The Lets Read Podcast - 71: Episode 062 | MORE Halloween & Cyberstalker Stories | 22 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

Welcome to the sixty-second 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 Halloween, Poltergesits & Cyberstalkers. Check out this other awesome, similar podcast: www.GhostPodcast.com 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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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I was recently sitting in Starbucks fooling around on my laptop and overheard a group of students discussing what scared them and why. Hearing this caused me to try and think back to the first time in my life I was truly scared. I guess I'm getting old because it took me a few minutes to think of it but once I did I figured I better write it down so I'd never forget again. Just to prove to myself

I hadn't just undergone one of the most useless exercises of my life it seemed like a good idea to send you a copy so you could share it with other people. Not completely sure what my age was maybe as young as eight but more likely closer to 10, I had been foaming at the mouth waiting for Halloween to arrive. It had been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember. I had known who I was going to dress up as after I saw the first Spider-Man movie with Tobey Maguire at the theater. My parents took me to Walmart as soon as they put out the costumes.

It wasn't the best and looked a bit stupid on my fat little body but I wore it with pride. My parents took me to Walmart as soon as they put out the costumes. It wasn't the best and looked a bit stupid on my fat little body, but I wore it with pride. My friends and I sat at lunch every day, excitedly discussing what houses we were going to and the candy we were hoping to get. Even though trick-or-treating door-to-door was already falling out of favor, mainly due to the fault of the media repeating nonsense stories of poisoned and razor blade filled candy, in my small town parents were more than happy to see their kids getting out of the house and away from their gaming consoles. Even then, the younger ones still had to have their mothers chaperone them around the neighborhood and make sure no boogeyman grabbed them, or at least that's what we thought then.

Since I was going out with my older brother, my folks weren't worried about us. When we got out of school that afternoon, I ran the two blocks home and began getting my stuff ready for later. After dinner, my brother and I jumped into our costumes and lined up in the living room so our mom could take some pictures. Every second I was stuck in my house was torture. When she finally let us go it was already beginning to get dark. I ran to the school playground to meet my friends and my brothers split off for me to catch up with his. Happy to be free from the eyes of our parents for a while we went from house to house holding out our bags and occasionally making smart aleck comments to the people whose candy we didn't approve of. Once or twice we had a clash with an adult because of our behavior, but being anonymous under our disguises, we were emboldened to mouth off to them and run away.

Moving forward was important because we had school in the morning, so most of us had to be home by nine. Not to mention we still had to let our parents inspect our candy before we could eat any. Of course, we ate some anyway, but we knew the faster we moved, the more houses we could hit, so we did. As we began to circle around the house on the opposite side of the street, we were passing an empty plot of land about the size of two lots. A building company had just recently broken ground and several tall hills of sand were located throughout the cul-de-sac. For some reason, I happened to glance over at the empty land and noticed a tall man dressed in black standing behind one of the sand hills. He didn't move at all and at first I thought he was some kind of decoration,

but when I looked away to get my friend's attention and look back, he was gone. When my friends didn't see him, they started making fun of me, but I knew what I'd seen. I tried to act like his disappearance didn't bother me, but I was already shaken up. I did my best to forget and continued my nocturnal assault on Candy. We moved pretty swiftly, going from house to house but once again as we approached the middle of the block the dark scary figure came back into my view. I was relieved to hear my friends acknowledge his existence this time. He remained stock still as he watched from the backyard of the house directly across the street. Not a one of us moved and we continued to silently

stare at each other. This battle of fear went on for over a minute before he slowly began walking towards us. We hightailed it out of there before he completed his first step. I remember looking back at one point and not seeing him behind us but I wasn't stopping until I couldn't run anymore. We all hit the wall around the same time. Coincidentally, we were almost back right where we'd started that night. Bent over with my hands on my upper legs, I struggled for every bit of air I could get. Even though we were still very afraid, we joked with each other, laughing probably in relief. Once I was able to finally breathe somewhat normally, I stood upright.

If I recollect correctly, I was making a joke about one of the other guys, probably Steve. He was a common target for our humor and I happened to look across the street to the playground. I was mid-sentence when I noticed the shape of a person standing just out of the glare of a streetlight. I couldn't be sure if it was our stalker up until I stepped over a few inches so I could see without the chain link fence blocking their upper body. As I moved to get a clearer look my friends watched me closer, afraid to breathe until I passed judgment on what I was seeing. The person didn't move this entire time. This is until I got into a position to get an unobstructed view.

The moment we got a clear eye-to-eye view of one another, the man stepped into the direct glow of the lamp allowing me to see him fully. All I could say was run. Unfortunately, this time we split off in different directions, likely toward each of our homes. At least, that's each of our homes. At least, that's where I was headed. Although I was moving as fast as my fat little body could carry me, some unknown feeling made me look back to see where the man in black currently was. I imagine each one of us was convinced he was hot on our tails, but I saw him turn nonchalantly and begin walking in the direction I had seen Steve and Brian run in.

They must have seen him behind them because I heard Steve in the distance let out a scream and yell, Oh, dude, run! A few seconds later, I had made it to the perceived safety of my front yard. My lungs burned so bad, I just dropped flat on my back and spent a couple of minutes getting myself back together. As I entered the front door, I was still huffing a bit. My brother was already back home, and when he saw the state I was in, he laughed at me and said, What's wrong? Did the boogeyman chase you? Did the little baby get frightened by all the monsters? He said it all in a very condescending baby talk type tone.

He was being his usual idiot self but I was too distracted by what had just happened to be mad at him. All the excitement and running I'd been doing had left me exhausted. I just walked into the kitchen and dropped my bag of candy on the floor in front of my folks and walked upstairs to bed. I was barely able to get out of my costume but I eventually did and quickly fell asleep. Sometime in the middle of the night I dreamed that the phone was ringing out in the hall but since I was so tired I couldn't wake myself up to see if the ringing was real. When I came down the next morning to eat breakfast I was still a little groggy. While I sat at the table waiting for my food my dad asked me when I had last seen Brian the night before. As soon as he said this,

I was instantly sucked back in time. Every second of the night flashed through my memory like a video on Fast Forward. All the fear I'd felt was right there with me, as if it had only just happened that minute. I wasn't sure why he was asking me this but I was terrified it had something to do with the man in black. Although I was afraid of what I'd heard I asked him why anyways. He answered in a calm voice that his parents had called here looking for him last night because he never came home from trick-or-treating.

My heart started pounding and I could feel sweat beating up on my forehead. I could see the fear emitting from my parents' faces. Even though I wasn't sure what it all meant, I knew it couldn't be good. All I said was that we had gone trick-or-treating and when we'd had enough, we'd split up and went our separate ways. That was the last time I'd seen any of my friends. I'm still not sure they believed me, but they had no reason not to. The urge simmered quietly inside of me, the urge to blurt out the whole crazy episode, every little detail, but I suppressed it. I had no idea what Brian was doing. Maybe he decided to run away. But I sure didn't want he or any other kids at school to think I was a crybaby tattletale. If it turned out that teenager that had chased us around and

scared us did something to him, I didn't want him and his buddies to find me and beat me up. These are some of the crazy things that go through a kid's young mind. I'm pretty sure it was a teenager dressed up in some outfit and my friends probably believed the same thing even if no one said it. No matter if it was an older kid dressed up it didn't make it any less terrifying. After all this was the kind of nonsense teenagers did to little kids isn't it? For all I knew it could have been my brothers chasing us around. He seemed to be rather knowledgeable about what was going on that night. At that point, that was the extent of the experience I'd had in that area. I wasn't quite old enough to realize life got any worse. I had

yet to discover how cruel and terrible adults could be to one another, and certainly not to children. In my world, the adults were the authorities and the older kids were the ones who bullied or beat you up. Things never got any darker than that. Rumors surrounding Brian's disappearance tore through the school. We were all a little scared and confused about the adults' reactions. Their attempts at stopping a panic from spreading was pointless. Every kid present that day could read the fear on their faces and just because we weren't all old enough to know why it was there didn't stop us from seeing it. One by one, Brian's friends were called to the

office. A pair of police officers were joined by a counselor as they asked each of us a load of questions. Most of them were about the previous night. Despite the immense pressure on us, no one mentioned the man in black and what had happened. We never discussed it or practiced together what to say, it just seemed to be a given. It wasn't until I got home from school that I heard. My mom sat me down and told me that Brian was dead. Apparently during a search of the woods that ran between our side and his side of the neighborhood, his body was discovered lying in the creek bed at the bottom of a giant hill. We used that area to pass back and forth to each other's houses all the time.

The hill was actually one side of a super high creek bank. Kids in that neighborhood had been climbing up and down both sides of that creek leaving a few well established trials probably since before I was born. If I hadn't already been afraid, hearing this definitely left me paralyzed. My mom asked me in a very concerned sounding voice if I understood what was going on. I just nodded and said nothing. Looking back on that, I'm surprised I didn't start bawling. I think I was just too afraid. As far as if I understood what was happening, I certainly did. Now that they found Brian dead, it was way too late to tell anyone what we had experienced.

Every adult in town was going to be furious if we said anything now and my parents would have grounded me until I was 18. Just like a kid, more worried about being punished than his dead friend. That evening on the news, the story of Brian's death was the hot lead. From what I can remember, nothing was said about anybody pushing him or disposing of his body in the creek. The theory they had at the time and the decision the authorities eventually came to was that it had all been a horrible accident. The assumption was that he was running, in a hurry to get home, and tripped on his overloaded trick-or-treat bag causing him to tumble down the steep hill, breaking his neck. Hearing this reminded me of a moment that night

before when I had done something similar. I was in a full speed run, fleeing the final time from the scary man and tripped on my bag of candy. I very nearly went head first onto the pavement, but I caught myself at the last second and stopped myself from wiping out. Once I had thought back on that, their explanation seemed possible and for several years after that, I decided that was what had happened. The weeks following Brian's death was stressful, however, with the passage of time, my life was taken up with other equally as important life-altering situations. As I grew older I would slowly lose my innocence and become the angst-ridden teenager many of us end up becoming. One particular eye-opening thing happened as I sat with my parents watching some cookie cutter tv drama. Honestly I wasn't paying very close attention until something about

the show caught my eye. A man was holding a woman at gunpoint and he had something sheer covering his face. This image drew me back to that Halloween night. For a moment I wasn't sure why but then the answer clicked in my head. The man we had been running from was wearing the same thing or something very similar on his face. This is why his face had looked so scary. I asked my mom what was on his face and she told me those were stockings, something women used to wear on their legs before pantyhose became popular. I wasn't really worried about their purpose but finally knowing what I had seen gave me a great feeling of relief. I was glad to know that we hadn't been stalked by some freaky looking monster. This epiphany unfortunately reopened another far more terrifying idea from the past,

the possibility that Brian had been killed by that guy in the mask. I had grown up since then and I'd seen enough movies to know that kids get taken out by creepy strangers in the mask. I had grown up since then and I'd seen enough movies to know that kids get taken out by creepy strangers all the time and nobody knows it. I remember I had asked Steve a few days later what had happened after we split up. He told me that the man did follow them at first but the point at which they separated at his house the man was nowhere to be seen. They both just assumed he gave up or went after some other kids. Brian walked off toward home and that was the last time he saw him. I know I never saw that scary guy again but I'm sure none of the other guys had either. I have no doubt they would have

said something if they had. Sitting here the last few days and writing this all down I've been reminded of a lot of great memories and a few terrible ones from my childhood. Even though I've had my fair share of terrifying occurrences in my life and I may share some of those in the future, the hair-raising events of that night and the tragic ones that would follow were the first to leave an actual permanent scar on my memory. To this day, I still can't be sure what was the real cause of my friend's death. I've often turned the facts over in my mind. Just getting there, we have to decide who or what was actually chasing us that night. Friend, foe, or perhaps something we've yet to identify. I recognize that this question is much less important than the how, but nonetheless, it still plays a part in the mystery.

Reaching the true goal, we can finally ask the how. Was Brian pushed to his death by the man in black? Did he truly just trip on his bag of candy while running as quickly as his short little legs could carry him while wearing a vision obstructing mask in the dark. Not to mention carrying the terror with him of being pursued by an unknown entity, always expecting it or him to pop up out of nowhere. Maybe this thing renewed its chase and Brian out of sheer terror flung himself from the cliff, not thinking of the drop off ahead of him. Heck, it could have been caused by something I hadn't even considered yet, or all of these things at the same time. I'm doubtful that myself or anyone will ever know the truth of how Brian lost his life.

I haven't even really discussed the possibilities of this all being the result of some prank gone horribly wrong, and the teenagers were way too terrified to come forward and take the blame. At the end of the day, I haven't even considered the chance of this anonymous person abducting him, doing his awful act, and disposing of his body where he was found. As you can see, the web surrounding this mystery is elaborate indeed, but when it comes to me, I think I've achieved my goal of passing the facts on to you the way I remember them. I think this is where I'll bow out and leave this enigma for another person to muddle over, at least for today. Happy Halloween, and thanks for listening. With Halloween coming around, I thought I would share something terrifying that happened to me a few Halloweens back. While it doesn't involve creepy ghosts or monsters,

I guarantee it terrified the life out of me and still does today. At the time this happened, I wasn't currently enrolled in school but most of my friends were attending our local county community college. Four of them, two guys and two girls, had been living together in a house roughly two miles away from the campus. In the early weeks of October I received a text from one of them saying that they were planning a big party the weekend before the 31st at their house and I was invited. I said yes of course and made sure to tell my boss I would be taking that weekend off. Normally I would have gotten a bunch of pushback but I had accrued more than enough vacation time to cover it. A couple of days prior to the party I realized I would be attending the

party alone and that's certainly no fun so I asked one of the girls from work to join me. She didn't want to go without her boyfriend so I reluctantly agreed. I wasn't trying to complain, I just simply didn't know the guy. I've never liked drinking around people I didn't know so I was relying on my other friends to protect me from anything creepy happening. The night of the party arrived and I chose to show up a little early so I could help my friends get everything in order. A few hours later the other attendees began trickling in and by 10 or so the party was raging. Sometime after 11 the first keg was floated. One of the guys at the party helped me tap the other one and pump out the foam.

Since he was the one with the nozzle, I handed him my cup to fill. At exactly the same time, a friend I had not seen in years came up and said hi. When I looked back to the keg, the guy had filled my cup and handed it to me. Being a nice little girl, I thanked him and my friend and I walked off to catch up. We spoke for a good 15 or 20 minutes before nature called. After I peed I began feeling really tired. Considering I'd been drinking for several hours I figured I just needed to rest until I got my second wind. I searched a couple of rooms before I found an unoccupied bed I could lay on. After I closed my eyes I don't remember anything other

than what I thought was a dream of my friend's boyfriend throwing me on his back. I remember thinking it was a real weird thing to dream about. My next memory is of a bright, cold room. People's voices faded in and out, similar to tuning a radio. When I opened my eyes and the room came into focus, the urge to vomit overtook me. After I barfed, I heard the voice of my work friend next to me. I remember specifically I wanted to say something, but I was way too tired to stay awake. I must have fallen asleep again and slept for a while because when I woke up, the sun was shining in my face. It was so bright it made me sick to my stomach.

Now I was much more coherent but I felt like I had the worst hangover in history. My friend's voice was there again. I fought the heavy feeling in my eyelids until I could finally get a clear look at my surroundings. I was in what appeared to be a hospital room. The girl from work and her boyfriend stood next to my bed and they both had a happy but still concerned look. At first I tried to speak but my throat felt super rough and congested. I cleared my throat and asked, What happened? Did I get alcohol poisoning or something? Every word heard to say and my voice resembled tires on gravel road when I heard it.

