The Lets Read Podcast - 74: Episode 065 | Scary Pet & Kidnapping Stories | 25 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

Welcome to the sixty-fifth 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 Pets, Haunted Ships & Nearly Being Kidnapped... 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 think the happiest day of my life was the day my family moved into our first proper home together. My wife and I had finally pulled together enough of our savings to buy a house in the suburbs. This big old three-story thing that looked like something out of a storybook. To go along with the picture-perfect scene of domestic bliss, we bought a dog. Our six-year-old daughter had been asking for one ever since she learned to talk.

Her first words were actually, doggy, and then, good doggy. She'd point it to them in parks, smile, and giggle when she saw them in her early learning books. It became something of an early obsession to her. to them in parks, smile and giggle when she saw them in her early learning books. It became something of an early obsession to her. So the day after the happiest day of my life was the second happiest. The day I got to see the look in my daughter's eyes when we brought home the dog of her dreams, a labradoodle named Elsa. After a few months of us living in such a quiet, nice neighborhood, something happened that made us all extremely nervous.

The first missing pet poster didn't cause too much alarm. I mean, it sucked for the family whose dog went missing. Their kids were devastated. But at the risk of sounding heartless, these things happen, especially since the area we lived in was often visited by coyotes in search of leftover garbage food. One of the first things I did was make sure the garden fence in our backyard was tall and secure, but when the second missing pet poster went up, the neighborhood started to get a little more concerned. A homeowners association meeting had people bringing up the possibilities of mountain lions, hawks, or even bears being responsible for our missing pets. A consensus was reached to keep an eye out for whatever was responsible. So one evening, a couple of weeks after the HOA meeting, I'm home alone, making myself a quick snack in the kitchen.

My wife is out with our daughter and our dog, Elsa, was out in the backyard. She's always been quite a vocal dog, barking or whining at anything and everything, so the occasional round of barking wasn't anything I was too concerned about. Besides, if that was her protecting the neighborhood from coyotes, then all the power to her. I didn't care if it was slightly irritating. So I'm done making my sandwich and I'm sitting in the living room watching some baseball highlights. The Red Sox are losing, as usual, and Elsa is barking up a storm in the backyard. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary, you see, so I'm sort of laughing to myself,

thinking she's just annoyed at yet another terrible sock season as I am. But then, out of nowhere, her barking begins to get more intense, way more intense. Like it's not just barks anymore, it's a mix of barking, whining, and yelping, like there's something close and she's scared of it or something. So I go out back into the yard, reassure her a little with some petting before poking my head over the fence to make sure it's all clear. I half expected to see a little pack of coyotes or god forbid a black bear, but there was nothing. Nothing at all in the woods behind the house. Maybe she'd caught scent of a squirrel or something. something small enough to be prey

and get her excited enough to bark like that. I went back inside to enjoy the game, or not enjoy it, whatever, because like half an hour later the same terrified barking starts up again. I immediately get up to head outside, intent on bringing Elsa inside so we don't cop a noise complaint from a neighbor or something. But as soon as I do, I see something that almost makes my heart stop. Elsa is barking alright, barking at the shapes of a man trying to climb over our fence. She's also barking at a guy who's actually inside our backyard, dressed in black, face mask on. He had a leash in his hand. A leash he's trying to get on Elsa's collar. I just rushed

into action, bursting out of my back door and into the garden, screaming for them to get out. That's when I see the gun on the guy's hip. I panic, realizing I'm lacking a weapon myself, and tear back inside to grab a knife. But when I turn, the guy's already got the pistol drawn. I run further into the house after locking the door, grabbing a cell phone before hammering 911 into the touchscreen. Those were some of the longest moments of my entire life. Hanging on the line with that dispatcher not knowing whether the gunman would break in and shoot me or whether I'd hear a single shot from the backyard as the guy cut his losses and executed Elsa the dispatcher discouraged me from

doing so but I couldn't help but sneak downstairs to get a view of the backyard. I had no idea what sight would greet me, but I was overcome with relief when I saw. There was Elsa, wagging her tail at the back door. No sign of any intruders in the backyard. When the cops showed up, I gave them a description and all that jazz, but I really didn't think it'd do any good. Those guys looked like professionals. They were prepped, armed and masked up. That's when the cops told me that they already had a lead. A gang that was stealing thoroughbreds and popular dog breeds to be sold out of state. Professional dog nappers. Can you believe that? The cops had done all they could, so they were just about to leave when I gave Elsa a little stroke around her chin. When I drew my hand back, there was blood on it.

My jaw dropped. I looked at the cops, they looked back at me. It appeared that they weren't entirely out of luck after all. Long story short, a forensics team was set up at the back of our house searching for blood trails. They found something alright. The whole dog napping thing isn't a huge crime, but given that they were armed, it qualified as a violent home invasion which warranted a much heavier police presence. But they didn't even need the DNA. The cops picked up a guy for stealing medical supplies from a pharmacy. When they looked him over at the county jail, he had a dog bite on his left forearm. They got a warrant for the guy's apartment and found three missing dogs locked up in tiny cages, horrific conditions for an animal to be kept in. They charged the guy with

home invasion as opposed to dog napping since it carries a much heavier sentence. We attended his pre-trial hearing at the county courthouse. Turns out the guy was an absolute scumbag with a rap sheet longer than a Stephen King book. But what else would you expect from a guy he tried to straight up steal a family dog from their own backyard. Lesson being, keep an eye out on your pets people. You never know who's watching. I've struggled with depression since my early teens. It's been something that's caused serious interpersonal problems with friends, family and employers.

But I've worked steadily using therapy and medications to keep a lid on it and by my mid-twenties I thought I had it under control. That was until I went through a really bad breakup, the kind that splits a whole circle of friends in two. Long story short, she cheated, told lies, minds were made up, and sides were taken. It was truly awful, and it had my depression coming back with a vengeance. By the time it came to me, deciding to end my own life, I knew I'd hit rock bottom, but I knew exactly what to do. I checked myself into a mental health facility and stayed there for just over a week until my mood was stabilized. I ended up meeting up with

a friend and telling them that I felt that there was a hole left in my life, one that my girlfriend used to occupy. He suggested I get a dog. I was confused and annoyed by the comment at first. I mean, how could an animal make an adequate substitute for a person? But once he had a chance to explain himself a little better, I started to see his point. I would keep my mind occupied and give me something to dedicate myself to. It would make a companion. But most importantly, it would give me the attention and affection I needed to start putting myself together again. I went from against the idea to calling up an adoption agency within a couple of hours.

Within a week, I had brought home a golden Labrador retriever named Daisy. Something else that would prove a major boon that my friend had neglected to touch on was the routine it would bring. A chaotic lifestyle is a breeding ground for depression and other personality disorders, so the fact that I had woken up at a certain time, fed her at a certain time, walked her at a certain time, it was all really beneficial and kept my mind off of things that would drag me down. One of my favorite things to do with Daisy was to take her on her morning walks. Getting some fresh air in the lungs, starting my day with the joy of playing with my dog, it was the best thing for me. I mean I don't doubt that mood stabilizers did help but the real benefit came from developing a meaningful relationship with an animal. Crazy I know but life is crazy. So I'm out with Daisy one morning, taking her around the public park that's just a short

walk from my apartment. It's a beautiful morning, crisp but bright and I'm watching Daisy running up and down the grass, chasing any birds which are foolish enough to land. Part of our route around the park takes us past a kids play area, you know the kind with jungle gyms, swings, and slides, that sort of thing. The way the path is laid out, there's like this big cluster of bushes that blocks the playground from sight for a few yards, but if you follow the path, eventually the playground comes into view. This particular morning, instead of bounding into the bushes in search of potential playmates or prey, Daisy just stops dead. She half stares into the bushes, half sniffs the air for a few moments before letting out a single muffled bark. This wasn't like normal behavior at all, and as any dog owner will tell you, I knew something was wrong the moment her demeanor

changed. She came back to my heel without even me telling her to, whining like there was something terrifying hiding in those bushes. I immediately took out Daisy's leash, clipping it to her collar before slowly carrying on along the path. I was tempted to shout hello or something at the bush since Daisy was alerting so much but I couldn't hear or see a thing. It's not like they were so dense as to properly obscure anything. Daisy is still acting pretty skittishly as we make our way past the bushes and lets out another few barks as we're passing the kids playground. I tell her to shush looking back briefly but seeing nothing unusual before I continue to try and calm her down. She's pulling on the leash really hard and since I picked it up from the dollar store and I didn't exactly have much faith in it,

she's still looking back at the playground so I take another look back to see what she's barking at. It was only then that my tired eyes registered what I'd failed to pick up on the first time I'd looked. What was oddly camouflaged among the swing set? Hanging there, along with the plastic strings, was the lifeless shape of a person. I didn't know what else to do. I knew I had to call someone, but I just didn't have it in me to stick around to guide the cops in or whoever responds to these kinds of things. I just kept walking, feeling like I was about to have a panic attack as I took out my phone and dialed 911. I did the best that I could to give an accurate information between shaky and panicky breaths.

The dispatcher was nice, She tried to keep me calm. I remember just sitting down in the dirt in my work clothes, petting Daisy until I had calmed down enough to walk back home. I called into work and tried to keep my mind clear throughout the day, but it was on the evening news too. I couldn't escape it. It was horrible seeing the limp form of something that used to be a person just hanging there in the morning light. But the thing that really got to me was that just a month or so before, I had been tempted to do a similar thing myself. It was just too close to home. That could have been me hanging there, for some oblivious dog walker to come across.

It was a hideous thought. I never wanted anyone to find me like that, stiff as a board and blue in the face. It must have been a horrible way to die. But the horror of it, and how it reflected on me, isn't the thing that really scares me about this whole thing. It's how Daisy acts on her morning walks, almost half a year after the event.

She still goes quiet as we approach the playground, still lets out the off-muffled bark despite there not being a soul in sight. Every time we walk past, she stops and stares at that old rusty swing set, as if there's still a body hanging there by the neck in the bright morning light. So this whole thing starts when I moved in with my ex-girlfriend. Obviously she was my girlfriend at the end and we were very much in love. It was one of those whirlwind romance type things so after just six months of being together and after countless hints from her that the big loft apartment she called home was far too big for one person, I finally moved in.

We were very different people, different personalities, different lifestyles, but you know what they say, opposites attract, right? One thing we definitely had in common was our love for animals. She kept a few small pets, a corn snake, a cockatiel, stuff like that. Only she took her love of the natural world a little bit further than I did. She was a vegetarian for the first few months of our relationship, but not long after she moved on to being entirely vegan. Now, this didn't bother me at all since she didn't mind me eating meat, it was her personal choice not to. She even cooked me food with meat in it every so often and I'd be lying if I said I didn't super appreciate that.

But after a while we talked about getting a larger pet, a dog or maybe a cat. And here's the thing about that, a couple getting a pet is basically training for a baby. If you can manage the pet's care and look after the thing as a team, there's a good chance you're compatible to start a family. So one day we made our way to a local animal rescue center to take a look at the dogs on offer. She might have been a little undecided on which one to bring home. She loved them all apparently. But as soon as I laid eyes on this big cuddly looking German Shepherd

I knew which one I wanted to give a home to. It took some convincing as she was torn between my choice and some of the smaller, cuter dogs that were available. But eventually I talked her around and we ended up leaving with the female German Shepherd who was named Jazz. So as I mentioned, my ex was heavily into the whole vegan thing, but she was into the organic food movement too. I was down with that too, don't get me wrong. The organic food shop she used to buy my chicken and pork from did absolutely amazing quality meat.

So when my ex mentioned that she would source some natural healthy dog food for Jazz, I was obviously approving. But the first time she brings a bag of it home, Jazz won't touch it. At first I'm pretty confident it's because I've been spoiling her. Part of her dog training had involved me picking up a pack of cooked chicken from a local supermarket, then walking her into a nearby park for training. Whenever she was a good girl, she'd get a piece of chicken. So if you spend all day eating fresh chicken breasts, I can get why you'd be adverse to actual dog food. The treats had to stop. It sucked, but whatever it took to acclimatize Jazz to her new home.

