The Lets Read Podcast - 65: Episode 057 | Yandere Stalker & Cult Stories | 28 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

Welcome to the fifty-seventh 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 Yandere Stalkers, Ghosts and Cult Survivors. 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 who's that pro the pros at tread experts from tires to auto repair. Tread experts is always there helping you with Kumo tires. You can trust until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Tread Experts.ca This happened in early fall of 2011 when I was 21. I just bought a new set of night vision goggles and I had to try them out. I went off to an area that I usually hunt. The trailhead is only about a 45 minute drive from town but the area I hunt is about a 4 to 5 hour hike. I got to the place about 5pm giving me a

bit of time to start the hike before it got dark. I noticed an old beat up green truck park there which to me was odd. This trail isn't maintained at all and I've never met another person in this area in the last 10 years of hunting this place with my family. Just ignoring it I grabbed my pack and headed out. Just ignoring it I grabbed my pack and headed out. About an hour into the hike I came to a narrow path with thick trees on either side but maybe 50 yards past was a clearing with a lone mass of cottonwood in the center. As I got closer I heard crying like someone was experiencing the end of the world type wailing. I started to jog toward the clearing thinking maybe someone was hurt or being attacked as there are a lot of mountain lines in this area. So many that it's actually rare that I don't see one when I'm hiking through. When I broke out into the clearing I heard a woman shout then a choking sound.

I looked around and couldn't see anything so I ran to the side of the lone tree. There was a woman flailing, hanging from a branch. I dropped my pack and ran to her. I tried to get myself under her to pick her up on my shoulders. She kept flailing and kicking and trying to hit me in the face, so I grabbed my knife and hugged her to get her to be still and reached up and cut the rope right around her neck. I didn't have her as tight as I thought and gave her a small cut on the neck and let her fall hard to the ground. Trying to see if she was okay I knelt down and tried to talk to her and see if she was still breathing. She just ignored me and stared into the sky crying. Not knowing what else to do and there being no service in the area, I grabbed her in a fireman's carry and jogged as quick as I could back to my truck.

Once at my truck, still having no service, I threw her into the back seat, set my child locks and hauled her to the hospital. In the emergency room, I carried her in. She was quiet now and not fighting. I told them we were working out in our apartment's gym and a wire fell from the ceiling, choking her while she was on a treadmill. Stupid to lie, I know that now. They took her back and shortly after some police showed up. One went into her room and the other pulled me to the side to ask what really happened. After telling them the truth, the officer came out and said she confirmed what really happened. After telling them the truth the officer came out and said she confirmed what really happened. They took some info from me and left. I went into her room to

see how she was. I spoke a bunch about how what she was doing was not the right answer and there are people who would be heartbroken after her death. She didn't say a word the entire time, just kept staring into the ceiling lights. I left her a note with my name and number and told her if she ever needed anything to let me know. Then I left. About two weeks later I got a call from a foreign number. I ignored it, not thinking about the girl from earlier. She left me a long message, first thanking me for saving her, then telling me what all happened. She was a 17-year-old high school exchange student who, the day before her hanging,

went to a party with some friends from class. There she was taken advantage of. Not wanting to shame her family, she tried to end her own life. She went on to say after a week in the hospital she was sent back to japan she continued with how thankful she is for me how she knows it was not the right thing she gave me her number and asked to call so she can thank me properly i called that night and spoke with her she went on and on about how thankful she was and how amazing i must be she then asked me for my address to send me a gift. I gave it to her. Kind of a mistake. After several weeks we keep talking pretty often and once a week

she sends me gifts. Flowers and things from Japan. Tons of candy and just random things. She one day tells me the program is letting her go back to finish out the year and she wants to meet with me to thank me in person over dinner. I said I guess we could meet, what harm would there be? Well things just started to progress when she got back. Every day she would text and call wanting to meet with me again. If I ignored her she would just keep it up with texts like every five minutes asking how I'm doing, how is work, what do I want so she can buy it for me, when can she hang out and things like that. After several more weeks of trying to tell her to relax it's done and over I get that she is thankful. She begins to get more personal saying how we are destined to be together. The gods put us there at the same

time for a reason. How much she misses me. How she will make an amazing wife who will cook and be a great mother to our children someday. At this point, I had had enough. She was 18 by then, but it was getting out of hand. I told her to leave me alone but she never replied. I have horrible insomnia from my PTSD while I was in Iraq so I take some pretty strong sleeping pills which knock me out for at least six hours. Nothing will wake me. About a week after I told her to go away I woke up at my normal time for work. When I went to get up I saw someone was in my bed. I knew it was her right away. I stood up and shouted, What in God's name are you doing?

She woke up, still all sleepy-eyed and said some stuff in Japanese. I yelled at her to speak English. She then said, See my love, I'm showing you how good we can sleep together. You will never know I'm here, but I can comfort you during your bad dreams. Doesn't that make you happy? I was livid. I asked how she got in and she told me by my sliding glass door. To clarify, I live on the outskirts of a large city by Wyoming standards on 40 acres and have a shooting range which I use daily after work. I go out back through my sliding door and usually forget to lock it. I told her to get out and to never come back. The rest of the school year went by and I

didn't hear a word from her. Summer came and knowing she went back to Japan, I relaxed and everything more or less went back to normal. Although I did change my phone number just to be safe. A few days into August 2012 came and I had a knock on my door. I opened it thinking it was the mailman or something. Nope, it was her. She had the biggest smile on her face. Before I could force her to leave, she told me my number didn't work anymore, so she came in person to tell me she was accepted to the local college and would be able to be close to me again. Before she could say her next sentence, I told her that I hate you.

I couldn't care less if she died. She took off running and crying to her truck. Kind of feeling bad about what I said, I didn't feel like cooking, so about ten minutes later I left to get something to eat. Halfway down the road I noticed traffic was backed up, which is crazy because I'm in a rural area, there isn't many people here to begin with. When I finally got up to the point that started the traffic I saw was a rollover. A disgusting old green truck was rolled over into a ditch with police fire trucks and

ambulance all around. I rushed right to the hospital, feeling like absolute garbage. After several hours they finally let me in to see her. She had a few broken ribs, right arm and left leg broken and a torn muscle in her neck. Before I had a chance to even walk into the room she was crying her eyes out saying how sorry she is, how she never meant to anger me. I also apologized and we both agreed to restart and just try to be normal friends. We were married in 2015 and had our first child later that year. We have been happy together ever since. She still gives me guff about how she finally got her way and she was right all along.

But somehow, through all the crazy, I still love the ever the ever living life out of her. This story happened to my dad and his wife. He was driving in the middle of nowhere in Utah I believe and he and his wife wanted to make a stop at a gas station to get snacks, use the bathroom, etc. When he got to the gas station he saw a police car parked out in the lot. When they walked into the gas station he saw a man at the register. My dad saw that the man was listening to a police radio. My dad didn't really think anything of it. He asked the man if he needed a key to the bathroom and the man looked pretty anxious and uncomfortable. The man told my dad that he didn't think that he needed one so my dad walked to the bathroom. Right before he went in he saw a doorway with a curtain in front of it

next to the bathroom door. My dad looked at the end of the curtain and all he saw was a man's feet with what he believes to be the police officer's shoes. My dad tried to stay calm so he walked into the bathroom and just stood there contemplating what to do. He got himself to calm down. Then he walked calmly out of the bathroom and went to his wife and calmly said, hey babe let's go I'm pretty tired and Mark is waiting for us. My dad just wanted to make sure this guy couldn't do something to them if he said someone was waiting for him. She looked confused but then understood what he was trying to do. So they paid for gas and left that place. What my dad thinks happened is that the guy ended the life of the police officer and he took his police radio to make sure no one was trying to contact the police but while he was hiding the

body my dad and his wife drove into the lot so he pretended to be the cashier there. I asked my dad why he never called the police and he said that if he did the guy at the gas station would hear the dispatcher and he would go after my dad. They were on a road trip and had a huge trailer and that guy could have easily have caught them. I'm an 18 year old female living in Australia. This true story happened to me about 4 years ago when I was around 14 still in high school. It was after school on a Monday and I had band practice which ran from 3pm to 5pm. Just outside the front gates of my school there was a large grass oval. The oval had gum trees surrounding the outside of it almost like a border.

Usually after band I would cross straight through that oval to get to the train station on the other side. It was possible to walk around the oval along the footpath next to the road but most students would just cross through the oval as it was a quicker route to get to the station. The only difference this time was I was alone crossing the oval on that day. After band practice, all my friends and other classmates had already been picked up by parents or had left earlier. Still, for some reason I hadn't thought twice about crossing the oval alone. In my mind it was just a five minute walk across in broad daylight and I really needed to hurry so that I wouldn't miss my train. As I was walking across the oval with my heavy backpack and clarinet in hand everything seemed to be going fine. That was until I got about halfway and suddenly heard a man's voice from behind me. Excuse me, could you help me? The voice belonging to this person didn't sound too strange or like there was any ill intent behind the words at first.

Figuring this was just someone who needed directions or something, I didn't hesitate to turn around. What I saw then terrified and confused young 14-year-old me. It was a disheveled man who looked to be probably in his thirties laying under one of the gum trees, almost hidden on the edge of the oval. He had a yellow striped tennis bag sitting next to him on the grass and something fleshy and pink gripped in his hand. I didn't notice this immediately, but when I was able to see and comprehend what he was doing, I immediately felt sick to my stomach. Sure, I might have been young and naive, but I knew instantly that what he was doing was far from innocent. The man stared at me and gave me a creepy grin. He motioned with his eyes down toward what he was doing before looking right back

at me. I clenched my fists and spun back around, walking briskly back in the direction I was heading. Every nerve in me was on end, just waiting for something terrible to happen. Despite the panic rising rapidly within me, I just kept telling myself to act calmly and continue walking towards the train station. I kept a close ear out behind me, waiting to hear footsteps following. I didn't hear his footsteps but I heard him try to get my attention once more by calling out, hey excuse me. I ignored him and didn't dare turn around. After what felt like a lifetime I finally reached the train station platform where I was so relieved to see that other people were waiting there. My train was slowing to a stop ahead so I didn't get much time to survey the oval behind me. There I saw the man again with that same yellow striped

bag I saw earlier slung over his shoulder. He was walking lazily towards the train station though it didn't seem like he was any rush to get there as if this was just another failed attempt at finding some kind of kid to meet his disgusting requests. I gladly hopped on the train and kept watching him just in case through that train window until he was out of sight. I was finally able to let out a breath that I didn't even know I was holding. I got my phone out and called my mom, telling her something bad had happened and that I would tell her when I saw her. I could hear the worry in her voice and she quickly picked me up from the train stop near my

house. I shakily told her everything and she took me to the police station where I made a statement about the whole thing. It was a lot to handle for a 14 year old and it made me feel ill retelling the events over and over. A couple of weeks later a call back from the police stated that they never found the man and from that point onwards I always ask my mom to pick me up after band practice or I just take the long way around to the train with my friends. What still sickens me to this day is the fact that this guy was knowingly laying right next to a school. I can only hope that he never tried what he did to me on any other innocent, unsuspecting children. I'm 15 years old and was absolutely horrified by this person.

I'm interested in something called roleplay. I only had started once I'd spent my 7th, 8th and 9th grade summer alone due to bad friends and depression. I used an app called Amino and had gotten interested in a show called Riverdale. I met amazing people on this app but also terrible people. As a shy girl I'm usually very kind and afraid to hurt someone's feelings or say no which got me into a lot of trouble. I met a boy who I'll just call Cheryl since that was the account the boy had at the time. He and I started out as good friends talking a lot and even shared common interests. I'm a lesbian and not into guys for obvious reasons, and since I'm a lesbian I felt horrible when he told me he had feelings for me.

I apologized profusely because I wasn't into dudes. After that we stopped talking for a little before I started to have him leave messages on my account, spamming me with a request on Discord which was now deleted and even found my Snapchat and Instagram. This was horrifying and I didn't understand why he was bothering me, so one night I messaged him on Amino asking him to please stop and that I wasn't liking how he was acting. He apologized and we became friends for a little, roleplaying Riverdale a bit and talking now and then. One night when I was up late, he and I had been talking. He said he was now transgender and said now that he was trans and still deeply in love with me, we could date. I shook my head at this because yes, I was lesbian but I didn't want to be with him after all the ways he treated me.

Soon enough he started to get angry. He called me all sorts of terrible names, told me I was dumb and worthless and even reported me to Amino for what I hadn't done. I soon messaged a creator on Amino and asked her to please tell him to stop and she did and also suspended his account for 24 hours. I blocked him and we never really talked. I occasionally get messages but to this day I still just ignore them. One summer my parents had booked a cabin for us for a whole week. I can't remember exactly how old I was, I'm guessing about twelve. Me and my big sister and my little brother had been playing and exploring outside all day. We were tired, so when our parents asked if we wanted to go to the grocery store with them,

me and my sister said no. My little brother wanted to go and he was too young to be under our supervision anyways even if he wanted to stay. They said that they would be back sued and they trusted us enough to leave us back at the cabin as long as we promised to stay inside and stay away from the lake. Both my parents were always very strict about not letting us swim unauthorized. A couple of moments passed with me and my sister chatting until she decided to take a nap on the couch. I had been chugging juice all evening so I needed to head to the toilet.

The toilet was a separate building near the main cabin closer to the lake. It was about 8 o'clock and the evening had already started to darken since it was almost October. I've always loved scary stories and I enjoyed the misty nightfall. I was halfway to the toilet when suddenly I heard a loud crack in the woods. The sound came from right in front of me, behind the toilet. I froze and stood quiet for a while. I saw nothing. I thought that it might have been a big animal so I ran straight towards the toilet. I closed the door quickly behind me. After catching my breath I peeked from its little window and I heard more loud movement.

It did sound like a big animal right behind the toilet. More branches cracking than a big splash. Something had just jumped into the lake. I thought the route was clear enough and slammed open the door. I started running back to the main cabin, not looking back. All of a sudden I heard my dad's voice calling my name. I stopped and listened. I was now 100% sure that it was indeed my dad's voice. Before I turned my head towards the voice I could see that our car was not in the driveway yet. I got chills and turned to where the voice came from.

The lake. To my confusion I saw my dad floating in the lake absolutely still with a frozen smile on his face. For a moment I thought that he hadn't left after all. Come here. He was shouting again and again with the same stiff voice. I saw no movement

in the water. It's like he just stood there but it was way too far from the coast or his or anyone's legs could reach the bottom. I realized almost immediately that this was not my dad. My legs went numb from fear, but I got back to the main cabin, crying my eyes out in panic. I was too afraid to look out the window and just lock the doors. My sister was still asleep and just when I was about to wake her up I heard a car. I looked from the kitchen window and soon saw my mom, brother and my dad coming out of the car, smiling and laughing. My whole body was cold. The whole situation felt unreal. I asked my father later had he been in the water before. He was confused and laughed it off with maybe it was a big fish in there. I tried to forget what I saw and heard but I still can't. I wasn't dreaming.