No, I'm sorry honey, but it looks like somebody roofied you. Don't worry though, no one assaulted you. Just get some sleep and we'll talk about it all when you're feeling better. I was concerned about what I just heard, but she fortunately said nothing happened, so I wasn't too terrified, at least not at the time. Sleep took me once more and other than waking up once or twice briefly, I slept through the night. That morning I was far more lucid but the sick feeling was still with me. When I opened my eyes, my friend from work was still there standing at the foot of my bed but at least now she had a

smile on her face. I found out later she went home for the night and returned that morning. How do you feel? I let her know I felt much better and we spoke a little while before the nurse came back in with food. Not much of it gotten eaten but I was thankful for a cup of orange juice that came with it. This was the first time we'd been able to really talk since it happened so she briefly laid things out for me. The following will be her words describing the events of that night. Jeff and I hadn't seen you for a while and I became curious of where you were and a little worried. I made Jeff come with me as I waded through the party asking people if they had seen you or knew

where you were. Everyone said no so I began looking going room to room checking if you were in one of them. When I came to the third door I opened it and saw two guys standing over a girl who was asleep on the bed. I took a couple of steps into the room and saw that it was you. When I looked at the guys they both had a sheepish look on their faces like little boys who have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. This made me really uncomfortable. Jeff must have known what they were up to because he walked up behind them, looked them in the eyes and told them that unless they wanted to get the life beat out of them they better leave. That's just what they did. I didn't recognize either of them, but you

may. If we see them around again, I'll point them out to you. I tried to wake you up, but you wouldn't move. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't get you to wake up. What little energy you had, you used to fight me. This is why I had a feeling you'd been drugged. I asked Jeff to help me get you out of there and to the hospital. I was certain your condition wasn't due to beer. I'd spoken to you less than an hour before we found you and you looked completely sober. Since I hadn't much luck in getting you to wake, Jeff just picked you up and threw you over his shoulder, kind of like a bag of flour. Despite the context I couldn't help but chuckle. You fought him a little

but nothing he couldn't handle. We whisked you away to our car and brought you to the ER. They did some tests and they came back positive for a cocktail of roofies and a couple of other drugs. The doctor said you were lucky because combining those amounts of drugs with alcohol could have easily have killed you. I didn't mention what situation we had found you in at first, but once the test came back, it seemed like the right thing to do. They contacted the police, and Jeff and I spoke to a couple of officers about the party and how we found you. Since you're awake now, don't be surprised if they pay you a visit. That's it. Everything up until today.

Now that I've heard about how close I came to being assaulted, I was starting to freak out. I didn't hesitate to thank her and tell her to tell Jeff how truly thankful I was, just like she suspected. Two cops showed up later that day, a few hours before I was discharged. I honestly didn't know how I'd been drugged and couldn't think of anyone who would have wanted to do that to me. Of course, my mind was still a bit hazy. I promised them if I remembered anything, I'd call them right away.

When I made it back home, I figured I should call my boss and tell him I needed a few more days off. But when he got on the phone phone he was very compassionate towards me. He mentioned that Gail, my friend from work, had already contacted him and explained my situation. He told me I could take as much time as I needed and hoped that I was feeling better. After I thanked him I hung up. Never in my entire life had I ever expected that man to show anything other than contempt toward me. Goes to show some people aren't all that bad, and sometimes they can surprise you. That evening, I had a little to eat and turned in just after 8. The next day was spent curled up on the couch watching Netflix.

At lunchtime, I was able to eat an entire sandwich. It was nice being able to get my appetite back. Since my stomach was still growling a bit, I checked the cupboard for some snacks and noticed a pack of red solo cups out of the corner of the eye and then bam, it all came back like a gunshot. The guy who had helped me with the keg was staring me in the face. Then the entire scene replayed in my mind. My friend coming up behind me and saying hi. I turned away to talk to her and look back to see the same guy holding out a red solo cup. I take it and say thank you. In less than an hour, I was unconscious. He had to have been the guy that drugged me. The only problem was I didn't know his name or even who he was. I'd never even seen him before.

I do remember that he was cute and I was planning to strike up a conversation but that was before my old friend interrupted. Now that I had a good idea of the culprit I was excited to tell the officers. Then the realization hit me it would be a pointless exercise without a name. Thinking on my feet I quickly called up one of my friends that lived in the house. She didn't even know about what had happened to me. Some friend. No matter. I asked if she knew who the guy was but she didn't. She did offer to ask the other three roommates but when she returned to the phone she said none of them had any idea who he was. It's likely he was just

a crasher or was a guest of another student. This sunk my hopes of solving the case quickly. I didn't bother to call the officers and tell them. My only real hope now was that someone turned him in but I wasn't holding my breath. It is possible he was one of the two males in the bedroom with me but Gail nor Jeff recognized them. It looked like I was SOL. That's how it all ends up pretty much. I've went on with my life and done my best to put the whole terrible mess behind me. I do admit that I was real shaken up a while but I've made an effort to use it as a learning experience. Since then I've separated myself from that group of people and stopped going out to drink.

I'd known them for a long time, but their indifference towards the girls' safety at their party made me so angry that I just began to think less of them. It's been almost three years since that party, and I've never heard from the officers again. As I expected, nothing ever happened. This Halloween will be a quiet one for me, celebrated at home with my boyfriend. If you go out, be safe and don't drive if you're drinking. If you're a female, be very careful. Don't let your drink out of your sight. Don't take a drink from anyone, sealed or not. Most importantly, don't drink too much and lose control, especially around strangers. No matter the environment,

that one heartless creep could be waiting for the right opportunity to make us move. Don't become a statistic. Each year around Halloween, my family gets together to tell the scariest stories we can find. Each member is responsible for one true story. The only rules are that the story must be fact and that it can't have ever been told before. With this year's storytelling get-together growing ever closer, I was finding it especially hard discovering a story. Nearing my wit's end, I took a trip to the local library in search of a spine-tingling gem from our misty past. Hours were spent in search of the perfect story until my attention was drawn to a small and unassuming headline on the corner of one page. It read, Daniel's Mansion Fire Cause Unknown. Continuing to read through the article

only caused more questions. Reaching the bottom of a four hour long rabbit hole uncovered a shocking story of revenge that convinced me I'd found the story I'd been looking for. About a month from now I will be sitting in my parents' living room sharing with them the tale I've discovered. As I thought forward to this night I figured I'd share this little known story with others hoping to add an air of creepiness to their holidays too. So if you're ready, turn out the lights, kick back and enjoy the story I've chosen to call A Trial by Fire. The time is 1933 and our setting is in rural Kansas. A record-breaking heat wave and drought have led to crippling crop failures across the Great Plains. Signs of the so-called Black

Blizzards, mile-wide dust storms comprised of topsoil were beginning to be observed. Because of this series of catastrophic environmental events, paired with a national economic depression, many families were losing their farms to locally owned banks. These banks, or more so their owners, were often seen as opportunistic vampires taking advantage of the farmers' increasingly bad luck, sucking them dry of what little they did have. In our town, the local boogeyman bank owner was named Saul Daniels, and although he was not as predatory as many bankers, he was despised

nonetheless. Not as much for his habit of foreclosure and eviction of those farmers too far in arrears, but more for his agonizing inability to never deny his son anything he wished. Abe Daniels was the textbook example of a spoiled child and his constant worsening behavior because of this saw him grow from an annoying whining little brat into a universally hated adult. He never let an opportunity to take what he wanted pass by. Any merchant in town doing business with his family's bank would ever be safe from Abe's predatory behavior. He would

often brazenly walk right into a business owner's store and take what he wanted off the shelf. No one who owed the Daniels Bank, no matter the amount, would dare stop him from fear of losing the tiny bit of whatever they had managed to hold on to. Abe's desires were not limited to mere objects on a shelf. His childish mind would sometimes focus on an unlucky woman. As you would expect, they were also nothing more than objects to him. He made it clear to every girl he chose that she was helpless against his desires. The foolish few who fought his attention found themselves homeless overnight. Probably the worst example of his malevolent acts on females was that of Miss Natalie O'Leary. Miss O'Leary was a young school teacher. She had moved

into the area only the year before and was soon to be marrying a young man named Martin Clark. By all accounts, the couple were very much in love. One Sunday morning, Miss O'Leary caught the attention of Abe outside of her church, and at that second, her fate would be sealed. He finally caught up with her a few mornings later at the Thompson family restaurant as she ate her breakfast. Being very familiar with Abe and his mistreatment of other women, she attempted to pay her check and leave before he could approach her. She wasn't quick enough, however, and Abe was on to her. He accosted her with a number of unseemly comments and propositions far too crude for me to repeat here. Miss O'Leary retained her

ladylike demeanor as long as she could, until Abe slapped and grabbed her backside right in front of everyone. This was when she lost her temper and returned the disrespect by slapping him across his face. It was clear that he wasn't prepared for such a reaction. No one had ever dared to put their hands on him. The shock and rage radiated from him almost as brightly as the handprint on his cheek. Abe must have been unsure of how to deal with the situation and stormed out of the restaurant without a word. Everyone there that morning did their best to warn Miss O'Leary of the danger she was in, but she didn't take their warning seriously. No man or woman could strike Abe Daniels in front of witnesses and not expect

severe repercussions. Severe repercussions were exactly what she would receive. Miss O'Leary's body was discovered five days later in an irrigation ditch just outside of town. She had been struck about the head at least fifteen times. Various bones throughout her body had been broken so badly that the pathologist, Don Atkins, said that they were like those he'd seen in head-on auto-collisions. The worst was perhaps that she had clear signs of being violently ravaged sometime soon before her death. This crime shocked the entire county and surrounding counties and was surely the worst ever to occur up to that time. Miss O'Leary had been loved and respected by most who knew her and had no known enemies. Every citizen was greatly angered by her death and demanded the killer be brought to justice swiftly.

The sheriff's initial suspect was Martin, her fiancé, despite his guilt being doubted by most. He had been seen arguing with Miss O'Leary after church that Sunday, but this turned out to be a misidentification of another couple by a nearly blind woman. Although he was doing his best to put this on Mr. Clark, he was soon forced to acknowledge to the press that he had no evidence he had committed it. It was no secret around town that Abe had assaulted Miss O'Leary earlier in the week and she had struck him in front of at least ten witnesses. He had to have been the only enemy she had had as far as anyone knew of. This made him the prime suspect in most folks' minds. It took massive pressure from severe, powerful

members of the town before the sheriff would bring Abe in for questioning, and even then, he was quickly released with no charges. The sheriff's rapid exoneration of Abe infuriated those who were positive of his guilt. It didn't take long for the rumors to begin making the rounds, claiming to know the actual reason of Abe's release. An unnamed gentleman at the bank provided information that claimed a veiled threat was made to the sheriff regarding the deed to his parents' farm. They were said to be several months behind in their payments to the bank, and this gentleman claimed Saul had threatened to foreclose on them if any charges were brought up on Abe. It was common knowledge that the Daniels Bank owned the deeds to the majority of the land and town and the county surrounding it. Whether Saul

had made such a threat could never be proven, but most who had heard it had little doubt it was. After the release of Abe Daniels, the case of Miss O'Leary went dormant and remains formally unsolved to this day. Even though most were confident of Abe's guilt, without any real evidence or support of law enforcement there was nothing they could do. Therefore, they were forced to bite the bullet and move on with their lives, praying one day a big break would come along and justice would be done. There was no doubt, especially after reading all of the myriad number of awful things the Daniels men did, some by Abe and some by Saul, that this family were the prime example of ultimate power and the blatant abuse of this power. However, there is

one aspect of this story that we cannot leave out, and that is the widespread racism aimed at the family. Kansas has a long history of supporting minorities that goes back at least to the 1850s when bloody battles would break out between the anti-slavery elements in the state and the pro-slavery ones in the surrounding state of Missouri. These skirmishes would continue all the way until the ending of the Civil War in 1865. Even in a usually open-minded and inclusive area, the distrust felt toward the Jewish family was widespread. There was a time in which this was not true. In the early 1890s when Saul Daniels first arrived in the area, he was welcomed with open arms. The county lacked any type of banking system and Daniels's arrival was seen by many as a gift from God. While not being wealthy himself, he received the backing

of several of the county's wealthier landowners. By 1907, the Daniels Farmers and Cattlemen Bank owned half of the town's properties and surrounding farms. This was around the time attitudes towards Saul and the rest of the family began to turn sour. Many of the town's properties and surrounding farms. This was around the time attitudes towards Saul and the rest of the family began to turn sour. Many of the men that had supported Saul in his early years had lost their fortunes in subsequent financial panics, but he had continued to invest his money wisely and grow into a man they could only have dreamed of once being. A few of these men had approached Saul for loans but found

themselves being rebuked by him for being foolish with their investments. Those men believed they were owed the money for helping him in his time of greatest need. This was likely the root of the bad feeling felt towards them and reinforced the stereotype many of them had of the greedy Jew in their minds. In the following decades, the rising anti-Semitism in Europe was brought to the New World with the immigrants coming west. A prevailing ignorance of the people and their religious practices only served to drive the two groups further apart. Stories of practices like child sacrifice, no matter how ridiculous, were being spread freely throughout the community. Saul and his spoiled son were not the only Daniel's family members to suffer from this

spreading prejudice. The matriarch of the family, Rebecca, despite being relatively liked in town, was often treated like a second-class citizen. This treatment ranged from being passed over in favor of other shoppers in the Baxter mercantile to children's blatant name-calling in the street. Rebecca, being a meek yet kind little woman, took all this abuse in stride. Saul was certainly made aware of the way his beloved wife was being treated. This may have been the prime motivation behind the coldness he showed toward them. This bitterness grew worse in 1918 when Rebecca succumbed to the Spanish flu and his only son, Abraham, also did as well. It was said at the time that the only thing Saul

Daniels loved more than money was his family. Most think Rebecca was the only moderating influence on Saul, so her loss removed any amount of kindness he may have still felt for his neighbors. The boom that followed the Great War continued Saul on his trajectory to boundless wealth. As you can imagine, his ever-expanding net worth made him more and more hated by his neighbors. This period of amazing prosperity just happened to coincide with Abe's ascendance into young manhood. Rebecca's moderating influence could have possibly worked to rein in his more childish impulses, but without her around, Abe's near-death made Saul virtually unable to deny him anything, regardless of the cost to himself or others. Not only did he have his own staple of racehorses and automobiles, but he would often purchase them

for his group of hangers-on, only to take them away and destroy them right in front of the person if they angered him in any way. He was said to have bought seven cars in one year, only to go on and crash them soon after. Following his clearance and the death of Miss Natalie O'Leary, Abe left for an extended vacation to Europe. This should have been a period of relief for the town's inhabitants, but the vile actions of Saul would force the town to make a choice many never believed themselves capable of. Mrs. Mabel Reed was an elderly lady living on the 150-acre farm her husband had purchased from the Daniels Bank in 1927. Less than two years later, he was thrown

from a horse and killed, leaving Mrs. Reed, now a widow, three months for their son Grant to find work. In the deepest depths of the Great Depression, work anywhere was exceedingly rare. Hearing there were jobs aplenty in California, Grant hopped a train heading west. In his absence, Mrs. Reed did her best to make what was left stretch until Grant had found work. At the four and a half month mark, every cent was spent and she had yet to hear anything from her son. She survived on store credit and the kindness of her fellow farmers. In a place where no one was getting by on farming, this was an especially generous act. After six months without a single letter from Grant, everyone but Mrs. Reed had lost hope. Things for her were looking very bleak. She was three months

behind on her payments, and although this wasn't that long compared to many of those around her, she knew Saul could pounce on her at any second. The pounce came a mere week later. To this day, no one is sure what caused Saul to choose her for foreclosure. One theory was that he was missing his son, but the facts are none of us know his true motivations that day. He sent the sheriff out the morning of October 13th to serve her with a notice of foreclosure and assist her in the removal of personal effects. Even after repeated requests from the sheriff to give her more time, Saul demanded he do the task quickly and quietly as possible. Unfortunately for Saul, knowledge of the foreclosure would quickly spread after Mrs.