But as the days went by, Jazz still refused to eat her dog food. She'd walk up to the bowl, sniff at it, then just wander away looking disappointed with the offering. It was only when she got really, really hungry did she actually try eating the stuff. We were overjoyed. My ex seemed particularly happy that Jazz was finally beginning to feel at home. But not long after she'd finished the bowl, Jazz vomited up all of the organic dog food all over the kitchen floor. We were beginning to get extremely worried at this point. For me personally, it came down to the idea that we may have inadvertently purchased a

sick or dying dog. That would be nightmarish, getting attached to the poor thing only to have it die not long after. I wasn't ready for that at all. So the search began to try to find out what was wrong with her. I took Jazz straight to the vet the next day, hoping a checkup would shed light on the issue. It did, and I never ever expected to hear just what they told me. This dog is extremely malnourished, the vet said. That didn't exactly come as a surprise, but the reason behind it shocked me to the core. What exactly are you

feeding her? The vet asked. I explained that my girlfriend at the time was feeding her this organic stuff. The vet seemed immediately skeptical. She politely asked me to go home, then call her with the name of the dog food so she could check it out herself. I don't want to give you the exact brand name or anything. I don't want to get sued for defamation. I honestly couldn't afford it right now, even if I might win. But I did as the vet asked and called her back with information she'd asked for. But then I told her the name of the food. She sighed, like she'd heard it all before.

That food doesn't meet the nutritional requirements of a dog, she explained. There's very little protein in it, and what protein is present comes entirely from plant matter. Essentially, my girlfriend was trying to feed our pet vegan dog food. I confronted her about it the moment she got home from work. I expected her to be sorry, to have made some kind of mistake. But instead of being apologetic, she got all self-righteous.

It was honestly dumbfounding. She said something along the lines of how it was monstrous to force an animal to eat other animals. Yep, you read that right. She thought it was cruel to feed a dog who needs animal protein to survive food that contained meat or animal tallow. What's more, she told me she'd been working really hard trying to train Jazz to like the dog food and that I'd messed up all of her efforts. Like it was me who was the bad guy and not her for literally nearly murdering our dog with freaking vegan dog food. Apparently it was a case of go along with what she wanted or move out. So here's the thing. When we got her all of the paperwork was filled out in my name.

Every official document listed me as Jazz's owner, not my ex. I had a plan laid out before the sun went down. I moved out a few days later, back into my parents house with Jazz in tow. At first my mom was a little apprehensive about having such a big dog in her nice neat little home, but she came around to the idea as soon as I told her the whole story. How my ex had almost killed her because some stupid ideal meant more to her than actually looking after an animal. It just strikes me as seriously ironic that the same people who claim to love animals more than anything else are the same

people who have no problem inflicting unimaginable cruelty on the same things they claim to love so much. I've always liked parrots. I was really into pirates when I was a kid. I used to watch Pirates of the Caribbean on loop sometimes while dressed in this little pirate costume. I'm pretty sure my mom has some pretty embarrassing pictures floating around somewhere too, but I digress. Obviously a big part of pirate lore is having a pet parrot. A colorful feathered friend who makes even more colorful remarks while perched on your shoulder. When I was younger, I'd beg my parents for a pet parrot, promising I'd look after it all by myself. But they refused, we already had a dog and a cat and they were trouble enough. Years later, once I'd moved out

and had a steady paying job, I decided it was time to get a pet. Naturally, a parrot was one of the first things that came to mind. After looking in the purchasing one I learned two things. Firstly some breeds of parrot are extremely intelligent not just because of their ability to mimic human speech. Ornithologists have claimed that African grey parrots have shown to perform at the cognitive level of a four to six year old child in some tasks, as well as being able to learn number sequences and recognize human voices. While browsing online, I happened across the story of one particular African Grey who managed

to escape from its Japanese owner's apartment and get itself lost. The bird actually managed to make its way back to the owner by repeating his name and address to whoever it met. The second thing I learned is that African greys are not cheap. Purchasing a young, healthy bird from a breeder can cost just shy of $5,000, which was $5,000 that I just could not afford. And that's not even including all the proper perches, cages, and grooming equipment to keep the bird happy and healthy. Dejected, I didn't quite give up hope on my dream pet. So I started calling around various animal shelters to see if they happened to be housing any African greys.

I must have called upwards of 50 animal shelters in three different states, but eventually, to my absolute joy, I actually found a shelter that had one available for adoption. I put the phone down, got into my car and immediately drove down to the shelter. What I found when I got there was an older bird who'd suffered a few health problems in the past but was perfectly house trained and friendly. And its name? Captain Jack. I couldn't believe my luck. It was like it was meant to be. I filled out a few papers, then took Captain Jack home that evening. One of the things the lady at the shelter mentioned was that Captain Jack might be a little shy for the first week or so in his new home. It's not unusual for such intelligent animals to be sad to leave a familiar

place or to be overly wary of new surroundings. He might not make a sound for weeks but eventually he began to relax and start being vocal again. The lady was right. Captain Jack was a bit shy for the first few days. We did some trust exercises, me leaving food in the palm of my hand just like the lady at the shelter had shown me. He'd even started letting me pet him much sooner than I'd imagined. But at no point did he make so much as a squeak and quite frankly, I couldn't wait to hear him talk for the first time. Only when he did, it wasn't the happy occasion I thought it would be. It was late on a Friday.

I was lazing around, watching TV, debating on whether or not to just call it and go to bed. When I heard it, I almost jumped out of my skin. I see you. I didn't even realize it was Captain Jack at first, but when I did, he spoke again. I can smell you. I should have been happy. I should have been elated that Captain Jack had finally gotten relaxed enough to speak. But I wasn't. I was just confused. What did you say, boy? But Jack said nothing. He just looked back at me, cocking his head. Still confused, I gave him a little pet on the head then headed to bed to get some sleep. The next morning as

soon as I walked downstairs to get a coffee, I remembered the weird stuff that Captain Jack had said. I walked into the living room to say good morning to him hoping he didn't come out with something even stranger hi i said in a cheery voice i let out a huge sigh of relief returning the cheerful greeting before fetching my coffee and a little feed for him he kept up the good behavior for the rest of the day too only coming out with the odd hi there or wow. It was simple stuff but I got a real kick out of it. But once the sun went down Captain Jack went quiet again. Despite me allowing him to roam freely around my apartment at this point he actually opted to return to his cage. He stayed there skulking around not coming out at. But it wasn't long before he spoke again. Where are you hiding?

He hissed. I didn't move. I didn't speak. I just wanted to see where all this weird talk was going. Maybe I'd figure out just where he'd picked it all up. Where'd I find you, little rats? It sounded angry. I see your nightmares.

It was weird, discordant stuff, but it sent a chill through me as I tried to imagine where he'd been hearing things like this. But the next thing it said actually made me terrified. No! It screeched. Please, no more. Please, no more. I'll be good. It repeated these phrases over and over again, until I rushed into the TV room and shushed him.

Captain Jack went quiet and actually seemed apologetic afterwards, hopping into the kitchen and rubbing his head against my pant leg. I contacted the animal shelter just a day or two later once the weekend was over to find out exactly what was going on with the parrot. If you haven't put it together by now, and I don't blame you, I didn't quite realize what was happening either. Captain Jack had been rescued from an abusive household. The father had apparently beaten his wife and children regularly and the parrot had witnessed everything. I felt awful for him and the woman at the shelter said she actually understood if I opted to return him to their care. But I didn't. I couldn't. Captain Jack had a safe, loving home for maybe the first time in his life, and there was no way I was taking become an animal doctor, and honestly,

the truth is that if I had known that I was going to be dealing with fearsome, biting terriers, panic-stricken piglets, or even cows stuck up trees, chances are I may have considered another profession entirely. But from the age of nine years old, all I wanted to do was help animals. My mom and dad think this stems from me accidentally throwing my teddy bear into the fire as a kid and never being able to forgive myself for not being able to repair the resulting scorch damage. In 2003, after five years of hard studying at Manchester University, I finally qualified as a veterinary surgeon.

I subsequently worked in Yorkshire for eight years before moving to Lincolnshire, where I was a partner in, and later the full owner of the practice in Horncastle, the benevolent veterinary group where from 2013 to the present day we deal with the medical issues of both livestock and pets. Obviously, with it being my dream job, I find the work incredibly fulfilling, but it does have its downsides, mainly having to work weekends and nights. I miss out on a lot of significant family moments because of it, and I can't tell you how much regret that fills me with. Veterinary emergencies usually fall into one of three categories. We call these the A, B, or C of genuine emergencies. A for accidents, B for births, and C for collapses. However, there's a sort of scary fourth option that no one likes to talk about. We call this one D for danger. Throughout my career I have

dealt with many hazardous or outright dangerous animals but there was only one occasion where I felt in serious danger of actually being hurt or killed. This was when I had the seemingly straightforward job of vaccinating an English bull terrier. Despite rumors to the contrary, English bull terriers are usually a good breed to deal with, but when they are in a bad mood they can be very difficult to treat safely. But in this particular case, the dog's owner parked outside the clinic and refused to bring the dog inside. At first they explained this was because there were other dogs in the waiting room, but it wasn't long until I suspected some other

behavioral issues. Instead of bringing him inside, they tied his two leads to some outside railings, pulling them tight so that the dog was unable to move. So when I went out, he was already snarling and growling, evidently in an immense amount of distress. Most owners get terribly distressed when we have to restrain their animals and some even flat out refuse any kind of needles, even though the treatment is to benefit of their pet. But these owners seem to have no problem doing it themselves. I found that deeply worrying. However, I quickly decided this was no time to be a hero. Other patients were waiting to be seen. I would simply have to get the job done for the time being and maybe call the RSPCA for a welfare check later on.

Nervously, I walked up to the restrained terrier and inserted the needle as gently as I could. Yelping and howling in pain, he only redoubled his effort to get free. I felt a spasm of fear as his violent struggling caused both collars to slip forward over his head. The livid hound was almost free. The female half of the owning couple immediately began screaming, Oh my god, quick, get back in the surgery, get back in the bloody surgery. I'm not one to dismiss a piece of sound advice like that, but I had one big problem. This furious barking ball of snarling aggression was blocking my way. One option was to jump onto the roof of a nearby van, but I thought better of it when I realized

the dog could probably jump much higher than I ever could. It was crucial that I didn't display too much fear in front of the other clients watching these antics through the window of the practice but still I was absolutely terrified. My only realistic option was to take a running leap over the top of him and dart in through the door slamming it shut behind me and smiling politely at the grinning customers waiting inside which which to my absolute shock, I actually managed to do. I never saw that bold terrier ever again. As a veterinarian, it can not only be your life and limbs that are at risk, sometimes it's your hearing that takes a battering. As veterinarian students, we have to gain

experience with a range of animals and I happen to get a work experience place on a pig farm. One incident had a sow and her two week old piglets being moved across the farm to a larger pen where they would have freer movement. A couple of us moved the sow from the crate to her new pen and left her there. Held inside by a metal barrier about a meter or two high. We then returned to the crate to collect the piglets but in this case their new pen happened to be a little too spacious. Our big mistake was to move the sow first because what do little piglets do when they are distressed and can't find their mother? They squeal loudly, ear piercingly loudly in fact, at the top of their voices.

I was the first to arrive at the pen carrying the piglets when at that moment the sow ran towards her squealing offspring and jumped up to rest her front feet on top of the barrier, grunting and groaning with her open mouth just inches from my face. Have you ever seen a pig's teeth? They can be horribly sharp if they're not clipped correctly. But I might be a little bit crazy, but I'm definitely not stupid. I did the only thing possible and tossed the screaming little things into the pen. They duly ran to safety, as did I. Then the bloke behind me, also carrying two squealing piglets,

approached for his turn. But the sow now decided on a different approach. And like a racehorse, she cleared the barrier in a single loop. My piglet-carrying colleague leapt out of her way and had no choice to drop the piglets and free. The sow was huge too. There's no thinking how much damage she'd done if she'd actually got a hold of one of us. Over the course of my career, I have endured all manners of injuries. Stapling my finger to a lamb's genitals is a particularly standout moment for me.