It was something I can't explain with logic. I'm 24 years old now and I'm still afraid that I will someday experience something like this again. I try not to think what would have happened if I had followed him into the water. This happened back in November of 2018. I woke up early that morning at around 7.30am. My wife usually works earlier shifts and I drive her to work. We made it to our work at around 8 and I got home at around 8.30. I normally work evening shifts at my job so I try to get some more sleep as soon as I get home. That morning when I got home I went back into bed in an attempt to fall back asleep. About 10 minutes rolled by when I got a

knock on the door. My wife and I lived next to most of my in-laws so I just assumed it was one of them. I wasn't going to answer it but the knocking continued. I got up to answer the door thinking it would be one of my in-laws. To my surprise it was this man that I had never met before. He was skinny, was about 5'8", the same height as me. He proceeded to ask me if I came up to his house and put his girlfriend in my car. I immediately told him no. At the time this story occurred, my wife and I were just engaged. I told him I took my fiancé to work and came home. He kept insisting that I came up to his house but

I told him if I did I would be honest and say that I did. As soon as I told him that he then went on to talk about his boots and how nice they were which I thought was kind of weird. That gave me the impression that he was probably on drugs. He left my house afterward and went home. About 15 minutes later he came back to my house and knocked on the door. When I answered he said he just left his girlfriend's present on my porch. I played it safe and said okay but I didn't remember seeing a present. The present he held up to me looked like a cheap makeup set you would give a 10 year old. Definitely not something you would give your adult girlfriend. At this point I got very suspicious. After I shut the door again I peeked out the living room window to see if he was still outside. He was standing right by my

brother-in-law's truck which was close to my vehicle looking straight at my house. It felt like we made direct eye contact. That should have been when I called the police but once again I let it go. Three hours went by and I still kept replaying the scenario on my head. I had just gotten out of the shower when I heard another knock on the door. I knew it was him again because the knock seemed more like a bang. I began to panic trying to call my brother in law who lived next door and debating on if I should call the police. I began to panic trying to call my brother-in-law who lived next door and debating on if I should call the police. I proceeded to open the door. To no surprise it was him. As soon as he saw me he asked me whose car was outside of my house and I told him it was mine.

At that moment his entire persona just changed. He began getting very angry. He insisted that his friend saw his girlfriend get in my car and began talking about fighting me. I remember the words he said to me, you come out here and we'll settle this like men instead of staying in your house. That's what sissies do. I'll never forget his piercing stare as if he had completely lost his mind. Being afraid because I didn't know the guy, I tried to be the bigger person and just explain to him that I didn't do it. But the way he looked at me and talked to me really started to tick me off. I didn't know what to do. I told him to hang on a minute and a more aggravated tone began to walk

outside. Within the few seconds it took me to go out to my porch it was like a switch just flipped inside my head. I was just so angry that this guy who I didn't even know had accused me of something I didn't do and had bothered me three times in one day. I just blacked out and began yelling at the guy. He jumped off my porch before I even got outside but continued to run his mouth. I told him to get off my property before I called the cops which sent him running. I called the police right after and my sister-in-law came to check on me. My brother-in-law came over soon after as well. Ten minutes after I called 911 the police arrived. I didn't know much about the guy other than what he looked like, but my in-laws knew the guy's name and where he

lived. I slammed the door as he began to run away so I didn't see how he left. My in-laws told the police and I that he left in a car which they knew the type and model of. They knew vital information that helped the police track this guy down. They went into the direction the car he was in went. When they couldn't find him then, the police pulled up to his house. They went into the direction the car he was in went. When they couldn't find him then, the police pulled up to his house. They approached him as he was walking toward his home, not too long after they parked. I don't know what the police said to him, but whatever they did, it worked. I stood outside my house as my grandmother-in-law pulled up and handed me a package for my wife. At the same time the police left. The guy

walked out onto the road beside his house and just stood there staring at me. I didn't let it phase me and just continued to grab the package going on about the rest of my day. As I left to pick up my wife from work later on my in-laws stayed at the house to make sure everything was unharmed. The guy came back down and told my in-laws to tell me he was sorry. My other brother-in-law who is now deceased approached the guy to find out why he had a problem with me. They didn't get along but my brother-in-law put their differences aside to figure out what the problem was. Just as I suspected the guy was on drugs. He had been doing meth that night before and I'm guessing his friend was too. My wife and his girlfriend both had the same hair color.

When I took my wife to work that morning, either he or his friend saw my wife and thought she was his girlfriend. Though that doesn't justify what he did, I'm glad I know now why this all happened. To this day, that stands as the most terrifying experience of my life. Never in my life have I ever felt more scared and endangered than that day. I just thank God it didn't turn out worse than it did. He really had his hand on me that day. I don't have any problems with this guy anymore, but needless to say, he's the reason why I own a gun now. Let's start with all the introductions first. I'm a 37 year old woman with a bit of a psychic

twinkle. I'm a sensitive empath which basically means I can sense spiritual presences and I can pick up other emotions. My mother's the same as was my grandfather. My grandma, not so much. She doesn't believe in all that nonsense as she says. I'm not a medium by any means. I have seen ghosts with my own eyes since I was seven, but they don't appear to me all the time. They don't talk to me. I can't call upon the spirits for information. That has never been my gift, but I can tell if one is around. I can feel their energy and my body reacts in certain ways. My mom and I jokingly call it our spidey sense. Apart from the fact that I am a practicing third

generation witch, I have also been a paranormal investigator for 19 years now. I run an investigation team by the name of Paranormal MIT, and I know it is weird, but when it comes to investigations, I prefer to take a scientific approach rather than a metaphysical one. The reason being is proof. Someone can say they feel a presence. But how do you prove a feeling? You can't. It is personal. It can't be documented.

It can't be shared unless you were there. As such, it can't be considered evidence. Those are my personal thoughts. I am also of the mind that any evidence that is presented should be scrutinized and analyzed severely before publication. Why? Because there is so much fake nonsense out there that people present to the public on the daily that any real evidence gets buried and it makes it that much harder to believe. It makes me so angry. I would give anything to capture that one piece of irrefutable

proof that ghosts exist and present it to the world. I know they exist. I have had so many experiences throughout my life there can be no doubt. All I can do is share my experiences and hope that someone believes me. That being said, the following is a true account of a shared experience with my mom that happened earlier this year. My grandma had just had surgery to repair some fractured discs in her back that she had sustained from a recent fall. They sent her to a convalescent home to recover for a month before returning to her retirement community. This wasn't the first time she had been there. She had had knee surgery several years before and stayed in the same home. I remember visiting her back then and really getting an icky vibe from the side hallway near the front.

Something just felt off but nothing other than that ever happened back then. Moving forward to earlier this year we went to visit her. I was kind of dreading it because I remember the icky feeling from that hallway and wasn't keen to experience that again. But to my surprise, when we walked through the door, it was a fresh, lighter feeling than I remembered. I also noticed that the place had been remodeled and rearranged. It is a single story building with a rose garden out front with a little fountain and white picket fence. You walk through the front doors into a sort of octagonal lobby with a front desk and hallways that shoot off in different directions. It is a lot bigger inside than it looks on the outside. One hallway is long and leads to the back section of the building

where, I didn't know at the time, the men's rooms were. I had commented that the Finch atrium was gone from the front lobby area as soon as we walked in. The woman at the front desk overheard me and said that they still have it, that it had just been moved to the new rec room in the back of the building. I thanked her and my mom said we would go find it after our visit. An hour and a half later we said our goodbyes to grandma and went in search of the Finches. Mom and I took the long hallway to the back of the building and made a right into another hallway and heard the TV blasting from the

rec room down at the end. As soon as we turned down the back hallway my spidey senses started tingling. It was like the feeling from the front hallway many years ago but not as overwhelming. Seeing as it was so faint I shrugged it off and didn't even mention it. We got to the rec room and saw that there were two women there. One was clearly visiting the other as one woman was about my mom's age the other lady who was in a wheelchair looked to be about 90. The younger of the two had brought along her two mini poodles and they were busy chasing the little finches back and forth in their atrium. It was a tall glass case and a polished wooden frame with ornate carvings in the corners, very posh in my opinion. I tried to get the poodles

attention to get some lovies but they were far too distracted. We were in there for maybe 30 seconds when everything changed. Okay, for those who are not sensitives, I'm going to try to explain how a spirit's presence can affect your body. There's the head squeezy, as my mom and I call it, which basically feels like someone pressing their palms into both of your temples or side of your head at the same time. Sometimes it's a light pressure, other times it can hit you like a migraine. There's what my mom calls the push, where you can feel a pressure either in the small or middle of your back like a hand pushing you forward, and the bit you feel pressure on gets a bit tingly. I don't normally get that, but I have a few times, but it happens to my mom a lot. Then of course the hairs on your arms and back of the neck.

Goosebumps. That's what I call stony baloney eyes. Which as the name suggests you can equate it to the feeling you get after you take a hit and the high is just kicking in. When you feel like you are wearing a masquerade mask that's a little too tight. Anywho we were in the rec room for no more than 30 seconds when the atmosphere changed. I can only describe it as if you are outside on a mild warm day with a cool breeze. Then suddenly a thick cloud blocks the sun and in the shade the temperature drops and suddenly that cool breeze is downright chilly. Kind of

like that. Mum and I looked at each other with wide eyes and without a word we both turned and headed for the door. At this point we both felt the presences but perhaps our awkward and sudden departure tipped off said spirit to the fact that we knew it was there. Big mistake. Before we left the room we both got hit with head squeezes but not the nice gentle pressure ones, oh no. This one was a slam. I can only speak for myself but this was not a hey I'm just letting you know I'm here kind of squeeze. This was an angry you. You can feel me. You can feel me and you were trying to run away get back here kind of squeeze. So my mom and I are now speedwalking down the side hall trying not to cause a scene. She's feeling her push.

I am starting to get severely dizzy by intense head squeezy and stony baloney eyes. So dizzy I end up shoulder checking the wall on the left side. My mom is saying, I know, I know, me too. Just hang on till we get outside. Immediately I start getting impressions. It is male. Strong. Very strong. strong and very very angry

possibly a recent death truth is I never looked into it we get outside and the feeling doesn't ease up I ended up gripping the fence in the rose garden and it took everything for me not to lose my lunch wave after wave of nausea and dizziness hit me. Mom turned to me and said, I know you're worse off than me, but I cannot have this follow me home. Can you do something? So I started reciting my closing spiel I usually end my investigations with. Thank you spirits for communicating with us. At this time we will be taking our leave and you are not permitted to leave this place. We do not consent to being followed any further and you must remain here. You must not follow us past this point. It is not allowed.

We hurried to the car and she turned the engine over as soon as her key found the ignition. Before she moved, I touched the dashboard and recited a spell Keeper of bones I know thy face but I may yet outstrip thy pace as we pulled up to our house we were feeling a bit better but still felt an attachment so I recited one last spell in front of the door who comes to me I keep who goes from me I free

but against all I stand who carry not my key we entered her house and I felt instant relief I don't know who this guy was but even if I had my equipment with me to take measurements I don't think I could have stayed any longer than I did I have never felt a presence that strong before or after. I am not opposed to helping spirits, but if they buddy drove to Manitoba in order to pick up some medicines for an upcoming sweat. So we get to west of Portage La Prairie and my buddy pulls into a gas station because he has to use the bathroom. I begin to doze off when all of a sudden I feel two cold and bony hands wrap around my throat. The smell of decay fills my nostrils and it makes my eyes water.

I've been hunting quite a lot and I have of course stumbled upon animal carcasses rotting, but that is a smell I would readily prefer over the smell that this creature admitted. I can't move my head as I try to see what is on top of me. I can feel tears starting to run down my face as black dots started to dance in front of my eyes. Bang, bang, bang. I look over at the window of the truck and see my buddy smashing his hands against the window. He looks petrified and keeps screaming a word over and over, and I can't hear what it was over the ringing in my ears. I read his lips and my blood runs cold.

He's screaming the word Wendigo. I think back to when I was a little kid and I had stayed out past sundown on a bitter winter evening. My father is waiting outside. He has a scared yet stern look on his face and says, you better get inside the house boy, there are man-eaters in these woods. For years I pester him over and over about what he's talking about and that's when he finally tells me about the Wendigo, the ravenous spirits that look to possess weak-willed or starving people. They are cannibals born from the harsh circumstances of the great winters that have occurred. I remember my father said all you need to do is blow a puff of air at it,

and if you are of pure and strong intentions, then it vanishes in search of its next meal. However, if you are a greedy and weak-willed person, it will possess you and make you into one of them. You will constantly crave meat, but only the flesh of man will satiate your hunger. But that relief is only a few moments. Then you will be on the hunt for your next meal, walking around the woods with a constant void in your stomach and a craving stuck in your mind. I turn slightly towards the beast and puff a breath in its direction.

All of a sudden the horrid smell of decay vanishes and the hands disappear. I feel an overwhelming urge to vomit, creeping up my throat but I restrain myself. My buddy hops into the truck. We are both silent as we drive on. Our breaths are the only sounds to break up the silence. We drive for around 10 minutes before my buddy shouts. He slams on the brakes and screeches to a halt and almost collides with the car in front of us. The car turns around and we see what is causing the sudden blockage in traffic. A greyhound bus is pulled over to the side and a bunch of shaken looking people are standing beside it. Their gazes can only be described as a thousand yard stare.

RCMP cruisers surround the bus. The red and blue lights dance on our windows. My buddy turns around swearing at the inconvenience and we drive back to a shady hotel we had passed earlier. The whole way there I'm sitting motionlessly. A sense of dread is ever present in my gut as we arrive at the hotel. We check in and start putting our stuff down when my buddy turns on the news. It's a pretty terrible television but soon enough we see breaking news flash across the screen and I stop what I'm doing. The news reporter looks shaken as she rattles off.

One adult male is confirmed to be dead in what is to be called a frenzied knife attack. We're getting multiple reports of the suspect consuming parts of the male's body. The police have not commented any further. I look over to my buddy and he's gone ashen white. He looks over at me and says in a withdrawn voice, I guess the Wendigo needed to be fed. The victim was Tim Macklin.

He was brutally murdered on a Greyhound bus, number 1170 by a man named Vince Lee, who was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He told investigators that God told him to kill Tim. Tim Macklin was sleeping as Vice stabbed him and was awoken to a crazed Vince standing over him holding a hunting knife. Tim was stabbed over 60 times and dismembered. Vince consumed parts of his head and actually stuffed chunks of Tim into his pockets.

Want to know the best part? Vince Lee was released with a new name and no criminal record. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was excused from his actions. So all of the Americans that complain about your justice system be thankful that they at least give out appropriate sentences for individuals like these. To this day I wonder if Tim Macklin could see the crazed Wendigo staring back at him as he looked into his killer's eyes begging for mercy. I'm sure you've heard the saying do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. I mean, everyone who doesn't live under a rock has heard it. Well, it is true.

