them as outright supporters of international

terrorism? I broke out into a cold sweat at this thought. I had saved a couple of books and that videotape, but ran maybe twenty more books and tapes up into the truck. I had saved a couple of books and that videotape but ran maybe 20 more books and tapes up into the truck. I had been almost catatonic for some time before my girlfriend came into the room and broke me free from my stupor. The following days were lived in a fog of regret. Then, not long after, it all came full circle. While listening to the news one afternoon in the truck, I was reminded of that little charity that had been closed around September 11th. A local self-proclaimed charity called the Holy Land Foundation, run by Palestinian Americans, were on trial for providing material

support to Hamas and related offenses. To be more exact, the prosecution's theory was that the HLF distributed charity through local zakat, or charity committees, located in the West Bank that paid stipends to Palestinians who targeted Israeli civilians, or to their families if they ended their own lives during the act. That Hamas controlled those Zakat committees and that by distributing charities through Hamas-controlled committees, HLF helped Hamas with the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people. By 2008, all the defendants had been found guilty on all counts. If you haven't got it yet, the freedom fighters shown in Children of Fire were part of Hamas. Hearing this report had transformed my guilt into utter terror. The odds were high that my partner and I had destroyed

things while not really indicative of supporting terrorism certainly showed a blatant pro-militant attitude towards the state of Israel and those who were on their side. I didn't want to even consider the amount of problems who would have if this came out. For the next four years, until the defendants from the Holy Land Foundation were convicted, I didn't want to have anything to do with any discussions pertaining to the Middle East. Their conviction would allay my fears and over time I would sell the books that I took that day. My mind would gradually move away from that miserable period. However, you can likely tell from this story that it hasn't completely disappeared from my subconscious mind. Within six weeks, I would

receive a career-ending injury and my priorities would drastically change. As a wrap-up with this particular tale, I want to stress the fact that I did not then or now have any concrete proof that the owners of the house or the things in the bag belonged to anyone connected to the Holy Land Foundation. Nonetheless, if you were to put the recent happenings in the world and the fact that a local Palestinian charity was being arraigned for supporting terrorists, I'd wager 9 out of 10 Americans would have jumped to the same conclusion that I did. Now with this story complete, we move on to the next. Perhaps it will be the account of the clumsy trash man, or

maybe the tale of the man who yelled heart attack. Not even I know. Watch this space for the next post, and bless you all for listening. Now for my next posts, and since we got to know one another a little, I'll shift the tone of our tale to something more life-changing, perhaps a tad gory for some. You've been warned. As you may imagine, the job of the classic garbage man can be dangerous at times. It's not uncommon to have five or more men out due to injury at any one time, a few more doing light duty in addition. The ways you can be hurt spans the spectrum. You can scratch a cornea one week, as I did, then suffer a heat stroke the next. I myself, in the almost three years working there, injured both knees, scratched both corneas, pinched nerves in both arms, and finally had the back injury that would ultimately

end my career. It wasn't just me that suffered problems. Two men had heart attacks while on the job, and my own partner on a truck had a job ending back injury a year prior to mine. Many of these accidents would happen to more than one man during their time throwing trash but one specific life-altering injury will likely occur only once. This accident was and is still the most horrid known among my former colleagues. At the time it happened, we were all fairly beat down from the summer heat and several guys made small mistakes causing them to be injured. Until you work 10 or more hours a day, 4 days and sometimes 5 days a week in the heat of

a Texas summer can you know how physically draining it can be. You can imagine how easy it is when you're worn out from a long hot day of work to make stupid mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes can result in life-changing accidents. It was many hours into a shift when the news of the accident began being passed on the radio. Nobody knew at the time how bad it was or would ultimately be, no one but the two guys in the truck where it happened. I must first give you an idea of how the trucks work before I get more specific. On the back of the passenger side of our style of trucks are two handles. These handles allow you to

open the scooper so it can come down and lift the trash into the storage area of the truck. If you need a better idea of what I mean, there are several good videos on YouTube available. On our older trucks, which we only had maybe half a dozen left, the handles cannot be run while the truck is moving. This was changed on the newer generation of trucks most of us drove. Often on a light day when we were in a hurry to get done and go home, we would clear the bucket on the move. This saved a lot of time. The two guys in that truck that day were doing exactly this when the accident happened. The guy on the back who was the one picking up the bags and running the handles would, on occasion, have to step off of the sidestep and onto the edge of

the bucket to avoid things like low hanging tree limbs. This is how it happened. From what we heard later, the guy on the back was running the bucket down between alleys. When the truck turned into the next one, he had to quickly step onto the edge of the bucket. Unfortunately, the scooper was already on its way down when he lost his footing and had his lower leg and ankle wedged between the edge of the scooper in the bucket. Naturally, he was in severe pain, but it was about to get worse, because he was clearly unable to think straight. Instead of grabbing and pulling on the handle to open the scooper, he mistakenly pushed against both handles causing the scooper to curl under the trash in the bucket, pulling him deeper into it

and crushing his legs even more. The driver told us the same day that despite having the radio cranked up, the windows also rolled up and the AC on max, he could hear his partner screaming clearly. The screaming got his attention immediately. When he looked over at the reverse camera, what he saw confused him at first. He said it was like he was being sucked into the back of the truck feet first, which in all reality, he actually was. He was waving his hands frantically as it happened. Even though he wasn't sure precisely what was occurring, it was obviously bad. He put the truck in neutral, set the brake and ran to the back.