But the most serious injury I sustained was actually away from work, taking part in the sport I love, distance running. Last year I was involved in a near fatal accident during a race and the injuries I sustained sadly brought an end to my clinical career. I'm still not used to the idea of not being a real vet anymore. I miss getting my hands dirty and the contact with clients and their animals. On some level I even miss being attacked, chased, falling over, and being surprised every day. It was a beautiful sunny day, just a few light wisps of cloud in an otherwise crystal clear blue sky. 22-year-old U.S. Marine Sergeant Stephen Reichenbach was trudging his way up a steep green hill, his scouting dog, Major, moving steadily along beside him.

He was on a mission, only he wasn't supposed to be. He was a short-timer, meaning his tour of Vietnam was coming to an end. Many American military units kept their short-timers safe from patrols and combat duty, as a soldier getting killed in action just a few days before the end of the tour was incredibly bad for unit morale. But Sergeant Reichenbach wasn't a week or even a few days away from going home. That beautifully sunny day was supposed to be his very last in Vietnam, his last day with his scouting dog Major. The replacement handlers had already arrived in country and were ready to pick up the leashes as soon as Reichenbach

and his fellow handlers left Vietnam to make their way back home. But when the request came in for a dog team to go out with a group of marines on a patrol mission, Reichenbach willingly volunteered himself. After all, it was his one last chance to work with his working dog Major. Weighing in at almost 100 pounds, Major, a great Dane shepherd mix with a creamy off-white color, had a large and intimidating presence. The sight of such a huge dog would strike fear into the hearts of the enemy. Reichenbach began to notice that once the Viet Cong saw Major coming through the jungle toward them, they would trigger their ambushes early out of pure terror. Major's size alone was enough to put the fear of God into them.

It was standard practice for U.S. Marine dog handlers to train with their canines back in the States before deploying to Vietnam. But unlike many of the other handlers who had been shipped over to Vietnam in 1966, Reichenbach hadn't trained with Major before deploying. Instead, he had been paired up with the dog once he arrived in country. The dog handler Major he had been paired with before their arrival in Vietnam had been KIA just a few weeks prior to Reichenbach's arrival. Yet in spite of the fact that they were grouped together purely out of convenience,

Reichenbach and Major developed a rapport from the very first moment they met. The young marine and his newfound furry friend had many similar personality traits. They were both chilled, even-keeled types who didn't waste much energy getting excited about much of anything. A quiet, well-disciplined dog, Major never barked and he never growled. He was never shaken by the cacophony of gunfire around him. Reichenbach never saw Major act up at all, except for the one time they came across a cat, a kitten that weighed no more than three pounds. But as soon as Major caught the scent of this little creature on the breeze, he went nuts, moving so fast to chase the cat he nearly ragged his handler into the dirt.

On their final day in Vietnam together, they both marched up the hill, which was mostly bare, offering no rocks or trees to find cover behind. Shortly after, one of the marines and the company stepped into a Pungi stake trap, a deep pit lined with sharp bamboo spikes. One of the spears went right through his boot and into his foot. While the medic was giving the wounded man treatment, Reichenbach turned around to walk away with Major and was hit with a bad feeling. He was suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that something wasn't quite right. That's when a mine exploded. A burst of red-hot, deadly shrapnel sprayed out behind it, cutting into six of the marines and killing four of them.

Reichenbach took a piece of the jagged metal to his upper right leg and left hip, causing precious life's blood to pour from the open wounds. Then Major, the dog that never growled, that was never freaked out by the cracking sound of gunfire or artillery shells, lay down at the wounded Reichenbach's side and barred his teeth. Major would not let anyone come near his handler. He would protect his master with his life. The Marines frantically hurried to get Reichenbach the medical attention he so desperately needed, but they had to get through Major first, who nipped and barked at them, unable to understand that they were trying to help his wounded friend.

When the Marines finally got a muzzle on the dog, the company commander, Captain Walter Boomer, hoisted Major up and put him on the medical evacuation helicopter right on top of the wounded Reichenbach. As the chopper descended back at the base, the first thing the waiting medic saw was a huge hound, covered in blood, bearing down on them. It was a sight to behold. That was the last time Reichenbach would ever see Major. The Marine Sergeant would spend the next three months of his service recuperating in a series of different military hospitals before finally flying back stateside. Meanwhile, Major was immediately paired up with a replacement handler, and as one of Reichenbach's fellow marines would tell him later, when this new handler went to meet his new dog, Major was still covered in his old handler's blood.

After Vietnam, and for the rest of his life, Reichenbach would never own another dog. After the war ended, he made no attempts to try to track down Major the way that some of the other dog handlers did, sending inquiries after their dogs in the hopes of adopting them. At one point, someone sent Reichenbach an email saying they'd found an official military document describing how Major had passed away of a jungle disease that had been killing off many of their dogs. But even if Major was still alive by the time the United States forces pulled out of Vietnam, he, like all but a few of the dogs still in country, would have been left behind. What's worse, many of these military dogs, met with an unhappy end,

likely were euthanized by the South Vietnamese army with whom they were left, or worse. Many of the handlers didn't find out for years that their canine partners never made it out of Vietnam alive. This is possibly the single darkest moment in the entire history of war dogs, especially considering how valuable they were to US troops. An estimated 4,000 dogs served in the war, leading patrols with their handlers through dense jungle terrain. Overall, they are credited with saving tens of thousands of lives through sniffing out booby traps and ambushes. When he got out of the Marine Corps, Reichenbach never had another dog, but he still thinks of Major. Whenever some website asks for the name of his first pet as a security question, Reichenbach always lists Major,

even though he wasn't really his first dog or really a pet. He was something more. He was a good boy, he says. He deserved better than he got, but he pauses, thinking for a moment. It was a useful life. Have you ever wanted an unusual pet? Dogs, cats, or the odd goldfish might be all well and good for certain people, but some lean towards a more unconventional choice of furry friends. It has not been completely unheard of for some wealthy owners to purchase lions, tigers, bears, or even primates.

This is the story of one primate in particular, a chimpanzee by the name of Travis. Travis was born at the Missouri Chimpanzee Sanctuary just outside of Festus on October 21st, 1995. When he was just three years old, he was adopted by Sondra and Jerome Harold, who took Travis all the way back to their Stanford, Connecticut home. At first, in an effort to socialize him, the Harold's took Travis everywhere with them. They would take him to work with them, and he would often accompany them on shopping trips to local supermarkets. Travis grew to be an incredibly intelligent, capable animal. He was able to use keys to open doors, drink wine from a stemmed glass, water plants, feed hay to horses, and even dress himself.

He was also so fond of ice cream that he memorized the schedule of passing ice cream trucks. During an interview, the Heralds claimed that Travis was able to use a computer and the TV's remote control, and that he was a huge fan of baseball. As an animal collector, Travis had appeared in several television shows and commercials including spots for Pepsi and Old Navy. He had also appeared on the Maury Povich Show, The Man Show, and a television pilot that featured Sheryl Crow and Michael Moore. It wasn't long before Travis wasn't only famous in his hometown, he was well known all over the United States. But despite growing up around humans becoming somewhat socialized, Travis wasn't exactly perfectly behaved. In October of 2003, Travis escaped from Harold's vehicle at a busy intersection.

It was on the loose for several hours while he held up traffic. The incident apparently began after a pedestrian threw something at the car that went through a partially open window and struck Travis while they were stopped at a traffic light. Frightened and angry, Travis promptly unbuckled his seatbelt, opened the car door, and chased the man but did not catch him. When police arrived, they lured the chimpanzee into the car several times only to have Travis let himself out another door and occasionally chase the officers around the car. The incident led to the passing of a Connecticut law prohibiting people from keeping primates weighing more than 50 pounds as pets and requiring owners of exotic pets to apply for permits. The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection did not enforce the law of the Harold's because they had owned 200-pound Travis for so long that

they did not believe Travis posed a public safety risk. Five and a half years later, on February 16, 2009, 55-year-old friend of Sondra Harold, Sharla Nash, stopped by to visit her. When she arrived, she found that Travis had taken Sandra's car keys and was refusing to give them back. In an effort to get Travis back inside the house to retrieve the keys, Sharla Nash picked up one of Travis' favorite toys, a Tickle Me Elmo, and showed it to the chimpanzee. Travis was familiar with Nash, who had also worked at the Harold's family car towing business, although Nash had a different hairstyle at the time of the attack, which may have confused and alarmed the chimp.

To their absolute horror, Travis began attacking Sharla Nash, inflicting devastating injuries to her face and limbs. Sondra Harold, then 70 years old, attempted to stop Travis by hitting him with a shovel and stabbing him with a butcher knife. The chimp turned around, she said as if to say, why would you do that mom? But this didn't stop the attack. In fact, the animal grew even angrier. Harold then called 911 and pleaded for help. Travis's screams can be heard in the background of the tape as Sandra pleaded for police who initially believed the call to be a hoax until she started screaming something that sent chills through the dispatcher who heard them.

He's eating her. He's eating her. Oh my god, he's eating her. Terrified emergency medical services waited for armed police backup before approaching the house. Travis walked up to the police car when it arrived, tried to open a locked passenger door, and smashed a side view mirror. Then, he went calmly around to the driver's side door and opened it, at which point a police officer shot him several times. Screaming in pain, Travis fled back into the house where he was found lying dead next to his cage. The emergency medical teams described Nash's injuries as absolutely horrendous. In the 72 hours that followed the attack, Nash underwent almost 10 hours of surgery on her face and hands by four separate teams of surgeons, the hospital providing counseling to its staff members who initially

treated her because of the extraordinarily brutal nature of Nash's wounds. Paramedics noted that she had lost her hands, nose, eyes, lips, and mid-face bone structure, as well as receiving significant brain tissue injuries. Doctors reattached her jaw, but announced on April of 2019 that Nash would be blind for life. Her injuries made her a possible candidate for an experimental face transplant surgery. After initial treatment at Stanford Hospital, Nash was transferred to the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family started a trust fund to raise money to pay her unfathomable medical bills and support her daughter. Nash revealed her damaged face in public for the first time on the Oprah Winfrey Show on November 11, 2009.

She was not at the time in physical pain from the attack, and family members said she hoped to leave the Cleveland Clinic soon. Pictures have surfaced on the internet displaying Nash's face before and after the attack. Two years later, Nash underwent transplant surgery performed by a team at the Harvard Teaching Affiliate, Brigham and Women's Hospital, receiving a donated face and hands. The hands transplant was initially successful, but because Nash developed pneumonia shortly thereafter, doctors were forced to remove her newly transplanted hands due to the infection and resulting poor circulation. In accordance with standard operating procedure, Travis' head was taken to the state laboratory for a rabies test and the blood was taken to the University of Connecticut for a necropsy.