If you find a way to eke out a living doing something you truly enjoy, something that brings you great pleasure, then you will enjoy going to work and it won't even feel like work. Your life won't feel tedious, dull, boring or like a dead end. It won't feel like you're just punching a clock until your time comes to push daisies. I'm extremely fortunate that I managed to earn a substantial living doing what I love to do. However, it is not so simple. You see, what I love to do is depraved, sick, vile, immoral, disgusting,

uncivilized, and, according to the law, highly illegal. I love to cause pain. I get great pleasure from the look of sheer terror in a person's eyes as they realize what is going to happen to them. I long for the sound of a victim screaming in great agony as they writhe in anguish. I love the knowledge that when I finally decide to deliver the sweet release of death to my victims, thereby relieving them of their suffering, it is on my terms and my face will be the very last thing they see, assuming they still have their eyes. Before you even consider calling me and my hobby or rather my livelihood sick, twisted, depraved and evil, save your much needed breath. I have heard those things many times before and quite frankly I am sick and tired of so-called normal people judging me. They will never understand me and the way my brain functions. Besides, killing and causing pain is human nature. Just look at the video games we play, the movies we watch, the wars we start, the news stories that are featured on TV and the internet, the religions we follow, and just about everything else humans do. All humans have dark and depraved

sides just waiting to be let out. I am just more human than most because my dark side is all my sides and it doesn't have to wait to be given free reign over my body. It gets plenty of exercise and fresh air but unfortunately it also has to spend a lot of time in dark rooms and basements like this one. Now I'm sure I'm not the only serial killer you've heard of. I mean, everyone knows of Ted Bundy. Although I personally find his victim count low, his methods sloppy and uninventive, and the fact that he got caught makes him a disgrace to his kind. understanding of the evil in this world from the way people like me are portrayed in movies, books, TV, the news, and the like. I am sure that this pre-existing knowledge combined with what I just told you gives you an idea of what I am and what I'm capable of. What you are probably still confused about, however, is how I turned this evil hobby into a way to make more money than a Wall Street banker? Well, there are the obvious ways. Gun for hire, kidnapping people for sale and trafficking in certain rings, illegal organ sales,

stealing from the victims, being a hired blade gun weapon for certain organized crimes, extracting information from people. These methods are millennia old, but with the birth of dark web forums and people posting their whereabouts on social media 24-7, my profession has become much easier and more lucrative. However, the biggest cash flow comes from something that really shows how depraved and repressed humans are. I film what I do and make it available for a price on the dark web. These videos are used as training videos for others like me, but more often they're used as certain guilty pleasures for all the sick freaks out there that aren't capable or willing to get their own hands dirty. I even take video requests for an extra fee of course. I can kidnap whoever the

client desires and do most anything to them. Oftentimes the client just wants the victim gone for good but as long as the client is fine with it I can make extra money by letting others pick the methods of torture, the cause of death and all of the other sordid details of the last hours of the victim. Sometimes these videos are even live with paid viewers determining the victim's destiny through the comments section. It would truly shock you how many people watch these videos and leave comments and requests, but it doesn't shock me, at least not anymore. I already told you the world is a sick place. You see, I may be a sick monster, but if a large portion of humanity wasn't also depraved, I would be a poor monster. Many people have urges and desires, but they are too weak or scared to act upon them.

Me, I act. I have the skills to live my fantasies hands-on instead of vicariously through others while I watch through a screen. Why am I telling you this? Well, sometimes I need to get why I cut open chests off my chest, both to brag and as a form of therapy. And besides, I figured you may be interested in who is about to torture you, and the reason that you're suffering an eventual death caused by your inability to pay a mafia loan shark on time is going to be uploaded to a forum full of torture and snuff. Now smile for the camera. It's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel. Your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel. Wherever you go, you can get a pro at Tread Experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort.

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For the first 15 years of my life, I lived among members of a doomsday cult that believed with all their hearts that the world would be soon ending. Hidden away in our compound on the shores of Lake Eildon in Australia, we lived behind a wall of thick foliage and barbed wire, completely cut off from the outside world. Out of the six male children that resided in the compound, five of us were made to wear the same blue velvet uniform and bleached blonde hair. We looked almost identical. We would also take part in joint activities every morning, including yoga practice. But one morning in August of 1987, our world did indeed end, but not in the way our leaders had imagined. Up until that day, my entire world was shaped and controlled by Anne Hamilton Byrne, an intensely charismatic yogi who had founded the movement she called

The Family. Officially, we would be known as the Santini-Kettenpark Association or the Great White Brotherhood, but among ourselves, we simply referred to each other as The Family. Members believed that Anne was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and that when the world ended they would be responsible for re-educating the survivors. But that morning after yoga practice we children were horrified to find ourselves being gathered up by uniformed policemen. There was shouting, screaming, begging and crying but nothing helped. We were soon whisked away from the five acre compound into a new kind of world that would take me years to fully comprehend

the real world the other children and I were told that Anne Hamilton Byrne was our mother but the day to day job of raising us was left to other members of the cult's inner circle women we called aunties. We woke up at 5am every single day in dormitory style bunk beds and followed the exact same unchanged routine, yoga, meditation, education, homework, bed. A huge part of the education we received taught us to avoid outsiders at all costs. If anyone approached us who we didn't recognize as being part of the family, we were told to follow the mantra of

unseen, unheard, unknown. It was strictly forbidden to communicate with anyone we didn't know directly, lest we give away important family secrets to outsiders. We were only allowed to eat small vegetarian meals as Anne Hamilton Byrne had strictly forbidden all consumption of meat on the compound. Any rule-breaking was met with brutal punishment. The aunties would sometimes hold our heads underwater if we were naughty, or if we were really bad, we'd be made to hold our hands over lit candles until they burned us. But that was nothing compared to the raw, naked fear we felt whenever Anne presided over our punishments. She would verbally berate us to the point of tears before beating us horribly with

her stiletto heels. More than once her heels would break the skin. I'm pretty sure some of the other kids still have scars as a result of her punishments, both physical and mental. Another way Anne exerted control over us and the other cult members was through drugs. Us children were fed a steady diet of pills that we would only later discover were sedatives such as Valium or Mogadin. But the adults had it even worse. They and the older teenagers present were obligated to take part in regular ceremonies known as clearings. It was during these clearings that Anne forced the cult members to take large amounts of LSD before she essentially began to brainwash them, strengthening the family members' devotion to her and only her. I hated my childhood,

but it was all I knew. Not only that, but my suffering was shared by all the other children. We all looked alike, we all talked alike, I was nothing special. The adults, led by Anne, created every aspect of our reality for us. We had absolutely no other points of reference, no competing narrative, but that all changed the day the police arrived. Lying in the bed of a child detention facility on my first night away from Eildon compound, I went over everything I'd said to officials that day, wondering if I'd given anything away that could get me in trouble with Anne. It took me a while to really come to terms with the fact that us children would not be returning to Lake Yilden, that the lives we've been forced to lead didn't matter anymore. For the first time in my life, I realized I was free. But as the truth started to finally come out, it nearly broke me. I was not 15, as I had been repeatedly told. I was 14. I was given an extra year to my age because I had

supposedly taken the place of a child that had died a year before I was born. I was treated as a replacement, a reincarnation of the deceased child spirit. I learned that Anne was not my mother at all, that my real mom was one of the aunties by the name of Joy. This was incredibly confusing for me. I'd never liked Joy and she'd never shown me an ounce of love or affection. To think she was my biological mother was psychologically scarring in ways I can't really describe. It also came to light that the other boys and girls on the compound were not my siblings. Some were the children of other cult members while others were simply orphans that the family had adopted through various agencies.

Finally and perhaps the most obvious revelation was that Anne Hamilton Byrne was not the reincarnation of Christ nor did she possess any kind of supernatural abilities or foresight. She was just a woman, and a crazy one at that. I had suddenly and involuntarily come to a stage in my life where it was a case of, well, what now? What are the rules? How do I function? After hours and hours in the chair of a child psychologist, I was finally given the all clear to begin attending a regular Australian school. Needless to say, I struggled to fit in. Whenever any of the other kids tried to reach out to me, I would quickly push them away. I didn't understand why at the time, but later I came to realize that it was because any children

in the family that showed any signs of bonding were quickly separated. Friendship was something I had never experienced. But even if I had, to build friendships you need common ground, shared interests. I had none of that. As a result of the isolation, I had suffered and struggled with severe depression. But the people around me, especially the teachers, were extremely sympathetic to my situation. The rate on yield and compound and the subsequent arrest of the cult leaders was national news in Australia. Everyone knew our story. I remember a teacher telling me that adjusting to regular life would take time. She told me I'd have to

learn how to relate to people. I took this advice to heart. Shortly after, I moved out of the children's home and into a foster home. The foster family I stayed with were churchgoers and I feel like this helped me adjust to regular life in ways other things couldn't. I began to feel increasingly at home. Eventually, I met a girl, got married and had two children, now aged 18 and 20. I've also held down a job over at IBM for almost 23 years now. I feel like the number one thing I need to get across to people is that no matter how terrible your childhood is, no matter what upheaval or chaos a person may suffer, it is never too late for them. With kind people, time and patience, I feel as though just about anyone can find it in themselves to get better,

to readjust, to earn the happiness and peace that I feel everyone so richly deserves. My mom was always something of a latent hippie. She dreamed of backpacking around Europe and soaking up the culture. One day when she was in Sweden on her way to buy a plane ticket for some new adventure, she met a man idling on a street corner, strumming a tune on a guitar. He told her of a man named Father David, the charismatic leader of the religious doomsday cult, offered the youth of her generation a purpose in life and a way to serve God without joining a church. He also spoke of living with a group of other followers. The man invited her over for dinner and she joined the cult known as the Children of God that night. My dad also had an adventurous streak but also

he harbored an insatiable lust for knowledge. He'd been the top of his geology class at UC Davis but had dropped out just a month before graduation. In the run up to him dropping out, he'd been in almost constant communication with his five older siblings. They told him how they were joining a religious organization, the Children of God, and were moving to Spain to be closer to other group members. My parents met in Spain shortly after they both had joined the Children of God cult in 1978 and were soon married. Father David, the leader of the Children of God cult in 1978 and were soon married. Father David, the leader of the Children of God, lived in hiding. Due to some controversial opinions regarding certain child disciplines and certain freedoms that he gave,

he had been on the run from the law and was forced to obscure his true identity. From an unknown hideout, he passed down commands and teachings to his global following of almost 12,000 individuals. Father David also believed he needed to amass a large army to prepare the world for the coming apocalypse. In the mid-80s, he ordered his followers to escape from western homelands and head for developing countries in the east. This was because he believed that the decadent west would be the recipient of the worst of God's divine wrath. And so, I spent the majority of my childhood in Thailand, completely ignorant of the outside world. By the time I was a teenager, I had lived in more than 20 countries on three different continents.

In Thailand, the gate separating our yard from the dirt road outside was completely boarded up with wood. In the afternoon, the children were allowed to go outside for one hour as long as we stayed within the perimeter of the walls. When no one was looking, I would press my nose against the metal bars of the gate and look out at the world that I wondered so much about. Wake up call was at 7 every day and our room had to be immaculate by 7.30. We gathered ourselves into neat rows and stood to attention. We filed down the stairs and through the halls just like little soldiers. As we marched I often heard sounds coming from the narrow screen covered windows at the top of the halls.

They were the sounds of women groaning and men breathing heavily. We were told that the adults, who we called Uncle and Auntie, were participating in God's love, and they were encouraged to do so continuously. Father David had wrestled with the constant conflict between his desires and his commitment to religion. With the children of God, he found a way to combine the two in an unholy union of spiritualism and pleasure of the flesh. But despite his predictions, the world didn't end in 1993. Instead, Father David claimed to receive yet another prophecy that told him it was time to move his followers back to the West. My family of 13 join at home with 30 other members in Chicago. What I noticed about life in the US was that the only protection we had from the outside world was a chain link fence, quite the

difference from the fortress compound in Thailand. I also noticed how plentiful food seemed to be. When we woke up on our first morning in America, we found a bowl of oranges on the dining room table. We were allowed to eat even if it wasn't mealtime, even if we weren't hungry, something I'd never experienced before. One morning in February of 95, we gathered in the living room of our home to celebrate Father David's birthday. We were told there would be a special announcement. I noticed that some of the adults had been acting a bit strange lately. Some of them seemed to have an unusual melancholy. There was a strange sensation of electricity buzzing in the air. Then came the words I never expected to hear.

A beloved father in the Lord has gone to be with Jesus. Some of the adults immediately broke into tears. Uncle Tim, the house leader, said we discussed details of how the family would move forward without Father David by utilizing the Charter, a new book of rules that had been issued by Father David's wife. According to the charter, adults could now live wherever they wished and with whom they wished, as long as they tithed 10% of their income to the leadership and continued to convert non-believers. Because of their newfound freedom, some of the adults were able to reach out to their families and relatives after years of silence. My dad found the small house just a few blocks from where we had initially

settled. Another couple joined us in our new home. The adults told the children that they still wanted to be a part of the Children of God and that they intended to follow the charter. Our goals might be different now without Father David's guidance, mom said. We continued to try to keep the daily routine we'd followed when we lived communally in the Children of God's compound. There was a total of 11 kids in our family, plus the other couple's three children, and mom divided up the chores amongst everyone. The women in the family took care of the children while dad, my older brother, and uncle Stephen were responsible for getting the money we needed for food and utilities by selling goods at local swap meets. After spending two very

difficult years in Chicago trying to make ends meet with no savings, my family moved to California to live near my dad's sister. Steven and Mary went to live with relatives in the Philippines. They finally had enough of living as a cult. No one in my family ever returned to the Children of God and none of us have any kind of contact with the community. Some of my siblings went on to pursue their degrees, some are working, while others succumbed to the path of drugs and alcohol like many children who grew up in the Children of God did. I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain what it's like to try to adjust normal life after being raised in such abnormal circumstances. I know my childhood is something

I can never return to or get back, so instead of focusing on the past, I have spent every day since I left the children of God choosing to focus on my future. Now, 20 years after finding freedom, I continue to be passionate about education, and I am currently pursuing a second graduate degree to become a college professor. Eventually, I want to work with the disadvantaged students in colleges and universities in hopes of helping them to find their own voices and think independently. After spending so much time as a prisoner of someone else's way of seeing the world, I can think of nothing more important. The Unification Church was a church founded on May 1st, 1954.