Reed's death from a heart attack while being served the notice. To his relief, the townsfolk didn't blame the sheriff for Mrs. Reed's death. They knew of the power Saul wielded over him. He was the man truly at fault for this. And almost every shred of misery that had happened the past thirty years could be traced back to him or his disgusting son. As if things weren't already awful, Grant Reed showed up on the morning train just two days later. With him was more than enough money to pay off the remainder of the deed. Upon being told of his mother's death and the circumstances surrounding it, he stepped silently back onto

the train and returned west, permanently disappearing into history. The downfall of the Daniels family empire can probably be pinned down to this moment. The arrival of Grant Reed only two days too late was the last straw for most of the citizenry. A few people even proposed a theory that Saul had been alerted of his imminent arrival and foreclosed out of plain spite. Nothing shows this to be true, but it wouldn't be out of character for Saul Daniels or his son. Within hours of his return home, Abe was back to his usual behavior. At the time of Miss O'Leary's tragic death, he had been in an odd relationship with Miss Barbara Roberts, a daughter of Gerald Roberts, a member of the

city council and owner of Roberts Men's Fine Clothing. Miss Roberts and her father became estranged soon after she and Abe began their counting of one another. Folks suggested that it was because she continued to see Abe after he had done all those things to her on their first date. Regardless of the true reason, just being believed to have assaulted the daughter of a well-respected member of the community, and a well-loved one at that, was enough to set his ultimate punishment in motion. With Halloween soon to arrive, the denizens of the town began to prepare for the worst. The holiday in the earlier parts of the 20th century were far different than it would turn out to be in the centuries waning years. What had been more of an adult-oriented occasion had begun its

drastic switch towards a more child-centered celebration. Although the tradition of trick-or-treating had already began for the younger ones, another much more juvenile pattern of behavior was common among the older children. In this period, the night of All Hallows' Eve had the more popular name of Mischief Night, and the night very often lived up to this name. Vandalism was the norm in much of the country and proved to be very costly to the communities in which it occurred. What was once seen as boys will be boys started to be viewed in a more serious light. It took the coming of a war and a concerted effort to divert the attention of the destructive

to less expensive hobbies. To this day, groups of energetic boys still roam neighborhoods on Halloween, cruising for things to smash, but compared to these same areas in the 1930s, this behavior has all but ceased to be a real concern. The week leading up to the 31st was consumed by multiple private meetings. These meetings were held in the homes of the few remaining wealthy and powerful people that weren't named Daniels. At the time, anyone not involved in them was left with the assumption that they were related to the yearly celebrations of Halloween, specifically the Fall Festival and Halloween Parade held each year around this time. No one on the inside attempted to check this belief and because of this, what was to occur

on the night of Halloween was able to be pulled off without the targets getting any prior warning. Just to remove any chance of rumor, a city meeting was held at the school to announce the town's plans for the holidays. This was open to the public. A large part of the meeting covered the city's father's plans to decrease the expected rash of vandalism that coming Tuesday. That Friday, the fall festival parade was held downtown, and the night everybody had been preparing for and dreading finally arrived on Tuesday. While families held parties and opened their homes to the throngs of little trick-or-treaters, hordes of teenage boys swarmed about the town,

toilet-papering trees and smashing every jack-o'-lantern they came across. Later that night, as they slept, the fire at the Daniels' massive home on the outskirts of town began to blaze. No matter how much water the firemen dumped on it, it deemed they had arrived too late to save the home. They'd also arrived too late to save the two Daniels' men, Saul and Abe. It had been one of their servants, Rose Blackmore, who had called out the fire department, but from what was discovered after, neither of the men made it out of the house alive. Also, Abe had managed to make it to the front door. He succumbed to smoke before he could escape the flames. As for Saul, he never made it

out of his room. It didn't take long before questions began to arise as to the cause of the fire. Firemen had discovered the cause of the fire. Firemen had discovered the remnants of two or three jack-o'-lanterns that had been smashed on the front porch. However, it was common knowledge that Daniels did not celebrate the holiday and had never decorated their home for any holiday even back before the death of Rebecca. Within two days of the start of the investigation, an unnamed firefighter came forward and said that when he'd first arrived, he had noticed a chain on the front doors. But when he had come back with a fire chief to show him, the chain was gone. The chief laughed this off as delusions from the heat and told the firefighter to shut up and get back to work.

Later, when he discovered a similar looking length of chain under the bushes, his suspicions were reinforced. This piece of information intrigued the sheriff as he hadn't come across any chain during the course of his investigation. Desperate for any lead, the sheriff brought every man present that night in for questioning, but no one would admit to seeing anything out of the ordinary. Weeks passed with no clues, so the cause of the fire was ruled as an accident due to criminal mischief. Although no one had seen any kids in the area, not to mention with pumpkins, it was the closest to a resolution he could find. It was obvious nobody was going to ruin some kid's life over a stupid accident. Besides, no tears were going to

be shed over the loss of that despicable family. The sheriff already had his hands full with cattle thefts and poaching, he wasn't going to be able to waste any more time on a dead-end case. So he packed up the file and moved on. As the years passed and people came and went, an occasional story about that night would drift into his office. Some of the things were just too outlandish to give any credence to, but a few matched things he'd heard before had been suspicious about then. An anonymous letter arrived in his office, alleged to be from someone who'd heard the truth of the fire from someone involved in it, but without any names, he was right where he'd

started. The first real break arrived in 1938. He'd been summoned to the sickbed of Ellis Norton. He claimed to have something important to get off his chest before he met his maker. The story Sheriff James heard that night would only create more questions than he had before. Ellis claimed that after the death of Mabel Reed and the rumors of Barbara Roberts' assault, folks had had enough. They began meeting in small groups, gradually bringing someone else into the conspiracy. No actual plan was created until the Sunday evening before Halloween. After services that night, everyone decided on what action they would take and when. The 31st had seemed the perfect time to send those two evil SOBs back to hell where they came from.

Sometime after midnight on the 31st, everyone gathered downtown and took the short walk to the Daniels' place. To ensure that they would be unable to flee the house when the fire started, any and every door and window was rendered unusable. Norton didn't indicate how exactly this was all done, but did mention that both doors had been chained shut. When they were confident Saul and Abe were trapped, a large amount of kerosene was poured all over the porch and several jack-o'-lanterns were lit and thrown onto the kerosene. Once the blaze had fully taken hold, Rose Blackmore was phoned anonymously and told to call the fire department. Mrs. Blackmore had made no mention of this phone call back in 1933, but may have been in league with the others in protecting them. Since she had passed in 1936, the sheriff couldn't ask her. Ellis also recounted hearing

the screams of Abe Daniels as he burned alive. The sheriff's hopes were soon to be dashed when he came to the question everyone wanted to know. Who was involved? This answer Ellis could not provide. He had sworn on his soul that he would never say, and this was an oath he was willing to honor to the grave. The only thing he would say was that it was everyone and no one at the same time. When the sheriff begged himself to explain, he simply said there wasn't a single person who was not there that night and that everyone was involved. These words ended up being Ellis Norton's last. Later that night, he passed away in his sleep, leaving the sheriff even more confused than he had been that night five years ago.

Even though he finally knew what happened that Halloween, he was no closer to an arrest. There was no way he could arrest the entire town and they knew it. From all that he had learned over the years, it looked like everyone from the Daniels' maid to most of the fire department played some part in the murder. He would go on to let it be known around the town that he was fully aware of what had occurred. Not even he knew why he had did this. Could have been in a vain attempt to scare someone into talking, but no matter the reason, he would retire never having the answer to the questions that mattered. Supposedly, even on his deathbed, it was said that case was on his mind.

One particular sensational story claims his last words were, Please, just one name. Whether this actually happened or had anything to do with the Daniels murders, we'll never know. One thing is certain, however, on a Halloween night in 1933, an entire town took it upon themselves to dole out the justice they had been deprived of for so long long and did it in an especially brutal way. The fact they did this to one of the most powerful families in the entire state of Kansas and nobody cared enough to punish them for it just goes to show you how truly terrifying these two men must have really been. Ben.

Being unsure of how to begin this story, I figured the best way would be to just come out and get to the point. On Halloween night I was 12. I almost killed my best friend. Rather blunt I know, but it happens to be completely true. I do suppose I should probably provide a bit of context so everyone reading or hearing this won't go away with the impression I'm a total psycho. I'll do my best to explain myself in this situation without being too long-winded. The story goes something like this. The house I grew up in was located on 30 acres about 6 miles outside of the nearest town. It had been in my family since just after the Civil War when my Confederate veteran ancestor

moved to the state from Louisiana. The first house that he built upon buying the land burned down within 5 years, so he was forced to build the one my family had been inhabiting for the past 140 plus years. It wasn't anything grand but was enough for my parents and I to be happy in. The distance from town meant I had to take the school bus back and forth every day and I didn't have many friends close by to play with. Some weekends I would spend in town with kids from school and others those friends would ride the bus home with me and spend the weekend on our farm. As a teenager, I didn't think there was anything to do, but as a younger kid, we never ran out of things to occupy us. One specific weekend happened to coincide with Halloween,

so my folks told me to invite a handful of kids out to the farm. Obviously, we couldn't trick or treat in the middle of nowhere. My folks loaded us all into the suburban and brought us into town where they were having some kind of candy handout at the mall. When it was over we went back to the farm and played some games on my playstation for a while. That got boring eventually and I asked if we could go outside and play hide and seek. My mom said yes but we had to be back by 11 p.m. I'd always had less restraints on me when I was growing up. Being out in the country meant you had to allow your children more freedom than to the kids in town. Where I grew up running the woods hunting rabbits and

squirrels and walking miles across open fields to go fishing was the norm. Most of my friends couldn't even leave their yard without an adult going along. I can only assume that's how everyone in the family grew up and my parents didn't see anything wrong or dangerous in it. The night was a perfect one for hide and seek. The temperature had yet to grow cold and there hadn't been any rain in several weeks. I gathered all the boys in a circle and laid out the boundaries and rules for the game. A few of them had stayed over the night before so they were pretty familiar with the area. I guess at this point I should mention that our house stood across the road from an

old 19th century cemetery used by the surrounding farm families. It was used all the way up until the 1960s when they ran out of space to bury the dead. I'd grown up next to it so I wasn't scared to play there but when I mentioned that it was inside the hiding boundaries, a couple of the boys got kind of freaked out. I assured them the place wasn't haunted and only after a lot of coaxing and a small bit of shaming, I convinced them to play. We played a few quick games of rock, paper, scissors until we had our seeker and began the game. Me and another boy ran straight for the cemetery and found their hiding places. I'm not sure where the others went. Once the seeker finished counting, he started the search. Two or three made it to the tree that served as a home base pretty fast. We in the cemetery were the last two left. The seeker was

soon combing the cemetery for us. The boy that had hidden there with me blew past the kid seeking and made it home untouched. I tried to do the same thing but the boy was ready this time and I became it. The game started again and when I finished counting I headed to the most used hiding spots first. I did have an obvious advantage but lack of a moon made seeing in the dark very difficult. A few boys got past me within the first minute. You know the ones that hide so close to the home base they can almost touch it. There's always one or two of those in the game but the remaining two were hidden really well. What seemed like ten minutes or so later, I still hadn't found them and I was beginning to get sick of looking.

Right before I was about to give up, my best friend Troy popped up from under a rotten log on the edge of the cemetery and made a break for home. The hiding place he was in forced him to run away from the road and deeper into the cemetery. Then he cut back towards the road bringing him dangerously close to me but I missed him as he passed. We were both running our fastest however I was just a bit quicker and right on his tail. All he had to do was make it across the narrow road and the six or so feet to the tree and he was home free. We were perhaps just a little less than halfway across when this old blue and grey truck came barreling down the road. It was so close by the time I first saw it, I could have reached out and touched it. Maybe not, but darn near it. I did the only thing I could think of doing and threw my body against Troy's in the hopes I could knock him out of the

path of the truck. I don't remember being worried about myself, just him. He was my best friend after all and I'd known him as long as I could remember anything. I slammed shoulder first into the ditch and it hurt like a mother. Almost positive the truck had run him over I looked just in time to see Troy rolling toward me. Miraculously he was okay other than a few scrapes and a little road rash. I pounced on him and checked for any signs that he had been hit, but found none. My hands were shaking, and I felt like I was about to barf, but so relieved, I started chuckling like a lunatic. I looked up the road, and the truck was nowhere to be seen.

This wasn't scary as much as confusing. It was after 10 o'clock at night and a truck I'd never seen came barreling out of nowhere down a road that saw maybe two or three cars during the course of a day and very rarely after dark. The thought sent a shiver through my body but wouldn't really begin to trouble me until much later. I helped Troy up and we did our best to shake the near miss off. The other boys were in utter disbelief that we'd survived and kept asking us if we were okay. I was a tad sore and I imagined Troy was about the same. Some of the boys were scared. I could tell by their expressions that they may start crying any

minute. This was the last thing I wanted to happen. I repeatedly assured them that we were completely fine and there was no need to be upset, and in a few minutes they began to calm down. I made all the boys promise not to tell anyone, but especially not my parents, what had happened. My biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to play outside after dark anymore. Also, if the other guys' folks heard about it, they may not let them stay the weekend anymore. I barely had any friends as it was. The game was over for the night after that and it was getting close to 11 anyway, so I called it.

We returned to the house and played games until it was time to go to sleep. The remainder of the holiday we spent our time building a fort in the woods behind the cemetery. That ended up being the last game of hide and seek for the year. Soon after the first of November, fall finally began in full. As we grew older, the weekends at the farm became fewer and fewer. A few of the boys there that night got other friends and one boy, Nicholas, lost his life after his car was struck by a train at an unmarked crossing. Despite this, I look back at those days with an endless happiness. I still talk to Troy about it once a month.

He is currently stationed at Fort Hood in Texas with his beautiful wife and two daughters. We never fail to laugh at how close we came to getting killed that night, only to be overtaken by confusion and fear surrounding the circumstances in which it happened. As for me, I'm in the process of moving back to the farm with my new wife. My dad and I have been building us a new home a few acres away from the old one and hope to soon be moving in. I moved into town right out of school because I'd been offered a job at one of the manufacturing places and stayed there until a month or two ago when I began my own business working out of the house. I told my wife many times how fun it was growing up there and we agreed there isn't any other place we'd want our kids to grow up in. Seeing as Halloween is coming up soon,

I want to wish everybody a happy holidays, not just Halloween. Don't forget the night is really for the kids. Let them have as much fun as possible while they still can. And one more thing, please don't forget to remind them to look both ways when crossing the street, not just when they're trick-or-treating. It should really apply to the rest of the time too. I'm not sure if I ever told anyone this story before but I thought since the Halloween holiday is arriving soon I'd share this strange but sad thing that happened to me as a younger man. At the time the story takes place, I was living alone in a small house next to a city park.

Back then I had this cute little dachshund named Oliver and I would walk him a couple of times a day in the park. On one morning walk, Oliver befriended a fat golden retriever named Buddy. Buddy's owner turned out to be an older gentleman that lived in the house on the other side of the park. His house was roughly 75 yards or so from mine and although we'd wave a hello at each other once in a while, I never got a clear look at his face. As Oliver and Buddy wrestled around a few feet away, Fred, the neighbor, and I shot the breeze and whatnot. I found out that he and his wife had brought their house back from before the park had been created or even any of the houses on the other side of it, including mine, had been built. Back then, all of that land had just been open prairie. Occasionally, kids in the neighborhood would ride their dirt bikes there, but that was about it. We talked a

few more minutes and then I had to split and go to work. After that we would run into each other in the park once in a while and sit and share stories while the doggos played with each other. A few times a year he and his wife would have neighbors over for burgers and hot dogs. Oliver and I would attend every time we could. In the short time I was living there Fred and I became good friends and I never saw him as anything less than a genuinely cool old man who could tell great jokes. When fall came around I took a second job to ensure that I could keep paying my bills. My regular job was laying concrete for driveways and sidewalks and during the colder and rainier

parts of the year we worked a lot less. The new job had me working at night so I started seeing Fred less and less. That year Halloween happened to be on a day off so I decided I'd stay around the house and give out candy to the few trick-or-treaters that showed up. Only five or six kids came by that night. It was disappointing but I guess times change and there ain't nothing I can do to stop it. Fred's porch light was also on and I did catch a glimpse of him while he was handing out candy earlier in the evening. Around 9pm I called it quits and closed up for the night. The sad lack of scary movies on TV meant I headed to bed soon after. Close to midnight, I had to take a leak and on my way back to bed, red and blue lights caught my attention from outside. Coming from Fred's

house as a matter of fact. I stood at the window and watched for several minutes but they were just too far away to tell what was happening. My bed called out to me and I returned assuming I'd get the story in the morning. Following breakfast I took a walk over to the house to see if all was well but even after knocking repeatedly no one answered. This was strange and something about it made me uneasy. They were both retired and their cars were in the driveway. I considered knocking some more but I didn't want to be a pest. Maybe they were sleeping in or they just didn't feel like be a pest. Maybe they were sleeping in or they just didn't feel like talking to me. That's their right after all. I decided to return home and

figured I'd see one of them later on. A few hours later I took Oliver to the park. I hoped I'd run into Fred so I hung around for a little while but he never showed. I tried to not let it bother me. We weren't lovers or anything. The man had his own life. Still something continued to eat away at me just under the surface. The remainder of the day was spent on the internet chatting and shopping for stuff I didn't need. This mindless behavior lasted into the wee hours of the night and I spent most of the next day sleeping. I finally dragged myself out of bed around 7pm to shake the cobwebs loose. I sat down with a massive mug of coffee and that morning's newspaper.