His brain tested negative for rabies, but there was evidence that Xanax remained in his system. Necropsy results in 2009 confirmed the chimp was overweight and had deep stab wounds to his back and sides. The remains were cremated at All Pets Crematory in Stanford on February 25, 2009. The toxicology reports confirmed Sandra's statement that she had given Travis Xanax laced tea the day of the attack, which could have exacerbated his aggression. Xanax is known to be a short-acting, potent anti-anxiety drug that can cause disinhibition and disorientation, and occasionally paradoxical reactions of rage and mania. On May 25, 2010,

almost a year and a half after the attack, Sandra Harrell died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm at the age of 72. Ms. Harold had suffered a series of heartbreaking losses over the last several years, beginning with the death of her daughter who was killed in a car accident, then her husband, then her beloved chimp Travis, as well as the tragic maiming of her friend and employee, Sharla Nash. In the end, her heart, which had been broken so many times before, could take no more. This happened 15 years ago when I was 19. At the time I worked on cargo vessels and this was my third trip to sea. The ship was around 30 years old when I was on board which doesn't sound old but it's pretty old for a ship. The vessel had been refitted a few times by the

time I was on board. I won't say the name of the ship as I will be naming people by position so it would potentially lead to people being identified. For anyone who works in a similar job you will know what it's like being the young, relatively new guy on an all-male team with people who've lived and worked together for months or even years. In essence you feel like an outsider and have to prove your worth and also you can expect to have a load of practical jokes played on you. So you can imagine when I joined the ship and the guys are all talking about a ghost on board. I was like yeah whatever. They asked me if I believed in ghosts and I said no which was actually a lie as I had experienced things before which I posted about previously. Anyway they just said something

like you will soon and I just laughed it off. I think I'd been on board for about a week when I first heard a loud knock at the cabin door. I had my own cabin, but it was a small one in the middle of the accommodation with no porthole. I opened the door, and there was no one there. I definitely thought I was getting pranked. This started happening regularly and it would be at all sorts of times, often waking me while I was sleeping with three loud knocks. Every time I tried to jump up and open the door as quickly as possible to catch the person but I never saw anyone or even heard them running away. Now my cabin was roughly in the middle of a corridor, I'd say around 20 meters long, so you'd have to run 10 meters to get around a corner. A few times I felt like I'd opened the door quick enough that I should have seen them.

This got me thinking maybe it was someone in a neighboring cabin. I asked who was in the cabins next to mine. There was an old guy in one cabin who was in his 60s and I had never seen him move fast enough. The others were empty. This is quite common on older ships as they used to get built to house more crew but ships sail with less and less crew these days. The knocking continued until one day I was at my wardrobe hanging my shirt up literally next to the cabin door when it knocked. I opened it so fast I should have been face to face with them. The corridor was empty. That's when I realized there was

something else going on. After that I started taking more notice of what other people were saying and I also started paying attention to the oppressive feeling on board. I had been on two ships previously, and I sailed on four more after this one, and none had an atmosphere like that. Things got worse after that. One of my jobs at night would be making rounds of the ship to check the cargo is secure and there are no problems. You take a radio with you so you can radio the bridge if you need to. The radio would sometimes loudly blast static for no reason, and if I radio the officer on the bridge to ask if

they said something, they would come back clear and say, nope, and there was no static for them. This happened with multiple radios, so it wasn't a dud. One day on my rounds I was in the laundry at 2am making checks and an alarm sounded. I spun around to see the watertight door closing behind me. I radioed the bridge and asked if they are closing it, which would be unusual as they only get operated in tests and emergencies. The second mate said no and on his console it's showing open. The door closed all the way and the second mate radios to tell me to try to manually override as he can't do it from the bridge as it still says open. I use the lever to override and open the door. I radio to tell the

mate and he says he'll get it looked at by the engineers. I carry on with my rounds and as I approach the next door the alarm sounds and it starts closing. I radio the mate and he says he's not doing anything and I'll have to override again. This time I get it open and as soon as it's fully open it starts to close again. I look around and the other door is also now closing. At this point I'm getting shut into the laundry. I get a feeling of impending doom. That's when the lights begin to flicker and static blasts over the radio. I jump through the closing door. Really bad idea because they can crush you and got out of there. Now theoretically that could be a coincidence of failing systems or someone playing tricks. Doors can be controlled from the bridge, but it's just not something

someone would do as a prank, since it could hurt you severely. Also, when the doors started closing, no one would have known I was there. It was just me and the mate and an engineer awake at that time and there were no cameras. They did a full watertight door test the next day and found no faults. I should mention that watertight doors are each controlled by an independent system so if one fails they don't all fail, meaning two doors experiencing faults together would be unlikely to say the least. After that I never went into the laundry alone again. One night I did my late night rounds as usual and reported back up to the bridge when I finished. When I got there the second mate was white as a sheet and shaking. He was holding a cup of tea that was sloshing about from how much his hand was shaking. I asked if he was okay and he

could barely speak. Finally he managed to tell me that he was sat in front of the radar screen five minutes earlier when he heard me come back to the bridge. He asked if everything was okay and I didn't respond. He looked over his shoulder back at me but instead it was an old guy, pale and wide-eyed, staring down at him from just an arm length away. He literally fell off his chair and the old guy disappeared in front of his eyes. He said the worst thing was the expression of malice on the face of the old guy. The second mate was weeping as he told me this and he was a pretty tough guy the worst experience was in my cabin i had been on board maybe three months by this point and had kind of accepted i was stuck on this messed up ship i guess some of the fear had gone as you

get used to being on edge i ignored my door knocking by this point, it might have even stopped happening, I don't recall. I get into bed one night, read for a bit, and turn the light off. As soon as I turn the light off, I think I see a figure stood over the bed, but it's pretty much pitch black, so I can't make out any detail, and after initially jumping, I reprimand myself for being silly and assume it's just my eyes adjusting. Then the figure sits down on the bed, squashing my legs and turning its head towards me. I can literally hear you screaming sleep paralysis at me right now, but I have experienced sleep paralysis and can tell you it wasn't that. I could move my arms and upper body just fine and could move my feet but my lower legs were trapped by the weight of something. I was frantically pulling the duvet to try and dislodge the thing and get my legs out but it was impossible. I tried to reach for the light switch but it was

a couple of inches out of reach. I started full on swinging at the space where it should be sat but my hands didn't hit anything. I started screaming at it, over and over and eventually the figure stood up and I could move my legs. I hit the light and there was nothing there. I couldn't sleep without copious amounts of alcohol and a night light after that, even for a bit after I left the ship which as you can imagine was awesome for picking up girls in my early 20s. Hey, wanna come around and stay over? Excuse me while I lose my mind and drink and turn my nightlight on. Multiple other things happened after this but this post is already pretty long so I'll skip ahead to the last big thing with multiple witnesses. So when I'd been in that ship about five months, me and the night

watch were in the crew bar after our watch finished probably at 4am. I was about to begin my routine of drinking, I'd pass out, not a care if a ghost sat on me or whatever. We were talking about some weird stuff that we had seen on board. It was me and the second mate, the second engineer and a grease monkey, an engineer lackey. As we were talking, one of the guys looks across the bar and says, what? His mouth is open like an O. We all look where he's looking and Henry Hoover is floating about two foot off the floor with his stupid smiley face looking at us. The second mate says, screw off, in like an incredulous manner and the Hoover gets thrown a few feet off to the left instead of just getting dropped.

Now that was by far the most terrifying experience that we had as a group. I've never experienced anything quite as tangible as what I did on board that ship, and I hope to God I never do again. From 1993 to 1998, every summer I attended a Christian youth camp for girls. Camp lasted four days, three nights. There were about 200 girls at the camp and it was about one and a half to two hour drive away from our homes. Some of the camping areas were tent only. Others had A-frames and at least one of the camping areas had longhouses.

The campground is called Ensign Ranch. You can look online to see pictures of what these different camping areas look like. It's a really safe campground and we had a lot of fun every year. In the evenings we would tell spooky stories, pretty typical stuff for youth camps. On the last night of camp in 1996, I was 15 at the time, there were several of us girls in the top level of our longhouse. It was past bedtime, so we were quietly telling scary stories. I had told a couple, one with the help of a friend, I'll call her Lily.

I don't remember the specific stories from that night, just typical, and the hook was hanging from the car door stuff. After a couple of hours of spooky stories, someone else was talking and I was getting really tired and could hardly keep my eyes open. Then some of the girls asked me to tell one more story. So I start telling a story, making it up as I go, just typical on a dark night in the woods not far from here type of beginning. Next thing I know, I wake up, lying flat on my back. As I'm waking I realize I'm still talking but once I've become aware of my own talking I couldn't remember what I was saying or trying to say. I was fully awake then. I finish by lamely saying something like,

they all died, the end. I looked around me at the girls who were all staring wide-eyed at me. A couple of the girls were quietly crying, mouths open in horror with tears streaming down their faces. My friend Lily whispered, that was the creepiest thing I've ever heard. The girls that weren't crying nodded in agreement. I said I was tired and we should all go to bed. As all of the other girls moved away to their sleeping bags, I asked Lily and another girl, I'll call her Sarah, what I had said. I admitted to them that I had fallen asleep and couldn't

remember anything. Lily and Sarah exchanged glances and Lily paused before saying, that just makes it worse. Sarah nodded in agreement and said she didn't want to retell it because it was that creepy. Now, at this point, if it had been just Lily and one or two of the other girls that were in that group, I would have thought they had realized I was asleep and were just messing with me. But Sarah was and still is a very serious person who doesn't have much of a sense of humor, doesn't like pranks, even innocent ones, and was almost honest to a fault. So, I went to sleep feeling unnerved but exhausted. A few hours later, I was being shaken awoke by one of the adult camp leaders.

She told me to gather my things and follow her. I sleepily and awkwardly carried my stuff down the ladder, then followed her outside. Two other camp leaders were standing next to a tent. They told me to put my items inside and then come talk to them. Inside the tent were two of the younger girls, 12 or 13, that had been listening to the scary stories and who had been crying when I woke up. They wouldn't look at me, just laid there sobbing. When I went back outside to talk to the leaders, they said Lily had showed up at their tent with the there sobbing. When I went back outside to talk to the leaders, they said Lily had

showed up at their tent with the two sobbing girls. The girls were crying and kept saying they wanted their parents to come get them. Lily explained about the scary stories and about mine being the one that made them cry. The leaders asked them what I had said. I admitted I had fallen asleep and honestly didn't know. The leaders said Lily refused to tell them what I had said. I admitted I had fallen asleep and honestly didn't know. The leaders said Lily refused to tell them what I said and the two girls just sobbed harder the more they tried to talk to them. They explained to the girls that they weren't going to call and wake their parents at 3am and have them drive over an hour just because of spooky stories. Plus, we were all going home the next day. As punishment for scaring the girls, the leaders made me sleep in the tent with them while the leaders went to sleep in the longhouse. The girls cried for a bit and then we all fell asleep.

They were both gone from the tent when I awoke in the morning. To this day, I have no idea what creepy story I told. No one that was there has ever been willing to tell me any of the details. Several years afterward, Lily told me that she would randomly have nightmares because of it. The only details I ever had answered were my voice sounded the same as usual, my eyes remained closed for the majority of the story which creeped them out more and the story was coherent and made sense up until the end when I lamely finished speaking. Again if it had only been Lily and a few of the other less serious girls I wouldn't know that they were just messing with me but Sarah and most of the other girls that were there, including the one that cried most of the night, being part of a prank on me just doesn't seem probable.

My husband, our son, and I moved into this townhouse around February of this year. It's three stories, not counting the basement. The second floor has the master bedroom and then a very small office space type room. In the small room, there is a set of stairs that led up to a third loft type bedroom on the third floor. We ended up splitting my son's room between the small bedroom and the third floor, so the third floor is more of a playroom while his closet, dresser, etc. is in the small room. He has had horrible night terrors since he was about six months old. He just turned three, so he still sleeps with us most nights. His bed wouldn't fit in the small room, so it's on the third floor.

None of us like this house. It's an okay property, but it just feels unwelcoming. I don't know how else to describe it but we just don't like the house. It doesn't have an open floor plan and just feels closed off and cold. My husband works away during the week and is usually only home on weekends so it's just me here alone with our son and our dog, our only pet aside from fish. We've had him for 7 years and he's very well behaved. I get really uneasy here at night during the week and make my dog and son stick pretty close. I've had a couple small things happen, like hearing footsteps running around on the third floor. But the townhouse to the left is empty and the right doesn't even have a third floor like we do. It's a row of four townhouses. The two middle have a

third floor. Oh and my son and dog are both terrified of the basement. Unfinished, washer and dryer are down there. My dog will not go down there. He has never once been in the basement. When I do the laundry he stands at the top of the steps and waits for me. We've tried multiple times to make him go down after he rolled on a dead animal or got covered in mud and needed cleaned off but treats aren't good enough and we've tried to carry him but he wiggled and threw himself around so much that even my husband couldn't safely carry him down. He's 70 pounds. My son was speech delayed.