Some of you may have heard of the church and how its members are often referred to as Moonies. Many members of the church are divided on that nickname. Many of us like it, but some consider it a kind of slur. The Unification Church and its teachings center around the founder, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. We were taught that Moon, when he was a young boy in North Korea, was visited by Jesus Christ himself, who descended from the sky to inform the young Reverend Moon that it was his destiny to bring the people of Earth back to God. In order to achieve this end, Moon collected his thoughts into a book called The Divine Principle, which is used as a supplementary text by members. In order to accelerate the growth of

the church, he arranged many marriages between members. My parents were matched using photographs of themselves. Moon literally picked up a picture of my mom and of my dad and matched them like that. In order to marry all the couples he matched, the church also arranged mass wedding ceremonies. I am a second generation member, though I know a handful of third generation members. I intend to leave the church officially when I reach 18 years of age. If I choose to stay, my parents would seek a girl in the church for me to marry and, with the consent of the girl's parents, I would be married off to that girl in a mass ceremony, along with thousands

of other couples. My parents have no idea that I intend to leave the church and I don't know how they will react when they find out. To be honest though, I'm more worried about how they react to the fact that I've had a secret girlfriend for the past three years. I've been dreading the moment when they inevitably find out. The main text of the religion is the divine principle. The divine principle basically states the core of humanity, the basic structure around which everything should focus, is the family unit. Another idea that is central to the unificationist philosophy is the idea of pure love. Pure love entails no dating of any kind before marriage, no sex before marriage, and no sex 40 days after marriage. Pure love also entailed that the founder of the church

would be the one who matched the couples, to ensure that the marriage was a pure one. In the first few matching ceremonies he literally pointed pairs of people in a room and told them that they were to be married to each other. As the church grew Moon began matching people by their pictures and he eventually loosened up on this policy and the church set up matching workshops for parents so that parents could do the matching in lieu of Moon's matching. It should be noted that Moon himself was married twice. We are generally taught the same things as Christians are taught in addition to teachings specific to the Unification Church. We learn about Moon's

struggles in North Korea, the moment when Jesus revealed himself to the Reverend, and the struggles of Moon in trying to get the church going in the 70s and 80s. One story that I was taught that always stuck with me was the story of how Moon, when in a North Korean prison, only ate half his allotted rice and gave the rest away. It shows how Moon built a cult of personality around himself, presenting himself as a Christ figure. He escaped the North Korean prison when the US bombed the prison he was in during the Korean War. He escaped to Japan, but was heavily persecuted there both as a Korean and a Christian, and eventually immigrated to the US. The church is now largely comprised of Japanese, Koreans, and the people who converted from being preached to in the US. I myself am half Japanese, half

Korean, a fact that can only be explained by Moon's bizarre matching methods. A little side note, Moon himself advocated for the mixing of races. I knew many half white, half Japanese people and a couple half black, half Japanese people as well. This is one of the few liberal ideas that the church maintained and I thought it was kind of interesting. On the flip side, the church hates gay people but they are not especially fanatical about it. I was taught to just pretend to be their friends and don't treat them differently. The church also takes part in a lot of missionary work. My Korean mom was born into the church but my dad converted when he was at college in the states. A white man with a bible showed up at his door, preached the

church's teaching and my dad decided to check out what they were all about. He later had a moment with God and well, here I am. The church is heavily invested in attracting new members. The people who had some extreme views don't get me wrong. I've sat through three increasingly awkward lectures about the sins of masturbation, but in all honesty, the people who I've met who are a part of the church are actually some of the nicest people I've ever met. There's a wholesome attitude that pervades the church and its members. We were taught that we were all part of the same family, that we're all brothers and sisters in our faith. It was actually kind of cool to be

able to call each other brothers and sisters. I can't deny that sense of belonging wasn't powerful. It was fun to feel comfortable enough with fellow members to say with earnestness that they were your brother or sister even if they looked vastly different than you and were of a different race than you. In public, there was a general vibe of cooperation and of kinship. At least in the general member population, there was no malice against those that were not a part of the church. It was a more of they just don't know that they're wrong attitude. I've always maintained that I like the people, just not the beliefs. Something to note about the Unification Church, it owns a whole bunch of businesses that help

fund the church via their profits. Up until 2010, they actually owned the newspaper, the Washington Times. Korean culture pervades the church. Korean food is served oftentimes, Korean culture is taught, and a lot of the words we use to describe church proceedings are in Korean. Most members are Japanese, at least in the US they are. I'm not sure why. The moment when Moon passed was an event to say the least. I cried.

I used to be extremely devout. I used to like the idea of arranged marriage because it took the burden of dating and finding someone off my shoulders. We had a huge scandal when the church's head pastor, who herself was a daughter of Moon, had a baby with the band leader who played worship songs before she gave her sermon every Sunday. Boy, was that a confusing time. I suppose now you can see why, although the church presents a positive image, I have opted to leave at the first available opportunity. It might not seem overtly scary, but trust me, when you realize you have zero control in your life, that it's essentially in the hands of someone else,

that's a terrifying thing to realize. Vernon Wayne Howell was born on August 17th, 1959 in Houston, Texas. His mother was 14-year-old Bonnie Sue Clark. His father, Bobby Wayne Howell, abandoned the pregnant Bonnie before Vernon was born. Due to the pressures of being a single mother, none of which she was prepared for, Bonnie Sue left the four-year-old Vernon to be raised by her mother, Earlene Clark. At school, Vernon was a loner. He displayed minor learning difficulties which in turn alienated him from his classmates.

He was put in special education classes but dropped out of high school his junior year. It was this confused and unstable upbringing that would characterize the rest of Vernon's life. Howell was 22 when he became a born-again Christian with the Southern Baptist Church. When he found himself harboring desires for his pastor's 15-year-old daughter, he prayed for guidance. He later claimed that while doing so, he opened his Bible at random to Isaiah 34.16. None should want for her mate, it read. He took this as a sign. However, when he approached the pastor with his idea that God wanted him to take his daughter for his bride, the pastor became infuriated God wanted him to take his daughter for his bride, the pastor became

infuriated and rejected the idea completely. Howell persisted and was eventually asked to leave the congregation. It is this that caused him to leave the central coast of Texas, traveling north into rural pastures to join an obscure branch of the Seventh-day Adventist church. After several years entrenching himself in the small religious community, Howe filed a petition in the California State Superior Court to legally change his name for publicity and business purposes. On August 28, 1990, a judge granted the petition. Howe had legally changed his name to David Koresh. The place he'd moved to several years prior was Waco. The religious movement was named the Branch Davidians. David Koresh was warmly welcomed

when he arrived at the Mount Carmel compound in 1982. He was young, enthusiastic, and charismatic, forming a band that entertained the Davidians and made him a very popular figure. When the group's prophetic leader died, her son inherited the position of prophet and leader of the commune. However, it wasn't long before Koresh and the newly minted leader began to butt heads. As an attempt to consolidate support for himself and ostracize Koresh, the young leader challenged Koresh to raise the dead, going so far as to exhume a corpse to demonstrate his spiritual supremacy. This was all Koresh needed to topple the arrogant, unhinged young man. He filed charges against him but was told by Texas prosecutors that evidence of such a crime would be required for an arrest. Soon, the young leader would be arrested and

charged with a handful of serious crimes. What's more, since he owed thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes on Mount Carmel Center, Koresh and his followers were able to raise the money and reclaim the property. Koresh had finally cemented his place as the supreme leader of the Waco branch Davidians. Koresh was the biblical name of the Persian emperor, Siris the Great, who was named a messiah for his part in liberating Hebrew slaves from Babylonian captivity. While his first name, David, represents his claim to the lineage of King David, of whom the final messiah would be a descendant. By taking the name of David Koresh, he was declaring himself

to be a messianic figure carrying out the divinely commissioned errand. Koresh also saw himself as God's hand in setting up a Davidic kingdom in the holy city of Jerusalem in Israel. He believed that would be the place of his inevitable martyrdom. But as early as 1991, Koresh had changed his mind and was convinced that he would be killed as a Christian martyr in none other but the United States. He abandoned the idea of the Jerusalem Commune, insisting the prophecies of Daniel would be fulfilled in Waco and Mount Carmel would be the center of the new Davidic kingdom. This is evidence that Koresh was preparing himself for a violent confrontation, years before any such event would occur. Under Koresh's leadership, the Davidians first came to the Texan authorities' attention when accusations of child abuse came to

light. The House of David doctrine-led Koresh fathered multiple children by different women in the group. The doctrine was based on a purported revelation that involved the procreation of 24 children by chosen women in the community. These 24 children were to serve as the ruling elders over the millennium after the return of Christ. Koresh's doctrine did indeed lead to marriages with both married and single women in the group, supposedly including at least one underage girl. However, a six-month investigation by the Texas Child Protection Services failed to turn up any evidence. This is possibly down to the Branch Davidians concealing

the marriage by assigning a surrogate husband to the girl for the sake of appearances. Ex-members of the Davidians had also claimed that one night, Koresh became irritated with the cries of his son Siris. They claimed Koresh physically assaulted the child for several minutes during multiple nightly visits to the child's bedroom. Additionally, a man involved in a custody battle with one of the Davidians visited Mountain Carmel Center and claimed to have seen one of the members physically discipline a child with a large stick. In February of 1993, a local newspaper began publishing a series of articles titled, The Sinful Messiah. Researched and written by two journalists, the articles reported on the child abuse that was allegedly occurring on the Mount Carmel compound.

In addition to allegations of misconduct, the Sinful Messiah articles claim that Koresh and his followers were stockpiling illegal weapons. They were based on an interview with a UPS driver that claimed that a poorly sealed package addressed to the Mount Carmel compound had broken open in a sorting office, revealing inert grenade casings and black powder. The articles sent Waco residents into a frenzy. They demanded that something be done about such an obvious danger to the local community. In response to public outcry, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

stepped up to put the situation to bed. And so, Sunday morning, February 28th, 1993, the Mount Carmel siege began. Yet, they were worrying signs from the get-go. Despite being fully aware that the Branch Davidians were expecting a raid by federal authorities, the commander of the ATF raiding force ordered that it go ahead anyway. The ATF agents also had their blood type written on their arms and necks while assembling in the staging area. This was under recommendation from military advisors since doing so made it easier to find compatible blood for transfusions if an agent was wounded under fire. Before they even made their way to the compound,

the ATF were clearly gearing up for a fight. The ATF arrived at the Mount Carmel compound at 9.45am in a convoy of civilian vehicles. The occupants were uniformed personnel in SWAT-style tactical gear. What happened next is unclear. ATF agents claimed that they had heard shots fired in the compound. While Branch Davidian's survivors assert that the first shots came from the agents at the compound's perimeter, a possible explanation could be that an accidental discharge of an ATF agent's weapon caused the rest of the team to open fire with their automatic weapons. Another comes from the suggestion that the first shots were fired by ATF agents sent to kill the guard dogs living in the compound's kennels.

But regardless of the root cause, everything went to chaos at the Mount Carmel compound. Bullets flew in every direction. Even the three National Guard helicopters being used as a distraction began to take incoming fire. Within minutes, four ATF agents and five Branch Davidians had been killed in the conflagration, with up to thirty wounded on each side. Koresh himself had been wounded in the exchange, with bullet wounds to his hand and torso. The gunfight lasted for forty-five minutes until the ATF raiding force began to run out of ammunition, but to their horror, the fire from Mount Carmel refused to slacken. They seemed to possess an almost endless supply.

The raid had been a complete disaster. The ATF was forced to retreat from the compound, bloodied and shaken. The deaths of several federal agents was an outrage. Despite ATF attempts to begin latent negotiations with the Davidians, they soon found themselves ousted by the FBI, who took over the case after such a miserable initial display. Their first move was to place the FBI's hostage rescue team in a position to de-escalate the standoff. Soon after, the HRT had managed to negotiate the release of 19 children, securing their safety in case a second violent confrontation broke out. The children were then interviewed by the federal agents and Texas Rangers,

who alleged that the children had been physically abused long before the raid began. But the FBI were faced with an additional problem. The Davidians were in telephone contact with local news media, and Koresh gave multiple phone interviews to any outlet or publication that would listen. Additionally, in a videotape made by Koresh and his followers, Koresh introduced his children and his wives to the general public. The video presented the Davidians as peaceful victims of religious persecution, that there was no hostages, that everyone at the compound was staying inside of their own free will. As a result, the FBI were forced to cut off communication to the compound from the outside world. For the next few months, communication with those inside were restricted

to a single telephone line directed to a group of 25 FBI negotiators. As the siege wore on, two distinct factions began to emerge within the FBI agents handling it. One group believed that negotiation was the obvious solution. Diplomacy and trust could be used to slowly and steadily diminish the threat posed by the Davidians, until they agreed to peacefully surrender. However, the other group was in agreement that increasingly aggressive techniques were the only way to defeat such a radical religious group. The latter was victorious, and over the following weeks, various methods of psychological warfare were unleashed upon the compound.

In one instance, a set of huge speakers were pointed at the compound, constantly blasting the sounds of jet planes and dying rabbits to deprive the occupants of sleep. While this was happening, the FBI began kind of an arms race as they geared up for the inevitable second assault. Nine Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and five M728 combat engineer vehicles arrived at the compound and were used to destroy fencing and vehicles owned by the Davidians. Despite their protests, these armored vehicles repeatedly drove over the graves of the branch Davidians killed during the initial ATF assault. Right when the situation called for a tranquil phasing down of potential violence, both sides chose to continue provoking the other. By this point, it was inevitable that a second violent flare-up was

due to occur. On April 19th, 1993, the second assault began, this time led by the FBI. Attorney General Jeanette Reno, appointed to the position just two months prior by the then President Bill Clinton, has since stated that the urgency of the assault was down to two reasons. Firstly, up to 30 children still remained on the compound and were apparently still being subjected to child abuse. But secondly, and perhaps most interestingly, was the declaration of solidarity from a woman named Linda Thompson. Linda Thompson had recently declared herself acting adjutant general of the unorganized militia of the United States.

She would later announce that the group planned to march on Washington, D.C., where militia men would arrest and try congressional representatives for supposed treason to the Republic. When she learned of the Waco siege, Thompson had allegedly stated that she would organize reinforcements to assist the Davidians in their clash with the federal government. This was extremely worrying, since an escalation of the conflict would surely be disastrous and devastating for all involved. The siege had to end, and soon. The assault began with armored engineer vehicles advancing under the cover of agents armed with.50 caliber sniper rifles. Holes were smashed in the walls of the main building so that the armored vehicles could pump increasing amounts of tear gas into the

building to force the Davidians to come outside. But the Davidians were tough. Somehow, even with the obscene amount of CS gas being used on them, they took shelter, wore gas masks, and refused to be dislodged from their entrenched positions in the compound. A few hours into the operation, the hostage rescue team had fired so many gas grenades into the building that they began to run out. The grenades they were resupplied with were different varieties that have since been discovered to set fire to the buildings they're fired into. And so, at around noon of that day, three large fires broke out almost simultaneously in different parts of the building, spreading quickly to engulf the complex. Government sources maintain that the fires had been started by the Davidians themselves, but it was no good. Footage of the blaze was broadcast live by television crews directly into living rooms around America. The Davidians had won the propaganda war and were viewed as helpless victims of federal oppression. As a result of the

second assault, 76 people died at the Mount Carmel compound on April 19th. The events of the siege spurred a flurry of criminal prosecution and civil litigation. A federal grand jury indicted 12 of the surviving Branch Davidians, charging them with aiding and abetting in the murder of federal officers and unlawful possession and use of various firearms. Eight Branch Davidians were convicted on firearms charges, five convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and four were acquitted of all charges. As of July 2007, all Branch Davidians had been released from prison. Nothing remains of the buildings today other than concrete foundation components, as the entire site was bulldozed two weeks after the end of the siege. Only a small chapel, which was built years after the siege, stands on the site.