Nothing caught my attention until I reached the second page. There I encountered a piece at the bottom that would rock me to my core. The first few sentences stated nothing out of the ordinary. The rest, however, would go on to answer every question I've had, and some I didn't even know I had. Apparently, Fred was the reason for the police visit on the night of the 31st. He had called and asked them to come to his home. Although the dispatcher was confused at the request, two officers were sent. When they arrived, Fred confessed to killing someone. He wasn't believed at first, but when he led the officers into the back bedroom, they were met by the body of Linda, Fred's wife of 30 plus years. This was all the cops needed, and they took him into custody. Many hours of questions followed during which Fred would answer

every one that was asked of him. The cops led with the most obvious. His answers were very matter-of-fact, but at the same time heartbreaking. Sometime around January of that year, Linda began having severe headaches, so Fred took her to the doctor when they referred them to a neurologist. A series of grueling tests following and at the end, a large tumor was found in her brain. The tumor was malignant and inoperable. The chance of survival was small but still possible if she underwent treatment. The side effects of the chemo made the treatment too unappealing and Linda decided not to pursue it. Without it, she was given about a year to live and she accepted this.

Now, armed with the knowledge of her impending death, the couple made sure to set everything in order. Things like finding a plot and buying the funeral package. One particular arrangement Fred was unwilling to do, at least at first. Linda had asked him to help her die when she felt the time had come. Of course, the very idea sickened him. They had been married over thirty years, and he still loved her as much as he did the first day they met. She didn't push, but as her symptoms became worse, he ultimately relented. When the time came, it just happened to be on the night of Halloween. Linda knew the holiday had always been one of Fred's favorites. He loved to see how happy all the children were when they came to the door.

She was also aware of the drastic drop in the number of trick-or-treaters in the last several years. Nonetheless, she still insisted he hand out candy to the few that did come by because of how happy it made him. Her plan was to make the scene appear as if though she had given the lethal shot of morphine to herself, but Fred stated that once she was gone, his desire to continue living had ceased, but since he didn't have the guts to kill himself, he hoped the state would do it for him. That night after he'd filled the needle and handed it to her, he left the room to hand out candy, but after an hour, he'd only been visited by two kids and he realized his heart just wasn't in it anymore. So he turned off the porch light and returned to the bedroom to be

with Linda. She had already passed by this time, but he crawled up next to her in the porch light and returned to their bedroom to be with Linda. She had already passed by this time, but he crawled up next to her in the bed anyway and laid with her for several hours until he decided it was time to turn himself in. I've added some additional information I picked up later, but this is more or less the facts. To say I was shocked would certainly be an understatement. I'd seen both Fred and Linda several times during this period and neither of them mentioned her illness. I suppose they didn't want people to fuss over them, but not being told hurt my feelings a bit. I had always seen us as friends and friends tell each other things like this. It was too late to matter now and I could only hope Fred's time in jail went smoothly. I guess before

I wrap this story up I should probably give you a little more information regarding Fred's punishment. After a few months of deliberation he was given a deal where in return for a guilty plea of second degree manslaughter, which is a class C felony in our state, he was given a sentence of one year in jail and an additional five years of probation. Since he had been held in the county jail for over a year, he was released with time served. The overwhelming attitude around the city was that he held no malice against his wife, and the crime was an act of mercy. Knowing the man personally, I can attest to this. It was clear that he and Linda loved each other very much,

even thirty years on in their marriage. Making the decision, not to mention actually assisting her in it, must have been a terribly agonizing decision for him. After his release, I can't tell you much more. I'd moved away to the next town over during his time in jail. The city put some soccer fields in the park and the constant noise all day kept me awake. Since the peacefulness of the neighborhood had been shattered and my friend was in the clink, I was forced to find a new place. I have considered driving over and visiting my old friend a few times but have chickened out every time. His name has yet to appear in the obituaries, so I hope he's doing well and has been able to move on without Linda. Perhaps someday, I'll finally summon up the courage and

go see him. Until then, I wish you well, old friend. A wise counsel was sorely missed. I'm sure when your time does come, she'll be there, waiting at the gates for you. I was always the weird kid growing up, so making friends was never easy for me. I was a bit of a punk in high school, so living in a preppy religious town was torture. Eventually I met this boy, Sean. I was so happy to finally have someone I connected with. We quickly became best friends and hung out nearly every day. He was odd but so was I so I just looked past it. Most of the time when we were hanging out we were also on drugs so I figured some of the stuff he was saying was just that talking but one day he said I'm gonna stab someone this week. Four days later he made threats towards the school on our Instagram.

He played it off as a joke when I confronted him about it but when the school confronted him they took it much more seriously. He was taken into custody by police, but not charged with anything somehow. His parents took away his phone and forced him to move away for a few weeks to let the air clear, but we kept in contact. At this point, my dumb self realized I was in love with him. I did everything I could to clear his name. I even got into arguments with my parents on Facebook. My parents begged me to stop talking to him but for some reason I truly believed he was good. I didn't want to believe he was capable of hurting anyone. The whole situation never really blew over.

When he came back to school students would run from him in the hallways. People were sending him threats and his reputation was ruined. After all of this, something in him changed. He was angrier. We would be talking and joking about something and he would start attacking me with words. I'd tell him about a boy I was talking to and he'd call me all sorts of names. Or if I made a new friend, he'd go out of his way to ruin my new friendship. And for some reason, I saw this as him being protective. About a year went by after this. The verbal abuse continued, and I continued to do nothing about it.

I was still in love with him, but I didn't act on it since he was my closest friend. To keep my mind off of Sean, I started dating a boy named Alex. Sean hated Alex, not for any particular reason, he just didn't like that I spent time with someone that wasn't him. Alex was also a dealer and Sean knew this. Sean asked Alex if he would front him some since he knew we were best friends and Alex did. I don't remember the exact amount but it was a decent amount, enough to be mad about it when you don't get paid for it. Sean never paid Alex. Alex tried to talk to him about it and Sean always put him off and avoided him. After a month of this, Alex saw Sean's car in a Taco Bell parking lot and pulled up. He saw Sean in his car and began to get out. Since Alex had anger issues, he also pulled out

his baseball bat. Sean saw him and freaked out. He pulled out of his parking spot quickly, drove off and called 911, calling it a deal gone wrong. Alex was then arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Three days later when Alex got out of jail, he was driving to his friend's house who lives in Sean's neighborhood when he saw Sean standing in his front yard. Alex rolled down his window, yelled some stuff and drove away. Sean called the police again and Alex was arrested for stalking this time. And around this time my parents caught me smoking. I didn't want to lie anymore so I was honest and told my parents everything. Obviously they were very mad at me for getting myself into the situation and I had just told them I was smoking and dating a dealer so I was in a decent amount

of trouble. My parents took my phone as soon as I got home from school. I wasn't allowed to see Alex when he got out of jail. They took my paycheck so that I didn't have money to buy anything and they made me download a tracker on my phone so they could make sure that I wasn't home when they weren't. They contemplated calling Sean's parents and telling them how we had been smoking together. I knew that if Sean got caught smoking he would get kicked out of his house so I snuck my phone and texted them that my parents might call his parents and he was mad. He called me horrible names and said he wished that he had never met me. I finally had enough and told him not to talk to me anymore. My parents never called his parents. We didn't talk at all. I asked not to be scheduled

with him at work and avoided him at school. We didn't have any classes together so it wasn't hard but hearing the stuff he'd say about me made it a little difficult. He made rumors that I was addicted to things and that I was selling images of myself online. This is when the text started. He began texting me constantly so I blocked his number. Then he'd use someone else's phone to text me. So I'd block that person's number. Then he'd use WhatsApp or GroupMe to text me since we'd use those for work so I'd just block person's number. Then he'd use WhatsApp or group me to text me since we'd use

those for work so I'd just block him on there. He eventually got fired from our job because he had been writing tips on receipts if people didn't ask for a copy of their receipt and left the tip line empty. The continuous messages went on for a few weeks and I just continued to block anyone he was associated with. I didn't want to be in contact with him whatsoever. He kept making new Instagram accounts to message me on and all of his attempts to contact me failed. One day I had a late lesson at School of Rock where I took guitar lessons. My teacher had stayed late for me so I was expecting his car to be the only car in the parking lot, but it wasn't. There were two cars in the parking lot, my teacher's and Sean's. To this day, I don't know how he knew I was going to be there. I quickly parked, locked my doors, and thought about what to do. I then realized he

wasn't in his car, so I calmed down a bit and called inside to ask if he was there, but he wasn't. I cautiously got out of my car and got my guitar then walked inside with no problems. After my lesson I came out to see that he was now parked right next to me waiting for me to get into the car. When he saw me he began screaming profanities at me. I was paralyzed. He just sat there screaming at me. I quickly climbed in my car from the passenger door so I didn't have to walk next to him and then drove home as fast as I could. He began asking people to ask me to talk to him at school. Of course I didn't. Each time someone mentioned his name to me it caused

me to have a panic attack so bad I'd have to leave school. I ended up missing the entire month of November and then switching to online school. A month after I switched to online school, I was driving with a friend to pick up food for my mom. As soon as we pulled into the drive-thru, the car behind me begins to flash the brights at me. I look in my rearview mirror and see Sean's car. He has a sticker across the top of his windshield, so I knew it was him right away. I look over at my friend in fear and she said, I didn't want to scare you so I didn't say anything but he's been following us since we left Target. I panic and just pretend not to notice him. He then pulled out of the drive-thru and

parked right next to it by the exit. As soon as he pulled out so did I. I sped to my friend's house, dropped her off and went straight home. At this point my parents thought going to the police would be the smartest thing to do. An officer came to my house and took a statement. I showed him screenshots of every message he had sent me over the months and my friend that was in the car with me in the drive-thru talked to him as well. We decided not to press charges but to just file an incident report. Days go by and I don't hear anything from him. I thought that maybe it was over and that I could move on with my life but my dad told me Sean had messaged him on Facebook. He had said I was

addicted to pills and that I stole money from him to buy more. I'd never done pills in my life. I'm a hippie. I stick to natural things. My parents know this, so they screenshot the messages and send them to police. The police go by his house and tell him to stop contacting me. I continue to get messages from random Instagram accounts and sometimes saw his car behind me, but each time I just wrote down the location, date and time I saw him. At this point I started to work with Alex's lawyers to prove that Sean wasn't an innocent victim.

Eventually Alex's charges were dropped. Sean was proven to be unreliable since I came forward with my story. I wish I could say I had an ending to this story but I don't. I still get random messages but I don't bother to screenshot them anymore. Since I switched to online school I was able to graduate a year early and because of that I moved away for college so I don't have to worry about him following me anymore. The last I heard about him was that he got arrested a few months ago. It was Christmas time. My wife and I were staying at her childhood home where her mother now lived all alone. Well, not if you include the cats. The house was a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburbs. If you're picturing freshly mowed lawns, American flags, and empty sidewalks, you're picturing it right.

It's a single-story home with an attached garage up front. The garage has two doorways, apart from the electric garage door, of course. One leads to the garden and backyard. This is an old doggy door from their days with dear old Max, rest in peace Max, that they covered with a piece of nail and wood. That had always made me slightly uncomfortable before, but I figured it'd been that way for years, so what's the worst that could happen? The second door leads to the kitchen. Hollow core. It could stop a mouse, but not much else.

Definitely not something that wanted in, or someone. We were asleep in my wife's childhood bedroom at the front of the house. 3am. I was in that deep, dark recess of sleep. You know, you're in the diving bell, and you're submerged hundreds of meters below the surface in black water, protected from the real world by miles of nothingness. Then I heard it.

The scream. What are you doing? It was my mother-in-law's voice echoing down the hallway. To me, lost in a sea of sleep, it sounded like a jet engine roaring past my eardrum. I bolted up. What happened next happened in a matter of seconds. But about that scream, even though I was dead asleep, I heard enough of it to sense an urgency behind it. This wasn't an, oh you scared me type of scream. This was different, and I knew it. Not consciously, but my lizard brain, that piece we retained from our primitive ancestors, knew something was wrong.

I watched and read a fair amount of true crime and this scream awakened that horrible fear. The one that says, this can't really be happening to me, can it? Honestly, in that second of the night it sounded like someone was about to be murdered. You ever wondered if you're a fight or flight type of individual? I always have and I came to know something about myself after that night. I'm a fighter. I leaped out of bed, growled, yes, growled in the manliest voice I could muster. I'm coming for you, and took off running. I tore open the bedroom door and ran into the hallway. There at the end I saw my mother-in-law, nightgown on, look of utter shock on her face, standing still. We make eye contact as I continue toward her.

Then she turns her head, looks directly into the kitchen. I hurry past her and round the corner into the kitchen. The hollow cord door is obliterated, shards everywhere. I look through the open frame and see the electric garage doors open. I push ahead. As I run into the garage I hear it, the sound of someone hopping into a running car just out of view. Just as I make it onto the driveway I see a car peeling out from the sidewalk adjacent to the house, but the adrenaline is still pumping. And who am I to say no to adrenaline? So like an idiot, I run, barefoot, after the car. I give a good go, but I'm no Michael Johnson and even he couldn't catch a speeding car. It soon vanishes down the street and I'm left all alone. The police showed up

within three minutes, which I have to say makes me feel a lot more at ease with my mother-in-law living there. They took our statements. My mother-in-law said she heard a noise, the hollow cord door being kicked in, and walked into the kitchen where she encountered the burglar, a small framed woman. The police theorized she was working as part of a team. Her job was to squeeze through the doggy door, kicking in the hollow core and open the electric garage door for her accomplice. According to the police, the burglars most likely thought nobody was home. Fortunately, my mother-in-law must have caught her off guard and scared her, in addition to my manly growl, of course. But it feels good to know that everyone was safe and to learn that I guess I've got a little fight in me.

And for the record, we bought the heaviest wooden door you've ever seen to replace that hollow core. I'd like to see a mouse try and get through that. So I had a best friend in high school named Lena. We were friends for about a year and a half, and we would spend almost every weekend at her house, listening to music, watching scary movies, and gossiping. She was just a little bit crazy. The type of girl to beat up her boyfriend's exes unprovoked. She actually did that once.

And catfish people. I say we were best friends but actually it was more like I looked up to her and she liked that she could boss me around and hang out with me whenever she pleased. She was extremely manipulative and two-faced. She had a hobby of being nice to girls at school and then going on their social media and making fun of everything they posted. She would befriend people just to get information from them. When we were friends, Lena was dating this guy named Nolan. They dated for about a year and a half and had lots of troubles the last six months or so. He would go out drinking most weekends and she would cry in the middle of the night and blow up his phone, yelling at him and making him feel guilty.