He went through speech therapy, which he has since graduated, but his speech just recently took off. Right after we moved in, I went down to do laundry and carried him with me, and as we got into the basement, he said, Mama,'s that? As he pointed around the ceiling of the room in a follow something type motion I asked him what he meant and he said, those flying people. At the time that was a pretty significant amount of talking for him. Usually he would only say a word or maybe two word phrases at a time.

It creeped me right out. Also more recently when he isn't having night terrors he talks in his sleep like crazy and at least once or twice a week he sits straight up and points to the ceiling or the corner of the room. Every single time never the floor or couch or anything, and says, mommy, who's that? Or, mommy, what is that? He'll repeat the question over and over and eventually start crying as I tell him he's just dreaming and there's nothing there. I never see anything but it's enough to scare the pee out of me, especially at night when we're alone. Basically I'm trying to get at is that we've had a few creepy things happen but it's nothing that can't be explained which leads me to the point of this post. In the small second story part of my son's bedrooms I keep his dirty clothes in a cylindrical heavy cloth batman hamper.

Right after we moved in I noticed that his clothes were always laying on the floor around it. I picked them up and threw them back in but the next time I would go upstairs they'd be back on the floor. I didn't think anything of it for the first couple of months. It was just annoying. I thought my son was doing it at first but he is rarely on the second floor without me. He's like my little shadow and follows me everywhere. I started taking notice of it more and would make a point to put the clothes back in before we would leave the house to go somewhere and even though no one would be in the house while we were gone the clothes would be out. So at that point I decided okay if it isn't my son

it is the dog doing it. I checked the clothes to make sure he wasn't chewing them or anything but they never had any chew marks or slobber on them. And they were always just right outside the hamper. It wasn't like he was dragging them to his bed or kennel or anything. He always had access to the hamper at his old house but this never happened there. Plus I don't think I've ever actually seen him in my son's room. He hangs out on my bed, in his dog bed in the kitchen, outside or in his kennel. Whatever, I suppose dogs do weird things sometimes. After that I didn't pay much attention to it until recently when my husband brought it up to me.

He started noticing it happening on his own, even though he's only here on weekends. Last week he asked if I'd been the one digging through our son's hamper and leaving the clothes on the floor. I told him how it's been happening for a long time now and that I think it's the dog. So we decided to start closing our son's door when we aren't in there just to see what happens. It's been a week now. The first time it happened with the door closed I figured maybe the dog had done it somehow before I closed the door but it kept happening. My husband took off for work today for a doctor's appointment and this evening we decided to go do some grocery shopping. As we left both

my husband and I checked the bedroom, shut the door together and left the house together so we couldn't blame the other for gaslighting. We also locked the dog in the kitchen just to be sure. When we got back we went upstairs and I kid you not all the clothes were torn out of the hamper and the hamper was laid flat. It looked like a steam roller ran over everything. That door was closed and I know that there was no one in the house and there's no way it was the dog. It's just weird. What kind of ghosts haunt someone by making a mess of a hamper? It's just so random. The door we closed is the only way into the part of the house and we don't have an attic or crawl space.

All of the extra space was made into the third floor bedroom so it isn't like we've had someone living in the attic or anything. Our landlord told us a long time ago that the people that lived here before us were a young couple with a newborn and they ended up moving because they bought their first house. Nothing weird there, I suppose. The neighbors have said before that they were a nice, normal family, so there's nothing creepy that happened on the property unless it happened before they lived there. I'm pretty stumped here. I feel like this is almost a glitch in the matrix type thing. While I was growing up I decided to get a job at my local grocery store. It wasn't too hard to get the job since my mom was friends with the owner.

On the first day of my new job my boss mentioned that the store was haunted. She had told me that there was a ghost that they called Henry. Apparently, when she first started seeing Henry, he was a tall man in a brown trench coat. She would see him every so often walk past the back of the store. People would even come up and ask her where the man in the brown coat went. My boss also said over time, Henry has just become a black shadow that runs past the back in the brown coat went. My boss also said over time Henry has just become a black shadow that runs past the back of the store. At first I just thought my boss was trying to scare me since I was young but after a few weeks or so of working there I started to see and hear things.

The first time I heard something I was all alone as my boss frequently left me alone in the store and I knew that there was no one in the store besides myself. I was sitting behind the checkout and I hear a freezer door close and footsteps. This happened frequently, probably almost every day or so. I never did witness it happen so I never did rule out that it could be a noise from the freezers but it just distinctly sounded like footsteps. There were occasions that I had seen a black shadow thing move in the back of the store but I felt that it could have been my eyes playing tricks on me. Another weird thing that happened was that our bread would sometimes

be on the floor when we came to work and this may seem normal to someone else but there are two inch metal grates in front of her bread so none can just fall off. These aren't very crazy experiences but they only happen in the right half of the store. I asked my grandpa about it and he said that it was once two stores with a wall between them so it made sense. The side with activity was also a grocery store. A while after working there my boss built a new store pretty close to the old one and gutted out the old store using almost everything taken out of the old store. I had to go back to the old store numerous times before it was demolished and I always experienced footsteps and loud bangs when grabbing boxes my boss requested. After finally settling in the new store it was almost like we never left the old one.

I would still experience freezer doors opening and footsteps after hearing them close. Most of the time this was right before closing and I would wait for someone to come check out only to have to search the whole store before I could close to make sure no one was still there. I also had many times where I would hear something fall and I would go check and there would be a loaf of bread across the aisle, just like at the old store. The only difference is that in the old store the aisles were around three feet wide, but in the new store they were six feet wide wide so I knew that wasn't something normal. The only thing that seemed to change was that there was no shadow figure running past anymore. I have asked newer owners over the years and they still experience some weird things especially the bread falling off the shelf which is just odd and someone must just hate bread.

During the time my story took place, which was only about three or so months ago, I was currently living in Germany, participating in a military exercise. Being an American, this was my first time in Europe and also my first time in Germany. I love being there as I have a huge fascination with war history, especially World War 2. This is important as I believe it may have something to do with my unexplainable occurrence. We had headed out to do some training deep in the German countryside, far from any real civilization other than the other military units out there training with us. At this particular point, we had been out for maybe three or so days. We still had about a

week to go and we weren't expecting anything crazy to happen this early in the week. That's when we suddenly got attacked by the people who pretended to be the enemy. Luckily for us, my squad wasn't attacked directly because we were far away from everyone else, providing communications to our artillery unit. I would say we were a good couple of kilometers from anyone else and we were on top of a huge hill. That way our radio signals can go further and be more effective. Regardless we still needed to pull security just to be safe. I happened to be the first one on guard shift that morning so I grabbed our machine gun and headed out from our vehicle. Now the hill we were on was huge and had only one real way of approach which was a tank trail that went from the bottom of the

hill all the way to the top where we were. At the top of the hill it was mostly flat, but had another smaller hill to the left of the road. So basically if you followed the road to the top and then headed left about 30 meters, you'd be at the base of this other small hill. While this small hill was the perfect spot to set up a machine gun nest so that's where I put it. The hill was impossible to come up behind where I was sitting as it was super steep and heavily covered in brush and trees. This brush covered almost the whole part of the little hill leaving only one possible way to get up there, the way I was watching. Fast forward 30 or so minutes and the sun is just

starting to rise through the trees. It was so quiet and peaceful and I just sat on guard enjoying the beauty of Germany when it happened. I heard a very distinct hush voice say, hey, almost as if it was right next to me. It seemed like someone was trying to quietly get my attention. No wind was blowing, no birds chirping, nothing. I quickly looked around to make sure no one was somehow able to sneak up on me and there was not a soul in sight. The rest of my squad was a good hundred meters away in the vehicle and I couldn't even hear them. It freaked me out but obviously I had to stay at my post. Then I was officially unnerved when my sergeant tried to sneak up on me a couple of hours later but I caught him. He didn't realize how steep the hill was and how covered in brush it was and I could hear him a mile away.

He then said that he was glad that I had my head on a swivel and doing the right thing. We began to talk and then he proceeded to tell me what I didn't want to hear. He basically told me that the area where we were training was a battlefield from World War II and that a lot of our guys from our sister unit died around there because they had no artillery support and the Germans were so well dug in they couldn't do anything. That information combined with finding German World War II ammo cans and machine gun belts in the area led me to put two and two together. Honestly I'm not sure what to think about this. I have no explanation as to why I heard this voice. I believe in the supernatural, but I also believe in explaining things.

The thing is, nothing adds up. I wasn't tired, there was no one around me, and there were no other sounds in the forest. Part of me wants to believe it may be the spirit of a lost soul of the war or maybe something else. Either way I'd like your guys' input and maybe some answers to explain this eerie occurrence. I'm the assistant manager at Joanne Fabrics. So I work there plenty of hours during the week and spend a lot of time in the store. Sometime last year or just barely the year before, there was a girl working with us. I'll call her G.

G was always super friendly and never really seemed bothered by much. She was best friends with someone also working at the store who I'll call C. Now I never really got to know G very well but I still got to know her a bit. Fast forward several months and I find out from my manager G passed away. She died in a really bad car accident. C was out of work for a while, understandable since her best friend of I think 13 years had just died. Now fast forward a few months, I find out that C had apparently spoken to G. I'm super spooked but I ask her how. She basically says, through a pendulum. The best way I can describe what that is, is a necklace with a point to it that

answers yes or no questions while you're holding it. So I definitely find it interesting. While C and I were closing one night we noticed we hear some odd noises coming from our upstairs. Now upstairs is basically where we keep extra shelves and baskets We try not to think much of it But there was one point that it came down And just the sounds of someone walking around the store Even though we had just closed We looked around to see if we could find the customer But there was no one there

After we finished closing the store we sat outside I had to wait for my ride And she said we could ask if there's someone here. She pulled out her pendulum and started asking questions. I was curious but extremely skeptical. It seemed to be answering questions but I just put it together as she has to be moving it. Things like, are you a nice ghost? It would answer yes. Are you someone

we know? It answered yes. We didn't think it could be G at the time. Why would she be there? Now while there's plenty of small little hauntings I could go over, I'll go over the ones that made both my manager and I certain. Here's the thing, I never brought this up to my boss. I knew she'd probably disapprove, definitely disagree, so I felt like I was just making mountains out of molehills. Things like when I'd walk into the store by myself in the morning and when I walked by the cricket vinyl aisle, I'd hear a motion and then a vinyl would come off the hook and roll down the aisle at me. This happened twice, two separate mornings. Another time I was putting on iHeartRadio. I was changing it to a station that I liked and all of a sudden there was just static in the radio

and I swear there was just a voice that said, F you. Guys, I've never had such painful goosebumps in my life, so I switched stations and the music came on. The last thing that put the nail in the coffin, so to speak, was when my boss came to me. She has heard some of the funny, ha ha, we're hunted gossip and heard about some of my experiences. She was so dead serious and told me what happened when she had opened that morning and another morning. The first thing she experienced was when she heard someone walking around in the store from the back room. She looked up at the monitors we have in the back and saw someone slowly walking down the jewelry aisle. She walked out there, phone in hand to call the police, called for them, and saw there wasn't

anyone. She went to the back room, looked at the monitors again, and they were still there, just standing now near jewelry. She went and turned on the lights, and it was gone. She described it as just the head and maybe shoulders of an almost grey shadow. The second experience she described was again only in the morning. We have two bathrooms that are right next to the back room door. They are one person bathrooms so they have those heavy doors that just make a big clank noise when shut. Only one of the bathrooms has a fan that starts when opened. Well, she was counting the drawers when she heard the clank of the door shut near the back room.