Koresh is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery, Tyler, Texas, in the Last Supper section, but the man's legacy survived him. It was no coincidence that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred on April 19th. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols stated repeatedly that the events of the Waco siege motivated them to take action against the federal government. Though the Branch Davidians are now defunct, the desire for belonging that is perhaps the root of all cult-like behavior is something that will continue to plague the US, and the world, forever. March 20th of 1995 must have seemed like a regular Monday morning for the citizens of Tokyo.

As the sun rose over the Japanese capital, almost 14 million people rose from their beds, ate breakfast that mostly consisted of white rice and eggs, then headed off to work. Many of these people would have been reliant on one of the largest and busiest subway systems in the world. The Tokyo Metro's 285 stations provided an essential transport service to almost 9 million Japanese citizens every single day. Yet as the legions of commuters journeyed to their places of employment, some began to feel distinctly unwell. At first, their noses began to feel distinctly unwell. At first their noses began to run. This would have caused little more than sniffles and thus caused no serious alarm. Commuters simply wiped their nostrils on handkerchiefs or tissues and carried on with their commute. But soon, many found that

breathing had become more difficult. Their chests felt tight, their breaths more labored. Some were having to gasp for air just to stay conscious, their pupils dilated becoming large black spots and otherwise deep brown eyes. People began drooling, thick saliva cascading from their lips as a heavy feeling of nausea began to set in. A horrendous smell began to fill the subway carriages as people began to lose their bowels, wet patches forming on their crotches of suit pants and sufferers began to twitch, their limbs jerking involuntarily as they totally lost control of their bodies. Then, like dominoes, people began to fall. One by one they collapsed to the ground in carriages and on platforms,

all up and down the Tokyo subway system, and one by one they suffocated and died where they lay. Witnesses later stated that the subway entrances resembled battlefields. At first, Japanese emergency services had no idea what they were dealing with. Medical staff began to panic, hesitating to transport desperately ill people through fear of contamination. One hospital even refused to admit an affected person for almost an entire hour. Over at Shinsu University, Dr. Nobuo Yanagisawa was watching the chaos unfold on live

television. At first he thought it was a bombing, but when the deadly attack proved to be bloodless, a morbid curiosity got the better of him. Dr. Yanagisawa began to recognize the sufferer's symptoms as similar to those exposed to the nerve agent, sarin. He had experienced treating sarin victims after a gas attack in the city of Matsumoto the previous year. He immediately faxed his suspicions to hospitals all over Tokyo. Now the authorities knew what to look for, they began to build a picture of just what had unfolded that day. They discovered that several packets of liquid sarin had been taken onto various subway trains, then punctured so that the nerve agent would diffuse into the air.

Given the confined nature of the Tokyo metro, this proved devastating. On the day of the attack, ambulances transported almost 700 patients to overwhelm hospitals all over Tokyo, and nearly 5,000 affected people reached hospitals by other means. In total, hundreds of hospitals treated thousands of patients whose symptoms ranged from mild to fatal. By mid-afternoon, the victims had previously experienced only minor symptoms and had recovered from vision problems and were released from hospital, while the majority of the remaining patients were well enough to go home the following day. Within a week only a few

critical patients remained in the hospital but the death toll on the day of the attack was eight with four more dying over the following few days. Once Saren was established as the cause of the incident authorities immediately suspected the group that was believed to be behind the previous attack at Matsumoto. This group was a new religious movement known as Aum Shinrikyo. Aum Shinrikyo could more accurately be described as a doomsday cult, founded in 1984 by a man named Shoko Ashihara. The cult borrowed beliefs from all manner of mysticism and religions including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and even the writings of Nostradamus. Despite growing up as somewhat of a bully, Asahara's

purported mission was that of a Christ figure, one who could take other people's sins upon himself. He also saw dark conspiracies everywhere he looked and was extremely suspicious of the Freemasons, the Dutch, Jewish people, and even the British royal family. Asahara outlined his doomsday prophecy to his followers, which was based around the idea that an atomic World War III would commence, and described a final conflict culminating in an Armageddon brought about by nuclear bombs, borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation. Asahara often preached the necessity of Armageddon for human relief. He declared that mankind had strayed so far from its creator that true happiness through lack of sin would be impossible.

After Japanese authorities conducted a carefully planned raid on the cult's headquarters at the foot of Mount Fuji, the full scale of Aum Shinrikyo's activities was revealed for the first time. Police found explosives, chemical weapons, and a Russian military helicopter. Police also uncovered stockpiles of chemicals that could be used for producing enough sarin gas to kill four million people.' discoveries included laboratories to manufacture drugs such as LSD, methamphetamine, and a crude form of truth serum, a safe containing millions of US dollars in cash and gold, and detainment cells, many still containing prisoners. During the raids, Ahm issued statements claiming that the chemicals were for fertilizers, but

over the next six weeks almost 200 cult members were arrested for a variety of offenses. The Sarin attack, Japan's worst terror incident, killed 13 people and injured thousands more. But there has been a lasting legacy left by the hideous attack. One victim died in 2009 after more than 14 years of hospitalization and treatment. Surveys of the victims in 1998 and 2001 showed that many were still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In one survey, 20% of respondents complained that they felt insecure whenever riding a train, while 10% answered that they tried to avoid any nerve attack related news. Over 60% reported chronic eye strain and said their vision had worsened. Seven members of the Aum Shinrikyo Doomsday Cult, which carried out a

deadly chemical attack on the Tokyo Underground in 1995, have been executed, including cult leader Shoko Asahara. The executions took place at a Tokyo detention house on Friday, July 6th, 2018. Japan does not give prior notice of executions, but they were later confirmed by the Justice Ministry. Their execution by hanging had been postponed until all those convicted had completed their final appeals. Another six members of the cults are still on death row. Injured victims and the families of those killed have welcomed the executions. I react calmly, but I did feel the world has become slightly brighter, said Atsushi Sakahara, a film director. It will be impossible to ever forget the incident, but the execution brings a kind of closure. The great philosopher and moralist John Acton once said,

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. Never was a truer word said, and never was there a greater example of this than the Reverend Jim Jones. Born in 1931 in Royal, Indiana, James Warren Jones grew up in the midst of the Great Depression. James was a bright child and a voracious reader, but childhood acquaintances were also quick to note that he was a strange child who harbored an obsession with religion and death. However, Jones had formed an indisputably strong moral compass as a result of his self-education. He once spoke of how his father was connected with the Klan, telling of how they had clashed on the issue of race on many occasions. This led to an incident in which Jones' father refused to allow one of his son's African-American friends

to enter their home, causing an argument that would ultimately end in divorce and estrangement. In 1951, America was gripped by the Red Scare and the McCarthy witch hunt hearings were in full swing. Jones was outraged by a vision of America that he could not recognize. The land of the three was displaying a blatant intolerance for left-wing ideas, silencing and blacklisting those that attempted to subscribing to them. When he and his mother attended a hearing for musician Paul Robeson, Jones was disgusted when the FBI harassed her at her workplace for her support of Robeson. He decided he had to do something about it. Jones later stated that he had asked

himself, how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was to infiltrate the church. Even though he was a known communist, a Methodist superintendent helped him to get started and he soon became student pastor at a local Methodist church. But it wasn't long before Jones clashed with the church's leadership when they refused to allow him to integrate African Americans into his congregation. Jones was able to launch his own church following his departure from the Methodists, which had various names until it became the People's Temple Christian Church Full Gospel. By 1960, Jones was now a fully- fully fledged activist in the civil rights movement.

During this time, Jones helped to racially integrate churches, restaurants, a local telephone company, the Indianapolis Police Department, and the Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital. When swastikas were painted on the homes of two black families, Jones walked through the neighborhood comforting local black people and counseled white families not to move. He set up sting operations to catch restaurants refusing to serve black customers and wrote to American Nazi leaders imploring them to renounce their un-American politics. When he was accidentally placed in the black ward of the hospital after a collapse in 1961, and he refused to be moved and even began to make the beds and empty the bedpans of black patients. Political pressures resulting from Jones' actions caused hospital officials to desegregate the wards. However, Jones would receive a considerable criticism in Indiana for his integrationist views.

White-owned businesses and locals were openly and vocally critical of him. A swastika was placed on the temple, a stick of dynamite was left in a temple coal pile, and a dead cat was thrown at Jones' house after a threatening phone call. It is abundantly clear that during these formative years, the Reverend Jim Jones was not only a charismatic religious leader, but he was an incredibly inspirational and righteous one at that. He was loved and admired by people of all races and backgrounds, but the intense criticism that he faced caused him to be greatly depressed. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

would have been devastating to him, shattering his faith in the idea that the USA could be a kind of political heaven on earth. And so, Jones began to look beyond American shores for places to construct his vision of paradise. By 1977, Jones had established a kind of commune in northern Guyana, on the coast of South America. At its peak, People's Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name of Jonestown, had over 1,200 people living and working together. The commune was held up as a benevolent communist community, with Jones stating, I believe we're the purest communists there are.

His wife, Marceline, described Jonestown as dedicated to live for socialism, total economic and racial and social equality. We are here living communally. However, Jones was already displaying increasingly authoritarian tendencies and did not permit members to leave Jonestown without his expressed prior permission. Jones also carefully controlled any and all information which entered the camp, essentially setting up his own little iron curtain around the Jonestown commune. Jones recorded news readings, constantly broadcasting them over town speakers placed all over the commune. These news readings invariably portrayed the United States as an insidious imperialist villain, while socialist nations such as North Korea, Zimbabwe, and the USSR were always spoken of in a positive way. But much like the socialist

countries which he spoke so glowingly of, food shortages soon became a problem in Jonestown. Community members ate meals that reportedly consisted of nothing more on some days than rice, beans, and the occasional greens, and as a result, the community developed some serious medical problems as a result of malnutrition. Jones' vision of heaven was quickly beginning to unravel. In the early evening of November 18th, 1978, Jones called all but a handful of the Jonestown residents to the commune's main pavilion. During this meeting, Jones recorded a 44-minute discussion with residents on a small tape recorder. This recording was later to be known as the Death Tape. Readily available to listen to online, the Death Tape includes the moment when Jim Jones first suggests the idea that the residents would

be better off if they all ended their lives together en masse. It is truly haunting. Temple member Christine Miller argued that the temple should alternatively attempt an airlift to the Soviet Union, but Jim McElvain, a former therapist who had arrived in Jonestown only two days earlier, assisted Jones by arguing against Miller's resistance to ending her own life, stating, let's make it a beautiful day. After several exchanges in which Jones argued that a Soviet exodus would not be possible, along with reactions by other temple members hostile to Miller, she backed down. However, Miller may have ceased dissenting when Jones announced something that shocked the congregation. California Congressman

Leo Ryan, who had been visiting the Jonestown commune due to concerns from relatives back in the states, had been murdered at the nearby Port Katuma airstrip. Jones announced this to his terrified congregation under the pretext that the congressman's murder would be the casus belli the United States needed to finally destroy the Jonestown commune. U.S. officials would order the Guyanese defense force to attack the compound, kidnapping their children and ending them all. During this time, the most loyal residents of Jonestown prepared a large metal tub of grape flavor aid, then poisoned the mix with a cocktail of drugs and poisons, namely cyanide. At this point, the congregation was surrounded by armed guards.

To the Jonestown residents the situation became clear, take the poison or be shot as a traitor to the commune by the men armed with Kalashnikovs. By morning over 900 people lay dead from poisoning and gunshot wounds in and around the Jonestown compound. Jim Jones himself was found next to his throne-like wicker chair. A gunshot wound to his right temple was consistent with being self-inflicted. Colt Lieutenant Annie Moore's body was found with a note in her hand. In it she had written, Jonestown, the most peaceful, loving community that ever existed.

Moore's corpse displayed gunshot wounds that were not self-inflicted. The story of Reverend Jim Jones is fascinating, but it seems to raise more questions than it answers. Just how did a civil rights activist, a person so full of love for his fellow man, end up being the one who ordered and oversaw the death of almost a thousand people. Never was there a clearer example of how good people with love in their hearts are also capable of the most heinous acts of evil. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from Tread Experts.

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We had an overall good time, a lot of good food and whatnot. After dinner, I remember my little cousin, who was four at the time, wanting to play that cootie game. It was in her room upstairs and she needed someone to go with her because she was afraid of something. I put it up to her being in a new environment and still getting used to the house. So naturally as an adult I prepared to fight off any Escaped Monsters Inc characters so she could get her game. We got to her room and she refused to set foot in it and I asked something along the lines of, is there something bad in here? She nodded and pointed to the game and I went to grab it. And then she told me to be careful in that corner of her room.

I asked why and she says, that's where the screaming lady is. She's on fire and screaming a lot. I don't like her. Hearing this makes my heart drop into my gut like a lead anvil. I quickly grabbed the game and went downstairs as soon as we were back in the living room my cousin returned to her normal cheery self and we played some cootie later on that night i asked her mother my first cousin if she knew about the screaming lady that her daughter told me about. She said that her daughter refused to sleep in her room until they make the lady go away and has to come sleep in her parents bed

just about every night since they moved in. No one else has had any weird experiences in the house since moving in but this four-year-old girl is beyond terrified on a daily basis. A month or so passes and I don't really hear much more about any spooky experiences so I eventually came to the conclusion that my cousin was simply having very specific reoccurring night terrors. Cut to yesterday evening. It was the birthday for another one of my cousin's kids so I stopped over to bring him the new Fire Emblem game for the Nintendo Switch. I usually stop over a few times a week to hang out since it's not far from my workplace. So today being my cousin's birthday didn't make

my stopping over a rare occurrence. We played some of that, we played some Mario Kart and some Super Smash Brothers and everything went well. Until later on in the evening, we were waiting for a pizza to arrive and I was in the kitchen grabbing some soda with the cousin whose birthday it was. Out of nowhere we both pick up on the very distinct smell of burning. My cousin and her husband came out of the living room into the kitchen thinking we had cooked and burned something but obviously we hadn't. The house filled up with this smell and if I was blind I would have guessed that I was right next to a massive bonfire minus the heat. During this time

my youngest cousin now five was taking a nap on the couch in the living room. She suddenly starts yelling for her mom who goes in to check on her. Everyone else follows and she inconsolably is crying and screaming saying, I can hear the screaming lady in my room. I hear her screaming. So basically everyone had the same lead anvil heart dropping into their gut feeling that I had last year and we went up to her room with her mom staying with her. We saw nothing but the smell of burning had changed from that of a bonfire to only what I can guess a person smells like when they're burning. A heavy waft of burning hair smell followed by some other burning smell that I hadn't experienced in my entire life thus far. We quickly went back downstairs and told her mother what we had experienced, and she decided for us all to go outside to the front

porch patio area until the pizza arrived. My little cousin was still hysterical saying she didn't want to hear the lady screaming anymore. We tried to calm her and eventually she seemed to settle down a bit still scared but not screaming and crying. We continued to sit there for maybe 10 minutes. My two other younger cousins and I were comparing our Pokemon Go collections and my youngest cousin and her parents were watching some kid-friendly YouTube stuff to distract her. Out of nowhere, everyone hears the most blood-curdling, terrifying and loud scream come from inside the house's second floor. It must have lasted for maybe 15 or so seconds straight, just multiple long horrible screams and after that moment everything went dead quiet.