She was borderline psychotic when it came to his exes or the girls he was friends with and they just weren't really working out but they stayed together anyways. At some point Nolan got Lena pregnant and one of Lena's other friends whose name was Autumn became pregnant at the same time from the guy I was in love with. Naturally I wanted nothing to do with Autumn but because they were pregnant together Lena started hanging out with Autumn most weekends and neglected our friendship. After about a month I became fed up with it and started ghosting her. At first she tried to apologize but I was not having it since the other girl was dating the guy I had been in love with for two years and I was jealous and childish. So eventually Lena got angry at me and stopped trying.

A few months went by and Lena had the baby. Nolan and Lena stayed together to take care of their son but their relationship was absolutely horrendous at that point. Lena cheated on him and Nolan decided he wanted out of the relationship but continued to see his son and buy things for him. However, Lena and Lena's mother made things very difficult for him by constantly changing the days he could see his son and refusing to let him take his son anywhere besides Lena's house. Lena's mother would also throw out Christmas presents from Nolan, ignore his phone calls and eventually told him he wasn't allowed at the house. Nolan begged for months to see his son but it was clear Lena and her mother didn't want him in the picture. Nolan offered to pay child support but they didn't want that either,

they just wanted him gone so he stopped trying. And apparently even that wasn't what they wanted. Lena took to social media to talk about how Nolan was a deadbeat. She told everyone she knew that being a single mother was really hard and the baby daddy refused to take care of his kid. A year after they broke up I met Nolan in person. We had been talking online for a couple of months about Lena. We had shared stories about her crazy meltdowns and her manipulative tendencies and we talked about the time he came to her house while I was there and attempted to scare her by jumping out when she went out the front door but instead actually jumped out at me.

He thought it was the funniest thing ever that my face stayed stone cold and I just said sup. We had a similar sense of humor and at the time I had no one. I had just come out of one of the worst depressive episodes of my life. It had lasted for a good year, and I had dropped out of school, been doing drugs, isolating myself for weeks at a time, and considered ending my life. He was the one to help bring me back from the brink. He was kind, and he was my support system. We were just friends at first. When Lena caught wind of our friendship she reached out to me. At this point we hadn't been friends for a year and a half. We caught up and talked about what had been happening in our lives. She asked what was going on with Nolan and I told her we were just friends. Everything seemed fine.

That's when her erratic behavior started. She would randomly block me on social media and then unblock me a month or two later. Sometimes we would talk like, how are you? Everything good? And then the next day unblocked. At one point I asked one of her friends to get her to tell me why she was doing it because I was confused. So she unblocked me and told me she was salty about the situation with Nolan and the fact that I was friendly with him. I asked her why she kept making up with me and then suddenly getting angry again and cutting me off. I told her I was tired of thinking things were good only for her to turn around and pretend like we had never

said anything to each other. That's when she said she could block me again or keep me unblocked. Whatever I wanted was fine. But she felt I had done her wrong by abandoning her during her pregnancy and befriended her ex-boyfriend. So then I tried to explain to her why Nolan was my friend. I tried to tell her that Nolan was all I had in the darkest time of my life. I tried to tell her why her neglecting me for Autumn hurt my feelings but she wasn't having it. I understand where she was coming from, I do, and I acknowledge the fact that I acted childishly and in a cruel way but I tried to make up with her multiple times. I tried really hard and she couldn't even stick with whether she could forgive me or not so I told her to block me

again and be done with it. She told me she wouldn't block me again and then gave me her blessing with Nolan. She said she was fine if we wanted to date and she said she hoped I had a good life and I said the same to her and I really meant it. We had a bad end but I was glad we could at least wish each other well. It was a few months after I last spoke to her that Nolan and I started dating. I had waited so long because I was worried about Lena, even though we weren't friends anymore, but she had given me her blessing and she was dating someone new, so I went with it.

It was around this time that I received a friend request from a girl on Facebook named Casey. Casey said that she lived in a big city in my state and since we had mutual friends and I had once gone to school in that city, I assumed we had gone to school together and I just didn't remember her. She seemed like a real person. She claimed to work at a Hooters, had made posts about how her work days went, had several pictures of the same girl and made frequent posts about her ex-boyfriend. I accepted the friend requests and she messaged me telling how pretty she thought I was. I thanked her and told her to message me anytime she wanted to chat. For the next few months I was clueless. I went about my regular life posting about the things me and Nolan did,

getting my GED, hanging out with friends, visiting my mother, etc. Occasionally I would see strange posts on my timeline from Casey but didn't think much about it because I had over a thousand friends on Facebook and I rarely saw them. They were mostly posts about how much she hated her baby daddy and how her line of work sucked, but there were two posts in particular that caught my eye. One was a post that seemed to be referencing something I had posted the day before, and the other was of her saying, we all know a dirty scoundrel named blank, with my first name in the blank. I went to her profile and then clicked through months and months of posts,

some were about her line of work. Everything else was related to me and Nolan. Everything. There were posts of her complaining about her deadbeat baby daddy buying things for everyone but his kid. Posts about how sad she felt about the breakup. Posts about how she missed me and thought of me as a sister. Which is nonsense. Posts about how I stole her boyfriend, also nonsense, and a myriad of posts talking trash on me. She made fun of my hobbies, had directly referenced some of my posts, talked about how much she hated me, said how dirty I was, and in her later posts even went so far as to put my initials or full first name in the post. She even had people in the comments egging her on and talking trash

too, even though no one knew who she was talking about. But I did. She mentioned things only the two of us knew. She referenced our past experiences and it was undoubtedly Lena. I messaged Casey and told her I knew it was Lena. She played dumb and told me the initials were of another girl she knew. When I looked up the name she gave me, not a single person on Facebook had that name. When I told her that, she brushed over it and tried to get me to talk about Lena. So I played along and talked hardcore trash about Lena. I lied about a lot of the things in an attempt to get her to out herself, but in the end all she did was send a screenshot of our conversation to Lena's account in an attempt to make it look like Casey was real and was trying to help Lena out by showing what kind of person I was.

Casey then immediately deleted her account. She didn't block me. She deleted it. I had a friend and my dad check and neither of them could find Casey's profile. So then another month went by and I found out that she had reactivated the account and because I can't block a deleted account she was in my friends list again and had access to my profile for who knows how many days so I blocked her. She then sent me friend and follow requests on three other websites under the Casey name which I also blocked.

It was around that time that me and Nolan began to get a lot of friend requests from obviously fake accounts. We would report them and block them and try to pretend she wasn't going insane. One of these fake accounts was extremely obvious because it had poked both me and Nolan on the same day at the same time. She was taunting us I guess. I blocked that account too. Please be aware that at this time Lena had married her boyfriend. She was doing this while married to someone else. A year later I thought it had stopped and one day I went to the Casey account on my friend's Facebook because I wanted to see if she was still posting about me and when I scrolled down I realized I had missed a post last time. This post was Lena mocking the fact that my mother, my birth mother, called her frequently to talk trash about me and give her information on

me and Nolan. Turns out my mother and Lena went to the same college and my mother thought what better way to make friends than by helping someone stalk my daughter. She would ask me about mine and Nolan's relationship often. She would talk trash about Lena and would act like the perfect mother to my face. She didn't raise me so I didn't trust her 100%. For that reason I never gave her my phone number, address or any other information I felt was private. When my dog went missing she tried to convince me to post my address on Facebook. She kept saying how important it was that people know exactly where he went missing from. It's insane. Thank god I didn't because

I might have woken up to Lena punching my head in or worse. For a while I was legitimately paranoid. Every time I went to the store or went outside, I was watching my surroundings closely. Because if Lena was willing to beat up a girl Nolan had dated for three weeks, unprovoked, what would she do to me if she saw me in public? I had never met someone so obsessive. Let me just say Lena was a horrible friend. She was manipulative, bossy, judgmental, rude, erratic, narcissistic, and two-faced. When I felt my first heartbreak she spent all night talking trash about this guy, saying I deserve better. Eventually I joined in with her to make myself feel better and what does she do? She messages him on Facebook and tells him everything I said about him. She guilt tripped me

about having other friends. She convinced me to abandon one of my friends just because she didn't approve of her. She would ignore me when there were other people around. If I complained about anyone, she would go tell that person what I said, even if she had said something worse about them. She would go through people's Facebooks and laugh at them and talk about how dorky they were and not in a nice way. In a this person is scum for being a bit dorky kind of way. She would make me feel ridiculous for liking things I did and I never felt like I could be myself around her. It amazes me how many people Lena had manipulated. Even her poor husband probably doesn't know she

was a stalker. And there you have it. Lena cyber-stalked me for two years and if I had given my mother my address it might have become actual stalking. She hasn't been trying to stalk me for a while now. I cut my mother off and deleted all but 40 people off my Facebook and made all my social media accounts private to keep this from happening again. I'm hoping I won't ever hear from Lena again. The last obvious thing I've gotten of her still trying to stalk me is a fake account that sent me a friend request about three months ago. An account that was a few months old had the same last name as my friend who told me didn't know her and only liked two Facebook pages, one of which was

a grocery store page and the other was my page, my obscure Facebook page. My page that has spaces in between the letters and Japanese letters in the name. My page that you have to either know the exact name of or have a link to find. My page that I had already had to ban Lena and Casey from because both accounts liked it. Sometimes I wonder if Lena is even trying to be secretive or if she's just stupid. My mom was a horrible addict. She barely took care of me as a kid. At the time of this incident, I was around six or seven, so my awareness and understanding of things happening may not totally

make much sense. This happened in the 90s. One night, my mother and I were on a car ride. I wasn't sure why we were driving, but it was late at night. I'm not sure what time it was, but I assume it was really late because there weren't many cars in the streets and I was sleeping in the back seat. I don't even remember getting in the car. My mom drove up to some sketchy house and left me in the car for what felt like forever. Suddenly the car door swung open and someone violently grabbed me by my arm and yanked me out of the car. I started screaming and crying until the man that grabbed me looked me in the eyes and said, be quiet and don't try to run. He had a scruffy beard and looked like a

madman. I was scared to death so I listened. He held me tight by my arm, shut the car door and walked me down the street. I looked back at the house my mom was in hoping that my mom would come out the last second and save me. I looked at the house as my mom was in hoping that my mom would come out the last second and save me. I looked at the house as long as I could as the man dragged me further and further away. As we walked down the street I wanted to cry but I was in shock and in fear. I didn't know what to do. If I sniffled or cried the man would tighten his grip and yell at me. I can't even explain how scared and confused I was. We walked for a little while and ended up in the projects. The projects were a bunch of buildings crammed together in a terrible neighborhood. We walked into one of the buildings and walked up a

flight of stairs. My legs and feet hurt terribly but I was too scared to stop moving or complain. I walked up another flight of stairs when I saw some random guy smoking a cigarette in the stairway. Then, without warning, the guy that kidnapped me fell to the ground. It happened so fast. I didn't know how the kidnapper fell to the ground so fast but the next thing I remember is the cigarette guy was punching and kicking the kidnapper in his head and face. The kidnapper was out cold. Cigarette guy picked up the kidnapper by the back of his jacket and threw him down the stairs. I have no idea how scary and violent it is to see an unconscious man fall down the stairs. To this day I still

have a fear of falling down stairs. He bled everywhere. I still have no idea how cigarette guy knew to help me but I'm glad he did Maybe he could see the tears in my eyes Maybe he just picked up on something and had a bad vibe but he acted instantly The first second he could he attacked my would-be kidnapper Cigarette guy starts pacing back and forth swearing at himself Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists I thought he was mad at me so I started to cry. He looked at me and said, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, shut up, shut up. He had an attitude so

I listened to him out of fear. I wasn't as scared of cigarette guy as much as the bearded guy but I was still in fear of him. He started to ask me questions with an attitude. Why are you out this late? Where are your parents? Why would you talk to strangers? I was in so much shock and confusion I couldn't answer the man's questions correctly. He asked if I knew my way home and I told him I didn't. I told him a broken story about what happened and somehow with the information I gave him, he knew where my mom's car was. The only thing I remember about the road is passing a house with Christmas lights on despite Christmas already being over. I think he knew the area well

enough and figured out where I needed to go from that information but I honestly don't even remember telling him about the Christmas lights. He told me he would take me back if I promised over and over that I wouldn't tell the police that I saw him or anyone that looked like him and made me promise that I wouldn't even tell the police anything. He had an attitude, I didn't care what he asked me, I just wanted to get back to my mom so I agreed. I followed him down the stairs. The bearded guy was still laying on the ground bleeding at the bottom of the stairs that cigarette guy threw him down. He wasn't moving at all. For all I know he was dead and I hope now that he was. Cigarette guy stepped over the bearded guy and I followed. We walked outside and cigarette guy looked around panicky. I remember him telling me the police don't like me.

We walked out of the projects and my feet still hurt. Cigarette guy was walking fast in a panic and I had to basically jog to keep up with him. I started crying and he was asking what was wrong. I told him my feet hurt and I remember him sucking his teeth and picking me up with an attitude. He awkwardly cradled me in both arms. He walked down the road for a moment. Then I remember him swearing and running behind a house or a building. A cop car was driving down the road and he put me down and told me to run to the police car. I tried to run but my legs could barely move and I was scared. The cop car kept driving and rode away without seeing me before I could even get remotely close to it.

He kept swearing to himself as he picked me up again and ran down the street. He took me behind a lot of houses and hid from every cop car that drove by. I assumed now that the police were looking for me. He carried me in both arms running fast down the road when I saw my mom's car in the distance. She was surrounded by police. Cigarette guy put me down and told me to run to the police. I got so excited the pain in my legs disappeared. He put me down and ran away. I ran towards the police. I got so excited the pain in my legs disappeared. He put me down

and ran away. I ran towards the police and my mom. My mom picked me up and hugged me tight. The police started to ask me and my mom questions. I don't remember too much about their questions but I remember my mom telling the police some convoluted story that just didn't make any sense. She basically told me not to say anything and I didn't say much but cried a whole bunch. We went home. Days later my dad picked me up and knew something was wrong. I told him everything. I never lived with my mom again. When I grew up and had time to think about that day I never forgave my mother. Not too long ago I asked my dad what he remembers about the situation and he told me

what he thinks happened from what I explained to him years ago. He said my mom was on a binge, I got kidnapped, someone saved me but the person that saved me had warrants and wasn't mad at me, he just was frustrated with the situation that he had to deal with. Imagine being a criminal on the run and now you have a kidnapped girl with you and you just beat a guy up half to death if he would have gotten caught with me he could be in jail for my kidnapping with my mom lying and me being in shock and confused i wouldn't be able to tell them that the man helped me because it was all happening i didn't even notice he was helping me to the man that saved me thank you you. And to the man that tried to kidnap me, I hope you're still laying at the bottom of those stairs.

I believe this happened in sixth grade. It's hard for me to believe that this took place 20 years ago. One thing I don't remember is what our science project was exactly. All I know is that I got partnered up with this Mexican kid in my class named Brian. He seemed like a chill kid at school. He was chubby, quiet, and kind of shy. When I went to his house to work on a project for the first time, he apparently was much more comfortable and seemed to be very outgoing. He made jokes and laughed a lot more than usual.

He kept saying stuff to his mom in Spanish and then they would both laugh at me but I never thought that it was really mean and I would laugh along even though I didn't know what they were saying. Usually right afterwards he would tell me what they had supposedly said. At one point we were in his room and he asked me to go ask his mom for lined paper. I told him I didn't speak Spanish and he should go ask her, but he said he would just tell me how to say it. I don't remember exactly, but he told me to say something like, ¿Dónde está el papa al baño? So I went and asked his mom. I knew something was off right away just by the way she looked at me like I had said something crazy.

She grabbed my hand and walked me to the bathroom like I was a special little boy. Once we were in the bathroom, she pointed to the toilet paper with a confused look still on her face as if to say, Where else would it be? I was confused and could only speak to her in English while she spoke to me in Spanish and we didn't understand each other. Soon we heard Brian having a hilarious laughing fit from the other room. Laughing so hard like he thought it was the funniest thing ever but I was pretty sure it was only kind of funny. I wasn't worried though and I laughed it off. You got me, I thought. Eventually he became really excited to show me something. He told me he'd be right back and then he ran out of his room.