She goes out to check and can see the light under the door and the fan going in the bathroom. She knocks on the door and the light and fan turn off. She opened the door, no one there. She told me she was just shaking and called her husband and told him what was going on. He came to me later talking about one morning when he was visiting her at the store when he was standing near the crit cut vinyls and with no one there to touch them saw three of them just suddenly start swaying back and forth on their hooks. Now he believes in ghosts and told me and my boss I'm very certain that it has to be G and we were both a bit taken aback. Why would she haunt the Joanne she worked part-time for? But he told my boss just say hello to her in the morning next

time. Let her know that you see she's here. She'll down on all of this guys my boss told me this the next morning she just walked in said hello g and nothing spooky happened for me or for her or anyone else that i know of i'll try to keep this up to date to let you know if either me or my boss or anyone else experiences anything else. I've experienced some spooky haunting stuff before but this one is just so odd to me in a retail store. I just can't figure out why she'd haunt a Joanne's. I thought it was because of C, her best friend, but she's quit now and is working somewhere else. There were speculations that she might have been stealing from registers but there wasn't really evidence to back up all the claims.

Even so, she wouldn't haunt a Joance for that, would she? I have had several creepy encounters in my life that I couldn't explain. However, this one happened tonight and it truly boggles my mind. I was in a grocery store desperately trying to find the restroom. It was about 10.30 at night and the store closed 30 minutes after. Finally found it and I always walk through the restroom at night to make sure I'm aware of my surroundings. I checked the stalls. All of them were wide open and to my surroundings. I checked the stalls. All of them

were wide open and to my luck the bathroom was completely empty. Or so I thought. I sit down in my stall closest to the sinks and door and start doing my thing when all of a sudden from a stall next to me to my right I hear a woman say, excuse me, do you have the time? Her voice was very calm and almost sad. Keep in mind there was no one in the restroom when I checked it, and it was dead silent there, no pun intended. I ignored it and continued peeing. Then, as I was finishing, I heard tapping on the stall wall and again heard the voice say, Excuse me. I was just trying to use the bathroom and then leave but after hearing her twice I couldn't ignore that it

happened. I did end up ignoring it and pretended like I had headphones in and rushed to pull my pants up and get out of there. Keep in mind it was late at night and there were hardly any people in the store, so to hear someone next to you at night when you checked every stall which were all empty was the scariest thing to say the least. I thought it could have been a sketchy situation as well. As I leave my stall I hear her voice once again say, Do you have the time? I decided to answer her and told her that it was 10.30. She replied by saying, thank you. She sounded so sad and her voice was very monotone. I still didn't understand how someone could have entered the bathroom without me noticing or hearing considering how silent it was in there and i was alone when i entered yet somehow there was a woman right next to me in the empty stall

without making a single noise prior to talking to me just because i was so confused i peeked down a little bit to see if i could see her feet but nope no feet and nothing slightly above that either. The bathroom stall was also slightly ajar and wasn't latch closed. Other than her question for the time, I heard absolutely nothing. Dead silence. I proceeded to wash my hands and then left quickly. Even if that was someone tweaked out, I didn't want to stick around and find out. Two weeks ago, my husband and I adopted a cat named Morty. He's a year old DSH tabby and we love him. We also have a 12 year old pupper named Milo. The transition

has been interesting, slightly challenging but worth it. We've learned a lot and he's a great kitty overall. When we go to bed at night we keep both animals in the room and shut the door because we don't want them roaming the house at night. Morty's litter box is also in our bathroom, attached to our bedroom, so it works out well. My husband wakes up during the week around 6am to get ready for work. Usually Morty sleeps through the night, but he gets hyper when my husband gets up because, well, people are moving around and he's excited. Sometimes he will wake us up around 4am though. He does a couple of things that wakes us up from time to time. One, he messes with our curtains in our room.

He really likes them for some reason and he'll hide behind them and claw at them. Two, he likes to go under our bed and get close to where our heads are sleeping near the headboard and scratch and claw up at the mattress. This one is most annoying because we can actually feel him claw up at the mattress. This one is most annoying because we can actually feel him clawing at the mattress. We don't feel his claws in our head or anything because our headboard and thickness of the mattress saves us, but we do feel it. Usually we will call his name loudly in a urine trouble tone, or my husband will make a loud noise by hitting the rail of our bed frame. This does not hurt our cat, as he is just hitting the frame. It is more just a scare tactic to hopefully scare Morty away from under the bed. It usually works and Morty

will go back to his little tree that he sleeps in eventually. Now we are always very diligent in making sure both animals are in the room with us before we close the door for the night. Our dog sleeps in the bed with us so it's easy to know he's there but we always, always put eyes on Morty to make sure he's in the room as well. We close the door and then go to sleep. Last night, around 6am, Morty was being naughty. We heard him meowing a bit, not abnormal, he will meow a few times in the middle of the night which is fine. He was messing with the curtains and we felt and heard him clawing at our mattress. We try the name calling and hitting the rail. He stops but he continues to meow and walk around. My husband gets up to get him so that he can put Morty in his cat tree that he sleeps in. He grabs his phone to use as a flashlight.

We sleep in complete darkness. First place he checks is under the bed. Morty's not there. Our room is not very big, but he does have a bathroom and closet attached to it, so he checks in there and he doesn't see Morty. As he's walking towards the room again, we hear Morty meow and he flashes his light towards the door. He sees a shadow under the door. He opens the door.

Morty walks in. We can't explain it. We felt him moving around in the room. We heard him meowing in the room. I should also say that Morty is very vocal when he doesn't like something. As the shelter where we adopted him, they actually told us that he was returned twice because he meowed too much. We have realized that Morty likes being around people. As long as he knows there's someone with him, he barely meows except for a few here and there.

We put Morty in the laundry room once when we were trying to vacuum and he non-stop meowed the entire time. If we had left him out there for the night, he would have meowed non-stop to come back in. That didn't happen. My cat literally teleported. To be continued... moved back to my old hometown and started a consulting company with my boyfriend which was going very well. We had just finished a contract in the Bay Area and were beginning a new one about eight hours south in Torrance. He moved down there first to start setting up while I took care of loose ends at our closing contract before moving down to meet him. The day comes and I pack my car and head south down the I-5. For the uninitiated, it's a straight highway with little in the way of scenery aside from the occasional strip mall and its monotony has a reputation for putting drivers to sleep at the wheel. I pass a strip mall with gas and a fast food joint and decide to fill my car and my stomach.

I go to park in the food venue's parking lot but it's completely full so I park across the street at a hotel which at the time I didn't think anything of. I go inside and eat my meal then cross the street to get back to my car. I'm well into the hotel parking lot when a pickup truck pulls down the aisle and cuts off my path and stops with the passenger's side facing me. The driver is alone and a clean cut white male in his mid-thirties. I don't remember anything about him except that he looked very generic and buttoned up. The way he pulled in front of me to block my path didn't initially set off alarm bells as he had done it pretty organically. He rolls down the window and the dialogue follows. Excuse me miss but could you tell me where the grocery store in town is?

I'm sorry, I'm not from here so I couldn't say. Oh, where are you from? Uh, good question. I don't know, not here though. I didn't say that to be rude. I had just moved through so many cities at that point and was on my way to a new one, I wasn't sure how to answer. He laughs and makes a joke and then asks me where I'm headed. I mention that I'm moving. I will say he was very charismatic and at this point I just think he was trying to flirt with me and if I hadn't been so exhausted or in a relationship on another day it might have worked. He makes another comment about how unpleasant moving can be. Absolutely true, and then gives

a warm chuckle and extends his hand to shake mine and goes, well, I'm glad I got to meet you. I'm Scott. If you recall, the truck is in front of me with the passenger's side facing me. I actually take a step forward to grab his hand and then got the delayed response of every alarm bell that should have gone off earlier. I'm in a hotel parking lot. He asked me a question that establishes I don't know where I am. Another question that establishes I'm alone. Another question that establishes I'm not expected at my destination for many more hours. The thing that connected all these synapses?

When he extended his hand, he didn't even make the faintest effort to make it accessible to me. He didn't lean over the seat or move toward me in any way. His hand was hovering comfortably over the center console waiting for me to grasp it, which in order to do I would have to lean well into the car. Again, I had already taken a step toward him and began to raise my hand to take his when the sirens went off. I rocked backwards back to where I was standing and I just remember looking in his eyes for what felt like forever, feeling everything click into place while also half convinced my imagination was just running wild. His hand still waiting, I lowered mine and felt my eyes slightly narrow with suspicion and slowly said I'm going

to walk away from your car now Scott. Boom. Truck burns rubber with thick gray smoke as the guy guns it out of the hotel lot at 100 miles per hour. He must have been flooring it. Regrettably smart on his end because I didn't have the license plate number or anything to offer the police. In the immediate minutes following the event I felt relieved but hadn't really processed the full weight of what happened. Unfortunately for me I had many more hours to think back and analyze the whole interaction to shreds. The car was somewhat lifted there could have easily been another person or even two to three other people hiding inside. Would he have pulled me in? Would I have been injected with something? Then my mind just kept creating all these scenarios where I wake up hours later and nobody

would even know where in my drive I went missing or possibly not notice for most of the day. I still get creeped out thinking about how close I came to taking his hand and how fortunate I was that I didn't allow my reaction to be driven by my manners as criminals often take advantage of. I had just moved into a new flat with some friends for university. At this point we didn't know the area well and were still getting our feet on the ground. We had a large chain supermarket a few blocks from us and none of us had a car so that's normally where we'd go for shopping because it was in walking distance. The supermarket had a foyer with some benches so normally whoever finished shopping first

would wait for the others there. On this day my flatmate Kate finished shopping before the rest of us so she went to wait out front. It was late evening and the store was winding up so she basically was alone in the foyer. She buried herself in her phone when a man sat down next to her on the bench, much closer than was comfortable. Now we live in a small city in a small country where there isn't a lot of racial diversity, so it's worth mentioning this guy was black. She later told me it was the first time she'd ever even met a person of African descent. There really just aren't many of them in our country, let alone in our city. He was wearing a completely black suit that didn't fit him,

and he smelled overpoweringly of cologne and cigarettes. Kate told me he smelled like he hadn't washed in a while too. According to her there was a fairly long pause after he sat down and the conversation went something like this. Hello? Uh hi you have beautiful hair. thanks what is your name um louise yours i'm from somalia brief pause where do you live as soon as she saw me she jumped up I can still remember his face while he was talking to her he had this kind of creepy fixed grin all teeth and roaming eyes that were all over her as soon as he saw me the smile was gone replaced by a completely blank

expression he got off the bench almost before she did and turned and walked toward the store entrance as if he was trying to pretend I couldn't see him that way on the way home she told me how creeped out she was and how she'd probably take her motor scooter to a different store in the future. I thought she was overreacting but she should do whatever makes her feel safest I thought. She was only 18 and pretty sheltered. This kind of thing had never happened to her before. A few hours after we get home, I'm just about to go to bed. While I'm brushing my teeth, I hear someone knock at the door.

We hadn't been living there long and we'd literally never had someone come to the door like that, let alone near midnight. I was immediately on edge. As I open the door just a crack, I put my full weight against the frame to stop it getting forced open. There on the doorstep was the guy from the supermarket. He had his creepy fixed smile on again. Can Louise come out? At first I couldn't really understand his accent, but I worked him out after a few seconds. Nobody with that name lives here.

I didn't know Kate had been smart enough to give him a false name, but it didn't matter. When I said that, he dropped the smile but didn't walk away. Instead, Can I have your phone? No. Can I borrow your cigarettes? No. Goodbye.