My five-year-old cousin went back to throwing a fit and everyone else was visibly shaken. I decided that it was time to leave at that point. It was about 9.30pm and while pizza would have been very tempting, I was not hungry in the slightest anymore. I thanked them for ordering a pizza even though I wasn't going to have any and they wholeheartedly understood. I wished my other cousin a happy birthday and told him not to spoil the new fire emblem game for me and went home. I couldn't sleep at all last night and I didn't even turn off my light. I was a tired mess at work today and I'm still fearful of going to bed tonight. I texted my cousin a few times today and this evening and she said that the burning smell didn't go away until around 4am and no one slept last night there either and are looking into getting some kind of help so they

can feel less terrified of their home. I feel terrible for them and worse for my young cousin who has been actually seeing this screaming lady in her bedroom and I haven't been able to get the smells coming from her room out of my head and I've been getting hints of them on and off as my day has gone on. I'm hoping that it's just a residual smell memory and not something more ominous. I still don't think I want to try and sleep tonight, especially not with the light off. This is very strange and at first I thought this belonged in a dream or night terror forum. Now I'm not too sure. My boyfriend and I have been together for nine years now. I've always suffered from night terrors, however that's not something you bring up on the first date. This was back when my boyfriend and I had been dating for a few months

and had recently started sleeping together. We were sleeping in his place. I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed we were holding hands. I thought it was cute but I noticed that his hand was so pale and thin. My boyfriend has hands like an orc to be honest and my eyes got used to the darkness and I saw his hands crossed on his stomach while I was holding a third pale hand. As I became aware of this something that looked like a woman with long black hair hanging over her face sat up from behind my boyfriend's form, looked at me and laid back down. I stroked the hand with my thumb as you do when holding hands with someone. I don't know why I did that, I just wrote it off as dream logic. This was in the beginning of a relationship so I didn't tell him about it because I didn't want him to think I was crazy.

Years passed and we're now living together. He is aware of my paranormal beliefs and night terrors. Out of nowhere I came to think of that dream. Did I ever tell you about that night terror I had at your house when we just recently got together? I asked him with a little laugh. I saw someone who looked like Sadako in your bed when we slept. I almost got jelly. I joked but he didn't laugh. He got very pale and said, Did she try to hold your hand? I was taken aback by his reaction. I told him I did hold her hand and even remembered stroking it with my thumb. My boyfriend then revealed to me that as a child he'd have a reoccurring nightmare that a woman with long black hair and white hands tried to hold his hand but he'd wake up in a panic before

she ever got to him. He never told me this because he just wrote it off as a childhood nightmare. Now neither of us think they're nightmares anymore. Before I begin this story, I feel it's important that I give out a few details first. So me and my three close friends like to drive around and walk around spooky places as we generally get bored with our university nightlife fast and need something to sort of excite us. All of us are also big believers in the supernatural and three out of four of us have experienced some sort of paranormal experience. All of us are from Malaysia and we Malaysians tend to believe in a lot of supernatural stuff as it is woven tight in our history and culture. Now Malaysia had a terrible incident way back in 98 or 99, don't really remember, where two apartment buildings collapsed due to uneven lands. Majority of the tenants of those two apartments

died. What's worse is that a number of them didn't die when the building crashed but died due to lack of oxygen. You can look it up, the building is Highland Tower. So we decided to go to the area nearby there as the site where the tragedy happened is closed, though there are no guards patrolling. Just outside the gates is a small neighborhood and boy the neighborhood is creepy. You see the area that is the rich area and yet a good amount of houses were empty. What's stranger was the fact that the whole neighborhood was absolutely quiet. A very uncommon thing in Malaysia as we're incredibly loud. It felt as if though everyone

just decided to up and leave the area. So as we walked around a couple of strange things happened. First the dogs in the neighborhood started barking at plain air. We Malaysians believe that when dogs start to do that sort of stuff, it means that they are seeing something that we aren't able to see. So we decided to avoid any area which the dogs are barking at. It's important to note that we made a few rules before doing all this. Again, a Malaysian thing I suppose. One, don't call out real names. Use nicknames. This is so that any wandering spirits won't be able to latch itself to you. Two, don't look back if you feel a presence that is often a big mistake as even if you look behind you find nothing. You've actually just shown the spirits around you that you've noticed them.

3. Don't make loud remarks about strange things. We believe that if you see, hear, or smell anything strange, it's best to keep it to yourself first. If you need to tell someone, then just use hand gestures or make some excuse to sort of hint at them. This is similar to the second one, as any remarks could easily attract unwanted attention. As we walked throughout the neighborhood, we heard footsteps behind us. Remembering the rules, none of us looked back. See, the footsteps were odd, as they just sort of randomly appeared out of nowhere. The footsteps also started to get faster, so one of of our group mates the expert as we called him

led us to the exit using a shortcut as it was getting too uncomfortable and here's what stuff happens see the expert is one of those guys who can see things or at least feel it to a certain extent now because we're big believers we don't question him we just follow as we all want to get through this as clean as possible see the expert is my best friend and he often brings me to the side to whisper to me if anything is really wrong and close to being dangerous this place where we parked our car was directly beneath this huge tree so my best friend calls to me to my side and whispers to me dude don't panic but when whispers to me, Dude, don't panic. When we get to the car, keep quiet and make sure the others keep quiet too until we reach a place with more people.

Why? There's a woman on the tree above your car. She's been looking at us since just now. Following his advice, I went on and started the car like usual while making some small jokes trying to take everyone else's attention away. As I reversed the car both my mates and me noticed in the reverse camera that there was a clear shadow of a woman sitting down on top of the car. Again not wanting to scare everyone else and to antagonize it further we keep quiet. We went to a nearby restaurant and sit down for a while. The woman was still on top of the car according to my mate and was hiding itself.

The worst case scenario is that if it follows us back to our university dorm and decides to latch into one of us. So I told the guys that when we entered the car, I'm going to play a special prayer recording out loud using the aux cord while also reading the prayers myself. I'm not a super religious person, but I do believe in God and his protection. If the plan didn't work, then we would just drive around or hang at a McDonald's until 5am because that's the holy time for my religion and the woman would disappear. We entered the car and I immediately started playing the prayers. My mate was driving this time as I wanted to focus fully on the prayer. The moment I started the prayer the car suddenly got heavy. As if there was an extra passenger when there shouldn't be any.

I continued to play the recording along the journey and to my shame I fell asleep halfway. By the time I woke up it was nearly 2am and we reached the dorms already. According to my friend the prayers worked but took quite a bit of time as the woman only let go as we were entering the university area. I asked if he noticed anything strange and he said that after all three of us went to sleep, he heard someone huffing and puffing, but in an angry way. He also noticed that several times the prayer recording got interrupted as the volume went up and down, as if someone was trying to purposely mess it up. When I was rather young, in second grade in fact, my family lived in the country, out in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi. There were no children for me to play with, and I tended to get a bit more lonely than you'd expect.

When we were in the process of moving out there parents had this double wide trailer. There was one incident that took many years to be certain I hadn't imagined it. While on one expedition to the plot where my family were going to put the trailer my mother needed to make a stop to use the restroom. With no gas stations for a good 10 miles dad pulled the truck down this dirt road looking for a place to stop. There, maybe 200 to 300 yards from the two-lane road, we found what looked to be an abandoned gymnasium from a school. Dad decided to use that place as the bathroom and we headed in. I don't recall much about the building, though one thing always stuck out in my mind.

Near the doors we entered through was this rather massive pile, or massive to my child mind, of clothing. I remember after doing his business, my father stood at the foot of it looking up at the clothing. He seemed to be thinking of something, but he never said anything about it. Several weeks later, with the trailer in place, we moved out there and the gym was largely forgotten by me. However that didn't stop weird things from happening. Well not weird in the sense of stuff moving around or anything of that sort. Weird sounds. Within a month or so of living there I was playing on the front porch when I heard laughter. Now before I go further let me clarify as to where

we lived then. The trailer was a good hundred feet back from a dirt road and across the road was the home of an elderly man I'll call O. Behind his house was a rather extensive stand of pine trees that reach right down to the two-lane highway, probably a distance of 500 to 600 feet total between where I was and the highway. In any case, as I sat on the front porch my father had built, playing with some of my toys, I kept hearing laughter. Not one child's laughter either, but several. It sounded to my ears like five or six kids were playing somewhere off behind where O lived. Not having anyone to play with, I remember wondering where those kids were and having anyone to play with I remember wondering where those kids were and if they play with me. Walking up to the road I could tell that the kids seemed

to be playing in the woods as their laughter came and went. After a moment I called out to them that I wanted to play too. As soon as I said that the laughter cut off. Dead, no pun intended, silence. One moment there was laughing and fun and the next it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I decided that I'd scared the kids off and went back inside. This happened several times and eventually I just gave up. I'd hear the kids laughing and playing but they never seemed to get closer. After a couple of times of this I remember telling my mother and she got this really odd look on her face before telling me that she didn't want me playing out front any longer. We lived there another year or two before we moved and I largely forgot the experience. It wasn't until many years later when the story came up again in conversation

with my parents and so I found some of the story out and again in conversation with my parents. That's when I found some of the story outs and personal investigation told me the rest. My mother said that the reason she'd reacted that way was because she heard a rumor that the area we moved to was haunted. She didn't have all the details but felt it was tied to the old gym. All she could say, or would say, was that quote, something bad had happened, and she was afraid. After my parents passed away, I kind of forgot the story again. It always stuck in the back of my head as just something weird, but that's it. Eventually, one bored night, I happened to stumble across the website for the church we had attended. On a lark, I shot an email off to the pastor asking if there had been a gym near where I remembered.

I didn't expect to hear back. Two months later I checked my email to find that yes, he had actually replied. Here's what he related to me. There had been a gym that once stood near where I described, though it had long since been torn down. The gym has been part of a private school which had stood there from roughly 1900 to about 1979 or 80. Early in the spring of that year, a tornado had gone through and demolished most of one wing of the school, in doing so killing a number of students. The building had collapsed, burying the students under the rubble, resulting in the death of a number of them, I think between 10 and 15 students.

After this, it was decided to close the school. As they were demolishing it, they cleaned out clothing from lockers in various places, dumping it in the gym in the tall pile I remember seeing. The gym had been left standing because it was hoped that one of the local churches might use it but given what happened there well it ended up being left abandoned. Curiously the property behind O's house had also been part of the school's property at one time being used by the students as a kind of playground area. This did explain why O kept digging up old toys, mostly metal trucks and such, which he gave to me. Looking back, I've come to the conclusion that what I had been hearing was in some way tied to the old school and the loss of life, though I also wonder if, in some way, it was my childhood imagination running wild.

That's probably one of the problems I have with the story. For all I know my parents could have mentioned what happened at the school at some point and I overheard it and my lonely state of mind and imagination just ran wild. Before we start I will preface this with the following. I have always been interested in cryptids, occultism, the paranormal. But until about two years ago I was skeptical about it. About two years ago I started to go after that kind of stuff with a friend, Z, who had a lot of luck with it. I have experienced a lot since then including this, and continue to delve into the unknown. One final note, I'm not ingrained into the culture much anymore, but I am about one-third to one-fourth native, though not Navajo completely. Now then,

about a year ago, me and my friends had decided to go camping up in northern Arizona near Flagstaff. We chose this spot because we all wanted to escape the heat of Arizona's weather. Originally the plan involved more people but by the time we actually left we were down to me and my friends Z, V, and P. This worked out though as it meant we could just take one car, something that may have saved us that weekend. Now we weren't experienced campers or anything, but we had the basics. A tent, flashlights, fire starter, and I had my Mosin's Noggin. Not the best I know, but it fired a big round and I had ample ammo at the time.

We chose a site based on reviews a bit north of Flagstaff and followed our GPS there through some windy back roads. Eventually we hit a Y intersection and went left as the GPS told us to go. By the time we eventually find a parking area and get out and look for a good campsite it's well past 10pm so I take my rifle and flashlight. Z and V also grab flashlights and we head off. We trek through the woods for about 15 minutes looking for a good place but to no avail. We were all feeling tense as we searched. Something felled off and we all vocalized it almost like we were being watched. We start to head back through a clearing we pass the car but about three fourths of the way through I ask Z a question and get no response. Finding this particularly odd I turn around to find him about halfway back in the field watching behind us. Shuffling in place like he wanted to walk back from where we had just come.