He was gone for a minute or so and then returned telling me to follow him. He was so sure that I was going to love whatever it is he was about to show me so I was excited too. Couldn't wait. We got outside and he goes to this little shed and pulls out a lawnmower. He tells me to follow him. He started the mower, began walking and then gestured with his hand again for me to follow him. As we walked we rounded a corner and there on the ground was a nest full of frogs. There was maybe 20 or more frogs in there. I didn't have time to stop him. Right before it happened we looked at each other, him looking at me to make sure I was looking and me looking at him in pure confusion. He pulled back on the mower, raising the blades, then letting the and there was a sickening wet crunching sound

followed by chunks being spit everywhere as he raised the blades back up. He raised the blades and let them fall in the pile of frogs four or five times, all the while he was staring at my face and laughing maniacally at my horrified reaction. He released the bar and the mower went silent as he crumpled to the ground and began rolling around in the grass laughing. A couple frogs escaped without getting blended. A few more frantically scattered away from the mower missing limbs. I awkwardly laughed with him and played along like nothing bad had just happened. I never get disgusted to the point of throwing up and it's hard to disgust me at all but from that point on I definitely knew that there was something wrong with Brian. Until now I've never told anyone. I wouldn't say that I was afraid it was just that I didn't think

it was a good idea to tell anybody what had happened. Not his mom, not my friends, not my parents, not my brother, not my sister, not my best friend. I didn't tell anybody anything about it and Brian never did anything like that or mentioned it again. It was the weirdest thing and they say it's the quiet ones you gotta watch out for. I haven't seen him since sixth grade ended but sometimes I wonder just what kind of person he turned out to be. When I was 10 years old, I lived in a relatively small town in Texas in a small house with my mom. My mom has always had a very caring heart for those in need. So when my uncle called her one night and told her he ran into a homeless girl in the local park, my mom offered to help her out for a day or so just to get her back on her feet,

that sort of thing. When the girl arrived at my house, she said her name was Laura. Laura told us she was 16 at the time. She seemed like a shy girl. When my mother asked what she was doing out in the streets, Laura told us that she had been kicked out of her home by her mom because her mom had accused her of sleeping with the mom's boyfriend. Laura told us that allegation wasn't true. She told us her mother's boyfriend was the one that came onto her. My mom gave Laura a place to sleep in the guest bedroom that night. The next day, after breakfast, Laura asked us to use my mom's house phone to call her mom to see if she could get some of her things from her mom's house. Laura's mom never answered

the phone and we felt bad for her. As a 10 year old girl, I couldn't imagine what she must have been going through. Later that day, I remember watching TV in the living room and minding my own business, but I could feel someone staring at me. So I turned my head where I felt the gaze. Laura was sending me a glare so cold that if looks could kill I would have dropped dead. I was confused and a little startled. I turned my head away from her quickly and went back to watching TV but I could still feel Laura's cold gaze. I couldn't understand what I had done to her to cause her to look at me with such hate. The next day it happened once more.

I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water when I could feel someone looking at me. I turned my head to the side and saw Laura's head peering around the corner at me. Her eyes were dark and laced with hatred. It frightened me and I felt so confused as to why she was looking at me like this. I didn't want to cause any trouble so I didn't bring up Laura's death glares to my mother at all. Later that night my uncle had joined us for dinner. He had stopped by to see how everything was with Laura and if we had had any luck finding her a place to live with one of her family members. After dinner I was washing my plate in the sink when I heard a loud growling sound coming from the dining room. I turned my head to see Laura shaking and growling like some sort of wild

animal. My mom and uncle looked disturbed and worried. Laura threw herself onto the floor and began thrashing around and screaming as if she were possessed. I was absolutely terrified. It was a scary thing to witness. I grew up very religious. My mom and uncle began praying out loud for Laura while I ran to the room and closed the door. This went on for two hours but it felt like an eternity of horror. I could hear Laura screaming like a mad woman and growling like some sort of deranged beast. I don't think any of us knew exactly what was going on. After my mom and uncle had prayed for Laura for what felt like forever, Laura told us that she was free from an evil demon that had taken over her.

None of us were sure what had caused her behavior. None of us were sure what had even happened. I peeked my head out of my room to see Laura smiling happily while she curled up on the couch with a blanket. Her eyes opened and she shot a cold glare at me. I quickly closed my bedroom door in fear. I placed a chair in front of the bedroom door and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning by my mom waking me up. She told me that she was taking me to eat at my favorite restaurant. When I asked her if Laura was going, she gave me a serious expression and spoke,

Your uncle is going to take Laura back to her mom's house. He slept on the couch last night after what happened. He and I were talking when the two of you had gone to sleep and we pieced together that Laura made the entire performance up last night. She said, she's not stable and I think she's dangerous. As I heard my mother say those words, relief washed over me. I got dressed and went to the car to go to the restaurant with my mom. When we got into the car, we saw Laura and my uncle get in his truck with her. Laura looked angry. Her expression was of a child's when you don't give them what they want. She got into my uncle's car and they drove away.

I'm 22 now and I have never forgotten about this horrific incident that happened in my life years ago. After that day I never saw Laura or heard anything else about her ever again. In 2015, I was a freshman in college. I roomed with my best friend Emily from high school. Before leaving for college, we had done research and found rumors online that our dorm building was haunted, but we didn't take it seriously. We lived on the second floor and our room was in between the stairwell and the laundry room. The first month went totally normal and we were settled into our new routines. One day when I got home from class and walked in the room, everything was open. All the drawers on both of our desks, dressers and tall standing wardrobes.

My first thought was that someone broke into our room and robbed us but then that didn't make sense because you could only access our room with two key cards. One was mine and the other was Emily's. Nobody else's key cards would be able to unlock our door. I called Emily to see if she was in class but she was in the bathroom down the hall. When she came back I showed her the room and she said it wasn't like that when she left. At the time we both thought it was the other one playing a prank but neither of us said it. Over the next couple of months more things started happening that proved to both of us that it wasn't the other one playing pranks.

We often came home to everything being open but that's not it. At night when we were both in bed we could hear our laundry baskets being drug across the floor and things falling off of our shelves. One time when we were both in our beds with the lights out I sneezed and clearly heard bless you. When I said thank you thinking thinking it was Emily, I looked across the room and realized she was asleep. I also heard hello whispered in my ear a few times. Another time at night I was up late studying and M was asleep. I felt like I was being watched all night but just told myself I was tired and paranoid but I couldn't shake the feeling. Then out of nowhere I felt a light shove on my back. Obviously this scared the life out of me so I got up to yell at Emily but

then saw she was still in her bed. Once when Emily was in the room by herself she was on the phone with her dad talking about all the weird stuff that had been happening to us and of course right on cue all at once every single drawer flew open. After about a month of us being terrified we got up the courage to talk to our RHD about everything. We started with something like so we had a weird question about our room. When she stopped us and said, Let me guess, stuff is moving around and you don't know why? Excuse me? What? She said every year she gets reports from people that live in that room with stories the same as ours. It's happened for years, she said.

She told us that it was the ghost of a little girl named Sarah who was known to be mischievous and liked to mess around. To be honest, this part of the story I'm not sure I buy 100%, but it made us feel a lot better to tell ourselves it was just a girl. After a couple of months, things settled down and occurrences became less frequent. We eventually felt comfortable in our room and if something happened, we would just tell ourselves it was Sarah messing around again and brushed it off. Even though we were scared at times, we both agreed that nothing ever felt evil or sinister. It did indeed just seem like a mischievous spirit, but either way, we never taunted it or tried to talk to it. I have told this story before in a public setting around 2008. I was living in

Louisiana at the time and had called into Coast to Coast AM and told this story to George Norrie, which was a pretty cool experience. I didn't have a whole lot of time to tell some of the details, so you'll be getting the unedited version, so to speak. It happened somewhere between 1997 to 1999. I was in my late teens and we were living in New Mexico up near the Four Corners. My parents were pastors at a local church in a very small town. We had lived outside of town, sort of out in the middle of nowhere, and there were a few houses sprinkled around us. Surrounding us, at least where there were no houses, there was some brush and a lot of desert. Ever since we moved there, the locals told us about skinwalkers.

Even people in the church warned us about them. One guy in the church swore up and down that when he was a truck driver, he saw a skinwalker in its human form running alongside his truck when he was going about 80 miles per hour. But since I didn't witness it, I just took him at his word. I had heard many different tales on the origins of skinwalkers, both from the locals and the Native Americans. There was a Native American who went to our church who still held on to his Navajo beliefs, who told me what I always assumed to be a more accurate description. He told me that when people of his tribe had a child out of incest, the tribe leaders take the baby out into the desert to be

raised by wolves. The wolves would raise it and they would become skinwalkers, having the powers to turn into anything, animal, human, etc. The story fascinated me. He never seemed to know for sure that this was the accurate tale then he warned me to never whistle at night which i thought was pretty weird but i never did until one night it was in the fall around 11 at night i was in my bedroom which was the furthest room from anyone in the house and near the garage, watching TV or playing PlayStation. My mother was in her bedroom. My dad was at the church studying as he always did till around midnight. My brother had a friend over that night and they were going to spend the night on the back patio, which was a long rectangular room with screen windows all down it. Like I said, I was in my bedroom

minding my own business when my brother and his friend came banging on my door. Annoyed, I opened the door and my brother, who is four years younger than me, and his friend are both frightened. My brother said as they were in the patio goofing off they heard someone walking around the backyard and said what looked to be the top of a white bald head walk by the screen windows. Now normally I would believe my brother since he would never make this kind of stuff up but his friend was a huge liar and had told tall tales about having been to Mars, even showing us the red dirt which looked an awful lot like the red dirt you could find throughout the area I might add. Of course by this time I had experienced a lot of paranormal stuff but I was still skeptical.

Bravely and annoyed I grabbed my jacket and a flashlight and the three of us went out to the patio. It was always creepy at night because it was always so dark and the only light came from a nearby lamppost a few yards down the street. Our backyard was insanely small except for the right hand side of it, which was a bit bigger but held a trampoline which took up the better part of it. We stepped out of the patio, my flashlight shining around the yard but saw nothing. That was when I started hearing the crunching of leaves coming from the front yard. So the three of us went through the back gate to the front yard. Now our front yard

was huge and had roughly nine apple trees. There was even a large creepy tree in the corner of the yard near the street I always stayed clear of for some reason. We had a close neighborhood, literally on the other side of the wooden fence, it was a nice family that had a daughter about my brother's age, and they also had a bunch of chickens and sometimes they would wander into our yard, so that is what I thought was walking around our front yard. Shining the flashlight around of course, I couldn't see any chickens, but I did see something white walk behind a tree near the wooden fence. That was when I got very curious. The three of us walked slowly to the tree.

I was being the protective big brother and kept the other two behind me. Before I knew it, I heard a loud whoosh and felt a gust of wind like something flew by us. My brother screamed out in pain. My brother always had his shirt off, which annoyed me because back then I was overweight and very self-conscious, but I noticed on his chest he had three long scratches across him. Scared and shocked, my brother ran back inside the house, leaving me and his friend. It all happened so quickly but I ran towards the street where I was sure whatever it was had gone, his friend close behind me. Once we reached the end of the property I could hear the sound of bare feet running down the paved road. I shined my light towards the sound but never saw anything. So I whistled some tune and from down the road I heard the same tune whistled back to me.

Intrigued, I whistled again. This time a different tune. And again the same tune was whistled back. My brother's friends started getting scared and kept trying to get me to go back inside, but I was very intrigued. I whistled for the third time. And that was when, very close by by we both heard a male voice say, hey kid come here. There was no hesitation. The two of us bolted back inside. We went to go tell my mother what happened and she was already frightened because she was tending to my brother's scratches on his chest. We told her what happened and my mother told us to stay inside.

My mother has had some pretty scary paranormal encounters before. I need to tell those stories soon as well and she believed us. I've never forgotten that encounter. My brother brushes it off these days making it out to be not a big deal, but I know differently, as does my mother. It's one of the few incidents in my life that literally bothers me to this day. First, some information about my great-grandmother. She was born to immigrant parents in 1911 and passed away at the age of 94. Her father was an Englishman and her mother was from Luxembourg. Most of her family spoke German as well as English, however great-grandma only knew a little German.

Gigi's mother only spoke German and was almost completely deaf. Gigi relied on either her sisters to translate the mangled German or a crude family sign language they had developed. Gigi grew up in rural North Dakota and to frame the time period, she once told me about how when she was a little girl, her family would regularly barter with the members of the Mandan tribe, whom she described as real Indians, not like today. She also only attended the local school till about 6th grade. Later in life, she was not particularly bright, but not dumb. She was religious religious but not a bible thumper. The type of woman who would give you a religious birthday card and a ninja turtle action figure who had a picture

of Jesus but never said grace. The one thing she was always very serious about was how she met the devil. Gigi would tell the story when prompted but she never seemed to enjoy it and was always consistent in her description. When she was ten years old, she was misbehaving. Her father wasn't home and her mother again didn't speak English. Her mother attempted to control her, but Gigi just ignored her. Finally, her mother tried to grab a hold of her, but Gigi flailed and almost hit her mother. Gigi's mother caught Gigi's hand and looked her cold in the eyes. She let her go and pointed at the closet and left the room. Gigi and her siblings were often sent to the closet as some sort of time out

and she knew she had messed up so she went to accept her punishment. When she opened the door however, something was inside. She said the being had hooves and was covered in dark fur which subsided a bit on the torso and chest up to the face. The being had a man's face with dark eyes, an unkempt beard, and a mop of dirty black hair, and from only one side of its head rose a deer antler. Gigi said that being stepped forward slightly before she slammed the closet doors shut, she shrieked and her mother came to see what the commotion was. She could only really cry and wave her arms, but her mother opened the closet door door anyway and it was gone. She was always very serious about that story and admittedly writing it even now makes me feel off somehow.

That's the story of how my great grandmother met the devil. However she also said that aliens gave her a stroke. A few years before she died Gigi had a number of strokes. She was in her 90s at the time. The first was not debilitating, it just took some time to recover. Some more quick info. Her and her husband, my great-grandfather, adored fast food. They had to substance hunt during the depression to feed their children, so they marveled at good fast food. Great-grandpa loved McDonald's but Gigi loved pizza, specifically Godfather's pizza. After she had mostly recovered from her stroke, my family took my great-grandparents to Godfather's as a kind of

celebration. But being a dumb kid, I got a bunch of quarters from my dad for arcade games and ignored my nonagenarian great-grandparents. To this day I regret not spending more time with them. I had an odd number of quarters after the games and the restaurant had one of those little toy dispensers, the ones with plastic egg things. I bought one with my last quarter and it was a tiny plastic alien giving a peace sign. Done with the games I returned to the table. I was fiddling with the alien, classic grey looking and Gigi noticed. When I set the alien down, Gigi took it and expected it closely. With everyone at the table, she held up the alien and looked at me and said, them's the thing that come and got me. My mom, half laughing, said, what grandma? Gigi repeated herself and then said

they were the reason she was in the hospital. When my grandfather, Gigi's son-in-law, told her she was in the hospital because of a stroke, she said, them things gave me the stroke. The family sort of stopped pressing at this point and things settled down. Most of my family chalked it up to a joke or her stroke. I don't buy it as a joke. Gigi was sweet but not a joker. Furthermore, I don't think she knew what a grey alien was. She hadn't seen a movie since the 1950s, she didn't't watch TV And she only really read the newspaper She mostly did crafts and listened to music in her spare time As for it being a stroke hallucination

Maybe But it's still weird So this event happened approximately a week ago. I was going to post then, but I wanted to let this digest a bit and not post on a knee-jerk reaction. I'm a police officer in a city of about 30,000 people. I am currently assigned to a midnight shift, working the hours of 10pm to 6am. At the beginning of my shift I am called to a house in what can be described as the wealthiest part of town. I am told by dispatch that the resident of the house, a teenage girl, believes that an adult male is attempting to enter the home. I activated my lights and sirens and arrived

at the home at a short time later. I knock on the door and make contact with the caller, a frantic 18 year old girl. My sergeant arrives on scene a short time later. I ask her to describe what happened. She explains that while laying on the couch she heard pounding on the front door. She then looked out the peep and did not see anyone. She then heard pounding on the front door. She then looked out the peep and did not see anyone. She then heard banging on the back sliding glass door and screaming coming from outside. Again she didn't see anyone. We ask if anyone made entry into the home. The complainant denies this. My sergeant and I check the area finding no footprints in the yard. We also check the dew in the grass

finding it to be undisturbed. We also check the glass for fingerprints and were unable to locate any. We chalked it up to this girl's friends playing a prank on her or her having an overactive imagination and leave the house. Approximately three hours later we are called back to the residence. We are notified that the female believes someone to be inside the home this time. I beat my partner to the house by approximately three to four minutes. I enter and begin speaking with the complainant who is visibly shaken. I am told that she was awoken by more banging and a man saying, I know you are in here. The complainant states that she had barricaded the basement door with a chair as she believed someone could easily enter the home

through the attached garage. I tell her to stay put in the living room and go to search the basement garage. I draw my firearm and search the basement. During my search, I feel very uneasy as if though I'm being watched. I complete my search as my partner arrives. I walk back upstairs and meet with her and tell her that I haven't cleared the rest of the home yet. She draws her weapon and helps me search the rest of the home. The last room we enter belongs to the complainant and it's her bedroom. Inside the bedroom we find a Ouija board to be in plain view. We deem the residence safe and go back to the living room. At this point the complainant is frantically shaking and crying. We ask if she lives alone.