At this point I closed the door. I watched through our kitchen window as he wandered slowly down our driveway and onto the dark street. He didn't look back, but instead he pulled out his own cell phone and started making a call. He must have followed us home. There was no other way he could have known where we live. The fact that he knew that I smoked at that time meant he'd watch me come out of the house at some point during the evening. I hadn't had a smoke on the walk home and I'd cooked dinner as soon as I got back. I only went out for a smoke after I'd eaten which was probably an hour and a half after we got back had he been out there somewhere in the bushes watching that whole time and if he had his own

phone why did he need mine I told Kate and made sure to keep all doors and windows locked I was shaken up and I didn't sleep much at all that night but by the next day I'd calmed down and put it out of my mind. A few days later in the early afternoon while I was biking to work I saw him walking near our house. He was wearing the exact same clothes as before on the phone and smoking a cigarette. Almost as soon as I got to work I got a call from one of my flatmates. The guy had knocked on the door again, once again asking for Louise. I told him the story quickly before I clocked in for my shift and he promised to keep an eye on things during the evening. That was the last I heard of our odd visitor for months. Eventually I learned our neighbors over the road were refugees from Somalia

and one afternoon I introduced myself to them and started chatting about neighborly stuff. They were a house of four middle-aged single mothers, all with young kids and absent fathers who had either been killed in conflict or had been denied refugee status. To put it lightly, Somalia really didn't sound like a great place to live. It turns out my town has a very small but close-knit community of Somalians, only about 150 people, almost all of them refugees. I was unaware, but I found out that their culture of value sharing has a community value. If you need something, you can ask for it, and your neighbor will usually give it to you. Something like sharing a cell phone around the community is

pretty normal. Obviously that doesn't apply here, but that's where he had come from. The more I talked and learned the more it kind of made sense why this guy was acting the way he did. He was a fish out of water, didn't understand his behavior, was a bit creepy in his new home country and was just trying to be friendly. I honestly started to feel really bad about judging him so harshly even if he did make my friend uncomfortable. One of the times I was talking to the neighbor ladies I asked if they knew who he was. At first they were confused and weren't sure who I was talking about but as I started describing him they went away from my friendly laughing neighbors to deadly serious. They started asking questions about him. When was he here? What what did he want who was he on the phone

with suddenly i was the one getting grilled eventually they started explaining what they knew they knew of him but didn't know him personally according to them they thought he had been involved in human trafficking back in somalia in fact the exact word they used was slavery they didn't explain much and i understood from what they said that the trafficking generally involves young, beautiful girls, a lot like my flatmate Kate. They wouldn't tell me his name and they didn't know what he did for a living now that he was here. They told me since he had been in our country, he'd been in constant trouble with the police for following young women, even though he was apparently married to someone back in Somalia. They found that to be the most dishonorable thing about him even though he had been arrested a few times for theft. They didn't really like him because they felt that people like him gave their community a bad name. A year or two went by after this and by total

chance I saw a short article in the newspaper. The headline was something like Refugee Convicted of Sexual Assault. His name was suppressed but the article revealed he was Somalian. A couple of months after I'd last seen him he'd forced his way into another student flat by following some girls home from class. He waited a few hours until only one of them was home then barged through the door when she answered it and assaulted her. He'd stolen her cell phone and laptop afterwards. That kind of thing almost never happens in our city and the similarities between what happened there and what happened to us made me certain it was the same guy. I never found out what happened to him after that but I hope he's still in prison. I really don't think less

of the local Somalian community because of him though. The ladies I was friends with were some of the nicest and friendliest people I'd ever met. The hardships they've gone through aren't something anyone should have to experience and for them to come out smiling and positive takes a strength I don't think I could ever possess. Just to give a little background, there was a boy I met in high school with a reputation for being creepy that I didn't take seriously enough when we first met. I could talk for days about the hell he put me through over the past nine years, but I only wanted to recount the story of our most recent encounter. This happened a few months ago while I was still living in an apartment in the town my college is in. I have since moved back to my hometown to live with my parents while I finish up school,

since I finally have a car and the commute is usually less than 30 minutes, plus housing in the town where my college is is so expensive. Final bit of background, although I know that this guy has a weird obsession with me, it had been nearly a year to this day since he had last tried to contact me and more than that since I had run into him in person so he wasn't exactly at the front of my mind. In high school my friends and I were always very careful with my home address and I am thankful he doesn't know where I live now. Over the summer I joined a slow pitch co-ed rec softball team. I hadn't played since high school and being back on the field was such a joy.

I had invited a few of my co-workers to the game since we were fairly a tight knit group. They were our only spectators that night, from the bleachers as far as I could tell. I slipped my phone into my bat bag so I could focus on the game. Afterwards, when I had gotten back into my car and was queuing up some music, I noticed a text from a number I didn't recognize saying I hit well in the game that night. I thought it was from my co-worker's girlfriend who had recently started working with us as well and decided I would thank her when I got home. It's important for me to note the setup of my apartment building. We have a tenants only lot that is nearer to the back door of the building which is locked at all

hours of the day and is the entrance that I usually use because it led in right by the stairs. I lived at the first apartment to the right from the stairs on the second floor. The front entrance however had an outer door that has always been unlocked and an inner door that was always locked. Next to the inner door was the buzzer and our landlord listed the tenant's last names next to the buttons. This entryway and inner door is all glass and you can look down into the entryway from the second floor. There were no security cameras at either entrance. I didn't feel like I was being followed on my drive home, and I am usually very cautious and paranoid, even thinking I am being followed when I am not. This night I was exhausted after a day full of work and a 9pm softball game. I parked and entered my apartment as usual, locking the door behind me.

I had barely been home for 10 minutes when the buzzer started making noise. My roommates weren't home and I wasn't expecting any guests. The buzzer is such a loud and unpleasant noise, it used to put me on edge every time I would hear it. My roommate would often leave her keys at home and ring me to let her in, but she would always text first and I had not heard from her. I decided to check the entryway to see if it was one of my roommates rather than hitting the button to let this mystery guest in and I am so glad that I did. When I got down the hall I thought I would faint. I would recognize this idiot anywhere.

He saw me through the windows and began screaming at me to let him in. I bolted back to my apartment and locked the deadbolt and chain, plus our patio door for good measure because, although I lived on the second floor, it would not be difficult for someone of his height to climb up. I called the police and they were there within a few minutes, but he had already disappeared by that time. The cops took my statement and I showed them the message, because by that time I had deduced that it wasn't from my co-worker. I blocked the number. They left someone stationed at my building that night in case he showed back up but never did. I was too terrified to sleep and the guy I was kind of seeing told me I had overreacted and he wouldn't come keep me company nor would he let me stay over that night. I hadn't heard from him since but that doesn't mean that I won't. I know. It's been nine years. He always finds me. I will be leaving the state when I graduate for a lot of reasons

but he is one of them. When I am bored I sometimes hop onto Tinder to meet new and interesting people. I rarely attempt to meet these people in person and when I do it is normally just to meet up. Well this is one of those nights I met a really nice sounding woman who said she loved caffeine and video games. We were talking for a while that night and when I was ready to jump off and go to bed she asked if I wanted her number. I didn't want her to have my number so I said, no that's okay, I know where to find you and I meant on Tinder. Flash forward to the next day when the new Assassin's Creed Origins game came out. I had pre-ordered the games months before and walked into literally the closest game stop to my house

and guess who I see behind the counter? She had a sheer look of horror on her face but I hadn't quite figured out it was her yet. There wasn't much of a line and I got up to the register and she yells loud enough so everyone in the store could hear, this is what you meant? And she stormed off to the back room and a couple of minutes later another employee came out and asked me to leave. One thing I should point out is that in person this girl looked nothing like her profile picture so I still didn't know what was going on. I explained to this new employee that I was here to pick up my pre-order and that I didn't understand why I needed to leave. They then threatened to call the cops if I didn't leave. I just gave up and left.

Later I got a message on Tinder asking how I knew where she worked. I didn't respond to this message and instead I called the GameStop and explained to them that I didn't want to upset Kathy any more than I had already and asked if they could move my pre-order to another store. The manager apologized to me and was able to move my pre-order. Even though this is the closest GameStop to my house I haven't returned and will probably be a while before I do. This occurred some years ago in 2012 when I was 18. I was inter-railing through Europe with my then boyfriend and we were on a train between Rome and a port town in Italy where we would be getting on a boat to Greece the following day.

We hadn't pre-booked any accommodation as we found it really easy to get a hostel either en route or on arrival at our previous destination. And as we'd been arriving in the town at nearly midnight we decided to have a look for hostels whilst on the train. Unfortunately we found there really wasn't as much accommodation where we were heading as there had been in other major cities we had visited and that the places we could find were mainly hotels and way out of our price range. We were discussing this quandary amongst ourselves, my ex suggesting we slept at the station, when the guy sitting next to me on the train randomly struck up a conversation. He was really enthusiastic and chatty and spoke pretty good English asking about our trip so far, where we were from and just a sort of general chit chat about ourselves. He also said that he

had overheard our accommodation problem and that he knew a perfect hostel for us very close to the station and run by a friend of his. Initially this just came across as a useful bit of information, but alarm bells started ringing for me as he became very insistent that we must stay there and that if we mentioned his name that he had sent us that we could stay there virtually for free. He wrote down an address and his name on a piece of paper and had me promise that we would go there. After I'd given my word to stay there he stopped talking to me entirely which I found quite odd. He'd been so warm and talkative and then just totally shut off. He also made three phone calls none of which

I could understand other than they said the word interrail a few times. The rest of the journey passed in slightly uncomfortable silence and when I got up to get off of the train he just said, remember. We arrived in the town and it was late and pretty deserted. Nothing like the big touristy cities we had been used to and I made up my mind then and there that we definitely wouldn't be staying in the hostel. My boyfriend was slightly annoyed as I admittedly am a very paranoid person but something just felt really off to me. We ended up checking into an annoyingly expensive hotel literally a stone's throw from the station as I was so creeped out I didn't want to go wandering off through the

empty streets at night. Whilst at the hotel I decided to look up the address he gave us. First thing to say is that if you googled it there was no mention at all of it being a hostel or a guest house or anything it just came up as a street address and secondly if you put it in on google maps it wasn't anywhere near the station and just looked like a normal building in a residential area way out of the city center. I know that there may have been a perfectly innocent explanation behind it and it may have just been that the guy ran a hostile from his house and train guy was just overly eager to promote business for his mate but the whole encounter felt very off to

me and I was relieved to leave the town the following day I can't help but wonder to this day whether or not we were being sent into some sort of trap. It was late at night one day and me and my mom hadn't eaten any dinner and we hadn't been grocery shopping so we decided to go order from a local Chinese shop. So me and my mother placed our orders and went to the Chinese shop. When we got there, there were two guys standing in front of the shop. This wasn't too unusual since homeless people hung out there all the time, mooching money. When we first went in, I saw no one in the store, so we went in and looked around. Then suddenly one of the workers there popped up behind the counter. She looked shocked and confused at first. We told her our order and then we left. I looked

at my mom who had a pale look on her face. When I started to head to our car I noticed one of the guys approach me. I guess coming from a violent city. I guess fight or flight kicked in. I'm still shocked at how I responded but I practically jumped in my car. I guess my pursuer gave up which was one of the two men. However the other men decided to approach my mom's side which was the driver's side. My mother instantly put it into gear and drove away and he was right by the window. No big deal right? I might be jumping to conclusions so me and my mom decided to go uptown to the town soda machine. When we got there my mom began to get sodas. After a while I noticed a figure approaching.

It was in a big part of the neighborhood and was late so I wanted her to hurry. I then noticed as the dark figure got closer it was the same man who approached my mother's side of the window. She got back to the car before the figure approached. The soda machine wasn't far from the Chinese place but still a bit of a distance so I think the guy followed us there. When we drove off the guy took the hood of his coat and pulled it down to hide his face and when we passed him in a car he began to run away. While we were driving I asked if the worker at the Chinese place was hiding from the two guys and she gave me this sideways glance and said, no, she was loading a pistol. And we drove in silence on the way home. When I was in 5th grade, my parents and I always went to Whole Foods on Saturdays to get salads and soups.

I live in a very nice part of Illinois, the North Shore, with few serious crimes, little to no homeless people or creeps in general, and I was too young to be catcalled. We walked into the store, went to the usual salad bar and my parents started making their salads. I was alone and had noticed a very tall man wearing a trench coat smiling at me. Thinking nothing of it, I waved to him and started making my salad. He started to circle the salad bar, each circle getting closer and closer to me. However, my back was turned to him and I didn't notice. Before I knew it, he was literally standing right behind me, me opening his trench coat basically trying to shove me in it. My dad noticed this and started yelling uncontrollably, hey what are you doing? Get away from my daughter!