I call out to him and he snaps out of it and swears he only looked back for a second and catches back up with us. Now before you say he got got I doubt this because of what happens later and that he has acted completely normal and looked normal ever since. We get back to the car without anything else happening and decided maybe we should have taken the right path at the Y instead so we drove back. We arrived at the Y and take the right path this time but getting a whopping 30 feet before we stop. There's a ditch in the road and we aren't sure if the car can make it over so Z gets out to check. It takes him less than a minute to figure out that it couldn't and walks up to the driver's side window to tell us. It's only after saying it

can't that T freezes in his tracks and just stares behind the car at the intersection and simply says to look in a hurried voice. We all contort ourselves around the car looking through mirrors in the back window but we all see it. A tall figure, easily 8 to 9 feet tall, standing behind a tree, watching us. Once confirmed, Z isn't just seeing things, he basically vaults over the car and dives into the back seat, slamming the door behind him. During the commotion, we lose sight of the thing for a moment and by the time we look back, it's still there, but in a different stance, just stalking us. We quickly get a flashlight out of the sunroof while I rapidly load my rifle. During this time it moves again slightly deeper into the

tree line but still watching us. We are stuck in a staring match for what feels like forever as we are too concerned backing up will make it strike and currently it isn't for whatever reason. Eventually something broke our line of sight with it, I can't quite recall what. I believe I was trying to get people to move so I could line up a shot through the back window but I can't be sure and knowing what I'd do now it probably would have done nothing but make us feel in control. Regardless in this time frame we lost it as it presumably fell more into the woods and we wasted no time slamming it into reverse turning back to where we originally came from and gunning it i kept my window down with the barrel out facing the woods went into while i never fired i swear

i saw something dart around in the darkness i am sure that it chased us because of that and from the scream we all heard while driving away, it sounded feminine but not quite human and way too loud to be anything good. We decided to stay at a motel that night in Flag and went back to Phoenix the following morning. That's how the story ended until earlier this year. For those of you who live in Arizona, you probably heard last winter Flagstaff got hit pretty hard with a big snowstorm. Naturally I went up right after the storm ended to have some fun with friends in the cold, sled, that kind of stuff. I hate the unending heat the rest of Arizona has so Flagstaff is my getaway whenever I want to cool off and it's easier now because I have some

other friends that live up there and go to NAU. We'll call them L and W and I went up with two other friends R and Q. Most of the trip was fun but I did experience some stuff though mostly unrelated to this sub, more paranormal stuff with Q. The second to last night though we decided to go sledding on a particularly good hill for it near the sports center. Arena and stadium both sound too grand but it's like where people play football or something. The sledding was fun and all but after me and L who like Z also has a lot of experience felt very off. Like something was watching us. We trekked through the small woods around the area and while I didn't see anything I definitely felt an ominous presence. Meanwhile, L told me once we

were in the car that he did see something pop its head over a hill and stare at him before retreating back away. He said he couldn't see all of it but it seemed big from the silhouette he could see. This one I'm not so sure of as I couldn't see it myself but it definitely felt very similar to a year ago. So take the second one with a grain of salt I suppose. Do you guys think both, one or neither were skinwalkers? Because I still can't explain that first night no matter how many times I look back on it. This past year was my senior year of college and I was thrilled to be living with an alumni of my sorority who I am very close with. We'll call her Abby for clarity's sake. Abby and I weren't

actually supposed to live in the apartment we ended up in. We were originally going to be living in a townhouse with two other girls, but they started so much drama a month before we were supposed to move in that we had to contact our landlord to find a different place within their company to live. Thankfully, we found a two-bedroom, one-bathroom basement apartment in a quiet area off campus. The first month was fine and without incident, but as the days went by, some strange things began to happen in the apartment. One morning, Abby woke up to a kitchen cabinet open. She wasn't that concerned about it and figured that I had just forgotten to shut it

the night before. The next morning a different cabinet was open and once again she shrugged it off. However, I went home one weekend and she woke up to find every cabinet in the kitchen wide open and the sink running. Needless to say, Abby was scared and spent the night at her boyfriend's. Two weeks later we were watching TV and heard the bathroom door close. I tried to calm Abby down by saying that the fan we kept in the bathroom blew it closed. However, when we went to bed, we thought we could hear someone walking around in our living room. There's no way someone broke into our apartment and hid the whole day only to come out at night and screw around with us. I was home the whole day and Abby was home from 11 in the morning on. That incident took place shortly before Christmas break and all was calm in the apartment until February.

Abby had gone home for the weekend and I was home alone, relaxing on the couch and doing homework. It was pretty late at night so I turned on the TV for background noise and curled up on the couch and doing homework. It was pretty late at night so I turned on the TV for background noise and curled up on the couch to sleep. I woke up at 2.32 in the morning to see Abby walking through the front door, smiling but not saying anything. I blinked, still groggy from sleep and asked if she was okay. She just looked at me and proceeded to take off her shoes and walk into the kitchen. Something about her didn't seem right. Like this girl looked like Abby and walked like her but wasn't her. I asked her again if she was okay because it was so early in the morning for her to be coming home. Abby looked at me, smiled and began washing something in the sink. Something inside me felt a profound sense

of dread, like I was in actual danger and I needed to get away. As quickly as possible I went to my room and locked my door. My roommate followed me because I heard someone tapping their fingers against the door. Once, twice, three times, four times, five times. It wouldn't stop. I didn't say another word because it felt like if I did acknowledge her, it gave her more strength. I know that doesn't make much sense, but that was my instinct. I curled up beneath my blankets and stared at my bedroom door, almost waiting for her to kick it in. My eyes felt heavy, and the tapping was almost like a

metronome enticing me to sleep. As I drifted to sleep the tap seemed to slow down to a trickle. The morning after I was exhausted. It felt like I had taken 20 Advil PM to help me sleep and I remember everything that had happened last night. Cautiously I left my bedroom and saw that Abby's bed hadn't been disturbed or slept in. I went to the living room and her shoes and purse weren't there. A cold feeling crept into my spine as I sent her a text asking if she had come home that night. She responded that no she hadn't and wouldn't be coming home for another two days. But I checked the sink and the bowl that Abby had been washing had been cleaned and put away. I firmly believe I was not dreaming or hallucinating and I know this wasn't some

elaborate prank by Abby because she would never do something like that. I firmly believe something took the shape of Abby that night and that its intentions were not good. There were a few other experiences in that apartment, but nothing so dramatic as what I went through that night. Was this a doppelganger? I have been a caregiver for a few years now. I have worked in last chance houses and organizations that aid and house the mentally ill, and I have been a care provider that would go to the individual's home to clean or do personal cares. Currently I oversee an entire branch of a home care providing company that stretches out to

several small towns in one moderately sized city in my years of working this field I've come to notice things I consider myself a rational person I need hard evidence I'm by the book but this field of work has shown me that some things can't be explained away which is why I'm here because it bothers me. I need other people to see something I've missed, to make sense of these encounters. I'll start with one, and then post the others, and it will not be in order. Incident number one. I have a client who has a debilitating disease, one that attacks and eats away at his nerves. Yes, recovery is possible if you're a millionaire, but it'll never be a full recovery. He also suffers from a brain disorder

that corrupts his memory, personality, and behavior. Despite all of this, he's a wonderful client. I rarely come down from my big boss tower, but when I do do it's to cover a shift with him. My first few visits with him were as expected. He could only talk about four topics that he could remember and he'd repeat them throughout the shift but he's so energetic and positive that it's a joy to be around him. He'd sometimes turn and look at me and say, dang baby you look good, I ain't lying. Then forget who I was entirely. His wife and I would share a laugh each time he did as we think he thinks I'm her from when they first met. This was my usual encounter with him. On one visit his wife mentioned that she's fighting to get him on a revolutionary treatment, not available in the states. I wished her luck.

She had a sad hopeful smile as she drew in a drag from her cigarette, nodding her head as thanks. At this point, he looked like he wasn't getting any better. He was declining and there wasn't much hope left. A month or so passes when I have to cover for his usual caregiver. I knock, open the door, go inside and hear the two of them talking, having a real conversation. I approached them and the client looked at me and was present. He was actually looking at me and knew who I was. He then went on to tell me about his week, what he did, who he saw. He talked about this coherently. Still some stumbling but there was flow to his sentences. They made sense, no repeats. I was blown away. He's still in his wheelchair, but the change of cognition was

incredible. I look to his wife, mind you I'm smiling like a moron, and I ask her, did you get the treatment going overseas? He's a whole new man. His wife ashed her cigarette, looked at me, and smiled like I've never seen her smile. The kind of smile a kid gets when winning a goldfish at the fair. Nope, she said with a pop of the lips. He got hands laid on him. What? Now, I'm not religious. I was once a Satanist, raised Roman Catholic. Unfortunately, bad memories there. And determined that it's all just a coping method to comfort us when faced with ours or others' mortality.

Yet what she told me next has now become a haunting thought in the back of my head. We were at church and the preacher man came up to us and put his hands on him and started blessing him. Everyone was singing, praying and then the preacher finished and gone back up to the altar. And I swear to you, my man looked at me and said, I want to go to that altar. He got up from his chair and walked 25 steps there and back. Everyone was crying. He hadn't walked since 2016 and... At that point I tuned her out. Like I've stated, I don't believe in that stuff and I felt like she was in need of something good in her life so she spun this story to me. I smiled, I nodded my head, and I got to my task with her husband.

Three years of no walking, then all of a sudden walking? Because he was touched by a holy man, and the way the church doesn't try to cover up? I call nonsense. So I'm doing my task with him, and he starts talking to me. I mean really talking about things he remembers from his past Things I never heard him talk about I'm just going along with it. Try not to think too much about what his wife said Then he turns to me and says as he usually says it Man, I got a poop will me into that bathroom,, I gotta go. I wheel him in towards the toilet, put the brakes on the wheelchair and was about to help him when he suddenly stood up from his chair,

took a few steps, turned and sat on the toilet. I could only gape. I had no idea what I just saw. This man, the last I saw him, was on a steady decline. He couldn't get up from his wheelchair without major assistance, yet he popped up out of that thing like he's been faking it this whole time. He saw my face and told me, Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've been walking. Doing good, baby. I don't know, guys. I really don't know. This didn't convert me. Honestly, Christ would

have to show himself to me to get me believing, yet I can't explain this. There's no cure for this disease. People in this state don't just progress positively like that without new and aggressive treatment. I'm still bothered and shaken by this. So to give some backstory, my neighborhood is pretty quiet, especially at night due to the number of young families and elderly couples that live on my street, which makes staying up in the early hours of the morning more relaxing and also a bit cooler knowing I'm most likely the only person in the street that's awake. The only thing is that I've had some creepy experiences, like hearing noises or even seeing a few drug deals, but most of that can be chalked up to living next to a big forest with lots of wildlife or just some sketchy neighborhoods. But for the past week,

I've been trying to find a logical explanation for the strange events that keep occurring. It started at 2am last Tuesday morning. I was just sitting in bed on my phone with earbuds in, something I do almost every night, when I begin to hear whistling coming from out my window. I took my earbuds out and began listening to the whistling trying to come up with an explanation. Normally I'm not scared by anything in my neighborhood this late and to be honest I get more excited that something is happening and I'm there to witness it but this time felt different. I wanted so badly to get up to look out my window but I was almost paralyzed with fear. I don't know what came

over me but every minute that went by of this whistling I felt the pit of my stomach growing larger. It went on for almost an hour and for the entire hour I waited for the whistling to start a tune or a song I could actually look up but it just kept whistling the same note in a strange pattern. It would whistle one note for a good minute, then take a break for another 30 seconds, and then return its one minute whistle, until about 20 minutes in, when the whistles got shorter and closer together, only to return to the original pattern after about 10 minutes. What was even more strange was that whatever it was was pacing in front of mine in my

neighbor's house up until it stopped when it retreated back down the other side of the street. As I heard it leave I almost immediately felt the pit of my stomach subside and while I was still confused I decided I should just go to sleep before I scare myself even more. So the next day I asked my parents and even some of my friends that lived close by if they had ever heard anything like that. Everyone assumed it was an animal which made me feel a lot better but I wanted a definite answer of what I heard. I stayed up for hours that night researching types of animals that were local to my area and the noises they made. I didn't find anything that matched.

This only left me more frustrated that I had no clue what it was so I continued staying up in hopes that I would hear it again and that this time I would look out my window to see it but with my luck I never heard the whistling again except lots of other weird things have been happening. After the whistle I begin hearing someone or something walking around in mine and my neighbor's driveways and sometimes even yards very late at night but whenever I go to check I can't see anything. Then about two nights ago when I swear I saw a figure of a person lurking behind my neighbor's car. Then the night after that I saw what looked like a flashlight in the woods near my house

and whatever it was that was holding the flashlight was running out of the woods. And then again last night I swear I saw a person crouching near my neighbor's car just looking around. I thought I was done researching because I couldn't find anything about animals but now I've begun researching any stories even similar to mine hoping that I'm either not alone or even better someone has the answer to the strange experiences because I would like to start sleeping in a normal time again and not be worried about either a stalker or a poltergeist coming to get me in my sleep. When I was 12 years old, we moved to a house on the outskirts of Los Angeles County, not far from Knott's Berry Farm in Disneyland. This was in the early 80s. We lived there for

a year and the house was completely haunted. Here's a list of a bunch of things that happened. 1. Every night after everyone went to bed you could hear someone digging with a shovel outside the window, but there was no one there. If you turned on the lights the sound would stop but only for a few seconds, maybe 30 at the most, and would then resume. If you went outside to check, the sound would be gone and there was no one there. Come back in and after a few minutes the digging would continue. 2. I had OCD as a kid and would put all my toys in their place at night. On several occasions, the following morning, they would be scattered all over the floor as if someone had played with them during the night. I would yell at my younger siblings thinking they had done it.

My mother would tell me I was the last one to go to sleep and the first to wake so it wasn't them. 3. Every night without fail at 11pm outside the upstairs window you could hear children yelling and playing in the backyard. If you looked out the window, it was pitch black and there was no one there. You could also see all the neighbor's yards and there was nobody anywhere. One night I listened carefully to try to make sense of what they were saying and yelling and I realized that they were playing kickball. Kick it, kick it, run, go, go, go, yeah. Stuff like that. This happened every night. On more than one occasion, I went downstairs and opened the door to the backyard.

The sound was gone. You couldn't hear it from downstairs, only upstairs. 4. My grandmother came to spend the night once. She got so scared she never came back. She slept in the upstairs spare bedroom and said she heard noises outside the window. When she looked out the window, down below she would see a shadow walking up to the front door, but no one was there. No one was casting the shadow apparently. 5. My aunt spent the night once in the same bedroom and something similar happened.

Noises outside the window. When she looked down below she saw lights moving and shadows moving towards the front door but no one was there. Like my grandmother she struggled to explain what it is she heard and saw. She never came back to visit. 6. The house rented cheaper than any other house in the area Every time the landlord would come back to pick up the rent She would ask if everything was okay Did we have any problems? It was always odd Parents would invite her inside the house

And she would always refuse 7. The neighbors to the right of us were very strange They were an older couple The man would never say a word, not one, not even hi. But the wife was always extra nice. She would ask the same things as the landlord. Is everything okay? Are you guys doing good? She seemed to know something. 8. We were playing with one of the neighborhood kids once, running around. We all ran back to our house and just as we went

through the front door he stopped in his tracks he said what happened he said he wasn't allowed in the house his parents forbade him why because he had spent the night once with the kids who lived in the house before we did a year earlier during the night the mother of the kids who used to live there started screaming and grabbed the kids and ran out of the house. As they ran, they all saw a blue mist or ghost with a distinct pattern of a head and shoulders. 9. The only person in my family to see the blue mist ghost was my father who said it walked down the stairs and directly into his closet. His description was identical to that of our friend who refused to come inside the house. 10. The last day we were in the house we had finished putting the things in the U-Haul truck and we were cleaning up the last of things. I remember we were eating pizza too. As we were

getting ready to walk out of the house, my father said something like, Finally getting out of this miserable house. Or something similar. Basically, he insulted the house. There was a wall panel three or four feet to the side of him next to the kitchen. The panel shook and came off the wall and hit him over the head. Hard. We all saw this and it happened right in front of

me. What's interesting about all of this is the fact that none of us really talked much about it while we lived in the house. Speaking for myself, I always thought I was imagining things and tried to make sense of what I saw and heard. My younger sibling did the same. For example, the kids playing outside the window. I thought, what are those crazy kids doing playing so late at night and why every night? I didn't know the answer but thought there must be an explanation. Being about 12 or 13 years old at the time I guess I wasn't old enough to figure out that something was very, very wrong. It wasn't until we moved out of the house that we all started comparing stories and it was always what you too? My parents were the only ones that knew something was wrong

but they didn't want to scare me and my siblings. We were in a bad economic situation at the time and apparently we could not move out right away. There's a lot more that happened but these are probably the ones that stand out the most. We would always hear doors slam upstairs and wonder who was up there or did the wind do it. One of us would go check and all the doors would be open but we heard a door slam shut. Our cat was a happy-go-lucky animal but he would all the time freeze at the stairs when least expected, stare intently, and hiss with its fur standing on end. He would always hiss while looking at the top of the stairs. As kids, we would think the cat was crazy. Years later, we realized the cat was actually seeing something, especially since the cat never hissed again in its life once we moved out.