She states that she stays with her grandparents. She also states that they are out of town on business. She states that she is frequently home alone due to her they are out of town on business. She states that she is frequently home alone due to her grandparents being out of town on business. I ask her to call and speak with her grandpa. I speak with him and learn that the complainant does not have any mental health issues nor any behavioral issues. The complainant also does not use any form of drugs that he knows of besides nicotine. The grandpa states he is going to call another family member to come look after the complainant.

We speak with Complaintant again, learning that she does not currently suffer from mental illnesses. The complainant admits to smoking recreationally occasionally, but not partaking on any of the night of the disturbance. The complainant also advised us that she found the Ouija board that day hidden in a closet of the home. Her condition further degraded and she requested that we take her somewhere else. My partner, being a female officer, transported the complainant back to her HQ, where she was picked up by a family member at a later time. I stayed at the home and searched the surrounding area again. I again did not locate any signs of a person being outside the home. I don't know if this is the right place to post this but I believe this girl may have experienced something. I for sure did not feel good whilst

being in that basement. I used to be a huge skeptic of the paranormal until I took this job However, I have experienced and dealt with multiple things that I couldn't explain in regards to calls to service My partner also stated to feel very uneasy while being in the house Anyone think she may have stumbled across something Or did we just feed into the paranoia of a young girl who was home alone unfortunately I have not been called out to the home ever since so I haven't gotten to investigate into this occurrence any further So this first story took place when I was around the age of seven.

I vividly remember me and my twin brother were just playing around in our backyard like little kids do. I remember we were sitting on the ground and playing around one of those heavy parasol things which had no parasol in it. Eventually me and my brother both sat around the parasol stand just playing with some little toy cars or something. This is the moment me and my brother both saw a pale hand coming out of the hole on the top. Me, being the curious kid I was, touched the hand and I remember it felt very cold. Eventually the hand just slid back into the parasol stand and we weren't really freaked out for some reason. We calmly explained to our mom what had happened and obviously she just played it off like it was just our imagination.

To this day, around 15 years later, me and my brother both swear to god we both saw that hand. The second story is about me having really weird night terrors when I was younger. So I would say I was around the age of 5 when this story took place and I remember it would happen almost every other night. So I would be laying in bed, sound asleep and all of a sudden I would just randomly wake up in the middle of the night. I'm guessing this would be around 2 to 3 a.m. As my eyes got adjusted to the dark I would start to look around my room wondering what woke me up. Eventually once my eyes had fully adjusted to the dark I would see this pale hand coming out of my wall which would be coming towards me trying to touch me. This would happen so frequently that I just got used to it and would just leave my room for about half an hour

and then I would come back and go back to sleep. The strange thing is the wall the hand was coming from was one of the outer walls of her house on the second floor. So nobody should have been able to get to me even if there was a hole in that wall which wasn't the case obviously. Also the fact that I always woke up before this happened makes it impossible to write off as a bad dream. It also wasn't sleep paralysis because I was able to look around, move my arms and legs and I could also get up. Fast forward to a few years later and we found out our house was built almost on top of a historic burial site where a famous murderer from the 1700s was presumably buried. I did some research on this criminal and he did not have a happy ending. According to a diary from someone who witnessed his execution back in

1775, he was strapped down in a chair for 114 consecutive days before he was brutally executed. Was it just my childhood imagination, or was it the criminal trying to make one more victim from the grave. I used to work at a diner in Spanish Fork, Utah. It is a small diner but pretty active with ghosts. The first experience I heard about was when a co-worker of mine, Mia, had something thrown at her. I was present when this happened but had my back turned on her so I didn't see it directly. I just suddenly heard Mia and my manager yelling in shock. I asked what happened and Mia said,

I was just printing labels and the container fell and hit my thigh. I know layouts are normally useless but I believe a layout explanation is necessary here so you understand why we were all so shocked. Mia was standing at the computer which we had in the server's aisle. It was an open restaurant so the only thing separating the server's aisle was a bar. To the left of the bar was a little closed in section with hot sauce and other condiments, ice, and iced tea and coffee in their respective brewers. The iced tea brewer was at the far left, closest to the wall. The computer was in a cart in front of the brewer. This is where Mia was standing, printing labels. On top of the iced tea brewer was the brew funnel. The brew

funnel was what ended up hitting Mia on her thigh. It's important to mention though that it was pretty far back so it couldn't have just fallen. And even if it did, it wouldn't have hit Mia's thigh. It would have just fallen straight down. Our manager said that it looked like someone swiped it off the iced tea brewer but gravity ultimately won. And instead of hitting Mia on the head it was on a path to hit her on the head. It hit her on her thigh. After that Mia and I spent a lot of time talking about how haunted the diner is. She had been there since it opened so she told

me a lot of stories that I wasn't aware of before. She said that scissors, knives, and other dangerous and or heavy objects had been thrown at the employees. She also shared the theory that the reason why businesses located at that building never made it past five years was because it was on cursed ground. Spanish Fork is one of the locations where a war between Native Americans and Mormon settlers took place, so I believed it. I asked her if anyone had died at the restaurant and she said, yes, some construction workers died. After hearing that, I thought I'd ask more of my co-workers and, well, it wasn't in vain to say the least. Another co-worker, Madison, told me about the time she had an experience. She told me she had gone to the bathroom and while she was doing her business,

she heard someone coming in and going into the handicap stall. Madison finished and went over to wash her hands, but she noticed that the handicap stall door was ajar. When she finished washing her hands, she checked the stall and to her surprise, no one was there. She said the person was particularly loud when they first went into the bathroom, so Madison found it weird that she didn't hear the person getting out. After returning to the server's aisle, it dawned on her that the restaurant was empty as the rush had been over and her and the other servers were cleaning up for the next shift. Then I talked to Madison's brother, Caden, who was a graveyard cook at the time. He said that he had seen two different apparitions while working that shift.

The first one was when he saw someone walking to the dry storage room. He thought it was the server he was working with, Taya, so he went to see if she needed help. Layout at the back house, dishroom to the left, then manager's office adjacent to the dishroom. The kitchen was to the right and behind the kitchen was the walk-in and freezer. Behind the dishroom was the dry storage room. When he reached the dishroom he saw that no one was there so he thought maybe Taya had gone to the walk-in. He checked and she wasn't there. He checked the dishroom and nothing, so he went out to the front of the house. To his surprise, she was clear in the back, taking drinks to a table, so there's no way she would

have been able to go to the back of the house, fill the cups, and take the drinks to said table in the time it took Caden to check the back. The next one happened a few weeks after that. He was cleaning the kitchen and just trying to make time go by as it had been a slower night. He looked up and saw a little boy running towards the door to exit the restaurant. Caden later told Taya, what kind of parent would bring their child to a restaurant at 3am. Taya was clearly confused and told him that she hadn't served any tables with kids that whole night. The next stories happened to me. I was taking a table's order one day and saw someone walking behind me. It distracted me and I looked behind me but there was no one there.

I looked to where the bathrooms were because I thought maybe that's where the person was headed but there was no one there either. The only person who was near me other than the people at my table was my coworker Lauren. She was to the left of me setting tables so she couldn't have been the one who walked behind me to go to the bathrooms which were to the right. I know someone walked behind me. I saw it but I also felt it. You know those vibrations you feel when someone walks near you. I felt that and the wind that comes after someone walks by you. I've seen shadow figures all over the place. One was even charging towards me. I've seen chairs moving and my name has been said by disembodied voices. One time, a child ghost, maybe the same one Caden saw,

dropped my tray full of cups of water. All of them broke and I got wet. I know it was a ghost because there was no way that tray could have fallen but I also heard a child laughing after the tray fell. Not only that but I also felt the presence of a younger spirit. Needless to say that diner is definitely haunted by several spirits. Some seem angry at us whereas others seem like troublemakers or even lost souls. I'm a 28-year-old female. I currently work as a cardiac monitor technician in a hospital 30 minutes south of a major city. The hospital is actually relatively new.

It opened independently in the early 90s, but by the year 2000, it was bought by a Catholic organization and the sisters completely changed the way the hospital was run. For those who don't know, hospitals who are trauma certified are qualified and governed by state laws. The level qualifications vary from state to state, but just know that level one trauma is the most severe. We're talking gunshot wounds, motor vehicle crashes, stabbings, basically the worst of the worst emergencies. The level designation is in place to determine where patients who are being brought in by ambulance should go depending on the severity of the situation. This is all relevant as my hospital used to be a level 1 trauma center in the 2000s, but to put it bluntly, there is no money to be made in trauma work. These patients often have

little to no insurance and cannot pay, or they don't make it, therefore it was decided by corporate that we would no longer offer trauma services and severe cases would have to be airlifted out to the nearest trauma center. As in any hospital, there is always death, both expected and unexpected. Not as much as you think really, I mean it's not like there's a death every day, but they do happen and it's always a sobering thing, be it expected or not, at least for me. Because this used to be a trauma center, there were many, many more tragic cases and a lot more deaths back in those days. Sudden and unexpected deaths often ended in hauntings and frankly, I believe that after what I experienced on this night. When I was new here several years ago, I got onto the topic of ghosts and the paranormal with the nurse I was working with at the time.

I'll call her Nicole as I truly believe my apartment back then was haunted. That's a story for another time. When I brought this up she asked if I'd ever heard of the little girl with no face who haunts this big long hallway that connects the whole hospital which we call the spine. I said no I haven't. Nicole went on to explain supposedly she died when this place still took trauma cases. The rumor is is that she was shot in a drive-by on her way to school and bled out and died in the ER before her parents got there because she'd come in by ambulance. It's probably nonsense I don't know. I don't know why she shows up in by ambulance. It's probably nonsense, I don't know.

I don't know why she shows up in the spine, but a lot of people have seen her down there and when they see her, she's got a long white dress on and no one can see her face. It's always a solid little girl with all the right features except all white and no eyes, no mouth, no nose.

On the occasions where people have seen her, a patient goes on to die that night. It always seems to line up. I was pretty dumbfounded by this. For one or two people to see a ghost is unlikely, but for multiple people to give accounts of the same thing, plus documented deaths, there must be something behind it, right? It was about a year later that I had my own experience, and it made me 100% a believer for life. I work the overnight shift 7pm to 7am, and since it's 12 hours, we always take a few breaks to get out of the room we sit in to watch the heart monitors. It's basically a broom closet, tiny, cramped, and hot, so I'm always happy to get out.

I had gone into the break room, which is on the other end of my unit, and on that end to the right is a set of double doors leading into the spine. I walk into the break room, microwave my lunch, and sit there, enjoying the peace and quiet while eating my food. Once I'm done, I open the door to head back to my station when, out of the corner of my eye, I see someone standing in the spine. This is unusual as it's not a hallway the employees use at night. In fact, those doors are usually kept closed and no one is supposed to be out there, so this person immediately caught my attention. I turned to fully look at them and, I kid you not, there she is. All white, long flowing white gown and no face.

She has no facial features whatsoever, but she is facing me. As I froze and stared at her, I couldn't help but notice she wasn't actually touching the ground. The bottom of her dress was about five or six inches off the floor, like she was hovering. I felt a bad presence. In healthcare, you tend to go with your intuition or gut instincts about people and situations because sometimes, it's all you have. As she stood there in front of me, I got this horrible, gut-churning feeling. A feeling like she had bad intentions. Like she wanted to do harm. I don't know.

Either way, it wasn't a pleasant feeling. It was one of those feelings where you feel like your heart dropped into your stomach. All the hairs in my entire body stand up and a shiver runs down my back as I stood there, maybe 20 feet away from this little girl, and my mind went absolutely blank as to what I should do. Do I acknowledge her? Do I just keep walking and pretend I didn't see her? I have no idea. At this point I'm in such shock that I don't think I've gotten a word out anyway. My mouth was clenched shut. Just as I am questioning what I should do she begins to

change shape into what I can only describe as a mist or smoke and moves quickly to the left side of the hallway and disappears just like that. As this happens, a nice cold breeze wafts into me. I begin to internally freak out and quickly begin to speed walk back to the monitoring room wondering what I had just witnessed. The best part is, the charge nurse relieving me for the break is the very same nurse who told me about the girl in the first place. As I return to the monitors, Nicole clearly notices I'm freaked out and shaken a little. Maybe I actually look like I saw a ghost, as they say. Nicole asks me what happened and I explain to her everything that I saw and she begins to freak out a little too.

She says, I wonder if someone's going to die tonight then. I'd completely forgotten about that part of the rumor and now I begin to freak out even more. If someone did start dying I'd be the first to know since I'm watching every patient's heart on the three computer monitors in front of me. It's hard to explain but if someone is on the verge of death there are obvious signs I look for. Coincidences do happen of course and as it happens I did have a patient who was actually right across the hall from the room where I sit who was not doing well at all. Nicole's patient. He'd been in that room for approximately two weeks by then. He was terminally

ill as it was. Lung cancer had metastasized and spread to his whole body, including his bones. Small cell lung cancer is very aggressive. Nothing to be done except manage the pain. I can't even begin to imagine the pain he must have been in. This poor man actually began to beg for death as the night dragged on, which made me wonder if the girl was perhaps an angel of mercy instead of something purely evil. Because he got his wish. He was what is called a DNR. Do not resuscitate, meaning no life-saving measures. If he begins to die then he dies

we do exactly nothing except make them comfortable given his sorry state and the amount of pain he was experiencing if the girl was responsible his last breath was truly a mercy listening to someone begging god to kill them and make all the pain stop is so gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. He did eventually begin to pass out at 3am. I saw it start happening on the monitor. His heart rate just got slower and slower and slower. Until there was nothing but a flatline. It's usually a somber thing, but I was actually grateful.

He got what he wanted and his pain was over In the end it would appear the rumor is true The faceless girl in white appeared and within a few hours a patient passed away Could be a coincidence of course but I find that highly unlikely I think maybe she really is an angel of mercy, waiting for someone who is critically ill, willing or wants to go, and helping them pass on. Maybe that's why she sometimes appears before someone dies. It isn't that she maliciously is causing the deaths, but rather holding a sick person's hand as they cross to the other side. Maybe she facilitates that journey. Perhaps that's why I had the reaction to her that

I did, and got that sick feeling that something bad was about to happen. But what may seem like something bad can actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. At least, that's what I'd like to believe. I've been hearing and reading a lot lately about people having crazy experiences with shadow figures. I don't know why, has there been an influx or something? And every time I do I think of the experience I had with one when I was 13, about 8 years ago now. Back then I had just gotten the loft bed, the black wooden one from Ikea to be specific. Every night when I'd go to sleep I'd keep the TV on, which sat on my dresser across from the bed because the noise would lull me to sleep. That night the noise and the light was keeping me up, thanks radiation,

so I decided to turn it off. When I did, my bedroom was pitch black, my door was closed, I didn't have any night lights and no other devices were on. I rolled over onto my side, facing towards the wall and closed my eyes. A few minutes went by and I was still wide awake. I was beginning to get frustrated because I still couldn't fall asleep. Just as I was thinking about this, I got the feeling that I wasn't alone anymore. You know how you can just tell when someone's walked into the room almost like the energy or density changes? Well, I had an older sister who had a habit of creeping into my room late at night to steal my stuff, so I thought, Okay, it's just Hannah getting something. But when I opened my eyes, my room was still dark.