That's all I remember him saying before the man was roughly escorted out of the store. We were told by the manager that this man had been circling the salad bar for four hours but since he technically wasn't doing anything wrong they couldn't take any precautions. Well until he tried to kidnap me. I was so scared for months after that. I'm 21 years old and still have not stepped foot in the Whole Foods. In my city the downtown area is pretty spread out. At the time I was living in an apartment just outside of the eastern edge of downtown. Walking was my primary method of transportation at the time as parking is scarce and rarely free. On this particular occasion I went to a job

interview about a half hour's walk from my place just outside the northern edge of downtown. It went really well actually but I ended up not taking the job due to the following events. I left the business in a very good mood and I skipped my step. It was in the middle of the day and the sun was bright and the streets were busy with passing cars. I felt pretty safe to walk back home rather than take the bus. And the easiest way for me to do so would be to walk south along the street I was walking on until it crossed my street, then turn and head east. A few days prior, I had forgotten my iPod at the mall and it was gone. So along the route, when I heard someone say, You got a really nice booty. From right behind

me I heard it perfectly. I decided to keep walking forward, eyes straight ahead. I figured stopping would leave me vulnerable and for some odd reason no one else was out on my side of the street walking in my direction, probably because of this creep. I upped my pace as much as possible, my heart pumping furiously from the increased activity and the knowledge that someone was behind me. But as I had been going to an interview, I had opted for heels that day. I didn't want to risk tripping. My uninvited company kept up without a problem and began to share with me in explicit detail what he'd like to do with women with nice booties. It was nothing I was particularly

interested in doing with him regardless of what he looked like. I still didn't know. At this point we were passing my apartment buildings with gated entrances. I was hoping someone would emerge and help me out but I had no luck. I was too nervous to turn down a side street not knowing if there would be an area that would be perfect for this not so gentleman to do exactly what he was describing to me for what seemed like eternity this man with a gruff voice followed me and didn't stop talking at one point he described the differences in the niceness of booties by ethnicity and began trying to guess mine based solely on the appearance of my rear and hair color I guess. Finally as I was approaching the street I needed to turn on I noticed the thrift shop coming up was open.

Not only was it open but the door that's normally closed that faces the street I was on was open. Double doors propped open by chairs with a large sign over the entrance announcing some groundbreaking sale. I still had no clue if my follower had a weapon. He hadn't touched me with an object or any part of his person yet so I decided to keep my pace. But when we reached the thrift store I made a sharp left and sprinted into the shop about halfway through. I turned when I was on the other side of the pay counter which was a combination jewelry display and cashier set up right in the center of the store. There was a man standing at the door, staring into the store. He wasn't looking at me. It kind of seemed like he was looking into space.

He had long dark gray hair and an unkempt beard that was mostly black. His skin was dark but more like it had been exposed to the sun rather than naturally dark. He reminded me of Brock's dad from Pokemon when Ash first runs into him outside of Pewter City in a green coat a few sizes too big and faded jeans. The cashier turned to see what I was looking at. She yelled, hey, get out of here. Her words seemed to shake him out of his trance and he took off the way he'd come. She asked me if I wanted to look at anything in the jewelry cases I shook my head no still a little winded from the experience to talk I walked over to a sofa and sat down I pulled out my phone and called my then boyfriend now husband they came to collect me and took me home they ended up staying

the night to calm my nerves it ended up being a nice night filled with Netflix, takeout and snuggles. But I walked a lot less after that and moved out of the area shortly thereafter. When I was young from the ages of 2 to 10, I lived on a 7 acre ranch. There was a small house in front of the property where we lived, a huge grass yard and cabinet shop behind it, and an orchard in the very back full of walnut trees. My father was a carpenter that always worked in the shop and my mother was a school teacher that was almost always busy. Because of their jobs and the fact that they were new to parenting, as I got older they really didn't pay as much attention as they should to where I would wander off. I would spend my days roaming around the yard, playing in the dirt and running through the walnut trees. I obviously didn't question my lack of supervision as it was

fun to explore this huge plot of land and I just thought I was being a normal kid. When I was about seven years old my father surprised me with a brand new child-sized atv it wasn't one of the electric ones that you are probably picturing either it was a fast gas-powered quad four-wheeler now at this point a good amount of you are probably questioning why someone would give a gas-powered atv to a seven-year-old child but like i said my parents were a bit reckless and they well my dad just wanted me to have fun. Pretty much right after I got the thing I learned how to ride it by myself and started going further into and past the property than I ever had before. I now had a free ride basically as far as my young self would let me go before turning back.

I started riding through the orchards behind my house almost every day and I loved it more than I had loved anything before. I would leave my house and be gone for hours. After a while I gradually started roaming farther and farther away from my house as I became more brazen and a little older. I would ride down this dirt path that leads past what I assumed was our neighbor's land into a ditch that held water. At the time I just liked looking at the water as it flowed and I felt like I was a little explorer. I honestly never contemplated that what I was doing could be the least bit dangerous and I really don't think my parents knew how far I was riding. When I think back on it now, just the idea of riding a pretty dangerous piece of equipment far away from my

house without my parents knowing where I was and before cell phones existed is pretty scary in itself as I could have crashed or hit my head and no one would have been able to find me. However luckily this never happened and it is not what the story is about. So one day like every other day I was riding far away from home and I passed by a man wearing a dirty white shirt, denim jeans and a wicker farmer's hat. I remember it vividly as it was the first person I had seen in all the time I had been out there. I remember the surprised look in his eyes as he stared at me a while as I passed by him. I had no reason to stop and my parents had always taught me about stranger danger so I kept going and forgot about it.

On the way back home a couple hours later I was coming up to the same spot and it dawned on me that this is where I had seen the man. I looked ahead not expecting him to be there as I said it had been hours yet as the trees parted there he was. I really didn't think it was too weird because I figured that he was either a farmer or a homebody so I kept driving coming closer to where he was. He seemed friendly to be honest. He had a big smile on his face like he was happy to see me. To my 10 year old self I just thought he was a friendly guy so I waved at him as I passed by and he waved back. I continued on my way and drove home not thinking much about it. I don't really

remember how much time had passed between then and the next time I went riding but it couldn't have been more than a couple of days. Like usual I took the same dirt road past the same few orchards to the same ditch full of water. I didn't think much about my previous encounter so I hadn't been thinking about the stranger with the big smile. I was sitting on the edge of the ditch when I heard footsteps in the dirt coming from behind me. Again, I remember this vividly because it was not a common occurrence to see anyone on this trail. I remember being more curious than scared and turned around to see the same stranger with the smile. This time his smile seemed to be more of a toothy grin. He called out to me as he walked up to me asking what my name was in a heavy southern drawl.

I told him with confidence that I wasn't really allowed to talk to strangers to which he said it's a good idea although you really shouldn't be out here all by yourself. It can be dangerous for a kid your age. I remember this striking me in the gut with a little bit of a butterfly feeling. I wasn't afraid but I felt uneasy. This piqued my curiosity however as I wondered what he meant so I asked him. He continued to walk closer to me slowly and answered, I heard they found a little boy out here just around your age. I think it was that ditch right there where he drowned. I would like to point out here that although my parents were reckless they weren't stupid. If there had been a drowning near a house that was reported or there had been a story in the

paper, they definitely wouldn't have let me out anymore. Anyways, he continued, why don't you come with me and I'll take you back to your parents. It's not safe out here for a kid your age. Uh, it's okay, I have my quad quad right here I'll just ride back. I pointed over to the side of him where my quad was but he didn't look. His eyes remained fixed on me and they were deep brown almost black and piercing into me. At this point I was scared and I knew that this could be a bad situation. I was hoping that he was just a concerned old man but there was no way I was going with him anywhere. I got to my feet to start walking to my quad to which the man said, should a kid your age be riding something that dangerous? Let's just put it in my truck and I'll

give you a ride back. I don't see a truck, I said looking around hoping to talk my way out of the situation. Oh, it's right over there on my property. You can't see it from here? He said, his smile widening. It's really okay, I'll just go now. I said, starting again to walk to my quad. But as I passed him, he reached and grabbed my arm. You really shouldn't be out here. He said staring me deep in the eyes. It's not safe for little kids. Let me go. You're hurting me. I shouted starting to panic but this only made him grip tighter. Maybe you don't deserve to go back home. What kind of parents would let their kid out here all alone? Maybe you should come home with me and I'll take care of you. At this point I was about to pee my pants. I was freaking out and I started to scream.

I don't know if I was saying anything. I just know I was screaming as loud as I ever had before. This only seemed to anger him as his once toothy grin turned to a face of anger. He put his hand over my face and I took this opportunity to bite his finger as hard as I could. I still remember the taste of blood so I know I hurt him pretty bad. Thankfully this caught him off guard as he finally let me go. I knew this was my one chance to get away from this weirdo so I booked it to my quad as he winced in pain. You little heathen, get over here. He cried in anger. I knew I didn't have much time so I jumped on my quad and turned the key as fast as I could. I started up and just

as I pulled the gas handle I felt a hand start to grab my neck. Luckily he didn't have a grip yet as I already started to drive away. I punched it out of there. At this point all I could hear was the sound of my quad so I wasn't sure if he was running after me but I wasn't going to look as I could probably crash and be out of luck. I drove down a dirt path as fast as the quad would go, probably the fastest I had ever driven. When I got home I peeled out into the dirt and ran into the house hoping to god my mom was home. I burst into her room bawling and there she was. She asked me what was wrong but I couldn't talk yet as I was so afraid. I just kept bawling. I

think I was crying for a good 30 minutes before I could summon up the strength to stop and tell her what had happened. I remember the fear in her eyes as I described what happened. She pulled me close to her and hugged me as hard as she ever had. The next day I talked to a police officer and recounted the story of what transpired. I honestly don't remember much after this as I started to block it out. It's not really something a 10 year old wants to think about. Needless to say they never let me off the property again. My dad started drinking and we lost the house soon after this anyways so I didn't really have to live there much longer. Recently I was thinking about that day after I started trying to remember various parts of my childhood. My parents had never told me about what happened

after the cops were called and I never really asked because I tried not to think about it. Yesterday I went to her house and asked her if they ever found the guy considering he had lived pretty close to her property. She was kind of startled by the question because we hadn't talked about this in 15 years. She paused for a minute as if pondering whether to tell me and said we didn't have any neighbors out that way. It was all corporate owned land and the description you gave didn't match any of the neighbors in the other direction. We called the cops and they went to search where you told us you were. But the guy was long gone by the time they got there.

They looked around the property and found an abandoned house that hadn't been used in years since the land was purchased. When they looked inside they could tell that he had been staying there. Apparently he left his stuff behind. We never told you this because you were way too young but one of the things they found was a black grocery bag it had a roll of duct tape and a hunting knife inside I was recently reminded of something that happened to me when I was eight. My family had moved out to a small farm in the country and I was going to a very small area school which had a rickety little bus that did a wide circuit dropping off kids nearish to where they lived.

Actually quite a distance but nearish in country terms I guess. I was walking home from where it dropped me off. No one else around. Shingle road with only paddocks, fields on either side, no houses in sight when a car came down the road and stopped by me. The man in it wound the window down and called to me. I was a bit wary but stopped since he was talking to me. He asked if I knew where any dairy farms were. Now having just moved to the country I didn't know exactly what a dairy farm was and in New Zealand we call corner convenience stores dairies in the cities so I was picturing some sort of farm with a little shop which seemed a bit odd

to me but I said I didn't know about any. Then he suggested I get in and I could help him look for one leaning over and opening the passenger side door. Fortunately I was close to our farm so I said I had to go, then dashed through the nearest fence and went diagonally across the fields towards home, which well I thought that was a bit sketchy at the time. Looking back now, there's no way a man would ask some random little kid to get in their car to help them look for a dairy farm, not even a specific farm, and holy crap, what a narrow escape. Thank cripes I didn't know what a dairy farm was. I don't think there was any around that way either. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations.

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