When I was two years old, my parents found a house at a very good price, so they decided to buy the place. There's nothing much to say about the first years since I was too little but my parents and my older brother told me stuff that happened the first months. At the end of the first week in the house my mom woke up and found that the stairs had lines colored with crayons. She blamed my brother and then they cleaned the stairs. Two days later the stairs had colored lines again. This time my mom threw away the crayons. After one week without crayons my mom found the stairs with black lines painted on them. That was when she began to think that something really weird was happening. Then in the next weeks the lights

began to turn on and off by themselves. The same happened with things like a microwave, blender, and televisions. My parents investigated the house but it was difficult back then without the internet. After some months a previous owner told them the truth. A woman and her son were murdered there by robbers. My parents were unable to sell the house so we stayed there and a catholic priest blessed the rooms. After this the paranormal activity decreased but we lived in the house for another 12 years. So let me talk about my experiences. One, when I was 12 I was eating with a friend. We were in different angles. I was looking at the tv and he was looking to the kitchen and then the conversation went like my friend saying I didn't know you have

a little brother. I responded yeah he's a baby he's upstairs right now. My friend said I'm talking about the kid that was running in the kitchen. What? The kid? By then almost every member of my family except for me had seen the kid. This is how we refer to a ghost that looks like a kid. I turned around and he was there running to the laundry room, so I immediately went there, but I didn't find anyone. My friend got really scared, so we ended up going to his house. 2. When I was 14 I used to wake up in the night with screams and then I began to listen to the conversations of children or older people in the background. The first time I thought it was my brother but when I turned on my lamp I saw him sleeping and there was no one else in the room.

Things like this happen a lot of times. I don't know the exact number, maybe more than 15 times. Three, when my little brother was five, I was babysitting him in the house alone and he asked me, can I play with the other kid? Which kid? The kid in your room. I went there and my old toys were on the floor but no one was there. My brother told me he saw him when he got upstairs, but once again, I didn't see anything. So I've had several weird experiences in this house since I moved here at the end of May and have posted about a few. My friend who's a skeptic and his wife came over and I told them about the encounters so we started exploring around a bit to see if we could see any shadows or anything. Well across the street from my house is a grain elevator and even though it looks like any other

grain elevator it kind of has a creepy vibe to it. My friend who we will call T decided to walk over to it around 10 p.m. on August the 10th 2019 last night as I write this. He walked over alone while my wife T's wife and myself talked in the front yard. We see T walk back and looks pale and flushed and he says he saw a really long bony hand with long bony fingers and a really long arm reach around the corner of the grain silo around 8 or 9 feet off the ground and he shined his flashlight at it and it disappeared. He has never believed in the paranormal or humanoids or anything like that and he wasn't making it up because we could all tell he was genuinely terrified.

Well we were all curious so he and I walked back over to the area and we both saw a head pop out around the corner incredibly quick and kept hearing footsteps behind us. We would get these cold patches where the air felt 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder and we would both get covered in goosebumps. We walked about 10 minutes along the train tracks and kept hearing noises and asking each other if we both heard them. We went and got our wives and didn't tell them what we saw or felt and brought them over and they both said it felt way colder in certain spots and kept getting goosebumps too. At one point I swear I felt something brush against my hand. So afterwards we were standing in my front yard and I told T what he saw kind of sounded like a skinwalker or wendigo and started showing him drawings and he was freaked out and said that is exactly what he saw. We went back over once more to see

if we could see any more signs of it and he freaked out and looked pale and sweaty and swear as he saw yellow glowing eyes about nine feet off the ground peering around the building where he and I saw what looked like a head. Like I said he was super skeptical and after this he was terrified and sweating and looked flush. I don't know what he saw or what we heard but it wasn't animals because it would only be a few footsteps that would stop soon after we did and whatever he saw was probably nine feet tall. We even tried to recreate what he saw when he saw the hand but we couldn't reach as high as he saw it just standing on the ground. We both had this feeling of dread and being watched the whole time we walked on the tracks. We were all sober at the time too, no drinking or drugs of

any kind at the time we saw this stuff. Now I do live about 5 to 10 miles from a mass Native American slaughter site in the 1800s and a battlefield. Does anyone else have a story about a wendigo or skinwalker in eastern Washington? I would really like to know. You may have heard stories about skinwalkers, Native American witches, or spirits that turn into animals to cause harm. But at the lake where I spent the larger portion of my childhood summers, they went by a different name. Derians. The story has faded to most families at the lake over time, but mine still recites it in hushed whispers around the campfire. The legends of the Deerians begin sometime in the 18th century. Settlers from Europe flocked to northern Michigan with hopes of getting a head start on the fur trade.

That's when they found the lake. And at the lake, there were native tribes. Most were welcoming and hospitable. Others were quiet and kept to themselves, but most were kind. Most. There was one tribe, a single tribe that resided in the swamps of the western side of the lake and they were vicious. They would attack anyone who strayed too far into the swamp. Man, woman, child, settler, even other tribes. Nobody knew why they were so aggressive but they tried to leave them alone. But the attacks added up and then followed the deaths and disappearances and the settlers had had enough. They began to set up traps and ambushes in the swamp where they knew the tribe would be. Common hunting grounds, pathways, even the village

itself, but they were always abandoned, inhabited only by a herd of white-tailed deer. Sometimes, people never came home from the swamp. They go missing for days on end but would later be found completely mangled. Most blame wolves or a bear or a mountain lion, but upon further inspection, the only tracks that would ever be found in that area belonged to deer. But that's not the story. No, my story takes place hundreds of years after the deaths and disappearances of the French settlers. I had always dismissed the stories of the Deerians as just that, stories. Tales to frighten wide-eyed children and keep them within the

confines of the family property. But one evening changed all of that completely. Bald eagles are a common sight at the lake, but their nests are not easy to find. Therefore, when my cousin said he'd found a nest while he was kayaking along the river that ran through the swamp, my dad and I naturally wanted to see it. We hopped into the rickety old canoe, and with what little daylight we had left, set off towards the swamp. As we approached, we noticed something. It was a doe, drinking peacefully from the water. She didn't notice us at first,

but something made her look up and notice dad and me, and it was at this moment I knew something was up. Whitetail deer are another dime a dozen animal at the lake though if you get more than about a hundred feet of one they take off but this deer was different. They just stood there and as we got closer I could tell this deer was wrong. She looked as if though a child had read about a deer one time in a book then drew one from what Little We understood. I got close enough to the deer so that I could almost touch her but then she calmly turned and walked like a marionette into the woods. Dad and I looked at each other but laughed it off. It was nothing. It had to be. Just some

deformed deer. We entered the river and immediately I was hit with a wall of sound. Birds, crickets, and cicadas accompanied us on our journey, and as we turned the first bend I heard something in the tall grass to my right, rustling. A big animal, perhaps that malformed deer. Dad didn't seem to notice but I listened closely, rustling then to my surprise a low whisper and with a hyena-like giggle the thing ran off into the woods. I felt uneasy, I felt watched. I wanted to tell dad but I was worried he'd tease me so we just kept paddling. Eventually we stopped to rest. We scanned the tops of the trees for the eagle nests until we noticed something. The swamp, which had previously been bustling with life, was empty.

No birds, no crickets, no cicadas. No noise at all until I heard another low whisper from the grass to my right, then another to my left, then giggling all around. I no longer felt watched, I felt hunted. Something splashed in the water behind me but by the time I turned and looked all I saw was the tracks of a deer. I looked at dad, who I had never seen afraid before and I knew he was absolutely terrified. We began to paddle for deer life and with that the swamp roared to life. We paddled against the current as birds dive bombed us and insects swarmed us and the giggling all around. We paddled for what seemed like an eternity until suddenly, silence.

Dad and I were in the open lake, safely away from the confines of the swamp. I took the time to try and calm myself until something plunked into the water beside me. I looked and saw an arrowhead sinking slowly into the shallow water of the bay. I hesitantly turned to seek its source and only saw a stag, walking like a marionette disappear into the swamp. My husband and I have always been cat people. In fact, we wouldn't have been able to marry non-animal people. Pets are essential for a comfortable and civilized home, don't you think? Now, just before we got married many, many years ago, we adopted two baby kitten litter mates at our local humane society on Impulse. They were only five weeks old and had already been there

for a week, far too young to be away from their mama. Tiny little shivering tuxedo kitties, a girl and a boy, huddled together and absolutely terrified. It was obvious we had to take them both. Because they were so young they bonded to us like no other cats ever have before or since. Astrid was very much a daddy's girl and Siegfried was a mama's boy. This was given from the start. They were always the closest of buddies, as littermates who have been raised together usually are. Astrid was short-haired, brave as a lion, dumb as a rock, with amazing instincts. Considering she hadn't had the benefits of her mother teaching her anything, Astrid was one of the best hunters I'd ever seen and a ferocious scrapper. She could

even bring down crows. Her brother was a beautiful long hair, big and sensitive and timid, despite his puffed chest posturing and loud macho bugling. Neighborhood tomcats would try to start fights with him and he would shriek, bringing Astrid on the run to beat up whoever was trying to mess with her brother. Siegfried, to his disgrace, wouldn't even stick around to help her. He'd run to the door and start scratching on it frantically to be let in. Astrid was an extremely expensive cat in the long term. In our early years, my husband and I were stone broke and we racked up I don't know how many thousands of dollars on our credit cards for all kinds of Astrid disorders and mishaps. We flew her up to Seattle

for radiation treatments for her thyroid. Her liver almost failed, necessitating week-long stays at the vet's. She broke all the bones in one foot once by catching it on a patio bench. She stopped eating several times and got terribly thin. My husband would grind up dry food, make a porridge from it, and hand feed her with a syringe. Yet, we never really minded all the trouble and expense because she always managed to bounce back from the brink of death, right up until her final illness. Astrid was always so single-minded and stubborn. She was an affectionate juggernaut. Siegfried died of cancer a few years before his sister, which was heartbreaking. Astrid lived to be about 15 years old. Just before her own death from cancer, we moved into a new

house. Instead of a cramped, dark bungalow, our new house was bright and roomy, with big windows everywhere and even better yet, from the standpoint of an arthritic cat who loved to play in water, it had a doorless walk-in shower. Astrid just loved that house and we were so glad she got to enjoy it for a while. Our backyard lets out on the BLM land and after we brought her home from her final visit to the vet, we buried her out under a big sagebrush bush which we could see from our living room. Knowing Astrid's indomitable will and rather dim intellect plus her fondness of the new house I guess we shouldn't have been surprised when she came back. It started out with glimpses out of the corner of the eye for both me and my husband

although we didn't mention it to one another until after the noises began. Distinctive Astrid noises would happen mainly at night when our two other kittens were accounted for and sleeping on our bed with us. The loud bonk of her head against the underside of the coffee table. We had that table for years and she never did learn not to stand up under it. The thud of her jumping off the dining room table. The rustling and rummaging through the garbage bag in the kitchen looking for treats. The sharp jing of a cat toy being slapped at in passing. Then Astrid started joining us in bed. My husband would distinctly feel her weight as it landed on the bed and stomped clumsily across his legs and we could see everything on the bed very clearly. Nothing visible was causing it.

To make things more interesting, Cow Kitty, a.k.a. C.K., the black-spotted white feral cat we had tamed and adopted, would greet her by lifting his head in her direction and cordially saying, in that sweet way he had. One of Astrid's habits in life was wedging himself between my head and my husband's. Since she was really his kitty, she'd leverage her butt against my sleeping face in order to really position herself for a thorough kneading of daddy's neck, sometimes for hours at a time, purring the whole time. He'd get a sore neck and I would wake up to a mouth full of cat hair.

So during one of her incorporeal visits, I woke up to hear loud purring between us, but nothing was there. Just the purring. My neck hairs tried to crawl up to the top of my head. You know that feeling you get when all your senses start to ratchet up. But then I thought, it's just Astrid. She loves us and she'd never hurt us. And I relaxed completely and went back to sleep. No big deal. In fact, some nights when the noises began while my husband and I read in bed, we'd look at each other and start laughing. And did I mention that my husband is a

skeptic who's very uncomfortable with discussing the paranormal? Even he started taking it for granted. CK too too, would often peer with great concentration into our bedroom doorway from his spot on the bed. He'd murmur a question or a greeting at our visitor and lay his head down on his paws again. Not everyone was so casual about Astrid. When we got our kitten, Flashman, a loud, bold, brassy, maine coon, Flashman would often stare at the bedroom doorway, fizz up, and hide between our pillows with his butt sticking out. But then again, Flashman was never properly introduced to Astrid in life like CK was. Eventually I was concerned that Astrid didn't understand she was dead and would be upset that we were snubbing or ignoring

her. I would call out to her that we loved her but that she needed to get going to where she needed to be. Our vet told us that our cats often come back after death in a new form to be with us again. If so, Astrid was delaying the process by spending her nights stomping around the house and bonking her head on the underside of our coffee table. I think she finally got the point. Astrid was very strong-willed and single-minded, but even she could sometimes catch a clue. Eventually, she stopped visiting. I've told lots of people about my Astrid experiences, and I can tell they don't know if I'm joking, I'm known for having a pretty dry sense of humor,

or if I'm just simply crazy. However, I've read a lot of real-life accounts which indicate that our experiences with Astrid aren't so much out of the ordinary. All the same, it takes quite a special cat to come back, regardless of how much it loved its owners, it really doesn't surprise me in the least that Astrid managed it. subreddit, our Let's Read official, and give and receive feedback from the community, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast where you can hear all of 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, the hiccup burp is the butter sock cult mating call.