When he could finally see what was going on, he said he almost started screaming himself. It must have been a terrible sight indeed. Running quickly to the passenger side, he pulled open the scooper and his partner's body dropped like a rock into the bucket. At first, the only sounds came from the idle of the truck, but a few seconds later, the guy started wailing again. His partner could see his ankle was twisted at an angle in his boot. Unsure of what to do, he asked the guy if he wanted him to take him into the service center or call an ambulance immediately. Of course, he yelled the word ambulance through his gritted teeth, so that's what his partner did. He knew just as well as any of us that our boss would want him to bring the injured guy in instead,

so he didn't call in until the ambulance showed up. The choice would be out of his hands then. With his partner out of action, he was told to return to the service center. This is where he was when I ran into him. The injured guy said the pain wasn't nearly as bad when it happened. The yelling and screeching was more a result of the shocking circumstances. However, by the time he'd made it to the ER, it was far worse. This is also when the results of his head striking the back of the truck first made itself known. It was determined later that day that he had a severe concussion in addition to the leg injury. When I visited him that evening, the doctors had yet to discover the full extent of the injury to the leg and foot. It wasn't until almost a year later when I spoke to his partner did I find out

that he had almost lost his foot. Despite all the doctor's attempts, even after multiple surgeries, the damage was just too great and they were unable to save it. I don't think any of us at the time, including the injured guy himself, realized how bad the injury was. Don't get me wrong, we were freaked out just hearing about it, but I don't think I know anyone that had that type of accident who's lost his foot because of it. It's possible I never grasped the magnitude of the injury. This may show through in the way that I've described it in this story, but like I said, I didn't witness it happen. Even when I visited him that night, almost his entire leg was wrapped

up and under a blanket. From the day I found out about the loss, I focused as diligently as I could to not have anything like that happen to me. Even after it became clear that my back was too damaged for me to do any meaningful work again, I counted myself lucky to still have not turned out like him, and I continue to do so every day. That's about all I have for that one. I did my best to be as descriptive as possible while not being needlessly gory. Any of you out there with a good imagination were probably able to see it clearly. As a writer should be able to do enough with the fewest words, it serves you better in times such as ours, especially. My next story is one of my favorites. While not quite

as shocking as this one, it contains just enough of what you're all looking for. Whether it's days, weeks, or months, I'll be back with another tale for you. Just don't hold your breath. It can kill you. I think I picked this story as my favorite because despite it being terrifying at the time, we were able to laugh about it not long after. The fact that most of those reading and listening to these stories prefer darker and more shocking ones isn't lost on me. I'm one of you, actually. However, I'm also of the belief that we all need a lighter story once in a while. If we don't get them, the more shocking ones lose their punch. That's the number one reason I decided to include this story. Although it may not include a darker and sinister creature as its theme, I promise,

if you'd been there with us, you would have been terrified. This story takes place not long before my final injury, maybe a few months. The year prior, my partner in the truck also had a back injury that would prevent him from returning to work. Since that time, I was rotated from truck to truck mainly to pick up discarded items such as dishwashers and TVs. We had a small fleet of larger trucks fitted with a boom arm to pick up the bulk items and on that day we were helping with the smaller stuff. Because of the constant abuse suffered to them, it was common for one or two of the newer trucks to be in the shop.

This was the main reason they kept a few of the older trucks around. Another reason was for jobs like the one myself and two of the other guys were doing that day. We all hated the older trucks. None had working ACs as far as I know. They could have just needed more Freon but that was something that lazy bums in the shop didn't bother with. Another common malady was the brakes. When you're driving a machine that weighs over 26,000 pounds, you need good brakes. We had started the day with one old truck. Sometime after lunch, we noticed the flashing light on the back had stopped working, so we had to take it in and get another. By the time we got

back out and to our next stop, everyone was finished for the day. We grabbed what was there and headed back to the service center to clock out. The trip back in, I was the one driving. Seeing as I'd gotten used to driving the trucks, I was very confident behind the wheel. I tend to have a lead foot in the car. This way of driving shifted to the trucks during work hours. I definitely was going too fast that afternoon. My eagerness to get home was my only excuse. Not far from the service center, there is an overpass connecting each side of town. The older trucks lacked the power the newer ones had, so I was going faster than normal to reach the top of the hill.

Not far from the bottom of the hill was a stoplight. When I noticed it, I gradually began pushing on the brake pedal. I continued to push it until the pedal hit the floor. Unfortunately, the truck wasn't slowing down. At all. Quickly realizing this and trying to fix it, I started pumping the brake. I was hoping it would build pressure in the line. Although it worked a little, it still wasn't enough. About this time was when the other two guys in the truck noticed. As we drew closer to the intersection, they yelled louder and louder to slow down. Obviously, I tried this without much result. All I could do was tell them to brace themselves for a possible crash. I swallowed the knot in my throat and began leaning into the horn.

It didn't really work very well itself, but it did manage to squeak out an audible, be it weak, tone. Blasting through the red light, I switched my head left and right, looking for any oncoming cars. Whether due to luck or divine providence, the way was clear and we made it through unscathed. Once we were parked and the truck shut down, a brief uncomfortable silence hung in the cab. Then, like as if on cue, all three of us let out a big gasp. It wasn't until we were back in the safety of HQ that we could finally feel relieved. We weren't even clocked out for the day and we were already laughing about it. Human beings are strange like that. How we're able to laugh at our near death

so quickly will always amaze me. Thanks for listening. Be sure to 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 in 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. Check out the Let's Read podcasts, where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends. And remember, taco, pickle, shrimps. I was hoping it would build prissure in the line. Prissure. Build prissure.