This told me it wasn't her because whenever she'd come in, she'd leave the door open a crack and the hallway light would shine through. Plus she's incredibly loud, although she tried her best to be as quiet as to not wake me up but my room was absolutely silent. As soon as this realization dawned on me an overwhelming sense of dread came over me. I knew someone was in the room with me, just as I know my own name, but since the human mind needs tangible proof of everything, I decided to check just in case I was imagining it. If you know anything about loft beds, you know those things are loud when you move since you're basically propped up on stilts in the air. So as I moved, I tried to do so as quietly as possible so that whatever was in the room with me wasn't aware I was there, and knew it was there

too. When I finally reached the slats and looked down through them, sure enough, there was this black figure in the shape of a person standing in front of my dresser. I straight up knew whatever this thing was. It was evil because A. Malevolence practically oozed from it and spread over my bedroom and B. This thing was literally blacker than the darkness of my bedroom. Like imagine being in a pitch black room then a figure materializes, no tangible features, just a straight up filled in outline in the shape of a person that is darker than the dark. That's what this thing was. I don't know how but as soon as I laid my eyes on this thing I saw it turn its head

and look at me. Again it didn't have any features so I didn't physically see its eyes looking at me but it's almost like I could see it, feel it in my mind. It paralyzed me. Then it began moving and walking towards my ladder like it was going to climb up. I shot straight up in terror knowing that if this thing got to me something bad was sure to happen and reached out my arm to turn on my ceiling fan light. Luckily it was literally less than a foot away from where I was. I yelled out the guardian angel prayer as fast as I could and my mouth stumbled over the words in my haste and as soon as I finished I felt this overwhelming

sense of peace and love come over me like I've never felt before, as if something was there protecting me. When that feeling came, all sense of darkness and negativity just shattered. I was so calm and at peace, almost like I'd taken a Xanax, although I didn't know what that feeling was until years later, insert punchline drum sound, that I just flicked the light back off and instantly fell asleep. I haven't seen a shadow person since, but I do feel people or things standing near my bed at night all the time. It'll wake me up, but I'll never see anything. Whenever I feel like I'm not alone, I'll imagine a white light surrounding me and

emanating from my body and tell whatever it is in my mind that it's not welcome and must leave. Works every single time without fail. But the experience I had when I was 13 terrified me and I hope always been very close and very spiritual. Though we've always viewed our spirituality in different ways, we have always believed in ghosts. That was one of the many common threads that we talked about openly and frequently, especially when we figured out that not everyone believed in ghosts as well. About a decade ago, we were teenagers. My cousin and I lived across the country from one another. The separation in our spiritual perspectives was growing larger every time we spoke.

He was very fascinated by demons and the macabre aspects of good versus evil. If he tried to fraternize with spirits, he aimed to hunt down demons or create an environment for them to be more likely to be present. That included carving pentagrams into any surface he could find or basically just inviting these things around. I, on the other hand, didn't see any need to talk with demons. Human spirits and natural forces are far more interesting. I spent a lot of time meditating and need to talk with demons. Human spirits and natural forces are far more interesting. I spent a lot of time meditating and trying to interact with any spirit I came across that didn't feel malignant. I like to think of myself as sensitive but I'm not a full-on medium. I am

open to those interactions and I trust my gut as much as possible. I found a kindred spirit and a friend that I met at school, Clara. We became fast friends and before long I found out that she believed in ghosts too. Her experiences tended to be a bit more traumatizing than my own but she liked the kinder side of spirits and physically felt ill anytime she encountered a bad spirit. My cousin found a friend that believed in the paranormal as well. He introduced this friend to me and after a while we started a long distance relationship. I didn't know his feelings about ghosts but I knew that if he was hanging out with Anthony, he probably had a feel for the macabre. Eventually the time finally came that I could take my best

friend up to see my family. I was very excited to get her up there. I wanted her to see the place that I have always considered to be my home and I wanted her to get to know my cousin. He was like a brother to me and it turned out she developed a little crush on him from my stories about him, chats and pictures. I was also happy that I could finally hang out with my then boyfriend in person. At some point I told Anthony that Clara is sensitive like us. He seemed vaguely interested and mentioned that Ray, the guy I was seeing, was also sensitive. I thought that was neat and

left it at that. Anthony had other plans. At the first opportunity he could find, Anthony suggested the four of us go for a walk, right as the sun was setting. He wanted to go to the park that was across the street from his apartment complex. It was a large wooded area with a winding walking path around a small lake. It was pretty nice. It had a playground for little kids, gazebos, and a handful of benches. There was a bridge or two over some wide streams. The park was lovely and I was enthusiastic about going to it. Clara seemed happy to go and Ray didn't have to be asked twice. It was only once we were outside and away from the adults that Anthony said that it was haunted. Clara seemed a little tense

but we went anyway. The air was a little brisk and leaves crunched under our feet. There was a couple mounds of snow here and there but nothing major. We could see the sunset through the tree branches and we were all talking and laughing. At first Ray would not stop touching me. It was a little awkward because my cousin and best friend were right there but when Anthony walked ahead of us, Ray followed. It was a relief to hang back and talk to Clara. Once we were in the park, just past the playground, Anthony took us to the edge of the lake next to the walking path. We looked across the water and Anthony told Clara about the ghost that he suspected was in the woods. Anthony hinted that he thought the spirit was evil

and Ray said that it looked just like his grandpa. I wasn't buying it. From where we were standing everything just felt right. It was calm and serene. The breeze felt nice and that crisp autumn air was intoxicating. I opened up my senses further but I still didn't feel anything wrong. When it was time to start down the path I drifted ahead of everyone. I could tell they were tense and a little freaked out and I didn't want to get mixed up in it. I was on cloud nine. That is at least until we took about a dozen steps into the wooded area. All of the sudden I didn't feel safe being so far ahead and chalked it up to feeling guilty about not walking with my friends and family. I hung back until I was walking with them.

It did not take long for Anthony to take the lead. Clara did not seem pleased to be taking that path so I stayed close to her. Ray went from Anthony to me and back again. He was smiling, happy. Anthony walked with determination. The further we walked the less eager and pleasant Ray became. By the time we crested the highest hill in the park he was positively despondent. Meanwhile Clara started asking if we could head back. I told her we were at the halfway point and she was thoroughly unimpressed with that response. All the while Anthony trudged on ahead. At the bottom of the hill Clara needed to stop. Anthony came back to us and Ray went to the nearest tree to peer into the dark that had

settled around us. I wanted to keep going. There was a prickling feeling against my skin and I felt very uncomfortable where we were. The trees were thick enough to block out the rest of the world and it was legitimately dark out but I kept my mouth shut. We only had a little further to go. I don't remember what scared everyone. Forgive me, but it was a decade ago and I have a blank spot in my memory here. I remember that we stopped and we were all nervous. The next memory I have is of Clara saying that she felt sick and either crying or about to. Ray was slowly creeping his way into the trees away from the path.

Most of all, I remember Anthony's panicked eyes and a look that just screamed, what do I do? Anthony has been the leader since before we could walk. He talks a big game and he makes the rules. He has always been the boss and he looked at me for help. Something in me clicked as soon as I saw that look in his eyes. Immediately, I told him, Get Clara out of here. I'll get Ray. For once, Anthony didn't argue. Usually, any bossy tone from me earned a quip or a fight, but he didn't even say anything back to me. He went straight to Clara and walked her back down the path. All the while, he kept a protective arm around her shoulders. They left and I was stuck

with Ray. For a second I didn't know what to do. Ray was stronger than me so I couldn't pull him out. He wouldn't look at me and he kept muttering something about his grandpa and going somewhere. He kept trying to walk into the trees and I begged him not to go. He responded by wrapping his arms around a skinny sapling and staring off into the dark. I tried to pull him away but he wouldn't budge. His muscles tensed and his brow furrowed when I touched him. In that moment I was scared he would hit me so I let him go. I pressed close to the nearest tree and tried to think of how I could convince him to leave. I guess I thought that whatever spirit he was connected with or wanted to connect with was what was keeping him there.

I reasoned that the only way I was going to get him to come along was if I opened myself up spiritually and tried to take some pressure off of him. If that meant getting some attention from whatever was there or pushing it away, I wasn't sure. I just felt that I had to try. I mentally envisioned letting all my guards down. For a second, I felt alright. I was annoyed with Ray and I wanted to leave, but I was okay. I thought about grabbing him again, but didn't get a chance when I felt like all the air in my lungs whooshed out of my body. The world was suddenly a blur and I felt myself being pulled through the trees by a

force I couldn't see. I remember everything was heavily laden with snow. Every branch I passed was on the verge of snapping from the weight and the ground ahead of me didn't have a single track or footprint. I couldn't stop and I couldn't breathe. Finally I was halted at the bottom of a tree. Above me a dark shadow stared down. It looked like the outline of a very large rotund monkey with a lion mane. It screamed out this grotesque pig-like squealing laugh at me. I knew it was laughing at me and that scared me all the more. I was on the verge of tears and I felt myself rocket back to my body like a slingshot. I heaved a nair and my eyes stung with tears. My body shook all over and that laugh just wouldn't

not stop replaying in my head. Ray didn't even look at me as I struggled to regain my senses. We had to leave. We were not safe and Ray wouldn't move. I looked back up the hill and saw the outline of a tall man next to something short. I couldn't figure out what the short thing was and decided it was a bench. I glanced at Ray and asked, do you see that? He didn't even look. When I returned my gaze to the hill, I couldn't find the man again. Fed up, I grabbed Ray's sleeve and hauled him the best that I could onto the path. I just kept saying, we have to go, we have to leave. Anthony and Clara already left. The more I talked to him and pulled, the more Ray tried to pull away. He was still talking about his grandpa. He wouldn't go with me until I yelled at him.

That thing is obviously not your grandpa. We're going. Slowly, he followed. I refused to go up that hill, so we finished the rest of the walking path. I helped Ray along until he started acting like himself again. The further we got, the more jovial he became. It was a little disturbing and I was still shaken up by what I experienced. I have had out-of-body experiences before, but nothing as awful as that. By the time we reached

the nearest gazebo, Ray was talkative and laughing. I wasn't listening. I just wanted out. I felt a lot better when Anthony met us at the playground. Clara wasn't with him. He was worried about us and said he couldn't leave us alone out there. Anthony took us to Clara. She was in the stairwell of the nearest apartment building, the one Ray lived in. Anthony knew the code because he and Ray were best friends. Clara had thrown up quite a bit. She wanted to go back to the apartment and she didn't want to go in those woods ever again. She was really shaken up and I was worried about her because she actually vomited. We walked back and the boys were in high spirits. We were not. Clara and I told my aunt what happened in private and she didn't seem surprised. She said

that Anthony and Ray had been carving pentagrams into the gazebo out there and she suspected that they were trying to summon something. She told them multiple times that they shouldn't do that, but they weren't the type to listen. Later, Anthony admitted that he took us out there because he wanted to test Clara. He wanted to know if she really was sensitive. He didn't seem to regret it in the slightest. He also let me know that there isn't a bench at the crest of the hill we were at when I told him what happened to me and Ray. I think all of our true colors shone that day and I still get chills when I think about what I saw. My mother shared this story with me.

Her and her friend, who shall remain nameless, were traveling after work from Great Falls, Montana for a camping trip at Holland Lake. The sky was darkened more than usual with impending storm clouds. Along the way they had found themselves inadvertently sandwiched in a three semi-convoy heading down the highway doing 55. As my mom and her friend passed Lincoln, Montana, a heavy downpour began, severely limiting their already limited field of vision. It was at this point that my mom and her friend were surprised when the passenger window completely The downpour began, severely limiting their already limited field of vision. It was at this point that my mom and her friend were surprised when the passenger window completely dropped,

in such a way that they were lucky the window didn't break. My mom and her friend looked at the now completely open window. There, they saw a figure that was hovering next to their open window, moving 55 miles per hour along with the vehicle. None of the semis seemed to react to this. My mom described the figure, of which she could only see the head and shoulders, as a man wearing a World War era gas mask. They immediately pulled over at a bar in Clearwater Junction where they received a free shot each the bartender commenting that they both look like they just saw a ghost fast forward to 1987 my mom comes across the just released communion by Whitley Stryber and

immediately freaks out she shows the picture to her friend. The first thing her friend did was scream, and they yell at my mother to never, ever bring the incident up again. My dad always worked away fitting floors. One day he got offered a pretty big job in Malta, a remote small island near Italy. The pay was great so we told him to go for it but didn't expect him to be working away for so long. Weeks had gone by and my dad hadn't finished yet so my mom suggested me and my sister catch a flight for the weekend to go and see him. I was really excited too having a relaxing weekend away to see my dad only that's not how it ended. When we got there we were staying in a small apartment house with three floors however the top floor was run down and abandoned. The apartment was quite large and had three rooms.

My mom stayed with my dad and I chose the room before my sister's so she went to look at her room. She came out in shock and fear and I said, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost. I joked, I want to sleep with you. There's a weird baby's cot in my room. I said okay and didn't think anything of it. Later that evening we went for some food and drinks. We got back and were quite tired and jet lagged so we headed to sleep. As me and my sister were trying to sleep we heard noises coming from the room above us and the sound of footsteps and furniture being moved around. This was weird too because the room was abandoned. Did you hear that? My sister said. I was thinking it was my imagination but when my sister said that I began to panic a bit. It's probably just the wind or something, let's just go back to sleep.

I said and brushed it off to the side. I got up and closed the door before heading off to sleep. Around 4am I woke up to a cold breeze and I opened my eyes to see the door wide open. I looked back at my sister and said, Did you open that? She moaned no and rolled over. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the door and my eyes took a shock as I saw an old lady standing in the doorway with long black hair and old sleeping gown that they would wear in Victorian times. I couldn't think so I rolled over and closed my eyes praying it was my

imagination. The next day was our last night there and we went for food and explored the island. When we got home we watched a few films and went to sleep. I had no problems sleeping that night however I still heard the footsteps in the room above. The next day we were heading home to the airport at about 3am when we got to the airport, my sister stopped me and what she said next sent shivers down my spine and every hair stood up on my body. I didn't want to tell you this until we had left but last night when you were asleep, I woke up and saw a child watching you sleep. A little boy around the age of one that would use the cot in the other room. I closed my eyes straight away and hoped it wasn't real. My mouth just fell open.

So I'm not going crazy then, I said to her. She shook her head in fear. Well, at least it's over. I just feel sorry for poor dad. He seemed to find it fine over there. I was getting ready to board the plane and wanted a book to read, so I headed to a shop to look for one. I was looking for about five minutes and then turned around and saw one side of the bookstore covered in books called The Ghosts of Malta. I was intrigued and decided to look at one. I got seated on the

plane and then opened the book and felt a tear of fear run down my face when reading this. I was staying in a little town called Valencia and I saw the town's name pop up on the book and this made me drop all belief I was being crazy and I knew what happened back there wasn't normal. It read, Valencia is a well-known town in Malta for the haunting of an old lady and her son watching people at night. I couldn't believe what I was reading and decided to bin it as soon as I got home. I don't know what happened when I was in Malta, but I knew I would never be returning. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, rLetsReadOfficial,

and give and receive feedback from the community, and maybe even hear your story featured 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 these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Links in the bio.

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